Timothy Kenneth Little felt a dull, pounding throb tolling with the rhythmic back-and-forth of a bell against his temple. It'd been a trying day, and the long trip to the Rogue River plant had required a two-junket flight that got him only as far as Medford's little municipal airport. Eugene, Oregon, was just too bloody far from the plant to be of any damned use whatsoever, and he cursed himself these days for not having had the foresight to've leased a similar parcel of property in Eugene in the early days rather than taking the cheaper route and building in Rogue River. But back then every dollar had to be accounted for. End result? A plant full of people in Rogue River had jobs, thanks to him, and there was no taking those jobs elsewhere now. Bottom line? He now had one helluva long, difficult drive ahead of him, and his back was acting up, and his neck was killing him. Turning fifty was a bitch, and that, too, was preying on his mind.
At least he'd done something with his life. Not like his brother, Thorn, who was still cutting other people's lawns and frying eggs, bacon and ham as a short-order cook in San Francisco, where when he wasn't working he was catching the latest wave, a ridiculous, aging surfer.
Timothy Little had never stood a surfboard, had never been athletic at anything in his life, but he had been a careful investor, and now he owned sixteen plants around the nation, plants that made aircraft parts which were always in demand-the convenient little kitchen apparatuses needed aboard every jet airliner. He'd tried to get Thom interested in the business, but Thom declared he'd go homeless before he'd take charity from his little brother.
He wasn't by any stretch the wealthiest man on the continent, but if this were France, maybe… Still, his loved ones didn't want for a thing. All the boys were grown up, following careers of their own, each with a family of his own, nice houses and cars, and they all owed it to their pop, a man who'd been as a pre-teen and teen what all the other kids in school called a pencil-carrying nerd. Thank God his interest in science and gadgetry never waned, paying off handsomely in the long run. Where were the jocks who'd bullied him throughout high school now? He curiously wondered as yet another discourteous driver the other side of the highway blinded him with high beams.
“Bastard!” he uselessly shouted while flipping his own brights on and off-another useless gesture.
The brights hitting his eyes conspired with the thumping headache to make him feel a creeping nausea rising within him. He tried to concentrate on the importance of the trip, the big merger with ASCAN, and how best to break it to the people at the plant, put the most positive spin on it. Hell, he wasn't getting any younger. And if something should happen to him, God forbid, say a heart attack? Where would it leave the company? If he sold out, and if ASCAN followed through on its promises, everyone-not just him-would benefit in the long run. It would mean more overtime, more money for everyone all around, and he could retire, begin to enjoy the fruits of all the years of intensive labor he'd put in.
He felt good about himself and the direction his life had taken him. Thought briefly about Lenore back in California, waiting for his call, no doubt. They had had another argument about money. He had wanted to, as they say, “give some back,” and Lenore had always supported him in his charitable donations in the past, but for some reason she had had a strange and urgent dislike for an old acquaintance from college who had contacted him for a donation, suggesting that he leave part of his estate to the religious organization his old friend now represented.
Timothy and Lenore Little were of the same faith, after all, and so why shouldn't he be charitable toward his church? Lenore simply didn't like the approach his college friend had taken.
Without telling Lenore, he'd gone ahead and made the donation, along with others to organizations he believed in and supported. For his old friend, he had gone a step further, signing over one of his many life insurance policies to the friend, who was now a Jesuit priest in Texas. His friend had contacted him via computer modem to tell him of their needs in Texas.
The dusk of evening was giving way to that twilight moment when visibility was at its worst. Timothy Little kept his eyes on the road, popped a cassette of relaxing, old-time piano music by Billy Vaughn into the player, and took a deep, long breath of air. On his left, on the grass median between the divided high way, he noticed a silver-gray van that might be in trouble. But what next caught his attention was the man atop the van on his belly. He was dressed all in black, like someone out of a Bruce Willis Die Hard film, like someone wanting to blend in with the night.
“My God, if he doesn't look like some sort of commando sniper preparing to fire,” Little said to himself.
Then Timothy saw movement at the base of the van on either side, two additional black-clad men. They truly did look like bloody assassins out of a Hollywood action-hero movie or something. Each man was holding up some sort of telescope or weapon; he could not tell for sure. He was moving sixty miles per hour, the car on cruise control, careful at all times to obey the traffic laws and speed limits, but now for some insane reason, he thought these strange, alien-looking creatures on the grassy knoll ahead were going to fire high-powered rifles at him. So he instantly forced the gas pedal to the floor.
The speedometer on the Olds Cutlass immediately rose to sixty-five, then seventy. Suddenly the windshield shattered in front of Timothy, glass and blood showering his line of vision, his right arm throbbing, but a second powerful blow, like a fist to his chest negated all sight and feeling, save the cold numbness and dark blindness that spread through him like a moving current. My God, he thought, they've killed me… but who… who are they?
He didn't know that his car was skidding off the road or that he'd blacked out all in the space of a nanosecond.
One of two arrows pierced his heart, which sprayed forth blood across the wheel and dash as the car careened out of control, first veering into the median, heading straight for the van, just barely missing it and sheering off before bumping back up onto the shoulder tarmac from which it had come, decelerating as it went into the right-hand ditch, bumping along this trench for another forty yards before coming to an abrupt, dead standstill, thanks to a tree. The impact sent Timothy Little's body lurching forward, but the body was saved any meeting with the jagged, shattered windshield not by the air bag or the seat belt but by the two steel arrows that had pinned him in place like a marionette.
The assassins brought the van around behind the wrecked vehicle, and like dark vultures they descended on Timothy Little. They had to wrench him from the car seat, where both his chest and an arm were pinned to the cushions by the steel shafts of the arrows that'd killed him. His heart was still pumping blood, but he was in such a state of shock and dying that he didn't feel a thing when they tore him from the cab, laid him out across the hood, and efficiently went to work on removing his extremities.
One of the assassins worked to decapitate Little's head, with its bulging eyes and grimacing teeth, necessarily causing a great gout of blood in the process. The blood ran in many small rivers over contours of the rental car, and several unusual dents across the hood of the car were left where the meat cleavers had done their work.
A passing motorist's lights momentarily shone on them, but the driver, speeding at well over sixty-five, didn't give them a thought beyond the minimal, Car trouble… glad it's not me…
Meanwhile, Timothy Little's feet, hands and head were bagged in two separate large plastic Hefty bags. These were thrown into the back of the van as one of the assassins climbed in.
The other two climbed into the cab, the engine still running. Cigarettes were lit, great breaths of relief were taken, and finally a cheer went up among them. It had been a job well-timed and well-executed. Helsinger I would be proud.
With a last look at Little's now limbless torso sprawled across the hood of his midnight-blue, regal-looking rental, a shining steel shaft sticking straight up into the air from his chest, the other shaft still in the car, the black-hooded killers congratulated one another, one taking credit for the direct hit on Timothy's heart.
They then disappeared down the highway toward Rogue River, leaving the silence of night and the body behind them. Only the absolute stillness and Timothy's mangled remains, sliding down the hood now, were left when the raccoons came to investigate the pungent odor left in the wake of the passing humans.