Assassin's Shadow

by Striker, Randy

  And the “rich piggies,” as Heiny called them, ate it up. They were all survivors—but only in the jungle of business. This kind of survival was a purge for them, a way to rid themselves of pressure by immersing themselves in a Swiss Family Robinson fantasy.

  But not a single one of them knew how deadly that fantasy could become.

  Not Samuel Yabrud, certainly.

  Even in a group as small as ours, I made it a point not to talk much with the Israeli. For one thing, I didn’t want to draw any more outside suspicion that I was there to keep an eye on him.

  For another, I didn’t want him to know. He no doubt realized the roll of his two CIA bodyguards. But suspicion that he had a third guardian might cause him to question just exactly what in the hell was going on. Why all the protection? No, he was the bait. And I didn’t want my bait giving off the scent of fear.

  It would make the hunter all too wary.

  So, when Sonya was safely back in her cabin, I slipped into commando pants and watch sweater, strapped the fine Randall attack-survival knife to my side, and went again to my surveillance station, the water tower.

  If the assassin was going to make a move on St. Carib, he would have to make it tonight.

  Because tomorrow afternoon, they would haul us all out to the islands for the beginning of our Solitary.

  Matrah had briefed us on it that evening at dinner. He was a different man in front of his wealthy clients. He substituted a patronizing smile for his attitude of superiority. Everyone seemed to like him. And he pretended to like everybody. Except me.

  He assigned an island to every group. Ours was Cayo Costa, a six-mile strip of barrier island that fronted the Gulf not far from St. Carib. Like the other groups, we would be dropped off alone a mile or so apart, each of us to carry only five gallons of water, some matches and mosquito netting, and a flare kit.

  “There is positively no fraternization between guests allowed during Solitary,” Matrah warned us in his oily Mediterranean accent. “It would defeat the whole purpose of your stay on St. Carib.”

  Everyone had laughed at that.

  But I didn’t.

  I didn’t laugh because I saw the way that his eyes swept the audience, then suddenly held me with a glare.

  That look of bare hatred tempted me. It made me want to wait for the first opportunity, get him alone, then finish the job on his throat that I had started on Cabbage Key.

  But I couldn’t take the chance.

  Maybe he was FEAT’s assassin. I certainly had plenty of circumstantial evidence. He had ties to the world money market. He had arrived on St. Carib not long before the planned vacations of Kiev Evenki and Samuel Yabrud began. He had been seen talking to my friend Norm Fizer before Fizer disappeared. And Rob Wells had told me about his fascination for firearms.

  There were a lot of marks against him.

  Maybe too many marks.

  But I had to wait and see. If it was Matrah, he would pay the price. I would follow Colonel Westervelt’s orders to the letter.

  The assassin’s death would look like no accident.

  If he didn’t get me first.

  So, in the darkness on that fourth night, I made the rounds of the island, slipping from shadow to shadow. There was still a light on in the main house. That was unusual. Through a third-story window I could see the dark outline of Matrah. There were voices, but I couldn’t catch the words—only the thin peal of occasional laughter.

  I wondered whom he was entertaining.

  Not Yabrud—that was certain. I had watched the Israeli go to his cabin and switch out the light before I had gone to get the beer for Sonya.

  I paused by the porch of the main house, straining to listen. And when I was sure that there was nothing to be heard, I checked once again to make sure the little geophone was still in place, then headed off through the darkness toward the water tower.

  I took my time. Every now and then I’d stop, pull the Star-Tron scope to my eye, and scan the island.

  I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t being followed.

  Tree rats scrambled in the high palms. A few mosquitoes vectored in on me, whining in my ears. Out on Pine Island Sound I could hear the small diesel putter of a commercial fisherman.

  It was a calm night, soft and quiet.

  It was a night filled with stars and a warm south wind. It was a night for fishing the passes, or for anchoring out with a cold beer. It was a fine night for walking. Or for love. But not for dying.

