Chapter Three: Exit Pursued by a Bear

For weeks now, Randy O'Neil had been practicing his next moves. As his hands mechanically went about their prearranged tasks of quickly breaking down the Heckler and Koch MSG3 rifle, stock, and stand, his eyes kept track of the approaching figure of the Brit.

Bond had just cleared the traffic on the street separating them as O'Neil completed the dismantling of the H&K. He was not to take the weapon with him; instead, he threw the pieces of the rifle into its companion case whose lining was filled with a magnesium-based compound. After peeling off his target gloves and placing them next to the rifle, he pressed the delayed ignition button on the small wick he'd been given and tossed the matchbook sized device into the case as he'd been instructed.

"God dammit," he muttered to himself as he checked Bond's position again. The guy moved pretty well for someone his age, the newly minted assassin realised. The Brit had removed his dinner jacket as he approached the twelve-foot fence surrounding the warehouse. In what seemed to O'Neil as one fluid movement, the oncoming man slung his jacket over the circled barbed wire topping the fence, climbed the barrier in two quick strides, rolled over his jacket at the top, and landed on his feet on the far side.

"British diplomat my ass," the boy spat, mocking the words of the woman who had given him this assignment. He could not sit around and watch the man any further. The target was closing on him quickly, and he had very specific instructions not to engage him. Besides, he didn't want to be anywhere near the gun case when the two-minute fuse ran down, the damn things burned as bright and as hot as a blast furnace. He had three possible escape routes from the building from which he chose the easiest and most direct.

The warehouse had worn many hats over the years. It had stood since the 1940's when it had entered the world as a factory for the production and storage of dried milk. There was still a sour smell to the place, too, either that, or the boy's imagination had been dwelling on the building for too many days. Its most recent occupant had been a tool and dye shop that had gone under a few years ago. The ground floor was a cavernous six and a half acres of open space with a few offices scattered about for the foremen. Here and there were the strewn remains of the drill presses and boring mills that couldn't be sold when bankruptcy had been declared. The second floor, where Randy now fled the room where he'd committed his first and last murder, was all office space. The second floor hallway circled the entire building and overlooked the work floor like a catwalk. This way, he presumed, the management was never too far separated from the guts of the business, a constant reminder, as well as providing them with great oversight as to what was going on down on the floor.

"Know your surroundings," Gibbons had told them in the deserts of Syria. "It gives you a great edge when you become the stalkee instead of the stalker. A sniper, once the shot is taken, is almost always outnumbered. Have secondary weapons, and be ready to use them, but the keys to your survival will be maintaining as many edges as you can keep over your opposition. The easiest of these, is to study and know your surroundings."

Randy O'Neil's education as a discriminate killer had begun just after his fifteenth birthday, when he'd been sent to Ireland under the auspices of his father, Gregory O'Neil. His father was a die hard Sein Finn man who had been very successful in raising hundreds of thousands of pounds in the United States to help support the party back in Ireland. His father was a bit soft, however. He believed there could be non-aggressive solutions to the problems confronting their homeland, even though there had been more than a hundred-year history of armed resistance now. How the man thought the Brits would just give away their jewel after all the spilled blood, Randy would never understand. Gregory had supported the cessation of armed resistance in August of 1994, and had been enthralled with the idea of his son travelling to a peaceful Ireland. The party had paid for his flight, and also sponsored the youth hostel he'd stayed in while in Belfast.

The Sein Fein men he'd met in Ireland, some of the higher-ups in the Republican Army, had a great influence on the already impressionable mind they'd found in the fifteen-year-old son of their great American ally. He'd been in Ireland in September of 1995, and had been there in person to watch Gerry Adams reject the declaration of the British when they demanded that the IRA surrender their arms.

Those brave men who were actually fighting the battle became his true heroes. Tom Barry, who ran the hostel where young Randy spent his days, was the great, great grandson of one of the original guerrilla warriors that had raised street warfare to an art form. He'd filled Randy with four generations worth of stories of the armed rebellion, and three days before Randy was to leave for the United States, he offered him the opportunity to become involved himself.

