Free Thirteen Million Dollar Pop by David Levien Page B

been stoic, ever since he was a rude boy on the streets, and the hardships he endured while plying his trade had made him a regular mean fucker. Though, it occurred to him, there were few things meaner than a pissed off Welshman in the first place.
    He had left off his things—his labelless clothing and generic toiletries—at the Shite-Quality Inn, kept the hardware with him, and had driven north out of the city. He’d entered a different world, he realized, as he reached Kolodnik’s office. The city was glass and steel shooting up out of a plain, but everything was marble and money out in this bloody suburb.
    Dwyer grimaced as he slowed at Kolodnik’s office building but did not stop the car. Anyone with a quarter of his field experience would’ve clocked the pair of yobs at the door for whatthey were: security for hire. He kept right on going, around the back, spotting two more, when another, a fifth man, big as a dray horse, came lumbering out the door. But this one didn’t stay with his fellows. Instead, he moved on toward his car.
    “Bollocks,” Dwyer said, and tooled on out toward Kolodnik’s home address.
    “Well, aren’t you the big-time Charlie Potato?” Waddy Dwyer said to himself as he crouched in the woods a good distance away from Kolodnik’s home. Hidden in a stand of old growth oak, he glassed the lavish dwelling with Swarovski 10×42 binoculars. The house was a heavy-beamed Tudor, with decorative leaded glass windows along the ground floor, a peaked slate roof, and landscaped grounds, including pool and tennis court, surrounded by a tall, wrought iron fence. The place was more English manor than regular house.
    He had parked several streets away, and had gone through the woods for a good stretch to get a look. With the binoculars, along with having seen the security at the office, it was fairly easy for him to deduce that Kolodnik wasn’t at home. But the home security team certainly was. Another four men, at least, Dwyer determined, based on the two outside and the movement inside. He saw the telltale lumps under their jackets beneath the left shoulders. Probably Uzis or MP5s on slings, like the bleeding Secret Service carried.
    He considered his options. A high-powered rifle from a quarter mile away while the man was at the kitchen sink. It was doable. He recalled a similar operation on a diplomat in South Africa more than a decade back. There were two on security there, who were put down after the shot, with the door kicked in and the target finished up close. But that was quasi-military, with plenty of support. There had been choppers for extraction. Here, a deer rifle with a telescopic sight was easily gettable, but night vision optics was not. It’d also be a cold bore shot, the barrel notwarmed up. Then there was that leaded window glass to consider. It could cause a deflection, which might in turn cause a wound, not a kill—or, worse yet, a miss, with no chance of follow-up.
    There was more poor news along with all this, Dwyer saw. Besides a pair of black Range Rovers outside in the driveway, and a Mercedes convertible in the open garage, there was a heavy-looking blacked-out Chevrolet Suburban that appeared modified with armor to his eye. There was also a moving truck being loaded with boxes and luggage. A team of darkie moving men was doing the hauling, and the security wasn’t even helping, which was another sign of their professionalism. So it seemed Kolodnik was soon to be on the move, and there wasn’t going to be much time for proper setup. There could be even more men inside, Dwyer realized, his mood blackening further. Four, six, eight, ten, or a hundred, it didn’t matter. Kolodnik was covered tighter than a pair of balls in shrunken wool shorts. This thing was a walkaway. The operation was rogered. Right up the arse.
    Back in his car, sucking on a Coca-Cola and a hamburger from some barf-hole drive-through window, Dwyer considered where he was at, and it wasn’t a pretty