Blood of the Assassin

CHAPTER 39





Rauschenbach hung his left arm out the open window of the rented sedan and enjoyed the feel of the sun on his skin as he motored south from Mexico City and into the wilds of the mountains that were part of El Tepozteco National Park. He had turned off the highway half an hour earlier and was now on a dirt road that was rapidly becoming more of a game trail than anything intended for cars. When he reached a promising cluster of trees, he pulled the vehicle off the path and rolled twenty yards into the thicket, where it would be out of view from anyone passing on the track – unlikely in the rural area at this early hour on a weekday.

He shut off the engine and stepped round to the back, opened the trunk, and extracted a guitar case. With a final look at the car, he set out into the wilds, following the trace of a route that deer had recently used, judging by some droppings he spotted. Rauschenbach was an accomplished tracker, a skill he’d developed as part of his professional disciplines, and it didn’t look like any humans had been in the area recently – there were no footprints or mountain bike tire tracks, and it had drizzled two nights ago, so if anyone had passed since then, they would have left evidence.

Eventually he came to a large clearing. He set the guitar case down, lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes, and methodically scanned his surroundings for any signs of life. After a few minutes of study, he placed them on top of the case, which was concealed in the tall grass by the edge of the tree line. He then stood and began taking large, measured steps across the field.

Thirty minutes later he stopped pacing and found himself a dozen yards from a pine tree – one of the few that grew in the otherwise open field. He withdrew a disposable diaper from his jacket pocket, unfolded it, and secured it to the tree trunk first with the adhesive strips and next with a length of cord. Stepping back, he studied his handiwork, then extracted a red Sharpie from his jacket and drew a red circle the size of an apple on the white surface, taking care to color it in. With a final glance at his project, he turned and retraced his steps to the guitar case a mile away.

A lazy breeze rustled the tree tops as he opened the lid and assembled the rifle, taking care to ensure that the parts were impeccably clean as he joined them together. When he was finished, the scope and silencer locked securely in place, he withdrew three of the five precious bullets from his pants pocket and set them on the case, and then lay down, balancing the rifle on a photographer’s tripod he had purchased the prior day.

He scouted around the clearing with the high-powered Schmidt & Bender PM II 10×42/Military MK II 10×42 scope until he found the diaper pad. Once sure of his bearings, he unscrewed the custom-made bolt and slid the first bullet into place, then screwed the bolt back into firing position and cocked it. The scope had been dialed for a range of twelve hundred meters, but he wanted to ensure that it would be effective at fifteen hundred – the longest shot he had ever made for a sanction. Most other weapons couldn’t deliver accuracy at that range, but the combination of the barrel, the silencer, and the ammo gave this weapon reasonable accuracy at fifteen hundred meters and beyond – assuming a host of other variables were also in his favor, such as elevation, temperature, humidity, and wind velocity.

He next reached into the case and extracted three devices his contact had sourced for him: a handheld ballistics computer; a Minox meter that measured air density, barometric pressure, temperature, and wind speed; and a laser range finder. He first confirmed the distance to the target, at fifteen hundred and twenty meters. Next, he took a measurement on the Minox, and studied the readout with interest before powering the computer on and entering the data.

Mexico City was seventy-five hundred feet above sea level, which would improve accuracy because there was less atmosphere. In the mornings, by ten a.m., it had been averaging just under seventy degrees, which also improved accuracy, as measured as an expected ballistic coefficiency number. The higher the number, the more accurate the round. This weapon at that altitude and temperature, assuming no wind, would be extremely high, in the range of 1.0 or higher, whereas a normal cartridge might have an expected coefficient in the .265 range at sea level. Expressed another way, those rounds fired through that barrel and silencer would be almost four times more accurate than a typical bullet, which was critical at ranges over seven hundred meters. He entered a coefficient assumption of .95, just to be conservative.

Finally, Mexico City was humid, averaging seventy-five percent or higher humidity that time of year, which would further improve accuracy – because contrary to seeming logic, water had less density than dry air, so higher humidity was actually optimal for shooting. At the end of the day, the biggest random variable would be wind. If under ten miles per hour, he could adjust for it and expect adequate results. More than ten and the kill shot wasn’t impossible, but the likelihood of shift would increase – the possibility that the bullet wouldn’t hit exactly where he had aimed it.

He peered through the scope again and centered the hand-drawn red dot in the crosshairs, now ten times larger than life due to the scope’s 10X magnification, and then exhaled smoothly and gently squeezed the trigger. The rifle stock slammed into his shoulder with a kick, which he expected – he had clocked over fifty rounds with the weapon in Spain to acclimate himself. After a brief moment he steadied it again and peered down-range at the target. A hole had appeared seven inches to the right of the red mark’s center, and three below it.

He did a quick mental calculation and then adjusted the screws on the top and side of the scope, then repeated the process of chambering another and went through his careful aiming ritual before firing again. This time, the hole appeared an inch to the right of dead center, but at the correct elevation. He made one final adjustment and fired the last round, and the bullet hit in the center of the target a second and a half after he pulled the trigger. The sound of the silenced rifle, about as loud as a muffled firecracker, would take roughly four seconds to reach the target, and the round a second and a half at that distance – the muzzle velocity with the silencer being nine hundred and twenty-five meters per second, and the speed of sound being three hundred and forty-two.

Rauschenbach took the same care breaking down the weapon as he had taken assembling it and then returned it to the false bottom in the guitar case. He closed it, picked up the three shell casings, and then carried it to the target a mile away.

By the time he made it back to the car, another hour and a half had passed, and he was getting hungry. He stowed the guitar case on the rear seat and started the engine, then backed out of the bushes and returned down the trail, bouncing along contentedly with the air of a man whose time had been productively spent.

His mind drifted to the job and the level of difficulty he’d bitten off when he’d agreed to go forward with it. He had already circled the target site numerous times, and arrived at the conclusion that his best odds lay elsewhere. And that elsewhere would require the ability to hit a man’s head with a high degree of reliability at up to sixteen hundred meters – a distance of over a mile.

Nobody would expect it, for good reason. Absent a high degree of training, perfect shooting conditions, a specialized weapon and ammo, consummate skill, and nerves of steel, it wouldn’t work. Few shooters in the world would be able to pull it off – a handful of snipers in Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps two other hit men he’d ever heard of, and a smattering of competitive target shooters. And him.

Which was why he was the right man for the job.

The road eventually turned from dirt to gravel and then to asphalt, and before much longer he was back on the highway weaving his way north through slower traffic, back to Mexico City, another essential element in his preparations concluded.

The hardest part, other than the actual money shot, still lay ahead: figuring out how he could penetrate the location on execution day. Security had already been ratcheted up, which made sense to him now that he knew that his involvement had been leaked. A source at Interpol had sent him an e-mail from a blind account warning him that the Mexicans were on alert.

That was fine.

It changed nothing. He assumed that they had his old photo from his days with the East Berlin police – but he hadn’t resembled his old likeness for years, thanks to a talented plastic surgeon in Budapest who’d later died in a car accident. It was amazing what a slightly different nose, an altered chin, and a little eye work could accomplish – his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him now, even without his disguises. No, he wasn’t worried at all, either about being discovered or the level of difficulty involved in the hit. He routinely performed impossible feats. That was his claim to notoriety. This sanction would be no different. He had absolutely no doubt that he would find a way in, and soon have the Chinese leader’s distinctive profile in the crosshairs. Now it was just a matter of logistics. He knew how he was going to do it, and where.

All that remained was for him to figure out how he would get in and out, and stay alive in the process.

Piece of cake.