"We need people to form a strong network of support," he'd told the boy.

"Like my father?" Randy had asked, not being too thrilled with the prospects of becoming a professional beggar like his old man.

Barry had simply shaken his head.

"Your father provides a valuable service to the cause, but although his heart is in the right place, his hands are not. He's second generation outside the homeland and does what he does out of patriotism. An honourable goal, but one lacking when it comes to physically giving of yourself, to put your life and soul in danger. Your father didn't grow up on the streets of Belfast, getting kicked to pieces by Brit goon squads, hav'n his own pa come home one day white-faced because the English wanted to torture betraying words from his mouth. You, my lad, you could be that type of man."

This was one of the first times in the boy's life he'd been referred to as a man, without the prefix of "young" having been applied. The significance was not lost upon him.

"What do you want me to do then?" Barry smiled at this, the fish had been baited and hooked, just as he'd done with countless others at the "hostel".

"There comes times when there are missions (Barry stressed this word, taking glee in watching the adventure flare in Randy's eyes) that need to be carried out overseas. Our enemies are on guard in Ireland, and they're none to at ease in London, but when they go abroad, they relax. They become…. vulnerable."

"An assassin…you want me to be a hit man?"

"No." Here, Barry was stressful. "We want you to be a soldier. You would carry a rank, you would be trained in weaponry, and you would be a true patriot in every sense. Hands on, real world stuff."

A brigadier of the IRA, the boy thought. At a time when most of his friends back home were worried about scoring Pearl Jam tickets and making the varsity football team, he would be a troop in a century old war to free the Irish homeland for democratic rule.

"How?" Simple and direct, his soul had been sold.

"This time next year, the summer of your sixteenth birthday, you will once again be our guest. Your father will receive such good reports of your stay that he will be honoured to have you visit again, he'll see it as a chance to improve his standing within the party. Hell, we'll even send you home with an autographed picture of Gerry Adams and John Hume so he can hang it above the old mantle. When you arrive, you'll go through the equivalent of what your fellow Americans call boot camp. You will become familiar with not just the tools of the trade, but with the history of the struggle itself. You will work among heroes, and maybe even become one yourself."

The picture hadn't ended up above the non-existent mantle, but instead resided in his father's study above the senior O' Neil's writing desk. In February of the next year, Gregory had already agreed to let Randy return to the homeland when the IRA announced it would resume military action against Great Britain.

That year had been filled with dreams of glory. Randy let his friendships back home wither and die unattended, becoming an outcast at his school, a shadow who never spoke and just blended into the surroundings. His school councillor at Sam Houston High attributed the change to a natural stage of social development, after all, the grades were still high, and the boy was absolutely dominating his history courses. He spent his free hours working out at the school track or weight room and then onto the firing range with the Glock he'd begged his father into giving him for his sixteenth birthday.

When he reunited with Tom the next summer, he only ended up spending a few days in Ireland. Barry wouldn't even tell him where the training was going to take place, he only knew it would be somewhere in the Middle East.

The four weeks he spent in what he found out later to be Syria were full of painful, but exhilarating, memories. There were five other boys snuck out of Ireland with him, and not one of them was an Irish national. They were all referred to as Tom's Boys, and had all been guests at the hostel at one time or another. Two of them were Canadian, one English, one Australian, and one was Slavic, from some dot country in middle Europe Randy couldn't even pronounce.

The course they were put through had been gruelling and intense. Their days began at five in the morning and ended as late as one or two the morning of the next day. They rested during meals and brief latrine breaks, but otherwise, it was a steady diet of man-to-man combat, rifle training, strategy sessions, and tactical analysis of different possible situations. During his time there, he'd made several calls home to his father to assure him he was having a wonderful time touring the homeland. Tom routed the calls through Dublin, he'd even been provided with a few postcards filled out beforehand, and then posted from Ireland over the course of weeks.

