The Recalcitrant Assassin, page 1
THE RECALCITRANT ASSASIN
S.A. ISON
THE RECALCITRANT ASSASIN
Copyright © 2019 by S.A. Ison All rights reserved.
Book Design by Elizabeth Mackey
Book Edited by Ronald Ison Esq. Editing Service
All rights Reserved. Except as under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without prior written permission of S.A. Ison
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the production of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons – living or dead- is entirely coincidental.
OTHER BOOKS BY S.A. ISON
BLACK SOUL RISING
INOCULATION ZERO WELCOME TO THE STONE AGE
BOOK ONE
INOCULATION ZERO WELCOME TO THE AGE OF WAR
BOOK TWO
EMP ANTEDILUVIAN PURGE
BOOK ONE
EMP ANTEDILUVIAN FEAR
BOOK TWO
POSEIDON RUSSIAN DOOMSDAY
BOOK ONE
EMP PRIMEVAL
PUSHED BACK A TIME TRAVELER’S JOURNAL
BOOK ONE
FUTURE RELEASES
EMP ANTEDILUVIAN COURAGE BOOK THREE
POSEIDON RUBBLE AND ASH
BOOK TWO
PUSHED BACK THE TIME TRAVELER’S DAUGHTERS BOOK TWO
BRAKING NEWS
THE HIVE
SMOKEHOUSE SMILES
SHATTERED MIND
BIO VENGENCE
Other books by S.A. Ison under the name: Stefany White
Dragon’s Fortune
Alaskan Heat
The Seeding
Future Releases
The Butler Did It
Little White Lies
ONE
Imani Zakarian had many names. Her favorite name, which always gave her a giggle, was Angel of Death. Angel indeed. She sat comfortably in a chair, her long legs crossed at the ankles, her Italian leather boots scuffed, and the leather buttery soft, they were her favorite pair. In her lap, her hands rested, holding her Fabrique Nationale, 5.7 mm. It was one of her favorite weapons. It had a suppressor attached to it, custom fabricated and was very portable. Its range was good as well as its accuracy, that is, if the shooter was any good.
She made a point of keeping up with her marksmanship, it was never good to let one’s skills gather dust. While she was in Italy, it was the one weapon she used. In each of the countries she operated in, she kept her choice of weapons in bank security lock boxes. The boxes were private, they were safe and she didn’t have to worry about inquisitive clerks. Each bank was paid a year in advance.
She was in Rome at the moment, sitting in an apartment that overlooked Piazza Perin del Vega. There across from her was a small café, one of many that peppered the cobbled streets of Rome, like spots on a cheetah. The sunlit piazza was subtly shifting, fading. Long shadows creeping in heavily and the electric lights had started their timely illumination, crowding out the coming night around the piazza. The streets were always crowded with tourists and locals. She caught the scent of something delicious and her stomach growled. She’d skipped lunch as usual, when she was zoned in on a target, she forgot to eat sometimes.
It was near time to terminate her target, then she’d go and have an early dinner. Many Italians ate later in the evening, but she’d never quite acquired the habit. The man below was just finishing his early dinner. She’d let him finish, it was after all, his last meal. She wanted him to enjoy it.
Imani was neither a cruel nor sadistic assassin. This was her profession and she was, if nothing else, very professional. Each kill was done with one shot to the head. The target would never know what happened, never dying painfully, never experiencing fear.
Her head itched and she scratched it, the long pale blonde wig shifting slightly. She tugged at it, setting it back in place and then looked at her target once more. The man seemed satisfied. She smiled, aimed carefully, precisely and pulled the trigger.
The sound of her weapon was quite muffled with the silencer and she felt the blowback puff of air. The bullet had gone right into his temple. Neat and clean, unfortunately, it would come out the other side a yucky mess, but that couldn’t be helped. It was just one of those nasty consequences.
She unfolded her long legs as she caught the screams from below. She was only on the third floor, and so the screams were easily heard from the open window. It was an easy shot. She walked out the door of the apartment, using a handkerchief to touch the door knob, her gun already tucked away into the leather satchel that was slung across her body. The fine leather had a stronger composite sandwiched between the leather straps, so would-be purse snatchers would find it difficult to cut the satchel off her body.
Like many metropolitan cities, theft was rampant. Rome was no different and she’d seen for herself, the speedy mopeds and vespas streak by, snatching the unwary tourists’ purse or backpack. She could not afford to have her purse taken. The tools of her trade were in there, and though she had backups, she didn’t like to think that her personal items were out there, falling into who knew what hands. In her line of work, it was a no no. Secrecy was all.
Imani stepped from the back of the apartment building, onto a side street. Which was conveniently on the back side of the piazza. A row of old apartment buildings separated her from her target. She walked up the street, passing many people who were looking around, looking for the uproar. They didn’t know that on the opposite side of the apartment building, was a dead man, laying in his empty plate, his brains mixing with his ragu. She walked between two buildings, five blocks up and stepped out onto the main street. She looked up the street, and could now hear the seesaw shriek of sirens from the Carabinieri, the Italian police.
