Presidential Retreat, Sentry Station
3, North East
Near La Paz , Bolivia
26 August
2339 Local
“Sentry Station Three, checking in.”
“Read you Station Three.” The radio squawked. Private Emilio Ameliaria Sanchez turned the
gain down on his radio. He adjusted the
slung rifle on his shoulder and began walking back toward the guard shack. He’d check in again 20 minutes later, as he
had done what seemed to be hundreds, if not thousands of times before.
The night was pleasant enough, the
moon was out, about half he estimated, the air was clear and the breeze was
pleasant. In the moonlight you could see
the towering massif that was Mount Illimani in one direction and the beautiful lights of
La Paz
The
silenced pistol bucked once, its report muffled to the sound of a light
cough. The tiny sub-sonic .22 LR round
chewed it’s way into of the head of Private Sanchez. He dropped heavily to the grass, the contents
of his head pulsing out, leaking out into the lawn.
A
man, dressed simply in
moderately expensive Italian tailored black slacks and a black long sleeve
fleece jacket, waited momentarily.
Adjusting the night vision device slightly, he looked at the sentry in
image intensified and infrared light. He
adjusted the thermo-graphic gain on the goggles and saw the heat signature of
the dead man begin to change slightly.
He looked across the empty lawn to the white, floodlit wall of the
Presidential Palace. He relieved the
dead sentry of his Galil rifle and removed three magazines from the guard’s
load bearing equipment. He immediately
pressed the bolt back on the rifle slightly, not seeing the brass of a loaded
chamber; he retracted the bolt fully, and then allowed it to snap forward. The satisfying sound of the weapon charging
rewarded him. Ensuring the safety of the
Israeli made rifle was on and locked, he slung the rifle crosswise over his
back, with the muzzle down. The
magazines he placed into the pockets of the
fleece jacket. He quickly dragged the body over to a small copse of trees, and
walked briskly toward the guard shack.
There,
in the guard shack, a soldier dozed, head propped near a radio, which had the
gain turned up quite loud. The man
smiled and then turned into the gate behind the shack. The presidential retreat was an older home,
but one that had been taken care of, quite obviously. The lawns were manicured, the landscaping
done in a naturalistic way that allowed for the varying mountain terrain, as
well as establishing clear lines of sight and, the man in black chuckled,
decent fields of fire. He paused. Ahead of him he could see the house. Two levels, probably about five thousand square
meters, with expansive patios, affording the occupants excellent views of the
city and the surrounding mountains.
His
nose detected the faint whiff of cigarette smoke. Ahead on one of the patios, a man and a woman
smoked. They were seated on chaise
lounges, the lights around them were out, in contrast to the rest of the well
lit house.
The
man moved toward them, angling toward a small grouping of fragrant, flowering
shrubs, silently thanking his ancestors for looking on him with
beneficence. He moved with a practiced
grace that made his travel virtually silent.
He kneeled smoothly behind the shrubbery. He turned the light
amplification up on the night vision device and could make out faces. The woman pulled in a drag on her
cigarette. The brighter glow of the
cigarette was an explosion of light in his eyes. He could make out her face, and recognized
her face against the photo he had been given earlier. In the night vision goggles he could not only
see amplified light, but he could see heat radiated by his targets. Post coital glow, indeed, he mused. The older, naked man who stretched out on the
chaise next to her, showed similar heating patterns in his face and
extremities. His face was illuminated by
the glow of her cigarette as well.
Major
Quan Ji-Linn of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army almost shouted with
joy. He elevated his silenced pistol,
and activated the laser sight. A beam of
invisible infrared light streaked out across the night and settled on the
forehead of the man. He quickly
estimated range, and added a bit of deflection for a bit of the light breeze
that cooled his sweating brow. Ji-Linn willed the trigger to break and the
Walther coughed. He quickly traversed
the little pistol a few degrees, and ended the life of a mistress of the
President of Bolivia. The bullet entered
the side of her head as she turned, surprised at the meaty, cracking slap of
the little bullet against the forehead of the man seated next to her.
Major
Quan waited, watching the trickles of blood from the exit wounds seep onto the
lounges, waited a few minutes, until he began to see the characteristic symptom
of death, the bodies before him began to cool in the light mountain breeze. Ji-Linn whispered a prayer of thanks and a
request for forgiveness to his ancestors for the taking of these lives.
He
stood, slowly, his senses alive and tingling, trying to will himself to sense
the presence of anyone who might detect him.
He turned and walked, slowly, calmly back to the guard shack, where the
sentry still dozed. He propped the
unused rifle against the outside of the shack and set the magazines on the
ground beneath them. That would cause
some panic and alarm when the investigation transpired, thought Quan with a
smile. His smile soured when he thought
of the punishment that the slumbering guard would receive. That is why soldiers shouldn’t sleep on guard
duty.
An
hour later, Major Quan Ji-Linn stood in a phone booth. On a busy street in the
night club section La Paz Baltimore in the State of Maryland ,
in the United States of
America
“Hello?”
an American voice said.
“Is
Johnny there?” Quan said in English, his accent perfectly American.
“No
Johnny here, pal. Do you know what time
it is?”
“I
do, I won’t apologize though.”
“You wouldn't, old friend, take care.” The line went dead. The code delivered. He could imagine the face on the other side
of the line. The diplomat and spy were
now, as he hung up the phone, probably sending a similarly coded email. The mission was completed, and the bodies
probably hadn’t even been discovered yet.
Quan left the phone booth, two duffel bags over his shoulders, and
hailed a cab. He had a plane to catch.
Later
an eyewitness claimed he saw a tall Chinese man, dressed
in black, speaking on the phone. The
eyewitness, a rather loudly dressed, an more than a little inebriated,
claimed that he couldn't help but notice the man. The
detective wondered why he picked out this man at the phone booth.
“The
shoes, the man was dressed to the nines, looked like a Chinese James Bond, but
his shoes.”
“What
of his shoes? Speak it or this will go
badly for you, we are looking for a presidential assassin, not your next date!”
raged the Bolivian Internal Security Investigator.
“Easy,
honored investigator. Look, his shoes
were fit for the mountains. He wore
combat boots, which were black, like the rest of his outfit, and they, I mean
the boots looked scuffed up. That man
who spoke on that phone was dangerous. He looked like he was carrying the shadow of
death with him. That had to have been your man.”
The police were unable to confirm or deny the eyewitness testimony.
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