“Actually, no. I put this together for very little money.”
I stand up. “Let’s see it work.”
He sits down. “I’ll be a little off, because my stock-to-cheek weld is a little different in this position, but I can prove the point. The big advantage is that I can just close my right eye and barely touch the rifle with anything except my index finger.”
He fires three rounds, examines his marksmanship through the scope and smiles. “Check it out.”
I have a look. The three bullets are in a six-inch group. “OK,” I say. “I take back what I said and I shouldn’t have laughed at you. This is brilliant.”
“I didn’t invent the idea. Fiber-optic gyroscopes have been used in fire-control systems for a long time, but apology accepted. Go fish or something. I need to sight in the rifle I stole from the good major and make sure it’s worth a shit.”
Our pistol practice goes better today. Milo brought disposable pie tins to shoot at, and we hit them at least most of the time from fifteen paces. We go through a thousand rounds again. Today, he asks me to shoot a video of him. He puts on a white paper crime scene suit to keep his DNA from getting on the outer clothing, then puts on camouflage fatigues and a balaclava. We adjust his clothing to hide the white underneath.
“Look at me. Is there anything to give away my identity?” he asks.
I give him a once-over. “Your hand and wrist brace.”
“Fuck, I forgot. I’ve got the shit I stole from Malinen.” He takes off his hand brace, slips on a class ring, a watch and a scarf. Subtle and masterful, I think. Small things people forget when disguising themselves.
I make a film for YouTube as he fires the guns he stole from the major: the Barrett-he forces himself not to wince-the automatic rifles and a couple semi-auto pistols. He has to do all this right-handed, and it’s hurting him badly. The balaclava masks his pain. I wish another one of us could have done this. Unfortunately, it has to be him because he’s about the same size as Roope Malinen, and both Sweetness and I are much too big to be believable in the role.
We start packing up to go, and he sighs. “Shooting left-handed just feels so fucking unnatural.”
I start to make a joke about jerking off with his left hand, but don’t.
He shakes his head, despondent and dejected. I know how he feels, it’s hard to be a crip. I’ve just been one for much longer than he has and am used to it. I don’t offer solace. Everything feels unnatural. There’s nothing to say.
On the ride back, I ask him if he thinks he can pick a lock and do a B amp;E with me.
“What for?”
“The Russian trade delegation rental office. The girls they use as prostitutes live and work in apartments run by them. It’s possible they keep all the girls’ passports there, too. Best-case scenario: We find the passports, or maybe their identities are on file, either on paper or in an office computer. We find the names of who is in charge of what, just unravel everything and shut down their operation.”
“I don’t know if I can do it with my lock pick set, but with an electronic pick gun, yeah, we can get in.”
I’ve always wondered how Milo manages to hack anything and everything. “And their computers?”
“Computers are odd little beasts. First, most people don’t bother to password-protect their computers. When they do, they usually use a predictable password, so it pays to learn a little about the owner. Their birthdays. The names of their kids and pets. If the passwords are random they’re hard to remember, and people often write them down and stick them under their mouse pads or somewhere in the area of the computer. Some computers have default passwords. Some have slots almost never used, for multimedia cards, memory cards, picture cards. I insert one with a virus and it goes unseen. People don’t notice when you look over their shoulders as they open their computers. And if all those simple tricks don’t work, there are more time-consuming ways to get it. Mostly, though, it’s just through people’s stupidity.”
“My idea is that the day before you carry out the assassinations, we take the info we’ve gathered there, send it to the police and all the newspapers, and while you’re doing your thing, half the force is busy making raids and arrests.”
He nods. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s do that tomorrow instead of coming out here.”
My phone rings. It’s Ai. “You asked for regular reports,” he says. “We’ve done thorough investigative work, and I have a comprehensive report for you.”
“Do you have dependable encrypted electronic gear?”
“No.”
“I’d like to come to your place at five thirty tomorrow morning. Is that acceptable?”
“Yes. That way, I won’t be late for school.” He rings off.
Now I bring up an uncomfortable but unavoidable subject. “I don’t know about killing Jan Pitkanen.”
Milo shuts off the engine. “You fucking hypocritical son of a bitch.” I’m sitting down. He takes a swing at me-with his bad hand and at my shot jaw-but I move my head and his fist goes by me. He pulls it together and doesn’t try again.
“I said something to you once about Sweetness killing a man. You called me a weak sob sister and told me to quit my whining. Pitkanen tried to kill your wife and child, and murdered my cousin-who never hurt a fly-and you’re having second thoughts. You’re supposed to be in charge here, but I’ve had to plan everything, do everything, and Sweetness and I are taking most of the risk. You’re telling me you can’t even do one simple fucking thing?”
He’s right, I’m a hypocrite. “Let’s just say I’m conflicted about it. I think when the people supporting him are dead, he’ll fade into the woodwork and leave us be. I’m thinking about buying him off.”
“This is about Kate, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess it mostly is.”
“Well, I saved her fucking life, not you. You think I don’t care about her? As long as that prick lives, she’s in danger. Let me put it this way: He’s dead. If you don’t kill him and I have to, we’re through. I’ll never speak to you again.”
“If I do and Kate finds out, my marriage is over.”
“I swear to you, after the fact, we’ll never talk about it again, even amongst ourselves. Kate will never know. You seem to keep forgetting that these people want to kill us and your family. Wouldn’t you rather lose Kate than see her and Anu murdered? Which course of action demonstrates your love for them more?”
He’s right. “I just want out. I don’t want any more blood, any more deaths.”
He lights one cigarette off the other. “You decided to play this game. You can’t just quit when you want to. Grow up.”
“And we play for blood.”
“That’s right. We play for blood.”
Milo will do it if I don’t, so Pitkanen’s dead either way. And Milo saved Kate. And I owe him a debt for that act of true friendship so large that I can never repay it. “You win. I’ll do it. But that means I have to know when and where. You should tell me everything about your plan.”
“I thought you don’t want to know the whole plan so you keep your hands clean, keep the guilt off your conscience, or whatever ‘weak sob sister’ shit is holding you back.”
“I already have a guilty conscience and blood on my hands. Killing Pitkanen doesn’t make much difference in that regard. Sweetness will do whatever you tell him. I think it would be good for you to tell me the plan, so I can play devil’s advocate and look for holes in it. If you make even the smallest mistake, you’ll be caught.”
We sit out on deck in the morning sun. It looks to be another perfect summer day. He begins. “We abduct Roope Malinen and drive him to his summer cottage in his own car. .”
I stop him. “How will you know the right time? He has to be alone. He might have his family with him or friends visiting. It’s vacation season. Even your first move has unpredictable variables in it.”
He lights a smoke. I could chain-smoke a pack right now and follow suit.
“Any ideas?” he asks.
I think for a couple minutes. “Yeah. He loves social media. Maybe he’ll give you his itinerary. Follow his blog, Facebook and Twitter posts. See what comes of it.”
Milo grins. He hasn’t done that much lately. “Good idea. Of course, I already have his and his wife’s vehicles GPSed.”
“When you abduct him,” I say, “you can’t use restraints that mark him. If his wrists are chafed, it’s a dead
