Rotten Politics

The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps. Proverbs 16:9 (ESV)

The bitter wind from the day before had spent itself. This November day was warmer, marginally, but without the torturous biting breeze so common with Texas cold fronts in the late fall. Only warm or inside activities should be scheduled on Sundays like these, but today a cold deed was planned indeed.

Dressing in dark clothing was fashionable again around Austin among the young, hip college students of the University of Texas. This seems to run in a cycle. At first, it would be stylish to wear all black. Then it was optionally cool. Next, it was passé. A year later, it was completely out of style; so last year. And then the coolest, most fashionable students would bring it back and the cycle would begin again.

The dark shadowy man that crept along the seven story parking garage wasn’t fashion driven in the least. His dark clothes were part of his occupation. It wasn’t cool for him to be seen in black. He didn’t want to be seen at all. He wore dark so he would be as invisible as possible, particularly in the shadows.

Working quietly and as light-footed as a cat, the Shadow placed three parking cones to block off the top floor entrance of the parking garage across from the hospital. His black 2005 Suburban was the only vehicle on the top level of the seven-floor structure. He had backed into a parking slot along the ledge that overlooked the building across the street.

After raising the rear hatch-type door, the mysterious man crawled into the back of his vehicle. With his head to the rear and the back passenger seats down, he easily fit prone into the cargo area of the Suburban. He had slept many nights in the back of this truck. He was not interested in sleeping tonight, however. He had a job to do.

Lying beside him was an M24 Sniper Rifle, the favorite tool of his trade. It was mounted on a small tripod that was surprisingly stout. He slid the gun further to the back of the truck and took a quick look at the range-adjustable scope to insure it hadn’t been loosened during transport.

After making a few adjustments and quick calculations concerning the light breeze, he was ready to complete his assignment. It shouldn’t take five minutes. It didn’t matter to him who the target was as long as the money was deposited into his off-shore bank account in two hours. Those were his terms. If it wasn’t, he would automatically switch to different terms, his terms, which was not a good thing for his clients.

He laughed to himself as he remembered an assignment the previous year. He could remember it like it was yesterday. It had gone down with clocklike precision. He took his shot, confirmed the hit and pulled away in his vehicle without being noticed by anyone.

A short while later, back at his motel room he logged into his bank account. He set his designer software to chime an alarm when his payment arrived and lay down to close his eyes. He fell asleep.

After two hours there was no chime, thus no money transferred. Thirty minutes later he manually checked the account, wondering if his software had a glitch. Still no payment. Out the door he went. He needed to pay his client a visit.

Still in his blacks, the contractor circled the residential block to check the client’s house. All was dark and window blinds were pulled. There was no opportunity for a sniper shot from outside the house.

The man in black parked in the alley and approached the house from behind. The client who hired him had always been paranoid. He had the best security system available. That left only one option for the assassin; speed.

He pulled on a black balaclava to cover his face in case someone else was in the house, dove through a dining room window, shattering the glass across the room. He rolled and completed a summersault into a run. He dashed up the stairway with his pistol pulled.

He was seeking to locate the master bedroom when his client exited the bathroom with only a towel covering his mid-section, having just finished a shower. The client was shocked to see someone dressed in black just feet away from him in the fortress of his extra-secured home, but not for long.

The man in black fired two lethal shots into his client’s head, dashed down the stairs, and exited the house through a sliding glass door. The twenty seconds delay on the alarm had passed, and every light in the house flashed on, accompanied by the obnoxious squeal of the alarm. The man in black trotted to his truck in the alley and drove away, again unseen by any observer.

The next day, the man in black checked his account out of curiosity and closure, already convinced that the man who hired him had cheated him.

Surprise! The money was there. He made a quick call to the bank to investigate the delay, hoping the entire thing wasn’t some type of new trap devised by law enforcement.

Who would have known that there was a holiday in St. Lucia and the banks were closed the previous day? That’s one customer he lost. Easy come, easy go. At least he had his money.

He was a little more patient these days. Just a little. He had learned that if the transfer of funds didn’t happen to his expectations, it was best to contact the bank by phone first. If the bank was not answering, he would call the client.

There was usually a suitable explanation for a delayed payment, and if there wasn’t, the client would be miserable with worry until he was found and killed. The only way for a sly client to survive would be to agree to double the killer’s fee and pay promptly. The assassin had to maintain his reputation most of all.

Today’s shot was the type of job he liked best; done from a distance with a quick, simple, route of escape. Seldom did things go wrong with this type of kill. In two minutes, he would be pulling out of the parking garage, mission accomplished and much richer. Even those who were in the room with his target wouldn’t look outside until the victim was examined and ruled dead, and the man in black would be long gone by then.

