The squad’s new mission was not an overly complicated one, infiltrate the complex, locate the woman, and then kill her as neatly as possible, preferably with one of their trademark-orchestrated ‘accidents’, or their equally popular method of a plausible murder scenario. They had set about staking out the abandoned textile mill with a covert surveillance plan that covered all areas of the complex.
The six men had viewed her movements from every angle for three days, with four of the men, in two-man teams, always on station directly observing through military grade optics. The nearest of them no closer than half a kilometre. They also had one man acting as ‘Tactical Controller’ situated in their Toyota Hi-Ace van, parked two kilometres away on a remote side road. He watched remotely via a live streaming from the camouflaged battery-operated surveillance cameras that had been planted around the site. These had been systemically installed as her movements and location had offered opportunity to do so. The TacCon also ran the coordination of the group using their integrated radio system. The final member of the team was classed as the ‘Floater’, or spare man. He rotated with the covert observation members if required, though generally, once in position the men were trained to stay in the same location for days. The Floater also provided any resupply support as required, reverting to a reserve asset to cover any unforeseen events that might occur.
The best scenario seemed to be to contrive a simple drowning accident next to the river. The main problem with this option would be first restraining and then transporting her to the river without causing any damage to her body, that would not be in harmony with a trip or a fall into the water. Even something as mundane as a bruise in an inappropriate place, could be spotted during the autopsy that would inevitably follow the discovery of a dead body. This in turn potentially led to questions that may detract from their illicit fabrication of an authentic accident.
The basic method for this type of contrived accident was to be able to deliver a single blow to the head, hard enough to render someone unconscious, but not hard enough to kill or break the skin to allow a bleed to occur. Then carefully transport the comatose individual to a pre-chosen location of the ‘accident’ and hold their head under the water until they drowned.
This method they saw as the most favourable scenario, however, as usual to meet the high level of professionalism their craft demanded, a unique attention to detail would be essential to achieve the required unequivocal standard of deception.
Two options were proposed for the take-down. One was to strike in the daytime, as she went about her now well studied routines. The benefits of this option were that she would be fully clothed, so her transportation to the river would be undertaken very quickly with a minimum of fuss. The downside was that their approach to come within striking distance would carry a reasonable risk of them being seen before they got close enough to bludgeon her. They were all trained to approach with stealth, but any grappling or manhandling of her that took place would curtail use of the accidental drowning scenario.
The other option was to make their approach when she was asleep, then once they had rendered her unconscious, change her clothes to daywear and transport her to the river. The upside of this was that they had hidden a camera in her room so could tell when she was asleep, then use the remote surveillance and integrated coms to guide them in, right up to her bedside. The weaknesses of this option were less problematic, they would just have to undress and redress her, put the night wear away and remake the bed, leaving the room to appear that it had not been slept in. There was the matter of it being dark, but night vision goggles would be worn to negate this.
To leave a DNA trail, in both cases the wounded area of her head would need to be scraped against the alleged point of contact of her demise, in this case the side of a waterwheel, before she entered into the river.
Their back-up plan would be to initiate a classic predatory assault leading to a murder and robbery MO. They would knock her senseless, sexually assault her and then strangle her to death, being careful to leave no trace of any of their DNA on the body. Finally, the house would be ransacked of any valuables. Not as neat as the accident method, but as long as no clues were left as to their involvement, extremely workable.
After a short debate, the consensus was that the night action was the least risky. There was no point in waiting through the fourth day to carry out the attack, as nothing more would be gained from further observation. The team were confident they knew her every habit and routine. So, it was agreed unanimously that the operation would be carried out that night.
In the centre of the complex a two-storey office administration building had been converted into living quarters. Downstairs there was a kitchen/diner and lounge area and on the first-floor theatre were the bedrooms and bathroom.
The stairway to the bedrooms was made of stone and made no sound under the soft-soled shoes that covered the feet of the two men stealthily making their way to the top of the steps. The CCTV controller was still feeding them real time telemetry on the status of the girl.
‘She is still out for the count, fast asleep, laying on her front,’ he informed them through their earpieces. ‘Standby.’
The woman had not moved in the last half an hour, since the team had started to move in from their start points, almost two hours ago.
The Tac Con had been in constant communication with them from the beginning of the operation, ensuring that they were fully up to date on her exact movements, since she got herself ready for bed.
No real variation in her routine was noticed from the previous days, apart from one small incident, where, after knocking over a small cup of tea onto her pillow, she had changed some of her bedding before she had turned in for the evening. The futon and quilt were not stained by the tea and so she had just gone to the linen cupboard and taken out another pillow to replace the wet and blemished one. It escaped their attention that the pillow had already been stored with a pillowcase over it. Neither did they think it was relevant that the pillow was blue while the rest of her bedding was white. After that incident she continued with her normal routine of opening the bedroom window before retiring. The team patiently waited for four hours, observing her through the night vision capacity of the hidden camera. The Tac Con was trained in recognising sleep patterns. It understood the sequence of different behaviours that individuals demonstrated as they moved through the layered gateways to come to the slow wave sleep cycle, a ‘non rapid eye movement’ phase of sleep, when the mind has dropped into its deepest level. The human brain starts to generate ever-increasing amounts of delta waves, relaxing the body to a groggy, debilitating state; the point when we are most vulnerable and slow to react if woken suddenly.
They observed her lying face down with her head resting on its right side, sandwiching the pillow between her two arms, which were folded across each other, under the pillow above her shoulders.
‘She is ready, stand by, stand by – go, go, go,’ signalled the Tac Con quietly.
