Sins of the Assassin

Chapter 16

“I can’t believe…can’t believe what you did,” said Leo, teeth chattering in the rush of humid air. He rested his head in his hands. “How did I let my dad talk me into this?”

What a crybaby. Rakkim tilted the seat back a little more, steering with one hand. Top down. The Caddy’s beams the only headlights on the road. Clear skies, more stars than anyone could count. Acres of alfalfa and sugar beets sweetening the sultry night. Crickets sawing away their desperate love songs, the sound undulating, and Rakkim hummed along with them, part of them now. No limits. No boundaries. He loved the South.

Leo looked up at Rakkim. “You killed those men.”

Rakkim glanced at him. “You’re fucking welcome.”

“I didn’t ask for help. Besides, it was your fault it came to that. You were supposed to take the long way out of town.”

“I missed the turnoff.”

“You think this is funny?” Leo’s lower lip quivered. “What’s funny about two dead lawmen?”

“Those two weren’t lawmen, they were just thugs wearing badges.” Rakkim drove on, the big twelve-cylinder engine roaring, steady as a freight train. Easy to ignore Leo’s questions, but not his own. Why had he done it? Even worse…why had he enjoyed it? A peeling sign by the side of the road announced PIGGLY WIGGLY DINER-HOT FOOD, COLD BEER, TEN MILES. “You hungry?”

“Hungry?” Leo’s voice cracked. “I may never eat again.”

“Wouldn’t hurt you to miss a few meals,” said Rakkim, “but you’ll eat. You’ll be surprised how hungry you are the first time you sit down. After seeing what I did, you’ll feel like there’s a hole inside you and all the food in the world will barely fill it. You’ll be shoveling it in with both hands.”

“I doubt it.”

Rakkim hummed along to the song in his head. He knew the melody but didn’t know the words. He wished he could remember where he had heard it before.

“What you did…it doesn’t bother you, does it?” said Leo.

“I guess I’ve got a moral deficiency. Maybe I should eat more green leafy vegetables.”

“Why do you keep making jokes about it?” said Leo. “Dad said you weren’t like that. He said I could trust you.”

“You can trust me.”

“Trust you to do what? Kill people?”

“Yeah, that’s right, when it’s needed.”

“It wasn’t needed.” Leo sounded like he was about to cry. “You went out of your way to kill those men. You jeopardized our mission.”

“Our mission? You little shit, this whole thing is on me. You’re only here because Sarah said to bring you.”

“Murder is a sin. It’s a sin in Judaism, it’s a sin in Christianity, it’s a sin in Islam and every other-”

“I’ll decide what’s a sin.”

“You’ll decide?” Leo stared at him, mouth open. “You’re going to get me killed.”

“Don’t worry,” said Rakkim. “Guys like you always die in bed. Clean sheets and a cup of warm cocoa in your hand, that’s how you’ll go out.”

Leo wiped his eyes. “Liar.”

Rakkim turned off onto a still smaller road, unlit and unmarked. Country and western drifted from the radio, love songs even sadder and more plaintive than the crickets. A huge wooden cross tilted by the side of the road. He raced on, pebbles kicking up in their wake. Disturbed by their passing, an owl flapped off from atop a tall pine, wings fluttering briefly across the moon. An omen, that’s what most Southerners would call that, a bad omen. Rakkim didn’t need an owl to tell him that they were fucked forever. He smiled to himself. Everything seemed amusing lately. It wasn’t that his sensations were muted, the fear and pain blurred. Exactly the opposite. The world never seemed more clear, an awful clarity frozen in his heart. I’ll decide what’s a sin. So now Rakkim had added blasphemy to his long list of transgressions.

Leo cleared his throat, afraid to disturb Rakkim’s thoughts. “Shouldn’t we…I mean, after we put some space between us and…what you did back there, shouldn’t we find someplace to sleep?”

“I’m not tired.”

“Right. That shadow warrior thing.”

“Why don’t you go to sleep? Give your mind and your mouth a rest.”

Leo yawned. “I’m not tired either.”

Rakkim kept watch for movement in the darkness ahead as he drove down the road, looking for a light, a signal, anything that would indicate an ambush. Leo didn’t know anything about death, but he was right about at least one thing: Rakkim had gone out of his way to kill the two Rangers. No real explanation for it either. Sure, they were murderous bastards, but the world was full of murderous bastards with and without badges. Yeah, the Rangers had groped the young nun back at Mount Carmel, but that was no capital crime, and besides, the nun would have been horrified at their deaths, preferring to pray for their forgiveness. No, the killing had been for Rakkim’s satisfaction and no one else’s, and that bothered him more than anything else.

