fire.
'Makes sense,' Brian observed. 'Where do we do it?'
'On the street, probably. I'm not going to tell you how to perform a mission. I will tell you what we want done. How you do it is going to be up to you. Now, for your first target we have a good crib sheet on his location and habits. It will just be a matter of identifying the right target and deciding how to do the job.'
'Who is he and why?'
'His name is Uda bin Sali, he's twenty-six, he lives in London.'
The twins exchanged amused looks. 'I should have known,' Dominic said. 'Jack told us about him. He's the money puke who likes hookers right?'
Granger opened the manila file he'd picked up on the way in and handed it across. 'Photos of Sali and his two girlfriends. Location and photos of his house in London. Here's one of him in his car.'
'Aston Martin,' Dominic observed. 'Nice wheels.'
'He works in the financial district, has an office at the Lloyd's insurance building.' More photos. 'One complication. He usually has a tail. The Security Service — MI5—keeps an eye on him, but the troop they have assigned seems to be a rookie, and there's only one. So, when you make your hit, keep that in mind.'
'Not using a gun, are we?' Brian asked.
'No, we have something better. No noise, nice and covert. You'll see when Rick Pasternak gets here. No firearms for this mission. European countries don't like guns much, and hand-to-hand is too dangerous. The idea is that it looks like he just had a heart attack.'
'Residue?' Dominic asked.
'You can ask Rick about that. He'll give you chapter and verse.'
'What are we using to deliver the drug?'
'One of these.' Granger opened his desk drawer and took out the 'safe' blue pen. He handed it across and told them how it worked.
'Sweet,' Brian observed. 'Just stab him in the ass, like?'
'Exactly right. It transfers seven milligrams of the drug — it's called succinylcholine — and that pretty much takes care of business. The subject collapses, is brain-dead in a few minutes, and all-the-way dead in less than ten.'
'What about medical attention? What if there's an ambulance just across the street?'
'Rick says it won't matter unless he's in an operating room with doctors standing right at his side.'
'Fair enough.' Brian picked up the photo of their first target, looking at it, but really seeing young David Prentiss. 'Tough luck, buddy.'
'I see our friend had a nice weekend,' Jack was saying to his computer. This day's report included a photo of a Miss Mandy Davis, along with a transcript of her interview with the Metropolitan Police Special Branch. 'She's a looker.'
'Not cheap, either,' Wills observed from his workstation.
'How much longer has Sali got?' Jack asked him.
'Jack, it's better not to speculate on that,' Wills warned.
'Because the two hitters — hell, Tony, they're cousins of mine.'
'I do not know much about that, and I do not want to find out. The less we know, the less problems we can have. Period,' he emphasized.
'You say so, man,' Jack responded. 'But whatever sympathy I might have had for this prick died when he started cheerleading and funding people with guns. There are lines you can't cross.'
'Yeah, Jack, there are. Be careful that you don't step too far yourself.'
Jack Ryan, Jr., thought about that for a second. Did he want to be an assassin? Probably not, but there were people who needed killing, and Uda bin Sali had crossed over into that category. If his cousins were going to take him down, they were just doing the Lord's work — or his country's work, which, to the way he'd been brought up, was pretty much the same thing.
'That fast, Doc?' Dominic asked.
Pasternak nodded. 'That fast.'
'That reliable?' Brian inquired next.
'Five milligrams is enough. This pen delivers seven. If anyone survives, it would have to be a miracle. Unfortunately, it will be a very unpleasant death, but that can't be helped. I mean, we could use botulism toxin — it's a very fast-acting neurotoxin — but that leaves residue in the blood that would come out in a postmortem toxicology scan. Succinylcholine metabolizes very nicely. Detecting it would take another miracle, unless the pathologist knows exactly what to look for, and that is unlikely.'
'How fast again?'
'Twenty to thirty seconds, depending on how close you get to a major blood vessel, then the agent will cause total paralysis. Won't even be able to blink his eyes. He will not be able to move his diaphragm, so no breathing, no oxygen through the lungs. His heart will continue to beat, but since it will be the organ using the most oxygen, the heart will go ischemic in a matter of seconds — that means that without oxygen, the heart tissue will start to die from lack of oxygen. The pain will be massive. Ordinarily, the body has a reserve supply of oxygen. How much depends on physical condition — the obese have less oxygen reserves than the slender among us. Anyway, the heart will be the first. It will try to continue beating, but that only makes the pain worse. Brain death will occur in three to six minutes. Until then, he'll be able to hear but not see—'
'Why not?' Brian asked.
'The eyelids probably will close. We're talking total paralysis here. So, he'll be lying there, in enormous pain, unable to move at all, with his heart trying to pump unoxygenated blood until his brain cells expire from anoxia. After that, it's theoretically possible to keep the body alive — muscle cells last the longest without oxygen — but the brain will be gone. Okay, it's not as sure as a bullet in the brain, but it makes no noise, and leaves virtually no evidence. When the heart cells die, they generate enzymes that we look for in a probable heart attack. So, whatever pathologist gets the body to post will think 'heart attack,' or 'neurological seizure'—a brain tumor can cause that — and maybe he'll carve the brain up to look for one. But as soon as the blood work comes back, the enzyme test will say 'heart attack,' and that should settle matters right then and there. The blood work will not show the succinylcholine because it metabolizes even after death. They will have an unexpected massive heart attack on their hands, and those happen every day. They'll run his blood for cholesterol and some other risk factors, but nothing will change the fact that he's dead from a cause they'll never figure out.'
'Jesus,' Dominic breathed. 'Doc, how the hell did you get into this business?'
'My little brother was a vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald,' was all he had to say.
'So we want to be careful with these pens, eh?' Brian asked. The doc's reason was good enough for him.
'I would,' Pasternak advised them.
CHAPTER 17
AND THE LITTLE REDFOX, AND THE FIRST FENCE
They flew out of Dulles International Airport on a British Airways flight, which turned out to be a 747 whose control surfaces their own father had designed twenty-seven years earlier. It occurred to Dominic that he'd been in diapers then, and that the world had turned over quite a few times from that day to this.
Both had brand-new passports in their own names. All other relevant documents were in their laptops, fully encrypted, along with modems and communications software, also fully encrypted. Aside from that, they were casually dressed, like most others in the first-class section. The stewardesses fluttered about efficiently, giving everyone munchies, along with white wine for both of the brothers. As they got to altitude, the food was decent —
