Sins of the Assassin

by Robert Ferrigno

  When Rakkim looked back up, the chopper was heading north at full speed. Not west. That meant Gravenholtz wasn’t interested in the recipient of the call Leo made, he was only interested in the man he thought made the call—Jeeter. Or maybe things were heating up on that mountain in Tennessee and he had no time to waste. Either way, Annabelle and Leanne were safe. For now. Rakkim stood up, bruised and muddy, splattered with blood and not sure how much of it was his own.

  Leo stayed on his hands and knees, coughing. No…he was crying.

  Rakkim walked over to the horse trough, started washing off the mud and pig shit. The cold water sluiced off the filth but didn’t cool his rage and frustration. He splashed his face, wanted to tear his hair out, still seeing Tigard on fire, still hearing him tell the redhead that he knew whom he’d invited into his home. The words of a dying man…and for the life of him, Rakkim wasn’t sure if Tigard was telling the truth.

  Leo slowly got up. “Why…why did they stop? Why didn’t they keep on shooting until they killed us?”

  “They didn’t know we were here.” Rakkim couldn’t look at him. “If they had known, we’d already be dead.”

  “So they just shot up the pigs for fun?” Timbers in the burning farmhouse collapsed and Leo flinched. “You…you think it’s my fault, don’t you?”

  Rakkim didn’t answer.

  “I…I was talking with Leanne. We talked for hours, told each other everything there was to tell and I still couldn’t stop. I love her. You probably think that’s ridiculous…”

  Rakkim walked toward Tigard, walked straight into the heat rolling off the farmhouse.

  “I checked for tracers,” called Leo. “I pulled two tracker chips. There weren’t any more.” His voice broke. “I didn’t want to use the Tigards’ phone…didn’t want there to be a record. I…I was trying to protect everybody.”

  Rakkim fell to his knees beside Tigard’s body. Wished him a rapid journey to Paradise. As the smoldering farmhouse hissed and popped, Rakkim bowed his head and apologized to Tigard, begged his forgiveness for bringing death to him and his family.

  “I wanted to tell Leanne about Mr. Tigard,” said Leo. “I wanted to tell her how he offered me a job working on the farm. I wanted…I wanted her to be proud of me.”

  Rakkim moved over and knelt beside Florence Tigard, straightened her limbs. Held her hand, feeling the heat from the burning house against his back. He whispered how sorry he was. It was too late for sorry, but he wasn’t saying it for her. He was saying it for himself, and it was too late for him too. Much too late. He folded her hands in prayer.

  “I’m going to kill that redheaded son of a bitch,” said Leo. “Once we get to where we’re going…I’m going to find Gravenholtz, and I’m…I’m going to kill him.”

  Rakkim felt the burden of tears lighten by an eyelash. A few days ago, Leo had been horrified at Rakkim taking care of the two Rangers. Now he was filled with the urge for righteous murder. Spider wasn’t going to recognize his son when Rakkim brought him back home.

  Chapter 25

  The sun edged above the horizon and Rakkim felt the tug of prayer. Wanted to kneel before Allah, press his forehead into the dust and ask for His blessing and protection. All across the planet good Muslims were rushing to mosque, or prostrating themselves in their rooms, the fields, the desert itself, from General Kidd to the lowliest goatherd. One heart, one faith, one God. Bound together by their devotion, a current running from the Creator to every believer, intimate as a kiss. Rakkim turned his face to the sun. Except for the warmth of first light, he didn’t feel a thing.

  “I need to sit down for a minute,” said Leo.

  “You going to throw up again?” said Rakkim.

  “No.” Leo tossed his shovel aside, flopped onto the ground. Sweat ran down his smooth, beardless cheeks. “I’m just tired.”

  “I told you, I’ll finish,” said Rakkim. “Just relax and—”

  “I want to help. I have to help.” Leo sat at the edge of the grave he was digging for James Tigard. He had barely gotten past the topsoil. “I owe it to them.”

