by Nick Thacker
“Actually, no,” Roderick replied. He offered a warm smile. “We appreciate gathering information about our clients if only to offer a better service, but we do not pry much into personal details. You are the account holder, therefore we care little for information on relations.”
Gareth watched the man’s expression and mannerisms. If he thought the statement sounded harsh, he didn’t show it. In fact, he seemed to appreciate this. His head fell backwards a bit, his mouth a thin line. A smile?
“And I have no servants here. I prefer the solitude, and I am not dead. I can cook, clean up after myself.”
“Very well,” Roderick said. “Still, we do believe you are in danger.”
“Danger of what sort?” the man asked.
“We believe your life is in danger, sir,” Gareth said, butting into the conversation.
The man looked at him like he’d just interrupted the pope in mid-prayer.
“I — sorry,” he said. “You guys, uh, continue. I’ll just…”
“My associate is correct,” Roderick said. “Your life is in danger. We believe you are being targeted by —”
The man held up a hand. Roderick stopped, Gareth stared.
“I know what you are going to say. I have known for a long time.”
“How — what are we going to say?” Gareth asked. Roderick’s face was again a mask of nothingness, a plain stare that belied nothing of what was in his mind.
The man shifted a bit to address Gareth. “You do not work for the bank.”
“I — well, technically, I’m contracted by —”
“So you cannot know the details of the transactions that have been made.”
“You mean everyone — including you, sir — dumping their assets into some shared account? One no one has touched?”
The man sat up straighter. “Those are some of the transactions, yes.”
“There are more?”
“This has been in motion for some time,” the man said.
Gareth shook his head. He considered standing, but he didn’t want to come across as threatening. “You guys like this, don’t you? Keeping me in the dark? I’m trying to help you, man. You’re going to be —”
“Killed?”
Gareth’s mouth remained opened. He didn’t try to conceal his shock. “H — how do… and why don’t you —”
The man smiled, and still Roderick offered nothing. Great help he is, Gareth thought.
“It is the proper way to end all of this,” the man said.
“To end what?”
“All of it. It is not of your concern.”
Roderick cleared his throat. “Sir, we would like to prevent anything that might lead to your harm. My associate and I believe you are next on a list of people targeted, and —”
“I am.”
“You are?”
“I am.”
“Right, well,” Roderick said, clearing his throat again. “We are here to assist you, and hopefully to prevent the attack we believe is —”
“8:58, local time,” the man said.
Gareth involuntarily looked down at his watch. A large, conspicuous piece he loved for its clunky, rugged qualities more than its usefulness. He’d always made a habit of resetting the timepiece to whatever local time he was in, and this trip was no different.
8:56.
Either the man was wrong about the current time, or Gareth’s watch was two minutes off, or…
He looked up at the man.
Suddenly he knew.
The man knew everything. There were no secrets in those eyes.
He understood.
He wasn’t fearful.
Even more, he was comfortable.
He was going to die in two minutes, and they were going to watch.
22
RODERICK AND GARETH SNAPPED INTO action simultaneously. Roderick made for the door, while Gareth approached the window he had previously been sitting in front of. Gareth looked out into the dense, thick forest surrounding the estate and weathered buildings. Is anyone out there? Right now, this instant?
Surely someone was watching them. Every movement, every flick of their head as they had been speaking. Gareth felt the chill, the shudder. He’d felt it before, but usually he was on the opposite side of the rifle.
As a sniper, he’d often imagined what it was like to be one of his victims. Never knowing when that instant would come, when the proper moment would strike and it would all be over. Gareth would watch on, their form motionless or moving slightly or moving a lot, talking or walking or sitting still or doing nothing much at all. Sitting at a desk, or standing in a hallway near a window, or even — once, anyway — driving a vehicle.
Gareth would steady himself, feel the heartbeat and try to match its rhythm with a steady breath pattern. Then he would close one eye, line up the shot, and open it again. Breathe out, breathe in, breathe — fire.
Unanticipated, except for in a small portion tucked away deep in his subconscious brain. The shot never missed. He’d confirm, say the words, pack up and be done. Sometimes it meant a hike back to an extraction point, other times it was as simple as swinging up and into his vehicle and driving away.
He wondered what it was like for her out there. If she was out there, now, watching them. Was she experiencing the same thoughts? Going through the same process? If the time was correct, and the man hadn’t been wrong, and the woman had been trained at all like Gareth, she should have been there now — wherever she was — for nearly an hour, maybe longer.
Setting up. Preparing. Her gear and her mind.
But he wasn’t her. He wasn’t about to kill the man standing behind him. He shuddered again, still watching out the front window, trying to see anything that might give them a clue.
Would she shoot the man through Gareth? It was a risky move, and it had a high chance of failure, but from any of the trees to the house, most proper rifles could make that shot possible. Gareth had never attempted it, but he’d heard of others who had. Some, even, that were successful.
