Reckoning (2 page)

“You’re thinking they hit another oilman?” Dartley asked.

“I got that feeling.”

“I think you could be right,” Dartley conceded. He was Woodgate’s nephew, about forty, square-jawed with high cheekbones.
His hooded eyes were a light gray-green, and his thinning black hair was crewcut. His muscular body was that of a man who
ran ten miles a day and pumped iron.

Charley Woodgate was in his sixties and had a lame leg, the result of a wound at Monte Cassino, when he got the notion to
chase the Germans off the hill on his own. “Could be some maniac, of course,” Charley said, “but I’m ready to bet it ain’t.
And a loanshark or drug hit would never be done that way.”

“How many of those oilmen are here in the States right now?” Dartley asked.

“Three. One with his family in Ohio, another hiding someplace in the south, the third in L.A.”

Woodgate and Dartley had been tossing back and forth the possibilities of an offer from an oil company for some days. Middle
Eastern fanatics had been wiping out American employees of the oil company, and the company wanted someone to neutralize the
assassins in a hurry. The money was good, but neither Dartley nor Woodgate were very keen on the job. As a professional hitman,
Dartley needed a precisely defined target. He
was a lone wolf and had no illusions about confronting a horde of Moslem fundamentalist zealots.

The World American Oil Company had approached Charley Woodgate, who acted as Richard Dartley’s contact. In turn World American
was acting on behalf of one of its subcontractors, Global Hydrocarbons, which had its main office in Houston, Texas. Global
Hydrocarbons was an oil and gas exploration firm. Ten of their field geologists were mapping major new fields in Iran for
World American when the Shah was overthrown. All ten escaped, but only after severe mistreatment at the hands of the Islamic
fundamentalists. Global transferred them to Iraq. After they were there a short while the Iran-Iraq war started—and was still
continuing.

They had not been kicked around in Iran solely because they were Americans. The Ayatollah’s men wanted the mapping data on
the new fields. World American was being expelled and the Iranians were taking over oil production themselves. They were hiring
European technicians to replace the Americans, but there were not too many people with the skills and knowledge of the Global
geologists.

The Iranians stopped short of torture—or hadn’t gotten around to it by the time the Americans escaped. All were detained for
lengthy questioning. It was made clear that their lives were in danger, and that the only safe thing for them to do was to
arrange a quick exit by making up new geological maps of the exploration area, since they had destroyed the ones they had
been working on. To their credit and pride, not a single one of the
Americans gave them even the smallest bit of information. They were kicked and forced to stand for hours as a matter of routine,
and they were told constantly that they would never leave Iran alive unless they cooperated, but nobody had taken a razor
blade or lighted cigarette butt to them. They escaped over the Turkish border in a Volkswagen minibus driven by two Iranian
employees of World American.

What happened next was not so clear. Information was given to the Iraqi armed forces on the new fields and the installations
already in place to service them. Iraqi bombs and missiles reduced everything to twisted metal and rubble, making the fields
impossible to develop. Charley Woodgate had been unable to find out who had given the information to the Iraqis, whether it
was World American, Global Hydrocarbon or some or all of the ten geologists. That hardly mattered anymore. Khomeini blamed
the geologists as individuals and swore that the long arm of Islamic justice would catch up with them and so forth. That was
where the matter rested, for some years—until the geologists started dying one by one, within weeks of each other. Clearly
the Ayatollah’s threat was being fulfilled.

“No one thought anything very much when John Arnold was killed in Kuwait,” Charley told his nephew. “He was crushed beneath
his jeep when it flipped over a hillside. No one saw it happen and Arnold was alone. Yet everybody believed, naturally enough,
that it was an accident. A lot of oilfield work is dangerous and the men there are used to serious accidents happening.
Then Bernard Phillips was shot after a barroom argument in a small Texas town. He didn’t even work for Global Hydrocarbons
anymore, so no immediate connection was made with the closeness of his death to that of Arnold. The shooter got away and Bernard
Phillips just became part of the country’s handgun mortality statistics.”

“I could buy those two deaths close together as just a coincidence, since they were in different parts of the world and one
seemed an accident,” Dartley confirmed.