  “It’s not your debt. It’s mine.” Rakkim kept digging, piling the dirt onto the grass; Florence Tigard’s grave was four feet deep now. Right alongside the one for her husband. “I was the one who brought us here.” Another shovelful tossed up. “I lied to them.” He worked faster, a smooth, steady motion in the soft earth. “I used them.” Dirt and pebbles flying. “You made a phone call you shouldn’t have, but I was the one who got them killed, Leo, not you.”

  Honor, revenge, hospitality—the three hallmarks of the tribal man, according to one of Sarah’s former academic associates, a fussy sociology professor who considered rationalism to be a sign of superiority. Yes, honor was a burden, as was revenge, and Bill Tigard and his family weren’t the first or the last to be killed by their own hospitality, but the world was dead without such virtues. A place of musty books and empty promises.

  Rakkim shoveled more dirt beside the grave. Almost deep enough now. The two of them had been working nonstop since the helicopter left. They had rinsed off the mud and pig shit, then Rakkim had gone to the bunkhouse, gathered bedsheets from storage, carefully wrapped the four bodies, and carried them over to the hill overlooking the river. A good spot to rest until the Day of Judgment. Leo sobbed quietly as they worked—the shovel was awkward in his hands, and he already had blisters, but he kept at it.

  “Why don’t you get some wood and wire in what’s left of the barn?” said Rakkim. “You make some crosses for the graves, and I’ll keep digging.”

  Leo hesitated.

  “The Tigards are good Christians. Can’t bury them without a cross to mark the spot.”

  Leo nodded, ran toward the shed.

  Rakkim got back to work, digging steadily at the moist earth, eager to lose himself in the effort. When they got to the next town, he would call the minister at the Tigards’ church. Tell them where the bodies were buried, so they could give them a genuine Christian burial. A Muslim and a Jew digging graves for devout Christians, saying their own prayers over the dead…say what you want, God might not be merciful, and he had way too many rules, but he did have a sense of humor.

  Rakkim had half expected the neighbors to show up, but the next farmhouse was four or five miles away, and with the storm and the lightning…if the neighbors had heard the guns and the explosions, maybe they just thought it best to wait until morning.

  Terrible what had happened to the Tigard family. Beyond terrible. The things he had seen tonight would never be erased, but Rakkim had learned something important from the attack. The stealth helicopter was Chinese built, a Monsoon-class, Model 4. The best bird in their arsenal—fast and maneuverable, with laser-sighted Gatlings, and quiet as a nightmare. It hadn’t been the noise of the approaching chopper that had awakened Rakkim, but the minute perturbation in air pressure.

  Rakkim took a breather at the bottom of the grave. Deep enough now. He walked up the narrow incline he had left himself, picked Florence Tigard’s body off the ground, and started back down. She was heavy, but he laid her down gently, held his hands out in silent benediction. Then walked back up and started shoveling in dirt.

  The Chinese didn’t export the Model 4. The president of the Belt himself only had a Model 2, a gift from the Chinese premier on his last official visit. If the Colonel had a Model 4, then the Chinese wanted to do business with him in a very bad way. Which meant they were convinced there was something in that mountain, something worth currying favor with the Colonel. The Chinese connection gave Rakkim just what he was looking for. An opportunity. A way in. A cover story that would grant him access to the Colonel. There were problems, of course…but after the price the Tigards had paid, there was no way Rakkim wasn’t going to act on this new information.

  Leo wandered back as the sun started steaming the wet ground, the kid carrying four crosses as Rakkim smoothed a mound of soil over Florence Tigard’s grave. Leo had rinsed himself before making the c
rosses, but his face and hands were still scratched and bruised from his being trampled in the pigpen. He offered Rakkim the crosses that he had made from pieces of white picket fence. “Are these going to be okay? I scratched their names—”

  “They’re fine. Really nice.”

  “Honest?”

  “They’re fucking crosses. Just stick them in the ground. If there’s a heaven they’re already there. If not…it doesn’t matter if the crosses are nice or not.”

  Leo stared at him.

  “I’m sorry, Leo. I’m…I’m stretched a little thin right now.”

