Nightmare in Red

by Bernard Lee DeLeo

  “Not yet. I took his picture before we left the boat, but have not found his identity with anyone, including Interpol. He may be that good although I doubt you ever kept kill files. I put an urgent on his file identity for Paul. I only have one laptop.”

  “Of course. You have it right about the kill files. It could be another quirk of stupidity or obfuscation. I need to find this guy. He’s dangerous. He’s me, but with the ‘Nutcracker Suite’ playing in his head. It was bad karma running into a guy like him on a tour boat ferry heading to Salem, the witch capital. There’s nothing to be done about it now but find him. He won’t quit until we’re dead. It’s what I would have done. We protect our identity at all costs, including wholesale murder. My guess would be either that little girl he paid attention to or one of the college girls is the next target for blackmail.”

  Chapter Ten

  Bad to the Bone

  A flash text pinged across the laptop screen – incoming call. A moment later Nick’s phone vibrated. It was Paul Gilbrech. “Jesus, Nick, how the hell did you stumble across Felix Moreau?”

  “Just lucky I guess. What’s the bottom line, Paul? We know he’s a major leaguer.”

  “World class hitter. Will kidnap and torture. Has completed every contract he’s ever taken. Does he know who you are?”

  “Unknown. He knows I’m a killer. I believe he thinks I’m on his trail which until now was not the case.”

  “He’s a long distance killer, brother. Stay off the skyline.”

  “I hear you. What kind of tools can we use?”

  “Everything at our disposal. He is to be sanctioned by any means necessary. I mean any means, Nick. The next time you see him, even if it’s in the middle of a hundred witnesses, shoot him in the head.”

  “Understood, Paul. I’ll be in touch. Thanks for the update.”

  “I’m sending everything we have on Moreau. The picture you sent me is the only decent one we have of him. The reason I know it’s him is because of the kill file. We have records on a lot of those people killed and the kidnapped girls. I never thought I’d be saying this to you, but good luck.”

  “Thanks.” Nick disconnected with everyone staring at him in anticipation. “The good news is I can still pick ‘em out in a crowd. Bad news is I found a bad one. After we finish with bathroom breaks we should get moving to the first place on Rachel’s list of places to see. I remember it was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s house and the house he based the book ‘House of the Seven Gables’ on. They’re within walking distance so I’ll confer with Gus and John for a moment while everyone else takes care of their business. There’s probably bathrooms in the ferry building.”

  “C’mon,” Rachel gestured for the rest to follow her.

  When they were gone, John screened a map where Felix Moreau’s phone was on his iPad. It indicated Moreau to be only a block away. Nick scanned the surrounding dock and buildings beyond. “I was afraid of that. He has eyes on us already. His name’s Felix Moreau. He’s world class. It means I picked me out of a crowd, only a me without my cheery disposition. I’m certain we interrupted his hunt. We probably saved one of the college girls or the younger girl with her family from being taken. He won’t assume anything and he doesn’t believe in coincidences. I saw him open the briefcase during the trip here and take a laptop out so I know he doesn’t have anything long range in it.”

  John put away the laptop but kept his iPad out with Moreau’s location. “What are your plans then, Muerto?”

  “We need to move while paying attention to what Moreau does until I can find a place where I can double back on the trail without being seen. I can’t assume until the tracker places Moreau on our tails whether or not it’s actually him or he figured we cloned his phone. In which case he would have ditched it in someone’s belongings.”

  “What would you have done in similar circumstances?”

  “Probably the same thing he’s doing. I would have waited for an opportunity to kill the three of us even if I had to do it in public. It would even surprise the two of you how easy it would be to murder people at random and actually get away if some precaution of a disguise is taken. I’d wager he knows Salem well. He could pick a street on the way to a tourist attraction he knows we’re probably seeing. Moreau could pick an alleyway or storefront recessed entrance to wait until we passed and walk out behind us. It would be no problem for him to use a silenced weapon on everyone in our group, put away the piece, and nonchalantly leave the area, allowing our dead bodies to be the distraction.”

