by Jamie Smith
“You’re becoming a relic, Simon. The chief of staff is clear on this; you need to play for the team.
“Chief of Staff Baker is going to be out the door as quickly as he’s just entered it.”
There was a long pause.
“I know about the Iran Contra dealing, Simon. And so does the chief of staff.”
Simon froze where he stood. He stood in silence for some time.
“Simon, are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here,” he replied icily.
“I’m on your side with this, buddy; we’ve been together on the cabinet since eighty-two…”
“You mean since you hijacked my move for secretary of state.”
“Since the president appointed you secretary of defense, not exactly a bad gig. None of this needs to come out. I just need to know that you’ll at least stay away from the press and let us get this thing through?”
“No,” said Simon and slammed down the phone.
His usually bronzed face had turned red with anger as he grabbed the whole phone set and threw it across the room. So consumed was he by his rage that he didn’t notice the red dot hovering over his heart.
***
Precisely eight hundred and fifty metres away, Nikita lay flat against the hard, cracked ground amidst the wispy yellow grass in full camouflage gear, his Dragunov sniper rifle firmly pressed into the crook of his shoulder and his eye pressed to the scope. In his ear he had heard it all. He didn’t know who their source was, but a KGB agent had at some point turned someone in the Conlan household. Bugs throughout the ranch had meant Soviet espionage had been able to follow his stance over the past seven years. Listening in to the conversion, Nikita could not imagine it had been a challenge to turn any one of the people in his household.
He sighed. It didn’t seem to matter where he was in the world, his race was either seen as a threat or inferior. Never as people.
Nikita dragged his thoughts back to the target. It was amazing, really, how arrogant Conlan was to think that he could speak so publicly and critically of the Soviets and think there would be no consequences. He watched him through the scope, standing there openly in his living room with the French doors thrown open to the world. He really didn’t need the bugging equipment; it would be so easy to get into the house and listen in person, especially with the secretary of defense not qualifying for secret service protection.
It would not be hard to kill a man such as this but Nikita was aware of a part of him silently praying for Conlan to reverse his stance. Just let the INF Treaty happen and nobody needs to die. One week into being a full KGB agent, he had enough blood on his hands.
He had shuffled on the ground to get more comfortable and the gun shifted slightly so that the laser sighting suddenly slipped over onto the wall, the tell-tale red dot vivid against the pale blue walls. Mercifully, at that moment Conlan had turned to look out the window, leaving the dot behind him and Nikita had carefully adjusted it to move back onto his chest without passing his eyes — no mean feat from eight hundred and fifty metres away where even the slightest nudge would move it several yards.
After more than a minute he had guided it back onto Conlan and was satisfied he had full control again.
As he heard the conversation rise to a crescendo, he prepared to take the shot, giving a last sweep to his surroundings, the gentle breeze rolling across the plains. He was calm and confident. Top of the academy for sniping, it was one place where he couldn’t be attacked or undermined by his fellow students or commanding officers.
Conlan slammed down the phone, and Nikita began to exhale and gently squeeze the trigger as he’d been taught over and over. At eight hundred and fifty metres it was at the very top end of the Dragunov’s range, but he knew the Russian weapon intimately and had every faith in the gun to push past its limits, and every faith in his own ability to make such a shot. If he could make the hit at the same range in a Russian winter storm, he could do it on a calm prairie in Texas.
As his finger began coaxing the trigger, out of the corner of his eye his attention was taken by the young woman who had been forced to pick up the beer bottle for the politician earlier, and his trigger finger relaxed slightly. She was loitering in the hallway just through the doorway to the right of Conlan.
‘Slaves should be neither seen nor heard.’ The words of Conlan still echoed in Nikita’s head. The poor girl just had to constantly hide close by, ready to jump but never be seen, valued, thanked or cared for. Nikita felt the familiar rage burning up in his chest and again focused on Conlan, now throwing the phone and storming about in a fury.
Again, he started to squeeze the trigger, this time to make the shot. But again, something stopped him. Something just didn’t feel right; it didn’t add up. Conlan walked to the French doors and stood looking out across the land. Nikita could even just about see him with his naked eye.
He took his eye off the scope for a moment and reflected on the situation. If he shot Conlan from this range, it would initially be blamed on his servants, which didn’t sit right with him at all. But then once the police ran their ballistics tests, they’d quickly realise that he’d been picked off by a sniper, which would immediately make headlines everywhere. If that happened, the Americans would instantly point to the Soviets for carrying out the assassination of the one person opposed to the INF Treaty, and would smell a rat. The whole deal would collapse in on itself.
It just didn’t make sense.
What to do, what to do, Allochka. Think.
He held in his hands the decision over world war or a move to world peace, and the whole thing stank.
His instructions had been to take out the target by sniper, with the goal of removing the obstacle to the INF Treaty. But a sniper kill made it clear it was an assassination, and surely that was the last thing Petrenko or Klitchkov would have ordered.
It didn’t make sense.
