The Third Option

chapter 18
Mario Lukas awoke on Tuesday morning at five. He was not a good sleeper, hadn't been for as long as he could remember. He figured it was just one more thing in a long list of liabilities associated with his profession. It's not always easy for a hired killer to relax. And at Mario's level, it's not the feds you worry about, it's the other shooters. You spend a lot of time looking over your shoulder wondering if someone is going to come after you for revenge, or if you might get double-crossed by someone you thought was a friend, or if an employer has decided you are too big of a liability to let live.

When Mario rolled out of bed in the predawn hours, this was what was on his mind. The person he knew as the Professor was not to be trusted. Mario had watched the man closely while they were in Colorado. Villaume had told him to do so, and Mario didn't like what he saw.

Operations like the one they had just done in Colorado were never good. Mario thought they were kind of like screwing a married woman. If you ended up getting seriously involved with her, you shouldn't be surprised if you woke up one day and found out she was doing the same thing to you that she did to her first, second, or third husband. In essence, the Professor had hired the couple in Colorado to do a job, and then he had them killed. He had also hired Mario, Villaume, and Juarez to do a job, and now what was there to prevent him from hiring another set of killers to take them out? This was why he couldn't sleep.

Mario swung his feet onto the wood floor of his Spartan one-bedroom apartment. He sat there for a minute scratching himself and waiting for the lightheadedness to fade. Then standing, he started for the bathroom, his back and legs stiff. The tiny apartment came furnished with only the necessities, which was fine for Mario. He didn't like collecting things. He'd been living in apartments like this for thirty of his fifty-some years. Even Mario wasn't sure how old he was. He'd had so many aliases over the years and lived in so many different places, he'd forgotten if he was fifty-five or fifty-six. Everything he owned could be placed in the trunk of his car. With what he did for a living, it made no sense to accumulate too many things. On a moment's notice you might have to pick up and disappear. He couldn't help but think that this was one of those times.

When he was done in the bathroom, he walked to the door and got his newspaper. He grabbed a jug of orange juice from the refrigerator and a glass from the cupboard. As he started to read the paper, he thought of an old associate who had tried to talk him into buying a house one time. The man had tried to sell him on the idea that they could use the tax writeoff. Mario reminded him that since they were paid in cash, the writeoff would do them no good. That acquaintance had disappeared, never to be found again.

Villaume was the only true friend Mario had ever had and the first person he had met in the business whom he could unquestioningly trust with his life. Villaume had helped him look toward retirement. Mario had always kept his money in a series of safe deposit boxes. Villaume had taken that money and put it into offshore bank accounts where it was now handled by a money manager. The return was so good that he could retire today if he wanted. In light of the job in Colorado, he thought it might be a good idea at least to take a little time off.

At 6:25, he got ready for his walk to the neighborhood bakery. Having lived in France for more than twenty years, Mario hated American coffee. It had taken him more than a week to find a place that served good cappuccino, but he had prevailed. It was a little bakery six blocks away. Before leaving, he stuck a 9-mm pistol in the front of his pants. Leaving his dark shirt untucked. he put on his jacket and hat and left.

JEFF DUSER WAS on speed. Sitting in the driver's seat of the gray Dodge Durango, he tapped out a tune on the steering wheel as his eyes darted back and forth between the two side mirrors and the rearview mirror. He was wearing a dark brown suit and a tan trench coat. In the breast pocket of his suit were credentials that identified him as Steven Metzger, a federal agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Duser still kept his hair short-buzzed and flat on top but not skinned on the sides like he'd had it when he was in the Marine Corps. He had joined the Marines when he was eighteen. It was either Parris Island or jail. The local cops in Toledo, Ohio, had his number. The police chief had personally driven him to the recruiting station on his eighteenth birthday.

Duser thought he'd found a home in the Marine Corps. That was until the Corps got soft on him. If the politically correct politicians thought they were going to force him to let faggots serve in his unit, they had another thing coming. He had openly encouraged and participated in the hazing of suspected homosexuals. A particularly green private right out of boot camp had taken the platoon's first sergeant's words a little too seriously: After an evening of beer and prodding, the private went back to the barracks and beat a fellow Marine to death. The subsequent investigation exposed Duser's role and many of his other shortcomings. He was court-martialed and run out of the Corps. From there he'd found his way into private security and then contract killing.

Wally McBride sat in the front passenger seat, a silenced Steyr TMP submachine gun on his lap. Duser and his people had a crate of the weapons stashed at a warehouse in Richmond. They had gotten them in one of the shipments they had hijacked from a gun dealer who was importing them from Austria. The weapon was compact. Even with the sound suppressor attached, it was easily concealable. They had meticulously filed the serial numbers off the weapons and then swabbed them with acid. Duser didn't have many rules, but there was one he was adamant about. If you used a weapon to kill someone, it was dumped in the ocean as soon as possible.

Peter Cameron was in the back seat watching the two men fidget. He had seen them take the speed but said nothing. He knew why they did it, and he himself was wondering why he didn't take one when they'd offered it to him. He had been up all night with Duser planning what they were going to do, and in an effort to stay awake, he drank a few too many cups of coffee. Now he had to go to the bathroom but didn't dare leave the vehicle. It was getting light out, and their target would be along shortly:

Before leaving Colorado on Sunday, Cameron had stepped away from Villaume and his people and made a phone call. It was to Duser. Cameron hadn't been given the order to take out Villaume and his people yet, but he thought he would be proactive. Cameron told him where and when they would be landing and whom he wanted followed. When they'd touched down at the Montgomery County Airpark, Duser and his people had been waiting. They'd placed transponders on eight different suspected cars in the parking lot. When Villaume, Juarez, and Lukas left the airport, Duser and his men followed. They stayed a good way back and let the transponders do the work. Juarez parked her car on the street right in front of her apartment, very stupid on her part. Lukas parked his eight blocks away, and they'd lost him. On Monday, one of Duser's people reestablished contact with the massive man, and now they knew where he lived. Villaume had vanished into thin air. The car he had taken from the airport was still under surveillance, and they were canvassing the neighborhood where it was parked but had yet to come up with anything.

This didn't really bother Cameron. He didn't think much of Villaume. Without Mario Lukas, the man was a bear without claws. Cameron was convinced that Villaume would run scared as soon as he found out his old friend was dead.

Duser heard the call come in over his earpiece and glanced over at Wally McBride. McBride nodded and got out of the car. Mario Lukas was headed in their direction. Duser had three vehicles and six people in the area. If they were lucky, he was on his way to the same bakery he had gone to the morning before. The plan was to distract Lukas and take him from behind. The job of distracting Lukas fell on the shoulders of Sandra Hickock, a former stripper and vivacious beauty whom Duser had personally recruited and trained.

THE STREETS WERE empty for the most part. The streetlights were still on but weren't needed. The sun would be up in another fifteen minutes. Mario recognized a neighbor who was out taking her poodle for a walk. As they neared, he touched the brim of his hat and nodded. Mario had learned long ago that his size was very intimidating to people. Sometimes this was a good thing, and sometimes it wasn't. The woman smiled back as they passed. A block later, Mario took a right. He never walked the same route to the bakery each morning.

An early-morning jogger was running toward him on the opposite side of the street. Mario thought he looked vaguely familiar. He continued on, looking at the parked cars and checking over his shoulder every half block or so. He made one last turn, and the bakery was just ahead on his right. When he was midway down the block, a woman rounded the corner up ahead and started toward him. She had her arms folded across her chest, and her hands were stuck under her armpits. She looked cold despite the fact that it was a relatively mild morning. Mario noted her clothes and her obvious beauty, even at this distance. This was a woman he would have remembered seeing. As they drew closer, the woman looked up, brushed some of her long black hair from her face, and smiled.

The warning bells went off immediately in Mario's large, head. While looking quickly over his shoulder, he slid his right hand under his untucked shirt. There was a man rounding the comer behind him, and he was moving fast. Mario snapped his head back around, first checking if there was anything across the street and then looking back to the woman, who was still smiling. A blue U.S. Postal Service box was just up ahead. Mario picked up the pace and moved to his right while he drew the 9-mm Colt 2000. The smile on he woman's face vanished at the sight of the gun. She started to unfold her arms. Mario noticed a black object in her right hand, and before she could bring the weapon to bear, Mario had the Colt up and leveled. He squeezed the trigger once, the loud crack of the automatic pistol echoing off the of the brick apartment buildings.

The bullet struck the woman in the face. Mario went into a crouch and ducked between two parked cars. Before he could turn to search out the man, a hail of bullets sliced through the hood of the car just behind him. Keeping his head down, Mario lifted the gun up and fired three shots down the sidewalk. As he brought the gun back down, he heard an engine revving and tires squealing. Bullets continued to thump into the cars around him.

DUSER WAS PUSHING the gas pedal to the floor. He yelled into his lip mike, "Keep him pinned down, I'll be there in a second!" The Durango skidded around the corner. He rolled down the driver's side window and got ready to shoot. Up ahead on his left he could see glass flying as bullets smashed into the windshield of a parked car. Duser stuck his compact Steyr submachine gun out the window and started firing. As he neared the spot, he slammed on the brakes and brought the truck to a stop. Dead in his sights, crouched down behind the trunk of the car, was Mario Lukas. Duser held the trigger down and emptied the remainder of the twenty-five-round magazine into the man's broad back. Lukas slumped over and fell facedown in the gutter.