Storm Killer (37 page)

92

Carlos stepped off the plane into the broiling sun of Riyadh. It was brutally hot as he walked across the tarmac to the terminal building.

He quickly cleared customs and grabbed a cab from the queue that formed in front of the taxi sign. He could have had a hired limo to be waiting to pick him up, but he wanted anonymity on this trip. 

He instructed the driver to take him to an address in the Olaya District of the city. The district was the
very heart of the city. It boasted being a thriving commercial and posh residential district, and offered plush accommodations, entertainment, dining and top-of-the-line shopping. It was a district only multimillionaires could afford to live in.

The taxi dropped him two doors down from a plush three-story home with a large gated security fence around it. He waited for the taxi to leave and walked to the front of his target.

He had worked for six months to find this house. His last assignment from his benefactor had been to find this house and its resident. Now, he had found it and his mission was almost over.

Carlos rang the bell on the gate.  He waited. Nobody answered.

He rang again with the same result.

Looking around to see if anyone was watching, he took a plastic card with a wire attached to a device that looked like an Ipod. He inserted the card into the gate card reader, flicked a switch on the “Ipod” and waited. Ten seconds later, he heard the gate lock click open and the buzzer sound announcing the gate was unlocked.

He walked through the gate, tucked the card and device back in his suit coat pocket and walked to the front door. He crouched down and inspected the front door lock and latch. He snorted contempuously at the ancient lock, and, using a lockpick, had the door open in about the same amount of time it took to open the gate.

He had already obtained blueprints of the house and knew that there was a butler’s pantry connecting the dining room to the kitchen. In this pantry was a broom closet. He made his way to the closet and took up as comfortable position as possible.
It should not be a long wait. The target should be back within the hour.

The target had been difficult to find. Carlos had traced him to Lima. He had been lucky there when he found a desk clerk that remember his man’s arrival and had also seen what he thought was the same man leave the next morning. He had provided an excellent description of the man leaving the hotel.

Carlos ensured he was the only one with this information by staging a traffic accident for the unlucky desk clerk. This effectively ended the trail for anyone else attempting to track his target.

Forty minutes after Carlos let himself into the house, he heard a key rattled in the front door. The door opened and closed and then footsteps approaching. Carlos reached in his pocket for the items he needed to complete his mission. He put on his gloves and waited.

He’d purposely left the closet door slightly ajar so he could see anyone passing the door.   

A man passed the door on the way to the kitchen. He had a cloth shopping bag filled with groceries dangling from his hand as he walked by. Carlos immediately recognized the man even though the man’s hair was a different color than he remembered.

He had gone no more than two steps past the broom closet when the closet door flew open and, in one quick motion, Carlos stepped up behind the man. Carlos had wrapped the piano wire around his gloved hands and quickly twisted the wire around the man’s neck.

He lifted the man’s body completely off the floor through the amount of strength he applied to the garrote. The wire sliced through the man’s neck in less than a second. Blood began spurting from the open arteries. The dying man’s brain lived for a few more seconds.

Just before he died, Dr. Rosen heard Carlos whisper in his ear, “Senator Gutierrez sends his greetings.”