The Discreet Hit

by Gowtham Gurunath

  The second one was also an American national running by the name of Matthew Keller, 44, 5.9” and weighing 226 pounds. This one has lots of rap sheets but nothing of big interests. Four kill shots in two years; pretty impressive. All basic stuffs and highest range: 1012.23m. Final status: AWOL.

  The third guy was pretty impressive.

  He goes by the name of Tom Rodriguez, 39, 6.2” and 250 pounds, good looking face and a German national, working for the Grenzschutzgruppe 9 der Bundespolize, most commonly known as GSG - 9, the German version of SWAT unit, specializing in counter – terrorism, hostage rescue and special operations unit of the German federal police. Highest Range: 1475m; one of the highest records. No history of fatal hits, Shady. No history of any charges, Dicey. Final Status: Unknown, Fishy.

  So the files were pretty clear. Turner thought Show time.

  Turner was all set to play the first part of his game, The Prisoners Dilemma, The only way he thought he could possibly end this.

  .

  Chapter Four

  If Turner’s theory was even slightly right, he only needed to interrogate any one of the three suspects.

  If his theory holds, and Rhodes anomalies were right, among the three, two were the plausible suspects and the remaining one was the innocent or there are even chances that the suspect was none among them.

  So, for the Prisoners Dilemma to work he had to choose exactly one suspect and it has to be the guilty one, if not the whole thing might blow back to him.

  And for a fact he knew that no one was dumb enough to hire an assassin from the same country to take a shot at the president, an instinct. His instincts proved him correct, most of the times. In the end he chose to interrogate Tom Rodriguez, the German.

  The moment he steps inside the interrogation cell, he knew he would be closely monitored but he needed some privacy, so he called Dylan Rhodes.

  ‘I know it’s too much to ask, but I need some privacy. I need the surveillance down. Just for five minutes.’ He asked.

  Rhodes was in complete denial and refused and blabbered something about security and stuffs. It took nearly five longest minutes of Turner’s time to convince him but in the end Rhodes accepted.

  Turner got himself a five minute window.

  He waved his hands at the guard manning the control room as he approached towards him. The short conversation between them ended when the guard nodded his head and entered into the control room.

  He walked out a few seconds later after which Rhodes signalled Turner, telling that the surveillance was down.

  It’s time to hit the bottom of the ocean.

  Jeffrey Turner slowly paced towards the second cell where Tom Rodriguez was locked up.

  He swiped his visitor’s card to gain access to the cell. The red indicator display quickly turned green with a deafening beep and the door opened.

  ‘Tom Rodriguez?’ called Turner.

  The guy in front of Turner was around 6” and 250 pounds, as mentioned in his file and his face was pale and lifeless. He was in a good shape and his hair was auburn.

  For a brief moment Rodriguez and Turner looked into each other’s eyes.

  Turner pulled the chair across him and placed himself on it, and threw the files on the table. He gently removed his suit and hung it on top of the chair, unbuttoned and started folding his sleeves, as he slowly walked around the cell; expressing a rogue manner.

  Rodriguez’s face lit in pure horror. He eyes were fixed on Turner. He kept staring at him for a few moments.

  Sixty seconds already gone. Four more minutes till surveillance was up. Two – hundred and forty seconds.

  Turner banged his hands on the table, rough and tough.

  ‘Let’s talk. Shall we?’ He said, at last.

  * * * * *

  Another couple of minutes passed by, in complete suspense. Dylan Rhodes was consistently looking at his watch to make sure the five minutes was up.

  He was not sure what was Turner doing inside the cell with Tom. He had null ideas, Nada. He wanted to look inside those glasses very badly but his state – of – the – art security features didn’t allow him to.

  As the five minute window provided for Turner was almost up, suddenly there was a sudden click and a deafening beep.

  Rhodes was completely surprised to find Turner walking out of the cell.

  ‘That was quick.’ Rhodes said.

  ‘Yeah, that was all I needed for him to spit out everything that I needed to know. Now I do.’ he said.

  Rhodes didn’t quite clearly understand him. ‘What’d you know? What did he say?’

  ‘First I need to make a call.’

  Turner was excused again to make his call. After hitting on some specific key strokes he held his phone close to his ears.

  Rhodes couldn’t hear what he was speaking but he was speaking for quite long than it took. Approximately after ten minutes Turner returned back with a smile on his face. Rhodes ignored him as he was instructing one of his guards to bring up the surveillance again and make sure everything is running the way it’s supposed to.