  “What if he was using the laptop to try and find out who you are,” Gus said. “Your picture’s all over the Internet from your novels. He would have access to all of your biographical data like your stint in Delta Force.”

  “True. That could be big in that he might figure because of my being in Delta Force I would naturally stand out on his radar, but my writing career could throw him off stride. Moreau didn’t get where he is being stupid. The fact I’m a novelist traveling with friends and kids could be enough of a smokescreen to confuse his instincts. It’s obvious he’s still on our track. John can split screen the GPS location and do a satellite street view showing his surroundings. I know it’s bad to assume anything, but he’s hanging around to watch our initial movements. Since he doesn’t have our location, Felix will have to make some guesses as to what attractions we’re heading to. Without a GPS location for us, he’ll have to make some guesses and go with them on a hunch.”

  John nodded. “Meaning we could find a way for you to approach him while he waits for us to pass his ambush spot. Instead he gets Muerto.”

  “Exactly. I don’t have my silencer so I’ll have to take it easy on what I do. Paul told me I can shoot him in front of a hundred witnesses, and I’m covered. I may have to, but I’d prefer taking him without a trip to explain national security, wet work, CIA business, and eventually be put in jail at the mercy of local cops who could give a shit less. In reality, I’d have to keep my mouth shut until Paul sends someone to spring me.”

  “You can’t take chances,” Gus reasoned. “You said yourself the guy’s like you only without your good qualities. I have a bad feeling about you hunting Moreau with your hands tied behind your back. Nothing can happen to you, brother. John and I would have to go home and face the Kader family. We would be without Muerto, matchmaker supreme.”

  “Before you have me already killed by Felix, we’ll see how his movements match ours. There’s our group of eager tourists. Maybe you better network with Gus so we have more than one set of eyes on his movements. I’ll watch our surroundings because if somehow we lose his signal, we’ll have to return this same way, exposing us to possible ambush on our return for the Boston ferry boat ride.”

  “The next time I think you’re harnessing dumb luck when you pluck a killer out of a crowd, kick my ass,” Gus said. “You sure plucked a live one this time.”

  “I was safe until my lovely wife helped me reveal the killer inside Felix. If I had simply ran into him, knocked him down and helped him up, maybe I could have kept his attention away from anyone else while discovering his gig. Water under the bridge now. Rachel sure lured him into the light. He needed to be. I don’t want the jerk lining us up in a digital scope with finger triggering a .50 caliber round from an M107 Barrett.”

  Rachel moved close to Nick. “How’s it looking for a day in Salem?”

  “It looks good, Rach. I may have to disappear for a small amount of time, but we have a plan. It’s a good one with full backing from Paul. The bad news is the guy is a world class hitter. He’s already stalking us by the GPS signal John cloned from his phone. Paul told me shoot him in the head even if it’s in front of a hundred witnesses. I don’t have any choice but to take him out, Rach. He’ll kill us all if he makes it to his tools of the trade. He’s a long range killer. He doesn’t have anything like that with him, so it gives us a small edge I plan to exploit before he gets into a position advantageous for him.”

  “I screwe
d up first setting you on a course to pay closer attention to everything and everybody, and then I screw up again by baiting an assassin in your skill set. Wow, I’m doing great,” Rachel said. She shifted Quinn’s form carefully as he slept in her pack carrier. “Thanks for letting me know the details.”

  “I needed you to know. This was not your fault. It was my hair-brained idea to do a psycho scavenger hunt on a family day to Salem. Like I said, you’re right about my losing focus. No way does this happen today if I had thought about it with some degree of awareness. We’re on the problem now. John and Gus will split duties on tracking while we find a spot where I can upset his plans.”

  “There was a time when I thought life was a bowl of cherries. Now I think it’s a bowl of pits.” Rachel kissed Nick. “I guess we soldier on until you work whatever magic tricks you still have in the bag.”

  “It will be a bit more straight forward than that. No magic trick will get this guy. He’s the real deal. Sometimes I have to prove I am too.”

  “Jean already suspects everything from wet work to aliens landing, complete with government conspiracies and pirates.”

  “Pirates?”

