Ghost Rendition Read online

  GHOST

  RENDITION

  GHOST

  RENDITION

  LARRY WEITZMAN

  Humanix Books

  GHOST RENDITION

  Copyright © 2021 by Larry Weitzman

  All rights reserved

  Humanix Books, P.O. Box 20989, West Palm Beach, FL 33416, USA

  www.humanixbooks.com | [email protected]

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any other information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  Humanix Books is a division of Humanix Publishing, LLC. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Humanix Books,” is registered in the Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.

  ISBN: 9781630061517 (Hardcover)

  ISBN: 9781630061524 (E-book)

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4  3 2 1

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About the Author

  GHOST

  RENDITION

  CHAPTER ONE

  I don’t like to take kill jobs, but the line between imperative target and imperative payday can get pretty hazy, and my monthly bills are really concrete. Especially since we sent Devon to private school. Paying inflated Westchester property taxes was bad enough, having to pay exorbitant tuition too made me want to shoot someone. And that’s not a good frame of mind for a kill job. People who commit crimes of passion get caught. People who get paid to kill learn to stay calm.

  Since 9/11 it’s been full employment for contractors who can shoot straight. The CIA mandate doesn’t allow them to operate domestically, which means hiring contractors. It’s still not legal, just harder to get caught. Shaarif Khalid sized up as a typical contract. He was in the country legally. He looked clean. But wiretaps had him planning some nasty stuff. That’s what has really changed since The Towers came down. The Agency doesn’t wait for the disease to strike. They excise the tumor before it can metastasize.

  They love to use medical metaphors. It makes them sound like they’re helping people, not killing them. They call me Scalpel, partly because I’m surgically precise in carrying out my jobs, and partly because I dropped out of medical school. That’s one of the problems with working for a spy agency—they know too much about you. Like they know I won’t kill anybody who isn’t a clear-cut “bad guy.” They played that up in my brief on Khalid. If I didn’t kill him, a lot of other people were going to die. And they knew I needed the money. So, they offered me two jobs: the kill job and a rendition. Renditions are big money, but I had to do the kill job first. They know exactly how to play you.

  Two weeks after I got the brief on Khalid, I was in an empty room on the second floor of a nursing home with my Remington Modular Sniper Rifle. There wasn’t much time to do my research, and Khalid was pretty cautious. He rode around in a custom Cadillac Escalade with a steel-reinforced chassis. Blowing it up would cause too much collateral damage. It had tinted bulletproof glass, which ruled out an accurate shot even with an armor-piercing round. He lived in a high-security building and was smart enough not to go near the windows.

  He had two vulnerabilities—cigarettes and sex. He visited his girlfriend on Wednesday nights when her husband played squash. She was an elegant blonde who spent her husband’s money and cheated on him as a thank-you. Would I have been happier if my wife had cheated instead of divorcing me? I had to respect her honesty, but at least I wouldn’t be paying alimony.

  The bad news was the blonde’s building had an underground garage. Khalid didn’t have to go outside to get laid. The good news was that he liked a cigarette after. The blonde didn’t want her husband smelling smoke in the apartment, and the garage was full of smoke alarms. That meant Khalid lit up outside in the Escalade and opened the window to exhale. He didn’t crack it more than two inches, but at under one hundred yards, it was enough to squeeze a shot through.

  Everything seemed to go right. Khalid showed up on time and was back out on the street in under an hour. The Escalade window descended, and a plume of smoke escaped. It was the last breath Khalid would ever take. I exhaled as he did and squeezed off a single .338 Lapua Magnum round. I already knew I hit him before I saw his car veer off the road and slam into a light post.

  I collected the shell case, stowed my rifle in its unadorned black case, and took the emergency stairs to the ground floor. Dressed in green surgical scrubs, I could have been a visiting doctor checking on one of my patients at the facility. It was like a reflection of what my life might have been.

  The lobby security guard was nowhere to be seen, which meant I’d been made. Did Khalid have security that I missed? Even if he did, they shouldn’t have been able to make my location off one silenced shot. I didn’t have time to figure it out. I knew from scouting that the building had only one working exit. The back doorway was boarded up solid for repair. That would normally have disqualified it as a shoot site, but its sight lines were perfect.

  I retreated into the stairwell and stashed my rifle case under the stairs. Sniper rifles are not made for close combat. I hadn’t fired my Browning Hi-Power 9 mm in action in almost a year, but I always put in my time at the range.

  I had two choices. I could go up or out. Going up and playing hide-and-seek in the nursing home was smarter tactically, but I didn’t want a bunch of dead old folks. So it had to be out.

  I took off my sneakers, stuffed my socks inside, and tied them together. The lobby was small. The guard’s desk to my left was the only cover. That’s where my adversary would be. He had likely seen me go back into the stairwell, so he knew I was on him. He would start shooting as soon as I came out. I opened the door and threw my sneakers up into the middle of the room. I didn’t expect to fool him, only to draw his eyes. I charged out as I threw and slid on my side with my feet curled behind me and my head angled back. I wanted to give him as little as possible to shoot at. The surgical scrubs gave me a nice smooth slide across the linoleum.

