Ben Mitchell was in the middle of pouring several gallons of clear liquid plastic onto a new mahogany tabletop when the phone rang in his garage workshop. The table had taken him several days to build and he could not stop now: the catalyzed liquid was going to harden in a few minutes. The clear plastic would forever capture an “underwater” scene of seashells, realistic looking “gold doubloons” and other pirate loot and artifacts. The ten-foot-long table was going to an upscale seafood restaurant on the Rappahannock River south of Fredericksburg, and they were paying him twelve-hundred dollars for it. If they liked it (and they would) they would order more.
After seven rings, the answering machine kicked in with his taped message, and Ben Mitchell heard a familiar voice, cracking with emotion. “Damn it Ben, are you there? This is Terry Shriver, pick up the phone! They blew up Mark Denton, Captain Mark Denton! Pick up the phone damn it, or turn on the TV, it’s all over the news!” The voice ended, the line went dead and the answering machine clicked off.
Mitchell finished pouring his bucket of clear liquid plastic, pulled off his rubber gloves and apron and air filter respirator and went back into his house. Terry Shriver was another retired Special Forces NCO, but Ben had not heard from him in a few months. Mark Denton was blown up? What was that about?
Mark Denton! Now there was a name from the distant past! Mark Denton had been a young lieutenant back in 68 or 69 when Ben was running a Studies and Observation Group recon team out of Kontum back in the Operation Prairie Fire days, jumping the fence into Laos on a regular basis. Denton had gone along as a straphanger on some ops with Mitchell’s Recon Team Utah, although he was actually a staff officer of a much larger SOG “Hatchet Force.” In the SOG, it was not an exaggeration to say that when it came to cross-border operations, rank came in a distant second to skill and experience. Even junior NCOs were made recon team leaders, based strictly on their aptitude and talent. When an officer was crazy enough to want to tag along, he went as a junior man: he followed instructions and he kept his mouth shut.
This inverted rank structure was unique to the SOG, and unique to that time and those classified missions. Later in the states Denton and Mitchell had both briefly served at the Special Forces Training Group, as a staff officer and an instructor, and the seniority relationship of course returned to the conventional one. But both men remembered their times together jumping over the fence into Laos when the Sergeant had led the Lieutenant. The ties forged on those classified missions, missions that were never officially recognized until decades later, were particularly strong and deep. No one knew about those do-or-die missions, about their shared dangers, and the friends who didn’t make it back. No one knew except the men who had suited up and climbed aboard the lone Hueys to go places they could never talk about publicly.
Mark Denton was a fine man and a good listener for an officer, but he hadn’t been career Army, and he’d gotten out a few years after the war as a captain. Ben still knew of Denton through the Special Forces Association, and periodically had run into him at SOG reunions at Fort Bragg and elsewhere over the years, but Denton wasn’t one to make a life out of being a former Green Beret, like some did. He’d moved on.
Ben Mitchell looked up Terry Shriver’s number and called him back, but the line was busy. Terry was probably calling up other old SF buddies of Denton, so he took the phone into his den and snapped on the TV, which was already set to TOP News, the only cable news channel he considered worth watching. They were showing an overhead shot of a huge highway smashup in Norfolk; dozens of cars were piled up on both sides of a highway overpass. The title at the bottom read “Highway Car Bomb in Norfolk Virginia.”
Ben hit redial and got right through. “Terry, Ben Mitchell here, what’s going on?”
“Have you been watching the news Sergeant Major?”
“I just turned it on.”
“Mark Denton, you remember him?”
“Sure, I know Mark. What’s going on?”
“His car blew up right on the highway in Norfolk, killed him and his son. Now they’re saying he was in some kind of militia, and he was carrying a bomb and it went off early. They say he was going to bomb the federal building in Norfolk, and it looks like he had some rifles and a bunch of ammo in his car, they’re all over the road is what they say. I tried calling his house, but the phone must be off the hook. I just can’t believe it Ben, I just can’t believe it.”
There was a long pause while neither man spoke. Ben Mitchell said, “It’s a crock. It’s bullshit Terry. There’s just no way, no way at all.”
