A very bad roll of the dice, she likes to say, and I’ve witnessed my share of them on the firing range when we go to town with our Bond Arms Bullpups. She rips through the heads of human silhouette targets while I play it statistically safe, mostly plugging center mass with only the occasional head shot for good measure.
Based on the blood, bits of bone and brain tissue I’m seeing, it’s not hard to reconstruct what went down when the hitman roared in on top of me and opened his door. The explosion of high velocity rounds would have made my ears ring were it not for the suppressor attached to Carme’s pistol barrel.
He didn’t see what was coming. Didn’t feel it happen, his lights knocked out with a one-two hollow-point punch, the back of his skull exploded. The impact pushed him into the seat, and he slid down halfway, leaving a swath of blood on gray leather, his body listing to the left, his arm hanging out.
He’s unfamiliar, and I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen him before, light skinned, a full beard, long hair, a tattoo of a winged woman warrior on the side of his neck. In jeans, flannel, a down vest, he could pass for a lot of folks in these parts but that’s not why he knows his way around Hampton’s back roads.
Displayed on the tablet mounted on the console is a map that shows my route since I left Vera Young’s Fort Monroe apartment last night after working her death scene for hours. While my truck was parked on the street, this man or someone placed a GPS tracker on it.
“I remind you that Neva dropped in on Vera unannounced yesterday,” as I paint light over an open range bag on the floor below the passenger’s seat.
“I’m aware,” Carme says in a way that makes me think she was there or remotely watching.
“Neva showed up unexpected it seems, and not long afterward her sister was dead,” I remind her.
My light shines on large-capacity magazines loaded with copper-jacketed ammunition, at first glance similar to .223 assault rifle rounds or comparable. Some have blue plastic ballistic tips associated with hunting down varmints, others without, telling me the objective wasn’t to capture but to exterminate.
“We’d just better hope nobody shows up while we’re doing all this,” I’m willing myself not to panic.
Powering up the stereo to see what addresses are plugged into the GPS, I’m startled by Neva Rong’s voice on satellite radio. It’s as if talking about her has conjured her up somehow.
“. . . Absolutely, we should question any vendor who has repeated malfunctions, and worst of all, vulnerabilities to cyberattacks . . . ,” she’s saying, and it would seem the hitman was listening to The Mason Dixon Line at some point earlier the same way I was.
“Can you believe it?” I open the door behind the driver’s seat. “Any doubt about who’s behind this?”
I shine my light over padded gun cases and duffel bags. A Mossberg 590A1 pump shotgun. Boxes of 12-gauge shells. A bulletproof vest, towels, a baseball cap with a mallard duck on it and several burner phones.
“I hate to be the one who breaks the news to you, Sisto, but she’s none too fond of us,” Carme ducks inside to turn off the ignition, shutting up Neva and taking the key.
“We’ve got to prove what she’s doing, that she murdered her sister, and just tried to smoke me, possibly both of us, that she’s behind everything going on,” I walk around to the back of the Denali. “We’ve got to show evidence of her crimes.”
“Really? Then what?” Carme knows as well as I do that if traditional means could stop Neva Rong, it would have happened years ago.
She pops up the hood, disconnecting the battery, making certain the SUV can’t be started, controlled or tampered with remotely. While she’s doing that, I open the tailgate, taking a mental inventory of the various tools and hardware in back. A branch lopper, pruning shears, a hacksaw. Rolls of duct tape. Boxes of heavy-duty trash bags.
Half a dozen 5-gallon plastic buckets are filled with a concrete mix like Quikrete, an eyebolt in the center of each. Plus, there are piles of zinc-coated mooring chain, I’d estimate at least 9 meters (29.5 feet) of it, everything needed to dispose of untidy messes with the help of inexpensive homemade anchors.
And around here where rivers and the bay meet the sea, if you don’t want something found, a good place to deep-six it is the water.
“This guy was a fixer,” I decide. “A freakin’ death-and-disposal factory on wheels.”
“That was the objective, I believe,” Carme agrees.
Covered from head to toe in her wetsuit-like skin with only her face showing, she’s menacing and surreal as she moves around with the pistol and carbine.
“It looks like I was about to be fish food,” I add. “Maybe you too.”
“Fortunately, I had just enough warning,” is as much as she’ll explain, and I can only figure that my military special ops spitting image must have picked up signals on a spectrum analyzer.
Or she may have hacked. Or was given intel, and I envision the clerk parked by the door at the Hampton Hop-In. I think of Dick calling me on a CIA line, and my mom checking in and asking where I was. One way or another, Carme got the information she needed. When she realized what was tailing me and headed in her direction, she got ready to take care of the problem.
The logical place to lie in wait was behind the unlit ice machine near the snow-dusted blue bench where Mrs. Skidmore used to sit. I imagine my sister ducked out of sight, biding her time, patiently watching me drive through the parking lot, ready as the silver Denali roared in right behind me. When the would-be assassin opened his door, she nailed him before he was out of his seat.
“Make yourself useful,” Carme hands me the carbine over my protests. “I’ve not cleared it yet,” she adds as I touch the weapon with my contaminated leather-gloved hands. “I don’t have much experience with these. So, you’re on your own but I think you can figure it out.”
Lightweight, less than 10 pounds fully loaded I estimate, the weapon that almost did me in is tricked out with a suppressor, a tactical scope, an under-barrel-mounted grenade launcher. None of it normal, not even in Virginia where people like us grew up with guns and more guns, knives, weapons of all persuasion.
Dropping out the curved black polymer 30-round magazine, I snap back the bolt to unseat a thick tapered brass cartridge from the chamber.