Killer Instincts v5 (25 page)

Now my pacing wouldn't just be the most important thing, it would be the only thing. Too fast and I'd be noticed, and even if I wasn't considered a threat, the bodyguards would be watching me and I'd lose the element of surprise. Too slow and I wouldn't get there in time, which meant the Cadillac would be driving away by the time I got into position.

Luck, however, was on my side. I had timed it right, and as I closed in towards the front of the restaurant, I could tell I would reach the car just as the first bodyguard slipped into the front seat next to the driver. Thirty feet away, I recalled Richard's advice about moments like this.

"The most important thing for you to do," he’d said, "is to make your aura as benign as possible."

"My aura? You mean, what, like my chi or something? Give off warm vibes before I blow them all away?"

"You laugh, but it's true. The best close-in killers are able to mask that predatory vibration they send out, the thing that tickles your animal hindbrain when you're on the receiving end and causes all the hairs on your neck to stand up, the old ancestral genetic early-warning radar that told you something had you zeroed in and was moving to make the kill."

"Are you saying they'll be able to sense I'm going to kill them?" I asked.

"If they are good at their jobs, yes. A good bodyguard, really anyone with true combat instincts, can tune in on that aggressive mental energy when it's pointed their way. For most people, it only works at a subconscious level - like instinctively moving out of the way of someone because they make you uneasy and you can't quite put your finger on why, or turning around for no reason and seeing that someone across the room is glaring at you. We all do it from time to time, but it's not conscious. But the real survivors, the operators who dodge those shots that should have taken them down, but they somehow avoid at the last millisecond, those people can use their inner threat radar actively, and can pick up on the predatory vibe coming their way."

"So you're saying I need to act casual, and not give them the stink-eye to keep from tipping them off."

"Its more than that. You need to learn how to control that aggressive aura, make it work for you. A good killer can put themselves into stealth mode right up to when they pull the trigger, and then when all the innocent bystanders are getting in the way and slowing you down, milling about in a panic, you dial it up all the way and blast it out like the bow-wave on a ship running at flank speed. You can clear a path through the crowd; they'll get out of your way without even knowing why. I've made it work for me, and I’ve seen others do it as well. It's just another weapon in your arsenal."

And so, I did my best to control my aura now. Richard told me the easiest way to accomplish this is to focus your mind on something completely trivial - the weather, a pretty girl walking by - anything to put your mission into the background of your mind right up to the moment when it's showtime. I looked at my watch and looked across the street and thought about the bagel and cream cheese and banana I had for breakfast, and how the latte I had just finished was a little weak for my liking.

Out of the corner of my eye, because I didn't look at the man directly, I could see the bodyguard - a big, blocky figure of a man in a well-cut charcoal suit - step out from the restaurant and look at me. I could almost sense his own predatory bow wave as it hit, a pulse of threatening aggression. Don't fuck with me, it said. Don't even think about it, just walk by, shithead, and don't even look at the chubby guy in the nice expensive suit walking out from the restaurant and getting into the Cadillac.

But I knew what he saw. I could almost feel his own early-warning radar scanning me and finding nothing. I was wearing a baggy red t-shirt, white basketball shorts, and a pair of high-top sneakers. I had my gym bag slung with the strap crosswise over my chest, just another college-age kid coming from or going to a pickup game of b-ball and minding his own business. I had on a blond wig, a pair of sporty Ray-Bans, and a Celtics cap turned backwards on my head. As I felt the bodyguard’s eyes sweep over me, I glanced down at my cheap athletic sports watch and I filled my mind with the thought of how I would be on time for that game, and all was cool with the world.

Fifteen feet away, I forced myself to just barely notice the bodyguard on the sidewalk climbing back into the front passenger seat of the Cadillac. At ten feet I distantly registered the car door shutting. At eight feet, almost of its own accord, my hand dropped into the open top of my gym bag. At six, almost surprised at what I found inside, I pulled the cut-down Remington 1100 semi-auto from the gym bag, the folding stock replaced with just a simple pistol grip. At four feet, I saw the bodyguard in the front seat staring at me, eyes wide, bellowing something I couldn't hear within the vehicle's luxuriously soundproofed interior.

