∞
Sergeant Andrew Kearney scanned the top floor corridor of building 847 one final time before engaging the safety on his sniper rifle and rolling quickly out of view. The body of his target lying conspicuously in the entryway of the apartment would have to be dealt with, but that wasn’t what concerned him at the moment. He reached into his tactical vest and pulled out the small satellite phone that had been provided to him for the assignment. After tapping in the phone’s security code, the sergeant immediately opened the COMLINK application that enabled real-time communication between field grunts like himself operating anywhere in the world and the tactical commanders who authorized their missions. It’s like text-messaging god himself Kearney thought morosely as his fingers navigated through another authentication screen and punched in his message.
Identify Kearney 50473095
First target NEUTRALIZED at site
NO VISUAL on second target
> CONFIRM SITE INSPECTION
Less than a minute later, the response flashed onto his screen.
Kearney 50473095 confirmed
AFFIRMATIVE on request for site inspection
Proceed with caution
Assume second target in area
KILL ORDER STILL IN EFFECT
Authenticated 0091245
Kearney stared at the authentication code in the last line of the response and raised his wide brow in surprise. A four-month assignment as a liaison for a Colonel in Army Intelligence two years earlier had required him to be intimately familiar with authentication codes – particularly the first three digits that indicated the military division or government agency providing the order. Kearney knew a directive from authentication code 009 could have only come from one source – but this was the first time he’d seen one from this agency. And a kill order no less.
He shook his head at the strangeness of it.
The sergeant shoved the phone back into his vest and rolled his muscular, five-foot ten-inch frame back onto his stomach. Looking through his binoculars, he briefly noted the unchanged position of his first target, the body lying unceremoniously against the entryway wall. He’d been a far easier target than Kearney was expecting, especially considering the intelligence briefing that warned him of a highly trained terrorist.
In truth, the man had looked more like a rank amateur, wandering the corridor of the target location in plain sight and hardly studying his surroundings before pulling out that tiny pistol – what the hell was that thing? – and kicking in the door of his intended victim. Kearney could still see the look on the man’s face after the first fatal shot, the way he had turned around and stared across the distance at him with that look of utter shock and… innocence? It was almost convincing.
Almost.
But again, that wasn’t what concerned him. As the intel briefing and the last COMLINK message confirmed, the man wasn’t working alone. Somewhere in the area, if not quietly hidden away in the apartment across from him, was the second target – a tall, blonde-haired man who by all accounts should stick out like a sore thumb in this miserable complex full of underpaid Chinese workers. Sergeant Kearney hadn’t seen anyone even remotely matching that description since arriving on scene an hour earlier. As he scanned the building through the magnified field of his binoculars, the obvious question was repeating in his head.
Where the fuck is he?
Certain that his second target wasn’t going to make the same mistake as the first, the sergeant dismantled his sniper rifle, packed it in a small nylon case, and tucked it beneath an air vent on the roof of the building before quietly crouch-walking to the stairwell access door. Once in the stairwell, he paused briefly to make sure the magazine of his .40 caliber handgun was full before quickly moving down the stairs. Time was now a serious factor. He needed to secure the body of the first target before it was noticed by a passing tenant, while also staying fully alert for the second target. This, plus the fact that he didn’t have a teammate to act as a spotter while he was “moving blind” meant he needed to haul his ass up to the fifteenth floor of building 847 as quickly as possible. All while drawing as little attention to himself as possible.
He arrived at the ground floor and stepped purposefully out through the central corridor and across the small courtyard towards building 847. Luckily, with the factories’ morning work shift now well underway, the massive compound of dormitories appeared as deserted as a ghost town. Seeing no one, Kearney double-timed it through the lower corridor of building 847 before moving quickly up the stairs.
∞
“You better start making some goddamn sense, Agent Coleman,” Director Preston said indignantly, dismissing the red-headed assistant that escorted Tom into his office with a petulant wave of his hand.