“I thought shadow warriors avoided confrontation,” blurted Leo.

“You just can’t let it go, can you?”

“I’m just trying to understand.” Leo balled his chubby fists. “Shadow warriors are supposed to be invisible, that’s what Dad told me. Unnoticed and under the radar. They don’t look for trouble. They don’t kill without cause.”

“I’m not a shadow warrior anymore,” Rakkim said.

“Then what are you?”

Rakkim didn’t answer. Didn’t have an answer. All he knew was that he had told Leo the truth-he had changed. Transformation was an occupational hazard for a shadow warrior. And for assassins. Given time, shadow warriors always went native and assassins always went mad dog, but Rakkim was neither.

Like shadow warriors, assassins worked alone, beyond any boundary or authority. No such thing as an old assassin…but Darwin had proven them all wrong. He was in his forties when Rakkim tracked him to the abandoned church in New Fallujah, Darwin at the height of his powers, a devout atheist, welcoming Rakkim to his private sanctuary. The two of them cut and bleeding, knives dancing as they gasped for breath.

I recognized you the moment I saw you, taunted Darwin. I knew what you were.

Rakkim lunged. Drew blood. I know who you are too. I know how you think.

I feel sorry for you then, Rikki. Darwin slipped slightly, but Rakkim wasn’t fooled. Knowing how I think…Darwin’s expression sagged-he looked in pain. Rikki, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

Even now, Rakkim wasn’t sure if the sadness on Darwin’s face at that moment was genuine or another ploy. Ultimately it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Darwin had died, and Rakkim had lived. Last laugh, motherfucker.

Rakkim followed a curve in the road, still thinking of Darwin, and the sudden silence in the church as the assassin’s mouth had worked around Rakkim’s blade, pinning him in place. No last words. Rakkim had stood there watching Darwin’s eyes grow wider and wider. He almost missed the man’s soft, mocking voice, the way it insinuated itself into their parry and thrust, wrapped itself around him…Rakkim slammed on the brakes, skidding.

“What’s wrong?” shouted Leo.

Up ahead a mass of vegetation had engulfed the surrounding fields and rolled on, a thicket thirty or forty feet tall now covering most of the narrow road. Rakkim hit the high beams. The light gleamed off the glossy leaves and thick vines, the interior of the undergrowth too dense to see into.

“What is that?” said Leo. “Some kind of jungle?

“Kudzu.”

Leo whistled. “I…I thought it was just a fast-growing weed.”

“Used to be. Before the big warm.” Rakkim turned off the headlights, kept the engine idling. “Kudzu was always a problem, but since the weather changed it seems like all our natural enemies got stronger. More tenacious.” He stared into the darkness. “Fire ants nesting in the cities, killer bees so bad in Savannah and Birmingham that kids don’t play outside in summer. Farmers in the delta calling in napalm strikes to keep the kudzu from taking over the best bottomland, hundreds of people dying every year from poison ivy…it’s like Mother Nature knows we’re on the ropes.”

Leo snorted. “Spare me the melodrama.” He looked over. “Rikki?” He turned around, peered into the night. “Rikki?”

Rakkim scooted silently across the road and into the underbrush, moving at a forty-five-degree angle from the idling car. The ground felt spongy underfoot. He heard Leo’s calls faint in the distance and kept moving. The kid was more trouble than he was worth, just like he had told Sarah. Civilians. She was the woman he loved, the woman at the right hand of the president, but she was still a civilian.

Starlight shone in the eyes of a squirrel watching from a low branch. Rakkim eased deeper into the brush, not making a sound. A deep gully ran along the other side of the road. He walked across a narrow plank half hidden by tall grass, circling around to the treeline, keeping low, staying quiet. He settled in, closed his eyes, let his night vision kick in and then opened them.

From his vantage point Rakkim could see a mile or so in either direction. No lights. No movement. No sound but the wind in the trees and small animals skittering overhead. No one waiting in ambush on the other side of the kudzu. No need to wait. The roadway fronting the kudzu, that narrow half lane of cracked asphalt, had been dug away for ten feet, replaced with a scaffold of wood and black plastic, a false front sprinkled with dirt. Cars approaching from either direction would see the encroaching kudzu and drive onto the shoulder; the embankment would give way, flipping them into the ditch. Next morning, the folks who laid the trap would check for survivors and any other loot that fate had sent their way, then winch out the wrecked car so as not to alert the next victim.