When he eventually returned home to Houston, Randy's hands and heart had become deeply calloused. The distancing he'd felt from his peers the previous year had now become a canyon; he was a man amongst boys. As he walked down the halls of his school his junior year of high school, he would analyse each person he passed, assessing weak points and possible take down manoeuvres. Randy would even be banned from intramural Tae kwan do sessions, due to his overtly aggressive behaviour. All he'd done was remove a schoolmate's arm from its socket. He scoffed at the weakness of the American youth about him and their lack of understanding when it came to real world politics and the levels to which people had to rise or sink to make mortal decisions.

His new brothers in the IRA had told the six boys upon the completion of their training that they would be sent home as operatives and if the opportunity arose for them to help achieve the goal of a free and democratic Ireland, they would be contacted. All the tools they would need would be provided; all the information they would need would be made available to them.

So it came to be that in the summer of his seventeenth birthday, Randy had received a telephone call from Tom, telling him he wanted him to pick up a friend of his at the airport. He was to tell his father the truth, that an acquaintance of the man who ran the hostel in Ireland was coming into town, and that she would require a ride from the airport to her hotel in the town centre. Gregory O' Neil had of course wanted to accompany his son, it didn't seem right that he would be escorting a young woman to a hotel room, but Randy had dissuaded him with an abrupt and forceful "No."

There was a time when Gregory would have chastised his son for having spoken that way with him, but that time had passed. Randy was now a muscular, and in all honesty, frightening individual.

The woman had been a flawless as she was nameless. Her voice was deep and raspy, what Randy thought the actress Kathleen Turner might sound like with an Irish lilt, but her body was Demi Moore all the way. She had the physique of a female bodybuilder, and was more than intimidating to a boy such as Randy.

The ride from the airport in his father's Oldsmobile had been spent in awkward silence. Tom hadn't gone into details over the phone, for obvious reasons, so the woman's rank and mission were unknowns. He couldn't help letting his eyes wander to his passenger though. She wore a long sleeved black silk blouse, and matching black slacks. Along with her black shoes, nylons, hair, and sunglasses she was almost void of any colour whatsoever. The one exception was her green necklace, which was dotted with small emerald shamrocks. Her breasts were obviously unrestrained beneath the silk top, and Randy was amazed at how they defied gravity and remained afloat beneath the shimmering blouse, if he'd been a little older he may have been able to attribute this to breast enhancement surgery, but to his young eyes, they were a miracle of nature.

"Are ya done starin'?" she'd asked him about three blocks from the hotel. The words hadn't been sharp, but neither had they been an invitation. He had the impression she didn't mind his appreciative glances, but that there was work to be done.

"I… I'm sorry, Miss…" he'd sputtered.

"Leave it," she commanded, and he obeyed. "This is important work afoot, Lad, and I'll not have your mind wandering."

Once inside the nondescript room at the Hilton, she seemed to relax some. She pulled forth from her luggage a black leather folder one might associate with a businesswoman.

The woman sat down on a corner of the bed with the folder and motioned for him to join her. His brief well of excitement was quickly squashed, however.

"It's as close as yer ever gonna get to sharing one of these with me, Boy," she spat. Once again, he did as he was told.

She opened the folder, and the face of a man immediately leapt out at him from a photograph. It wasn't a studio shot, but it was a very well done profile, most likely taken with a zoom lens. The shot had been taken outside of a grey building, which the gentleman appeared to be entering. He was rather average in appearance, lacking in many of the facial markers he'd been trained to recognize when remembering faces. There was a very distinct scar running down his left cheek though, and his dark hair and ruthless look gave him a slightly dashing quality that certainly would make him popular with the ladies.

The woman sat quietly while he digested the photograph in front of him.

Was he the one that was to end this man's life?

"His name is James Bond. He's a British diplomat and we have very good reason to believe he will be frequenting this area soon. He has acquaintances that live nearby, their names and addresses are included in the briefing," she motioned her head toward the picture and the documents beneath.

She was rushing, Randy realised. He took in her black, leather folder with a quick glance and noted there were at least 20 folders similar to the one given to him.