“Third one to go was Joseph Donovan, in Saudi Arabia,” Woodgate continued. “He died with a knife in his back at a market in
Riyadh. Fourth was Roger Elliott. He was working for Global in Indonesia at the time. They still haven’t put a name on what
was in his coffee. The damn thing worked by slow paralysis until his lungs finally quit pumping. So there you have it—a faked
accident, a gun, a knife, poison. They don’t stick to any mode of operation.”

“They’re going out of their way to make the killings look dissimilar,” Dartley said, “which in a way is a common thread. What
interests me more is that the first and third killings took place within four hundred miles of each other. Why go halfway
around the world to do the killing in between in Texas?”

“Could be they have separate hit teams, one working here, one in the Middle East.”

“Then this job is not for me,” Dartley said. “I don’t want to get into anything like that. But I don’t
believe that’s what is happening. I think the assassins had some reason to strike first in Kuwait, then come to Texas and
next go all the way back to Saudi Arabia. From my point of view, that’s the key to the whole thing. They’ve hit four of the
ten oilmen. We’re told that of the remaining six, three are here in the States and the other three abroad. How can I tell
who’s going to be next? There’s no point in me taking this assignment if I can’t tell where they’re going to strike next.
I say ‘they’ while I believe this could be the work of one man. So forget your separate hit teams, Charley. We need to know
why he came to Texas between killing those two in the Middle East.”

“There could be a very simple explanation for it,” Woodgate said mildly, “like he happened to have a plane ticket reserved
for a certain date. I’ll put Malleson to work on it. If there’s anything to it, he’ll find it.”

Herbert Malleson sold information for a living, and he made a very good living from it. He was also a wizard at sifting data
through his computers and coming up with unexpected patterns or relationships. He was a friend, and trusted completely by
both Dartley and Woodgate.

“Make it clear to these oil company people that we’re interested,” Dartley said. “All the same, I don’t want to commit myself
unless we can find something to give me an edge.”

His uncle nodded, knowing Dartley’s fear of failure.

Dartley said, “I have a small job I want to do for a friend. I should get it out of the way now, in case I
decide to go on this oil thing. I’ll be back in a couple of days. By the way, did you clear with the World American people
what my fee will be?”

Charley grinned. “Of course. A million dollars. They gritted their teeth when they said yes.”

The man with cropped fair hair and broad shoulders, who had given the cassette to Leonard Hill’s son, sat on a park bench
and looked out over the East River. New York City’s mayor Ed Koch resided in an eighteenth-century Dutch farmhouse fifty yards
behind him, while beneath the park six streams of traffic speeded on the ED.R. Drive. The day was calm and sunny. Mothers
and children were out in force, and old folks were sunning their bones on the benches. A tugboat nosed nine barges heaped
with garbage downriver.

The man with cropped blond hair kept a close watch on everyone who approached him. He noticed the small, sallow-skinned man
immediately because of his dark blue business suit and briefcase. The man hesitated and then sat on the bench beside him.

“The enemies of Islam are powerful,” the man said.

“But they shall be destroyed.” The ironic tone of his voice made it clear to the Iranian that he was saying this only as a
password, not because he believed it.

The Iranian opened his briefcase and handed him two large manila envelopes. One was ready to burst. That would be the one
containing two thousand $100
bills. The other envelope would contain the details of his next hit.

“Where do I make contact next?”

“Telephone our New York mission and ask for me and give a time only. I will meet you at that time at Grant’s Tomb. Anything
else?”

“No.”

The Iranian nodded, got to his feet and went away.

The blond man knew it would only have been a waste of time putting questions to him. The Iranian was simply a messenger, an
employee at their mission to the United Nations, who did what he was told and delivered sealed packages which arrived from
abroad in the diplomatic pouch. He placed the envelopes on the bench beside him and calmly waited. The Iranians paid him $200,000
per job, expenses included, everything up front, for the series of ten jobs. Five down, five to go. Not bad.

It was a reasonable guess that the next hit was set for somewhere in North America, since he was to return to New York. This
made more sense than having him fly back and forth across the Atlantic. He would have preferred to have had a list of the
ten men and set up the hits himself in the order preferable to him. But he had no idea who the remaining targets were or where
they were. They clearly had a relation to one another, since all five so far had been American oil geologists. But he knew
that his Iranian employers were crazy and that he could not make his normal demands on them. He had decided that if he didn’t
like the way one hit
was set up, he’d just return the $200,000 and skip it. So far he had no complaints.

