The Whisperers

He and Vernon wore homemade ghillie suits, with holes in the back for ventilation. They had doused themselves with mud and water from a nearby creek and, as it was a moonlit night, their hats bore netting to break up the shape of the human face. They were not using laser range finders. Instead, both men automatically performed all of the necessary calculations in their heads: range, angle to the targets, air density, wind speed and direction, humidity, even adding in the temperature of the propellant in the cartridge, for a cartridge that is twenty degrees warmer than another will strike a target twenty inches higher at a thousand meters. In the past, they had used data books, calculators loaded with ballistics software, and data tables glued to rifle stocks. Now, they knew such details by heart.

The slant angle was slightly downhill. Pritchard figured that he’d be aiming fifteen feet above the target, and to the left, to allow for bullet drop. All was set. The only problem was Twizell and Greenham. They weren’t in position. Pritchard had no idea where they were. Both he and Vernon continued to be troubled by the fact that Tobias had sent the others somewhere in advance, but hadn’t bothered to run it by them first. Vernon had been a staff sergeant, an E-6, the highest ranking of the four snipers, and he and Tobias still butted heads when it came to operational matters. He and Pritchard should have been consulted. Now they were down a team, and that wasn’t good.

The van was parked in a copse some four hundred feet from the back of the Rojas warehouse. The driver’s door was open. Tobias, concealed by a black ski mask and black fatigues, was sca

‘Four, plus Rojas,’ said Mallak. ‘Three with MP5s, one with a big-ass pump action. Mossberg Roadblocker, most likely. Two Glock nines in shoulder rigs, one with the shotgun, the other with the MP5 nearest the door. No alcohol that I can see. TV is on, but not too loud. Remains of food on the table.’

Tobias nodded. That was good. Men were more sluggish after food.

‘What about Rojas?’

‘There’s a stairway against the western wall, enclosed, no turns. Ends at a steel door, slightly open. My guess is that it can be sealed at the first sign of trouble. Windows are thickened glass on the first floor, so no reason to think Rojas’s level is any different. There’s no outside stairwell, but there is a weight-activated ladder on the southern exterior wall, accessible from the window above.’

‘Surrounding houses?’

‘Two families at A and B,’ said Mallak, using his fingers to indicate the buildings in question. ‘Two female juveniles, one adult female, two adult males in A; one Glock, belt. Two adult females, one male juvenile, one adult male in B; one Glock, belt. Three males in C; two AK47s, one Glock, shoulder. Vernon and Pritchard have the intel, but we’re still a team down.’

Tobias took one more look at the target through the lenses, then tossed them on the driver’s seat. They could wait for Greenham and Twizell, or proceed. The longer they stayed in position, though, the more likely it was that they would be discovered. He leaned over the seat and looked into the interior of the van. Bacci gazed back at him, his mask rolled up to his forehead in the heat of the van, his face damp with sweat.

‘All right,’ said Tobias, as Mallak slouched against the side of the van, ‘listen up…’

Herod was unarmed. His gun was in the car. He carried only a pair of manila envelopes. The first contained a piece of paper on which a figure was typed. This represented the sum of money that Herod was prepared to transfer to any account nominated by Rojas in return for information on how, and from whom, he had obtained the seals. If Rojas refused to provide such information, then Herod knew where Rojas’s American mistress lived, along with Rojas’s illegitimate five-year-old son. Herod would take them both. If necessary, he would kill the woman first, to indicate his seriousness to Rojas, but he did not believe that such action would be required, especially not after Rojas looked in the second envelope containing photographs of those who had crossed Herod in the past, for Herod had a particular way with women. His understanding of their bodies might even have made him a gifted lover, but Herod was a sexless being. Neither was he cruel. Pain and suffering were, for him, a means to an end, and he gained no particular pleasure from their infliction. Herod was not without empathy, and his own sufferings had made him reluctant to prolong the pain of others. For this reason, he hoped that Rojas would take the money.

He looked again at the Captain’s reflection. He felt no unease. He liked being in the Captain’s presence. He wondered if the Captain would come with him to the Rojas warehouse. He was preparing to find out when, on the surface of the pond, the Captain moved. His fingers were made from twigs, and they rustled slightly as he raised his hand and placed it on the shoulder of Herod’s reflection. Herod himself shivered involuntarily at the pressure, and the chill, of the Captain’s touch, feeling it as surely as he felt the warmth of the night air, and the biting of the insects, but he stayed as he was, and together they kept watch on the building before them.

One side of the first floor of the Rojas warehouse was lined from floor to ceiling with crates of Rojas Brothers Fuego Sagrado hot sauce. If anyone took the trouble to inquire, the importation and distribution of the sauce was the reason for the warehouse’s existence, and one of the means whereby Antonio Rojas made his living. Rojas had lost count of the number of times the trucks transporting the sauce had been searched by local and federal law enforcement, but he didn’t mind. It distracted them from all of the other trucks and cars transporting far more valuable cargo, although, if Rojas were to be honest, he made a very respectable living from the sauce too, even if there were those on the other side of the border who regarded the name, and the packaging, as almost blasphemous. It had a distinctive label, a red fiery cross on a jet black background, and it was marketed as a premium product to gourmet food stores, and the better Mexican restaurants, across New England. The mark-up was nearly as high as on pot or cocaine, and Rojas was careful to declare all income derived from it to the IRS. With the help of a creative accountant, it appeared as though Antonio Rojas was making a reasonable, if not excessive, profit as a purveyor of quality hot sauce.

It was the sound of one of those hot sauce bottles breaking that alerted Rojas. He looked up from the papers on his desk, and his hand drifted to the gun that was never far away. The door to his living quarters was slightly ajar, otherwise the insulation on the floor would have masked all the noises from below: glass shattering, a chair scraping, something heavy yet soft falling to the floor.

Rojas stood and made a lunge for the door, but he was seconds too late. The muzzle of a weapon was thrust through the opening, and there was a burst of muffled gunfire that took him across the thighs, almost cutting his legs from his torso. He collapsed as the door opened fully, but even as he fell he had time to squeeze off two shots that hit the dark-garbed figure in the chest. The Kevlar vest absorbed the impact, rocking the man on his heels. Rojas’s third shot was higher, and a messy splash of blood burst forth from the back of the man’s head, the aftermath of a pebble dropped in a red pool. Rojas barely had time to register it before there was more gunfire, and he felt the hot punches as the shots tore through his back. He lay unmoving, and yet he did not die. His eyes took in the shiny black boots that surrounded him, and registered some of the words that he heard: ‘shoot’; ‘question’; ‘no choice’; and, ‘dead, he’s dead.’ Rojas chuckled wetly.