“It’s a setup Ben. It’s got to be a setup.”
“Yeah, it has to be. Thanks for calling Terry, and keep your powder dry—there’s something mighty strange going on.”
“You watch your back too, Ben.”
****
Ben Mitchell had retired from the Army after putting in 25 years, most of it in the Special Forces. One wall in his den was covered with military plaques, unit memorabilia and framed photographs. He walked over and took one large picture down off its hook and brushed his fingers gently over the glass. The faded black and white photograph showed a group of ten smiling men, half of them Americans and half Asians, dressed in tiger-striped jungle uniforms and wearing all types of non-regulation head gear. They were carrying a mix of CAR-15s, M-60s, AK-47s, and an assortment of other weapons. They still had a faint smear of camouflage paint left on their faces; they had the look of happy, exhausted warriors.
“Recon Team Utah, Kontum RSVN, 9-29-68,” was hand-written across the bottom of the picture. Lieutenant Mark Denton was in the center of the photo, holding one end of a captured NVA flag, a wide grin on his face. Staff Sergeant Ben Mitchell was holding up the other side of the flag, also grinning at the camera. He was the only black man in the picture, a largely immaterial detail that was totally irrelevant in the Special Forces community, which was a large part of the reason he had stayed in for twenty-five years.
Mitchell did three tours in Vietnam, in 66, 68 and 71, but his time with the SOG had always been what he remembered most intensely, running covert ops into Laos and northern Cambodia against the NVA on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The SOG recon teams’ primary mission besides gathering intelligence was calling in air strikes, which sometimes rained death and destruction on NVA troop concentrations. More frequently however, they were themselves discovered by NVA hunter teams and had to flee under pursuit to landing zones for hot extractions.
LT Denton had ultimately gotten shot during a Hatchet Force rescue mission, a clean “million dollar wound” which finished his tour without ruining his life.
And now he had been blown up on a highway in Norfolk, along with his son and five other people, and he was being called a fumbling “militia terrorist.”
Ben Mitchell, Sergeant Major (Retired), tried to watch more of the news, but he was too disgusted by all the lies that he heard.
Number one, Mark Denton was not going to bomb a federal building, or anything else, period.
Number two, he wouldn’t involve his son in anything like that, period.
Number three, he would not in any way be associated with white racists, period. The “Niggers Back to Africa” leaflet from the Portsmouth mosque, which was being tied to Denton’s alleged “militia” activities, looked like a very crude and amateurish attempt at false-flag psyops. Mark Denton would not in a million years be involved in any way with that sort of racist crowd, whether or not the “Niggers Back to Africa” leaflet was a fake.
Number four, Mark Denton would never “accidentally” blow himself up with his own C-4 bomb. Your average civilian might buy that line of horse crap about “old unstable C-4,” but no professional demolitioneer ever would. During his decades of handling demo, Ben had often used hard-cast blocks of TNT left over from World War Two. It had been as safe and stable after forty years as brand new stuff, and C-4 was much better than TNT in every regard. Like all military demo, it was built to last just about forever. It didn’t just “go off by itself,” and Mark Denton was not some goofball who would throw together a Rube Goldberg firing device and blow himself up. Impossible.
Clearly, someone had murdered Mark Denton and his son and the others. Clearly, it was meant to be tied together with Jimmy Shifflett and the Stadium Massacre. Clearly, someone or some group was trying to panic the American people and make them believe in a right wing “militia” boogieman plot, and so far it seemed to be working.
But to an old pro, it just didn’t wash. Ben Mitchell knew all about “black ops.” The Special Forces and SOG had run them all the time in Southeast Asia, such as leaving doctored exploding ammunition and mortar shells in NVA caches along the trail. The CIA would then insert manufactured rumors into NVA communications back channels saying that poor quality control at Chinese munitions factories were to blame for the “accidental explosions.” This was an attempt to make the NVA and VC distrust their ordnance, and their Chinese suppliers.