  In the time it took for him to shift his eyes from my sneakers all the way down to me on the floor, I hit him twice in the face. He still managed to squeeze off a couple of shots. Hitting a moving target when you have to change your eye level isn’t easy, especially when you’re under fire. His dispersal of shots was all over the place, but he got lucky. He hit me with one in the chest. The impact from the 9-mm round took my breath away. I wear a level 2 bulletproof vest. It’s lighter than the heavy-duty body armor with steel or titanium plates, and it stands up to handguns.

  I pulled my scrubs off, dressed my dead adversary, and dragged him to the middle of the lobby. My ribs were on fire. I cracked the door and barked, “Clear!” I didn’t know what their code word was, so I garbled it so you couldn’t tell what I was saying. I positioned myself behind the desk and waited.

  It wasn’t long. Two guys came charging in all bright eyed and excited. They couldn’t wait to see how dead I was. They both had Remington R51 9-mm. I hit them as soon as they came through the door, one shot apiece in the head.

  I went back and collect
ed my rifle. I was wearing gloves and the rifle had no identifying marks, but I felt like Devon used to with his stuffed animals. You know they’re not real, but you still can’t help getting attached to them.

  If I were running this operation, I would have another shooter at elevation to clean up any loose ends. The logical place would be in the building directly across the street. It had a low roof and the clearest line of sight. I slipped my socks and sneakers on and grabbed the bigger of the two guys I’d just hit. He was about a head taller than me, which was lucky. I’d caught him on the left temple, no exit wound. I held him up with my left arm under his armpit, pressed my Browning to his temple, and pushed my way out the door. I angled him in front of me and yelled, “Put down your weapon or your buddy doesn’t make it.”

  It wouldn’t fool anyone for long, but holding him in front of me made a shot from across the street pretty difficult. I dragged him to my car, pushed him into the driver’s seat, and started it from the passenger side. I spun the steering wheel hard, stamped on the accelerator, and slammed the car into drive.

  A series of shots shattered the tinted driver-side window as we whipped around the corner. The tall guy took a hit in the temple less than two inches from where I had hit him. I opened his door and pushed him out as we squared the block. I took his place in the driver’s seat and wove through a random pattern of streets to make sure I wasn’t being followed. Then I hopped on the West Side Highway and headed home.

  On the plus side, I had completed the job, I hadn’t left any traceable evidence, and there was no collateral damage. It was borderline miraculous that there hadn’t been any passersby on the street. It made me wonder if they had somehow cleared the area. That would mean they had expected me, which didn’t make sense. That brought me to the negatives. The whole thing felt wrong. These guys were well armed and well positioned but a little wild. They didn’t read like security. And how had they tracked me that quickly? I hated to leave unanswered questions almost as much as I hated to leave dead bodies. They both lead to trouble.

  I pulled into my garage, swapped my dummy license plates for my regular ones, and dumped the dummies in a portable compactor. I shredded my scrubs and disassembled my vest. The carrier had been scored so that got shredded. The 9-mm hollow point slug was still in the front plate or I would have had to get rid of that too. They’re expensive to replace, but you don’t want some cop to get lucky and match fibers from a slug you left behind.

  I pried the slug loose and put it in the compactor. I tucked my guns, gloves, and two vest plates in my secure underground cache. I rented a three-bedroom cape across town when Suzanne made it clear that I needed to find other accommodations. It was small, had almost no property and was a little shabby, but the landlord lived in Florida. He wasn’t around to snoop, and I convinced him to let me fix up the attached garage in return for cutting my rent. I turned it into my safe room, with reinforced steel walls, deadbolt locks, and an encrypted garage door opener that couldn’t be spoofed. I added the safe and the compactor, a dedicated router, webcams, a generator, and enough supplies to withstand a siege. This was a last resort in case my identity got compromised.

  The one perk of being divorced is that I didn’t have to sneak in after a job. Then again, having to keep secrets from my wife was one of the reasons I got divorced. I made myself a cup of Chinese lavender tea. It calms me after a job and helps me sleep. When I first started, I would stay up all night after a job, and then I’d be wrecked for days.

  When my alarm went off the next morning, I was dreaming that I was in the operating room and the patient I was performing surgery on was me. I wanted to go back to sleep, but I had to get ready and take Devon to school. My ex-wife Suzanne was a preschool teacher and was up and out before Devon was. Private schools start later than preschool, which doesn’t seem fair with all the tuition I pay.

  Luckily, I could make it to the Big House in less than five minutes. It was a hundred-year-old farmhouse Victorian that had been in pretty serious disrepair. We bought it when we first got married and slowly fixed it up. Suzanne was good with home repair. I was good at following instructions. It’s no mansion, but compared to the tiny apartment we’d had in Manhattan, it felt huge. And since we had used every dime we had for a down payment, we figured we were sentenced there for life. In old movies, the inmates try to break out of the Big House. I wished I could break back in.