  Yet I almost did.

  I stepped into the assassin’s trap at almost the same time I heard St. Carib’s stiletto-shaped Excalibur roar to life.

  I was three quarters of the way up the water-tower ladder when the boat’s engines started. I turned to look, the Remington 700 slung over one shoulder, the seismic alarm case over the other.

  In the thin starlight, I could see the glisten of boat and wake.

  And the dark shapes of men—but I couldn’t tell who they were or how many.

  It wasn’t that unusual, really. The night before, Matrah and his Mediterranean friends, along with Heiny and the other German, had taken the Excalibur to Cabbage Key for an evening of scotch. I had even kidded Heiny about his hangover that morning. And he had banged me playfully on the shoulder—then slipped me a note from Marina Cole. It said that she was anxious to see me, and that I should save some energy for her after my stay at St. Carib.

  So the leaving of the Excalibur wasn’t all that surprising—only they were leaving later than usual.

  Much later.

  Just after midnight, in fact.

  So I wanted to get a look at them through the Star-Tron scope. I wanted to see who was going and where they were going.

  And that’s when I stepped into the trap.

  It could have killed me.

  It should have killed me.

  But it didn’t.

  Someone had loosened the nails at the top of the ladder. The tower was about sixty feet high. Wooden steps zigzagged up the first forty feet to a small platform. The ladder began there. Someone falling from the top of the ladder would hit back first on the railing of the small platform, then catch the next railing along the wooden steps, then crash, finally, onto the old shell-and-cement base on which the tower was built.

  It was one long back-breaking fall.

  When I saw the Excalibur leaving, I tried to hurry up the ladder. My right hand grabbed the first loose rung just as my left hand reached above it for the final rung.

  When the first gave away, I grabbed at the second frantically.

  And I caught it, bending in toward the ladder, looking desperately for any kind of foot- or handhold.

  But then that rung gave way with a sickening creak of nails pulling away from wood.

  Anyone else it probably would have killed.

  But I had spent my childhood working the high trapeze, learning how to maneuver my body in midflight.

  I had only one option.

  And I took it.

  Instead of resigning myself to the fall, I gave a frantic outward spring with my legs. A wooden framework supported the tower. The braces were old two-by-fours crossed between the main pilings. They were more than a body length away from the ladder, and I barely caught the highest network of cross brace with my right hand.

  My body swung under it with tremendous impact, and I felt the old wood bow beneath my weight. And just when I thought I had it made, there was a loud ker-wack as the two-by-four snapped.

  But luckily the second brace, the one I had grabbed with my left hand, didn’t.

  I hung there by one hand for what seemed like a long time. The wood was old, possibly rotten. I couldn’t take the chance of making any sudden moves. Slowly, I got my right hand up on the brace. Then, hand over hand, I pulled myself along to one of the four main vertical supports. After that, it was easy enough to lower myself from brace to brace, back to the ground.

  An unexpected fall, like an unexpected noise, kicks all the caveman senses
into gear.

  The adrenaline goes roaring through the veins, and the heart pounds high in the ears. Every muscle tenses involuntarily, ready for danger.

  So, back on the ground, I had to force myself to take some deep breaths; had to command body and brain to relax. The black dragon had almost caught me this time. As the philosopher promises: “Death thou comest when least expected. . . .”

  And I sure as hell hadn’t expected that kind of trap.

  So when I had calmed and was back in control, I made my brain scan the options, seeking my next move.

  Doesn’t the hunter usually like to watch his quarry fall?

  Usually.

  But it had taken me so much time to climb down the tower that he would probably be long gone by now—if he was around at all.

  But why make my death look accidental? It didn’t take me long to settle on the obvious: I was an American. Apparently, FEAT had nothing to gain from the death of an agent of the United States—not this time, anyway. My murder would only cloud the issue of Samuel Yabrud’s assassination—and he was marked for assassination. I was convinced of that now.