  “She suspects you’ve been warned about a pirate attack on the Salem Ferry,” Rachel explained.

  “I think I’d rather take on some pirates,” Nick replied. “A couple of our stops on the Rachel tour of Salem are pirate related, right?”

  “Yes. There’s a couple of them today I read good reviews on. I figured the ghosts, pirates and witches would really keep the kids energized through the Salem visit. I didn’t know you’d hook us into a real live adult scare fest. We’d better get started.”

  Nick grinned. He had no regrets over anything. He said the right words for everyone around him to hear, but outwitting a Felix Moreau and taking his life would be a one on one challenge he had not had for quite a while. Nick liked the edge he engineered in cloning Moreau’s phone. Let Felix worry about our meetup.

  * * *

  Felix Moreau looked at the communique encoded to him from his contact in the states. It said ‘Run. Don’t walk… run. McCarty’s the real deal. Delta Force, CIA affiliation, and contractor with DOJ as well as the US Marshal’s service and FBI. Suspected assassin of NSA Chief Frank Richert. Dismantled Tanus Import/Export and Fletcher Exports as viable employers. Confirmed kills in the hundreds. Unconfirmed unimaginable. Get the hell out of Dodge, Felix’. Moreau nearly threw the tablet into the wall of the coffee shop he stopped at after confirming McCarty’s group was heading toward the Hawthorne House.

  He had heard of McCarty… a New York Times Bestseller list novelist who wrote an assassin series, and was rumored to be a badass hitter. Until now, Moreau thought McCarty was some kind of clown who talked up his real life to sell books. Now he’s being told McCarty’s like Moreau, only more deadly. He didn’t believe for a second McCarty was on the hunt with his family in tow. Felix knew he could run and McCarty would never find him if he left now. It would mean putting off the best payday he’d had in a year. Moreau would be forced to delay the kidnapping of billionaire April Hutchen’s Granddaughter he had planned meticulously for later tonight while the family stayed in Salem. The delayed kidnapping meant formulating an entire operation again from the ground up.

  Felix would do McCarty first and as many of his friends as he could kill in twenty seconds. The kill time frame represented significant study involving his speed and public reaction. He would need a nearly perfect scenario to blast McCarty and his people after they left one of their tourist spots. Being a deadly talented shooter even with hand weapon at fifty to eighty yards, Moreau hoped to wound Nick badly before killing his friends and family. That way Felix thought he could watch the great killer’s eyes as Felix shot everyone. It wasn’t smart to fool around with McCarty, but he wanted to show everyone in the know there was only one top assassin in the world. He wasn’t afraid of the poser. McCarty was just another kill.

  Their first choice of tourist spots convinced Moreau the list would include the logical moves depending on their eating and bathroom habits. He decided to follow them for the time being, making sure they acted as tourists and not a hunting party cover for McCarty. When staking out Hutchen’s Granddaughter for the family’s visit to Salem, he had figured correctly they would go on the Salem Trolley Tour. When McCarty’s group journeyed to the Nathaniel Hawthorne House first, Moreau thought it meant he needed to guess their route. Instead, they visited the Hawthorne House and House of the Seven Gables, but then returned to get tickets for the Salem Trolley. This pleased Moreau immensely as he watched their tourist plan unfold. After the Hutchen’s prep work, Moreau knew exactly where he could hit the group and disappear without a trace in the aftermath. The Salem police force were rarely seen because of Salem’s tourist reputation and nearly nonexistent crime rate for anything other than theft. The McCarty hit might cause the Hutchen’s to stay in place or extend their visit until after the furor ended.

  Hutchen would have to wait. I know McCarty was suspicious during his woman’s game on the boat which I still can’t figure out. If McCarty heard of a kidnapping right after the meeting on the ferry, I’d have complications I don’t need,” Moreau determined. He grinned. The safest way for me now was if McCarty died.

  * * *

  Nick paid for the Salem Trolley tickets with John next to him while Gus remained with the group. “How are we doing?”

  “He is on our trail. I do not believe he suspects we know his location,” John said. “I like your Salem Trolley idea. It will depend on if Moreau is familiar with the Trolley route. Are you certain Moreau’s target was the girl?”

