awaits. He walks the rest of the way, softly humming a cheery tune of
his own creation, acting as if he has trod these sidewalks ten thousand
times before.
Furtive behavior is always noticed and, when noticed, inevitably raises
an alarm. On the other hand, a man acting boldly and directly is viewed
as honest and harmless, is not remarked upon, and is later forgotten
altogether.
A cold northwest breeze.
A moonless sky.
A suspicious owl monotonously repeats his single question.
The house is Georgian, brick with white columns. The property is
encircled by a spear-point iron fence.
The driveway gate stands open and appears to have been left in that
position for many years. The pace and peaceful quality of life in
Kansas City cannot long sustain paranoia.
As if he owns the place, he follows the circular driveway to the portico
at the main entrance, climbs the steps, and pauses at the front door to
unzip a small breast pocket in his leather jacket. From the pocket he
extracts a key.
Until this moment, he was not aware that he was carrying it. He doesn’t
know who gave it to him, but at once he knows its purpose.
This has happened to him before.
The key fits the dead-bolt lock.
He opens the door on a dark foyer, steps across the threshold into the
warm house, and withdraws the key from the lock. He closes the door
softly behind him.
After putting the key away, he turns to a lighted alarm-system
programming board next to the door. He has sixty seconds from the
moment he opened the door to punch in the correct code to disarm the
system, otherwise, police will be summoned. He remembers the six-digit
disarming sequence just when it’s required, punches it in.
He withdraws another item from his jacket, this time from a deep inside
pocket, a pair of extremely compact night-vision goggles of a type
manufactured for the military and unavailable for purchase by private
citizens. They amplify even the meager available light so efficiently,
by a factor of ten thousand, that he is able to move through dark rooms
as confidently as if all of the lamps were lit.
Ascending the stairs, he removes the Heckler & Koch P7 from the oversize
shoulder holster under his jacket. The extended magazine contains
eighteen cartridges.
A silencer is tucked into a smaller sleeve of the holster. He frees it,
and then quietly screws it onto the muzzle of the pistol. It will
guarantee eight to twelve relatively quiet shots, but it will
deteriorate too fast to allow him to expend the entire magazine without
waking others in the house and neighborhood.
Eight shots should be more than he needs.
The house is large, and ten rooms open off the T-shaped secondfloor
hall, but he does not have to search for his targets. He is as familiar
with this floor plan as with the street layout of the city.
Through the goggles, everything has a greenish cast, and white objects
seem to glow with a ghostly inner light. He feels as if he is in a
science-fiction movie, an intrepid hero exploring another dimension or
an alternate earth that is identical to ours in all but a few crucial
respects.
He eases open the master-bedroom door, enters. He approaches the
king-size bed with its elaborate Georgian headboard.
Two people are asleep under the glowing greenish blankets, a man and
woman in their forties. The husband lies on his back, snoring. His
face is easily identifiable as that of the primary target. The wife is
on her side, face half buried in her pillow, but the killer can see
enough to ascertain that she is the secondary target.
He puts the muzzle of the P7 against the husband’s throat.
The cold steel wakes the man, and his eyes pop open as if they have the
counter-balanced lids of a doll’s eyes.
The killer pulls the trigger, blowing out the man’s throat, raises the
muzzle, and fires two rounds pointblank in his face. The gunfire sounds
like the soft spitting of a cobra.
He walks around the bed, making no sound on the plush carpet.
Two bullets in the wife’s exposed left temple complete his assignment,