Steve Martini - The Rule of Nine

He struggled to get out of the chair. If he could stand, he could turn and perhaps twist free. Feet planted on the floor, he pushed on the arms of the chair with all of his strength. He started to rise, then suddenly the knee was again driven into his back. The sharp bone could be felt through the thin web that formed the back of the chair. Snyder was jerked down hard into the chair as it tilted backward, and his feet came off the floor.

Reflex drove his hands back to the futility of the rope around his throat. Snyder could feel the veins in his face bulge as panic flooded his brain. In one violent heave he threw his head back against his assailant’s chest, cast his gaze toward the ceiling, and saw the pockmarked cheek and the dark malevolent eyes.

Snyder’s sight began to dim as his heart pounded in his chest, pumping for air. He reached forward with his hands, grasped the board on the stand in front of him and felt for the positioning of the keys, and touched four quick letters.

His right hand left the keyboard and grasped the mouse. The assailant saw the gesture. He jerked the rolling chair away from the computer, but not before Snyder had clicked the button.

Liquida jerked the wooden handles he’d fashioned for the garrote with all of his strength. His gaze fixed on the flashing yellow sign on the computer’s screen-MESSAGE SENT.

In a fury, Liquida pulled the chair over backward, slammed it to the floor, placed his right knee on the side of Snyder’s head, and jerked the ends of the rope with all his might. He heard a snap, looked down, and saw the tongue protruding from Snyder’s mouth, his lifeless eyes bulged open.

Liquida held tight for another few seconds until he was sure there was not a hint of respiration coming from the man’s chest. He released his grip on the wooden handles of the garrote, stood up, and tried to catch his own breath.

With his foot he moved the lolling head back and forth one time, making sure that Snyder’s neck was broken. Then he reached down and removed the garrote, slipped it into his pocket, and lifted the body, hoisting it onto his shoulder.

Still panting from the battle with his victim, Liquida carried the dead form out into the garage. He turned on the light and maneuvered around behind the back of Snyder’s car toward the empty bay at the far end of the three-car garage.

Liquida had already set up a five-foot ladder and tied off a short section of the same hemp rope he’d used to fashion the garrote, looping it over one of the rafters in the garage.

Snyder, who had driven in, never saw the ladder or the rope with the noose all the way down at the other end because the overhead door light didn’t illuminate that part of the garage. Liquida had made a note of this. He had been waiting for Snyder for more than three hours, napping on the bed upstairs, waiting for the noise of the garage-door opener to wake him the moment Snyder arrived home.

He carried the lifeless body, climbed up two steps, and centered Snyder’s chest over the top of the ladder. Careful to make sure the body was balanced, Liquida reached up, grabbed the noose, and slipped it over Snyder’s head. He positioned the knot behind the left ear, tightened it, and checked to make sure that the noose was aligned with the rope burns and abrasions left by the garrote.

When he was finally satisfied, Liquida stepped down, stood there for a moment looking, then reached out and pulled the ladder sideways. Snyder’s body lurched free, swinging in the air as Liquida laid the ladder carefully on its side on the concrete so as not to make too much noise. He stood there watching until the body hung motionless, twisting only slightly on the rope as it searched for its point of ultimate rest.

Liquida checked the garage one last time to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind, then went back inside. He left the light on in the garage. Not even the most despondent soul would hang himself in the dark.

He went back into the study, picked up the toppled desk chair, and with a gloved hand grabbed the computer mouse off the floor where it had fallen.

Liquida then used the mouse to maneuver the cursor on the screen to the folder that read SENT MESSAGES. He clicked and opened it and looked at the top message on the list. It was sent to someone named Joselyn Cole.

Liquida opened it. It was a reply to an earlier e-mail and it was there that Liquida saw a name he recognized. This woman, Joselyn Cole, was traveling, where she didn’t say, but she was on the road with Madriani. Liquida had been headed to Ohio to kill Madriani’s daughter when he was called away by his employer to clean up a loose end. It was now becoming a generational thing. The fellow who overdosed in D.C. had a meddling father. To Liquida it all came down to the same thing, money. Business before pleasure. The lawyer’s daughter would have to wait. He would have to do that one on his own time.

It would have been a nice touch to send Madriani another message, leaving the mystic thumbprint on Snyder’s computer. But that wouldn’t do. It would cause complications. And besides, the digit was beginning to smell. The print Liquida had left on the lawyer’s business card, the same one he had left at the scene of Afundi’s body dump, was not his own. Liquida wasn’t that stupid. The cops didn’t have his picture and they sure as hell weren’t going to get his prints. The print belonged to the thumb of one of Liquida’s earlier victims. Liquida had cut it off to use like the sealing stamp on a signet ring, storing it in formaldehyde when it wasn’t needed. Like the Mexicutioner, the victim was not an American citizen and had no prior criminal record. So Liquida knew his prints would not show up in the FBI database.

He turned his attention to Snyder’s farewell message, his abrupt reply to Joselyn Cole. It was very brief. Whatever Snyder was trying to communicate, you might say, was cut short. But then only Liquida knew this. Still, it wasn’t bad. The cops might even see it as a suicide note. After all, the four-letter word “evil” is not such a strange farewell for the fevered mind of a man about to hang himself.

They were now in the home stretch, and like a buzz of electricity running through his veins, Thorn could feel it. He was finally back at the airfield in Puerto Rico. The clock was running. He had only days to go and a mountain of work to complete before the plane could be airborne again.

Thorn had received word that morning that the Mexican had done his job. Snyder was dead. There would be no more news conferences. Whether he knew anything or not, the old man’s lips were now sealed, and Thorn was free to concentrate on the task at hand.

To help him he had two of his regular crew, along with the two others, Western-educated Saudis, both of whom were trained as pilots and who would fly the plane. They were Muslims from the Mahdi Army, recruited through contacts that Thorn had developed during his years in Somalia.

But it seemed there was always one more problem. This one was driving Thorn crazy. Ahmed, the senior pilot, came fully equipped with his own caste system. He indicated a strong resentment toward anything that even remotely resembled manual labor. And, of course, the moment this affliction was made evident, his copilot, Masud, developed the same disease.

Between prayers they would sit on their asses all day under the trees, watching Thorn and his crew busting their behinds to get the plane ready. When Thorn tried to explain to them that there was painting to be done and a ramp to finish, they turned up their noses.

The one job they agreed to work on was the pylons under the two wings, and only because these were weapons-related. This seemed to appeal to their native warlike instincts in the same way possessing a rifle and shooting it into the air had appealed to their ancestors.