by Mark Allen
THE ASSASSIN’S PRAYER
by Mark Allen
Copyright © 2013 by Mark Allen. All rights reserved.
DEDICATION
This one’s for Jud, for keeping the faith. May the black dog never win.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my father (for getting this whole crazy thing started), Keith Gardner (for urging me to new heights), and God (for granting me the talent).
CONTACT
Blog: www.gunsgutsgod.blogspot.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/MarkAllenWriter
Twitter: www.twitter.com/MarkAllenAuthor
CHAPTER 1
As he entered Ardee’s Diner & Truck Stop, Travis Kain spotted Silas Kurto seated in a booth in the back, as far away as possible from the truckers sitting at the counter working their way through plates of bacon, eggs, and home fries. It probably annoyed the waitress that she would have to walk all the way to the back of the diner to wait on them, but judging from the way the wrinkled uniform stretched across her ample paunch and thighs, she could use the extra exercise. Didn’t matter to him whether she liked it or not and he was pretty sure Silas didn’t care either.
He fought back the conflicting emotions he always felt when he was in Silas’ presence, the wrenching sensation of hate and friendship at war with each other like a couple of mangy mutts trying to decide who’s going to get the bone. He clamped down on the feelings, pushing them back down into the shadows where they belonged. Right now was all about business, pure and simple. The sins of the past would have to wait.
The door closed behind him, hinges creaking in metallic protest. The waitress approached, grease staining her uniform, time staining her rather plain face. “Take a seat wherever you like, hon,” she said, her voice practically dripping with that I-don’t-give-a-crap drawl used by cynics the world over.
“Thanks.” Kain made his way through the tables scattered across the floor in no discernible pattern. He felt the furtive stares of the truckers watching him. A hard knot of tension prickled between his shoulder blades. But he sensed no threat, just regular old human curiosity, the natives checking out the stranger in their midst.
Relax, he told himself. Even if someone here tries to go all apeshit on your ass, you’re more than equipped to deal with it. There was a sawed-off shotgun slung under his long black duster, a Colt .45 in shoulder leather, and a Gerber double-edged dagger tucked into his right boot. Maybe not quite enough hardware to jumpstart World War III, but more than enough to turn the diner into a kill-zone if need be.
He slid into the booth across from Silas and leaned his left arm on the table. He kept his right hand out of sight under the table within easy reach of his guns. He didn’t say hello or nod or offer any kind of greeting whatsoever.
Silas leaned forward, the overhead lights gleaming on his shaved skull. He plucked an electronic cigarette from between his lips and exhaled a cloud of water vapor. “You made me wait,” he said. “You know I hate waiting.”
“My heart bleeds for you,” Kain said. He pointed to the cigarette. “Got another one of those?”
“It’s an electronic cigarette. Why would I have more than one? Besides, I thought you quit.”
“I did,” Kain replied, “but being around you leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Kind of like someone rubbed dog shit all over my tongue. So I thought a cigarette might get rid of it.”
Silas took another drag and pointedly ignored the jab, instead glancing around the diner. It wasn’t much; just your typical grease-pit with wallpaper that had been outdated when Elvis was alive, a souvenir counter crammed full of cheap gadgets and worthless trinkets, and a floor that, while not exactly filthy, you wouldn’t want to eat off. He shook his head. “I don’t get it, Kain. Why do you insist on living up here in cow country? You’re over four hours from the city. Can’t be too many job opportunities around here for people in your profession.” He exhaled a plume of fake smoke. “And why are we meeting in this shithole?”
Kain stared at the smoke, wishing it was real, wishing he could suck in a cloud of nicotine to wash away the bitterness searing the back of his throat. “I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty fork than live in the city. And we’re meeting here because it’s quiet, anonymous, and supposedly makes a killer western omelet.”
“How can you hate the Big Apple? People come from all over the world to visit New York City, but you, just a few hours away, avoid it like leprosy.” Silas shook his head. “I just don’t get it.”
“Nothing to get. I just prefer the country, that’s all.”
A waitress approached. Not the large-hipped cynic; this one was younger, prettier, her face unmarked by time’s passage or cynicism’s bite. Kain tried to remember back to a time when he had been that fresh-faced and innocent. It was damn hard. Felt like he had been on the killing fields forever.
“Sorry, sir,” she said to Silas, “but there’s no smoking in here.”
“It’s not real.”
“Then what’s the point?”
Silas grunted. “I hear that.”
“Coffee?” The waitress hefted the carafe in her hand.
Her cheery voice and warm smile pulled Kain back from his dark thoughts. “Sure,” he said, sliding his cup over to her.
“How ‘bout some breakfast?”
“Just the coffee for me,” Silas said. “Thanks.”
“Heard you’re famous for your westerns,” Kain said.
“Famous might be stretching things a tad,” the waitress said with a grin, “but it’s better than a kick in the nuts.”
“With that kind of glowing recommendation, how can I say no?”
She jotted down the order and whisked away. When she was gone, Kain looked at Silas. “Let’s get down to business. I don’t want to be around you any longer than I have to.”
