337: Chapter 337 White Shirt Stained Red

This reason was perfectly valid on paper. The warehouse had been seized ten years ago; the owner had gone bankrupt, the building had fallen into disrepair, and the waterproofing layer on the roof had already peeled off in large patches. Standard security protocols allowed for mobile patrols to replace fixed posts in cases of structural insecurity.

Morrison finished writing the last word, capped his pen, and uploaded the document to the command center system. He then walked out of the office, bought a can of sugar-free cola from a vending machine at the end of the hallway, and stood by the window to take a sip. No one noticed his hand was shaking, because the tremors were so slight that only he could feel them.

Twenty-four minutes later, a white panel van bearing the words "Norvik Municipal Facilities Maintenance" drove into the alley behind the warehouse. The van contained pipe unclogging equipment, four barrels of industrial cleaner, and a marksman rifle disassembled and packed into two long aluminum alloy cases. The rifle's length when folded was just enough to fit into a standard-sized toolbox, which was hidden in a false compartment at the base of the unclogging machine. Even if patrol officers opened the van for inspection, their professional habits would more likely lead them to stare at the barrels of cleaner rather than the grimy unclogging machine.

The van driver was a middle-aged white male wearing coveralls and a baseball cap. His driver's license read "Middleton," thirty-nine years old, a Norvik local, with "plumber" listed as his occupation.

The real Middleton had died of pancreatic cancer three years ago. The man currently driving had another name in the Federal Intelligence Agency's personnel system: Ryan, code-named "scavenger." His file was sealed in a top-secret personnel vault on the third basement level of headquarters, with access restricted to the Deputy Director level and above. His previous mission involved training tribal militias supported by Palt forces in Yemen to use anti-tank missiles, and the one before that was coordinating cross-border operations for Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria. These missions shared one thing in common: Ryan's name never appeared in their written records.

Now, the instruction he received was just a single sentence: "Norvik, February 18th, Target: The Leader. Tools in place. Evidence left at the scene will point to Palt. After completion, evacuate via Route 3; someone will be waiting for you at the end—that will be your final evacuation."

The instruction was sent via a disposable encrypted chat application, with the sender appearing as "Blank" in the contact list. Ryan knew who "Blank" was—the man who had recruited him into a covert operations group under the Special Operations Command fifteen years ago, whose name now belonged to a member of the Defense Advisory Board. But he didn't intend to mention this in court. Because he knew he would never see a courtroom. The success rate for such missions might be only fifty percent, but the mortality rate for the operative was one hundred percent. Regardless of whether the target lived or died, the operative would be silenced. He wasn't the first to receive such a mission, nor would he be the last.

It was simply his turn this time.

At 4:40 PM, the Chief Executive of the United Federation stepped onto the stage.

The music was "God Bless Our Nation," and there was a sixteen-gun salute—symbolizing his former status as a leader and his current bid for re-election. He took off his suit jacket, threw it to the staff below the stage, and stood behind the podium waving in just his white shirt with sleeves rolled up to his forearms. Below the stage, fifteen thousand people erupted in a roar that nearly blew the roof off the square. The rhythmic chants of "Glory! Glory! Glory!" were synchronized, powerful, and deafening. He loved this feeling; this was the entire point of his candidacy—not the dry briefings, not the murky backroom deals, not the financiers in gold-rimmed glasses calmly reading out his fate.

It was here, the adoration of ten thousand people under the sun, the waving flags, and the upturned faces.

Gripping the podium with both hands, he spoke into the microphone: "They want to shut me up. They think I'll be afraid. Let me tell you—I have never been afraid of anyone. Not in the courts of New York, not in the backrooms of this city, and not here."

No one knew who "they" were. The supporters below the stage thought he was talking about the opposition party, the mainstream media, or any of the targets he had been attacking for four years; after all, he used the word "they" as frequently as others used "we." "They" was just a basket into which anything could be tossed. But the Chief of Staff knew. The Secretary of State knew as well. They were currently standing in the VIP area at the side of the stage, one pretending to applaud, the other pretending to check his watch, while in reality, both their eyes were repeatedly scanning the horizon to the southwest, toward the coordinates that had been crossed out in red ink. When the Chief of Staff was reviewing the final security deployment that morning, he noticed the food warehouse had been excluded from the high-ground control list. He had called the Norvik head of the Security Agency to ask why. The response was: "Deputy Director Morrison signed off on it; the structure is unsafe." The Chief of Staff thought about it and didn't press further. He had grown up in the cornfields of an agricultural state and wasn't a career Security Agency agent; he figured if the professionals said the structure was unsafe, it probably was.

He would never have another chance to correct that mistake.

At 5:03 PM, the Chief Executive reached that topic.

"They are in basements in Manhattan, smoking cigars and drinking martinis, thinking the whole world is their chessboard." He paused, and the noise from the crowd quieted down. "They are wrong. This land is not a chessboard; this land is a battlefield. I am your warrior, and you are my—"

"Bullets."

He didn't know that as he spoke that word, on the roof of the warehouse four hundred and eighty meters to the southwest, Ryan was looking at his chest through a scope. The white shirt formed a distinct bullseye in the overcast light, and the outline of the bulletproof vest beneath the shirt was faintly visible, but Ryan wasn't aiming for the chest. The cold-forged barrel of the marksman rifle rose slightly, about two fingers' width, and the crosshairs finally settled just above his throat—where there was no bulletproof plating.

Not a cloud in the sky, a level two wind, with humidity and temperature both within optimal ranges. The trigger began to move backward—evenly, steadily, without a hint of haste.

When the gunshot rang out, the first reaction of most people in the square wasn't that it was a shot. They thought it was a salute. Sixteen rounds had already been fired; this was just the seventeenth—until they saw a dark patch rapidly blooming on the chest of the Chief Executive's white shirt. His hands let go of the podium, and he slumped backward.

That dark patch continued to expand. It wasn't the exaggerated spray seen in movies, but something quieter and faster, like a piece of dark fabric soaking in water, instantly saturating the warp and weft of the white poplin. The way he fell didn't look like a man being shot; it was more like a building collapsing during a controlled demolition—first the knees buckled, then the waist snapped, and finally, his shoulders slammed heavily onto the floor behind the podium, his head hitting with a dull thud.