Net Force - Tom Clancy [109]
She looked down at the bodies. They both had thought they were going to walk away when shed dropped them, and theyd been effectively dead before they had time to realize any different. There were worse ways to go.
Okay, now the second part.
She moved to the back door, peeped through a gap in the blinds covering the window next to the door. A big man in a gray sweatsuit stood inside the fence, next to the gate. He was smoking a cigarette, and he had a belly pouch drooped heavily over his crotch. That was where hed have his gun. Good. A belly pouch was a lot slower than a holster.
She needed to get him away from the gate and closer to the backdoor, out of line of sight from the front, in case anybody was looking at him.
She had spent the better part of the day with Brigette.
She could do enough of an imitation of her voice to fool somebody who might have heard it no more than a couple of times.
She took a deep breath. Opened the door. Excuse me? Could you come here a second? Ray needs a hand.
The sweatsuited bodyguard ambled toward the back door. As soon as any view of him from the front was blocked by the house, the Selkie stepped out into the yard.
Sweatsuit frowned. The Selkie wasnt what he expected to see.
His reaction time was pretty good, but his tactics were bad. Instead of ducking his head, bolting and trying to hop the fence, which might possibly have gotten him clear with a couple of small-caliber rounds in the back, he dug for the pistol in his pouch.
The fastest gunslinger who ever lived couldnt move fast enough to outdraw a gun already lined up on him. The reaction time, plus the mechanical time it took to come from the holster-even from a quick-draw rig, hed need at least a third of a second, even if he was really fast. Coming out of a belly pouch, this guy was going to need two seconds to get his piece on-line, and he didnt have two seconds.
The Selkie squeezed off her first shot before the guy got past the frown. The second and third rounds followed so fast they sounded like one long brap! She tapped him three times in the head, then ran for the back fence before the bodyguard even hit the ground. Her van was on that block, two houses down, to the left, and there werent any dogs in the neighbors yard-she had checked.
The barrier was a cedar-plank, good-neighbor fence, six feet tall. She got to it at speed, put her hands, including the pistol, on top and jumped and levered herself over it. A pretty good hop.
The ground was soft, the neighbors yard empty. Nice grass, recently mowed.
She ran to the gate next to the house, opened it, closed it behind her. Unscrewed the suppressor from the Walters threaded barrel, shoved the suppressor into her back pocket, slipped the gun into the horsehide waistband holster, pulled her shirt out and over the gun.
Forty-five seconds later, she was at the van. Across the street, two little girls played hopscotch on a pattern chalked on the sidewalk. The Selkie smiled and waved at the girls. Got into the van, started it, backed out into the street, then pulled away. She drove without any particular haste, stopped at the stop sign, put her blinker on to make the right turn. A model driver.
Ray Genaloni was no longer a worry.
Now, she had to go back to Washington, to finish one more little chore
34
Thursday, October 7th, 2:45 a.m. Grozny
As he was rebuilding his system, damaged in the sudden VR bail hed been forced to take, Plekhanov came across bad news.
Somebody had snapped a couple of his trip wires.
It was late, he was tired and his first