It all came down to what this woman truly wanted. If she was on a mission with orders given to her from someone else, those orders might or might not explicitly state what to do in a situation like this. He figured eighty percent she’d have been told to call it off, to pack it in and wait for another opportunity. Twenty percent she’d have been told to take the shot.
He checked his watch. 8:57. It wasn’t an atomic clock, and it wasn’t offset to match the officially correct time in Greenwich Mean Time. It didn’t matter if it was, anyway, as there were at least two other watches that mattered in this situation: the man’s and the woman’s. Gareth didn’t know which time theirs was set to, or if it had gotten off a bit. And he was willing to bet that one minute of error was a reasonable estimate.
So they had less than a minute. Whatever was going to happen was going to take place in a minute or less. He needed to do whatever was possible to help this man, even though he seemed to be completely at ease with it all.
Roderick was returning to the house, but he didn’t come in. He was holding a rifle of his own, a modified AK-15, and had checked its 30-round magazine and flicked off the safety. Gareth had watched him do all of this with mild interest, both surprised that Roderick was setting up a defensive perimeter against a still unknown sniper in a still unknown location, and also impressed, once again, with Roderick’s ability.
Strange for a specops sort to move into private security for a bank, he thought. He knew of soldiers who had gotten frustrated with the authority in traditional branches, washed out, then gotten hired on in security forces for decent wages and less oversight. Typically they weren’t Roderick types, however. Enlisted men and women, sure, and possibly an O1 or 2 every now and then. Military life wasn’t suitable for everyone, so these sorts of alternatives attracted the folks who wanted to sling guns around and act like bullies without needing to report to a thousand different bosses.
He wondered if Roderick was related to the
woman he’d talked to, or possibly someone else higher up at the bank. Still, why would they have given him this particular job? It seemed reckless and dangerous to send someone into a mission such as this, and he did not pity the person who did that to their own family member.
So, with less than a minute left, Gareth pushed the thoughts of Roderick back into that same corner of his mind he kept ongoing problems that needed solving. He wanted to know who this man really was, and he wanted to know what it meant for him. But that could come later. They only had a minute or less.
He whirled around to the man on the armchair, but he stayed in front of the window. He felt no desire to jump in front of a bullet for this man he barely knew, but he was risking the 80/20 percentage that she wouldn’t attempt a shot through him. There was also the very real — and probably — possibility that she wasn’t aiming from an angle where Gareth was even in the way.
“What’s going to happen?” Gareth asked.
The man looked up at him, smug and content.
“What is she going to do?”
“She?”
“The woman — you know about all of this, don’t you?”
“I do not know who it is going to be. Only that it must happen.” He had the faint hint of a smile on his face, but it was tampered and nuanced by a growing frown. Lines creased his forehead, and Gareth got the impression he was watching the man age in this last minute of his life.
“Why are you okay with dying?”
“We all pass away, my friend.”
“Why now?”
“It is atonement for my sins. As I said, it must happen, and it must happen now.”
Gareth was growing more and more agitated the longer they spoke. He hadn’t expected to get anything from the man, but it was still aggravating getting these half-vague, half-cryptic responses.
“Please,” he said, changing his tactic, “what’s it to you to come clean? As you said, you’ve got less than a minute to live anyway.”
The man nodded slowly, once. He looked at the front door, where Roderick was standing just on the other side of it, looking outward at the forest. He must have figured, as Gareth had, that the woman would shoot from the front of the house, since the man hadn’t moved out of his armchair. Therefore the only logical position for the shooter would be somewhere in the front, behind the trees, looking up and into the house.
By judging the angles and calculating a bit, he could narrow down the possible locations to about three that made sense. The warehouse building blocked most of the tree line directly in front of the great window, so that left the extremities, far left and right, and one small outcropping of trees that was rising up and above the warehouse, but farther back from the tree line.
He figured Roderick would be watching those spots, so he turned his attention once again to the man.
“It is done,” the man said. “It is all done.”
“I know. But what is done? Something you’ve done?”
“Yes,” the man said, nodding. “Something we all have done. And now it is time to pay for our own lives, with our own lives.”
“So you’re religious, is that it? You think you’re a sinner, so you have to atone for your sins?” Gareth wasn’t a religious man anymore, so while he understood the construct in general terms, he wasn’t able to empathize with this man. What God would want to take people’s lives instead of forgiving them?
“I am deeply religious,” the man said. “Devout Catholic, actually. But this is separate from any religious atonement. This is my past life, catching up with me.”
“Who is the woman?”
“As I said, I do not know who has come for my final judgment, but I trust that it is an appropriate alignment.”
Gareth was about to ask a follow-up question, but then realized he had been talking to the man for longer than a minute. He checked his watch again.
8:58.
He felt his heart begin to race. Still within the margin of error, but now the stakes had been raised. They were sitting in the middle of the window of opportunity, both literally and figuratively. Any moment now he could expect the glass behind him to shatter, and for the bullet to travel through, hit its mark, and — hopefully — miss Gareth. He dared a glance out the window of the mansion, mostly checking on Roderick. The man was still scanning, carefully, left to right, then back again slightly faster, alternating the pattern with random stops and varying speeds to account for any random serendipity in spotting anything, as well as to throw off anyone tracking him back.
