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  Target of Opportunity

  ( The Destroyer - 98 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  Free Agent

  Remo is set to teach a few lessons in hospitality at Florida's top tourist attraction, but his mind is made up. He is a free agent. No more CURE, no more trying to solve America's problems.

  But the nation goes into a state of shock when a Lee Harvey Oswald look-alike is nailed trying to shoot the President, and Remo can't ignore a sense of deja vu. Soon, a meddling television anchorwoman and strange transformations at the White House leave him feeling that he has landed in a role in a bizarre Hollywood Thriller

  With the direct line to the President still dead, and Chiun trying to give away the secret of CURE, Remo and Smith are hard-pressed to protect the Man who threatened to shut down CURE for good...

  Destroyer 98: Target of Opportunity

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Chapter 1

  Everybody thought they recognized the man who tried to assassinate the President of the United States, but ten minutes after he left their sight, no one could remember his face.

  The assassin had that kind of face. It was nondescript. Slight of build, vacant-eyed, weak-chinned, pasty-faced, he looked like a nobody. The quintessential nobody.

  It was exactly his utter nobodyness that made him slip from memory as soon as he was out of sight.

  Yet everyone who got a good look did a double take.

  The desk clerk at the Government Center Holiday Inn in Boston, Massachusetts, found himself scrutinizing the man's receding hairline when he presented himself to the front desk, saying, "I have a reservation."

  "May I have your confirmation number?" the desk clerk asked, fingers hovering over the reservation terminal.

  "Number 334433," the man said from memory. His voice was neither high nor low, loud nor soft. Nor was it evenly modulated. He spoke with a nervous, halting tone.

  When the man's name came up on the screen, the desk clerk failed to recognize it. It was only when he asked for the credit card that he looked more closely at the face. It was one of those new picture-ID credit cards. His face struck a chord in memory.

  "Have you stayed with us before?" the clerk asked pleasantly.

  "No," said the man. He did not look away. Nor did he meet the desk clerk's eyes. He was standing right there, but he seemed as conspicuous as the brass ashtrays that dotted the bright lobby. There but not there. Decoration. Unimportant-unless you had to get rid of a cigarette butt in a hurry.

  "I thought you looked familiar, Mr.-" the clerk read the name off the credit card "-Hidell."

  Alek Hidell said nothing when he accepted his credit card back.

  The desk clerk banged the front bell and, as the bellboy bustled up to scoop up Alek Hidell's two suitcases, he watched Hidell walk toward the elevator, trying to place his face.

  He looked so damn familiar . . . .

  Then the elevator doors closed on his impassive, pasty features, the desk phone rang and the clerk put the man completely out of his mind.

  He only recalled him again when the Secret Service showed up the next day. By then, it was too late to be a national hero.

  ALEX HIDELL was next noticed riding in the back of the last car of a four-car Silverbird subway train as it rattled south through the Red Line tunnel between Charles Street Station and the JFK- UMass stop later that day. Noticed and dismissed from memory. Although several passengers looked twice at him as he sat swaying in his seat, clutching a shapeless duffel bag that bulged with something hard and angular. But almost everyone clutched something. It was the week before Christmas.

  The driver of the shuttle bus to the University of Massachusetts Harbor Campus also looked twice when the nondescript Hidell boarded his bus just outside the JFK- UMass station.

  I've seen that guy before, the driver thought to himself.

  Five years of driving the shuttle bus between the JFK- UMass Red Line station and the college had brought him into contact with thousands of riders, most of them students and faculty. A familiar face unless it was a pretty one-shouldn't have caused his eyes to go to the interior rearview mirror all the time the nondescript passenger rode the bus. But this guy's face did.

  He sat in the back, gazing out the window, lost in thought. There was a suggestion of a sly smile lingering on the passenger's lips. It was that, not the undershot jaw or dreamy eyes, that kept drawing the bus driver's gaze.

  Where have I seen that guy before? he kept asking himself.