  I made a pit stop in the kitchen, then drove the two miles to the Big House at an unsafe speed. My reward was that I got to the front door as Suzanne was coming out. She didn’t look that different from when we had first met. She wore her light brown hair short. She hadn’t gained any weight, a tribute to the energy it took to chase preschoolers around. And she still had that guileless smile that got right inside me. She gave me a hint of it, then covered it quickly.

  “What happened to the Limo?” she asked.

  That’s what we named my Camry to go with the Big House. It felt like a small victory that she still called it that.

  “I left my garage door open and some stupid kids broke in and took my iPod.” I still hate lying to her.

  “They’ll give it back once they hear the awful music you have on it.”

  “I planned it that way. I don’t actually listen to any of it.”

  Her smile came back out, but then she put it away for good. It upsets her when we get along too well.

  “Please make sure Devon takes his lunch,” she said.

  I wanted to ask why the huge tuition we’re paying doesn’t buy lunch, but I knew that wouldn’t go over well.

  “I will clip it to his jacket like we used to with his mittens.” I was trying for one more smile, but I knew it was hopeless.

  “And Gib, don’t forget we have a meeting with his guidance counselor after school. You can’t be late for this one,” she said and got into her Prius.

  She had gone green after the divorce. I still wasn’t used to the solar panels on the roof of the house. I watched her drive away, wondering what else had changed. I had heard that she was dating a guy in town, a doctor. I don’t think she did it to upset me, but it felt like it.

  I walked absently into the house as if I still owned it. Devon came rushing down the stairs. Around town, I was invisible, but he was still willing to acknowledge my existence in private.

  “Did you bring it?” he asked.

  I reached into my coat and pulled out a Taco Bell bag. I keep a bunch of burritos in my freezer. It was a shameless tactic to buy his affection. Suzanne has the home-field advantage, so I use what I have. “Don’t tell your mom.”

  “She thinks I’m a vegetarian,” he said, sticking out his tongue.

  “She just wants you to be healthy.”

  Devon made a farting noise with his outstretched tongue.

  “Yeah, meat rules,” I agreed.

  He gave me a high five, which made me feel guilty. Good, but guilty. I took the healthy lunch Suzanne had made him from the kitchen, stashed it in my coat, and we boarded the Camry.

  “What happened to the window?” Devon asked.

  “Kids grabbed my iPod.”

  “With your sucky music on it?”

  I laughed loudly and didn’t tell him his mother had made the same joke. I let him off on a dead end street around the corner from the middle school. Since he had started seventh grade, he wanted no part of being dropped off by his father in his dirt brown Camry. He gave me his mother’s smile as a thank-you. I sat there and held onto it. Then my cell phone buzzed. The text message said one word: “RED”.

  I slid down in my seat and peered at my side view mirrors. I didn’t see anything coming, but RED meant imminent danger. Carrying a weapon when you’re not on a job is the easiest way to break your cover. I make one exception. I pulled off my belt, pushed down hard where the buckle meets the leather, and slid the tip of the buckle off. It left a two-pronged piece of metal that looked like the top of a football goalpost. I twisted one prong and bent it at a forty-five-degree
angle in toward the other prong, forming a trigger to a palm-sized gun. It shoots a 2-mm caliber bullet at 400 feet per second. A bullet has to go about 330 feet per second to pierce the skin. At close range, my tiny belt buckle gun can kill, but I get only one shot.

  Had someone followed me from the Khalid contract? I’d been careful, and even if I had screwed up somehow, why would they wait until the next day to move on me? And what had tipped the Agency to warn me? The explanation that stares you in the face rarely lies. That was what Nachash would say. His voice is in my head way too much. He always said that he never tried to manipulate me, but control the mind and you control the man. That’s another one of his sayings.

  I opened the car door and slid out into a crouch on the driver’s side. If I was wrong, I would probably take a bullet to the head. I hoped they would get rid of my body. I didn’t want Devon to have to see his father with his face blown off.

  There was a broken, old phone booth three yards up the street that provided the only cover. It was one of those half booths closed on three sides and open on the bottom, but bushes had grown up around it. Devon referred to it as my office. I think he was sort of embarrassed that I work from home, instead of a big office like most of the other dads.

  The phone booth was in perfect tactical position if your target stayed in front of you. I slipped around back of the car and exploded out of my crouch into a dead run. Krav Maga does have some locks and submission holds, but Nachash didn’t teach them. You shoot to kill, you strike to kill, or you end up killed, was how he taught it. He would not have approved of what I did.

  I recognized who was in the phone booth a split second before I hit him. It would have been too late to stop if I had gone for a kill strike or used my buckle gun. I slammed a flat palm into his abdomen just below the ribs into his diaphragm. I heard the air whoosh out of his lungs as he crumpled to the sidewalk.