So when Vinko received the electronic code for the locator on Lana Elkins’s Prius from the same anonymous “guardian angel” who’d proved so helpful in the recent past, he sent it along to Colonel Williams, warning that the window of opportunity would be brief. He’d closed with “Good luck!”
“Don’t need luck,” Williams fired back at once. “Just tell me it’s good intel.”
“Good intel,” Vinko confirmed, hoping like hell that was true, because you didn’t get a second chance with men like the colonel.
All the telling clues that could identify Williams’s men on-camera were hidden. The three beefy bruisers wore urban camouflage clothes — dark green, gray, and dark blue. Their full face masks bore the same dull colors. Even Vinko, a fan of the conventions of terror, thought the colonel’s heavily armed crew looked daunting.
He watched them inspect their weapons, hearing the encouraging slide of steel on the semi-automatic pistols getting readied for business, and the shush-shush of camo pants legs brushing against each other. When Vinko still hadn’t spotted the tall, lean colonel he realized the officer must have been the one with the camera mounted on his head.
The men’s diligence reminded Vinko of how impending violence can bring out a studied sullenness in men. Yet the four also moved with such purpose that he would have known they were ex-military even if the colonel hadn’t assured him that his crew had seen plenty of combat.
Years ago, the colonel had been cashiered out of the 75th Ranger Regiment after a night raid in Ramadi, Iraq. Not dishonorably. Quietly. When the Army has a colonel who leaves behind seven dead noncombatants, and a severely wounded four-month-old baby girl whose leg had been severed by bullets fired by the officer’s own M17—her hearing lost to a percussion grenade — you don’t advertise your failures by making any of that public. For the colonel, speaking behind closed doors in Boise about what had happened on that night raid was a point of honor. Unfortunately for him, though, the entire incident had been captured by the unit’s cameraman and made available to his superiors, who did not agree with his self-serving assessment. But Vinko admired the colonel’s steadfast refusal to apologize. “They were there. They were in the way. They made the mistake. Not me or my men.”
The one-legged baby without eardrums was now a deaf seven-year-old who shared a bed with three other girls in a Baghdad orphanage. Something the official newspaper of sharia law—The New York Times—would not let its liberal readers forget. More aid and comfort for the enemy. One of these days they were all going to learn their lesson.
Vinko was content to watch the men moving about on screen. He didn’t plan to go live online until the last possible moment. The colonel had noted unnecessarily that the propaganda value of the video would fail dismally if he and his cadre were caught, so there would be no signposts viewed along the way, no advance notice of the target, and no identifiable locations until they closed in for the killing of Lana Elkins and whoever else might be in her car. Vinko hoped Emma, most of all, would be in that Prius.
Already the colonel’s camera was focused tightly on the blinking light of the locator on a tablet screen. His voice was electronically disguised, making him sound echoey, froggy, and plenty scary.
“The target is in motion. Operation Intercept American Evil is underway.”
The ambient sounds of footfalls accompanied them to an enclosed parking area with whitewashed walls. Could have been anywhere. Could have been the moon. The killing crew approached a pair of dual sport motorcycles and a gray Hummer H3 parked in the lot. As soon as two of the men gunned the motorcycle engines, Vinko felt his pulse quicken. He double-checked his website, making sure it was ready to receive the video. He’d been sending out a cryptic message all morning to his subscribers: “Countdown to Killing.” That was all. Not who, where, or when. His subscribers didn’t need to know. They trusted him. Just like the colonel. They knew Steel Fist didn’t bluff.
The colonel and his men were only minutes away from the blinking locator. They’d had all night to move into position, since Vinko had passed along the guardian angel’s electronic code for the device. Whoever the guardian angel was, he’d proved himself a useful son-of-a-bitch. Clever, too, even if he’d outsourced the placement of the locator on Elkins’s tin-can car, which was Vinko’s suspicion.
If he regretted anything about the need to move on Lana so quickly, it was that she’d never get to hear those two words from Emma: “I’m pregnant.” Vinko couldn’t remember ever wanting anyone pregnant as much as he wanted that seventeen-year-old bitch to be knocked up by that Muslim.
Vinko caught a quick reflection of the colonel’s mask-covered face on the passenger-door window. Yep, there was the camera, strapped to the top of his head.
Otherwise, Williams kept the lens focused on the locator. But Vinko figured they were getting very close, confirmed within moments when the colonel pointed his eyes — and that lens — at the Prius driving down a tree-lined suburban street.
Where’s her protection? Vinko wondered. The guardian angel had warned him that Elkins would probably have an FBI escort, which Vinko had told Williams.
Vinko smiled. This is going to be a turkey shoot.
“Go!” the colonel commanded over a radio in his froggy voice.
Vinko sat forward, feeding the video for the first time onto his website.
The bikers were getting down to business, racing past the Hummer. They came up alongside Elkins’s car, shooting out her front tires. But they didn’t shoot her.
Intriguing. The colonel must have a flair for drama.
Vinko wondered what he had in mind.
But his cadre would have to move very fast now. Anyone familiar with these streets could be watching, and in a town that was home to many government employees, including intelligence and military officers, there might be a few who would be on their computers and outraged by this attack.
Gunshots flared on screen.
Elkins had just fired a shot out her driver’s-door window, hitting the biker on her left, who was spilling off his dual sport on the fly. But she was slowing down, running on her front rims.
She angled sharply right and shot at the biker on her passenger side. She missed him with car and bullets as he veered off, speeding up over the curb. He chewed half a donut into the lush front lawn before braking, no longer an easy target.
Vinko smiled. Elkins didn’t appear to know the real threat was racing up behind her.
Lana had fired four times, leaving six rounds in the magazine. She had another one loaded and waiting in the glove box.
Silencing Jojo with a command, she then yelled “Down.” The Malinois dropped to the floor in front of the passenger seat as his master pulled behind a Chevy van and in front of a large Buick, grabbing the scant protection available to her crippled car. A large chestnut tree towered over the spot she’d claimed, trunk thick as a whisky barrel.
Lana opened the electronic locks and looked left before moving to exit right. She glimpsed the biker she’d shot, bleeding from his neck on the street. His arm rose feebly, drawing her attention to a large SUV turning to a stop about fifty feet away, effectively blocking the street on that end.
The biker on the lawn shot out her rear window. She pushed past Jojo, then opened the door, determined to grab the protection of the tree. The Prius now felt like a goldfish bowl. She doubted it could stop a .22. She’d bought it before chaos had come to America. Time to trade it in for a vehicle more up to the grim challenges gripping the country.