He made his decision. Staying flat to the ground, he began to dismantle the sniper in front of him and packed it away in its case, keeping the scope to hand. He put it to his eye and watched as Conlan took a deep breath and turned back into the house, disappearing from view. Doing a quick scan of the rest of the property, he made sure nobody was watching, then keeping low to the ground, retreated to his car, hidden in a small copse of trees half a mile away, and prayed to God that he was making the right decision.
***
The dusty expanse glowed almost luminous in the moonlight as he stepped out of his car and looked over from the copse of trees to the ranch in the distance. A blanket of stars glittered overhead, and nothing could be heard but the crickets chattering in the night air as the temperature began to drop.
Leaning against a tree he paused, pensive. The vast plain was illuminated by the near-full moon, rendering any chance of a covert approach near impossible. He saw a large bank of cumulus cloud drifting across the moon-drenched night sky, in the direction of the silver orb. It was a long, thin cloud, and there was little breeze. Again, raising the scope to his eye, he scanned the ranch and saw only the glow of lamplight creeping around closed curtains.
He weighed the odds in his mind. It was around a mile to the ranch, and at the pace the cloud was moving he’d have no more than four or five minutes to cover the distance.
There was nothing for it; the ranch was surrounded by flat land and minimal tree cover, rendering any other kind of approach impossible.
The cloud was about thirty seconds away from cloaking the moon. He took a deep breath, and burst out of the trees and began his charge across the hard, cracked ground, hoping that distance would buy him the extra seconds before the land was cast into shadow.
Starting low, he slowly rose into a fully upright position, his back straight and his legs and arms pumping simultaneously. Had he looked back, he would have seen a low trail of dust in his wake, but his eyes were fully focused on his destination as darkness fell.
His pace didn’t falter, and his confidence was supreme. Speed and stami
na were not areas in which he had failed yet, but then, he thought to himself, he had never raced against a cloud before.
As he hurtled towards the house, with around two hundred metres remaining, he chanced a glance up at the sky and saw that the cloud had twisted and mutated slightly, clumping together and buying him some extra time. But as he fixed his gaze firmly forwards, he saw movement in one of the upstairs rooms as the curtain shifted. He threw himself forwards onto the ground, sliding forwards and skinning the front of his body. He grimaced slightly but kept his head flat as the curtains opened and the face of the girl he had seen earlier looked out.
He lay unmoving, hoping the unavoidable eddies of dust he’d left in his wake weren’t visible in the gloom. Dressed in camouflage clothing and black leather gloves he was confident he would be hard to spot, but the clouds of dust might lead her gaze in his direction.
His right cheek flat against the ground, he had nowhere to look other than the sky and saw the cloud moving determinedly. He had only about thirty seconds at the most. Easing his head slowly around to look towards the house, he saw the face still staring out and realised what he would have to do. Moving his hand under his body to his chest, he withdrew his nine-millimetre CZ-75 pistol and began commando-crawling forwards at pace, covering the distance expertly and rapidly. He kept his eyes firmly on the face in the window, as it continued to gaze absently into the distance. At a hundred yards, the moon began to peer through the thinning cloud and he had no choice but to stop and raise his weapon.
The shot was near impossible but he had no choice but to try and make it; his whole mission relied upon nobody knowing he had ever been there. Easier to hide the murder of a black servant than the US secretary of defense. Propping his elbow up, he aimed the pistol in his right hand and wrapped his left hand around his right wrist and the butt of the gun. He exhaled and as he began to pull the trigger, the curtains suddenly closed and the face vanished.
At that moment the entire expanse was again bathed in moonlight and his location clearly visible to anyone who should look. In one swift movement he leapt to his feet and began running powerfully towards the stables at the side of the house, careful to land gently and not alert anyone to his approach. This time he ran with the gun in his hand, ready to take a shot should anyone spot him. He lowered it briefly as he vaulted the low wooden fence, set up, Nikita imagined, to prevent cattle from straying too close to the home.
He felt his muscles bunching as he propelled himself forwards, but although his breathing was heavy as he reached the shadows at the side of the stables, he had scarcely broken a sweat.
He squatted down, and breathed deeply, taking a moment to gather his thoughts and prepare himself for the next move. He could feel a temptation to just walk away, and knew if he paused too long, he would give in to it.
Keeping low and to the shadows, Nikita made his way past the stables, keeping to the numerous blind spots of the security cameras, where he heard a horse whinny gently, but he didn’t stop and continued around to the front of the house. Due to the isolation of the ranch, he’d been unable to scope it out as completely as he would normally have preferred, forcing him to use his imagination to gain an entrance. But the isolation, and the rarity of the secretary’s presence there, had meant that security was minimal. Behind the stables a path led between a grassy verge and an elaborate flowerbed that had been carefully trimmed to keep back from the path. It felt oddly out of keeping with the barren landscape behind him.
All of his senses felt highly tuned, noticing the slightest buzz from a cricket or throaty croak from a toad. But he didn’t hear a sound from indoors. He checked his watch. It was eleven p.m. and from the dark windows, and the occasional glow from a room on the first and second floors, it looked like most of the Conlan ranch had headed to bed. No doubt he had his staff up early to prepare breakfast for him. How hard is it for a man to fix his own breakfast, Nikita thought, as he rounded the front of the huge house?
