The name on it read Achilleion Palace, Corfu, Greece. What was so important about the invite? That a banker would need a security detail for it and that he had been killed by an unknown assailant in his room here. All these thoughts swirled in his mind, and his eyes narrowed on a burner lying inside the briefcase. Placing the invite back on the table and grabbing the burner from the briefcase, he examined it slowly.
His training through decades of fieldwork had taught him not to miss anything and to question everything. He knew the burner had been encrypted with the most sophisticated software there was. This told him one thing: the banker was no ordinary banker at all. He had laundered money through various channels for terrorist organizations, drug cartels, and governments.
He came off the chair, reaching for his IMI Desert Eagle in his hip holster as he rushed out onto the balcony. Training his pistol on her, he pulled the trigger and fired a shot. The bullet ricocheted off the wall, hitting her.
The woman hit the ground, dashing over to the pier. She glanced sideways, seeing Eric firing shots at her. She jumped into the boat and started the motor as she sped down the harbor front, passing by boats and cruise ships that were sailing in. Her shoulder-length black hair flowed in the wind as her threatening, menacing eyes stayed focused on where she was heading.
He ran back into the room, heading for the door, his heart racing. He grabbed the door handle and swung it open, strolling over to the elevator, Eric waited, the doors opened, and he stepped in. Whoever she was was a professional, he guessed, which meant the burner and the invitation were vital to get. The doors slid on the main floor, and he sprinted out, gripping his semi-automatic pistol in his grip, dashing through the Scandinavian marble lobby, and rushing out through the massive doors.
He darted over to the dock, where he had tied the motorboat.
Eric flashed onto a memory: him lying in the prone position on the sniper range, his handler Holiday pressing binoculars to his face. He dials the elevation into the scope, correcting for the ballistic arc. He exhales through pursed lips, applying steady pressure to the trigger. The stock kicks into his shoulder, and a hole appears centered in the red bull's eye six hundred meters downslope.
He leaps into the motorboat and starts the ignition, speeding down under the bridge and down the harbor. Finally, he could see the boat that she was on. It looked like she was heading into the fjords. He drew his semi-automatic 50-caliber pistol and aimed it at the boat. He fired a shot at the boat, and the bullet rushed out of the muzzle at a speed of 2600 per second as it slammed into the boat.
She gave the steering a hard turn, and the boat suddenly swerved left, waves splashing against the boat. She glanced over, saw the bullet hole, and let go of the steering wheel as she dove into the cold blue ocean. A few minutes later, the gas tank on the boat erupted into an explosion, sinking it. Out of nowhere, within seconds, a boat sped along the ocean and stopped.
She swam over to the boat as the men pulled up into it. After that, they motored off into the distance, heading to the safe house, where she would wait until she received further instructions from the organization
Eric slipped his pistol back into his hip holster, reached into his pocket, pulled out his iPhone X, and clicked on the camera, zooming in on the woman in the boat. He swiftly snapped a photo of her; he knew that he would have to run facial recognition software and the NCIC database to find out who she was. Placing the iPhone back into his pocket, he headed back to the thief as he turned the steering wheel on the boat.
He tied the boat to the dock and stepped out onto the dock, scanning the area for a couple of seconds before he continued up the steps. It had finally dawned on him that whoever she was working for could have left a backup team of shooters in place in case she had failed. He had to assume that the banker that he had terminated earlier had to be somehow connected to all this; maybe once he found out who the woman was in his room, he could finally get some answers to why the briefcase was so important.
Instead of heading back into the Thief, he walked up the boardwalk, stopped, and knelt down, pretending to tie his shoes. So far, he hadn't spotted a surveillance team tailing him; still, there could be a sniper on top of a hotel or building. Peering through the scope, he knew how the snipers operated, recording everything in their dope book.
After he sprinted and hailed a taxi as it drove up along the sidewalk, he grabbed the door and slid inside, slamming the door behind him. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his burner and entered a secure, encrypted ten-digit number. He held the phone up to his ear.
Three seconds later, a voice came on.
"Holiday,"
"We need to meet. I need some intel on this assassin who tried to snatch the briefcase from me," Eric told him as he gazed out the window.
"Where are you?"
"In a cab on my way."
"Lovenskiold Shooting range,"
Eric ended the call.
"Lovenskiold Shooting Range," Eric told the driver.
The cab sped down through the narrow streets, passing by spiraling skyscrapers that spiraled up to the sky, restaurants with people eating inside, and stores with tourists strolling along the sidewalk. Eric puts the burner back inside his pocket in his jacket. Still, he wondered how the assassin had gotten into his hotel room with no one seeing her. It had crossed his mind earlier that she could tail him, but he would have known if he had tailed.
A couple of minutes later, the cab pulls up to a halt outside the shooting range; he steps out and pays the driver with Euros. He surveils the range, seeing two vehicles parked outside the shop. Walking over to the shop door, he grabs the door handle and enters. The inside looked like an ordinary gun shop with racks of pistols, rifles, and snipers' rifles on them. But maybe that was the point
Holiday emerges from behind a hidden door behind the counter, his shoulder holster concealing his silenced Sig P365 and his Taran Tactical Combat Master. His expression hardened.
"Okay, let me look at the photo of the assassin that you snapped."
He reached into his pocket in his jacket, pulled out an iPhone, and handed it over to him as they strode behind the counter and entered a room filled with computer screens hung on the wall and what looked like a weapons vault behind him. It was a perfect front for the CIA off-book black box program that Holiday ran; nobody would ever expect a shooting range, and it also covered E14, a classified unit of the Norwegian intelligence service.
A few hours later, after running the photograph through the facial recognition software, Holiday finally got a match, and within seconds, a photograph flashed onto the screen with a name.
Emlin Fallen Medusa
Bingo, Holiday thought to himself as he clicked on the file.
Name: Emlin Fallen Medusa Code-name: Angel of death
Operational Status: assassin
Background: She is trained in every kind of weapon there is and kills her target from an extreme distance if necessary. She is also skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and she is extremely dangerous and efficient.
Current employer: HeadShot
Eric froze for a second, staring wide-eyed at the photograph on the screen. It was the woman he had seen in his room. So she was an assassin for this headshot; his guess was they were the ones giving her the instructions.
"What do we know about Headshot? What would they want with the burner and the invitation to the private party?" Eric inquired as he walked back and forth.
"Not a lot, to be honest, only that they are effective and efficient assassination organizations. And that they have been credited for thousands of assassinations they have carried out over the years. He paused before he pressed on and then continued the poisoning of an ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, in London, Senator Shane Howard was killed by a 50 caliber round from an extreme distance walking out of the Senate Heart building in Washington DC, and many more to name," Holiday explained to him
"OK, what about the burner and this invite that assassin tired snatch from me?" Eric asked
"The banker must have been a middleman for HeadShot, maybe he funneling money through various channels for them. My guess would be an untraceable unlimited black budget. The burner was probably how we got instructions as for the private party do what you best and infiltrate it but be careful," Holiday told him.