At two feet from the bumper of the Cadillac, the muzzle of the Remington pointed itself at the driver, and the shotgun roared twice in the span of a second. The driver's side of the windshield turned into stars from two distinct impacts. Not a killing spread of buckshot, but two rifled shotgun slugs, each an ounce of hard-nosed lead alloy, that punched through the tough curved windshield glass. The first slug tore through the top of the dashboard, passed through the opening in the steering wheel, and bored into the driver. The slug shredded his heart and spine with enough energy to pass completely through the back of the seat and shatter the knee of the bodyguard sitting behind him. The second shot, coming in high as I rode the recoil up, caught the driver right at the hairline, turning his skull into a valley of bone and brains. The slug painted the injured bodyguard with gore as it passed by his head and blew through the window of the left rear door, eventually lodging itself in a Toyota parked across the street.

It was only then, after I had fired the first killing shots of my ambush, that I channeled the full force of my aggression at the occupants of the car, specifically the bodyguard sitting up front, who I saw scrambling at his coat, all thumbs, in an attempt to draw his gun from its shoulder holster. I took two quick steps forward, placing myself so that the two bodyguards, front and back, were in a direct line with my shotgun's muzzle. I could see the closest bodyguard's eyes, see the naked fear as he stared, not at me, but into the smoking muzzle of the Remington. I knew he saw death in that dark circle of steel, because he knew what was coming in the next heartbeat and he was too slow to stop it.

I pulled the trigger three times, slightly slower now, one measured pull a second so I had time to aim after every load of buckshot did its gruesome work. The front bodyguard's head came apart with the first load of double-ought, disappeared entirely after the second, and even the headrest behind him was a tattered ruin after the third. I noticed, out of the periphery of my vision, the right rear door flinging open and Pauly Paggiano clawing himself out of the back seat, flinging himself out of the car, and stumble-stagger-running from me down the sidewalk, arms flailing, an inhuman shriek of pure horror tearing from his throat.

I slipped the emptied Remington into the gym bag, and pulled from a side pocket the sleek little Beretta automatic. I sighted down the pistol at Pauly's back and aimed low, firing three shots that struck him high in the buttocks and the lower spine. Pauly dropped face-first to the pavement with a hard thwack, like a man who'd been tripped while sprinting, earning him broken teeth and a bloody nose. I stepped around the open rear door and glanced inside at the bodyguard in the back seat. The man was a ruin, pieces of his skull torn away, scalp shredded, sheeted in blood from his head to his lap. His right shoulder was torn to dangling fragments of muscle and bone, while his left hand was clutched around his throat, bright arterial blood pulsing between his fingers.

I crouched low, leaned into the Cadillac, and fired two shots through his skull. The clutching hand flopped into his lap.

I stood back up and walked over to where Pauly Paggiano lay blubbering and wailing on the sidewalk. He had scrambled and dragged himself a few feet from where he had fallen, and there was a smear of blood by his dead, dragging legs where his face had bled all over the concrete. I thought of making some pithy little speech about revenge being a dish best served with a smoking pistol or some other cold fucking action movie one-liner.

But looking around, I could see people staring at me, screaming and sobbing in terror up and down the block. Off to the right, across the street, someone who’d kept his head was crouched behind the back end of a blue sedan, a cell phone held up to his face, frantic words pouring out. I stood over Pauly Paggiano, the worthless, piece of shit, the scumbag rapist who’d set all this in motion, and I fired three hollowpoint bullets into his back, and two more through the base of his skull.

After the echoes died away, I shouted at Pauly’s corpse at the top of my lungs. “
Idi na hui, zasranetz!
” which, roughly translated from Russian, meant “Go fuck yourself, shithead!”

Having a Russian roommate my sophomore year bore surprisingly helpful fruit.

Now it was time to run, as Richard once said, as if the Devil himself were dogging at my heels. Half of the police cars in Boston were probably descending on my location at the moment. I dropped the pistol into my gym bag, zipped it shut, and pushed it around so it was slung across my back, cinching the shoulder strap tight. This done, I took off at a dead sprint, running as fast as I possibly could. As I ran, I shouted “
Ubiraisia c moyevo puti!
” as loudly and clearly as I could at the gawking bystanders, another purloined Russian phrase that meant “Get out of my way!”.