  Turner interrupted Rhodes, ‘We found the shooter.’ He said.

  * * * * *

  Dylan Rhode’s jaws dropped in shock, or surprise, or whatever it was. He was speechless. ‘What?’

  Before he could process the information, there was a huge Ding and a Click. The doors of the elevator opened wide in the Fiftieth floor.

  Three military personnel stepped in and marched towards Dylan Rhodes and one of them shouted with a pistol raised to Rhode’s temple, ‘We are placing you under arrest. You have the rights to remain silent.’

  Everyone went speechless.

  Chapter Five

  One of the military personnel was a woman, in her thirties, with a dark silky tied hair. She had an athlete body and pale face with dark and wide eyes. She cuffed Rhodes’ hands behind and looked at Turner with a restricted smile.

  She introduced herself as Major Susan Turner from the 110th MP, as in Military Police. Jeffrey Turner already knew who she was. She was famous among the 110th division, the first youngest female to make Major.

  ‘I guess Reacher made the right choice by hiring you Jeffrey.’ She said.

  She was in fact mentioning Jack Reacher; apparently known as the trouble maker of the 110th division. Reacher was Susan Turner’s predecessor, an Ex – Major of the 110th. He was a loner too, wandering around places indefinitely as the trouble consistently keeps looking for him.

  Jeffrey was associated with Jack Reacher in a mission in his early days at TCG. It was an organized joint task force where he first met Reacher. They were both acquainted back then.

  ‘Yeah I’m surprised he mentioned me by name. You didn’t make a mistake by trusting me.’ He said.

  Rhodes was staring at them in pure shock as they both spoke.

  As they finished speaking, both Turners shook their hands and exchanged a quick hug and smiles. Within the next minute, Rhodes was escorted by Susan Turner and her military personnel and he was out of sight so fast.

  * * * * *

  A few weeks later when Jeffrey Turner was called for a debriefing back at the TCG HQ, he was asked how he knew that Dylan Rhodes orchestrated the entire operation. It was actually very surprising as well as shocking for most of the people within.

  ‘The key point for any incident is always very simple.’ Turner explained. ‘Ask yourselves the very simple question, “Who benefits the most?” when a certain incident takes places, in our case – An attempt on the President.’

  There was a long silence among the members of the TCG panel when Turner popped the question.

  The panel was organized and covered by ten members from within the TCG that included the TCG’s director of operations, Division’s lieutenant and a few legal members of Turner’s task force.

  Everyone exchanged gazes and finally looked back at Turner.

  ‘Everyone who hates the President, that includes even me. Hell pity for whoever likes hi
m.’ Said one of the members from the panel after which everyone laughed and commented.

  Turner smiled at him and continued, ‘Well, in the presented case we had three suspected snipers, two of which are Native American’s and one German, but look at the real picture here. Why would a sniper benefit from a presidents death?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s when I thought that I was looking at everything in the wrong way.’

  ‘How do you say that?’ The lieutenant asked.

  ‘Everyone from the outside definitely knew about the presidential speech on the 4th of July and the security scrutiny, but no one from the outside knew that the president would be protected inside a ballistic proof glass booth the entire time during his speech.’

  The TCG’s operations director’s eye brows raised, he sat straight. Things were getting interesting.

  ‘So I immediately knew that it was someone from the inside.’ He said.

  ‘But why Rhodes? It could be anyone. What’s the motive?’ It was the lieutenant again.

  ‘Rhodes knew that the president would be protected the entire time and we all know that Rhodes Enterprises was always known for its quality products. So without a practical test, how do you think the fame gets out?’ he asked.

  And continued, ‘So that’s when Rhodes orchestrated the whole plan by hiring two snipers to attempt a shot on the president’s life.’

  He paused for a few seconds to see if anyone raises the question, Why two snipers? When there was a complete silence, Turner continued again.

  ‘When you are working for a defence industry you must already know that a multi – dimensional ballistic proof glass shield is already in existence. But it’s a known fact that no glass shield would ever withstand the forced impact of a .700 Nitro Express Armour Piercing Rounds with a consecutive multiple hits at the same target area. So he made a point to prove that the product of Rhodes Enterprises is of good quality, by hiring two snipers where both of them are supposed to hit the same target area back to back.’

  ‘So when the world knows that, even the most powerful .700 with a multiple hits couldn’t collapse the ballistic proof shield, automatically the fame goes to Rhodes Enterprises and it in fact would also land him more buyers.’ Turner concluded.