Silas sighed. “What happened to us, Kain?” His voice was full of regret. “When did it all change?”
“You know damn well when it changed.”
Silas seemed to shrink before Kain’s withering gaze. “I guess forgiveness isn’t on the agenda, huh?”
Kain again wished for a cigarette. A real one. Not so he could smoke it, but so he could put it out on Silas’ eyeball. “I’ll never forgive you, you son of a bitch,” he rasped. “Now let’s finish our business so you can go back to leaving me the fuck alone.”
Silas studied him, trying to decide whether to push further. Kain stared back, eyes viper-cold and twice as mean. Finally, Silas shrugged and said, “Fine. Suit yourself.” He reached into his jacket, took out a plain white envelope, and slid it across the table. “There’s the target info, plus ten grand.”
“Numbers?”
“Five. Target plus four guards.”
“So what is this, a dick over? You’re forty grand shy.”
Silas nodded, sucked on his electronic cigarette again, and let the water vapor trickle out. It curled around his face like swamp fog. “No problem, Frank will pay it. Consider this a down payment and you can collect the rest upon completion of the job. That work for you?”
“I’ll live with it.”
“Good.” Silas stood up. “Next time we meet, we do it down in the city, not up here where sodomizing pigs and strumming banjos are popular pastimes. And we do it at a decent hour, not the crack of goddamn dawn.” He gestured out the window. “It’s not even light yet, for god’s sake.”
“Maybe I like the dark.”
“Of course you like the dark,” Silas retorted. “It hides your sins.”
“We’re all sinners.”
Silas rolled his eyes. “I’m outta here. You start talking like a damn priest, you make me nervous.”
“What’s the matter, Silas? You afraid of salvation?”
The waitress brought his western. Turned out she was right—it was better than a kick in the nuts, but not by much. Kain polished it off anyway, then nursed his cup of coffee as he opened the envelope. Inside were several photos of the target, Peter Perelli, a middle-aged man whose black hair had just begun to grey. Perelli was a mid-echelon player in New York City’s organized crime ranks, making a name for himself in drugs and prostitution.
Kain had been expecting this hit. Kain’s client, Frank Giadello, was an up-and-comer in the shadow world of organized crime and the best way to rise to the top quickly was to eliminate the competition. Frank was making a power play, pure and simple. Of course, this power play also had some personal overtones; last week Perelli had hijacked a shipment of coke meant for the Giadello organization. If Frank let such a blatant insult go unchallenged, he was finished. Perelli had flexed his muscles; Kain had been hired to slap him down and send a message through the underworld that Frank Giadello was not to be messed with.
He would not have to travel far to do the slapping. Perelli owned a country estate in Hartford, a small farming community twenty miles to the east, not far from where Kain had grown up. According to the stats sheet, Perelli was something of a recluse who preferred the smell of dung and silage to that of exhaust fumes and factories, the tranquility of wide open spaces to the hustle and bustle of metropolitan chaos. Kain understood such sentiments completely.
He drained the last dregs of coffee, put the photo and stats sheet in his pocket, then pulled the thick bundle of cash out of the envelope. Seemed like a lot of money … until you considered it was the price of a man’s life.
I’m not killing innocents. I’m not gunning down babies or popping bullets between little old ladies’ eyes. All I’m doing is exterminating scum. Peter Perelli is a piece of trash who deserves to die.
The same excuses he used every time, an internal ritual of self-justification.
They were cold comfort.
CHAPTER 2
The night sky was ash-black but striated with moonlight filtering through the clouds as Kain turned off Route 40 onto Gordon Hill Road. Eighteen hours had passed since he had received the target package from Silas. Between preparations for tonight’s strike, he had spent more time than he cared to admit thinking about the past, reliving the good times he and Silas had shared growing up. Looking at them now, nobody would ever know they had once been the best of friends. People rarely understood the fragility of friendship; all it takes is one little sin to shatter even the strongest of bonds.
He parked his Jeep Grand Cherokee in a weed-choked lot that had once been a Post Office but was now just a remote rendezvous for local kids looking to get drunk, get high, get laid, or some combination thereof. Evidence of carnality littered the ground; broken beer bottles, condom wrappers, and even syringes crackled under his boots.
In the back of the Jeep was a black duffel bag containing the various items required to complete his hit. Perelli’s walled estate perched on the crest of Gordon Hill, overlooking the village of Hartford like the fortress of some medieval tyrant. Dressed in black fatigues, Kain slung the bag over his shoulder and ghosted into the woods, flowing like dark water through the underbrush as he made the steep, half-mile trek to the top of the hill. The crisp night air cooled the minimal perspiration that dewed his face, which was striped with black to help him melt into the shadows and prevent moonlight from reflecting off his cheekbones.
Pine trees rimmed the northern wall of Perelli’s estate, providing Kain the cover he needed to get close. But not too close; a drive-by reconnaissance earlier this afternoon had revealed surveillance cameras mounted along the wall every fifty yards. Kain rarely operated under assumption—as the saying goes, assumption is the mother of all fuckups—but in this case he felt fairly confident in assuming that the cameras fed into a monitor room manned by at least one of Perelli’s thugs. Which meant he needed to blind one of the cameras before he made his move.