That one I had to find on the Internet.

I ran down the sidewalk until I reached the corner, turned left, sprinted diagonally across the street, ran up half a block, turned right down a narrow side alley, ran the length of the alley, turned left again as it opened onto the next street, ran down another full block, crossed right at the next intersection, and finally came to another alleyway. I could hear sirens passing to my left, closing in on the scene of the shootout, and I knew it was a matter of moments before the first witnesses turned to the police and screamed "He went that way!" while pointing in the direction I’d fled.

Halfway down the alley, I ducked between a pair of dumpsters and into a little hidden nook I’d prepared two hours ago. I kicked aside a stained and crumpled cardboard box and revealed a bright pink gym bag, and into this open bag I stuffed my red and white gym bag. Then with a single, practiced motion, I stripped t-shirt, wig, cap, and glasses off my body and crammed them into the bag. I followed this a moment later with my baggy white basketball shorts.

Underneath those garments, I wore a hot pink athletic tank top and a matching pair of scandalously brief running shorts. A pink sweatband went around my head, and I produced from my bag of tricks a pink water bottle with a pull-top spout. In fifteen seconds, I had transformed myself from a casually-dressed basketball player into a proudly gay college student returning from the gym. I took the water bottle, popped the nipple, and jetted a stream of water over my head and down the front and back of my neck, giving the appearance of someone who'd worked up a sweat.

Thus costumed, I took several deep breaths and emerged from the other end of the alleyway, pink gym bag carried loosely in one hand, water bottle carried in the other, the faintest hint of a sway in my step. I turned left as I exited the alleyway, eyes peeled to ensure no one noticed me emerge, and I began to walk at a natural pace towards Commercial Street and downtown, where I would avoid public transportation and any potential bag searches in favor of walking back to the Fens. I passed people along the way, someone occasionally looking at me with a second glance, but all anyone would see was my fabulous pink outfit and a big smile, and once or twice, when I thought I could get away with it, a wink to any good-looking guy who paid too much attention.

Two blocks and six minutes after I emerged from the alleyway, I saw a police cruiser turn and come down my street, the blare and glare of sirens and lights conspicuously absent. This wasn't an officer dashing hell-bent to the scene of the crime, this was a hunting hound sniffing for the scent of the prey. As soon as it took the turn, I lifted my water bottle to my lips, tilted my head back, and mimicked taking a long, deep drink, using the bottle and my upraised hand and arm to conceal my features from the passing police cruiser. The vehicle was rolling at a measured pace, not much faster than a brisk walk, and the two officers inside were no doubt comparing everyone they saw to my description.

This was the critical moment. If I could slip free of this strand of the dragnet, I would likely on the safe side of the manhunt. But what if my costume change wasn't complete enough to fool the officers in the cruiser? Rather than the pink outfit and assumed harmlessly gay personae, what if the cops notice the white high-top sneakers, the gym bag, an athletic physique, and a height comparable to the suspect? Then a street stop and a search of my bag would follow, and I was done for. All I could lay my hopes on would be a flat out dash as soon as the officers approached, and I knew there would be no hope to perform a second costume change; I would have to rely on pure speed and luck to break free. I didn't favor those odds.

And the odds became foremost in my mind when, a few seconds after the cruiser passed me by, I glanced into the reflection of a van's rear window as I walked past and saw behind me the cruiser stopping with brake lights on, then with growing dread the second set of tail-lights glowing as the cruiser began to slowly back up the street towards me. They were coming in for a second look.

I had prepared, thankfully, a last-ditch gamble for this very situation, and it was time to put it into motion. I immediately altered my course and turned up the steps of the first apartment I came to, stepping confidently into the building's vestibule and up to the row of mailboxes lining one of the walls. I dropped the gym bag, bent down and unzipped the front pocket, then pulled free a thick wad of mail; letters, flyers, and a couple of magazines.