  He looked fiftyish. Not too old to be a student, technically. But fiftyish students at UMass were comparatively rare. And he looked too vacant to be faculty. Even UMass faculty.

  The little guy had never ridden the UMass shuttle. The driver was sure of that. This wasn't a passenger-I-haven't-seen-in-a-long-time experience, he decided. This was a guy-I-haven't-seen-since-high-school experience.

  But the bus driver hadn't known the solitary passenger back in high school, either. Maybe grade school. Maybe that was it. He had known the passenger back in grade school before his jaw and hairline receded. Before the brownish hair that sat on his head like a disturbed wig had begun to thin out.

  But much as he tried, the bus driver couldn't put a name to the annoyingly familiar face.

  The shuttle bus trundled off Morrissey Boulevard and up the lone access road to the imposing complex of chocolate brown brick buildings that comprised the University of Massachusetts at Boston. It came to a stop in the sheltered concrete trough between the administration building and the parking garage under the elevated campus plaza.

  The passenger got up and left the bus by the rear door, stepping through to the steel door to the underground garage so quickly he was hardly noticed.

  In that brief span of time, the driver followed him with his eyes. Even his jerky walk rang a dim memory bell.

  Then the bus filled with departing students and faculty, and the driver closed the doors and continued on his monotonously circuitous route.

  By the time he pulled out into the daylight of Columbia Point and the John F. Kennedy library, he had put the disturbingly familiar passenger out of his mind.

  NO ONE NOTICED Alek Hidell as he strode through the ill-lighted underground parking garage to the elevator marked Science Center. He waited patiently for the elevator and rode it to the top floor, then worked his way through the narrow corridors until he came to the rooftop greenhouse, a pair of Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses blocking his eyes.

  The warm, moist air smacked him in the face when he opened the door. By that time he was already sweating anyway.

  A denim-clad woman looked up from tending rows of Christmas cactus. "Yes?" she said.

  "Secret Service," he said, flashing a gold badge clipped to his wallet. "You'll have to vacate."

  "Why?"

  "This spot makes a perfect sniper's nest. We're sealing it off."

  "Now? The President isn't due until tomorrow."

  "Now," said Alek Hidell.

  The young woman gathered up her purse and books, saying, "Will I be able to water my plants tomorrow?"

  "Sorry!"

  "Could you water them for me?"

  "I'll think about it," said Alek Hidell, shutting and locking the greenhouse door after her.

  When the elevator doors ran shut, he stripped off his coat and shirt and hunkered down on the tile floor in his undershirt. Extracting the sections of his rifle from his duffel bag, he began assembling the weapon.

  When it was all together, he took an oily rag and began polishing it, his pouty lower lip growing moist in the close humid air.

  He was still polishing it the next morning when
a Secret Service agent stepped off the elevator. Hidell ditched the rifle under a shelf and went to the greenhouse door where the agent stood, his face like a rock behind his impenetrable sunglasses.

  "'You'll have to vacate this area," the agent said, flashing his gold badge. "Security precaution."

  "Make me," Hidell said in a self-effacing tone.

  "I didn't catch that," the agent said, leaning forward.

  "I said, 'Make me.'"

  The agent's face gathered around the edges of his Ray-Ban Aviators like a wet rag wrinkling up. He stepped into the greenhouse, his right wrist lifting to his mouth. He never got a chance to speak into the flesh-colored wrist mike.

  Alek Hidell whipped the rifle from the concealing shelf and shot the agent square in the nose. The slug came out the back of the agent's head. He stumbled back and when he hit the tile, Hidell finished him off with a second shot to the throat.

  When he stepped from the greenhouse roof, he was wearing the agent's blue windbreaker with SECRET SERVICE stenciled on the back in white block letters, sunglasses, and belt radio and earphone.

  Hidell stood on the eastern coping of the roof and looked down at the starkly abstract black-and-white compound of the Kennedy Library poised on the brink of Columbia Point, where the Atlantic lapped gray and cold.

