XLII
The Man Who Killed Gods
As he stood at the doorway to space, he checked the suit's readings to make sure there was no damage or problems. One single step outside and there would be no gravity, no heat, no air. One little hole or defect and he was either a shooting star or space junk. Some may have called it fear. All readings checked. He took a deep breath and jumped from the CERN satellite to the Earth, a castaway in the inky darkness.
David Cain was only afraid of failure. A lifetime of murder came down to this… a new page in human history. The evolution of those who killed and those who died. He would come at them like the wrath of God and they would know his name. Death from above.
The League had used their affiliations in the war-torn nation of Kahndaq to place two hundred million dollars into Cain's Swiss account via terrorist slush funds. Let them think him a terrorist, he knew what he was. He was an assassin.
Four years ago the League had handed him a green-light application from an unknown employer. When the light turned green, he was to kill the American president. On the morning of the explosion in Kahndaq, when the desert skies became an emerald death, his light had turned also turned green. And one of the greatest minds of history, the man he called master, had given him the plan to kill the president.
And more.
He had taken what he needed from the satellite according to his master's plan and now his flight suit was rocketing downward towards the blue and white planet. Resistance was almost nonexistent until he hit the mesosphere. And then he felt the speed. He was falling fast.
Damned fast. The darkness of space fell behind him. As he entered the fiery blue of the sky, his propulsion system went into guidance mode…letting gravity take over. He had just broken the sound barrier in the mesosphere and was on his way to the stratosphere. This was screaming fast.
His stealth flight suit was handling re-entry admirably. He hadn't burned to a crisp yet. Its instrumentation were now making minute adjustments to his free-fall to coordinate his impact into history. The greatest Democratic party-crasher of all time! For a man with three minutes left to live, he was in a much better mood than he ought to be.
He could feel the heat of re-entry as he began to approach terminal velocity. The suit was designed to be flown face-first so that he could see where he was going…supposedly. Right now he saw the white landscape of cloud-tops approaching. His radar hadn't detected approaching aircraft yet... So far, so good. The stealth was holding and the League's insurance policy had come through.
Normally, even with their high-level infiltration, this plan wouldn't have stood a chance. Big Blue would have scooped him out of the air long before impact and that… as they say…would have been that. But not today. He was planning on Big Blue trying to stop him. The Kryptonite had been hard to obtain, but the League was always good at finding things, including the right people.
They had found him thirty years ago. A soldier. A killer. An assassin. Even if his victim could fly and bend steel girders with his bare hands, Cain would find a way. The assassin's greatest weapon had always been predictability and planning. If the victim had habits, a routine, a schedule… he would find a way.
Big Blue was as predictable as he was powerful. He protected the president without question or second thought. The perfect watchdog. That was the true kill today. The man who killed the god of the skies was something he requested on his tombstone. The other promise was that the League protect Cassandra. They owed him that.
Polonium-210 was child's play. Kryptonite poisoning - that was new to the League scientists. Still, they felt confident that one shot from the Kryptonite/titanium auto-injector would take Big Blue down. If not death, then at least disable him for a time. And that was all David Cain needed. Just three seconds to make sure the world knew he was the greatest assassin of all time and then Big Blue close ten seconds later so they would know the man who killed gods.
Author's Warning:
Next Chapter - Somebody dies.