The Iscariot Agenda

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The assassin wore a Ghillie Desert suit. At nighttime the color didn’t matter much since the darkness was his camouflage and the suit looking as much as the surrounding desert sage. From a hilltop overlooking Hawk’s ranch, the assassin spied down on them through a night vision monocular.

Sitting on the porch were two men, talking, the Native American keeping a vigil eye over the landscape with night vision goggles of his own and a rifle across his lap, a CheyTac M200.

So, you were expecting me.

The large man sitting beside him he couldn’t quite make out, so he dialed the lens and zoomed in, first catching the pristine white collar and then the man’s face.

The assassin’s breath hitched. Well, if it isn’t the priest who is not a priest.

The level of the assassin’s jeopardy had just risen tenfold.

Moving slowly across the terrain on his belly, the fabric of his Ghillie suit swaying like grass in a soft breeze, the assassin moved to gain a different vantage point. When he reached a row of thick sage, the assassin had a solid blind that granted him a complete frontal view of the entire ranch. The question was, how was he to encroach with Kimball and Hawk working in tandem? He was sure that he could take down one, but not both. Not when they were members of the Pieces of Eight no matter how far removed they were from active duty. Kimball Hayden was testament to that.

But killing Hayden now was not in the assassin’s scheme of things, as he wanted Hayden to die in the sequential manner of the way the warriors were posing in the photo: First Hawk, then the brothers, and then Kimball.

But if it was one thing the assassin learned in life was that plans rarely came together due to the unpredictability of the human element. And Kimball Hayden had become that element.

In the west where thunderheads gathered, celestial rumbles sounded off like aged cannons of the Colonial period — something distant with the deep grumble that shook the earth miles away.

Patiently, the assassin waited for the opportune moment, always believing that there was a solution to everything. And twenty minutes later a solution presented itself.

Kimball rose from the chair, spoke to Hawk, then disappeared into the house.

Divide the team, and then conquer. Always level the playing field before engagement.

The moment Kimball left, the assassin moved away from the blind careful not the catch the eye of Hawk through the NVG he was wearing, fully aware that he was time restricted and needed to act quickly now that the team was separated.

So inch-by-inch and foot-by-foot, the assassin made his way toward Hawk in a hastened belly crawl with murder as his sole intent.

Hawk sat on the porch with all the ease and content of a retired layman with the CheyTac M200 resting across his lap, and rocked leisurely on the curved skids of his chair while looking through his NVG.

The landscape before him was lit up in luminescent green. Everything that was once steeped in shadow was now clearly defined; the saguaros, the brush, the sage — even the outlines of the sandstone escarpments were obvious to where he could see every curvature or indentation of any particular rock or boulder.

Night had become day.

Slowly, moving back and forth on the skids of his rocker with his eyes forward and focused, nothing moved other than the occasional sway of sage branches that moved with the course of a soft breeze.

But because something could not be seen did not mean that it did not exist. Predators often waited for hours for the opportune moment to strike; the reward always the relish of the kill. And no one knew this better than ‘The Ghost,’ who once waited as long as seven hours to run the blade of his knife across an unsuspecting throat.

A cool breeze came in from the west, along with the soft soughing of the desert wind that sounded like a drawn and distant sigh, almost pleasurable in its tone. In the sky lightning flashed. Most likely the coming of a storm, he considered; the slight wind an obvious precursor.

On most nights he would delight in such cool weather, but not tonight. Not when strobes of lightning would render the optics of his NVG inoperable.

Not with the assassin a click or two away from his ranch.

Are you out there? he thought.

At the trailing edge of Hawk’s thought, Dog responded symbiotically to his master by craning his head off the floor and staring off into the darkness, centering on something only he could see. A deep growl rumbled in the back of his throat, the red flag that Hawk had become accustomed to when they were not alone.

Reaching over, Hawk scratched the dog behind the ears. “He’s out there, boy, isn’t he?”

The dog remained as still as a Grecian statue, focusing, sensing, the growl abating little.

Hawk then placed both hands on the rifle, then carefully popped off the caps covering the front and rear lenses of the weapon’s hi-tech scope.

All he needed was one shot.

In the not too distant skyline lightning flashes were becoming more pronounced, the wind rising to more than just the soft soughing.

Damn!

The brush began to sway and roll with the direction of the growing breeze, the landscape coming alive from all directions.

Hawk stopped rocking.

But Dog continued his growl at a leveled measure as he slowly got to his feet. The hackles on the back of his neck rose the same time the folds of his muzzle lifted to show off canines that were polished and keen.

“Oh, yeah,” whispered Hawk. “You’re out there all right.”

Hawk then spoke in a manner Dog had heard many times before, giving that one order geared to attack an opponent with the intent to kill.

