Saint of Sinners (4)
After my arrival in the capital city it took me two weeks to settle into a routine. Nguema was a pathetic excuse of a city, so I'd seen most of it after a day. What I hadn't seen however was the tail I'd picked up. I'd been briefed on this but even if I hadn't any half-decent assassin would've figured it out: Teodoro Macías was notorious for his security concerns; any foreigner arriving in his city was sure to be followed by his fanatics in plainclothes. Undoubtedly they would want to make sure I was just as innocuous as I pretended to be. So, I couldn't exactly walk around the downtown palace without getting noticed.
Like I was going to case the joint myself. Idiots. Only an amateur would do
that.
So, I took two weeks to settle into the routine of someone recently arrived in the capital city. I told anyone who wanted to listen I was an expat, from an impoverished family of Velarian Astarians, and that I was looking for work. It explained my presence, and the occasional meeting with one of MacBride's contacts.
Speaking of which, those contacts were suspiciously well-informed too. They provided me with all kinds of information concerning the god-president's schedule and whereabouts, up to and including surveillance photos taken from way high up. The man who handed them over said they were taken from an aircraft, but he didn't look like he believed it himself. And I wasn't exactly inclined to be more gullible than he was, if you catch my drift.
I'd never been handed satellite surveillance photos of a mark before. It was kind of a big deal. Not too many people could get you satellite photo's with enough resolution to make out the kind of watch someone's wearing, if you know what I mean. Not for the first time I found myself wondering who the hell MacBride was working for. In the meantime however I continued my pretend-visit, going through all the pathetic motions of a desperate woman looking for a job in a desperate shithole, receiving my updates as I went along, just as we'd agreed beforehand.
After two weeks my patience began to pay off. The security men following me got bored with me. Bored men got lax, and lax men made mistakes. It took me three days to figure out the routines of the set of guys who were tailing me. Another two to memorize all the faces of my stalkers. By the time the final meet went down, three weeks after I arrived, I was all set to go.
The last drop of information was even quicker than the previous ones. A girl came up to me in the market and palmed me an envelope. Back in the hotel I saw it contained a timetable and photo's of a single location.
Well at least they didn't waste their breath.
The day the hit was going to go down I only had to shake my tail. I had my case with me. I'd carried a similar case several times before, so my stalkers wouldn't necessarily be surprised that I did so today. I strolled into an alley, dropped the luggage, then double-backed toward the entrance. The moment my resident stalker walked into view I yanked him into the shadows and put a blade through his throat. He slumped down, gurgling as he drowned in his own blood. With some effort I dragged him behind a dumpster.
I now had six hours before his superiors got wise. On the clock, baby. Let's get this show rolling.
I'd stayed out of the area surrounding the palace before, but the surveillance shots had given me all I needed. I broke into a warehouse roughly a mile from the palace and scaled the steps. The second floor window offered an unobstructed view of Macias' residence in Nguema, a gaudy piece of architecture that seemed horribly out of place considering its dilapidated surroundings. Then again the resident ruler didn't exactly care about the bottom line of his fellow citizens, which didn't exactly make me feel guilty. I whistled a tune under my breath as I opened the case and assembled the AS50.
"Its time to go to sleep now not another peep..."
I laid down on the table in the back of the room and drew a bead on Macias' ugly-ass palace. He even had thirty-feet statues of himself erected near the bullet-proof entrances. I swear, you wouldn't be able to find a more outrageous piece of self aggrandisement in Bissauru if you tried. Word was, the fucker had Arabian architects flown in even as his own people died of the plague and starvation. What a prick.
"And Ill see you in the morning light..."
I glanced at my watch to checked the time. Any minute now. I felt that familiar, strange strange form of excitement that always bubbles to the surface just before taking out a hit. The feeling of absolute control over life and death is quite intoxicating.
Oddly enough the same song always kept popping into my head whenever I did this, no matter how often I did it.
“And then the radio was playing and the weatherman was saying...”
You had to know that Teodoro Macías was notoriously paranoid. He rarely traveled by motorcade, and barely ever showed his face to the public. So, the hit was going to have to be come from an unexpected vector, and from a long distance too. Even moreso because I didn't plan on becoming expendable. So, we'd planned accordingly.
“The hurricane had blown away...”
A sudden ruckus. A helicopter slowly rose above the walls of the palace. It was Macias, had to be – his was the only Mi-8 in the country that actually worked. He and his retinue always traveled down to the coast on the same day of the week. In Bissauru, the god-president's fondness for the young underage girls of Mbini was well known. Almost legendary, in fact .It was a weakness that made him predictable, and now it was going to get him killed. No doubt that helicopter had special protection against MANPADs.
Good thing I wasn't going to be using a MANPAD. 'Cause MANPADs were for amateurs.
“Daddy's little boy was jumping up for joy...”
To be honest, if even half the things they whispered about Macias were true he was bound to be an utter bastard. Some people said he fed his political opponents to crocodiles. Others said he kept the bits the crocodiles didn't want for himself. Either way he was a pervert and I was glad to do the job. Hell in better times I might've done it for free. Perhaps that surprises you. But just because I'm cold and jaded doesn't mean I don't have any feelings.
In some ways I guess I'm weak and pathetic like everyone else.
“And he was singing at the break of day...”
Anyway, this was going to be a tricky, long-range shot. I had to take into account humidity, elevation, temperature, wind, spin drift, the Coriolis effect, not to mention the downdraft of the helicopter itself. The target was a good nine and a half seconds flight time out, so I had to shoot where it was going to be.
Once upon a time I would have had a spotter to do the mental arithmetic. Those days were long gone. Oh well.
“Daddy, is he a goodie or a baddie...” My voice was a whisper as I allowed a minute amount of air escape from my lungs.
My finger brushed the trigger and the gun discharged. The recoil kicked the rifle into my shoulder. It didn't even register. I was already correcting my aim by the time the first round impacted. The heavy anti-materiel round went exactly where I wanted it, punching through the pilot's windscreen and controls like they weren't even there and not so much killing him as blowing him in half. The helicopter quivered noticeably as the corpse slumped over the ruined controls.
“Daddy why do people go to war...”
The semi-automatic rifle had cycled the second round into the chamber even before the pilot snuffed it. My second shot rang out just after he did. It crossed the distance and punched through the helicopter's engine directly underneath where it connected with the rotor assembly, completely annihilating it in the process.
“Once upon a time there were cannibals...”
Yeah, there was no way that bird was staying in the air. Not that I could stay around to enjoy the spectacular effect of my handiwork. The Mi-8 fell from the heavens like a stone. And Teodoro Macías, self-proclaimed 'god-president' of Bissauru, spent the last miserable moments of his life screaming his lungs out in terror, trapped in a metal casket plummeting to earth before it exploded in a ball of fire on the roof of his palace.
I was already haflway through the process of dismantling the rifle before the blast of the explosion had mushroomed off. By the time I got down the warehouse stairs the palace was burning something fierce. Apparently they'd topped off the helo. Suckers. That certainly made my job easier. I smiled and skipped out into the street. By the time Macias' security people comprehended what just happened I would already be out of the country, whistling as I went.
“Now there are no cannibals anymore...”
Result: Teodoro Macías, god-president of Bissauru, snuffs it.
