Detachment Delta (2 page)

Charlie started to step around, and the man stepped directly in front of him, a nasty grin on his face, saying, “I don't like to work, Tonto.”

Charlie smiled, and his right hand shot out and grabbed the large man by the testicles as he squeezed hard and twisted. The man's face contorted with the twisting, and the women watched openmouthed as his knees bent and a strange sound, almost like a raspy hum, came from his gaping mouth.

Still grinning, Charlie said, “Tell you what, O.J., just go back to the country club and beg for money there.”

He let go and walked past the man, who fell on one knee, holding his groin and moaning, as the prettiest attorney chuckled and said to the others, “I have vacation coming up, and I am heading west. Time for me to visit some Indian reservations. I want one of those.”

The woman next to her, a paralegal, said, “Can I go on vacation with you?”

Charlie was already a half block away, at his hotel on West Fifty-fourth Street. He went up to his room and lay down, preparing for the night's activities. He slept for one hour, allowing his body clock to awaken him. He got up and started stretching, then went downstairs to the hotel's small workout room. The killer started the treadmill slowly at 3.4 miles per hour, which he walked at for five minutes while watching FOX News mounted on the far wall. Then he cranked it up to 4 miles per hour for ten more minutes, then set it at 5.5 miles per hour and jogged for the next fifteen minutes, starting to work into a sweat. He then began slowing down, which lasted another ten minutes.

When he got off the treadmill, Charlie drank a plastic bottle of water and lay on his back sticking his legs up in the air, crossed at the ankles. Then he placed his hands at his sides, palms down, one inch above the floor. He slowly did a crunch sitting up as far as he could, then lay back down. He crossed his sinewy left arm over his eight-pack abs and slowly did ten more, lay back, crossed his right arm over, and did ten more. Then he pointed both toes and legs together, lifted both feet six inches off the floor, and held them there while he slowly counted to two hundred.

Charlie then ignored the machines and grabbed a chrome barbell off the rack and started doing a series of four sets of ten repetitions for a variety of exercises. He exploded and exhaled as he did each rep, then inhaled and slowly returned the weights to position after each. He lifted for an hour, then cooled down by doing some slow stretches.

He returned to his room, changed into trunks, and went down to the hot tub. There, he let the warmth soak into his muscles, and he let his body go limp.

Returning to his room, he lay down on his bed naked after showering, and he slept for another full hour, awakening feeling refreshed. Next, he sat cross-legged on the bed and opened the sliding door to his balcony, from where he could hear the familiar street sounds of the Big Apple.

Charlie took out a piece of hemp rope, with sage and other items added to it. He lit it and set it on a saucer from the room's coffee setup. Then in the manner of his ancestors, and using an eagle wing from his valise, he fanned the rising smoke into his face and body and got lost in the thoughts of riding his chestnut and white overo paint horse at Pine Ridge Reservation.

Finally, Charlie dressed and went downstairs for dinner. He ate a chef salad and drank iced tea. No beers or wine tonight. He had to be totally clearheaded.

Virginia Hampton was an outstanding labor relations attorney, a workaholic, and the prettiest and sexiest-looking of the women who had been in the restaurant and fell in lust with Charlie earlier. It was just coincidence now that she was working late on a brief she was preparing and her office was just down the street. She came in to the hotel restaurant wearing a black pin-striped two-piece business outfit with a white silky blouse underneath. When she spotted Charlie, she immediately undid the top two buttons on the blouse, which would reveal a nice hint of her ample cleavage. She could not believe her luck.

His eyes had already caught hers, and because he was the best, he immediately recognized her as one of the hot women in the diner who he felt were talking about him. He saw her undo the buttons, and he started fantasizing about what she must look like under the expensive business outfit. Charlie, however, also knew he had a job he was required to do, and he had not become one of the best hit men in the world by not being tough-minded.

She walked over to his table and looked flush, her face almost as red as her hair, which was the color of a blazing fireplace. The suit could not hide her curves at all. Virginia boldly pulled a chair out and sat down across from Charlie. He hated himself for what he was about to do.