  ‘Such a cheap trick, but how did you confirmed your suspicions?’ The director spoke for the first time.

  ‘That was pretty simple. I played Prisoners Dilemma.’ He said, and continued. ‘I requested a few minutes of privacy from the surveillance, for which Rhodes accepted. Since I did read the file a day back when the problem was brought to my attention, I reached out to one of my contacts and confirmed that a new hitman was in town, a day before the attempt. So I knew it was the German. So I chose to interrogate him first. I scared him a little with some of my trick and finally started speaking by saying that his partner gave him up and he was going to prison for the rest of his life, but if he speaks first, he would be given a reduced sentence.’

  ‘He believed that?’ a voice from the panel.

  ‘Yes he did. When we land a certain trick in a certain way, everything works. So I saw his face go pale and just like that he just told everything that I needed to know. I recorded the confession with one of my recording device.’ He said and handed the director a small video tape.

  ‘What about the second sniper?’ the same voice again.

  ‘It was Jim Pratt,’ He said. ‘It was one of the Marine snipers. He was immediately placed under a life sentence in a supermax facility for the rest of his life.’

  The German, Tom Rodrigues was escorted back to the German Government where they made sure to cancel his permanent residency and cease all his assets and put in an underground maximum security prison, maintained by the GSG – 9.

  Finally the lieutenant asked, ‘For the record, your contact that you mentioned, what’s his name? Don’t worry, he’ll be off records.’

  ‘His name is Neal Caffrey, a convicted bond forger, art thief and apparently a con man, presently a C.I., [as in criminal informant] for the New York’s White Collar Division. One of FBI’s finest agents Peter Burkes is his handler, but make sure his name doesn’t stick anywhere near the records.’ Turner said.

  The panel thanked him for his time and finally Jeffrey turner was excused to leave. Turner thanked them back and slowly walked away from the TCG HQ for one last time.

  The sky was blue and the day was clear so was Turner’s conscience. Yet another new day has been born with lots of new hopes and memories to look back into.

  * * * * *

  The Epilogue

  As Turner walked away from the TCG’s HQ, his phone rang and vibrated at the same time with equal rhythms.

  The caller ID showed, Private Number.

  Turner hit the key and listened, ‘Is this Jeffrey Turner? Ex – TCG task force?’ the male voice asked. The voice from the other side was rugged.

  ‘Who’s asking?’ Turner shot back.

  ‘Ted Marshall. Cherokee County’s Deputy Sheriff. We have an incident down here and we are short – staffed as of now. Your name was referred to us by one of our contacts at the 110th MP.’

  Turner knew who it was. ‘What’s the case?’

  ‘One missing child, and it’s already been twenty – four hours and a dead body turned up at the woods this morning with some strange markings.’ He said.

  Statistics says that the probability of getting back a missing or kidnapped child was very slim after seventy – two hours from the time of occurrence. So the first seventy – two hours are crucial, out of which twenty – four hours are already gone.

  ‘Are you still on the line?’ the sheriff asked, worried.

  Turner came back from his never – ending thoughts and finally spoke.

  ‘I’m in.’ he said. ‘I’ll find you within two hours from now. Sit tight.’

  THE END

  Note: Dear Readers, the “Epilogue” Part is just an introduction to the featured novel [The Silent Bells Are Ringing] that I’m writing. Hope you enjoyed the character of “Jeffrey Turner”. Please vote for my upcoming works. Keep supporting. Thank You.

  Visit: Https://www.visionbeyondexistence.wordpress.com [OR] Visit: Register @ “Wattpad” and search for the ID “Gowtham_Gurunath” and read & Vote for my upcoming works.

  About The Author

  Dear readers,

  Being an Engineering graduate, writing has always been one of my passions, but one of the most important things for an accomplished writer is a good platform. Huge successes always come from small step and I’m very grateful that I’ve taken that step towards success and I don’t care how small it is, as long as it takes me to the peak.

  An encouragement & good feedbacks from readers are what that keeps a writer going and in that case I’m proud to say that, even though my achievement is very small – my readers, family and friends have always encouraged me and those motivations kept pushing me here [If I’m right and you’re reading my bio right now, then that’s where the HERE is – The point where people start reading my works and acknowledge them].

  I’ll always be in debt for my readers and supporters for their extended support and care. Please keep supporting.

  With Love,

  Gowtham

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