Getting into the house wouldn’t be all that difficult, particularly
since Lee had the pass-code. He’d managed to get it the third time
he’d been here, when the two people had come to the cottage. He had
already confirmed the place was wired, so he had come prepared. He had
beat the couple here and waited while they did whatever they were doing
inside. When they had come out, the woman had entered the pass-code to
arm the system. Lee, hiding in the same copse he was in now, just
happened to have a bit of electronic wizardry that snatched that code
right Out of the air like a fly ball neatly falling into a glove. All
electrical current produces a magnetic field, like a little
transmitter. When the tall woman had punched in the numbers, the
security system had thrown off a discrete signal for each digit, right
into Lee’s electronic mitt.
Lee checked the cloud cover once more, slapped on a pair of latex
gloves with reinforced fingertip and palm pads, readied his flashlight
and took another deep breath. A minute later he moved out from the
cover of the bushes and made it quietly to the back door. He slipped
off his muddy boots and set them next to the door. He didn’t want to
leave traces of his visit. Good private investigators were invisible.
Lee held the light under his arm while he inserted the pick in the door
lock and activated the device.
He used the pick gun partly for speed and partly because he didn’t
crack enough locks to be that proficient at it. A pick and tension
tool required constant use to allow the fingers the level of
sensitivity required to detect the proximity of the shear line, the
subtle descent of the tension tool as the lock’s tumblers began to do
their little jig. Using a pick and tension tool, an experienced
locksmith could pick the lock faster than Lee could with his pick gun.
It was a true art and Lee knew his limitations. Soon, he felt the dead
bolt sliding back.
When he eased open the door, the silence was broken by the low beeping
sound of the security system. He quickly found the control pad,
punched in six numbers and the beeping sound immediately stopped. As
Lee closed the door softly behind him, he knew he was now a felon.
The man lowered his rifle and the red dot emanating from the weapon’s
laser scope disappeared from the wide back of an unsuspecting Lee
Adams. The man holding the rifle was Leonid Serov, a former KGB
officer specializing in assassination. Serov had found himself without
gainful employment after the breakup of the Soviet Union. However, his
ability to efficiently kill human beings was much in demand in the
“civilized” world. Fairly well pampered as a communist for many years,
with his own apartment and car, Serov had grown wealthy literally
overnight as a capitalist. If he had only known.
Serov didn’t know Lee Adams and had no idea why he was here. He had
not noticed him until Lee had made his break for the bushes near the
house, because Lee had come through the woods on the side farthest from
the Russian. The sounds of his presence, Serov correctly surmised, had
been covered by the wind.
Serov checked his watch. They would be coming soon. He inspected the
elongated suppressor attached to the rifle and then rubbed its long
snout gently, like a favorite pet, as though bestowing the notion of
infallibility onto the polished metal. The rifle’s stock was a special
composite of Kevlar, fiberglass and graphite that provided remarkable
stability. And the weapon’s bore was not rifled in the conventional
way. Instead it had a rounded rectangular profile, known as polygon al
boring, with a right- hand twist. This type of rifling was supposed to
increase muzzle velocity by upward of eight percent, and, more
important, a ballistics match on a bullet fired from this gun was
virtually impossible because there were no lands or grooves in the
barrel that would make distinctive markings on the bullet as it
exploded from the weapon. Success really was all in the details. Serov