Later in El Salvador and elsewhere in the 1980s he had been aware of programs to leave doctored weapons and field radios for the communist guerrillas to “find” after what they considered successful attacks. Sometimes the weapons and radios were fitted with tiny beacons, to lead the government forces to guerrilla hideouts. Other times they simply exploded when used by the guerrillas.
He knew from friends serving in the Balkans in the 90’s that it had been practically SOP for one side to occasionally blow up some of its own civilians, in order to score propaganda points and win world sympathy, by blaming their own atrocity on the other side. It was real nasty business, the worst form of black op there was.
Yes, Ben Mitchell knew all about black ops, and everything from the Stadium Massacre to Mark Denton’s death said black op to him. He was not fooled for one minute. The so-called assault rifles and incriminating books immediately found in Shifflett’s trailer proved that the Stadium Massacre was a false-attribution operation as far as Ben was concerned. The rifles conveniently being carried out of the trailer an hour after the massacre just screamed “made for TV.” It was all just too pat, too perfectly scripted, just like the “Niggers Back to Africa” leaflets. No, the week’s events had all the hallmarks of a classic false-flag operation to Ben Mitchell.
The only question was, who was running the op, and why?
Whoever was running the operation was probably in the government; it was the only source that made logical sense. It made no sense for any “militia” to be doing it; it would be suicidal for them to go head to head against the FBI. Besides, the only “militias” Ben had ever heard of were composed of middle-aged wannabees playing Rambo and drinking beer. The only “militias” he had ever heard of couldn’t organize a successful gas station heist, much less get Shifflett up in that building, hit the stadium upper deck eighty or ninety times from a thousand yards, and then get clean away.
What made Ben Mitchell certain that the operation was being run from somewhere inside the government was the one glaring anomaly: the gun store arson attacks Friday night. All of the other actions plausibly could be explained as having originated in a right-wing militia conspiracy. They wanted to blame the Stadium Massacre on Muslims, they shot up a mosque, and Mark Denton was being portrayed as a militia terrorist on his way to bomb a federal building.
But the gun store arson attacks didn’t fit the pattern in any way. They were obviously done to create the illusion of a vigilante reaction to the Stadium Massacre, but who ever heard of violent anti-gun vigilantes? It made no sense; it was the flat note in the song. The anti-gun crowd would hold candlelight vigils, or pay for anti-gun TV ads, but attack gun stores with gasoline bombs, and kill some of their owners? No way. The most violent thing the anti-gun crowd ever did was scream and throw trash down onto the Senate floor during the debate. They preferred to let paid agents of the federal government handle their anti-gun violence for them, in the form of the black-clad ninja storm troopers of the BATF.
The gun store arsons were probably designed to provoke a genuine violent reaction from the right wing gun rights crowd, and to make it appear that some type of dirty war was starting up in southeastern Virginia. But they just didn’t add up. Little old ladies in tennis shoes made up the anti-gun crowd, and they were hardly the types to throw gasoline bombs. So if it wasn’t them, it was the government, or some group inside the government. After serious reflection, Ben Mitchell grew sure of it.
But if it was all a government sponsored black operation, what was their motive? He had some ideas.
Ever since the early 1990s, Ben had been watching the militarization of American police forces with growing dismay. Increasingly, young Special Forces officers were doing their minimum time in the Army, and then getting out and going directly into the FBI and other federal agencies’ special operations teams. SF enlisted men, without college degrees, were getting out in droves and joining local police department SWAT teams. It was the same thing with the Army Rangers, and he also heard from his Navy buddies that young SEALs were frequently serving one hitch and then going on to law enforcement SWAT teams, where they could still enjoy “the action,” but without having to spend months and years in third world shit-holes like Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti and Kosovo. SWAT teams had the latest gear and the best training, at least as good as the military equivalents, but they didn’t have to deploy overseas. A civilian SWAT team operator got to kick down doors and shoot guns for a living, and then go home and sleep in his own bed with his own woman in his own town.