At a window in an apartment building in New York City’s Greenwich Village, Richard Dartley loaded five rounds into the twenty-round
magazine of a Heckler & Koch HK91 assault rifle. The cartridges were Hornady/ Frontier load with a 150-grain Spire-Point Interlock
bullet.

“How come you’re using an assault rifle?” Dan Leeson asked. “I thought you’d for sure use a specially tuned version of a manually
operated bolt-action weapon as a sniper rifle.”

“First you ask me to do the job for you—now you want to tell me how I should do it.” Dartley grinned to show he was not serious.

Dan Leeson had been the point man of one of Dartley’s patrols in Vietnam and had taken a concealed sharpened bamboo spike,
smeared with excrement, in the right calf. Dartley had shot him full of penicillin. It was almost three hours before they
found a clearing large enough for a Huey to use as an LZ and lift him out. In that time the jungle infections had done their
work and Leeson lost his right leg just above the knee. He was lucky to keep the rest of it, the docs said. That was all the
luck he had. Things went wrong for him steadily after that. His head. His marriage. His jobs. And now one of his kids.

Over some things Dartley felt a powerful guilt. He could kill and maim without flinching. Yet where an
average individual might rationalize and absolve himself of all guilt, Dartley could feel a deep and lasting responsibility.
He had been the leader of that patrol on which Leeson had been wounded. All these years later, Dartley was still in touch
with him and helping where he could.

While he attached the telescopic sight, Dartley explained, “At ranges of five or six hundred yards, I’d want a bolt-action
sniper rifle. That way I could hold a group of shots to an inch or less. But I don’t need fine-timed sensitive equipment here,
which is all the more easily traced if I have to dump it. The range won’t be more than a hundred yards. I probably don’t even
need this scope, but the HK91’s lever-type mount allows me to fit the scope without disturbing the zero. It’s a four-power
Schmidt & Bender and it may give me an extra edge.”

“I’ve used the West German G3,” Leeson said, referring to the selective-fire form of the gun. Dartley’s weapon was the legally
available semiautomatic model. “You don’t aim to rake him with automatic fire then.”

“Not on a city street,” Dartley said, dropping the bipod and resting the legs on the windowsill. He looked through the scope
down at the far sidewalk from the third-story window. “You’d best be getting to your job, Dan. Make sure everyone sees you
there.”

Leeson nodded to Dartley and the sixteen-year-old whom Dartley knew only as Joe. The youth did not know Dartley’s name. Dartley
saw Leeson emerge on the street and cross it. He did not look up.

“He knows we’re watching him,” Joe said. “You ever get that feeling? Someone watching you from a window, you can feel their
eyes in your back.”

Dartley grunted noncommittally.

Joe asked, “Were you with Mr. Leeson in Nam?”

Dartley paused, looking down the street after his departing friend, then suddenly wheeled around and rapped the end of the
kid’s nose with the flash suppressor on the rifle’s muzzle. The gun wasn’t cocked, but the kid, in spite of his knowing talk,
couldn’t tell that.

“You starting to get curious about me?” Dartley asked in a sinister drawl.

White-faced, Joe looked down at the rifle barrel tickling the flap of his right nostril. “No, mister. I swear!”

“I’d hate to have to come after you, kid. And you know I would if you learned something I don’t want you to know.”

“I understand! I was only passing the time talking with you.”

Dartley eased off with the rifle before Joe pissed in his pants. He was that scared. “All right, tell me what happened with
Dan’s son, Frank. His father told me. Now I want to hear your version of the story.”

“Frank and me were in the same school together, up on Eighteenth Street. Neither of us had any real money. We’d buy an ounce
of pot between us and resell it to break even after holding back some for ourselves. We’d do some pills now and then. We never
had enough money for cocaine—until crack came along. I
been doing crack. That’s what I like. Somewhere along Frank got into shooting up. I wouldn’t have nothing to do with needles
’cause I think you got to be sick to stick shit in you and you can catch AIDS off a dirty one. So we were doing different
scenes. We stayed friends, although Frank was hanging out now with some real heavy dopers.”