Prologue
Dr. Phillipa Hennigan watched the sun set on the horizon. The last rays of light glittered over Lake Pontchartrain. She pulled the black sedan to the curb in front of an industrial building a block away from their target. From Mardi Gras to the Jazz Festival to any night on Bourbon Street, New Orleans was always one of the most happening towns in the United States. And as much as she wanted to grab a hurricane, kick back her heels and take a load off, she wasn’t in town to enjoy the debauchery with drunken tourists. She had a job to do.
After throwing the car into park, she took in her surroundings. In the distance, a large group of people were boarding a vessel for an evening cruise. She’d read in a brochure that nightly excursions left from this part of the lake. The evening trips around Pontchartrain, or any of the rivers that fed into it, were combined with exquisite seafood and seemed to be a requirement for any knowledgeable vacationer. From the way some tourists down the block wobbled on solid land, she could tell the revelers on the dock had been drinking long before they arrived here. One tourist almost missed the gangway completely, but a shipmate grabbed her before she could fall into the waters below.
Dr. Hennigan glanced at the brick building they’d parked in front of. ‘Pontchartrain Fishery Buyer and Processor’ was stenciled in fading black letters across the side. She’d chosen to park here because the people who worked for the fish buyer were in bed or would be shortly. From the intelligence her team had gathered about this area, the workers would start unloading the previous night’s hauls around four in the morning, so the building should be vacant this time of the evening.
She looked across the lake and could almost make out Bayou St. John. While many of the lake’s boats were neatly tucked away in their rented spaces, she’d done enough research to know many crews were already setting traps and getting ready for a long night of fishing, either in the lake or the Gulf of Mexico. She turned her head and looked down the street toward a clump of houseboats that swayed in the night air. She wasn’t interested in all the houseboats, just the second one.
Two other women sat inside the sedan with her. Her two colleagues wore khaki shorts, loose-fitting polo shirts and new tennis shoes. Her colleagues’ wardrobes were recently purchased, but the only part of the outfits that gave that away was the bright white of the shoes. They looked like thousands of other tourists shopping or stalking the streets, hoping to glimpse their favorite soap opera star. Since the hit showNOLA Nightsbegan shooting in the area, paparazzi and lookie-loos had been clamoring to get photos with and of the cast. Some international press members had been camped out for months in various hotels throughout the city.
Dr. Hennigan wore a more conservative gray pantsuit with six-inch stilettos. At five-feet-eleven-inches with short-cropped black hair with a tint of red in it, she looked like any power CEO. She reached into her bag and pulled out a rifle telescope, then examined the scene down the street. The boat with the drunken revelers was finally pulling away. As for the houseboat she was interested in, the boat’s internal lights were lit.
“How many people are in there, Richardson?” she asked. Richardson picked up a pair of binoculars and scrutinized the houseboat.
When satisfied with her answer, Richardson said, “One.”
“You had better be right,” Dr. Hennigan said.
Dr. Hennigan checked to ensure her Browning Buck Mark with the Silencerco suppressor was ready. She liked how accurate the gun was and how quiet the silencer made it. She glanced around and noticed her two operatives doing the same with their standard-issue Glock nineteens with Octane nine suppressors. Their weapons were not as silent as hers but were quiet enough to get the job done that night. Next, she double-checked her backup gun in her jacket, a small handgun explicitly designed for The Foundation. It was a nine-millimeter short with thirteen point-thirty-eight hollow-point rounds inside, which she could easily hide under a light T-shirt. This weapon was not a standard police-issue weapon. It was created using a special plastic polymer, making it undetectable by the most stringent airport security. As for the bullets, they were ceramic and shattered on impact to maximize damage.
Dr. Hennigan’s mother always told her, “If you’re going to level your gun and shoot, plan on putting the target down.” For a second, she wondered what would happen if terrorists ever got this specific technology for themselves. She grinned, noting it would be impossible, especially since the designer was dead—the first victim of his own creation by her hands. Satisfied, she opened the driver’s-side door and walked toward the houseboat. Without saying a word, the other two women slipped out of the sedan and matched her stride.
When Dr. Hennigan was almost to the boat, she turned and looked at the women. For the first time, she realized how ridiculous they looked. She would chastise them later, but for the moment, she had a job to do and wanted to get it done.
“We are going to do this exactly like we planned. Richardson, go to the rear and up the back ladder but stay on deck in the shadows. Take anyone down quietly and quickly if they come on deck while we’re inside. Denzili, you’re my backup. Follow my lead.” The two women nodded.
The three made their way around to the side of the boat. Richardson went along the wooden surface between the boats to the rear. Dr. Hennigan stepped on the ladder and scaled it before jumping on board, landing in a silent crouch.
Denzili landed next to her, and Dr. Hennigan made a series of hand motions to Denzili.
“Back deck is clear,” Richardson spoke into Hennigan’s headset, a tiny earpiece that used bone conduction to amplify speech. “Stage one complete.”
“Proceed to stage two,” Dr. Hennigan replied.
There were two sets of stairs, one going up to the target’s office and one down to the living space. Dr. Hennigan and Denzili crept down into the lower living quarters. Luckily, nothing creaked under her weight, which had been one of the major concerns of this operation. Thankfully, the boat was still new enough that it didn’t make the wrenching noises of an older vessel. Strains of classical music reached them from the bottom of the stairs, along with the faint smell of grilled vegetables. Dr. Hennigan flattened her back against the wall and peered into the room at the bottom of the stairwell.Bingo, she thought. The target was in the living room, standing next to the opposite wall, looking at a row of CDs. Dr. Hennigan slipped inside the cabin, just out of sight of the occupant.
As part of their surveillance research, Dr. Hennigan and her colleagues had found out the company that ranNOLA Nightshad long realized that providing the stars of their show with houseboats was more economical than attempting to put them up in hotels in the city. All the actors had their own boats scattered around the lake. This one was two stories high and contained a posh living environment, which included a living room, kitchen, exercise area, office, primary bedroom and bathroom.
Richardson and Denzili had scouted the layout earlier in the day when the target was on set filming and security was focused on the set, not the boats. According to internal emails Dr. Hennigan had read after they’d hacked the producers’ accounts, the company felt the threat was not substantial enough to hire guards, making this mission easier.
Dr. Hennigan moved across the thick carpet toward the subject. The lush flooring muffled her approach. Denzili was still against the wall, eyeing the back of the boat and up the stairwell with her gun firmly in her grip, just in case.
Dr. Hennigan quickly looped her arm inside the subject’s left arm. With a sweeping motion, she prevented the subject from moving and yelling. A stifled screech came from the woman’s mouth beneath Dr. Hennigan’s hand. She pressed the nozzle of her gun against the woman’s temple.
“Where are the files?” The subject didn’t respond. Dr. Hennigan pressed the nozzle a little harder and asked again, “Where are the files?” As she asked the second time, Dr. Hennigan lowered her hand from the subject’s mouth so she could speak.
“What’re you talking about?”
“Where’re the files?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about. I swear, I don’t!”
“Hey, Cynthia, where do you keep your oregano?”
Dr. Hennigan turned fast enough to watch the owner of that voice walk into the living room from the kitchen before she pointed her gun and fired. Cynthia shrieked as a man slumped to the ground. A pool of blood spread its way over the plush carpet from the bullet hole in the man’s forehead.
Cynthia’s sobs were muffled from beneath Dr. Hennigan’s gloved hand. “You can stop with the theatrics. I taught you everything you know.”