He crouched in the deep shadows of the pines, opened the duffel bag, and withdrew a CO2-powered air rifle and a clip of paintball pellets. With an efficiency bred by a lifetime of handling weapons, he loaded the gun then moved toward the edge of the trees. He positioned himself behind the trunk of a large pine and braced the rifle against his shoulder. Peering through the sights, he aimed at the nearest camera. As he waited for the camera to pan back in his direction, Kain took several deep breaths to steady his muscles. It was a relatively close shot but the air rifle was not a precision weapon.
The camera swung his way. Kain fired, the sound of the shot nothing more than a soft pop. The pellet struck the camera lens and splattered it with paint, blinding the electronic eye. Kain quickly put the gun back in the bag. Anyone manning the monitors would soon notice one camera was dark. Gunners would be dispatched to investigate within a minute, two at best. He had no time to waste.
He peeled away from the cover of the pines and raced to the wall, ten feet of brick capped with six inches of concrete. When he reached it, he didn’t even break stride. He executed a flawless parkour move, placing his right foot against the bricks and surging upward in one fluid motion. His hands hooked the top of the wall and pulled, increasing his momentum, carrying him up and over. He landed on the other side, boots sinking into the lush, well-manicured lawn. The automatic sprinklers had showered the grass recently and moonlight danced on the droplets.
Shouts of alarm sounded from the house. He froze for a moment, crouched like a predator in the shadow of the wall. His heart pumped adrenalin hot and fast through his veins as he realized they had discovered the crippled camera sooner than he had anticipated. Time to throw stealth out the window and get ready to play rough, because this strike was about to go hard.
He drew his silenced Colt .45 from its shoulder holster and waited. The stats sheets had warned that Perelli’s grounds were guarded by a pair of attack-trained Dobermans. They would be the first to arrive and Kain would have no choice but to put them down.
They came barreling out of the shadows a few seconds later, fangs bared, triangular ears pasted flat to their skulls, throats brimming with angry snarls. They began to bark furiously, letting their handlers know they had cornered the intruder.
Kain leveled the Colt and pulled the trigger, the suppressor reducing the report to a muffled whisper. The .45 slug hammered the first dog dead into the ground.
He swung his gun toward the second Doberman. But before he could fire, a spotlight blazed to life, pinning him in its harsh white glare. He heard someone shout, “Over there! By the wall!”
He rolled to the left as gunfire rocked the night. Bullets blistered the space he had occupied a heartbeat before. He could hear the sizzling whine of ricochets pocking the wall.
“Get the light on him!”
The second Doberman slammed into Kain’s chest. They went down in a tangled heap. The dog snapped at his face like it was a tasty delicacy he wanted to tear off and gobble down, splattering him with hot drool. Kain grabbed the animal’s throat with his left hand, keeping the sharp teeth momentarily at bay.
“Over there! I think the dogs got him!”
The sphere of light from the spot-lamp swept across the grass, hunting, probing, seeking. Kain knew he only had a few seconds to get clear of the Doberman. If the light found him while he was still wrestling with the dog, he was finished.
His left hand still locked like a vise on the animal’s throat, Kain used his right to jam the muzzle of the .45 under the dog’s front leg. The Doberman shuddered as the bullet blew through its heart.
Kain threw the canine corpse aside and regained his feet as the spotlight swept inexorably toward him. He slid th
e .45 back into shoulder leather and drew a short-barreled SPAS-12 semi-auto combat shotgun from his duffel bag.
The spotlight nailed him a second later; a microsecond after that Kain fired a blast of buckshot that blew the light out in a sparking spray of glass. Darkness rushed back in to fill the void where the light had been and Kain welcomed it. In this deadly game of hunter and prey, light was the enemy, darkness an ally. His years of training had conditioned Kain to maneuver better at night than most men did at high noon.
As the shattered spot-lamp winked out, Kain saw three shadows crouched beside the wrecked machine. Two of the figures detached themselves from the other and circled around back of the house.
Kain moved, silent and ghost-like. He made a wide arc around the remaining guard, wanting to take him from behind. The thick grass hushed his footsteps as he edged toward the man like a shark on a blood scent. He was close enough to smell the guard’s cologne and hear his raspy breathing when the radio on the man’s belt crackled to life.
“Patrol One, this is Johnson. Come in. Over.”
As the guard reached for the radio, Kain mentally pulled up the information on Johnson, Perelli’s chief of security. Johnson was a black man who tipped the scales at about two-sixty and judging from the photos Kain had viewed, all of it was solid muscle. He bragged twenty years experience in executive body guarding and had spent the last five employed by Peter Perelli, acquiring substantial wealth in the process. Kain hoped it was enough to die for; with this strike screwed seven ways from Sunday, there was no doubt that he would have to go through Johnson to get to Perelli.
The guard thumbed his radio, oblivious to Kain’s lethal presence right behind him. “This is Patrol One. Go ahead, boss.”
“Give me a sit-rep.” Johnson’s voice crackled with radio static.