  “Gee, that’s too bad, because me…I’m just having a great morning.” Leo pushed the cross for James into the ground at the head of his grave. He thumped the cross in with the flat of the shovel, drove it in deeper. “If it doesn’t stretch you even thinner”—another whack—“I have a question.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Gravenholtz…Mr. Tigard slashed him with a scythe, but he didn’t die. He didn’t even seem hurt very bad,” said Leo. “How could that be?”

  Rakkim had wondered the same thing. He took one of the crosses from Leo; meticulously made, the crossbars wired into place, the name and date etched in.

  “I saw him get cut,” said Leo. “He wasn’t wearing body armor. He bled. Mr. Tigard was strong. The scythe should have cut Gravenholtz in half, but it barely broke the skin.”

  Rakkim tapped in Matthew Tigard’s cross. He could have told Leo the scythe was old and dull. Could have told him that Tigard was weak and dying when he swung the scythe. People believed what made them comfortable. What fit with their preconceptions of how the world worked. The kid would have probably believed him, but Rakkim couldn’t lie to Leo. Not today.

  “Redbeard told me a story once. A rumor, really.” Rakkim tapped the cross in, the sound echoing in the still morning. “We were in his water garden, drinking Coca-Cola. The real stuff, the stuff that gets you thrown in prison for breaking the embargo, not that Jihad Cola shit.” The memory warmed him. Redbeard had contempt for substitutes of any kind. Or maybe the State Security chief just liked being bad once in a while. He straightened the cross, gave it a few more taps with the shovel. “Redbeard said that about ten years earlier he got reports that the Belt had started a secret program to counter the Fedayeen. Soldiers of Christ, their own elite warriors, that’s what they wanted. Never panned out, or at least we never encountered them. General Kidd said Christians didn’t have the discipline for the training required. Or the genetic boosters. Said it was just another tall tale from the Belt, more disinformation, but Redbeard wasn’t so sure.”

  Leo worked a cross into Florence Tigard’s grave, listening. He winced, pulled a splinter out of his thumb.

  “The subject remained a point of contention between Redbeard and General Kidd, an academic discussion…until a Fedayeen forward combat patrol in Missouri lost contact one night. All eight Fedayeen were found murdered the next morning. Beaten to death. Skulls crushed, ribs stoved in. They had followed standard procedures, secured the perimeter. Three contacts from the Belt had been ushered into camp the previous evening, renegades with information to trade. The renegades had been scanned for weapons, but the scanners must have missed something. For three renegades to kill eight Fedayeen, at close quarters…nothing like it had ever happened before. General Kidd ordered a full investigation. The ground at the camp was soaked with blood, almost none of it matching the Fedayeen—so they hadn’t gone quietly. No trace of drugs in the blood, no genetic anomalies, nothing to indicate how the Fedayeen had been overpowered.”

  “You think that’s what Gravenholtz is?” said Leo. “One of these Soldiers of Christ?”

  “I doubt it.” Rakkim bent beside Leo, helped him bang in the cross. “If there was some elite warrior program in the Belt, we would have seen it by now. A couple other Fedayeen units disappeared right after that in the same area. Redbeard was investigating clinics in Thailand and Japan that specialized in implanting striking plates in the hands of martial artists, but then the attacks stopped and there were too many other domestic problems—”

  “The attacks stopped?”

  “Almost overnight. So General Kidd was probably right, it was just more Belt disinformation. Or the Belt ran out of money to fund more than a few prototypes, or maybe they didn’t perform as well as anticipated. Gravenholtz is no superman. I think maybe…I think he just has some…enhancements.” He looked at Leo. “You know about that kind of thing, don’t you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I heard you’re not off the rack either.”

  “I have an IQ that’s too high to be measured, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I’ve seen smart guys before. I was told you’re something different.”

  “I…I process information very efficiently.” Leo licked his lips. “Really efficiently.”

  “Lucky you.” Rakkim wiped his hands on his pants. “We should get going. I have to contact Sarah.”

  Leo glanced at the graves. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “I’m not calling to ask her to go steady,” said Rakkim. “The situation here’s changed. The helicopter Gravenholtz used is an advanced Chinese design. Very limited production. If the Colonel has one, it’s because the Chinese are courting him. We can use that to our advantage. I need Spider to hack into a very secure database for me.” Rakkim was backlit by the remnants of the Tigards’ farmhouse, the embers still glowing in the dawn. “If things don’t work out, Sarah has to be ready to inform the president. Fuck deniability at that point—he has to be ready to consider all options.”

