The Maya 1.4
What You May Have Missed...
U.S. Secret Service agent Lance Simmons was part of a large detail protecting the President of the United States during his visit in the Ukraine. As Simmons watches for would be assassins through the scope of a sniper rifle from the veranda of a hotel, he is suddenly attacked by not one, but two known professional killers—Leyla Zerjawy of the IIS and Oleg Pavlov of the KGB.
While fighting them to save his life and that of the President, another individual joins the fray—The Maya. When the two assassins try to take her out, The Maya dispatches both of them easily. She takes something from the Iraqi and retrieves the bat from the Soviet. As she turns toward the sniper rifle, Simmons wonders what she's about to do. If she intends to kill the President, too, he must stop her.
He raises his gun, but it is unceremoniously knocked from his hand.
To his unfinished question regarding her intentions, The Maya simply says,
"Preventing a tragedy."
And now, part four of, The Maya.
Simmons grunted and tried to shake off the pain. The Maya looked at him, then turned back to what she was doing.
An armor piercing round she'd lifted off the Iraqi appeared in one hand. Carefully inserting the bullet inside the bat, she rolled it around. When she removed it, it was covered in a wet black substance. A moment later, though, what looked to be tar was smooth and hardened. The Maya quickly reattached the bat handle then reached for the sniper rifle's bolt. A shell ejected from the chamber, which she then replaced with the modified armor-piercing round.
"Timberwolf making final approach," the two-way blared.
The Maya pivoted the rifle 180-degrees and looked through the high-powered scope. In less than two seconds, she found her target, drew a breath, settled, and fired. There was a heartbeat of silence, then an explosion.
The blast was close enough to be felt. Simmons stumbled and went down as the room shimmied and the far window blew in. He covered his face, narrowly avoiding lacerations from dozens of flying shards. When the floor stopped shaking and the smell of smoke began to filter in, he raised his head. The Maya was gone.
Simmons staggered over to the broken window and looked out onto the scene below. The Presidential motorcade was gone, but there were at least twenty Secret Service men surrounding a motorcycle and its downed rider. Further up the street, separated by a good thirty yards, there was a blackened circle with a two foot radius, some of the asphalt melted or scarred. The Kiev police were keeping the onlookers at bay, and in the distance, Simmons could hear the sound of sirens.
He couldn't tell if the rider was alive or not, as the man lay there, unmoving, face up. No one made any attempt to talk to him, though they hovered over him expectantly. Simmons turned away, and headed for the door. He needed to find out what happened to the rest of his team before others came looking for them. It seemed impossible that either Zerjawy or Pavlov could have sneaked past them, let alone defeated them all, but to make it to the nest, they must have.
Regardless of his urgency, Simmons did not leave the room. Not at that moment, anyway. He was barely away from the wall when he felt faint, tripped over his own foot, and went down. He was out cold before the fine, odorless and colorless mist dissipated completely in the mid-summer air.
It took less than ten minutes for the other two rearguard teams to lockdown the hotel and locate their men, along with the KGB and IIS spies. Other than out cold, all were breathing.
Eventually, all came to, and all were debriefed, including the two assassins. The five Secret Service agents caught unawares in different posts throughout the hotel knew the least. Severely embarrassed, they had no idea that anyone had been there.
Pavlov and Zerjawy were reluctant to say anything, but they were overly defensive about being knocked out and captured, to the point of denying such a thing were possible, even though they couldn't remember anything past combining to kill the Secret Service agent in the nest.
As for Agent Simmons, he answered the questions put to him in a professional, though somewhat abrupt manner, saying just enough, without going into much detail. Like the others, he claimed ignorance when it came to who saved the President.
When his interview was over, Simmons was given two months of leave, with pay, to allow him to heal physically, as well as to possibly remember what had happened. The rest of his team went back to work the next week, in a backup role, rather than the front lines, though none were initially charged with negligence or dereliction of duty, pending an investigation.
A few hours before dawn, a man wearing a fedora and trench coat entered the alley and walked to where it dead ended. Several minutes later, another man, similarly dressed, joined him. The two shook hands, and after exchanging pleasantries, the second man produced a thick file from a leather briefcase.
"You heard about our dry run, right?" the first man inquired. He took the sheaf of papers and began skimming them.
"The assassination attempt?" the second man smiled wanly. "Which one? There were three!"
The first man nodded and chuckled. "I told you The Maya was good."
"I haven't heard everything yet," the second man said. "Did The Maya really take out an entire rearguard team?"
"Yes. Made it easier for the Iraqi and Soviet agents, obviously, but the move saved at least some of our boys' lives."
The second man shuddered, imagining two or more dead Secret Service agents at the hands of the Iraqi and the KGB agent. "Awfully risky, if you ask me."
"Not as risky as dismissing known assassins," the first said. There was disgust in his voice. "Not to mention a suicide bomber on a motorcycle going unaccounted for."
"I take it, he survived, too?"
The first man nodded.
"Has he been IDed yet?"
"Haven't heard, but he will be. Probably a Chechen, trying to make a name."
"True," the second man said. Then, he added, "The Maya must be good, to take out our men, two top assassins, and an unknown terrorist wannabe."
"Taking them all out wasn't really the hard part. Setting up the scenario, that was the real genius."
"I don't follow."
"Well, the only one with plans of their own to kill the President was the biker."
Author's note. 'The Maya' is the working title of a previously unpublished work-in-progress of mine. If interested, you can find the first three installments here, here, and here.
A portion of 'The Maya' publishes every Tuesday and Thursday.
Copyright © Glen Anthony Albrethsen, 2014-2018. All rights reserved.