Soulless (A Tanner Novel Book 43) Page 5

  That said, I know you’ll do it. I knew you were special when I met the ten-year-old boy you used to be, and nothing has ever changed my opinion about that. I don’t know how much farther you still have to go, but I know you’ll find the strength to make it.

  Remember, your limits are all in your mind. Go beyond limits. That’s what it takes to be a Tanner.

  * * *

  See you at the finish line,

  Cody

  * * *

  Henry tucked the letter away in his pack and checked the time. It was 9:23 a.m. and he had sixteen miles left to cover.

  Your limits are all in your mind. Go beyond limits. That’s what it takes to be a Tanner.

  Henry downed the last of his water before taking off at a trot. His feet were killing him, and a sharp pain was deepening in its intensity at the small of his back. He ignored the aches and picked up speed. He would not fail. He would be a Tanner someday and not a damn thing in this world was going to stop him.

  Cody waited for Henry at the finish line. The line was a white streak Cody had spray-painted across the sand. Cody had strung a banner above the line. Two words were written in bold red letters that were three feet high, TANNER EIGHT.

  The route curved out of sight a couple of hundred yards away and the intense temperature was sending up shimmering waves of heat from the hot sand. Cody checked his watch and saw that time was growing short. When he looked up again, he saw a form moving along the trail. It was Henry. When he was close enough to hear, Cody shouted to him.

  “That’s it, Henry! Just keep giving it everything you’ve got!”

  Henry was pounding along the trail, his eyes wild with the effort he was expending. As he neared the finish line, Cody heard a timer go off. It wasn’t the timer set on his watch, which still had more than ten minutes to go. The sound had come from Henry.

  Henry flew past him seconds later and Cody marked the time. Henry had run over to the Jeep and was bent over while panting. Cody grabbed a damp blanket from off the seat along with a gallon jug of water. Henry took the water while still gasping in air, then poured some of it over his head. When Cody draped the damp coolness of the blanket over him, Henry sighed with pleasure, then gulped from the jug. When he was able to, he asked Cody what his time was.

  “You tied Spenser’s record.”

  “I was aiming for yours. I had set my watch to go off when I reached it.”

  “You still made damn good time, and now you’ve passed both tests. Welcome to the club, boy.”

  Henry laughed. “I did it! I passed.”

  “You sure as hell did.”

  They returned to the trailers. To celebrate, Cody took Henry into town for a good meal and drinks. The exhausted teen fell asleep on the ride back. When Cody glanced over at him while driving, he knew he was looking at the future of the Tanner legacy.

  Cody and Henry stayed at the trailers one more day to clean them and pack up items to be placed in long-term storage. After that, they were headed to Colorado to fulfill the contract.

  4

  Breaking The Rules

  Gwen was still alive. Soulless hadn’t killed her despite the fact that she could identify him. He told himself it was because he still needed her expertise and connections if he was to fulfill the contract he’d taken on A.J. Pirrello. While that was true, he wouldn’t admit to himself that there was something else involved as well. He also never doubted that he would kill her someday.

  The two lovers spent weeks together in Mexico while they waited for certain items to be delivered. Those items had to be handmade and exact.

  The day after they’d first made love, Soulless and Gwen had visited the cemetery in the town where A.J. Pirrello lived. They walked among the graves while looking for a specific one. When they had located it, Soulless took photos of the grave as well as the graves that surrounded it. While he was doing that, Gwen took measurements of the nearby stone crosses and statues of the Mother Mary and angels.

  When the curious cemetery caretaker approached them and asked what they were doing, Gwen told the old man they were from a travel magazine and were researching a story about cemeteries in Mexico. The man had shrugged and went about his business.

  “Did I do good giving him that story?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “I would have told him to mind his own business, then I would have killed him if he gave me any trouble.”

  “I’ve never killed anyone up close. I have done it with a bomb.”

  “Dead is dead,” Soulless said. “Use poison, a knife, a gun, a sniper rifle, or a bomb, and they’re just as dead.”

  Gwen reached out and took Soulless’s hand. “Do you get pleasure from killing?”

  “I enjoy it when I kill a target because that’s my job. If I were to kill that groundskeeper, I’d feel nothing. It would just be work done in order to be able to kill the target.”

  “Do you have to take any more photos?”

  “I think we’re done.”

  Gwen smiled. “Then let’s head back to the hotel. I want more bed time with you.”

  They had spent a lot of their time in bed while waiting for their items to arrive. When they weren’t making love, they went for long drives to explore the area. In a seaside town, Gwen taught Soulless how to scuba dive. She was an expert at it and did it often. On one occasion, when they were only out for a swim, Gwen was impressed by how long Soulless could hold his breath while underwater.

  “I’ve always had good lungs, but I did nearly drown once.”

  “What happened?”

  “I fell through the ice on a lake when I was sixteen. I should have known better than to walk on it, because it was nearly spring, and the ice was thin.”

