Black Jade

Eric Lantz sat at a café in downtown Kinshasa, sipping tea and enjoying the bright, humid morning. The slouch of his six-foot frame in the chair, along with his full dark beard and bland, beige kaftan allowed him to blend in with the surroundings.

Although he was fluent in four languages, he spoke to the waiter in English. His eyes never rested, but scanned the street and the building on the other side. Trucks, buses, and automobiles passed by in a cadence of noise and exhaust fumes. He didn’t notice them.

He'd been sent by the US government to Kinshasa to find and eliminate a man known to be an arms supplier to the Janjaweed and Al Qaeda. After two weeks of searching, he'd finally uncovered the office. Although heavily guarded, the office sat on the ground floor, making it easy to observe. An idea formed in his mind as he watched the heavily armed guards slouch around the doorway.

He spent the next four days carefully noting times and patterns of the guards and confirming the elements of his plan. Haroun arrived each morning at ten a.m. with six guards who protected the front and rear entrances. At ten thirty each day, two guards - one from the back and one from the front -- left to get coffee and breakfast for the group. They spent about twenty minutes away, sufficient time for him to accomplish his mission.

On the fifth morning, he settled behind a trash bin in the alley Haroun's building at eight am. His kaftan covered his "working" clothes. Under the kaftan, he wore a pair of jeans, a baggy shirt and rubber-soled shoes designed to look like regular shoes, but perform like high end running shoes. Right on time, three guards rounded the corner and assumed their stations on lawn chairs arranged against the wall. At ten thirty, one man, the shortest of the three, set his rifle against the wall next to his companions. After a few words, he left the way he came. Lantz checked his watch and began a countdown.

Four minutes after the short man left, Lantz aimed his CZ 75, 9mm pistol, with a sound suppressor, at the right guard. Exhaling, he squeezed the trigger and heard a small "putt" sound and the clack of the pistol's arming slide. A dark crimson circle appeared on the guard’s forehead. He shifted his weight and leaned out slightly from behind the bin. Another "putt" produced a similar hole in the second guard's forehead. He stood and entered the back door, ignoring the two corpses slumped in the chairs.

He stepped into the shadowed interior and made his way toward the front, following the voices he heard in offices on the right side of the hallway. He was about fifteen feet from the front door and could see the back of the shoulders of the flanking guards ahead. They seemed oblivious to his presence. Slowing his breathing, he stepped into the doorway of the offices. His first shot went into the head of a man sitting at a desk in front of him. A sound drew his attention to another man standing before a row of file cabinets on his left. Lantz smoothly arced the CZ towards him and, as the man turned to see what was going on, Lantz fired two bullets in his left eye and forehead. Brains and blood spattered on the wall resembling a surrealist's view of some far-away galaxy. Searching for the final voice, he spun to his right and fired two more bullets into the man sitting there. The man's gaping mouth worked twice. He slid back and off the chair. The sound of the empty chair slamming into the wall seemed incredibly loud in the confined space.

He replaced the magazine in his CZ and, as he did, he spotted the door to the boss's office across the room. He took four silent strides and stepped through the doorway. Haroun was getting to his feet behind his desk. He still held his telephone in his hand as Lantz fired two bullets into his chest. Haroun crashed backward and fell to the floor. Lantz walked around the desk and stared down at the man. Haroun lay on the floor with his mouth open, gasping for air, blood pooling beneath him.

Ignoring Haroun, Lantz hung up the phone and placed a USB drive into the computer. One press on the enter key started a batch file on the drive which compressed and downloaded the contents of the hard drive. While he waited for the process to finish, he removed his kaftan and examined the surface of the desk. Ink smudges on the worn blotter and a picture of a woman and three children were the only items of interest. Several folders lay on the desk. Lantz flipped them open but could make no sense of them with a quick glance. He slid the files between his belt and his back. Pulling down the baggy shirt, he looked at the screen indicating the progress of the download to the USB.

Seven minutes later, the batch program finished and Lantz slid the USB quickly into his pocket as he looked down at Haroun once more. The man still clung to life. Lantz tried to gauge the length of time Haroun still had left. Glancing at his watch, he knew the return of the "breakfast squad" was imminent. Deciding, he moved directly over the man's head and pointed his CZ at Haroun's forehead. Haroun closed his eyes, and Lantz fired once.

Lantz retraced his steps through the outer office and out the back door. He sprinted down the alley for several blocks and then slowed to a walk as he entered the pedestrian traffic flow on the next street over. From there it was a simple matter of returning to his hotel room and arranging his outbound flight to Tel Aviv.