Linda Howard - Death Angel

“Whatever you need,” said Scottie promptly, because it was due only to Simon that his daughter was alive. “And it’s your call whether or not it’s the last one. I’m always here, for whatever you need.”

He explained what he needed. Scottie thought a minute, then said, “You got it.”

That taken care of, he began analyzing the situation more minutely. The two things you needed in order to kill someone were a weapon and the opportunity. All the other details fell into one of those two main categories. Getting a weapon was no problem; getting an untraceable weapon, and a good one, was easy if he had enough time, but time was the one commodity he didn’t have. Normally he would spend days working out the details, the logistics. This had to be done fast, then he would grab Andie and get out of the country while he could.

That pissed him off, too. He didn’t like being forced to leave his country, and he knew going into this that he might never be able to return. If he worked everything just right, maybe. Only time would tell.

If he’d maintained his apartment in the same building as Salinas, he wouldn’t have any problem, but he’d let it go months ago and relocated to San Francisco. Likewise he didn’t have time to establish Salinas’s routine, so he’d have to initiate the meeting. Drawing him out wouldn’t be a problem, because Salinas had already been trying to contact him about another hit. Now he’d never know what big scheme Salinas had going on, he thought, then gave a mental shrug because it didn’t matter. Salinas wouldn’t live to see it through. Somewhere in the world, someone would live another day.

He’d have to do a street hit, which greatly increased the risks. On the plus side was the weather, which was still cool enough that coats were needed. On the minus side was that he’d not only have to carry his weapon, but adding a sound suppressor to it greatly increased the weapon’s visibility by doubling the length.

Having to suppress the sound added all sorts of complications to his plans. To begin with, using a pistol meant he had to be close, and Salinas was always surrounded by his men. Because of how their mechanisms worked, a suppressor could turn a semiautomatic pistol into a single-shot weapon by preventing the slide from unlocking, but because a pistol meant close work, he had to have more than one shot available to him, in case one or more of Salinas’s men were trained well enough to function through the surprise and initial confusion. He’d need an advanced suppressor that overcame that problem, or he’d have to use a different type of weapon.

The more the sound was suppressed, the harder it would be for them to pinpoint the location of the shooter. He’d go with a smaller caliber weapon, he thought, a blowback design with a fixed barrel; they were more effectively suppressed. He’d never yet seen a real weapon that could be suppressed to Hollywood standards, but with all the street noise added in, the resultant sound wouldn’t immediately be recognized as gunfire. Most bystanders would have no idea they’d heard a shot, at least at first, because it was neither the soft “spit” of what they’d heard in movies, or the sharp crack of unsuppressed gunfire. When Salinas fell and his men grabbed for him, the bystanders would be confused, and they’d either mill around watching or they’d rubber-neck but keep walking. Salinas’s men would pay more attention to the walkers, figuring the shooter would be among them, trying to slip away. Instead he would be right there in the middle of them, under their noses.

Between now and then, however, he had a gargantuan number of tasks to accomplish.

A LITTLE AFTER noon, Rafael Salinas emerged from his apartment building, surrounded by his usual coterie of seven men. His driver was parked at the curb, motor running. One guy, his long hair tied back with a thin strip of leather, came out first, his head swiveling in all directions. He surveyed the street and the pedestrian traffic, though most of his attention was reserved for cars. Seeing nothing suspicious, without turning around he gave a brief nod of his head, and seven more men exited the building: Rafael Salinas walking in the middle of six men who used their bodies to block sidewalk traffic so Salinas could go in a direct path from the door of the building to the open door of his car. People stalled, tried to side-step, growled “Get out of the way!” or worse, all of which was ignored. One bent old guy with a cane lurched a little off-balance.

A bus rumbled by and there was a barely audible pop over the roar of the diesel engine. Rafael Salinas stumbled, his hand going out as if to catch himself. A second pop, right on the heels of the first, made several people look curiously around, wondering what that noise was. Salinas went down, a red spray arcing from his throat.

The first man out of the building realized something was wrong and wheeled in a half-circle, his hand already emerging from his jacket, clutching a semiautomatic.

Pop.

The first man, a red blossom growing on his chest, reeled back into the driver. The weapon fell from his suddenly limp hand and went spinning across the sidewalk. People realized something was wrong and a few random screams pierced the air, followed by a flurry of pedestrians suddenly running or diving to the sidewalk. The old guy with the cane was pushed down and he landed behind the back bumper of Salinas’s car, half on the sidewalk and half in the street, his cane several feet from his outstretched hand. His lined face wore a startled expression as he tried to crawl for his cane, only to sprawl on the ground when his strength gave out.

“There! Go!” One of the remaining men pointed down the street, where a young guy was flying through the crowd, trying to get as far away as possible. Two of Salinas’s men took off in pursuit. All of them had weapons drawn by now, pointing them at first one person and then another in a serious lack of muzzle discipline. They circled around Rafael Salinas as if they could protect him now, despite the evidence of their eyes. The red spray from Salinas’s throat had stopped; his heart had beat only a few more times after the first bullet ripped into him. The second shot, thrown off by Salinas’s sudden lurch forward, had caught him in the throat.

The old guy tried once more to get his feet under him. “My cane,” he kept bleating. “My cane.”

“Here’s your fucking cane,” one of the goons said, kicking it toward him. “Get outta here, gramps.”

The old guy picked up the cane, his gloved hands trembling, and with difficulty levered himself to his feet. He hobbled behind the next parked car and stood there staring around as if he didn’t understand what was going on. “What happened?” he asked several times. “What happened?”

No one paid any attention to him. Sirens began blasting as New York’s Finest tried to bull their way through traffic. The old guy worked his way through the crowd and continued on down the street-back in the direction he’d come from. Fifteen minutes later, a uniformed cop found the murder weapon, a pistol with a sound suppressor threaded onto the barrel, lying on the pavement under Rafael Salinas’s car.

SIMON CALLED ANDIE’S cell phone. “Get packed,” he said quietly. “We’re leaving.”

“Leaving? But-”

“Salinas is dead. You don’t have any reason to stay. Now get packed, because we have to move fast.”

Numbly she closed the phone. Rafael was dead.

She wasn’t stupid; she didn’t need things spelled out for her. Horrified, she realized exactly what Simon had done. In a daze she gathered her toiletries and dumped them in a suitcase; as she hadn’t unpacked, getting ready to go took only minutes.

Simon appeared at her door within half an hour. The closed, set expression on his face kept her from asking questions. He took the suitcases and she followed him in silence, her eyes as bleak as his.