"Is he the target?" Randy asked. She recoiled at this, and quickly looked about the room. When she spoke again, it was in a venomous whisper.

"They told me your training was excellent, Boy, that you excelled in weaponry and that you were mentally sharp. I assume you have already checked this room for monitoring devices, but to speak openly is not wise. Just read the file."

"If there are any confirmed bookings for this man, or any known aliases, at any local airports, train stations, or rental car agencies you will be informed immediately. Otherwise, keep a close eye on the house noted in the briefing. Upon a confirmed sighting, you will be given some tools. This is an important man, Randy," this was the first time she'd spoken his name. "He has committed high crimes against our people, and to aid in the slaying of such a monster would be an honourable and decorated service."

She reached out and took his hand in hers.

"Do not fail, do not let this man see you until you want him to. Screw up, and we may kill you before he does."

The threats had not been necessary, but he understood why they'd been issued; they just wanted to convey the gravity of the situation.

The cripple, Leiter, was the man whose house he had been assigned to monitor. According to the briefing, the man was a former colleague and friend of Bond's. It hadn't been an unpleasant assignment, the guy's girlfriend was a looker, and the two of them worked out in the pool, and often made love while doing so. It sickened the boy to see the legless, armless, man manipulating the flesh of such a beautiful woman, but at the same time, the show was worth the price of admission.

The file told him Leiter used a Beretta 9mm and was a Pinkerton detective, as well as a former operative of the CIA, and was graded as a first class shot with his good arm.

After two months of observing, the first E-mail came. It was from Tom, and was quite simple and to the point; a flight number and the man's assumed name, John Bryce. There was also a query as to when his father would be away for at least several hours. Randy laughed at this last bit, a better question would have been, when would his father be home for more than a couple of hours?

"Good Luck, Boyo," the message had ended. "And happy hunting."

Randy replied, and the very next day, while his father was at yet another fundraiser, a very nondescript man driving a white Chevy van, whose plates were covered with brown paper, delivered the H&K. The gun and case were wrapped in the same butcher paper, and after hurriedly unwrapping them like an expectant child beneath the Christmas tree; he laid the case, gun, and ammunition upon his bed and marvelled at their beauty for several minutes.

The barrel had a note rolled about it. Randy smiled as he began to read the brief. The cripple's woman, Needy, had purchased four tickets to a Bocelli concert. The target was to be Bond's companion, if that companion were female. Randy knew this was inevitable after having read the man's personality profile. If the companion was not female, he was to take out Leiter. Just as a reminder of the words of the woman in black, he was not to harm Bond, and was to attempt to avoid any confrontation with the man if possible.

* * *

As Bond began to hammer at the door of the warehouse, giving the rusted doorframe a few test kicks to gauge its strength, Randy took a running leap off of the catwalk.

The mattresses he'd placed below a few days before broke his fall efficiently, if not gracefully. He'd taken eight practise jumps prior to this one, using the standard pole-vaulting flop. His first attempt had been a disaster; the recoil from the mattresses and the twenty-five foot drop had flung him back in the air and onto the cold concrete. During a later jump, his right leg had become trapped beneath him and his ankle had been twisted. These traumas had been worth his attention, however, as he completed the jump. The mattresses now smelt of urine, and the bitter stink stuck with him as he rolled to the edge of his landing pad.

As he regained his feet, he felt the athletic tape straining against his right ankle. It was wrapped tightly, and felt secure, he was sure he would have little difficulty in beating the Brit in a footrace if it were to come to that, but there would be no outrunning bullets. Randy reached down to the front pocket of the loose black windbreaker he'd worn, and felt the reassuring weight of his contingency plan, just in case he came face to face with Mr. Diplomat.

Placing a few boring mills between him and the entrance Bond was banging on, Randy scampered across the structure toward the far door.