Virginia said, “I apologize for being so bold and brash, but may I join you for supper? Dutch treat, of course.”

Charlie smiled, and she nervously placed a napkin across her lap.

The attorney went on, “I have a law office down the street and saw you handle that monster in the restaurant this afternoon, and honestly, it is wonderful to see a real man in this country anymore.”

Charlie smiled and put his hand up, which stopped her.

He said softly, “I want to save you a lot of time and effort, ma'am, before this goes any further. I am gay.”

Her face really flushed now, and she could feel her ears burning.

Virginia, the great courtroom orator, was at a total loss for words. “I am so sorry, sir. I, a, a, excuse me.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and she almost ran out of the restaurant.

Charlie took a bite of chef salad and shook his head with a smile, whispering to himself, “Charlie, you dumb-ass Redskin! You could have been lost in that all night.”

Then, with the discipline of years and pride in his deadly proficiency, he put the incident out of his mind and started thinking about the events before him this evening. One error, one slip, one mistake, and he could end up very dead. Instead, he planned for one New York City police officer to be the dead man.

“What the heck,” Charlie said quietly to himself. “This could be my last meal.”

He signaled the waitress over and ordered a warmed-up slice of apple pie a la mode. This was followed by a relaxing cup of hot tea.

Charlie was ready, and he went to his room.

Within an hour, he would be ready to leave and would be looking like anything but a Lakota or Sioux Indian of the Minniconjou tribe.

 

AN
hour passed, and two teenagers wearing iPods came out of the hotel laughing. They were followed a minute later by two different couples in business attire who seemed to have been dining inside. The men were shouting back and forth comments about the New York Stock Exchange, and they were followed by a gray-bearded elderly Ortho-dex Jew. Gray curls hanging down under his black hat, he carried a suitcase and seemed to be looking for a cab. He was followed seconds later by a very tall bearded 1970s-throwback hippie, replete with long red beard and long hair, a tie-dyed shirt, and faded bell-bottom trousers. He took off down the street at a very rapid pace and was out of sight in seconds. A cab pulled up to the curb, the driver a Middle Easterner, who saw that the fare was an Orthodox Jew and quickly sped away. Another cab pulled up minutes later, and the driver, a young college kid, enthusiastically put the old man's bag in the taxi and helped him into the backseat, handing him his cane.

The Orthodox Jew whispered an address near Bronx Park East, and the young cabbie sped across town, dropping the old man off on a street running off of Lydic near White Plains. The old man, contradictory to what the cabbie had been told, gave him a handsome tip and a blessing, and he pulled the handle up on the heavy suitcase and walked slowly down the street. Within two blocks he turned and entered an old brownstone. He pulled out a key, opened the door to the one basement apartment, and entered. It was well after dark now and not many were on the streets, except for a few coming and going.

Inside the apartment, the rabbi dropped the cane, easily tossed the suitcase on the bed, and stripped off the traditional black suit, hat, and his fake beard and curls.

Charlie was wearing a dark gray body armor suit, and the spandex clearly showed the myriad of muscles and sinews that ran through his perfectly proportioned body. He went into the bathroom, and although it was not prudent for a professional hit man, out of respect to his warrior ancestors he pulled out a makeup kit and, standing in front of the mirror, applied black and red war paint, with black paint covering the upper half of his face with a long red diagonal lightning stripe going through it.

He worked rapidly now; there was no wasted time or energy. Charlie pulled a laptop out of the suitcase and opened it. He brought up a JPEG image of the front door of an apartment, the apartment of his intended target, NYPD Officer James Rashad.

Rashad right then had gleaming beads of sweat running down his well-muscled body. He breathed out hard as he pushed the weights on the Smith Machine upward in his sixth repetition. His partner, Gerome Alexander, sat up on the bench at his own Smith and again wondered in amazement as he stared at the three forty-five-pound plates on each side of Rashad's bar. Gerome was using one forty-five-pounder and one thirty-five-pounder on each side, and felt he was very strong. In fact, he was, but Rashad was massive. James finished the rep, then twisted and hooked the bar on the Smith and sat up, grabbing a bottle of spring-water.

