| From: | Paul J. Adam Shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Mission Complete |
| Date: | Sat, 8 Apr 2000 01:16:13 +0100 |
>>>>>[The mission is complete: they are dead.
I believe this should serve as adequate confirmation.
+++++begin video
The camera treks up a hillside, in the damp, cool predawn: her breath
misting before her. Pausing by a fallen tree, she looks back to where a
highway curves through the sparse woods, curling around the base of the
hill. From the cameraman's vantage, a good quarter-mile of the road is
visible, empty for now.
"Bien." She says to herself, sitting on the tree and unslinging a small
daypack. (Her arms, at least, are clad in a virulently bright camouflage
pattern of safety-orange and lime green: hideously obvious to humans,
but supposedly inconspicuous to colour-blind deer).
Whatever the reason that brings Blondie here, she's sitting on a deadfall,
lighting a Sterno stove and making a mug of hot chocolate. As it comes to
a simmer, she stirs until the cocoa powder dissolves, then sets it aside and
snuffs the stove. She lets both cool, as she unslings a rifle: a simple,
handsome, Mannlicher-stocked bolt-action, blued steel and brown
macroplast, fitted with a Nikon 6x35 scope and a Lorus rangefinding
laser.
A basic, practical weapon, costing less than two thousand nuyen and
thoroughly anonymous. Blondie opens the breech, and begins to push
steel-cased .297 Jacoby rounds into the breech: high-velocity softpointed
bullets, Speer 95-grain JSP, 'Express' loaded for higher velocities and
flatter trajectories. A popular load for anyone gunning for whitetail deer,
and again a popular and anonymous round. Six cartridges, pressed into the
rifle's magazine.
By now, the steaming cup of hot chocolate has cooled a little: she takes a
pewter flask from the daypack, pours a generous measure of dark
Jamaica rum. Sipping the mix, she sits on the fallen tree, the rifle across
her lap, and waits.
The sun creeps over the horizon, golden light flooding the hillside as
shadows pool in the road, shrinking slowly. The light shows the morning
mist, slowly burning off as sunlight warms the air and begins to ease the
ground's damp chill.
"I hope they are not late risers..." Blondie says to herself, as she finishes
her spiked chocolate and puts the metal cup back in her rucksack.
"Yesterday they were on the road by seven hours and thirty. Why are they
late today?"
Nobody answers, as she sits and frets for another quarter-hour: watching
the half-dozen cars that pass, letting them all go by unmolested.
"Bonjour, messieurs." she says suddenly, as a dark Land-Rover comes into
view. A quick peek through the rifle's scope even gets her the
registration: UCAS plates, Massachusetts colours. "Vous etes tres en
retard... but I will forgive you, today."
Blondie slides off the tree, landing behind it. She takes a moment to wrap
her rifle's sling around her left forearm, then takes a small black box with
one guarded switch from a pocket.
The Land Rover slows for the turn, and the assassin watches intently; as it
passes one of the scores of marker posts that highlight the road's edge,
she pushes the switch closed.
It's much less dramatic than you'd expect. Sixty half-pound sticks of
commercial dynamite, carefully placed in the drainage culvert under the
roadway, detonate in perfect unison. A simsense show would have the
Land Rover disappear in a huge mushroom cloud of fire.
In fact, there's just an expanding globe of black dust and flying dirt, and
the thunderclap of the explosion reaches Blondie a second later: followed
by a fading chorus of echoes that die into a rolling rumble, as the breeze
carries the smoke away and reveals the wrecked Land-Rover.
It's survived fairly intact, amazingly enough, though it'll never drive again.
The explosion went off under its back wheels, tossing it twenty feet along
the road to sit skewed on the asphalt: the ten-foot-wide crater behind it
still steaming.
"Merde." Blondie raises the rifle to her shoulder, using the sling as an extra
brace, as the driver's door opens and a sandy-haired man falls out of the
Rover. Starting to crawl along the road, away from the ruined vehicle, he
has no idea that he's framed in crosshairs from three hundred yards away.
One, two, three breaths, a controlled exhale, and a gentle pressure on the
trigger.
The rifle cracks and spits smoke: the crawling man thrashes for a few
seconds, blood spurting from the neat round hole in his temple. Blondie
works the straight-pull bolt-action, bringing her aim back to the Land
Rover: another brown-haired man is on his feet, staggering towards his
comrade. The assassin settles her sight on his chest, aims off a little for
elevation, windage and deflection, and the rifle cracks again: the man
lurches, blood coursing from the tiny hole in his Whalers jacket before he
falls over backwards.
There is a long pause, five or ten seconds, while Blondie scans the Land
Rover carefully through the x6 scope. No more movement, no more
reaction.
"Et maintenant, we see how dead they truly are." She says to herself,
rising to her feet and working the bolt again: taking a moment to retrieve
both fired cases.
The two-minute jog to the road is tense, but at this early hour it's still
quiet. Blondie slows two score yards from the sprawled bodies in the road
and the crater (which has almost stopped smoking). The first, shot
through the head, lies unmoving and unblinking: the neat little entry
wound in his temple matched by a fist-sized exit crater in the back of his
cranium. The second, with a bullet through his chest, is still breathing,
blowing vividly red bubbles out of the small entry wound and soaking his
whole back from what must be a hideous hole. .297 Jacoby will drop a
deer in seconds: it'll wreak awful injury on a man.
Still, Blondie pauses, and takes a small, vicious Fichetti automatic from
her pocket: points it at the dying man's head, and pulls the trigger four
times. No exit wounds at all: needle rounds, maybe, but the man's
gurgling breath stops with the first flat crack. No empty cases, just four
echoing reports and four oozing holes in the man's skull.
The Land Rover is still sitting, skewed and twisted by the blast, but in
defiance of all the simsense and trideo rules it isn't burning. The assassin
walks towards it, careful, slow, skirting it widely to reveal its interior in a
controlled manner.
Its third passenger, sitting in the right rear seat, was right above the
exploding dynamite: chunks of the rear suspension have been blown up
through his body, a piece of leaf-spring jutting horribly from his ribcage.
>From the shoulders down No need to waste ammunition on him.
In the front passenger seat, though, a mousy-blonde woman is pawing at
her face: blood sheets down from where she'd hit the windscreen hard
with her forehead, blinding her. "Tommy? Is that you?" she cries
plaintively. "Tommy, what's happening? I heard gunfire, what's happening?"
She gropes at the empty driver's seat with her good left arm (her right is
broken, badly: at least one of her legs might be, too).
Blondie says nothing, but settles the Fichetti's laser on the woman's gory
locks and fires: lets the body come to rest, and fires twice more. "Adieu,
cheri. Je regrette."
The pistol and the detonator box are all quickly tossed into the back seat,
followed by the squat cylindrical shape of a phosphorous grenade: Blondie
sprints for five wiregirl-quick seconds before the muffled _whumph_
behind her says the grenade's exploded.
_Now_ the Land Rover is burning, upholstery catching at once and spilt
diesel reluctantly taking fire too. On this road, at this time, it'll be a few
more minutes before any other vehicle passes: more time for firefighters
and rescue crews. By then, the weapons will be scorched metal skeletons
and any forensic evidence long gone.
Whoever the four occupants of the Land Rover were... they aren't any
more.
+++++end video
I trust this is satisfactory?]<<<<<
-- Blondie <01:01:56/08-04-61>