Along with the increasing militarization of the police came a militarization of the police mindset. Military specops personnel who were routinely involved in covert ops and dirty tricks overseas had to be bringing their “total war” mindset back to the states when they left the military and joined a SWAT team. There was no way to avoid it. Military specops troops and civilian SWAT personnel often practiced side by side at the same training academies, learning the same skills from the same instructors.
The flow was constant, back and forth, between the military and civilian special tactics units. They first learned their skills in the military, and then they got out and joined SWAT teams. Then they typically stayed in the military reserves, where they were periodically activated to serve on deployments overseas again, keeping up their military skills. Back and forth they went, until there was virtually no noteworthy distinction between the military and the civilian special operations troops.
Everything from the Stadium Massacre to what was happening in Norfolk smelled like a covert operation to Ben Mitchell. Perhaps it was part of the military covert ops mindset trickling over to the civilian law enforcement world? That mindset said that the only thing that matters is results, and how you achieve them isn’t important, as long as you’re not caught red-handed flagrantly violating the rules of engagement. If a civilian law enforcement unit in this gung-ho “war on terrorism” era felt that it was being hampered by overly strict rules of engagement in carrying out its missions, it was predictable that they would simply bypass the rules. It’s what they were encouraged to do overseas in the war on terror on a weekly basis, with a wink and a nod from the highest authorities. “Do what you need to do, just don’t get caught,” was the new unofficial motto of American specops units.
At the outer fringes of the specops covert action mindset, framing and killing the innocent could even be rationalized in the pursuit of their greater mission. Perhaps the Stadium Massacre had indeed been meant to be blamed on Muslim terrorists. In that case, the war on terror might have been turned into a war on all Muslims in America…. Special ops troops who learned to hate Muslims fighting them overseas might be getting eager to ratchet up the battle against their perceived enemies at home. It was a possibility.
Or, perhaps the goal was to incite an armed reaction from the pro-gun crowd, in order to begin a new crackdown in that direction? Either motive was plausible.
But whoever was behind this campaign stepped over a very personal line when they blew up Mark Denton, forever damning his good name as a racist militia terrorist. Denton’s honorable combat service for his country in Southeast Asia all those years ago was now being twisted into some kind of evidence of his terrorist tendencies, just background material to turn him into a convenient fall guy for a black operation.
And so far, from what he had seen and heard on the television, it was working. Denton was already being uncritically accepted as some sort of incompetent militia bomber. Well, Ben Mitchell wasn’t accepting it. If whoever was running this operation thought that they could use an old Special Forces officer in this way and get away with it, well, they had better think again. By blowing up Mark Denton and his son and the others on the highway, they had made the fight personal.
After twenty-five years in the Special Forces community, Ben Mitchell not only knew about black ops, and he not only knew about C-4 plastic explosive, he actually had forty pounds of it. And he already knew where he was going to put it.
If the President of the United States didn’t know what was going on in his government behind his back, well then, Ben Mitchell was going to tell him. Once his C-4 calling card made its mark, the President would listen to him, with his complete and undivided attention.
And if the President knew what was going on in Virginia and approved of it, then to hell with him: it would be war.
****
By the time it grew completely dark Ranya Bardiwell was in position overlooking Eric Sanderson’s three story brick Colonial-style home in the exclusive Fox Hills area ten miles east of Richmond. The Virginia Attorney General’s desire for seclusion and privacy now worked against him: once she had found his address, his isolation and lack of close neighbors made her approach to within range a simple task.
She had ridden the Nighthawk up Route 460 almost to Petersburg, and once in the area she stayed on back roads until she found the best place to leave her bike while she stalked into position. A dirt road ran parallel to a small stream a quarter mile west of his property, it was county watershed land and there were no houses built on the wooded slope which ran up to Sanderson’s hilltop property line. She left the bike hidden in a thicket under the green canvas cover while she put on her sniper’s garb in the last light. An old set of brown mechanic’s coveralls went over her jeans and jean jacket. They were big enough to pull on over her boots, which she then covered with a pair of men’s galoshes, which would leave false footprints if she could not avoid leaving footprints at all.