The two cops lifted hard and did treadmills every Monday and Wednesday evening, so it was the past two Mondays and Wednesdays that Charlie had come to Rashad's apartment to prepare for this night. He was one of the best in the world in killing, so he left nothing to chance. In the air vent in the hallway Charlie had planted a small video camera, which had a remote hookup to his laptop. A motion detector activated the camera every time a person or pet moved up or down the hallway. He reviewed the recorded video feeds all day long.

Charlie now looked at his laptop and saw that a locksmith had come during the day and replaced the lock. When Charlie had read the bio report on his target, he saw that the man was very security conscious, so he was not at all shocked by this happening. It might make for a slight delay on the assassination, but maybe he would be able to affect his goal anyway. Charlie always had backup plans. He saw Rashad with his workout bag on the video, leaving for the gym, and he was ready to make his move.

Quickly, Charlie packed his small black rucksack and added some additional tools to it. He donned his black vest, with many pockets in it, and his weapons. Wearing night vision goggles, Charlie crawled out the back basement window into the window well and up into the very small fenced backyard. The route to Rashad's apartment was almost routine now, but Charlie would not allow himself to let his guard down. He climbed over the fence into the yard of the couple who were retirees and were sound asleep by nine every night. Having quickly dashed across their tiny yard, he had to stop at the next brownstone and look back to see if the couple's bedroom window was open or if instead the air conditioner was on. When the window was open, their toy poodle kept a close watch on the blacktop parking lot behind the building and would start yapping if he heard or saw Charlie. Tonight was a new moon, so in the shadow of the building he would not be visible, but the little dog could smell or hear him if that bedroom window was open. It was closed.

He made it across the parking lot to the crushed white stone lot at the back of Rashad's long brownstone. Charlie had the key out and knew the schedule of all the tenants, so he knew he would not be spotted in the hallway. He unlocked the door, which was chump change for him after he had digitally photographed the outside of the door during his first nighttime visit, identified the Schlegel lock, and by the second night had a key that would fit and open it.

He made his way down the hallway to the officer's apartment, pulled a stethoscope out, and placed it on the door, listening intently. He then pulled out a small mallet-type hammer and identified the brand-new lock as a Master. Charlie had a key with graduated filing down from base to tip, and he placed it in the lock. He smacked the end of the key with the mallet and it penetrated all the way in, then Charlie pulled slightly and backed it out one notch.

Standard locks are constructed with a series of springloaded stacks called pin stacks. Pin stacks are made so that two pins are stacked on top of each other. There is what is called, ironically, the key pin, which is the part that actually touches the key as it goes into the lock. Then there is a spring-boosted driver pin. A proper key makes all the pins line up right, allowing the cylinder to be turned.

Obviously, the wrong key keeps the cylinder from turning, but Charlie used a common and frequently used burglary tool called a “bump key.” The bump key is placed one notch out in what is called the keyway. Then you hammer it, and that sends the key deeper into the keyway, and the result is that the smaller teeth of the bump key jiggle all of the pins in the lock, which affects the driver pins. So now the driver pins spring up for a millisecond from the key pins and then the spring inside pushes them back into place. By pulling back almost a notch, you can cause the smaller ridges of the bump key to hold the driver pins from snapping back, and the lock can be turned.

Charlie did this and opened the door on the first try. He looked all around the edges of the door to see if Officer Rashad had put a piece of tape down to see if anyone had entered, as he had done one night, but for some reason not since. Charlie then carefully scoured the floor in the immediate vicinity of the doorway to ensure there had not been a toothpick, coin, or pin placed on top that had now fallen down. There was not.

He immediately made a quick pass through the small apartment to ensure that it was empty. Verifying that, he moved to the cop's bedroom and specifically his valet that he kept there. On the valet was his uniform, IIIA vest with ceramic heart plate, shoes, socks, and underwear, as well as his tactical belt and holster. Rashad carried a Glock Model 17 in .40 caliber.