  “Who saved you?”

  “I saved myself. I got confused after falling through the ice and had trouble finding my way out. It took me over three minutes to find the hole I fell through, but I held my breath and climbed out.”

  “Three minutes? Damn. That’s a long time.”

  “I’ve held my breath longer since then. On a contract I did two years ago, I had to swim beneath the surface of a lake to reach the target without being seen. I timed it and saw that I had held my breath for nearly five minutes.”

  “Maybe you should take up free diving. Those guys can hold their breath up to eight or nine minutes.”

  “What is that, free diving?”

  “It’s like scuba diving but you don’t use equipment.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “None that I can see. With an oxygen tank I can stay underwater for nearly an hour, so why would I only want to do it for a few minutes? I love boats too. I live on one when I’m not working.”

  “Did you sail it to Mexico?” Soulless asked.

  “No. It’s docked back in Europe, in Italy. I have someone who cares for it whenever I’m away.”

  “Maybe I’ll get to see it someday,” Soulless said, then he wondered why he spoke the words. Once the contract was finished, he would have to kill Gwen.

  Some of the items they’d been expecting were shipped to them in several crates. Soulless had to rent a small truck to accommodate them. Gwen had yet to receive the supplies she needed to fashion her explosives. When she told Soulless they would need the truck again when it came time to pick them up, he was surprised.

  “You’re going to need a truckload of material for my plan?”

  “It’s more a matter of weight than size, but yes. You want to be certain, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then it would be best if I erred on the side of caution. My bombs will wipe out anything in their path.”

  “As long as A.J. Pirrello is in that path. I can’t fail again.”

  Gwen looked surprised. “When did you fail, in Africa?”

  “A man named Tanner killed the target before your bombs could. It was the only time I’ve ever failed to fulfill a contract.”

  “I’ve h
eard of Tanner. He’s friendly with the New York mob, or so they say.”

  “I’m going to kill him someday. Everyone thinks he’s better than I am. When I kill him, they’ll know that they were wrong about that.”

  “Let me help you. No matter how good Tanner is, he won’t survive one of my bombs.”

  Soulless nodded his agreement. If he agreed to let Gwen help him kill Tanner, it meant he had a reason to let her go on living a little longer.

  That night, they returned to the cemetery while the town slept in order to make certain the items they’d received had been built to the correct specifications. They had been, and Soulless was one step closer to killing his target.

  Tanner and Henry arrived in the area where Krakoff’s compound was located and set up camp outside its borders. Before attempting to fulfill the contract, Tanner needed to gather information about the area. Like Soulless, he had to take photos and measurements.

  He and Henry wore clothing that would help them to blend in with the surroundings. While it wasn’t desert camouflage, their clothing was a mixture of tan, brown and green colors.

  The research Lawson had given him told Tanner that Krakoff’s people patrolled their property often, but they rarely traveled the far reaches of it unless something alerted them or Krakoff was giving one of his speeches.

  When they were about two miles out from the center of the compound, Tanner found a spot on a rock ridge that would be an ideal place for him to set up with a rifle. Nearly a mile away was another ridge. That was where he would place the box with the second rifle inside. A mile beyond that was the center of the compound, and the balcony where Krakoff gave his speeches.

  Tanner would need to fire and hit the box in the right spot in order to activate the second rifle, which would then fire off a projectile that would kill Krakoff. There were a dozen things that could go wrong, and any one of them would result in failure.

  The current iteration of the box varied from the prototype that Tanner had first used in Mexico. Instead of clamps, the rifle was welded to the inside of the box. There were also holes drilled into the bottom of the box through which spikes could be driven to secure it to whatever surface it was set upon. The rear panel had also been altered. Tanner had reduced the thickness of the steel so the impact from a round anywhere on its surface would result in the panel being bent inwards at great speed and striking the swiveling piece that would activate the rifle. Instead of having to hit a red dot that was less than two inches wide, he just had to hit anywhere within six inches of the center of that panel. It made allowances for inaccuracy that the old panel didn’t.

  Along with alterations to the box, Tanner had upgraded the rifle by adding a laser-guided system onto it. The system worked through a high-tech rifle scope that was wired to the gun’s trigger, which was electronic. The scope would do all the work of adjusting for the range of conditions that could affect the shot, including wind, temperature, and distance. The weapon more or less shot itself once the trigger was depressed. As for the electronic trigger, it needed to be held down while the scope worked its magic and did its calculations. Tanner had adapted to that by making and adding a ratcheting system to the slot inside the box. When the piece that struck the trigger made contact with it, it would stay in place, held by the teeth of the ratchet, and exert a steady pressure on the trigger until the scope performed its computations and gave the signal for the gun to fire. Given that the sophisticated rifle scope did most of the work, Tanner was planning on making further alterations to his creation. A future model might be activated by a signal from a remote-control device that was miles away. If he could manage that, all he would have to do someday is to camouflage the box to fit its surroundings, drop it off at the right location, and await an opportunity to hit a switch and kill a target. By the time Henry became Tanner, fulfilling a contract might depend more on computers than weapons.