Over her head she wore a dark green t-shirt, with the neck hole pulled up around her eyes. The two short sleeves were then tied together behind her head to create an instant camouflage mask. This left a clear horizontal slit for her vision, and gave the overall effect of an irregular misshapen stump with the shirt draped loosely over her shoulders. This was a trick an old turkey hunter had showed her, from the days before there were store-bought camouflage head nets. It worked just as well, and left her with no incriminating mask in her possession, just an ordinary t-shirt.
On her hands she wore thin brown driving gloves, supple enough to load and fire her .223 caliber shells while hiding the shine of her hands, and of course preventing the leaving of any possible fingerprints.
The quarter mile uphill approach from the dirt road was easy traveling through mostly open forest floor, beneath a mix of fir and deciduous trees. The woods ended on the ridge along the property line above Sanderson’s house. His house was featured in an on-line architectural digest. It was almost two-hundred years old and was a registered landmark, so there was no question of misidentification. Five minutes on a college library computer was all it had taken to direct her to his home with the accuracy of a GPS-guided cruise missile.
Ranya moved slowly along the inside of the tree line until she had a clear view of the front of his house, facing the side of the long driveway that descended away to her right. There were security lights on the corners of the house and over the front and back porch landings, bathing the immediate area in bright light. Ranya thought they should be called “false security lights,” because they put anyone near the house into her clear view, and at the same time blinded them to anything beyond their brilliant circle of illumination. She was certain that the top of the hill and the woods that concealed her would just be a black void to any light-blinded people in or around the house.
Fifty yards from the house, a dark sedan was parked under some small trees along the side of the driveway. At 7:35 PM by her wrist watch another car came up the driveway, a Chevy Caprice or Ford Crown Victoria by its look, and after a few minutes the first car drove away. So, Sanderson has a detail guarding his house, Ranya thought. Probably plain-clothed state troopers. She wondered if the security detail had been added since he had made his “merchants of death” speech; no doubt he’d received some threats after going high-profile with that gem. But certainly not from Ranya Bardiwell: she was light years beyond making anonymous threats.
She shifted around until she found a comfortable shooting position sitting behind a low deadfall pine trunk. The top of the log was at the level of her ribs while she sat cross-legged with her knees just under it. She moved some rocks from under her, because she knew she had to be comfortable enough to stay in her position for hours if necessary.
Finally, she took off her black daypack, unzipped it and withdrew the long pistol case, laid the case across her lap, and removed the Tennyson Champion. From one of the case’s outside pouches she slid out the suppressor and screwed it onto the threaded end of the pistol’s fourteen inch long barrel. From another pocket she took out the plastic cigarette-pack-sized case which held her father’s hand-loaded .223 caliber match quality cartridges. She put the half-zipped gun case back in the daypack, which she also left unzipped beside her. She planned to take only one shot, and then hit or miss, she was going to unscrew the silencer and drop it in the bag, then plunge the Champion muzzle-first into the pistol case within the pack, zip it up and throw it on her back, and escape down the hill to her motorcycle.
Ranya knew that she had to be down the hill, out of her sniper’s garb, packed and on the bike and out the area within five minutes of the shot. With state police bodyguards on the scene, she could not depend on confusion to delay the pursuit. The call would go out over police radio almost immediately. Any police in the area might begin to block key intersections, which is why she had a route planned out that used only local neighborhood streets. She had a yellow-highlighted section of road map already cut out and taped onto her gas tank to assist her. Her worst fear though was that a police helicopter would already be airborne over Richmond, which seemed likely, and in that case it could be over Fox Hill in mere minutes. Her escape would be a narrow run thing at best.
She snapped open the top of the plastic cartridge case, and selected one bullet, pulling it out by its sharp conical tip. She closed the case and put it into the breast pocket of her coveralls and buttoned the pocket: it was critical that she not drop, forget or leave behind anything at all.