* * *

James Bond halted his attacks on the door for a moment and placed his ear against the steel postern. Covering his other ear to block out the sound of the sirens of the approaching emergency vehicles, he could faintly hear the flight of fading footfalls. Bond's first thoughts of a lone assassin had been correct, and if he didn't move quickly, the bastard would be away before Sam's body had even begun to grow cold.

With the last on his mind, Bond reared back and unleashed a mighty kick at the already yielding frame. He took a quick, shielded look inside the warehouse. There was no gunfire, only the now distant footfalls of the assailant. Bond bolted through the door and into the long shadows and dim light of the shop.

He moved to his right trying to establish a line of fire. The high, heavy-glassed windows rimming the structure provided wan lighting, and as Bond cleared one of the huge presses, he was able to sight his target. The man was little more than a glint of shadow in the darkness, a fleeting figure that was almost to the far side of the building, where 007 was certain the attacker would have a vehicle waiting.

The hundreds of hours logged at the Maidstone Police Station had honed his skills to automatic fineness. The Beretta was raised in the right hand, the left cradling the weapon's handle, the feet slightly staggered and shoulder length apart. He judged the distance and aimed appropriately high. There was no dramatic Hollywood-style pause, the action was immediate and instinctive as three quick bursts rose from the weapon, the latter two quickly adjusted for recoil and aim. A handgun at such a distance was never a preferred weapon, and with the dim lighting Bond could not be discriminating enough to attempt to just wound the assassin. He would rather piece together a corpse's mystery than have him escape altogether. He heard at least two of his shots ricochet against machinery, but thankfully the figure gave a yelp and then folded to the floor.

Bond advanced cautiously, gun still raised. The man on the floor now scampered on his haunches toward the nearby cover of some office cubicles.

"Stop immediately!" Bond shouted, not really expecting a response. "Lie on your stomach and place your arms away from you body, flat on the floor!"

James Bond let loose a second volley of shots into the cubicles and was rewarded with the sound of breaking glass. The shots were meant as a warning, but the assassin seemed not to care. He was out of sight now behind the floor offices, about twenty feet from the door he'd been fleeing to. As Bond drew closer, he could see the door stood wide open to the night, and he could well imagine the idling car that was surely waiting outside. Someone had thought things through very well, foreseeing what direction pursuit would come from, and clearing an exit.

He was now passing the offices on his left, about fifteen meters from where the fleeing assailant had crawled from sight. The offices were nothing more than drywall propped up by cheap standards; a bullet would pass through this thin skin like a bear through a spider's web. The man could be on the far side crouching, following Bond's footfalls with his gun, but the agent had no intention of being the victim of some well-timed probing shots. He made the edge of the offices and quickly jerked his head around the corner to see how the ground lay, and then yanked it back. Although the light was dim, he didn't have to see far. The body lay crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood that appeared black in the faded gloom.

James Bond rounded the corner with the gun still trained on the nearly lifeless figure. He could still see the man's chest rising and falling He then repeated his earlier instructions.

"Lie on your stomach."

The man did not move, he was either unconscious, or feigning it well.

"Place your arms…."

This was when the whooshing noise came from behind him, and the scene was suddenly lit with flames. A bright fireball erupted through the second storey floor and came crashing down amongst the machinery. Bond averted his head for only a few moments to observe the chaos, but when he turned back to the body a force struck him in the chest. It was as if someone had slammed him with a hundred-pound medicine ball directly to the sternum. He was driven to his knees, and then into unconsciousness.

* * *

Randy had never been shot before. Two of the boys he'd been with in Syria had been clipped during live drills. Neither had been serious, and Randy had just assumed their stays in "Mother Ireland" would be prolonged until the scars could be explained away.

He was not so lucky, however. The bullet had deflected off something to his right and had torn into his buttocks as he fled. When he made the cover of the offices, Randy had curled on the ground with his back to where Bond would eventually appear, clutching his insurance to his chest. As he felt the blood running down his haunches, pumping from his body to pool about him, he concentrated on ignoring the pain and focussing a visual image in his mind of Bond's approach. He could sense the Brit as he rounded the corner, and stood over his victim, gloating at his own marksmanship, while all the time Randy lay there, playing possum, counting the seconds until the rifle's case would melt down and send the damn building to a fiery grave.

