From the darkness of the new moon, the compound was an intimidating mass of bricks and concrete. The place looked like an old prison or a mental institution to the eyes of Shinya Yoshida. He had been jailed before in a medium security establishment in Hokkaido and John Rasmussen's place reminded him of these two strange years where he had to cultivate beets eights hours a day with his feet chained. Who, right in their mind, would live in such a desolate place? From the photo reports, the writer made the interior pretty cozy, but there were still high concrete ceilings and barbed wire under the windows, to prevent any ill-advised escape attempt. Shinya could understand that a deranged mind could feel secure living in a place like this, but considering what he was hired to do, he couldn't help but wonder if Rasmussen ever though about the potential need to escape from his own fortress.
This was almost too easy. A big chunk of land, no neighbors and six muscle heads hired by private interests to cover him. ¨The Chosen¨ had organized clever security around John Rasmussen, but like in anything, time and comfort made them cocky. There were two cars parked permanently in front of the domain. A Subaru van and a little Hyundai car. Both looked empty, but a sentry lied down in permanence on the Hyundai backseat and a monitoring team dwelled in the back of the van, wiretapping his phone calls and constantly watching the security camera, getting ready to interfere with any trespassers.
Nothing had been attempted against Rasmussen for a little while now. Last time was three years ago when the CIA tried to bomb the compound with a rocket launcher. Surprisingly enough, Rasmussen escaped unscathed. The government thought that brutality could make up for the lack of subtlety, but they were wrong. Within a week, the compound was rebuilt. Rasmussen was taken to an undisclosed location and hired workers labored over there day and night to make sure nothing would show to ¨The Chosen¨'s superstar. For the last ten yars, strenght had been used to try and penetrate the compound, but it failed everytimes. Bombs, rockets, assassins, mobsters, everything had failed, but for Shinya Yoshida, there was no such thing as this. Failure was a temporary hinderance to a latent success. He would succeed where everybody had failed because he was different. He always was different than the others and that's the reason why he was constantly hired for this kind of job.
There was little chance for the writer to expect what was coming to him. For Rasmussen, it always had been a question of politics, warfare and virtue. ¨The Righteous¨ was his sacred quest to rid the Occidental Society of the upper floor thieves and criminals that ruined the everyman's life for their personnal gain. The fight was in-between him and the upper floor. Shinya wasn't a part of this battle. He was hired as a mercenary in a fight in between execs. This was about ¨The Righteous¨ and not John.
Shinya looked at his monitor given by his new boss and Rasmussen had resumed writing after the unsettling phone call. The call had for a use to make the surveillance team hop over the phone wire when Shinya hopped on the domain. They didn't hear anything of what John and him said to each other. All they had was a publicity for re-runs of ¨MacGuyver¨ that were airing on the same channel than ¨The Righteous¨. Wrong numbers and software malfunction were things that could happen, even with the most sophisticated, expensive, top of the line gear.
Now that he penetrated the domain of John Rasmussen, Shinya planned his next move in the surrounding woods. The place was thick and dark enough to obfuscate his presence to every living being on the outside (especially on a moonless night), but ¨The Chosen¨ weren't idiots, they wouldn't leave a perfect hiding spot where you could plot an attack against their star writer. No, two sentries were walking in the forest with maglites, scanning for potential threats all night long. Their word was to stay in the woods all day or all night (depending on the shift) in order to get their eyes used to the movement of the branching.
In order to get passed their torches, Shinya timed himself with the halos of light, so he climbed up a tree while the two sentries had their backs turned to his hiding spot. Over there he could change and prepare for the initial phase of ¨Operation Eight Ball¨.
In the comfort of his living room, the stress of the enigmatic phone call was quietly vanishing into the back of his mind. What was important, what was always the most important was the writing. Conrad and the adventures he only could wish to live himself. Freeing America from opression with fiction was, for John, as noble as freeing them with guns and blood. Even moreso. The quest had been uninterrupted for three years now, his words were more powerful than guns and his voice was the one of a new Che Guevara. He was indestructible.
Then, the doorbell rang. Twice, the same night, and the cavalry still wasn't there. John took a dive under the living room couch that he adopted for a bed many years ago and yanked a 9 mm. Glock from there. He called the weapon ