Viral

Administrator wanted to make certain this mission succeeded. Quickly. And it would.

Mehmet Hassan logged on to his laptop computer and accessed the F-2 network to check for new transmissions. Yes. The subject had driven across the Chesapeake Bay in a rented Jeep Wrangler, then taken it to a house in the woods not more than three miles from where Mehmet Hassan was sitting. The subject had arrived.

“The Butcher” already had a plan for afterward, although he wouldn’t think about it again until the operation was complete. Three deliveries: A part of the leg with the tattoo would be sent by Federal Express in a florist box to Angelina Moore, the attorney general, at her residence in Falls Church, Virginia. The head, minus the eyes, would be gift-wrapped and sent to his brother in Washington. The genitals and the eyes would be left on silk napkins in the desk drawer of a woman in Switzerland named Anna Vostrak.

FIFTY-FOUR

CHARLES MALLORY CLICKED OPEN the lock of his rented Jeep Wrangler, got in, and turned the ignition. The gravel drive wound through thick birch and pine woods for nearly half a mile, then came to a two-lane blacktop road that took him to the highway.

He drove another seven and three-quarter miles to the Bay Woods shopping plaza. Parked in the lot. It was a typical suburban strip shopping center, with a CVS, liquor store, sundries shop, dry cleaners, and Subway, anchored by a Food Lion grocery store. He walked slowly across the lot to the ATM by the grocery.

MEHMET HASSAN WATCHED his laptop monitor in Room 7 of the Sea Breeze Motel: New images of Charles Mallory, provided through the Administrator’s network. Mallory walking up a path in the woods, the morning light dappled through the bare trees. Then another: parking the Jeep, getting out, walking toward a Food Lion grocery store. And then a digital video of him, standing in front of an ATM, inserting his card, waiting, pressing in the digits of his PIN. Hassan stopped it and clicked the image enlarger, saw the close-cropped hair, the angular face. Then he clicked the location scanner, calling up the coordinates. It was here, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Less than two miles from the motel. The time: fourteen minutes ago.

Hassan waited for the follow-ups. Every minute, a new transmission. The satellite cameras followed the Jeep as Mallory traveled east along the highway, and then turned right onto a two-lane road. Through forestland back to the cottage, where it stopped. A man emerged. A face and a gait that he knew now. That he had memorized. He returned to the location scanner and called up a map, requesting the most direct route to Charles Mallory’s current location.

CHIDI OKORO HAD rigged the property three weeks earlier with dozens of infrared motion sensors cued to a computerized monitoring module set up against a wall in the living room. When one of the quarter-sized sensors was activated—detecting the radiation of human body heat in the air—a high-pitched alarm would chirp inside the cabin, and Charles Mallory would be able to see on his computer monitor just where the breach had occurred. When he needed to sleep, he would attach a decelerator unit to his arm, with low-wattage electrodes held in place by Velcro strips. The electrodes would give him a mild electric jolt, waking him if one of the sensors was tripped.

Charlie had decided that he was going to stay in the cabin until Il Macellaio came to him. The same strategy he had used with the Butcher’s cousin in France. For the next few hours, or days, or whatever was required, he would keep his mind focused on two things: staying alert and anticipating his prey. This was his final game.

On the floor beneath the bed was a rifle case, placed there three weeks earlier—a Heckler & Koch PSG1 with a custom-made 50x telescopic site thermal infrared scope.

There was only one path to the cottage, and only one door. Five windows. They would try to come at him through the woods, although first they would probably access the property from the gravel road. However they came onsite, they would have to trip one of the infrared sensors, which were placed all along the perimeter.

He had stocked the refrigerator and brought along warm clothes. Unlike most people, Charles Mallory could remain focused on a single object for hours at a time when he needed to. It wasn’t something that just came to him. He had trained for this.

Charlie waited through the remainder of the first day, sitting on an armchair across from the opened window, watching the woods for any changes in scenery, imagining what they were doing, the strategies they had considered and rejected. Listening for the distant sound of an engine or of gravel under wheels. Becoming attuned to the natural sounds of the outdoors—wind stirring the leaves, the footsteps of squirrels on tree bark, bird wings flapping—so he would know when a sound wasn’t natural.

Several times, he thought of Anna, and what they would do when “this business” was over. The clarity of her dark, reassuring eyes. He thought of the places they would go. It was his way of detaching from the work, taking a break.

He slept for no longer than an hour at a time the first night, wrapping himself in blankets against the cold. But nothing came through the woods overnight. He woke to the cool glare of the sun rising in the trees across the dewy forest floor and listened—heard the creaking of branches in the wind, the fluttering sound of falling leaves. Nothing else.

He ate a breakfast of fruit, granola bars, and coffee, staying close to the monitor. Sitting in the chair and watching the woods. Thinking about Anna. Waiting.

It was 5:23 that afternoon when the first alarm sounded. Mallory checked the monitor. Something or someone had entered the property from the east side of the gravel road about three-quarters of a mile away. It was picked up again forty-five seconds later, moving closer. And then once more. A trajectory suggesting to him that it was someone walking toward a specific target.

Then came a second breach, about a hundred yards to the northwest. A second subject. They were on the property now. Two of them.

Charlie Mallory lifted the weapon out of the gun case. The scope was special-operations military grade, capable of changing from a day scope to a night scope when necessary. But he wasn’t going to need the thermal night scope, not yet. He slid the mounting rail into the top of the rifle and switched it on. Put his right eye in the eyecup. Placed the gun’s mounted bipod on the table top across from the open window and settled in the wooden folding chair beside it. The scope was 50x magnification, higher than any telescopic lens that was commercially available.

HAVING TWO TARGETS made it more difficult. Probably, they would stake out the cottage from a distance first, using their gun sights. Charlie had already determined the approximate spots in the woods that would give them the best views of the windows and door.

He slowly scoured the woods through his gun scope, aiming in the directions where the scanners had been tripped, following the likely trajectories. Twice, he saw motion. The first was a deer, walking over a rise. Charles Mallory saw it stop and turn, hyper-alert, and then dart away.

The second movement he spotted was not a deer.

He followed the subject through the scope of his rifle, dialing in a clearer focus: an agile, medium-sized man, wearing a camouflage jacket and pants. Moving stealthily among the trees, carrying what looked to be a Russian 12.7mm rifle. A man nearly as alert and focused as he was. Climbing in a crouch over a small rise in the forest floor, then ducking down behind a fallen tree.

Charlie twisted the scope, adjusting the magnification until the predator’s features were sharp, in the center of the illuminated floating reticles. So sharp that he could see the pores in his dark skin, a hook-shaped scar on one cheek. But it wasn’t Il Macellaio. No, this must be the partner. Someone he didn’t know.

He turned his scope away, quickly scanning the woods behind him and then in front with his eyes. Left to right. Realizing that this man might just be a decoy. Where was Hassan?

But he saw nothing.

Or maybe this was only an orientation. Getting a feel for the set-up.