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El Chupacabra. The blood beast of the shadows, a creature of the South American night, seldom glimpsed and never caught.
Eduardo removed the lens cover on the scope and settled into his hide position. He had not picked the nickname that now provoked such fear throughout the Colombian cartels, but it suited him. He was death incarnate. He didn’t just enjoy killing. It sustained him.
There were now only two other professional killers who could be compared with him. One was Carlos the Jackal, now rotting in Clairvaux Prison in Paris and hardly a worthy comparison. The other was still out there among the sheep, very much like himself. Hunting. But the one known as the Ripper would come for him. Eduardo would see to that. And then El Chupacabra would be the only name whispered in dark places.
But right now, business called. Below him, the George Washington Parkway rounded a gradual bend along the west bank of the Potomac, the heavy foliage ensuring he could not be seen from the ground, especially not from the highway. Two narrow windows through the trees provided twin sight lines to the road. The crosshairs steadied on the nearest section of highway.
Killing a president wasn’t supposed to be easy. The biggest problem was a general dearth of information critical to making the hit. The US Secret Service was very, very good at what they did, and one of the things they did was protect the specific information that made killing easy. Travel by motorcade was one of the times when the president was most vulnerable since the entire route could not be as thoroughly secured as the departure and destination points. Therefore, a combination of armor, deception, and misdirection were the primary tools used to ensure the president’s safety.
Which car the president was riding in, his seating position in the car, the exact route of the motorcade, the time of departure—all of these were zealously guarded secrets. But not today. Eduardo’s inside source had provided incredible detail, the last update coming in via encrypted text message just five minutes ago. Everything was go.
As the police escort entered his peripheral vision and then moved through the crosshairs, Eduardo felt the familiar tingle where his cheek welded itself to the stock of the AS500 sniper rifle, down along his arm and into his hand, terminating where his finger rested against the trigger. In rapid succession, the vehicles flashed across his sight line as he counted. Now!
Although it was secured to the thick tree branch in a vice and despite the weapon’s incredible recoil-damping mechanism, the recoil of the three incendiary, armor-piercing, fifty-caliber rounds rocked the weapon back into his shoulder. It didn’t matter. The killing pattern had been perfect, the first round entering through the forward edge of the armored limousine roof, each subsequent round four inches behind it.
Without waiting for any reaction from the convoy, Eduardo grabbed the handle that dangled below his branch and let himself fall outward. His momentum snapped the string that had secured the pulley in place and swept him down the steeply angled cable into a thicket on the water’s edge.
Filling his lungs with air, he slipped beneath the river’s murky surface, feeling his way along the rope that guided him down to the submerged scuba gear. Opening the valve on the tank, he cleared his mask, then grabbed the underwater sled that would pull him to safety.
As the propeller spun up, El Chupacabra smiled inside the scuba mask. Killing a president shouldn’t be this easy.