Chapter 13

Zeus

Christmas eve. It's supposed to be a family time, but I didn't have a family. Except for Artemis, who was by my side, and Martinez, who was in my head, and Io, who was probably in a salt cave inside some computer chips. Arti had family I guess: her Aunt Poppy. But she didn't make a move to contact her. It was the same as Thanksgiving, I guess.

Mostly Christmas eve was D-day for the 'keep Alison Hartnet alive' project. I sat behind my rifle, looking through the scope at the FBI agent who was sitting in a glider on the Hartnet/Vander front porch. Christmas eve ticked down to midnight, then it became Christmas. I guess some people were at church. We were here sighting down a sniper rifle hoping to get a shot at some bad guys.

I had taken my eye off the scope and was rubbing the tiredness out of my eyes when Arti jostled my elbow. I took a quick look at my wristwatch: 1:33 a.m. She was looking through her binocs at a different angle.

"They're here. Two targets. Looks like men," Arti whispered. I couldn't really spin my rifle around to get a look through the scope. So I just looked where she was looking. It was dark; my eyes didn't come equipped with night vision, so I didn't see much. I did see some movement, though. They were keeping to the shadows.

I looked back through the scope. The FBI guy was only marginally awake, I guess. In any event, he didn't see them. I felt bad for the guy.

"They each have a gun. Looks like silencers," Arti said. I didn't think this was the right time to point out that there's no such thing as a silencer. Noise suppressor, or just suppressor was the right term.

When they got within my target range, I focused on one of them. POP. My gun went off through the open window. One of them was down, and I was shifting my target to number two. The FBI man heard my target fall heavily to the ground, and stood up. The number two target immediate tore off three shots at the FBI man. He went down heavily on the porch. POP went my rifle again. I hit the number two target shortly thereafter.

Arti took a quick look down the street and saw the van the bad guys had exited from. She didn't see any motion there. "Nothing at the van. C'mon ... let's go," she said.

I took a second to fire a round into the wood post holding up the porch roof.

"Why shoot at the porch?" Arti asked.

"Gotta establish a trajectory, so they'll look for the sniper in this house. We want them to look here. Not elsewhere," I answered. "That shot will give them the trajectory back to this spot."

"Hmmf," she grumped. But I could tell she wasn't really angry. "Smart and cute too. I think I'll keep him," she said to herself, in that soft voice that was becoming her trademark.

We slipped out of the house on Sage Court. Through the backyard of the next house, also vacant, tripping on a sprinkler in the lawn, and in the backdoor of our rented house. I took a detour to the back and slipped my rifle into its hidey hole in the camper, and locked everything back up.

Arti and I tore off our clothes, threw them in a pile and jumped into bed. We didn't go to sleep, of course – too keyed up. But we wanted to present a realistic picture of 'sleepy renters' to any police that showed up.