Net Force - Tom Clancy [33]
Step, step, step, turn-
People had not noticed the little clues she had accidentally dropped, because most people never thought to look for them. And eventually the links had rusted away under time and weather, become no more than stains on her trail, small, dark blotches that offered nothing to normal vision.
But this time? This time there would be a microscope turned upon her actions. Police officers, no matter what their organization, were special cases. First and foremost, the police protected their own. The message was simple: You may do many heinous acts and escape, but killing a cop is not one of these acts. Do so, and you rise to the top of the list, never to be removed until you are caught or killed-preferably killed. Sullivan knew this. Her father had been one of those who had gunned down a policeman, and paid for that with his own life. The policemen who had caught him had executed him, and it had been no chore for the killers to justify their revenge, no chore at all.
Step, step, step, turn-
Killing her target would not be the problem. That was the easy part. An assassin who was willing to be caught or to die herself could pretty much take out anybody in the public eye, from the President on down.
Getting away with such an assassination was another thing. Especially when the best and brightest lights of the top anticrime organization in the world would be shined into your escape tunnel. There would be no wiggle room on this one, no errors permitted. The smallest clue would be found, magnified, analyzed, tested, followed.
The thought was both scary and attractive. The Selkie thrived on the risk. She enjoyed epinephrine as if it were a fine wine, savoring the jolt it gave. The truth was, she could walk away tomorrow and live a long and well-supplied life. Once you had more than a few million working for you, you didnt really need more. She had a goal and she would reach it because she always reached her goals, but she was self-aware enough to realize that for her, the game was as important as the get. And this would be a challenge. Shed never deleted an FBI agent before, especially one who was head of a sub-agency.
Step, step, step, turn.
So, the plan would require a meticulous surveillance, an undivided attention to every possible problem and enough time to make certain everything was covered. Everything.
Before she left, she would take on a new identity. She would become a woman who belonged in Washington, D.C., who had reason to be near her target, who would pass any inspection if necessary.
Sullivan stopped pacing, and grinned to herself. Already, the adrenaline bubbled in her, made her skin and muscles tight, gave her breathtaking rushes.
She was a creature of the were. She could change her look as easily as some people changed their clothes, could become anything she wished.
Already the Selkies metamorphosis had begun.
Saturday, September 18th, 4:19 p.m. Los Angeles
Ruzhyo stood on the moving walkway at the Los Angeles Airport, heading for the car-rental pickup. According to the pilot, the temperature outside was nearly body heat. It might be fall, but summer was not done with this country-it had been almost that warm on the East Coast when hed boarded his flight.
The business in New York had gone well. Less than twenty-four hours after they had kidnapped him, Luigi Sampson was no more.
Well, Ruzhyo thought, that was not strictly true. The chopped-up pieces of the criminal were by this point a semiliquid goo inside a large, glass-lined holding tank filled with a very strong acid. It had been necessary for the Snake to carve the dead man into sections small enough to fit through a pressure-valve opening atop the containment vessel, a chore that affected Grigory not in the least. He had an uncle who was a butcher, and had worked in his uncles shop summers