  Because if he wasn’t, the assassin sure as hell wouldn’t be playing a cat-and-mouse game with me.

  No, this organization—an assemblage involved in terrorism strictly for profit—had a reason for wanting Yabrud dead. And they didn’t want me in the way, alive or otherwise.

  But in that moment of terror, hanging one-handed from a rotten brace, I had made up my mind to disappoint them.

  They had tried to kill me—and failed.

  Now I was hell-bent on living to see them regret it.

  I picked up the seismic alarm case. I had dropped it when the first rung gave away. The aluminum covering was bashed like a bad melon. It rattled when I shook it. But the sniper rifle with the night scope still hung on its sling over my shoulder.

  It took me a while, but I finally found them: the two rungs that had given way. As I expected, the heads of the rusted nails were shiny with prying.

  It had been no accident.

  I set the rifle aside and, with the two wooden rungs in hand, climbed back up the ladder. I used the butt of the Randall knife to pound them back into their proper place on the ladder.

  In the event the assassin hadn’t been watching, I didn’t want him to know that his trap had been sprung.

  That done, I collected my gear and headed back through the shadows toward the water. I gave it a full ten minutes before I stepped into the clearing by the dock. I wanted to make sure no one was watching. I returned the seismic alarm to the fish-box compartment, hesitated, then put the Remington 700 in too.

  I was tired of the weight of it.

  And it hadn’t been bringing me the best of luck.

  Instead I took up the Cobra crossbow, pieced it together, slid the shaft holder onto the back of my belt, and inserted a half-dozen aluminum shafts, complete with triangular killing points.

  I was tired of playing the assassin’s game of hideand-seek.

  It was time for me to force someone’s hand. And after almost being splattered by my fall, I was in just the proper mood to do some forcing.

  I had allowed myself to be hunted for too long. It was time to turn the tables, to regain the initiative.

  It was time for me to become the hunter.

  I checked my Rolex. It was two forty-five a.m. Cabbage Key had closed long ago. And still the Excalibur was not back. At the base of the mound by the path that led to the dock was a big gumbo-limbo tree. I climbed the tree, found a suitable Y of branch, and made myself comfortable. It was time to wait. And think.

  I didn’t like the reading I was getting on this island, St. Carib. All along my instincts had been telling me there was something wrong. Something bad wrong. But I had chosen to follow D. Harold Westervelt’s route of cold logic and cool reason—waiting, always waiting for just the right time.

  But that just wasn’t my style. And I had been paying for it all along.

  In the business of war, you learn not to ignore the little cerebral warning bells. And my private alarms had been going off since I had set foot on the island.

  Sitting high in the branches of the gumbo-limbo, I sat and thought and waited. It was nearly three a.m. before the Excalibur made the turn into the St. Carib channel. It ran without running lights. Something had happened only a short time before that had me deep in thought—so deep in thought that I didn’t hear them coming until they were almost to the docks.

  While I was waiting, the ground had trembled suddenly, unexpectedly. Then I had heard a muted whoof in the distance and seen a brief corona of flame illuminate the far village of Boca Grande.

  What in the hell could explode on Boca Grande at three a.m.?

  I felt my stomach roll, and the hair stand on the back of my neck. I didn’t like the obvious possibility: Maybe Kiev Evenki had decided to stay on after all.

  And maybe FEAT’s assassin had caught up with him.

  The Excalibur came burrbling up to the dock. They didn’t bother hauling it out with the davits. Four men got out of the boat. I wished I had brought the Star-Tron scope with me. I couldn’t see their faces in the darkness.

  The one shape was unmistakable. It was the lanky, angular form of Matrah.

  They came quickly up the dock, as if running away from something.

  As they got closer I recognized Matrah’s two Arab sidekicks.

  But the fourth man remained a mystery—until I heard the voice. It was cold and professional, native American.

  “How long do you think it will take for them to piece the body together?” Matrah was asking.

