The shooter waited roughly two miles from Sadana’s back door. The spot he chose was fifteen feet off the cart path, on the backside of a massive oak whose trunk was nearly ten-feet wide. He settled into an indentation in the trunk, where wind or ice had ripped off a lower limb in the tree’s youth. The oak swallowed him up.
The shooter was nervous, more nervous than when he shot the first two doctors. He knew that with every abortionist he took down, the heat was building and the circle was closing more tightly around him. Like a noose. It was inevitable he would be caught. At least one FBI agent was getting warm. He wanted to take out as many of the murderers as he could before that happened.
A light breeze kicked up but the shooter paid it little attention. He wouldn’t be shooting at a distance this morning, so he needn’t take the wind into consideration when making this shot. Today’s work would be up close and personal. His first two kills had gone off without incident, and he was taking a chance by altering what worked. But he didn’t want to be predictable. He wouldn’t make the Feds’ job easy.
He held the 12-gauge Remington pump shotgun against his body, butt down, barrel up, minimizing its profile. He would be visible to anyone coming down the cart path toward him, but he’d watched the path the last two mornings and Sadana was the only one he saw jog this route. And Sadana would come from the opposite direction. Two days wasn’t much of a sample size, but his time was running out.
The shooter’s nose dripped, leaking over his lips. He wiped it with the back of a gloved hand. A chill ran through him and he shuddered. He was antsy and willed himself to calm down. He breathed in and out slowly, watching wisps of steam rise and disperse. He wanted to get this over with and go home.
The branches above the shooter groaned as a bigger gust of wind pushed against them. He shook his head, realizing the wind could be a problem if it kicked up even more. He wasn’t worried about it knocking his shot offline, but it could potentially conceal the sound of the runners’ approach.
The thought was pushed away by the rhythmic slap, slap, slap of running shoes on asphalt. Faint at first but steadily increasing in volume. The shooter glanced to make sure the red edge of the gun’s safety showed, letting him know it was ready to fire. Adrenaline coursed through his body, warming him and spiking his heart rate. He welcomed it. He didn’t need to be calm and accurate at close range. He needed to be fast. Violent.
When they were so close that he could hear their breathing, loud and nearly synchronized, the shooter pushed away from the oak and faced them. He brought the gun to his cheek in one motion, just as they were even with the tree. Their heads began turning at the sudden movement, but the shooter pulled the trigger before either saw anything. The roar of the gunshot shattered the morning and the agent went down hard, hit in the left side of his chest and ribcage. The shooter stepped toward the runners as he pumped a new shell into the chamber. He pulled up and shot the agent again, this time high in the back as he lay sprawled on the pavement.
Sadana stared at the fallen agent. He knew he was looking at a dead man, but he heard the agent moaning and struggling to breathe. He should see blood, but there was none. He processed it all in the span of a millisecond, noticing the two bean bags on the ground by the agent, and realized the gunman he hadn’t seen yet had fired non-lethal rounds.As a wave of relief flooded the doctor’s system, the shooter jacked another shell into the chamber, aimed at Sadana’s center mass, and jerked the trigger.
The first two shells were bean bag rounds, but the third was a number four buckshot load. Twenty-one large lead pellets tore through Sadana’s back and out the other side. He died instantly, his heart and lungs shredded.
The shooter pumped his last shell into the chamber, realizing even as he did it that he was done shooting for the day. He slipped the safety back on and reached down to collect the three empty shells he’d ejected. He turned to leave but stopped and turned back toward the doctor. He closed the two steps between them as he reached into his jacket. He pulled out a small metal cross and tossed it on the doctor’s bloody upper torso. He pulled out his catsup bottle and sprayed it at the doctor’s feet until it declared itself empty with a wet “blat.” He looked at the agent and saw that he was breathing raggedly with his eyes closed.
The shooter turned and began his own jog on painful feet through a short patch of woods, the shotgun heavy in his right hand as he slogged through brittle ice-covered leaves and twigs. He climbed over a low fence and emerged at the back edge of a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. His Blazer was backed into a stall ten strides from the tree line where he stood and as far from the retailer’s entrance as possible. He pressed his key fob and unlocked his truck. He set the shotgun down before stepping out of the woods and raising its rear hatch.
He retreated to the tree line and retrieved the shotgun. After looking around to make sure nobody was watching, he walked back to his vehicle with the shotgun shielded as much as possible at his side. He slipped the gun into its cloth case and shut the hatch. He opened the driver’s door, got in, fired up the truck and pulled slowly out of the lot.
A Dunkin’ Donuts coffee sounded mighty good to him, but he didn’t want to push his luck. He thought he heard the sound of a siren in the distance but couldn’t be sure. As he turned right out of the lot and headed north, Mick Jagger shouted “I can’t get no satisfaction!”
“Ain’t that the truth,” the shooter mumbled.
After a thirty-five-minute drive due north up I-90, the shooter pulled into a McDonald’s in Janesville, Wisconsin. He went through the drive-thru and ordered two sausage McMuffins and a large cup of black coffee. He sat at the far end of the parking lot and made quick work of the McMuffins, carefully sipping the hot coffee in between bites of the sandwiches. On his way out of the parking lot, he pulled up to a big trash can, tossing in his crumpled McDonalds bag containing wadded-up paper wrappers and napkins and three spent 12-gauge shotgun shells.