Lethal Affairs (3 page)

The sudden change in plans had unnerved him. Although this was a much better setting for his first job than Miami International, he had memorized the airport layout, not this hotel’s. There were too many unknowns here. And he hadn’t expected to share an elevator with the man he was about to kill and the goons assigned to keep him from doing it.

Everything had gone smoothly until now.
He had proceeded to the elevator ahead of his target and pushed the down button with some confidence it was Guerrero’s destination as well. To keep his backup apprised of the situation, he had hesitated by the elevator’s control panel after pushing the round, white,
P-forParking
button and asked, “Which floor?” of the others as they got on.
Then he got the first hint he may have been made.
The bodyguard studied him a little too closely before peering at the panel and replying, “We’re good.”
Things unraveled further when the bodyguard positioned himself in the back of the elevator beside him. And when Sundance glanced his way, the man purposefully opened his suit jacket so he could see the gun beneath it.
This close, the guy was massive and intimidating.
“
Que pasa
, amigo?” the hulk inquired. “What’s your problem?”
Sweat ran down his back. “No problem,” he said, with as much nonchalance as he could muster.
The elevator braked to a stop, and he hesitated, intending to let Guerrero and his goons take a few steps toward their car. To his dismay, the bodyguard put his hand inside his jacket on his gun as he stepped out and glared at him. A warning.
To further complicate matters, the three men did not turn left toward the SUV they had arrived in as Sundance expected, but walked straight ahead, down the main parking aisle. He had no choice. He had to follow them, and he couldn’t do so as discreetly as he would have liked.
Fuck this
, he thought, as he stepped off the elevator.

Domino eased open the stairwell door to the parking garage and listened as she slipped on a thin pair of latex gloves from her tote bag. She could hear low voices, speaking Spanish, and the sound of footsteps, but everything was moving away from her, so she slipped out and took cover behind the nearest concrete column to ascertain the situation.

Guerrero and his goons were headed down the main parking aisle, and Sundance was walking right behind them, fifteen feet away, and had the perfect opportunity for a shot.

Domino paralleled their movements from a row of cars away, keeping down, diagonally tracking them, mentally urging Sundance.
Come on! Take the shot! You’ll never have a better one.
But she could see his hesitation clearly, and their window of opportunity was about to close. The three Cubans were headed toward a dark sedan instead of a SUV. Soon they would be in it and headed to the airport.

Sundance had his hand on his weapon but wasn’t drawing it. Guerrero was only a few feet from the vehicle and Domino had a clear shot.

As she reached for the holster strapped to her inner thigh and withdrew a Glock G33—a subcompact, semi-automatic pistol whose magazine held nine rounds—she spoke quietly to their backup. “He can’t do it and I have a clear shot. Tell him to get the hell down.”