  “If they let the KGB help, a day. If they try it by themselves, a week.”

  “You are sure he was in the room?”

  “Evenki? I saw him myself, Matrah. Don’t worry.”

  It was like meeting your best friend unexpectedly in some distant corner of the earth, and it took me a while to place the voice.

  And then I didn’t have to, because I could see the face: the square-jawed, Rockwell dream of the all-American male.

  It was my dead friend.

  The fourth man was Stormin’ Norman Fizer. . . .

  14

  They passed beneath my station in the tree.

  I could see the tops of their heads as they hurried along the walk toward the main house.

  I was tempted to end it for all four of them; tempted to bring the Cobra crossbow to bear on the temple of a man whom I had come to admire and trust.

  Norm Fizer had been there in Cambodia when I needed him.

  And he had come to my aid in Key West when I wanted to take revenge on the drug runners who had killed my family.

  I had always thought that Fizer was one of the good ones, one of the government’s dependable few.

  So now I was in shock. Complete shock, as I watched him walk with the Mediterraneans, talking calmly about how he had set the bomb that had killed the Russian diplomat. My breath came soft and shallow, and my throat was dry. My hands were white on the alloy lightness of crossbow. Brain tissue began casting back and forth for an explanation, nerve centers blinking like a switchboard lighting up.

  Fizer liked to joke about his small government salary—but there was always an edge to the joking. It bothered him.

  He had a wife and kids. Two of the kids were in high school, college-bound.

  And you don’t send two kids to college on a civil servant’s salary.

  For his entire professional life he had plowed onward against the never-ending red tape and bureaucracy. In government work, he had seen how often a man’s life is used as a pawn in the giant political chess game.

  So maybe he had finally snapped; said to hell with it. Maybe he had finally decided that if he was going to be a pawn, he might as well be a highly paid pawn.

  The four of them disappeared into the darkness at the top of the mound. The lights of the main house blinked on.

  So this is the true test, MacMorgan. You were off
ered a mission that demanded an assassin—a cold-blooded killer. And you grabbed at it with all the reluctance of a barracuda hitting baitfish. But now you learn that the mission requires you to kill one of your best friends. No longer is the quarry an enigma or a symbol of evil—or any of those other hackneyed cubbyholes you depend upon to cloak your own inhumanity. This is a flesh-and-bone man. This is a person you have laughed with and drunk beer with and suffered with and trusted. So why not just pack your gear, grab the pretty lady on Cabbage Key, and head on back to your hermitage built upon the water? After all, it is just politics—D. Harold Westervelt said as much. And Fizer’s death—or your own death—would be nothing more than the briefest ripple on the broadest sea.

  I thought about it.

  I really did. Various brain segments wrestled and struggled and battled to a conclusion.

  Finally, I took a deep breath; exhaled.

  I swung down from the tree, landing heavily on the shell path.

  Then I mounted an aluminum shaft in the crossbow, arming it with the self-cocking device. And I noticed for the first time that my hands were shaking....

  Three of them sat in the living room of the main house.

  I peered in through the corner of the window. There was a stone fireplace with old tarpon rods crossed over the mantelpiece. On the walls hung stuffed fish and one massive alligator skin.

  It looked like the setting of a 1940 English mystery movie.

  Fizer sat in a leather chair near the fireplace with a whiskey tumbler in his hand. Matrah sat across from him, and one of the Mediterraneans stood by his side.

  I wondered what had happened to the third.

  Fizer had his business smile on. He was talking. He wore clothes different from those described by the woman who had rented him the boat: black sweater and black pants. It was exactly the sort of thing I would have worn if I had gone to assassinate a Russian diplomat.

  Or an American agent, for that matter.

  The windows were closed in favor of the air conditioner. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. None of them seemed to be carrying weapons. Fizer and Matrah were doing the talking.

  Still the third Mediterranean did not arrive.