"Is this line secure?" Aliza's voice was hushed, calm betraying none of the emotions that were bubbling just under the surface.
"Of course."
"Give me a moment." Aliza slipped out of bed and walked naked to her bedroom door. She looked back to make sure that Lily was still asleep, she was, and headed up the stairs to the main floor of the triplex apartment.
"Lester, kindly tell me what the hell you're doing calling me."
"What no 'good to hear from you old friend'. Not even a 'how are you'." God his sense of humor is still terrible, she thought.
"Good to hear from you old friend, how are you, why the hell are you calling me?" She headed for her study. She could count the number of reasons why a paranoid introvert such as Lester was contacting her on one hand, all of them would require weapons.
"You're in my neck of the woods, and I've got some very important things to talk to you about, you'll receive an address, come to it tomorrow, and come ready for some real action." The line went dead, typical Lester.
She checked the clock, it was three in the morning, certainly not the first time she'd been woken up in the middle of the night by a cryptic phone call since moving to Los Santos. Instead of going for her weapons chest as she'd planned, she went for her computer.
She opened her laptop and pulled a bottle of Pinot Noir and a glass from her desk drawers. She poured herself a glass and while she gave the wine a chance to breathe, she began her research. If they were calling her back in, something had to have gone completely to hell. She started with general search engines. Israel was launching another push into the West Bank to root out militants, important, but nothing that would pull her back in. Syria was still a mess, but that wasn't the kind of thing that she would be brought in for. A major player in Hezbollah had been killed, looked like the work of some of her old colleagues, nothing they'd need her for.
Taking a sip of the now aerated Pinot, she moved on to more specialized databases. A relatively large number of forensic accountants and financial counterterrorism specialists had recently been killed, relative because forensic accounting was not generally a high risk profession. The entries were all spread out across various intelligence databases and the details on how they were killed were all pretty vague. All of them were listed as killed in action, which eliminated natural causes for any of them. The sheer volume of deaths in such a specific category meant that they were connected. She searched for any mention of their deaths in their respective countries' news outlets and found none were being reported as terrorist attacks, a mugging here, a car accident there, a few domestic accidents spread around, it all reeked of a cover up. The most common trait was that each death was said to have happened outside of their home country.
She leaned back in her chair and nursed her wine while she processed the information. The deaths were connected, all of them were in the same field and all were listed to have died in the last few days. There was a chance of it being a coincidence, though not a large one. The fact that it had warranted a cover up meant that they had died under extreme circumstances, either they died in a terrorist attack or a country had arranged the series of assassinations. The multinational coordination in the cover up ruled out a country, so that meant it was a terrorist attack. The only question was why they hadn't been killed in a more dynamic way. Terrorists used bombs and AK's, not silencers and poisons. They were attention whores, a terrorist attack was about as subtle as a fireworks show, it should be all over the news.
Unless… a summit, it was the only thing that made sense to Aliza. A covert intelligence summit would be out of public view, explaining the lack of news coverage, multinational, explaining the coordination, and they were usually specialized to one facet of intelligence, explaining the specific professions of the dead. Terrorists being able to locate, infiltrate, and strike a secure clandestine gathering such as that would certainly be embarrassing enough to warrant a cover up. It was the only thing that made sense, but her mind kept going back to the fact that it wasn't on the news. Even with a covert attack and a well-executed cover up, the group responsible would still be all over news outlets and social media touting their victory. It just wasn't the way terrorists worked…
"Never picked you for a morning drinker," Aliza caught sight of Lily standing in the doorway. She slowly turned around, taking in all of the delightful curves of the naked woman's form.
"Only when work calls at ungodly hours of the night." Lily was a knockout, no question about it, her plastic surgeon was incredibly good. Though there were very few things that could be hidden from someone who had gotten as close as Aliza had. Despite this, there was no spark between them, the sex was wild, it was intense, but it was just that, sex.
"Problems?" Aliza finished the last of her glass, Lily's question was actually quite valid. Was it a problem, was it her problem? Barely a year ago she'd stepped on a plane to Liberty City, swearing that she was moving on with her life, was she really willing to just jump back into it.
"An old friend called me, the market took a nasty hit. Knowing him, he'll want my investment in one of his ventures. I'm trying to decide whether to play it safe and hold back or take my chances and see how it all turns out. He wants to meet today." Lily was under the impression that Aliza was a former call girl turned day trader. It was always best to stick to one cover as often as possible.
"I don't know much about stocks, but I think you should take the meeting. If you like what you hear say yes, if not, say no. What's the worst that could happen?" Aliza could think of a few things, but Lily had a point.
"Either way, I'm going to grab a shower, feel free to join me." With that Lily spun on her heel and headed for the bathroom.
Aliza smirked, Lily was right, what was the harm in taking the meeting.
With that thought, she stood, decided that some morning aerobics were in order, and headed for the shower.
…
The address was a park, odd choice for a meeting of the nature that Aliza expected. She scanned the area as she pulled up to the curve on her Bati, but Lester was nowhere to be found. Her phone buzzed, connecting to the Bluetooth in her helmet.
"Glad you could make it commander, there's a man in a red dress shirt coming out of the public bathrooms to your left, he's just delivered a suicide vest with several pounds of military grade semtex to a home grown militant. If you're ready to get back into the big leagues again, answer this, do you have visual confirmation on the target?"
The old habits kicked in and before her conscious mind had even registered it, she'd identified the man in question and began mentally mapping her possible approaches. She was back in that field operations state of mind, a state of mind developed from training to allow for split second decision making.
True to form, her decision came in less than a second, "Visual confirmation achieved, it's too messy to engage the courier here, no solution."
