The Speed of Sound (Speed of Sound Thrillers #1)(91)
Barnes had purchased the home when he first started working for Dr. Marcus Fenton, because it was cheap, it afforded him the privacy he required, and Swedesboro and Woolwich Township were close, but not too close, to Woodbury and Harmony House. Seventeen minutes, door to door, and there was never any traffic. It didn’t bother him that the place was a dump.
The property was dimly lit by design. Barnes liked it that way. It gave the impression that the home’s resident was careless, and gave him a tactical advantage against most types of threat. The only light at the rear of the property came from the temporary work light Barnes had strung up across one of the storage shed’s beams. He had backed his Impala to the shed’s sagging entrance in part to block any view of his activities, as well as to reduce the distance he’d have to carry the unearthed containers. The first box was already in his back seat. The container had just barely fit, which was no coincidence. It was the largest container that would fit through the door. The second box would similarly squeeze into the vehicle’s trunk.
Barnes was sweating as he hoisted the second container out of the ground. It had only been buried two feet beneath the ground’s surface, and the box weighed no more than 150 pounds, but it felt to him like twice that much. Barnes thought to himself that maybe he really was getting too old for this shit. Given how radically his life was about to change, he found the notion reassuring. He had made this choice because it was his only choice. In a universe of one option, you take it.
Barnes dragged the container to the rear of his car, and paused to take a breath. That was when he saw it: a single, partial boot print in the driveway dirt, which had never been paved for exactly this reason. He had visitors. Barnes’s tactical neural computer instantly cranked up to an uncountable number of calculations per second, and went something like this: The print was the right heel of a combat boot made by Altama or Belleville, both of which were military approved, AR 670 compliant. The size was approximately twelve, which meant the size of his enemy was approximately 6’1” and 190 pounds. The adversary most certainly had training similar to his own, which meant he wouldn’t have come alone. He had at least one associate with him, and possibly more. Barnes was outnumbered.
These were elite hired professionals working in a clandestine service few knew existed. And at least one of them could see him at this very second. The only piece of the equation that didn’t add up was why he was still alive. It was a matter that would be resolved in the next three seconds.
The target looked like a greenish apparition through the Leupold Mark 6 tactical night-vision scopes trained on him from opposite sides of the property. The National League East fans had arrived shortly after the home’s owner had returned, but it had taken them longer than expected to get into desirable firing positions. The property was a ramshackle obstacle course: storage bins, stacks of tires, a dilapidated greenhouse, rusting lawn furniture, and a broken-down canned-ham trailer that looked like it hadn’t been touched in decades. There were old strings of Christmas lights strung up around the property, some sagging so badly they almost touched the ground. It was all so haphazardly scattered about that there was no way they could possibly know that everything had been placed for very specific reasons known only to the maze’s designer.
The baseball fans, however, would find out soon enough.
Thirty yards from his partner, Murphy whispered into his bone-induction tactical headset, gently applying consistent tension in preparation for squeezing the trigger of his SR-25. “One.”
Giles pulsed his trigger finger on his identical weapon. “Two.” As the two men fired in perfect unison exactly one second later, something unexpected happened. Barnes ducked. He dropped to the ground as if his legs had suddenly given out, collapsing right behind the storage container, which was bulletproof. Barnes’s instincts had saved his life, but hadn’t saved him from being wounded. Murphy’s .22-caliber bullet clipped Barnes’s right ear, removing the upper portion of it, which fell to the ground like an undercooked piece of chicken sausage. Giles’s hollow point ripped through Barnes’s left shoulder, causing enough structural damage that replacement would be his only option for returning to full function. That was, if he survived the night. But it was his nonshooting shoulder, so at least he had a fighting chance.
The National League East fans watched him hide behind the storage case, which was large enough to conceal his body. Murphy said quietly, “Son of a bitch got lucky.”
Giles never blinked. “Not for long.”
Murphy carefully scanned for a glimpse of the target. “We have that same case.”
Giles recognized it, too, remembering that the reason they had selected it was the reason it was being used now. “No point trying to shoot through it, then.”
Neither took any action. In this game of chess, it was their opponent’s move.
Barnes was in excruciating pain. But the searing sensation only seemed to further sharpen his senses. The game was on, and it was being played on a field of his design. He had a true advantage. He knew exactly where on the property grid the two shots had been fired from. He also knew exactly how best to approach them.
Barnes’s first order of business was to neutralize their night vision, which he assumed they were using, because it was what he would do. Employing the storage container as a shield, he pulled it with him as he crawled backward, deeper into the shed. Reaching the rear wall, he grabbed a section of pipe from a stack of them, and used it to reach up and flick an old light switch. With the click of the mechanism, the entire property lit up like a Christmas tree, quite literally. The old, sagging strings all worked perfectly. They might not have been stadium lights, but they were enough to temporarily blind anyone not expecting them. Barnes took out his handgun.