“Get him.”

And Dog bounded off into the darkness with his jaws snapping.

The assassin lay quietly in wait. Behind him, coming from the west, a wind began to surge. The brush swayed all around him, the earth coming alive with movement that gave him aid, his Ghillie suit just another part of the living landscape.

Through his NV scope he could see the Indian sitting serenely on the porch with his dog next to him, the Native American seemingly at ease but obviously suspect that he was not alone. Odd, though, that he would sit openly like that knowing he could be in the crosshairs.

And then the dog lifted its head, staring, the creature looking uncannily his way and drawing a bead.

The Indian stopped rocking.

And the dog got to its feet.

What a truly amazing sense of instinct and intuition, he thought.

Reaching beneath the folds of the Ghillie suit, the assassin worked his way to the hilt of a KA-BAR knife and slowly retracted it from its sheath, turning the weapon over in his hand in order to get a better feel, and then a better grip.

If the assassin understood one thing, he knew that dogs were full of incredible fight with courage as stout as their loyalty. And that self-preservation was secondary to the welfare of their masters.

He gripped the knife tighter.

And then the dog launched itself in his direction, a straight line — the shortest distance between two points. But most noticeably to the assassin, its jaws were snapping in a manner to rent and tear.

But all he could do was to lay in wait as the beast drew near.

Hawk loved the animal more than he loved most people, its loyalty immeasurable and its companionship always an unwavering joy. From the moment Dog took off from the stoop, Hawk recalled the entire moments of the dog’s life from a puppy with a penchant to play to the moment it ran off into the darkness. It was a quick collage of wonderful snippets filled with good remembrances.

A horrible sadness crept over him, but Hawk remained stoic, his face betraying little as his emotions warred for the release of pent up sorrows in the form of tears.

While Dog served as a distraction, Hawk bolted from the porch and ran into the darkness to set himself up with a vantage point. The strategy was for Dog to locate the assassin so that he could find them through the scope, hone in, draw a bead with the CheyTac, and pull the trigger.

Pressing himself against a sandstone block wall, Hawk quickly established himself by mounting the rifle on the ledge, removed his NVG, and placed an eye over the eyepiece of the weapon’s scope, searching.

Through the lens the world became of planet of lime green light as he tried to center his site on Dog and his target.

And then he saw him, a man in a Ghillie suit waiting as Dog approached him.

Hawk began to draw a bead. “I got you,” he whispered, and put his finger on the trigger.

The assassin could feel his temples throbbing as adrenaline coursed through every minute fiber of his body and being. His position had been compromised — his mission, his life, everything he worked for now in jeopardy as the dog raced toward him with the intent to do nothing less than to rip his throat free and clear from his body.

The problem was that he needed to focus on the animal knowing that the Indian was maneuvering into position to make the kill. It was a simple choreographic device of distraction in order to provide oneself enough time for a tactical advantage.

And it was working. The assassin knew he could not keep an eye on the beast and an eye on Hawk at the same time. And no doubt the Indian was already on the move as Dog closed the distance between them with his teeth gnashing and eyes gleaming like silver dollars in the faint moonlight.

With his mind and heart racing with the speed of a passing cheetah, the assassin realized that the Indian now had the advantage.

One of the oldest moves ever created, he thought. And it was still effective.

With the knife held firmly within his grasp, Dog approached him with incredible velocity, and then propelled himself toward the assassin by leaping through the air like a projectile.

Hawk watched Dog run straight toward the man wearing the Ghillie suit, the assassin standing to meet his attacker, a knife in his hand.

Beautiful!

Hawk wrapped the crook of his finger across the CheyTac’s trigger, the assassin’s head dead center of the crosshairs.

And he began to squeeze, slowly, his breath coming in shallow pulls.

Behind the assassin, on the sandy rise where the western sky served as the backdrop, a staircase of lightning crossed the night sky turning darkness into day for the briefest moment, the burst of white-hot light rendering the CheyTac’s NV scope inoperable, as the illumination turned the landscape from a marshy green glow to snow-blind white. Everything in Hawk’s vision was immediately washed away, the sudden flash sending intense pain to his optic nerves as he errantly pulled the trigger, the bullet going wide.

Dropping the barrel of the CheyTac toward the ground, Hawk quickly began to rub the sting from his eye with his forefinger.

In the distance he could hear Dog engaged in battle, the animal growling, barking, his jaws snapping.

A shot at this point would be difficult, thought Hawk, with Dog and the assassin fighting each other on the mound in a drunken tango, the masses becoming one.

In the distance, coming closer, thunder rumbled.