From her vantage, many people were clustered around the café. She turned, hunting for a small pizzeria. When she was in Italy, she always tried to find new places to eat. She had to admit, she was a foodie snob. She found such a place and walked in. The smell of it made her mouth water. It was one of the best perks of her job. Travel and food. A little old woman greeted her. Imani spoke fluent Italian, and so was presumed a local, if not from possibly Naples.
She’d spent several years in Naples as a child. Her parents had been in the military, and so she’d learned the language from a Neapolitan. Like most places, there are regional differences in language. She had an eidetic memory, and one of her hobbies was picking up languages and mastering them.
Taking a seat, she ordered the house wine and she ordered the fried zucchini blossoms as an appetizer and a small pinsere, a slightly thicker pizza. She sat back and watched the small room around her. There weren’t many people here, it was too early.
She’d lived in many countries, absorbing their cultures and their languages. Being an only child, her father’s Greek ancestry mixed with her mother’s Irish, produced a daughter of the world. Imani was given greater latitude to peruse different interests. She’d been born in Seoul Korea, where she’d been taught her first language. She had a Korean nanny. Her parents had next ended up in Atsugi Japan, where she’d picked up Japanese from her Japanese nanny.
She’d also been old enough to start martial arts. She’d started very young in Tae Kwon Do. She’d been four years old and then when she was ten, she’d become interested in Hapkido, which is also a Korean martial art. Through these arts, she learned discipline, control and flexibility. By the time she went into the navy after high school, she’d earned third degree blackbelts from each philosophy.
Both her parents worked long hours and sometimes one parent would be deployed. She’d been encouraged to keep busy and follow her passions. Cathy and Nickolas Zakarian loved their daughter enough to let her explore her world. And she did.
Her family had then transferred to Naples, Italy and then on to Rota, Spain, and still on after that to the Azores, Portugal. And so, her life had been lived shifting, in flux and never settled. She’d been given a free hand at learning. When she’d been about thirteen, her parents had gotten her, her very first computer. She laughed now, the computer had been a big clunky thing.
She sat back as the old woman brought her a glass of wine and a plate of the blossoms. She inhaled beatifically, nodded and smiled at the old woman, who smiled back and left her to her food. Her head itched, but she ignored it. She was never without a wig. It was rare for anyone to see her in her natural state. She had short hair beneath, a mousy brown and uninspiring. She kept it short, because there were times when she dressed as a young man.
Either fortunate or unfortunate, Imani had an androgynous face. When she was younger, it was not unusual to be called a plain Jane by her teachers, though they thought, out of her hearing. But it worked in her favor now in her chosen vocation. When she wanted to look feminine, she simply applied makeup, becoming hyperfeminine. When she wanted to look male, she left off the make up and wore men’s clothing and sported a thin mustache. She looked like a young male, perhaps a recent departure from his teens.
Imani was tall, at least for a woman and slender, with long legs. She had small breasts and this helped her look like a man if she wore bulkier shirts or sweaters. She felt her phone vibrate and pulled it from her pocket. She looked at it and then looked around, ensuring that no one was near. She never spoke, only texted. No one had ever heard her real voice. It was safer that way. She was a fabrication, an avatar and there wasn’t a person alive that knew her true face nor her true name except Nobu Grullon, her partner in crime.
“Is it complete?” Nobu texted.
“Of course. I’m eating some dinner now.” She typed.
“Bring me some back.” He typed, which made her laugh. She should, it would serve him right.
“See you soon.” She typed.
She hung up, the conversation instantly deleted. She didn’t need to call the bank, she received her pay up front. Nobu had set up her accounts. Most of her hits ran $50,000. Her highest earning had been a double hit, $150,000. That had been difficult and hairy. It was not always so, but over the years, she’d built up a reputation under several sites. Nobu, had been responsible for that as well. Her phone was encrypted. She had Nobu ensure that her phones and computers were all encrypted. One didn’t go on the darknet without it. You did not enter into that world without an extensive knowledge of how to protect yourself.
You didn’t need someone piggybacking off your signal and locating you, nor jumping into accounts and stealing money. The biometric login, her thumb print and a twelve-character password would open the phone, and if anyone tried to hack it, all info would be destroyed, including the phone’s microcircuits. Nobu was a mastermind.
She and Nobu had met when she’d joined the navy when she’d graduated from high school. Her first duty station out of corpsman school was Misawa Japan. She’d only been in the navy a year, before she realized it was not for her. She’d always been an independent girl and now woman and she found the homogenized sameness stifling. She found herself fighting it at every turn, which found her in trouble many times.
“Girl, you need to chill out. You’re gonna get written up.” Nobu had advised her. They’d met when she’d first gotten to Misawa. She’d gone to a Pachinko parlor and they’d struck up a friendship. They were both fluent in Japanese, since Nobu’s mother was Japanese, his father of Spanish descent.
“I feel like I’m choking to death here. It’s soooooo tedious. I go to work and do the same thing. I want to gut myself.” She’d said.
Imani had also committed her first murder while she was in the navy. It was an epiphanic moment. She’d discovered her passion, her aptitude. She’d been so jazzed about it, yet fearful she’d be caught, that she’d blurted the whole episode to Nobu.