She raised her hand to fire, her focus entirely on her target, as Blade’s voice relayed her warning: “Sundance! Get down!”
Her first shot nailed Guerrero in the side of the head and he crumpled.
Both the bodyguard and the driver whirled around, reaching for their weapons. Sundance, though, moved too slowly and was too visible as the culprit, with Domino positioned off to the left and half-hidden behind a car. As she took her second shot, killing Guerrero’s driver, the bodyguard got Sundance in the chest as he dove for cover, and he went down, too.
The bodyguard noticed her then, but it was too late. Her third bullet was already on its way. It buried itself into his temple and he fell like his boss.
She hurried to her target and fired another shot into Guerrero’s head, though the blood pooling beneath him indicated it was unnecessary.
“Target is down,” she relayed to her backup. “Everyone is down, Sundance included. What a fucking mess.” Sundance had the keys to their escape vehicle, a dark coupe parked not far from where he had fallen. In a crouch, she ran to him.
He had a growing blossom of red on his shirt, right over his heart. He looked up into her eyes and weakly gripped her arm. “Don’t leave me.”
“I’m here.”
“I screwed up, didn’t I? Jesus, I’m hit bad.” He tried to sit up, but his strength was gone. She watched him take in the pool of blood, his blood, on the concrete. His hand relaxed, releasing her arm.
She took the hand and squeezed it. “You did good.”
His gaze became fixed and his breathing more shallow. “Domino, are you still there?”
“I’m here.” She squeezed his hand again.
“I’m tired. It’s cold. I need to…” His whisper tapered off and he lay still.
She patted down his pockets and retrieved the keys, but as she fumbled for his earpiece she heard the roar of an engine—a car entering the lot, approaching fast. She darted behind the nearest vehicle just as a Jeep came into view, braking abruptly when it rounded the curve from the entrance to find three bodies blocking the way, with a fourth lying not much farther on.
The front doors of the Jeep flew open and a pair of middle-aged men jumped out, tourists from the look of them. One was focused on the bodies, the other more cautious—he was looking around for the person responsible. A woman inside the Jeep started to scream.
Domino couldn’t possibly make it to the coupe without being seen. Besides, the Jeep was currently blocking the only way out by car. She quickly backtracked, keeping low and out of sight. “I need another way out of here,” she whispered into her transmitter.
“Take the stairwell again, up one floor,” her backup replied in her ear, but Reno was talking this time, not Blade.
She noted the security camera above the door to the stairs and kept her face down as she approached. It was positioned too high for her to do anything about it. She didn’t have time.
“There’s an air vent in the stairwell on the floor above the garage. Use the screwdriver in your bag,” Reno said, as she took the steps two at a time. The small battery-operated tool was fast, but two bolts remained in the grill that blocked her escape when she heard running footsteps on the stairs above, heading her way. Clipped voices. Anxious, and she couldn’t hear the words. Security guards, most likely.
Working quickly, she removed the final screws and slipped into the narrow space as quietly as possible, fitting the grill back into place behind her and hoping it would stay put long enough for her to get the hell out of there. It was precariously balanced on a small ledge of metal.
She didn’t have much room to maneuver in the square ductwork, but she’d been in worse places. She shimmied forward a few feet to a wide junction. Vents led forward, left, right, and up. “I’m in the vent at the first juncture,” she informed her backup in a hushed voice. “Which way?”
“Keep straight, then up,” he replied. “Then forward again a short way. You’ll find the vent in the women’s public restroom on the mezzanine of the hotel. Blade’s headed there now to get the screws off for you.”
Domino elbowed forward to the next juncture, then into the duct that led up. She didn’t have enough room to change, but she stuffed her wig into the tote bag and paused to remove her heels. Bare feet would give her better purchase against the slippery-smooth metal walls of the vent.
Bracing her back against one side and her feet against the other, knees bent, she had to strain for every yard she gained upward. But in less than three minutes, she reached the next level of ductwork and followed it to the restroom. Peering through the grill, she could see Blade primping in front of the mirror.
Domino remained where she was, quietly waiting.
Soon a toilet flushed and a young woman appeared beside Blade at the sinks to wash her hands. When she left, Blade pulled a screwdriver out of her pocket and hurried over to the vent.
“Turn left out the front door,” Blade whispered as she removed the final screw and lifted off the grill cover.
“Right. Now go.” Domino hustled into one of the stalls and jerked on the change of clothes provided in the tote bag. When she emerged a couple of minutes later, she was wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and sneakers. Everything else was tucked in the small red nylon backpack she slung over one shoulder. She paused at the mirror to hand-comb her brunette hair into place and wipe the lipstick and rouge off her face with a wet paper towel. Then she plucked out her brown contacts. Blue-gray eyes stared back at her; she looked like herself again.
She emerged onto the mezzanine, which overlooked a lobby abuzz with people, harried hotel employees, worried-looking guests, and a handful of police passing through to the crime scene, appearing singleminded in their purpose and destination.
Domino strolled casually through the chaos, simply a hotel guest out for a day of shopping and sightseeing. After exiting through the front door, she turned left and had taken only a step or two before Reno said in her earpiece, “Turn right at the first corner, Domino. Then, halfway down the next block, you’ll see an alleyway next to the Starbucks. We’ll pick you up there.”

Senator Terrence Burrows had employed an image consultant long before he decided to run for president, so he needed only minor tweaks these days to keep him in maximum photogenic form. Hair transplants had given him thick brown hair, dermabrasion removed the evidence of his chronic adolescent acne, and all his suits were tailor-made.

