A Job Well Done Is Its Own Reward
Picadilly Road, Denver, Colorado. March 7, 2008.
Every so often, things went right. That situation was a perfect description of the present operation and it made Angel content. Finding herself in need of a little pocket money, she’d taken the contract offered to her. When she’s been a child forty years before, Angel had been so desperately poor that she’d eaten food from trash cans. So, she rarely turned down an opportunity to make money. Her current rate of 12,500 sovereigns was worth having but the contract had fitted in quite neatly with another job she had to do for the local Chinese Neighborhood Association. Also, her agent had remarked that the principal seemed quite distressed. That was why she was in Colorado and it was the first thing that pleased her. Colorado was a long way from New York. While she doubted that the kill-on-sight order issued by the NYPD was still a factor to be considered, Angel had not survived for 28 years in a profession where the average lifespan was three by taking chances.
“Winston Martinez?” Her voice, a low contralto roughened by years of excessive drinking and tobacco use, growled across the still night. “You got the stuff?”
“Yeah, you got the large?” Martinez’s reply was loaded with a Mexican accent. As it happened, the accent was as fake as the name he used. Behind him were three men, one the driver of his limousine, the other his two bodyguards. Angel, a trained and highly professional bodyguard herself wasn’t impressed. Anyway, she could read Martinez’s body language. Seeing she was alone, he intended to kill her and take the money he presumed she had brought for the drugs. It had never occurred to him that a woman, alone on a deserted road meeting three allegedly dangerous criminals might know something about the situation he didn’t. Nor did it occur to him that the timing of the meeting coincided with a TWA Machliner taking off from the airport just three miles away.
“ ’Fraid not, asshole. You shouldn’t have tried to sell that crap in a school full of Chinese kids. The Neighborhood Association doesn’t like that. And I’m their Vanguard.”
By their own standards, the men actually responded quite well. They went sideways and down, the two bodyguards trying to swing Robow submachine guns to bear on Angel. She went sideways as well, drawing two guns as she did so and firing a barrage of shots. The guns were Springfield XDMs, .45ACPs with 15-found capacity each and they made a continuous roar as she gunned down all four of her targets. Martinez had the presence of mind to try and run but it hadn’t done him any good. Angel had no compunction about shooting people in the back and had done so. The timing had worked perfectly; the sound of the airliner taking off had drowned out the gunfire.
She turned his body over with her foot, reflecting that the cowboy boots she habitually wore were probably quite well suited to the area. He was stone dead, six bullets in the center of mass and head made sure of that. She checked the other three bodies, ensuring that they were all properly and completely deceased. Then she holstered the Springfields and picked up the two Robows carried by the bodyguards. To her delight, both had full 30-round magazines. It really is going well for once.
She’d just finished that part of her night’s work when another car turned up. A man got out and looked at the car at the side of the road. “What’s happening?”
“Are you Mr. Allan V. Evans? I’m Rebecca Lee.” That was a pseudonym Angel used now and then.
“Ahh, Miss Lee. You said you had some papers that would help my case?”
“In a way, yes. You see, I have been advised to tell you that Her Majesty’s Government does not smile upon false pretenders to the throne.” That was the part of her instructions that had told her who was behind the contract. She saw Evans’ realizing what her words meant but he never got a chance to act on the insight. With a Robow in each hand, Angel saturated him and his car with bullets. Now, she had to move fast. She took the two Springfields and put his prints on the guns and on one of the expended shells. The guns had been wiped of course, down to the components and the ammunition in the magazines. Then she threw one of the empties into Evans’ car, and dropped the other by his lifeless corpse. He was, she reflected, the most thoroughly shot corpse she had seen for years. She returned the Robows to their late owners and looked at the scene carefully.
It would hold up; Evans, a notorious con-man, had set up a drug deal on this deserted road and then tried to hijack the goods. There’d been a shoot-out, the dealers had got him but he had got them. A bodyguard had riddled Evans with his dying burst. It was good enough for government work. She got back in her own car and made a quick 911 call to report the shooting and dead bodies on Picadilly Road.
By the time the Police got there, Angel was already on a Pan Am Sonic Cruiser back to her home in Bangkok, her Berettas safely nestled in her shoulder holsters and a glass of rum in her hand.
Sir Humphrey Appleday’s Office, Cabinet Office, 70 Whitehall, London, March 8, 2008.
“Well, what is the problem?” Sir Humphrey looked at David Attewood, Secretary of Defense, with a dismayed look on his face. The file he had just read did not make happy reading.
“British Electronics and Aviation Systems.” Attewood said each word as if it were a curse. Which, across the Ministry of Defense, they were. “BEA Bloody Systems. They muscled and politicked their way into getting the contract to develop the new ABM system and then made a complete dog’s breakfast of it. The whole job is hugely over-budget, running seven years late and far short of specifications. The Red Team who looked at their work says there are fundamental systemic problems still unaddressed. We’re no closer to replacing the Nike-Minerva than we were ten years ago.”
“Well, David, what do you want to do?”
“Cancel the whole damned thing of course. And buy the Yank system. Which is what we should have done ten years ago. Billions down the hole and nothing to show for it.”
“Put it together, David, write a paper and I’ll make sure it goes on the agenda for the next Cabinet meeting.”
Once alone in his office, Sir Humphrey picked up The Times and read, once again, the story of how the imbecile who had faked a claim to the British Throne had died in a stupid, sordid dispute over a drug deal. Ahhh well, he thought. At least Her Majesty’s Government has one reliable and honest contractor.