Enough light from the house reached her position to permit her to examine the single .223 cartridge. It was made of gleaming golden brass, a bit over two inches long, thicker than a pencil, then necked down in two sharp angles to hold the narrow .223-inch wide projectile. A half inch of the sharp copper-coated projectile extended from the mouth of the brass case, at its tip was a tiny hole, opening into a small internal cavity. The 50-grain projectile would leave the Champion’s fourteen-inch barrel at almost 3,000 feet per second, and when its hollow tip struck flesh or bone it would virtually explode, dumping nearly six-hundred foot-pounds of energy into her target. This was as much destructive energy as her .45 caliber pistol fired point-blank.
If Sanderson was getting death threats, he might be wearing a Kevlar vest, and he might even be wearing a thin armor plate in a pouch in the front of the vest, a plate which would stop the tiny high velocity .223 hollow point. Because of this possibility, Ranya decided to go for a head shot if possible. She knew that from its steady rest across the pine log the Champion would absolutely be able to hit an apple-sized target at the house 250 yards away, but Sanderson would be moving. Her best chance would come right at his front door, when he might stand still for a few moments. If she could not get a head shot, if he didn’t stop, she would go for his torso.
But Ranya really wanted to take the head shot, because she wanted to erase Sanderson’s self righteous smirk forever. In death, her father had not been permitted the dignity of an open coffin viewing, and Ranya had been left scarred with the hideous memory of what she had seen on the ground between her house and the store. Ranya meant to give Eric Sanderson the same gruesome sendoff that federal agents had given her father. She wanted to blow his telegenic face and head into shreds, so that there could be no public viewing of his formerly handsome corpse in the capitol in Richmond. She wanted his bodyguards and aides to experience some of the horror she had been forced to endure, when they saw Sanderson’s head disappear. Besides, their shock might slow down their reactions and their radio calls, and every second of their delay was a second added to her escape.
Ranya wrapped her long fingers around the carved wooden grip of the Champion, pulled back the trigger guard extension tang to unlock the breech, tipping the long barrel down so that she was looking into the empty chamber. She lifted the barrel back up and snapped the breech shut, and then laid the barrel across the pine log. On top of the long barrel there was mounted a 2.5 to 7X variable magnification pistol scope. Ranya flipped up the small hinged lens covers at each end, and rotated a knob on the black scope to turn on its internal reticle light. She had already adjusted the magnification to its 7X maximum, now she adjusted her sitting position again so that she could comfortably examine the house through the scope with the pistol resting across the log.
The crosshairs glowed red-orange, and the front porch filled the ocular lens as she sighted on the brass and iron doorknocker, which when it was magnified seven times appeared to be only 100 feet away. With a two-handed grip, she settled the thin crosshair on the center of the doorknocker, and began to slowly exhale while softly touching the trigger with the pad of her right index finger, only squeezing when the crosshair was directly on the center of the knocker. At three pounds of pressure, she felt and heard the sharp metallic click as the hammer dropped on the empty chamber, a certain hit within an inch of where she was aiming. An experienced shooter like Ranya could generally “call” her hits or misses as soon as the trigger was pulled. Dry firing, Ranya hit the knocker and doorbell again and again with imaginary shots, practicing for Eric Sanderson.
When she was satisfied that she had adapted to the Champion’s crisp trigger, and she was comfortable shooting the 250 downhill yards to the house from her sitting position behind the log, she loaded a single .223 caliber hollow-point cartridge into the chamber and closed the breach for the last time. She laid the heavy pistol, with its fourteen-inch barrel and scope and seven inch long suppressor across her lap and waited, studying the house, the driveway, and the car with the unseen bodyguards.
No lights had come on in the house after it had grown dark outside, and she was certain it was empty. Perhaps Sanderson was out of town; there was no way Ranya could know. She had a small water bottle in her pack. She drank a little, putting it away carefully each time in case she had to flee with no warning. She shifted and stretched her muscles to keep from getting too stiff, but she never left her position sitting behind the log with the Champion across her lap. An occasional mosquito buzzed around her eyes; crickets accepted her presence and chirped close around her. At 9:00 PM she washed down a caffeine tablet with some of her water. She thought about Brad Fallon and his lovely white sailboat and his escape plan of sailing to the islands. She wondered about Phil Carson and his civil war talk. She wondered if Phil was also in the woods tonight, and whether he was burying or digging up his serious weapons. She remembered a saying she had heard, that when it gets bad enough to have to bury your guns, it’s time to dig them up. She thought about snorkeling with Brad in transparent blue-green tropical water over coral reefs.