Hawk took a quick look through the scope, searching for Dog and zooming in, the land once again a marshy and luminescent green where everything was once again pronounced, the sage, the brush, the saguaros.

But he could not find Dog or the assassin through the lens.

Worse, everything went quiet.

He panned the scope to the left, to the right: Nothing.

The mound where they engaged in battle was now empty.

Hawk quickly turned toward the porch. By the rocker was the assault weapon he left behind in his rush to grab the advantage on the hillside, the MP-5.

Damn!

The CheyTac M200 was excellent as a sniper rifle, but in battle the assault weapon was the key to survival. And with the MP-5 on the porch he might as well have been miles away. There was no doubt that he had missed his mark; therefore, he was now in the crosshairs.

He then lowered his NV monocular and searched the landscape.

There was nothing but the soft swaying of sage and brush, as the wind continued to march in from the west.

Where are you?

The sound of the wind soughing through the land began to pick up, the song a continuing sigh of gentle whispers.

“You are ‘The Ghost,’” he told himself. You can do this.

Hawk tossed the CheyTac aside and methodically removed the Bowie, the long blade sliding neatly from its sheath. Hunkering down, Hawk, ‘The Ghost,’ closed his eyes and called upon the spirits. Although it had been awhile he was confident that the skill of his people was something inborn. Taking down ‘The Ghost’ was like trying to catch a wispy comma of smoke within the clench of a hand, which is impossible. And Hawk believed himself to be that smoke. He would use stealth as his tool, locate the assassin, and drive the blade across his throat.

After all, he was an elitist on his land and knew every nuance about it, which gave him the advantage.

Low to the surface of the sand, using the NVG as an aid and with the Bowie in his hand casting glints of light whenever the mirror polish of the blade reflected the cold moonlight from the east, Hawk went to find his quarry.

The last thing the assassin saw before the impact was the canine’s long teeth. As the dog was taking flight the assassin’s world seemed to move with the slowness of a bad dream. He noted its teeth, long and dangerously keen, and the fury within its eyes.

Just before the moment of collision the assassin heard what he thought was the waspy hum of a bullet missing wide, and then the impact that struck him like a hammer and sending him to his backside, the knife in his hand taking flight.

The assassin held the dog at bay, at least for the moment, watching the silvery threads of drool cascading down from its jaws, snapping — could smell its fetid breath as the gnashing teeth drew closer to the assassin’s throat.

The knife!

Where… is… the… knife?

With one hand on the dog, the assassin reached blindly to his right, his hand scrabbling through the sand like an arachnid searching for the blade, the hilt, a stone.

There. In the sand. Was that a glint of steel?

The assassin reached out, stretched his arm, his fingers flexing for the purchase of the handle.

Dog’s teeth were closing in on the throat — inches away now, closer, the grazing of teeth against flesh.

The hand found something solid, the end of the knife’s hilt, his fingers grazing the tip, but just out of grasp.

The German Shepherd’s teeth touched the assassin’s throat, the skin parting, but barely, the blood now beading, then flowing.

Dog was now going wild with blood lust.

The tip of the handle — the hilt — was now within his grasp.

The dog, in frenzy, reared his head back for the final blow.

But the assassin brought the blade out and up.

Hawk quickly learned that no man can fight age. Nor was the trait of skillful hunting something merely inbred, but something that must be maintained with constant practice. Since the man had aged without the benefit of rehearsal that would have kept his skills honed, the Native American could feel his confidence wane as quickly as his endurance.

Sweat trickled down the Indian’s brow, down his cheeks, the wind doing little to cool his flesh as his heart palpitated in his chest, the rhythm threatening to misfire. And Hawk chastised himself for letting himself go.

Lightning was beginning to flash in strobe fashion, the subsequent roll of thunder shaking the granules beneath his feet. The storm was obviously upon him; a strong wind brewing.

As the sky flared with incredible brightness, the Indian was again blinded. In frustration he removed the NVG and tossed them, relying now on the skill of Apache stealth.

Hunkering low, the wind buffeting him so that his braided ponytail flagged behind him like the whipping mane of a horse, Hawk approached the position where Dog and the assassin converged.

But there was nothing but the footprints of a skirmish, which were quickly disappearing as the wind began to erase away all telltale signs by rolling sand and dust over the tracks.

The Indian then scanned the area with his head on a swivel.

There was nothing but the wind that was beginning to sough like a nocturnal howl, the wail of a banshee.

Above him the moon was being eclipsed by scudding clouds, the thunderheads from the west now beginning to stake their claim.

And then another brilliant flash, another staircase of lightning as the world lit up long enough for Hawk to recognize a shape about fifty meters to the south — that of a man?

The Indian got low and drew a bead. When a subsequent bolt crossed the sky, it provided him with enough of a lighted glimpse to see it was a man in a Ghillie suit.

