The Speed of Sound (Speed of Sound Thrillers #1)(78)
The two lethal silhouettes moved swiftly across the yard toward the kitchen door. One carried a crowbar. The other a roll of duct tape. They were going to make it look like dangerous predators were on the loose. Morris County residents would be double locking their doors for years to come after reading news accounts of what was about to occur. First she was robbed. Then tied up and beaten. And then far, far worse. Sales of firearms and security systems would go up for months, as they always did after a heavily reported crime. Because Michael Barnes’s two-man team was going to leave an ugly mess. Whoever Gloria was working for would get the message, loud and clear.
CHAPTER 77
Backyard, Gloria Pruitt’s House, May 27, 9:29 p.m.
Through Leupold Mark 6 tactical night-vision scopes, Strunk and Dobson, Michael Barnes’s two-man team, looked like greenish apparitions. The lenses were zoomed to 8X, which was close enough to make the targets’ expressions clear. The taller man was gritting his teeth, like he was here for business that he was eager to be done with. But the smaller one appeared to be smiling ever so slightly. He was excited. There was no question he was looking forward to whatever he was about to do.
That expression was about to change.
The two baseball fans had their Phillies and Mets caps turned around backward. Not as any kind of fashion statement, but so that the bills of their caps didn’t obstruct their views through the night-vision scopes of their matching suppressed SR-25 sniper rifles. Most would argue that this weapon was the finest ever designed by Eugene Stoner (SR stood for Stoner Rifle) and manufactured by the Knight’s Armament Company. The SR-25 was a work of industrial art. Functional, beautiful, and lethal. The baseball fans carried the same weapon not only because they both preferred it, but also because redundancy was a good idea in any system. If one cog goes down, another is available to take its place, and the machine can keep right on functioning.
The baseball fans were lying prone on the ground about forty yards apart. Murphy, the Mets fan, had been here for hours, demonstrating masterful patience, but the Phillies fan, Giles, had only just arrived, shortly after the nurse. He had followed her from Harmony House to make sure she got there. Murphy had worked out their kill zone, which was generous by their standards, and directed his partner into position by speaking into the bone-conduction tactical headset positioned snugly against his larynx. Giles wore a matching headset. Both men could whisper at nearly inaudible volumes and still hear each other clearly.
Murphy moved his right index finger onto the trigger, gently applying consistent tension before he prepared to fully squeeze. He spoke almost silently. “One.”
Giles used a slightly different technique to prepare for firing his weapon: he gently pulsed his finger on the trigger in synch with his heart rate. This allowed him to make sure he pulled the trigger in between beats. A sniper learns never to fire on the beat, which can be unpredictable. No one’s heart beats perfectly every time. Exactly one second after he heard his partner’s voice, he responded quietly. “Two.”
Neither man said “three.” Instead, they simultaneously fired their .22-caliber suppressed sniper rifles. Fffwwt!
The muzzle flashes on either side of Michael Barnes’s men told them they were under attack, but Strunk and Dobson didn’t have time to react. They were taken by complete surprise. The two men were thirty feet from Gloria Pruitt’s kitchen door when their chests exploded. The entrance wounds were small compared with the gaping holes that exploded out their backs.
The gunfire was impressively quiet, and demonstrated recent improvements in suppression technology. In fact, the sound of the two bodies collapsing to the ground had created more of a ruckus than the guns. Branches cracked. Leaves crackled.
Was that thunder she heard? Did something fall out of a tree? Whatever it was, there was some kind of commotion going on outside Gloria’s window. She went to the back door and yelled out through the screen, “Is anybody there?”
Strunk didn’t move. He was already dead, lying on his back. But to the surprise of the baseball fans, who were watching through their infrared scopes, Dobson’s eyes were still blinking. His mouth was moving, but no words were coming out because his lungs, what was left of them, were full of blood.
Determined to find out what was going on, Gloria retreated inside her house to look for a flashlight. In the pantry, she opened the toolbox she kept for such emergencies. Of the three flashlights inside, only one worked, and this one barely. She took the dim flashlight and walked fearlessly out into her backyard. “Anybody back here?” She flashed the light around, moving it across the shrubs and trees until something on the ground caught her eye. Something red, which looked like blood. As she moved closer to the area, she became sure it was blood. There were two pools of it right next to each other, like two animals had just been killed there. Big animals.
But where were the bodies?
It occurred to her that whatever killed the two animals was still out there, and might still be hungry. There were confirmed recent sightings of coyotes in New Jersey. For all she knew, there might even be wolves. Gloria suddenly forgot all about the pain in her legs, and ran the ten yards to her kitchen door faster than she’d run any distance in years.
She locked and bolted the door. She shook her head while catching her breath, thanking the Lord for not punishing her bravado. He must have known she’d be going to church the next day, and decided to cut her some slack.