  Tanner had tested the new box rigorously, and while he had never succeeded in hitting the exact spot on a target he wanted while using the box, the variance was under eight inches in any direction and acceptable. A .50 BMG round striking anywhere on a person’s torso would result in death. There was even a good chance it would penetrate a bulletproof vest if Krakoff wore one. If it struck the vest, it would cause an indentation in the steel or ceramic panel the vest was made with, and the kinetic energy of the round would do severe damage to the wearer of the vest. At that caliber and size, a projectile doesn’t have to penetrate skin in order to be deadly.

  If the round fired by the box failed to strike and kill Krakoff, Tanner would be forced to do things the hard way. That meant he would need to infiltrate the compound, avoid detection, and eliminate Krakoff close up. That would be far riskier than the method he was attempting by using the box.

  Tanner held up a hand to signal Henry to stop moving. Someone was walking along six hundred feet away and near the ridge they were headed for. It was a man, and he was holding a rifle.

  The man strolled about casually as he made his circuit on patrol. Others were visible in the distance. The guards increased in number as the distance to the buildings decreased. That was fine. Tanner had no reason to get much closer than a mile. It would be easy to escape the notice of the occasional guard, especially with Henry along to keep watch while he worked.

  Tanner took measurements along with photos of the spot where he would set up to take his shot at the box. He’d used a military-grade rangefinder to determine the distance between the first ridge and the ridge where he intended to place the box. It turned out to be seventeen hundred and thirty-six yards. He would have to make quite a shot. If he missed, he might get another chance, but the odds were good that Krakoff’s security people would have him on the move the moment they heard the boom of the first shot.

  That truth concerned Tanner. While the laser targeting scope inside the box was sophisticated, it didn’t work instantly. It took valuable seconds for the scope to calculate the variables involved in striking a target from a distance. Once the boom of his rifle round echoed across the land and reached the ears of Krakoff’s security people, they would be on alert and take measures to get him off the balcony. Fortunately, the scope made allowances for moving targets. If it activated the electronic trigger on the gun soon enough, Krakoff would die.

  The perimeter guard moved on. Tanner and Henry moved in closer, to reach the other ridge. They were forced to take cover again as a pair of guards walked within shouting distance of them. The men had the shaved heads and beards of the cult’s elite guard.

  They were having a conversation, but they also kept their heads moving back and forth to take in their surroundings. Security was tight. Tanner imagined it would be even more so while Krakoff made one of his speeches to the faithful.

  As he had done at the first ridge, he took photos and measurements. This time they were much closer to the buildings. When he was done, he used binoculars to study the balcony where Krakoff would make his speeches. It had a semi-circular railing that was painted gold with a red background behind it. Krakoff was tall and well-built. He would make for a good target standing on the balcony. His confidence in his security was such that he believed no one could ever get close enough to take a shot at him with a sniper rifle. That may be true, but Tanner believed he had found a way to work around that. Only time would tell.

  Tanner and Henry had to drop to the ground and stay still on their way back to their camp, because they had crossed the path of another guard. The man passed within forty feet of them.

  If they had to, they could kill a guard in order to remain undetected, but that would only cause Krakoff to elevate his security. Tanner wanted to avoid that. What he was attempting was difficult enough with the security that was already in place.

  When they were back at camp, Tanner broke down their tent while Henry began loading gear in their vehicle. It would take time to have the items made that Tanner needed, and so they were going home to Stark. When they returned to Colorado again, Joseph Krak
off would die.

  5

  Ghosts

  Soulless smiled when Gwen told him the materials she needed to make her bombs were waiting for them to pick up. Her contact had sent a text with instructions on where and when to meet. Hearing that made Soulless’s smile disappear.

  “They set up the time and place?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “In three hours, and it’s about an hour drive to get there.”

  “Are you meeting them in public or somewhere private?”

  “It’s an abandoned mining town out in the desert. They’re delivering bomb making materials, privacy will be a good thing.”

  “Do you trust these people?”

  “I don’t know them, but they were recommended by someone I’ve used before.”

  “When we head there, I want you to drop me off when we get close, then give me time to travel in on foot.”

  “You think they might be up to something?”

  “I don’t know. If they are, I don’t want to find out the hard way. They only gave you a short time to get to the meeting spot. That means you can’t check it out ahead of time. They’re probably already there and waiting for you.”

  “If they’re planning to rob me, other than the money I have for them, all they’ll get is my phone and a wallet with a few thousand pesos and a phony ID.”

  “No. They could force you to transfer funds to them, maybe everything you have, then they could leave you in the desert. If anyone asked about it, they could claim that you never showed.”

  “Shit. I’ve been shaken down for a bigger payment before from a contact, but nothing like you described.”