“Call my aide in the morning,” he told the consultant, “and have her set up the appointments. Thanks, Seth.”
When he disconnected, Terrence reached for his remote and turned on CNN. He wanted to catch their story on the energy bill, because they’d interviewed him for the piece. Though the rest of his staff had gone home, he was still in his plush Capitol Hill office, tying up loose ends.
When CNN interrupted its regular broadcast with breaking news of the Guerrero assassination, he turned up the volume to listen but gave it only marginal attention.
Only when he received a phone call from EOO Chief Montgomery Pierce while soaking in his bathtub at home two hours later did he begin to realize his entire political future might hinge on Guerrero’s misfortune.
He was already upset with the EOO for their increasingly outrageous demands. Joanne Grant, the other Organization chief he dealt with, had called earlier in the week, asking for sensitive information regarding the upcoming visit of a Chinese diplomatic delegation.
“I don’t have the China info yet,” he told Pierce after he identified himself. “It’s going to take some time.”
“I’m not calling about that,” Pierce said. “Miami police have a hotel security tape of the Guerrero assassination. We need you to make it disappear. Tonight, before they get it to their lab for analysis. And copies, if there are any.”
“Are you insane?” He sat up so abruptly water sloshed over the side of the tub and onto the mat. “Do you know what you’re asking? I can’t do that. I
won’t
do that. Don’t you have people for such things?”
“Yes,” Pierce said patiently. “People like you.”
He forced himself to bite back a response he might regret. “How do you expect me to do this without jeopardizing myself?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Pierce said. “Make it happen. Soon.”
The line went dead.
Terrence cursed as he flipped the cell phone closed. His quiet peace had disappeared. He got out of the tub and threw on a plush burgundy robe, cinching the belt so tight in his aggravation he had to immediately loosen it. Dripping water onto the carpet, he padded in bare feet down the hall to the bedroom, where his wife Diana, a blond former Miss Connecticut, was reading in bed. “I have some things to attend to, honey. Don’t wait up,” he told her from the doorway, gracing her with the perfect, boyish grin cosmetic dentistry had provided him.
They lived with their six-year-old twin boys, Andrew and Austin, in a stately Tudor-style mansion in suburban Virginia, a seven-thousandsquare-foot behemoth that boasted six bedrooms, five baths, a pool, sauna, fitness room, and other luxuries. But Terrence spent nearly all his time in one spacious, masculine room on the second floor—his private domain, part office, part den. In addition to his desk and books, it featured a giant plasma TV, cozy fireplace, well-stocked bar, and comfy leather couch long enough to accommodate his six-foot, oneinch height when he needed a quick nap. The windows along one wall provided him a view of his landscaped, terraced gardens.
Flipping on the TV to CNN, he poured himself a whiskey while he considered how to satisfy Pierce’s demand. The network soon aired its next update on the Guerrero matter.
“Miami’s police chief has confirmed a hotel security camera captured the assassination this evening of Cuban Information Minister Juan Carlos Guerrero,” the news anchor reported. “Chief Marcus Thompson says the tape of the shootings and evidence gathered at the scene indicates the murders were the result of a well-orchestrated plot by two or more persons—a still-unidentified man, found dead at the scene, and a woman who escaped through an air duct into the hotel. Thompson says the female suspect did the actual shootings. The male suspect was reportedly killed by one of Guerrero’s men. There’s no word yet on whether the tape of the incident will be made available to news organizations.”
Terrence knew from personal experience that Pierce had a welltrained cadre of female operatives. He should have realized it was an Organization hit.
Pierce had asked him for a lot of favors, but never anything so risky. However, this trend had recently become his biggest headache. The EOO was squeezing him too hard, long after he had paid his debt in full.
He had tried to get out from under them. He had called in every possible favor with his contacts in the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service, attempting to uncover something he could use as leverage against Pierce’s demands. Terrence was powerful, with powerful friends, some of whom had regular dealings with the elusive EOO. But only a rare few individuals knew anything about the group except for its capabilities and an untraceable contact number. He had managed to learn only that it was based somewhere in Colorado.
Then it dawned on him that Pierce’s phone call might be the break he’d been waiting for, that he might be able to squeeze them back.
He sipped his whiskey and considered the possibilities
.
He had to plan. No one could gain access to the tape for a few hours, anyway. The police would be all over it.
Pierce had been right about one thing. Senator Terrence Burrows knew how to obtain information and make things happen outside ordinary means.
He’d been a nobody and still naïve when he’d contracted the EOO to do his dirty work for him. Things were different now. Now he had his very own take-care-of-anything-and-everything contact. Jack. And Jack took care of all his needs very capably and quickly, without making the demands the Organization did. He dialed the number from memory, and it was answered on the third ring.
“It’s me, Jack,” Terrence said. “The Miami PD has a tape of the Juan Carlos Guerrero assassination. Get it for me, tonight, before the high-tech whizzes get to work on it. And find out if any copies exist.”
“Doable, but expensive.”
“Whatever it costs. Do it right away.”
“Understood.” The line went dead.
He poured himself another drink and stared out at the starlit night. Within an hour, he had a plan. The tape would set it in motion.
At the very least, it would get those assholes at the Organization off him for a while. Keep them too busy watching their own backs. And they’d think he’d done his best to fulfill an important and risky request.
Best-case scenario—this could sever the link between them permanently.
All he needed now was the right accomplice. Someone with the same drive and ambition he had, that hunger to succeed, whatever the cost. Someone willing to take risks.
It came to him. That bright young woman he’d met before he came to Washington. She was perfect.