The lead man on the two-man group acknowledged the order to proceed with a single click of his transmitter button at his throat. Receiving the order to proceed directly into his brain via the bone-conducting receivers held against both sides of his upper jaw. The device allowed his ears to be free from obstruction, removing the impedance that a standard headset, in or around his ears, would limit his ability to pick up important ambient sounds.
The two men were completely dressed in black from head to toe, with just a band of darkened skin, dulled by light-absorbing shades of camouflage cosmetics, showing through the eye slits in their balaclavas. They were suitably armed with a single side, doubled-edged knife, one also carrying a leather-covered cosh filled with half a kilo of lead shot. They had kept it light for speed and deftness, leaving the heavy artillery with the back-up team. Their breathing disciplined and measured, a control they had defined over years of training, they silently opened the door and entered the woman’s bedroom. Each moved to either side of her bed. The man on the left teed up his cosh by raising it about his head, cocked to deliver the single blow required for their plan.
The second assailant readied himself with hands free, to seize her if she moved… then she moved.
The Tac Con suddenly found himself blind, deaf, and dumb, all the screens on the laptops before him had turned to a fuzzy haze, he called via the net, ‘Abort, abort, we are compromised. I repeat abort.’
But he got no response from any of the other five members of the team. He quickly exited the van, picking up his Chinese variant AK 47 assault rifle as he did so and started to jog towards the complex.
The man on the right-hand side of the bed was already dead, so he could not remember the woman rising up backwards from the bed onto her knees. She had risen so fast it was as if she had been released from a catapult. Her two arms unfolding from around her pillow, she struck with the speed of a praying mantis. Two thin slivers of hardened steel, sharp as razors on both edges had flown from her hands. The man on the right had taken the narrow blade in his left eye, the twenty-five centimetres of steel firmly embedded up to the hilt into his brain.
The second man on the left, was not quite dead yet, the blade had been deflected slightly by his throat mike. It had entered his neck but missed his spinal cord. He now looked in disbelief at the slight female before him dressed in pink Pokémon pyjamas, resting on her knees with both her arms outstretched level with her shoulders. He had dropped the cosh, and with both his hands now clutching at the handle of the knife sticking out of his neck, he watched her suddenly spin around, pivoting on her left knee, her right-hand whipping outwards. She struck his hands where they held onto the blade protruding from his throat, causing the blade to slice through his vertebrae. The angle of the strike delivered a blow that almost decapitated him, but for the remains of his muscles on the left-hand side of his neck.
She rolled off the bottom of the bed, avoiding the two expanding pools of blood on either side, to reopen the linen cupboard. Reaching to the rear of the cupboard she pulled out a SIG Sauer P227 and a Wakizashi sword, the smaller brother of the Katana.
The second team remained in position outside of the dwelling, awaiting the order to enter the building and initiate the next phase of the operation, maintaining radio silence as per the plan. They had no idea they had been compromised – that was until the lead member’s head exploded right in front of his partner. He looked upwards to the source of the gunfire, neatly presenting his forehead as a second target for the next hollow point tipped round from the woman leaning out of the window, brandishing the SIG in her right hand. She stroked the trigger, watching dispassionately as his head also disintegrated in a shower of bone and brain.
On hearing gunfire, the fifth member of the team now realised things were not going exactly as planned. He tried to hail his comrades over the net; but received just worrying static in response. He drew and checked his side arm, a Glock 26, putting a 9 x 19 Parrbellum round in the chamber and re-holstered it. Picking up his AK 47, he did the same for that, loading one of the thirty 7.62 rounds held in the magazine and started to move towards the building.
The Toyota HiAce van drove into the car park at the front of the complex. As it rounded the stone-walled approach road, its headlights picked out a small woman with a large gun held across her chest, a pistol hanging from one hand, with a short sword pushed through the waistband of her pyjamas. Behind her lay a torso lacking most of its head, bleeding profusely across the tarmac.
The vehicle pulled up in front of her. Its lights extinguished along with the noise of the engine, as she walked towards the side door of the van. The driver got out and came around to stand beside her.
‘Trouble at mill?’ said Kurosawa Hikaru, sliding back the door of the van, to reveal a lifeless, bound, and gagged man dressed in dark clothing.
‘Bring him in,’ she said. ‘But before we ask him some questions, I will need to clean the place up a little. Will you help?’
‘You always did give me the shit jobs around here, sister,’ he said, shaking his head from side to side, making his long fringe float across his angular face, as if the mop of black hair had a life of its own.
‘It was all you were ever good for, brother! Now put him in the dye room. There are many questions that require answers, hopefully he can provide some of them. If they are targeting us directly, then we have a major problem unfolding here. Something important must be in progress.’
‘Well, whatever it is, we are going to be well armed to face it, and no mistake. These guys meant business.’
He handed her a second AK that matched the gun she was holding and reached in to grab their prisoner.
‘A resupply is always welcome,’ she said as she shouldered the weapon by its sling. ‘Though we must thank our friends for their technological investments that watch over us.’
‘Always nice to get a heads up when unwanted visitors come to call, sister.’
‘Yes, but it is always the mess they make afterwards that is most annoying,’ she said as she walked away to start clearing up the bodies. ‘Oh, and brother, don’t forget to turn that jammer off, I’m told it is powerful enough to intercept every radio signal within a twenty-mile radius. We don’t want to draw any more unwanted attention, do we?’
‘I will, sister,’ he called back to her. He looked down at their captive. ‘And you are about to have the worst and last day of your life, friend,’ he said to the now semiconscious man. He noticed that the dull hue of the man’s aura flickered slightly, as his subconscious registered danger at the comment. He caught hold of the man’s collar and dragged him away to their makeshift interrogation room.