Larinda, on the roof of a low-rise Georgetown apartment building: black hair, a dark ball cap, black pants and athletic shoes, and a black Kevlar vest, all of it adding to the camouflage of nightfall. Seven seconds to the rooftop exit from this vantage point near the ledge, four seconds if she ran.
She lifted the 5.56 smart rifle and leaned its tripod on the ledge chest-high, snugged up the precision-guided tracking optic. She had no business owning this weapon. Too cost-prohibitive for an itinerant carpenter, and affordable only with funding from a hugely popular religious non-profit. Thank you, Christian Charismatic Ministry of Wisdom and Light. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
Something she hadn’t counted on, but it would work in her favor: her target was entertaining on the townhouse’s raised deck, fully visible. Hanging with the target were the bodyguard, the bounty hunter, his dog, and his midget. Very tempting alternative targets. They were all complicit; she had no compunction about making them all pay.
She positioned herself behind the rifle and found her target with the optics.
The large bodyguard moved into the line of fire.
“No!” she said, gritting her teeth, “move!”
Larinda couldn’t tell if the Supreme Court justice was still behind him or had reentered the house. Seconds passed, Justice Coolsummer still not visible. A helicopter made a wide turn, its searchlight scanning distant rooftops south of the community. She had maybe forty seconds before it would make a return sweep in this direction.
“Okay, original plan,” she thought aloud, which was explosions and fire at each of the home’s exits, with bombs in each of the potted evergreens to be detonated by rifle. They would flush her target outside, where Larinda could cut her down. She re-sighted the tracking optic to the edge of the front porch, to where a shrubbery pot peeked out from a corner.
Tovex sausages surrounded by jars of Tannerite exploding binary rifle targets, bundled together at the bottom of each clay pot, delivered to the side door, the corners of the back deck, the basement patio, and the front porch. All four exits of the townhouse.
Time was a-wastin’.
She pressed a button on the gun. The scope tagged the front porch shrubbery pot, aligning the gun’s reticle with the tag; she squeezed and held the trigger. The tracking system delayed the release, waiting for the optimum conditions, its can’t-miss technology good for up to five hundred yards. From here it was much less than that.
One second, two seconds…pffft…BOOM. The front corner of the porch exploded in a ball of fire, and one flaming, suited body tumbled down the slate steps to the curb. She re-sighted the gun, aimed at the box on the slab next to the side door of the home. One second, two seconds…pffft…BA-BOOM. The front and the side of the house were now in flames.
Larinda re-sighted the gun to the rear patio, under the deck. The helicopter did a compact turn from half a mile away and sprinted toward her rooftop. One second, two seconds…pffft…BOOM, the patio area underneath the deck was now orange and red, another agent in flames. She raised the barrel of the rifle slightly, re-sighted it.
“There you are, Madam Justice.”
The bodyguard enveloped her target, his gun drawn but with nowhere to point it. He hustled her toward the back door, toward cover inside the house, but they needed to first pass the last potted evergreen.
One second, two seconds…pffft…BOOM.