Given her primary allegiance to her true employer, Gloria did not want to draw undue attention to herself. She needed to be careful. Her instinct for self-preservation had kicked in when she’d sent the text earlier that day. She genuinely cared about Eddie, but nowhere close to how much she cared about her son, or her own well-being.
Her drive home typically took thirty-five minutes, but required a little extra time today because she made stops at the grocery store for a pork tenderloin and the pharmacy to refill her Lipitor prescription. She never once noticed the sky-blue Jeep Wagoneer following her.
The nurse parked in her driveway as the sun set over the horizon. It was darker than it should have been, because the exterior lights weren’t on. They were supposed to go on automatically, but, like everything else in life, they didn’t always work as they should. She carried her dinner and medicine into her kitchen, turned on the radio, which she kept tuned to her favorite easy-listening station, and rinsed off the pork in her sink. Eating alone used to depress her, until she decided to make an occasion out of her meals. Now, every dinner she prepared was something special. A date with herself. It took time and focus, and was a far better way to spend an evening than watching the day’s investment news. Jim Cramer’s advice had never much helped grow her retirement fund, anyway. The repetition had also turned her into one heck of a cook, at least according to her devoted son, Cornell, who came home every chance he could.
Gloria was thinking about pouring herself a glass of white zinfandel when she thought she heard something outside. Well, not so much heard it as felt it. Something or someone was in her backyard. She couldn’t quite make out what it was, but something wasn’t right.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as everything got very quiet. The air was suddenly perfectly still. Too still. Looking out the window, she couldn’t see a thing. It was nearly pitch black. There was no light outside except for the moon, and even that was obscured by the dense trees around her yard. She flipped the switch on the wall by the back door, but all her outdoor lights seemed to have gone on the fritz at the same time. A trip to the hardware store was now on her agenda for the following morning, right after church. God always came first on Sundays.
At least, that was her plan.
Crouched in Gloria’s backyard, Strunk was fidgety from adrenaline. “Let’s do this.”
Dobson nodded. He didn’t have quite the appetite his partner did for this type of work, and he wanted to get it over with.
The two lethal silhouettes moved swiftly across the yard toward the kitchen door. One carried a crowbar. The other a roll of duct tape. They were going to make it look like dangerous predators were on the loose. Morris County residents would be double locking their doors for years to come after reading news accounts of what was about to occur. First she was robbed. Then tied up and beaten. And then far, far worse. Sales of firearms and security systems would go up for months, as they always did after a heavily reported crime. Because Michael Barnes’s two-man team was going to leave an ugly mess. Whoever Gloria was working for would get the message, loud and clear.
CHAPTER 77
Backyard, Gloria Pruitt’s House, May 27, 9:29 p.m.
Through Leupold Mark 6 tactical night-vision scopes, Strunk and Dobson, Michael Barnes’s two-man team, looked like greenish apparitions. The lenses were zoomed to 8X, which was close enough to make the targets’ expressions clear. The taller man was gritting his teeth, like he was here for business that he was eager to be done with. But the smaller one appeared to be smiling ever so slightly. He was excited. There was no question he was looking forward to whatever he was about to do.
That expression was about to change.
The two baseball fans had their Phillies and Mets caps turned around backward. Not as any kind of fashion statement, but so that the bills of their caps didn’t obstruct their views through the night-vision scopes of their matching suppressed SR-25 sniper rifles. Most would argue that this weapon was the finest ever designed by Eugene Stoner (SR stood for Stoner Rifle) and manufactured by the Knight’s Armament Company. The SR-25 was a work of industrial art. Functional, beautiful, and lethal. The baseball fans carried the same weapon not only because they both preferred it, but also because redundancy was a good idea in any system. If one cog goes down, another is available to take its place, and the machine can keep right on functioning.
The baseball fans were lying prone on the ground about forty yards apart. Murphy, the Mets fan, had been here for hours, demonstrating masterful patience, but the Phillies fan, Giles, had only just arrived, shortly after the nurse. He had followed her from Harmony House to make sure she got there. Murphy had worked out their kill zone, which was generous by their standards, and directed his partner into position by speaking into the bone-conduction tactical headset positioned snugly against his larynx. Giles wore a matching headset. Both men could whisper at nearly inaudible volumes and still hear each other clearly.
Murphy moved his right index finger onto the trigger, gently applying consistent tension before he prepared to fully squeeze. He spoke almost silently. “One.”
Giles used a slightly different technique to prepare for firing his weapon: he gently pulsed his finger on the trigger in synch with his heart rate. This allowed him to make sure he pulled the trigger in between beats. A sniper learns never to fire on the beat, which can be unpredictable. No one’s heart beats perfectly every time. Exactly one second after he heard his partner’s voice, he responded quietly. “Two.”
Neither man said “three.” Instead, they simultaneously fired their .22-caliber suppressed sniper rifles. Fffwwt!
The muzzle flashes on either side of Michael Barnes’s men told them they were under attack, but Strunk and Dobson didn’t have time to react. They were taken by complete surprise. The two men were thirty feet from Gloria Pruitt’s kitchen door when their chests exploded. The entrance wounds were small compared with the gaping holes that exploded out their backs.
The gunfire was impressively quiet, and demonstrated recent improvements in suppression technology. In fact, the sound of the two bodies collapsing to the ground had created more of a ruckus than the guns. Branches cracked. Leaves crackled.
Was that thunder she heard? Did something fall out of a tree? Whatever it was, there was some kind of commotion going on outside Gloria’s window. She went to the back door and yelled out through the screen, “Is anybody there?”
Strunk didn’t move. He was already dead, lying on his back. But to the surprise of the baseball fans, who were watching through their infrared scopes, Dobson’s eyes were still blinking. His mouth was moving, but no words were coming out because his lungs, what was left of them, were full of blood.
Determined to find out what was going on, Gloria retreated inside her house to look for a flashlight. In the pantry, she opened the toolbox she kept for such emergencies. Of the three flashlights inside, only one worked, and this one barely. She took the dim flashlight and walked fearlessly out into her backyard. “Anybody back here?” She flashed the light around, moving it across the shrubs and trees until something on the ground caught her eye. Something red, which looked like blood. As she moved closer to the area, she became sure it was blood. There were two pools of it right next to each other, like two animals had just been killed there. Big animals.
But where were the bodies?
It occurred to her that whatever killed the two animals was still out there, and might still be hungry. There were confirmed recent sightings of coyotes in New Jersey. For all she knew, there might even be wolves. Gloria suddenly forgot all about the pain in her legs, and ran the ten yards to her kitchen door faster than she’d run any distance in years.
She locked and bolted the door. She shook her head while catching her breath, thanking the Lord for not punishing her bravado. He must have known she’d be going to church the next day, and decided to cut her some slack.
She didn’t drink hard liquor very often, but tonight’s dinner was definitely going to be accompanied by three or four fingers of scotch. Maybe five.
CHAPTER 78
American Heritage Foundation, Alexandria, Virginia, May 27, 9:32 p.m.
The human body begins to cool immediately after the moment of death, which was why the heat signatures of the two bodies being carried from Gloria Pruitt’s property were different from those of the baseball fans carrying them, as indicated by the thermal-imaging technology being used to observe them. From her office, Caitlin McCloskey watched along with Daryl Trotter while they enjoyed deli sandwiches from Jersey Mike’s. She pointed to the dead bodies as they were carried to the Jeep Wagoneer. “They were killed at the same time, but their body temperatures are different. Why?”