Huge sloping grass lawns and a curved driveway bordered by ornate hedges and statues led down to a road which snaked away through the desert towards the twinkling lights of Odessa in the distance.
So strange, Nikita thought, to put so much effort into the front of the house, and to leave the back of the house so open to the plains with little more than wooden fences to separate them.
He stepped behind the hedgerow set back from the white stone driveway, separated by a few metres of lawn. Eyes everywhere, he crouched next to a marble bird bath set in an alcove of the hedgerow, noticing as he did that the side hidden from the road was covered in moss and grime. Conlan seemed to only care about what the world could see of him and gave little care to what they couldn’t.
He gazed up at the front of the ranch, and realised that the word mansion would fit it better. Three floors up and ten rooms across, it was everything you would expect and more from a billionaire politician. Security cameras were mounted on either side of the building, but pointing inwards at a forty-five-degree angle, to cover the approach to the main entrance. He picked up a medium-sized stone from the ground next to him, and after moving further behind the hedge he tossed the stone onto the lawn in between the two sides of the driveway. He waited to see if the cameras were motion-sensored. Neither moved.
Always make sure. He groped around and found a thin tree branch, about three yards long. Again, he tossed it onto the lawn, this time a little closer to the front door. Again, there was no motion sensor.
Things felt a little too easy to be true, which made Nikita feel very nervous and he doubled his focus. Conlan was without doubt an arrogant man, but you could rarely make secretary of defense if you were stupid.
Casting his eyes over the mansion’s façade, he weighed up his entry options. The rear of the home would provide the easier access, but he assumed that the stairs to the first floor were at the front of the house. This would require him to make his way through the entire house just to get upstairs, where he would still have to find a way to identify Conlan’s quarters.
On the far side of the house, he could see what looked like a garage bolted onto the side of the building. That would be where he would find his way in.
To avoid the gaze of the cameras, he crept his way back to the rear of the house, and circled round to the other side, approaching the garage from the back. No lights were on anywhere on the ground floor now and he moved with more confidence as he drew towards the low building.
The side of the garage was met by a hedge which would be very difficult to get through without generating a significant amount of noise. Allowing himself to stand up to his full height and briefly stretching his cramped back muscles, he looked at the building. There was a wooden door at the back of the garage which he approached softly, and held his ear against. He could hear nothing, but while leaning his head against the door he noticed he was directly facing a wrought iron drainpipe leading up the side of the house.
He followed the line of the drain upwards and saw that it carried right up to the rim of the roof. He could easily climb it, drop onto the flat roof of the garage and enter through the window of the house visible above it.
He swiftly dismissed the idea, knowing that it would likely create more noise and difficulty than was necessary for the operation, but logged it as an escape route should he need one.
From his pocket he withdrew two long pins and went to work on the garage door, careful to make no sound. In under a minute, he heard the welcome click of the lock.
Without prompt, the old door opened slightly, the wood clearly slightly shrunken and only held in place when forced closed and locked. He was grateful that it made little sound as he pushed it further open, and moved swiftly inside, on high alert, with his weapon drawn and, as always, the safety off.
Once inside, he dropped into a crouched position, his back to the wall and his ear cocked, while he let his eyes adapt to the gloom. He breathed deeply and slowly through his mouth, knowing that nasal breathing was always louder and more
recognisable.
As his vision became accustomed to the darkness, he could see four cars in the large garage; inside it looked even bigger than he had anticipated. A battered jeep sat next to a gleaming station wagon, which was itself alongside a Silver Spirit Rolls Royce and cream Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2. Nikita gave a low whistle; these were some serious cars. The jeep, with a thick layer of dust on it, looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. Conlan was clearly not a hands-on ranch owner and every inch the wealthy Southern politician, a fact reinforced by the absence of tools, old paint tins or any of the other clutter you would normally expect to find in a farm garage. The place was pristine. Aside from the muddy old jeep, the only things to suggest he was in rural America were the ornate shotguns on racks on the wall, over a long, low apothecary cabinet. Nikita crossed to it and checked the drawers, finding old boxes of shotgun cartridges in one of them. He closed the drawer gently, and again noted their location should he need them.
He turned now to the door on the right of the garage, connecting it to the rest of the house — a far newer door than the others. He ran his fingers gently around the edge, checking for sensors and ready to make his escape if an alarm was triggered. He paused. Nothing happened.
The door was made of a heavy wood — Nikita guessed oak — and fitted the frame perfectly, with two locks.
He peered at them and put his ear to it, listening for any sound. He was grateful, but surprised, not to have not seen or heard any dogs on the ranch. But then Secretary Conlan seemed to have little interest in having a ranch in anything other than name.
Going to work on the first lock, Nikita again made quick work of it, feeling the tell-tale turn of the bolt, but the second lock proved to be more stubborn. No hint of frustration showed on his face, his training having kept him calm and patient through far more than a difficult door lock.
Eventually it began to turn, and his fingers strained to hold and turn the heavy latch, which clicked over with a sound that felt loud in the night-time silence of the ranch.