  The press was already gathered. Microwave TV vans spilled miles of thick cable everywhere. Satellite dishes pointed to the winter sky. And, of course, Secret Service agents, unmistakable in their Ray-Bans, moved about with brisk authority.

  Rifle at his feet, Alek Hidell waited patiently, the cold breeze off the Atlantic worrying his faded hair, listening to Secret Service communications.

  "Point of entry secure."

  "Roger."

  "Access road is now clear of traffic."

  "Roger."

  "Library roof checks out."

  "Countersniper?"

  "Science roof okay," said Alek Hidell into his wrist mike.

  "Okay. Stay sharp. Stagecoach is turning onto access road. Repeat, Stagecoach is turning onto access road."

  "About time," Hidell muttered under his breath.

  A minute later three black Lincoln Continental limousines came up the perimeter road to the entrance to the Kennedy Library. The waiting crowd grew still. A wintry wind seemed to pick up.

  And Alek Hidell lay down on the edge of the roof and cradled his rifle in his arms. He put his right eye to the cheap Japanese scope, his finger on the trigger, and tracked the middle limo-the one flying the presidential flags-with cool confidence.

  When the three limos eased to a stop before the entrance, his earphone crackled, "Get set. Big Mac is about to step out. Repeat, Big Mac is about to step out."

  "Make it easy for me," Hidell muttered, putting the cross hairs of his scope on the dead area where the rear curbside door would open.

  Then it opened.

  "Big Mac stepping out now. Watch your zones."

  A familiar helmet of thick steel-wool hair lifted into the cross hairs and Alek Hidell squeezed the trigger carefully.

  The helmet of hair erupted in a pink-and-gray flower of exploding blood and brains.

  "He's been shot! Alert Mass General!"

  "Sniper on roof! Repeat, sniper on roof! Everybody get down! Get down now!"

  Everybody got down on the plaza, fearing another shot.

  But there was no second shot. Just the echoes of the single rifle shot reverberating between the great buildings of the University of Massachusetts, and the answering cries of disturbed scavenger sea gulls.

  "For the love of God!" a shocked Secret Service voice said over the air. "It's Dallas all over again!"

  "You can say that again," said Alek Hidell, leaving his rifle on the roof as he quickly and quietly reentered the Science Center.

  On the roof a single shell casing lay smoking. And scratched into the shiny brass were two letters: RX.

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo and he stifled a yawn as the agent at the Mavis Car Rental counter tried to assure him that yes, while the city of Furioso, Florida, is as safe as can be, prudent tourists took precautions before driving into the city.

  "What kind of precautions?" Remo wondered, hoping to cut off the droning spiel.

  "For one thing, we suggest that our customers do not dress in touristy garb when driving into the city."

  Remo looked down at his clothes. He was wearing a black T-shirt and matching black pants. Italian loafers enclosed his sockless feet.

  "This," he asked, "is touristy?"

  "Actually you're fine in the garb department, sir."

  "I always thought so," Remo said good-naturedly.

  "We also suggest you store all luggage in the trunk of your rental vehicle. No stacks of conspicuous luggage piled in the rear seat where they might be spotted by urban predators."

  "Is that what they call them down here?"

  "That's what the City of Furioso safety brochure calls them," said the rental agent, pulling a pastel-colored pamphlet from a plastic holder and offering it to Remo.

  "The salient points are inside," he added.

  "So why are you running them down for me?" asked Remo.

  "Company policy. A lot of adults can't read these days. Lawsuits, you know."

  "Lawsuits I know about," said Remo, opening the brochure.

  It was festooned with palm trees and pastel bikinis. The Sorcerer's Castle and other famous attractions belonging to the nearby theme park called Sam Beasley World were splashed around the twenty points of safety.

  Nowhere in the pamphlet was there any mention that renting a car and driving it from the lot and into the city was an open invitation to be slaughtered.

  "It says here not to drive in through International Drive," Remo pointed out.

