End of Days (Pike Logan #16)(15)
That needed to change. If a temple was to be built, Israel needed to assume control of the area, and the only way to do that was to force a confrontation that both religions clearly wanted, but heretofore had been afraid to wage. A push was needed to force the issue.
And so he was stationed on a small cutout for a highway that looked like a spaghetti noodle draped on the earth, waiting on the arrival of a poor political appointee from North Carolina, solely to kill him.
Raph said, “I’m behind him, and he’s driving slow. Taking his time.”
“Roger all. We’re ready. Give us a time hack at thirty seconds.”
The spit of gravel they were on was still in the mountains, right before the highway began dropping to the valley and coast below. Full of switchbacks, it held incredible views, and as such was frequently traveled for them alone, but it was also the perfect place for the magnetic mine. They could cut him off from all other traffic simply because of the winding nature of the road.
Michelangelo saw three cars pass by his position, all driving slowly because of the serpentine nature of the blacktop. He heard, “Thirty seconds,” and started the motorcycle.
He saw an Alfa Romeo Spider convertible pass his location, a man driving with a woman in the passenger seat. Right behind it was a Vespa scooter trying mightily to keep up. The scooter pulled into the cutout, and Mikey saw Raph flipping up the visor on his helmet. Mikey nodded and pulled out into the lane. The scooter followed, now driving much slower to clog any traffic that appeared behind them.
Mikey caught up to the convertible around a blind curve, now right behind it. He waited until they crested another switchback, then goosed the engine, pulling abreast of the car.
The man behind the wheel looked at him in confusion, wondering why he was trying to pass on a section of road that was potentially suicidal. But Michelangelo wasn’t trying to pass. He slowed next to the rear axle and behind him, Donnie pulled a strip of paper off from the top of his pipe like he was loading a new toner cartridge in a laser printer, flicked the rocker switch one more level, then slapped the magnetic mine right above the rear tire. Mikey laid off the gas and let the car continue forward.
Mikey saw the next hairpin turn growing closer, the four-foot rock wall along the side the only protection from falling into the valley below. The mine should go off before the turn, forcing the target to the side of the road.
Inexplicably, the Alfa Romeo sped up, racing wildly into the turn too fast by far. Mikey saw the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror, staring at him with fear on his face.
Not good. Not good.
The driver powered into the turn like he was auditioning for a movie, the car skidding through the curve with the rear end breaking contact with the pavement. And then the mine went off, shattering the rear axle just as the vehicle began to straighten out. The rear end of the vehicle bounced against the sheer rock wall of the mountain, then the vehicle ricocheted to the small barrier protecting the drivers from the drop below. Mikey saw the driver’s face, a look of terror, his mouth screaming, just as it hit the wall sideways. It flipped over the stone and turned upside down, the woman flung out of the vehicle in midair, the man held in place by his seat belt and the steering wheel.
Mikey went through the curve and pulled over next to the shattered brick of the wall. He ripped off his helmet, looking at the burning wreckage far below, seeing the woman’s body broken open on a ledge halfway down.
He shook his head and said, “What the fuck. What do we do now?”
Donnie said, “Get the hell out of here.”
“What about the letter. We can’t leave the letter. It’ll look like he was just a drunk. They won’t even find the explosive damage in that mess.”
“Nothing we can do about that now. Keep going. Get out of the blast radius. This mission is done.”
Chapter 10
Lia Vairo showed her badge at the door to the trailer and said, “Is it messy?”
The carabinieri at the entrance said, “Not like the other one. It’s pretty clean. Although the place is a mess. Pretty sure COVID would get its ass kicked in here fighting the other diseases. Might want to wear some gloves.”
She smiled and raised her hands, encased in thin latex. “Always.”
She entered to find a photographer she knew snapping pictures of the scene, along with an investigator already there and a coroner’s assistant she didn’t know examining the body. She said, “Hey, Jonathan. What do we have?”
Jonathan was nothing more than a recorder of events. He had no official stance as an investigator, but because of his job, Lia had found that he noticed things. Saw connections through his lens.
“My opinion? It’s the same guy.”
The investigator scoffed, aggravated at her appearance. He was much more experienced than Lia at murder scenes, and he clearly didn’t like her presence. Especially since she was in charge of the investigation. She was an impediment to his work. Nothing more than a social experiment to prove that Italy was diverse.
She ignored him, looking at the dead body on the mattress, lying flat with her panties still on but her half shirt raised to expose a single breast.
She said, “Why do you say that? The first had her throat cut, spraying blood all over the place. The second died from blunt force trauma. And this one?”
The coroner looked up and said, “Strangulation. Whoever it was choked her to death with his hands.”