Ben’s gut turned suddenly heavy and cold. It was a dirty game all the way to the top. While he was preparing to assassinate Gejjen, Gejjen was doing a deal to strike at Jacen and Niathal, with Omas turning a blind eye.
Everyone could be bought if the price was high enough. Omas obviously put peace above individual lives. It might not have been any different in the long run from any general risking combat casualties, but it didn’t feel anywhere near as clean.
Ben switched his attention. He began to visualize the exterior of the terminal buildings. A walkway ran along the roof, a little-used observation deck where anyone could sit and watch vessels taking off and landing. It wasn’t a popular spot, but it was perfect for a sniper. As soon as the meeting sounded as if it was coming to an end, Ben had a minute or two to get up on that roof and wait for Gejjen to exit.
There were three sets of doors Gejjen could leave through to walk back onto the landing field and rejoin his ship. To cover that spana couple of hundred metersBen would have to be ready to sprint along that platform in either direction from a central point.
I’m ready.
He pressed his arm against his side and felt the Karpaki. It would be almost completely silent. He’d also be standing on top of a stark permacrete platform with no cover.
I’ll just have to be fast, then …
The conversation between Omas and Gejjen slowed, and there were longer pauses and more restless grunts and sighs. Business was drawing to a close. At a nudge from Lekauf, Ben began walking to the roof turbolift without even looking back. He stood in the turbolift cab with a family of Trianii looking for a tapcaf, wondering if they could smell his intentions.
One of the GAG troopers liked free-falling. He’d told Ben that to
jump off a five-thousand-meter building, there was a point where a free-faller had to simply stop working up to it and step off into the void. Ben was at that point now as he walked along the rooftop terrace and took up position. He stepped back into the shadow of a single lonely air-conditioning outflow and unfolded the Karpaki. If he held it against the leg of his baggy, creased pants, it didn’t present such an obvious profile.
There was nobody around anyway. The observation platform was cracked, and weeds were thriving in the crevices. He settled down to wait for Shevu and Lekauf to do the spotting for him.
Jacen’s going to go crazy when he hears what Omas has in mind for him.
“Ben, heads up.” It was Shevu. “Gejjen’s on the move. He’s exiting via the south doors. Go right.”
Ben checked around him and jogged to the far end of the platform, keeping close to the rear wall. He hoped he’d recognize Gejjen. He’d studied the man’s face and walk intently before the mission, but now he might be looking at the back of his head, depending on the exact path he took back to the ship. It was a silly, petty doubt. He hadn’t thought it through enough before he embarked.
But when he looked down on the permacrete, and the chaos of ships, freight droids, and species of all kinds wandering around as if it were a theme park, that neat military haircutjet black, glossy, not a strand out of placedrew his eye like a beacon.
He lay prone and sighted up. The optics brought him instantly a hundred meters closer to Dur Gejjen, and then there was no doubt that he had the right man in his cross wires. As Gejjen walked, two security guards in discreet casual clothes weaved in and out of Ben’s shot.
As soon as Gejjen dropped, at least one of them would be looking for where the shot had originated. Ben would have to stay low and melt back into the crowds in the airside terminal, then rendezvous with Lekauf at Shevu’s transport.
I can do it. I got in and out of Centerpoint, didn’t I?
Ben held his breath, let the Karpaki’s smart optics adjust for wind and angle, and felt his finger tighten on the trigger. One second Gejjen’s neat dark head was filling the scope, and the next Ben was staring at empty permacrete as the rifle kicked back against his shoulder. The muffled report seemed to come from a long way away. Nothing seemed to have gone down in the order he expectedshot, recoil, drop. He lay flat.
What happened?
Did I kill him?
He could hear shouts carried on the air from three stories below. His body made the decisions for him and he found himself scrambling backward to the rear wall while Shevu’s voice in his ear kept saying, “Get out of there, Ben.”
He ran at a crouch to the turbolift, found that it was on a lower floor, and took the fire-escape stairway. It was going to plan. He could merge into the crowd.
Back on the ground floor, he slipped through the fire doors and made a conscious effort not to look panicked. Maybe professional assassins could take this in their stride, but he couldn’t. He’d put aside the fact that he’d just killed a man and found he was totally caught up in the simple act of getting away.