  “Like what?”

  “That’s for him and General Kidd to decide. All I know is that with the Chinese backing him up, we can’t let the Colonel keep whatever’s hidden in that mountain. If it takes a Fedayeen strike force to neutralize the site…” Rakkim leaned the shovel against the tree. “Better a diplomatic disaster than an all-out civil war.”

  “It…it doesn’t have to come to that. That’s why we’re here.”

  Rakkim watched the new day, the morning light soft and golden. He looked around at the farm, noted the fields of alfalfa almost ready for harvest, the neat rows of sweet corn, the peach trees…The orchard was Bill Tigard’s gift to his wife. Conditions here weren’t optimal for growing peaches, not well enough to compete with Georgia and South Carolina freestones, but Florence loved fresh peaches warm from the sun, and Bill loved Florence. The peaches would go to worms and black canker without proper attention, and there was no one to care for them now.

  “Rikki?” Leo shivered. “How do you intend to contact Sarah?”

  “We had a fallback plan in case things went bad,” Rakkim said, still taking in the Tigards’ farm, wanting to remember every bit of it. A ladybug landed on his hand. He watched it amble toward his thumb. “I’ll transmit a one-second compressed-data packet to a weather station in the Canadian Rockies. The information will move to Sarah—”

  “—as part of the regular streaming update of storm conditions.” Leo snorted. “Brilliant.”

  Rakkim watched the ladybug flutter away. Remembered some ancient nursery rhyme about babies on fire.

  “If the Chinese are involved with the Colonel, you might as well just send it directly to Beijing,” said Leo. “The Chinese have the most sophisticated data-mining operation on the planet. Anything going in or out of the Belt is going to be snagged and decoded faster than you can blink. That’s probably what happened to the other shadow warriors—the Colonel probably knew their entry point before the Fedayeen did.”

  Rakkim stayed calm, evaluating the new information without taking it personally. Leo’s expertise wasn’t wide, but it was deep. If he said the plan was shit, Rakkim wasn’t about to step into it.

  “You’re not the only one with a backup plan,” said Leo. “Spider has an emergency contact in Atlanta. You can call from there.”

  Chapter 26

  “Watch your step,” said
the Colonel.

  “I’m no hothouse flower, Colonel,” said Baby, dropping to her hands and knees. Her tight jeans scraped the rock face as she squeezed through the opening.

  Moseby offered her a hand from the other side. “Ma’am?”

  She took his hand, giggling as he pulled her through. “I declare, the Belt has more gentlemen per square foot than anyplace on God’s green earth.”

  The Colonel wriggled through the cleft in the rock, more agile than anyone would have expected for a man his age. He brushed back his hair, dust drifting down. Two of his adjutants waited for him inside the inner passage, two others worked their way through after him. One of them, Trey, a big ole boy from the Kentucky border, almost got stuck, and had to be dragged through, embarrassed and a little frightened.

  The Colonel walked around the widened interior passage, his shadow huge in the floor lights. He gingerly touched one of the walls, looked at his fingertips.

  Baby pounced on his shadow. Looked around, dirt streaked on her cheek. “Spooky.”

  “I told you not to come,” said the Colonel.

  “You know I like a little scare, Colonel,” she said, kissing him. “Keeps the blood circulating, that’s what my mama says.”

  “What makes you think this tunnel goes anywhere?” the Colonel said to Moseby. “Jefferson’s already checked it out.”

  “No, sir, he checked out the main tunnel,” said Moseby. “This is a little feeder line…run off the main one to see if it was worth excavating later. The old-timers used to do that a lot when they were chasing coal.” For the last few days and most of the nights, he had been walking the tunnels and mineshafts honeycombing the mountain. Examining untouched tunnels and ones that had already been explored, and crossed off from consideration. “My point is, I don’t blame Jefferson for not bothering with it, but sometimes folks miss things. They get so focused on what they’re looking for that they don’t see what’s right in front of their nose.”