The same method Gareth had been taught.
He watched Roderick chewing an imaginary piece of gum for a moment, then grow still. Just then Gareth saw a flash out of the corner of his eye. A glint of white light, the telltale sign of a pair of eyeglasses, a pair of binoculars, or a gun-mounted rifle scope. He immediately turned his head and stared. There were no more flashes, but instead he saw exactly what they had been looking for.
The woman, standing, not attempting to hide her location, staring back at him.
23
SHE WAS ON THE RISE he had scouted earlier, no doubt having been completely and successfully concealed up until now. She wore white, a strange choice for a killer hunting in the woods with so little snow on the ground, but the white parka and pants did appear to be a military-issue, high-quality kit. There was a thin line of black resting on her shoulder, one of her white-gloved hands holding onto its strap.
The rifle.
It was too far away to see what make it was, but Gareth wasn’t concerned about that right now. He ran out the front door, his heart pounding out of his chest.
Roderick was surprised, but he recovered quickly.
“Did you see her?”
“Over there,” Gareth asked, pointing. “Up on that rise, just above the warehouse’s roof.”
He was carrying a pistol, a 9mm Roderick had given him, opting to leave his rifle in the trunk of the care, so he ran toward the rise hoping that the woman would be taken by surprise and not try to pop off a few shots his direction before he got into range.
He heard Roderick’s footsteps behind him. Heavy, crunching pounding over the pea gravel driveway, but keeping up with Gareth.
“What’s the plan, Red? She’s not there anymore.”
Sure enough, the woman was gone. Shit. She might have done that to lure us out, and she’ll take the opportunity to make her shot.
He hadn’t considered that possibility, and now he was kicking himself for it. They were not outnumbered, but they were certainly outmatched. Their primary objective was in tracking her down, but Gareth’s own objective was preventing any more deaths. If she decided to take her shot now…
She didn’t shoot. In fact, she didn’t do anything but run. Gareth reached the top of the short rise and stumbled through the trees. He saw her camp, now nothing more than a few broken sticks and some rubbed dirt and leaves in the spot she’d set up. He recognized the position as a decent one, one he himself would have chosen if their roles had been reversed.
But he also saw the route she’d taken through the trees. He wasn’t a great tracker, but he knew more than most, and this woman hadn’t been careful in her hasty retreat. More broken branches, and — best of all — footprints in the soft forest floor.
“This way!” he shouted. He didn’t care if Roderick followed or not. Now it was just one person running from another, and the person behind had the advantage, as he wouldn’t have to turn all the around to shoot.
But he had to catch up with her first. It was likely that she was just as in shape as he was, and it was also likely he was bigger and heavier, which meant she could be faster than him. So then the challenge became stamina — could he outlast her, or was her vehicle or transportation close enough she could get to it before Gareth could catch up?
He ran faster, aligning his breath with the footfalls. Sharp, quick breaths was his preferred method of running at a tilt. Counterintuitive, but it kept the oxygen in his bloodstream fresher, and the
refore more efficient. The trees passed him as he wound through the forest, trying to pay attention to her trail.
He caught a break after a left turn, seeing her white parka about two hundred paces ahead. He stretched, pushing himself still faster, and knew that he would eventually catch up.
Unless…
The woman slowed, and he thought he was going to make it, but she ducked at the last minute and disappeared. What the…
Then he saw it.
It was a car, a small compact sedan that had been fitted with off-road tires and probably weighted to catch on the track better. She was already behind the wheel, and he heard the roar of the engine firing up.
No.
He sprinted the last hundred paces, trying to close the distance, but the woman started moving. Slowly at first, then the blue sedan picked up speed. She’s going to burn me, he thought. There’s no way —
Crack! The sound of a rifle firing from behind him made Gareth duck. Two more shots fired, and he watched from the ground as the back windshield of the sedan blew out.
He turned and saw Roderick, aiming and walking. He continued firing. One of the rear tires blew, and the car spun wildly and nearly hit a tree.
Roderick ran to the tiny dirt road now, turned, and dropped to a knee. A much better vantage point, and he was no longer moving. Gareth watched, still lying on the ground, now behind him in the woods. Roderick’s rifle blasted four shots, then Gareth heard the telltale sign of a vehicle smashing into a tree. A deep, low rumble, interspersed with the crunching sound of weak aluminum pushed beyond its limits.
“Let’s move,” he said. “She’ll try to make a run for it.”
Gareth nodded, but he was already in motion. He was not winded, but he knew he couldn’t keep up the incredible pace for much longer. Roderick, thankfully, seemed every bit as fit as Gareth, so at least there was a chance one of them would make it.
The woman, however, hadn’t popped up from her vehicle. He wondered if she had been injured in the crash. The car was smoking, but it was the charged condenser spilling its toxic load out into the air, and Gareth figured there was no danger of a fire.