“As for you, you are guilty of treason and official corruption. I have the bank records of the bribes you paid to the council using tax money. I have the bank records of your many embezzlements of tax money for yourself. And I have the message records of your discussions of your real plans with the council. These are all capital charges.
“But I am not without mercy.”
Kendall breathed a sigh of relief. He thought he would get out of this alive after all.
“It will be quick.”
Matt lifted the pistol and shot Kendall twice in the forehead.
Matt signaled MingWei in his heads-up display, and many things happened at once. The sliding door into the hallway opened and MingWei came in. Matt could see others moving wooden backstops out of the hallway. It was to get those backstops in place that he had engaged Kendall so long.
As it was, only the head shots over-penetrated. Those of the bodyguards did not penetrate the plaster wall behind them, while Kendal’s two head shots did penetrate the rice-paper of the door to fetch up in the center backstop.
Several men came in from the garden and began removing the bodies out into the courtyard. Several women came in behind them and began scrubbing the mess off the wooden floor and plaster walls while it was still fresh. They had hydrogen peroxide for the incipient blood stains.
Another man lifted the sullied sliding panel out of its tracks and removed it while yet another placed a new sliding panel in its place.
“Have all our people been drawn in within the compound?” Matt asked.
“Yes, Chen Zufu. The family is all within our walls save only those preparing for operations.”
“Very good. Seize the car.”
“And the driver?”
“Kendall’s bag man. He’s dirty.”
“Yes, Chen Zufu.”
At the front of the apartment building, an attractive young woman wearing a lavalava and flip-flops walked out of the front doors of the building. She carelessly left the door into the building standing open behind her.
The limousine driver was sitting in the driver’s seat of the car. He had the front seat windows open in the pleasant weather. He watched the young woman walk across the front of the car. She was smiling at him. Apparently she was coming around to talk to him. Some message from the boss, probably. At least the messenger was attractive enough.
In the dark of the hallway behind the open door, a young man sitting on the floor with a crossbow steadied on his raised knee pulled the trigger on his weapon. The heavy steel bolt passed through the open building door, passed through the open front passenger-side window of the limo, and hit the driver in the side of the head.
Two men walked out of the open building door toward the car. The woman continued around the front of the car, opened the driver’s door, and dumped the driver’s body out on the street. She got into the car and drove it around to the vehicle gate into the Chen-Jasic compound, which opened as the limo approached. She drove on into the compound and the vehicle gate closed behind the car.
The two men walked up as the car moved out of the way. They picked up the driver’s body and carried him into the apartment building. Two women carrying buckets of a fifty-fifty mixture of water and hydrogen peroxide had followed them out, and they quickly rinsed the blood off the sidewalk and the street and disappeared back inside the apartment building.
The whole thing had taken less than a minute.
No public evidence remained that Chairman Kendall had ever been there. Kevin Kendall, his bodyguards, his driver, and his car had simply disappeared.
Their existing Plan CC – standing for Cops and Council – had been modified. The other thing Matt Chen-Jasic had received in his computer account the prior morning was access to Kendall’s computer accounts in the colony servers. This allowed a simpler, easier version of Plan CC. They had gamed it out yesterday evening and this morning.
Matt sent a message from Kendall’s account to the garage in the council building that he needed the second car at the Chen-Jasic compound. When it arrived, the driver of the second car got the same treatment as the driver of the first.
The uniforms of the drivers and the bodyguards were cleaned and mended. Some additions were made to the cars.
About six that evening, Matt sent a message to the council from Kendall’s account.
Emergency meeting of the Council.
I’m sending the cars around to pick you up.
Kendall
Plan CC
The armored limo pulled up in front of the large house in one of Arcadia’s wealthier residential sections. Anna Drake, the director of the health department, came out of the house and walked out to the car. She was still dressed in her business suit from earlier today.
Drake didn’t recognize the bodyguard holding the car door open for her, but she didn’t know everyone on Kendall’s staff. This would be the second shift bunch anyway. He was in the right uniform, though, and only Kendall had the big limousines, so she wasn’t concerned.
Drake got in and saw she was the sixth passenger in the rear compartment. She looked around curiously, never having been in either of Kendall’s limousines before.
The bodyguard got back into the car and the car pulled out and headed downtown.
“What’s this all about?” she asked. “Anyone know?”
“I know he was going to see the Chen today,” said Larry Donahue, the director of the food department.
“That can’t have gone well. I think the Chen is happy with the way things are,” said Park Jinsook,
