The Innocent Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Out there!”
    They rushed to the door.
    The two guards outside the plane had drawn their weapons and fired at the source of the fatal shot.
    Shots pinged around Robie’s position. He aimed and fired back. The first sentry fell with a kill shot to the head. The second collapsed a few moments after that with a bullet wedged in his heart.
    From his high perch Robie pointed his rifle’s muzzle at the door of the plane. He sent five shots right through the center, destroying the opening mechanism. He swiveled around and took out the cockpit window and with it the plane’s controls. The big bird would be grounded for a while. It was fortunate for his mission that bulletproof material was too thick and heavy to carry on planes. That made it simply a hundred-million-dollar vault with a very large Achilles’ heel.
    Then he was done with killing.
    Now came the hardest part.
    The exit.
    He tightwalked down the girder until he reached a wall on the far side of the hangar. He pushed open the window, attached his cable to the support ring he had bolted into place the night before, and rappelled down the wall. His feet touched the asphalt and he ran due east away from the hangar and the dead prince. He scaled a fence, dropped to the other side. He heard shouts behind him. Some beams of light broke the darkness. Shots headed his way, all far off target. He knew that could change.
    The car raced up. He threw his gear in the backseat, jumped in, and it drove off before his door was even shut. Robie did not look at the driver and the driver did not look at him. The car traveled for only a few miles, into the outskirts of Tangier, before stopping. Robie slipped out, headed down an alley, walked another five hundred feet, and entered a small courtyard. A blue Fiat was there. He slid into the driver’s seat, snagged the keys from under the visor,and started it up. He gunned the engine and left the courtyard. Five minutes later he neared the center of Tangier. He drove through the city and parked the car at the port. He popped the rear hatch and pulled out a small bag packed with clothes and other essentials, including travel documents and local currency.
    He boarded not the high-speed ferry back to Spain, which he had taken to get here, but instead the slow ferry from Tangier to Barcelona. It took twenty-four hours to go from Barcelona to Tangier and three hours longer in the other direction.
    His employer had sprung for a three-person family berth rather than simply a seat. He went to this space, stowed his bag, locked his door, and lay on the bed. A few minutes later the ferry slipped away from the dock.
    Robie could see the logic. No one would expect an assassin to escape via a boat that took over a full day to get to its destination. They would check the airports, the high-speed ferries, the highways, and the train stations. But not the lumbering old bathtub that would take twenty-seven hours to go a few hundred miles up the Med. He would actually arrive two days from now, since it was nearly midnight.
    Robie had had with him a long-range surveillance cone that had allowed him to hear the conversation on the plane between the prince and the two other men. Access to weapons. Decades in the making. Significant funds for the aftermath. It would have to be followed up. But that was not his job. He had completed his task. He would make his report and others would now take over. He was certain that even the Saudi royal family would be relieved that one of their black sheep had been killed. Their official statement would condemn such an act of violence. They would demand a full investigation. They would posture and fume and whine. Tense diplomatic communications would be exchanged. But in private they would toast the ones responsible for the killing. In other words, they would toast the Americans.
    It had been a clean operation. Robie had had the prince in his crosshairs from the moment he’d gotten out of his SUV. He could’ve taken him