Rogue(49)

One found a mix of garb, from skirts and bonnets to robes to dishdashas and jellabas, and T-shirts and shorts. Religious services ran Thursday to Tuesday depending on sect, and the gunfire and bombs added to the festivities at random intervals. Various settlements were monocultural, the capital was a mishmash, though currently in a truce with no major violence, just street gangs and midnight kneecappings.

The problem I faced was that there were far too many targets worthy of assassination, and even more people willing to spend the money to do so. The planet exported a lot of semiprecious minerals and some gorgeous woods, so they had a steady economy with the ultrarich.

I recalled this was where my life had turned. I’d arrived a trained expert with no combat experience. Before I left, I had experience of combat, atrocities from all sides including myself, a hatred for the human race including myself, and a realization that some people will refuse to respond to any logical argument even if it means their death.

I did not feel well. Yet at the same time, it was familiar, and not uncomfortable. I knew how to move here, how to talk, what to expect. It had been formative for me.

Attaturk, the effective capital by being the largest and having the easiest star and sea ports, had changed in fifteen years, twenty-two Earth years. It was making an attempt at being modern, and regular infusions of capital and infrastructure made it a place that most of the factions regarded as off-limits. They all placed their HQs/embassies/OPs away from the cultural and commercial areas, so violence was minimized, apart from the occasional vehicle bomb or drive-by rocketing. Another couple of centuries and they might actually sort things out.

Once outside the city, the entire main continent was a hodgepodge of “zones” mapped by culture, religion and sometimes ethnicity. This is something the UN has tried successfully for centuries both here and on parts of Earth. That is, they’ve successfully drawn lines on a map. Getting the locals to both concur with the lines and abide by them is another issue.

Realistically, we could probably ignore ninety percent of the planet. In fact, so far we’d been lucky. Randall was sticking to surfaces and major centers. His rates must rule out the lesser options. Here, there was the one major city, and possibly two minor ones. It was also somewhere I had much more experience than he did.

Silver and I had multiple charts, graphs, plots at this point. The victims were broken down by every demographic possible. The locations and MOs were listed step by step and by relevant characteristics. We had some DNA on him. She’d set up a bias function to weigh potential targets against the existing data.

If we could get me close, I could take him out. He varied his methods a bit, but they all had a high-tech feel to them.

When I’d done wet work, I’d gone for psychology. People died in their sleep and the person next to them woke up in the morning to find a corpse. Targets just disappeared. One got dismantled to the point where he still hadn’t recovered, as a warning to others. It’s very hard not to leave a signature of some kind. So far, the only commonality of Randall’s was the kills were exotic, but in lots of different ways. Predicting his next method was all but impossible.

But mine had been simple. Find the person, kill them silently or without witnesses, exfiltrate. We didn’t care if they knew who did it, as long as they couldn’t prove it.

He wanted people to know who did it, and required setup and equipment.

Had any of that stuff we’d arrived with been tagged for his use? Or was he plugged in and planning to steal it?

Or had he brought all he needed with him?

No way to know, so we went back to trying to anticipate target first.





CHAPTER 11





I decided to change our M.O. a bit. Instead of a hotel, we got a cheap one-bedroom flat in a working neighborhood. Silver was dark enough to pass as one of the typical racial types found locally, especially once in a nondescript robe that fit many of the sects. She carried hardware underneath. I donned a light silk coat over an ankle-length shirt, and looked like a middle-class business rep trying to dress for upper-class clients. We stocked up on food and were prepared for a wait. I bought a used but reliable basic van, and we disappeared into the local scenery rather than the offworld crowd. In less than a twenty-five-hour local day, we looked like natives to any outsider. All the UN cared about was our return tickets and visa fees. If we were here over a month, I’d pay that at the consular offices.

That made it easy to drive around, get images, draw maps and otherwise plug into things. I held off on weapons. The UN would seize anything they found, and I’d need something good if I planned a distance shot.

I found an obvious target in a short search, one of the top of my prearrival list. The UN was holding one of its endless discussions to resolve the problems on Mtali, which had been going on for at least two Earth centuries—the problems and the discussions.