Gnats buzzed around his ears as Rakkim stared into the gully. He picked out a couple of glimmers among the rocks-a piece of shattered windshield maybe, or a hubcap that the locals had missed. Hard to make it on farming alone in this part of Texas, what with the drought and the kudzu sucking up all the groundwater. The survivors probably got ransomed or sold off. People did what they needed to survive. Then went to church on Sunday, said their prayers, and laid it in the lap of God.

Rakkim touched his pocket, reassured himself that the shekel of Tyre was still there. He pulled it out, examined it in the starlight. The silver coin was tarnished and worn, pitted in places, but the profile of the emperor or whoever he was on the front was clear enough. Another sneering, overfed, thick-necked bastard with a crown of laurel leaves on his brow attesting to his divinity. Two thousand years later and nothing had changed. He turned the coin over, tilted it, catching the light. A giant eagle rising up, ready to strike…probably trying to get at the suety son of a bitch on the other side.

“Where did you go?” said Leo as Rakkim slid behind the wheel.

Rakkim backed up, eyes on the rearview mirror. Faster, accelerating.

“Tell me what’s happening,” pleaded Leo as they bumped over the rough road.

Rakkim backed into the wide spot in the roadway, turned around, and headed back where they had come. “We’re taking another route. This one’s too dangerous.”

“I’m not scared.”

“Right.”

Bugs splattered against the windshield like popcorn, the ultrasonics embedded in the glass disintegrating them. The crickets’ undulating sound stopped as they approached, started up again as they passed.

“I still don’t know why we’re going to New Orleans,” said Leo. “We need to get to Tennessee as soon as possible, not waste time with Moseby’s wife.”

“There’s no way Moseby would have left without talking to his wife. They would have had to kill him first. We need to know what he told her.”

“You could have said something. I’m part of this too, you know.” Leo fiddled with the radio, tuning in static more than anything else. “You’re lucky to have me with you.”

Rakkim flipped him the coin. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

Leo held the coin between his thumb and forefinger, spun it round and round. “It’s heavier than I thought.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Leo hefted the coin, rubbed his fingernail along the raw edge. “This big shot you’re interested in is an End-Times Christian. Suddenly you cancel your request for a gold coin, and ask Stevenson for a Roman coin, and it’s got to be silver.” He lightly touched the surface of the shekel. “Wasn’t that hard to see what you were up to. Not like it was non-euclidean geometry. I mean, what good Christian wouldn’t want one of Judas’s thirty pieces of silver?” He handed the coin back. “Your only mistake was you don’t really know your history. Judas got bought off by the priests of the temple, and they didn’t use Roman silver. The only coins accepted at the Jerusalem temple were shekels of Tyre. That’s what Judas walked away with. That’s what you’ve got to show this End-Times gangster in Tennessee.”

Rakkim put the coin away. Glanced over at Leo. “Does anybody other than you know things like that?”

“Most people are pretty stupid…no offense.” Leo tuned the radio again, taking his time. Finally found a station. “I figured it was best if you used the right coin, just in case. To fool somebody else, you have to fool yourself first. That’s the way it works, doesn’t it?”

“That’s the way it works.” Rakkim laughed. “Thanks.”

Leo sang along to the radio, his voice surprisingly strong and sweet. He waited until the song finished before speaking. “Those two Rangers you killed…they had guns, but you only had a knife. So, I guess it was kind of fair.”

“Fairness had nothing to do with it.”

“Just a knife…” Leo sniffed. “Could you teach me how to-”

“No.” Rakkim hesitated. “I thought the whole thing disgusted you.”

“It did, but now when I think about it…” Leo chewed a fingernail. “They were bad, weren’t they?”

“When I pushed their car into the river, I saw at least two more cars down there. So yeah, I’d say they were bad.”

“I learn fast,” said Leo. “You could just show me a couple Fedayeen moves…”

Rakkim’s laughter echoed.

“You’re probably just worried I’ll get better than you, that’s why you don’t want to teach me.” Leo yawned. “Piggly Wiggly Diner,” he said as they passed the sign. “Maybe we should stop and see what they got cooking. I’m hungry.”