The video cameras in the garage would prove to be useless during the investigation. He had rendered them useless when he entered the garage by foot three minutes before he drove in. A piece of low-tech equipment was most useful. A small stapler was used to insert a staple into each coaxial cable. That short-circuited the center conducting wire with the cable’s outer braided conductor, making the span of cable worthless.

It would take weeks, if not months, for the technicians to find the problem, if they found it at all. It was the staple in the haystack, so to speak. Most would replace the entire cable and never find the problem.

Some businesses he had entered by sabotaging their outdated video systems upgraded to wireless cameras after his attacks. That was funny because a wireless jammer would just as easily hide his movements.

He adjusted his body in the back of the Suburban to get a bit more comfortable and pressed his eye on the scope. It took him a few seconds to locate the proper window, and when he did, he discovered his mark was seated, easily in view just inside one of the hospital room’s large windows.

He adjusted his scope again for the proper range and adjusted his rifle on his shoulder. He then settled in to make the fatal shot, breathing deeply and exhaling all the air slowly. He began to squeeze the trigger, slowly and steadily, with the crosshairs of the scope spotted on the victim’s head. Any second now he would be done.

But something unexpected happened.

The target had not moved but there were other people rushing around and getting in the way, creating a human shield.

“Get out of the way,” he said. If he shot and hit one of them, the panic would remove his opportunity to hit the mark and his simple hit would become a chaotic mess.

“Move, move, move!” he snapped impatiently. For a brief moment, two people parted, nurses, he believed, and he tried to focus with a quick aim. Then a doctor stood blocking his view.

By the time the medical team surrounded the bed, moving out of his way, the mark was gone.

∞

Texas Governor Stan Miller sat in the chair at the foot of his wife’s bed. She was wired and tubed in the hospital bed where she would soon die. He was exhausted. He felt helpless to protect his beloved Margie from the cancer that was squeezing the life from her body. She wasn’t going to win this battle and the powerful, popular governor could do nothing but say another prayer.

How his prayers for Margie had changed in the last two years. In the beginning, he and his wife would hold hands and confidently pray for her healing. As her health continued to spiral downward, and she was not responding to any of the treatments, the prayers became more and more about her faith and comfort, and his. This was a time they needed to be strong.

Lately Miller battled guilt because in his private prayers he, was asking God to take his wife to her eternal home, sparing her the long days and longer nights of suffering. He felt he was betraying his wife, something he would never willingly do. He felt as though God had abandoned him, and he had abandoned his faith. His pain was deep and seemed to grow every day.

There was still hope that God could, in the last moment, heal Margie in a way that the doctors and medications could never take credit. He believed God did that at times, but He didn’t always choose to do it. There was much he didn’t understand and his pastor, Dr. Kenneth Prescott of First Baptist Church in Austin, assured him that this was not the time to worry about what he didn’t understand. Today was about survival. It wasn’t now about his wife’s survival any more, but his own.

Suddenly the beeping device that monitored Margie’s last hours on earth began to squeal a single tone. As Miller looked to the monitor, the flat line told him the story and the monotone whine testified that her song in this world was over. His heart sank even lower as he looked into the face of his dead wife.

Margie’s face was now relaxed, much like he had seen for years. Often, early in their marriage, he had awakened in the morning before his wife and he admired her relaxed, sleeping face in wonder. She was so beautiful.

He had teased her that the only time she was not attractive was just before a sneeze, when the autonomic responses took control and distorted her expression for a single second. They laughed at that often through the years. She had sneezed a lot. It was as though she was allergic to this world.

Now her face was totally relaxed and her mouth slightly opened, not because she was asleep but because she was gone. The life that was in her had departed. Her battle with pain was ended, but his was taking the toughest road. He didn’t know if he would survive the next few hours, much less the next years without her.

Nurses ran in as Miller zoned out. He closed his eyes and wept. Margie was gone.

“Governor, we’re going to have to ask you to step out of the room for a bit,” said the floor doctor in a gentle tone. The medical staff at Seton Medical Center in Austin, TX had been the best. They cared, not because he was governor, but because they understood this would be a difficult time for anyone.

Almost in a daze, the smallish, slender man with dark hair just touched with gray, stepped into the hallway. Looking back into the room through the glass window in the wall, his wife’s face was ashen, hollow and depleted. This hit him harder. He fell to his knees and cried.

Everyone on the fifth floor knew who the governor was, of course, but no one dared approach him. All wanted to respect his moment of grief, but to him, it seemed as if no one was there to care. At that moment he realized that the overwhelming pain was intensified by not having any family or friends with him.

He wished Sheriff Ted Kline and his wife had been called. Although they hadn’t had enough time to develop that relationship like he planned, the connection between his wife and Kline’s late mother somehow translated into the sheriff being as close to a brother as he had.