When the explosion finally came, and Randy could feel Bond's attention averted, he twisted his body to face the man, extended his right arm, and released 30,000 volts into Bond's chest.

The Taser had been his mother's before her untimely death. A present from his father to assure that his wife had the "safety she needed in such an unsafe world," as the literature read. Too bad the thing couldn't fend off cancer, the boy bitterly mused to himself.

The three coiled wires shot out and pronged into Bond's chest. The man's back immediately arched as Randy watched the blue charge leap across the wires. The "diplomat's" mouth was agape and his eyes were wide, staring in shock at Randy, but he really wasn't sure if they were seeing anything at all as the man collapsed to the ground and twitched a few times like a landed trout.

Randy O' Neil didn't stick around to observe much more. He'd been given instructions not to harm Bond, and he hadn't. Baring a heart condition, the man would be up in a few minutes time, and by then, Randy would be safely deposited in the stolen Jeep's driver's seat, miles away from the burning warehouse. He paused for a moment, wondering if Bond would come to and get out of what was sure to become an inferno, but he was damned if he would drag this man outside while his butt bled like a stuck pig, and the cops had time to figure out what the hell was going on.

As best as he could, Randy ran for the door. The night beckoned him with a cool Houston breeze, but as he cleared the opening, an arm swung out of the night, an arm with a hook where a hand should have been.

The sharpened black prosthetic ripped into the boy's shoulder as the forward momentum of his body swung his legs out from underneath him. The owner of the hook took advantage of this awkward flight and slammed Randy's body to the ground. Randy could not remember such pain in his life; a bullet imbedded in his ass, and a cripple's hook, which was still lodged underneath his right clavicle.

"Just like haying back on Uncle Marty's farm," he heard Leiter mutter. When Randy finally opened up his eyes against the pain he saw Felix now stood above him with another 9 mm about three feet from his face and aimed therein. The hook was still buried in his shoulder, the man had just unattached the thing and left it dangling there.

Leiter saw the boy staring at the device, and offered up an explanation.

"Stuck," he explained. "Anchored underneath the collar bone. You're just damned lucky I didn't aim higher. That was a mighty fine lady you just killed, Shith**d. I should have buried the thing in your eye socket and been done with it. But this way…we get to know each other a little better. By the way, where's my friend?"

Randy, still in shock, couldn't answer with anymore than a whimper that would soon be evolving into sobs, but just the turning of his eyes toward the door was good enough for Felix.

"You in there, James?" he shouted into the smoky blackness beyond the door.

At first there came a groan, and then a string of epithets as 007 dragged himself to his feet.

By the time Bond had made it to the door, Randy had regained some of his composure and was becoming difficult.

"We need to get clear of here," Bond muttered, rubbing a hand across his now aching skull. "The boy must have lit the place after the shot."

Felix nodded as Randy began to babble.

"I don't know what the hell you two are talking about. I was just hanging out in there, scoping out spots to bring my girl to. I didn't light any fire, and I sure as hell didn't shoot anybody. Where the f**k's your evidence? My dad's an important man and he's gonna be pissed"

Bond looked at Felix and rolled his eyes, and then motioned toward the idling Jeep, it would make an appropriate exit vehicle.

The once straw-haired Texan, who now had a fair share of grey blossoming at the temples, looking down at the whining boy and smiled. Not the smile of someone in good humour, but the grin of someone who'd just lost a loved one, and was ready to unleash some suffering of his own.

"Aw, you were doin' so well, Kid," he spat as reached down with his stub of an arm to help Bond drag the boy to his feet. "The police won't ever see your butt, and in case you haven't read, the CIA doesn't give a crap about evidence. As far as your dad's ever gonna know, you're just another runaway."

This said, Randy began to panic, but before he could scream, Felix gave him a merciful butt with the hilt of the gun just behind his ear.