“I was coming back from Karaoke, and the streets had been pretty empty.” She’d said.
“Okayyyy…” Nobu said, his dark brows raising in question. They were sitting across from each other at the chow hall.
Imani looked around the chow hall, she didn’t want to be overheard. Most people had gone back to work, so they were alone. She’d wanted to spill her guts before she lost her nerve.
“So, I was going along the side street and I heard someone crying. I turned down the alley and heard the crying more clearly. I followed it, and then I turned and saw some asshole trying to rape a schoolgirl.”
“Holy shit!” Nobu hissed lowly, looking around, hunching his shoulders forward, drawing closer, his eyes large behind his glasses.
“Yeah, it was some dickhead, not sure who he was, but he was American. I think the girl was about fourteen, but it was hard to tell. She was in her school uniform and Christ only knows why she was out as late as she was, but this asshole was trying to rape her.”
“Friggen bastard!” Nobu growled.
“I walked up behind him and gave him a snap punch into his mid spinal column. He dropped like a stone and the girl was nearly catatonic with fear and panic. I had to shake her.”
“Did she see your face?” Worry was heavy in Nobu’s voice and she heard it clearly.
“I don’t think so, I was wearing a hoodie. I told her to go home and tell no one. I made my voice deep. Her clothes were wrecked, but I don’t think he penetrated her. Her panties were down around her thighs, not her ankles.”
“Fuck, fuck. That poor kid.” Nobu moaned.
“Yeah, she finally snapped out of it and then ran off. It was quiet and I didn’t hear or see anything or anyone. I rolled the bastard over, he was still alive. I looked around the ground and found one of those wooden chopsticks, you know that you get at restaurants.”
Nobu was nearly across the table, his tray shoved to the side. “What the hell did you do Ima?” He breathed, his eyes now the size of saucers.
“I shoved it in his eye and up into his brain. Then I swished it around, scrambling his brain. His body jerked around. Then he stopped. I don’t know if he was dead at that point, but he sure as shit wouldn’t rape any little girls anymore.”
“Fuck me.” Nobu breathed out in a low gust. Then his head had jerked back, “did you leave finger prints or DNA?”
“No, I used a piece of plastic trash to pick the chopstick up. I kept the plastic with me and threw it away once I got back to base. There wasn’t much blood if any, just aqueous humor, you know the liquid in the eyeball.”
“Ewww and good, so nothing to lead back to you. Have you heard anything? I’ve not seen or heard anything on tv or at work.” Nobu said, making a face.
“No, someone should have discovered the body by this morning. It might take a bit of time, before we hear about it. I’m sure the local police will have jurisdiction.”
“Damn, girl, how do you feel about it?” Nobu asked, and she’d seen the worry in his eyes.
“Actually, I feel pretty damn good about it. He deserved it. I hate to say it, but I think I might have found my calling.” She didn’t smile, she was sure that would have been inappropriate, but she felt like it at the time.
She’d seen the wonder in his eyes, and then the light. He had nodded. He’d kept her secret. He had been a true friend to her.
She took another drink of her wine. The sirens up the street had finally quieted. She sighed happily, taking a bite of her pizza. It was so friggen good. She did wish Nobu was here. It would have been nice to share this with someone. Sometimes it got lonely on a job. But she needed Nobu at home.
Nobu had programed her phones to emit false positioning, so that the signal would bounce off hubs and satellites and dead-end. If someone were hunting her, she could stand right beside them and they’d never track her down. The assassin’s game was a competitive one. If you wanted the big bucks, you had to produce. She’d built herself a name over the years. It had taken patience and luck. One didn’t fall into this job, it was a job you went after, with full intent, desire and skill.
Imani finished her pizza, it was quite wonderful and she left the pizzeria and walked back out onto the street. She’d go first to the bank, to drop off her weapon, thankfully the banks remained open until early evening. Unlike U.S. banks that closed at five. Then she’d head to her modest hotel room to pack up and leave. She wanted to get home, to Chicago. It was a place she could relax and blend in and disappear into anonymity.
Ϫ
Nobu sat back from his laptops, rubbing his face. Ima was on her way home. He was glad. He always worried about her. He’d known her for ten years, since they’d been stationed in Misawa Japan. Getting up, he got a cup of coffee. It was just after 1pm. She’d fly in tonight and he’d swing into O’Hara and pick her up.
Nobu went back to his computers, careful to keep his coffee cup away from the equipment. He was always harping to Imani to be careful. She usually was. He had four computers, but his favorites were Thinkpad X1 Carbon and the MS1 GS65 Stealth. He was also a serious gamer as well as Imani’s handler. He didn’t know what else to call it, he had to handle her assignments, her flights, her identities and all the other things that went along with an assassin. He’d not seen himself in this place when he’d gone to his high school guidance counselor when it was vocation day.
Meeting Ima had changed his life and the trajectory of his life. He couldn’t say he was sorry. Ima was not only his best friend, but she was also his boss or rather, he thought, his partner in crime. After she’d killed that airman, the guy who’d tried to rape the Japanese school girl, there had been a big investigation. He and Ima had watched both the AFN, Armed Forces Network, news as well as the NHK, Japanese news.