"Trail him until the opportunity presents itself." Lester was acting oddly professional, that most likely meant he had someone standing over his shoulder. This was a test.
"And the recipient?" He was most likely still in the public bathroom, it would be tricky, but it was possible, and he was the more immediate threat.
"Forget him, he's handled, focus on the courier." So that meant that there was at least one more operator on this job, so far that amounted to a bare minimum of a three man team.
"Soft or hard," did they want her to make it look like an accident, just kill him, or did they want to send a message.
"Handle it however the opportunity presents itself." So she could kill him in whatever way she wanted, good that made things easier.
Her target walked up to a grey sedan and got in, "target is leaving in a grey sedan. Do we have technical support?"
"The traffic grid is at my fingertips, as long as he's in the city, I've got eyes on him." Good, that would make tailing him much easier. She gave Lester the make, model, and license plate number of the car as she waited for him to get a decent distance away then sped after him. She lost sight of him as he turned at an intersection.
She turned onto the street he'd gone down, but he was nowhere to be found. "I've lost visual contact, give me a path Lester."
"Go straight down the road your on and take a right." She did as she was told, but there was still no sign of the courier.
"Left at the next intersection, then another right." It was becoming more and more clear that the courier was running counter-surveillance, twists and turns to ensure no one was following him. It continued like this for some time, the courier kept making random turns, going off in one direction, doubling back, speeding up, and slowing down. All of it standard procedure for any half decent criminal or terrorist, nothing that she hadn't dealt with before. Lester's technical support with the traffic cameras rendered the entire affair pointless.
She trailed him at a safe distance until he finally seemed to be moving toward his destination.
"He's getting onto the interstate, there aren't as many cameras."
Aliza took his meaning, "Understood, reestablishing visual contact."
She weaved through the spaces between the cars until she was about two cars behind the courier. This entire operation felt off, the hit could have just as easily have taken place in the bathroom with the recipient of the suicide vest, it would have been simpler and involved less risk. Then there was the fact that a suicide vest was on American soil to begin with. If they were in the Middle East it would've been a normal operation. Africa, sure, Asia, less likely but possible, Europe, highly unlikely but still viable, but the United States? Either there were new pipelines coming into the west coast, or someone had lied to her.
They were nearing Chumash when the courier turned into the drive of a beach house. Aliza pulled her motorcycle into a parking lot in front of the house. She assessed her chances, the house was relatively similar to those surrounding it. A condo with a great deal of windows two levels of balconies looking over a gated inner courtyard. If she had one of her long rifles, she'd have attempted a shot from one of the ridges facing the house. But she hadn't, she'd only brought close range weaponry, a silenced pistol, a high quality garrote, a vial of one of her poisons.
All in all, she didn't much like her chances of a frontal assault, she could see at least one other person in the house, and she wanted to do this cleanly.
"Lester, a frontal assault is out of the question, I need an alternative entrance." Lester was quiet for a few moments, then finally spoke.
"There's a back door facing the beach, I've hacked the house's security system, it'll be unlocked." Aliza grabbed the garrote and the pistol from the saddle bags on her Bati, tucking them both into a handbag she'd also brought in the saddlebags. She left the jacket on her bike, it would make her look out of place on the beach. It was a bit of a walk to get around the condos and onto the beach, but it wasn't long before she found what she was looking for. There was a stairway leading from the beach up to a pair of French doors.
She pulled a yoga mat out of her handbag and went through the poses, using each one to scan the beach. It wasn't exactly the best day for seaside fun, being mid-December. This worked for and against her, it meant there was less of a risk of her being spotted, but it also meant that if anyone saw her, she'd stand out more.
Once she was reasonably certain that no one was watching her, she made her way up the stairs to the French doors, just as Lester said. One thing caught her attention though, the lock, it was a simple chain. Lester was good, but no amount of computer skill could hack a titanium chain. Either the courier was dumb enough to leave his back door unlocked, unlikely for someone who could move a suicide vest on U.S. soil. Either that, or the far more likely option, Lester had lied to her.
That… was unacceptable.
She brushed those thoughts aside for a moment, regardless of the circumstances, she was too far into the operation to pull out now. She had to see this through.
She moved through each room, she didn't try to hide her presence, she adopted a comfortable confident gait as if she had every right to be there. There were two distinct approaches to infiltration, one was to make sure no one saw you, the other was to make no one question your presence. She was adept at both, but preferred the latter.
It was all modern chique, but overdone. She liked modern styles, but not to when it was excessive. This place was just trying too hard. None of the furniture even looked comfortable, she found the man she'd seen from outside passed out on the couch with a needle in his arm. She shook her head, she hated heroin.
She heard the shower running downstairs, she'd found her target. She made her way into what appeared to be a guest room connecting to the garage. Sure enough, laying in a clothes hamper was the red dress shirt her target had been wearing. She removed the garrote from her hand bag and got into a decent position.
Ten minutes later, the man walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist.
The garrote wire was around his throat before he could react, he thrashed and tried to get a grip on Aliza as the wire dug into his jugular and carotid artery. He stopped struggling after about eight seconds, she waited until they hit the thirty second mark to make entirely sure that he was dead.
She let his corpse fall to the ground and flipped him over, snapping a quick picture with her phone.
She sent Lester a text with the picture and a single sentence before exfiltrating.
Mission accomplished, we need to talk.
Missed my deadline by about 4 hours, but otherwise successful, I wasn't going to have the assassination in this chapter, but the last chapter was so dialogue heavy that I figured we needed Aliza to kill someone.
I'm not going to give myself deadlines anymore, school and work are taking more and more of my time, but I'll still try and maintain some level of regularity with my posts.
R&R people.