  "Actually that's been updated. It's I-4 that's unsafe now."

  Remo looked up.

  "Urban predators read, too. Some of them."

  "Excuse me, chump," a surly voice said at Remo's side. And a long brown arm reached under Remo's elbow to slip a pamphlet from the plastic holder. "Gotta have one of these here brochures."

  Remo felt the butterfly touch on his wallet, which he carried in his right front pants pocket because pickpockets had the hardest time reaching into it undetected.

  Remo stepped back, bringing the heel of one hand-tooled Italian loafer down on the instep of the would-be pickpocket with deceptively gentle force. Like a jigsaw puzzle held together by tough ligaments, foot bones began separating along every fault line, and the pickpocket yelped and kept yelping until Remo released the foot.

  "Hey, man, what your damn foot made out of anyways? Lead?"

  The pickpocket was hopping on his good foot while clutching his other Reebok with both hands. Blood seeped up around the laces with each hop.

  The pickpocket saw the blood seepage and rolled onto his back the way Remo had seen hip-hoppers drop to the sidewalk to spin in place.

  This man didn't spin. He began screaming that he was going to sue everybody in a fifty-foot radius for inflicting personal injury, emotional carnage and "expensive stuff like that there."

  To quiet him, Remo nudged his skull with the toe of the same foot that had rearranged his foot bones. He began spinning. And screaming.

  "Haaalllp!"

  "Happy to oblige," Remo said as the rental-booth door was opened by a second possible urban predator. He gave the spinning man another nudge, which sent him spinning like a top out the door and onto a moving escalator.

  "What his problem?" the newly arrived possible urban predator wanted to know as his head snapped from the escalator to Remo and back again.

  "He tried to pick the wrong pocket," said Remo.

  "What pocket is that?"

  "My pocket."

  The possible urban predator-Remo had sized him up by the steely 9 mm bulge in the crotch of his baggy pants pocket-did a double take, pretended to look at the red Mavis sign on the glass door again and said, "Oh. This be Mavis. I want Bur
tz. They number two and try harder."

  "You were saying?" Remo asked, turning his attention back to the rental agent.

  "You shouldn't have done that."

  "Why not?"

  "All he wanted was your wallet."

  "And all I wanted was to keep my wallet."

  "He might sue."

  "He might," Remo agreed.

  A screech came from the vicinity of the escalator. "My damn leg! It caught in the fucking escalator! I'm gonna damn sue some sonna bitch over this."

  "Just as long as he doesn't sue me," said Remo, grinning. And put out his hand for the keys.

  "I need to finish telling you about the safety problems," the agent said.

  "I have the pamphlet, remember?"

  The agent plowed on anyway. "If, while driving from the airport, you are rammed from behind or someone attempts to run you off the road, under no circumstances should you stop your vehicle. Or if you are forced to halt, do not exit your vehicle."

  "Got it," said Remo, signing the credit card slip.

  "Your car will be waiting in the lot. For your personal safety our tags are no longer emblazoned with the Mavis corporate logo."

  "How many Mavis renters bought the farm before the front office decided on that innovation?" asked Remo.

  "When our rentals dropped thirty percent in one month," admitted the rental agent.

  On his way to the rental lot, Remo stopped to buy six of the biggest pieces of luggage he could find, in bright red leather, an I'm Going to Sam Beasley World T-shirt and a yellow Day-Glo Welcome to Florida acrylic baseball cap.

  He carried them balanced on one upright palm in a stack that teetered right, then left, then right again and threatened to fall countless times but never did because the stack, precarious as it was, had become one with his perfectly balanced body.

  At the foot of the escalator Remo paused only to step on the free hand of the urban predator who had earlier tried to pick his pocket and was now trying to free a baggy pant leg from the stalled escalator treads.

  Under the brief pressure of Remo's foot, the metacarpals became the base ingredient of gelatin.

  "You again. Damn, I gonna sue you ass off."

  "Have your lawyer call my lawyer," Remo called cheerily.