  “Absolutely. The college girls helped him with something to focus on while prepping for taking the Hutchen girl. It was an easy choice after investigating the ferry’s passenger list. Once we’re on the tour, we’re golden, John. Felix will pick an ambush sight and set in to wait. I’ll drop out of the tour, work my way into a counter assault position and figure the best way to take him depending on the flow of people. There may be an isolated spot on the tour where the street is narrow.”

  “I have the route,” John replied. “I will track him until he halts. Then I should be able to determine how many witnesses any ambush he does would have. We are ready to proceed with this. I wish we could entrap this Felix together with Gus.”

  “Can’t do it. He’s a pro. We’d need a lot of prep work for a hit on him from a triangular ambush. The reason I may have an edge is my approach to his stationary position.”

  “Was Rachel mad that the Trolley Tour has ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ on it?”

  “She understood. That was the main reason we didn’t go in on the official tour. I told her it was the logical way to find out if Moreau’s phone moved with us. The kids were the ones a little bent out of shape about a return. When they saw we weren’t going to make them do the inside tour twice, they were okay about it. They liked the building structure and seem curious to know about the inside.”

  “Tina T-Rex has been unusually quiet,” John remarked as Nick was handed the tickets. “You don’t think she’s getting ready to blow, do you.”

  Nick chuckled. “She’s okay. Gus had a talk with her I’m sure. She knows the score, but you’re right, I could tell she was none too happy about my playing find the next serial killer game on the tour. I’m not either. I may have distracted Moreau from his Hutchen girl target. That is not a bad thing, my friend.”

  “I won’t tell anyone if you’re wrong, but where would you hit our group while on the Trolley Tour, Muerto.” John walked beside Nick to their waiting group next to the Trolley’s flag stop.

  “Burying Point.” Nick took John’s iPad with the Trolley Tour route on it. He quickly went into a street view of the old cemetery from Google maps. Nick pointed to a spot where beside a surrounding wall, a huge tree grew. “It has an old stone wall around it. Beyond this tree is the open cemetery area. I would lie in wait near the tree for the group to get inside the stone wal
l. Moreau won’t care about collateral damage. I would be his main target. I’m wondering what he has for weapons.”

  “What about your approach?”

  Nick smiled. “I have my disguise figured out. It will be perfect.”

  “I may not have mentioned this, Muerto. I get as uneasy as Gus when you claim to have a perfect plan for anything.”

  “I had a perfect plan when I went in to get you at the Isis compound in Onalaska, John.”

  “Point taken.”

  * * *

  Felix grinned with satisfaction when he was sure what trolley McCarty’s group climbed aboard of. He looked at his watch. The Salem Trolley Tour lasted an hour. He considered his options. His logical choices were massive confusion in a crowded spot near the Salem Witch House or Burying Point where he had open ground to put some distance between him and his kill zone. I’ll shoot the bastard in the neck so he can bleed out while watching his family and friends drop around him. Burying Point will be perfect.

  * * *

  Inside ‘The House of Seven Gables’ John and Gus moved nearer to Nick with John holding his iPad so Nick could see. “You were dead on right, Muerto. It is as if you sent him a text message to take a position by the tree. How do you do such things?”

  “Logistics and temperament,” Nick answered. “I know by Moreau’s hits and his kidnappings that he has not the slightest moral code in place. Burying Point would be the perfect kill zone for his temperament. He has no conscience to limit casualties. In fact collateral damage in my case would be his friend. It will be in his mind that the cops will decide it was a random act of savagery perpetrated by a psychopath they should catch easily.”

  “Have you made a similar type prediction before,” Gus asked.

  “When a sniper team was sent after me and Rachel in Denver I figured where they would try and kill me after I sanctioned the target. They arrived right on time, positioning their nest where I told Rachel they would be.” Nick smiled. “She was pissed. We’ll be nearing the pirate tour stores and such soon. I’ll be picking my costume then. I don’t think Felix will appreciate my disguise. I’ll need to get near him at the same time he’ll be concentrating on the trolley arriving. Take no chances, guys.”