The Apache toyed with the knife by tossing it from hand to hand, feeling its weight, its heft, its power.

Slowly, he approached the assassin from behind, careful not to attract attention.

Thirty meters away.

His temples throbbed with blood lust while his heart hammered deep inside his chest with the beat of a drum roll.

Twenty meters away.

Hawk turned the knife over in his hand, rolling it until he got a white-knuckled grip on the leather-laced handle.

Ten meters away.

Another stroke of lightning, a dazzling display of inconstant lighting as the Indian closed in, hunkering, the point of the Bowie ready to rent flesh.

Before him stood the man in the Ghillie suit, oblivious to the Indian’s approach.

I am one with the Earth. I am ‘The Ghost.’ At first you see nothing but jungle …

He raised the knife in a fashion to stab and drive the blade through.

Five meters away.

… then the flicker of a shape…

The fabric of the Ghillie suit wavered likes blades of grass in a soft breeze. The assassin had his back to him.

And then the Indian struck, the blade biting deep through flesh, the sound reminiscent of driving a knife through a melon.

… And then you were dead.

The assassin watched from behind the sandstone rise as the Indian approached from the north. He was turning a knife over in his hand, the steel glinting against the rays of a disappearing moon.

Then in a deft move the Indian drove the blade through his intended target.

The assassin did not betray a single emotion as the Bowie found its mark.

Hawk could feel the resistance of the blade driving through flesh again and again and again, the man in the Ghillie suit maintaining his feet.

Impossible!

More stabs, then hacking, the Bowie used like a Roman gladius — the blade slicing, cutting and slashing.

Hawk stood back, observing, his chest heaving and pitching from lack of exercise, his power diminished.

The Ghillie suit fell away, revealing a small saguaro about six feet high, the trunk badly chopped.

Hawk looked at the knife, saw the juice of the cacti on its blade, then turned back to the saguaro, his face registering an uncertainty.

And then he felt an awful stab in the back of his neck — white-hot pain — as the point of a throwing star found its mark, crippling him, the large man falling to the sand as a boneless heap. At first his entire body became a tabernacle of pain, of jabs and darting pins and needles, which was subsequently followed by a wave of fire that swept throughout his entirety.

The Indian gritted his teeth but refused to cry out. In his blurred vision he could see the assassin work against the wind toward him.

The Indian could only move his eyes, but not enough to catch a glimpse of the assassin’s face.

“Did you really think you still had an edge after all these years?” asked the assassin. His voice was smooth and hypnotically melodic. “Is that why you did it alone? To prove to yourself that you could still be ‘The Ghost’ after all these years?”

Hawk grunted, caught himself, and let the pain ride without uttering another groan.

“You’re paralyzed,” the assassin said. His voice was steady and even, a voice without care. “The blade damaged the column bad enough to destroy the nerves. However…” The assassin let his words trail as he produced a silver cylinder. With a quick depression of the button a pick shot forward. “I can mercifully end the pain and send you off to the land of your ancestors. Or,” the assassin leaned closer, “you can spend the rest of your life as a quadriplegic for the next twenty years until your body atrophies to a pathetic skeleton.”

Hawk clenched his jaw in response, the disdain apparent.

“Your call, Mr. Hawk. Or, if you like, I will make the decision for you.”

The Indian looked skyward, the repose of his face becoming stoic and unmoving.

“I see,” said the assassin, who then grabbed the Bowie from the sand. “I’ll need this,” he added. And then he placed his hands beneath the large Native American and flipped him onto his stomach. Sweeping the braided ponytail aside, the assassin removed the star and laid the point of the pick against the base of the man’s skull, the tip indenting the flesh. “May the spirits have mercy on your soul,” he said.

And then he punched the weapon home.

Standing in the doorway of Kimball’s room, the assassin held something in his hands. Slowly, as Kimball slept with his chest rising and falling in even rhythm, the man crept silently into the room.

Through the NV monocular he appropriated from Hawk everything appeared green and definable.

Kimball was laying on his side with his knees drawn up and his arms in a manner of self embrace.

The assassin moved closer, his footfalls so silent no one would have known the man was there, even if awake.

Kimball shifted, moving a leg.

And the assassin stilled.

A moment later, when Kimball found his comfort point, the killer moved forward careful not to awaken the sleeping giant, and placed the item in his hands on the night table beside the bed.

Through the NV monocular the assassin watched Kimball, his head tilting from left to right as if studying a living cryptogram.

And then he began to retreat, the assassin backpedaling slowly, softly, always maintaining a keen eye on Kimball as he slept.

And then like a wisp of smoke caught within the current of a breeze, he was gone.