At 9:55 she saw several sets of headlights bouncing and turning up the road from the right and onto the driveway. He’s home!
Her pulse and breathing quickened as she laid the Champion across the log, holding it securely in her two-handed grip. She thumbed back the hammer. A full-sized SUV was in front, a sedan behind. The SUV paused by the unmarked car which was parked down the driveway; they were getting the “all clear” no doubt. If they only knew!
The SUV pulled into the circular driveway and came to a stop facing Ranya, its headlight beams aimed into the hill. Then the dark sedan, a Lincoln or Cadillac, came to a stop at an angle partly hidden from her view behind the SUV.
The Champion’s pistol scope had a long eye-relief distance. Ranya’s face was a foot behind it; she switched between looking over the scope at the entire scene and through it at the vehicles. According to the ballistic data card that her father had prepared and placed in the case with the pistol, the scope had been zeroed in at two-hundred yards. Its bullets would drop barely an inch from there to the 250 yards, which Ranya estimated was the distance to the front porch. She only needed to hold the crosshairs on the center of his head, and squeeze the trigger.
Car and truck doors clunked open and shut. The sounds of talk and music and laughter floated up the grassy hillside, to where Ranya Bardiwell sat holding a long-range target pistol. A female stepped out in a full-length sequined gown; it was blazing gold in the home’s security lights. Then some men in dark suits—aides or bodyguards—were getting out of the SUV. Finally, Eric Sanderson himself came into Ranya’s view from around the SUV. He was wearing a tuxedo, his blow-dried black mane with the silver sides giving him away.
Moving…get the crosshairs on him. Stand still Eric, oh what now? He’s back behind the SUV, no shot. Now here he is again, and two more ladies are with him; stand still Eric! They’re all moving to the porch, he’s behind them, find his head, lay the crosshairs on his head, move with him… The other two ladies are in front of him now; young blondes, a matched-set in black mini-dresses. They must be his daughters, up from college for the weekend, they matched his bio.
The group walked to the front porch and up the steps. His wife, his aides, his daughters, his bodyguards; all of them milling and turning and blocking her view of Sanderson. They stopped at the front door, his body obscured but not his head, his black and silver hair a beacon. On the door step now, the women smiling, no doubt full of fine food and wine. All four of them now in a tight shifting knot, aides trailing on the steps below. Sanderson’s back to Ranya for a clear shot, her finger on the trigger, one pound of pressure taken up. His head between his two daughters, in front of his wife’s face. A blond daughter leaning on his shoulder, tipsy and laughing; Ranya’s crosshairs on the back of his head. Two pounds of pressure on the trigger, the crosshairs jiggling faintly in time with her heartbeat. Steady…exhale…aim…squeeze…the sequined wife facing him, smiling in her scope…
Stop. Pressure off the trigger, finger clear.
I can’t do it, not in front of his daughters. Ranya closed her eyes, her head down, uncocking the hammer with her thumb and easing it forward and putting the pistol on safe. She looked again, but not through the scope. She looked down at the contented family scene as Eric Sanderson, his wife and his two daughters disappeared behind their front door, and the lights came on inside.
Sanderson was a pig, he was filth, and his hands were on her father’s murder one way or the other. He was using her father’s murder to advance his own political career, all that was true, but Ranya just could not splatter his skull and brains all over his wife, and especially not in front of his daughters. In the end she found that she just couldn’t do it, there was a line that Ranya discovered she couldn’t cross. She unscrewed the suppressor from the muzzle, slid the pistol into its case inside her back pack, and checked the area for anything left behind. Then she crept back into the brush, stood up and walked carefully in the darkness down the hill through the trees to her Nighthawk.
Okay Eric, you son of a bitch, you just got a reprieve. Enjoy your father’s company, girls. Your presence tonight saved his miserable life.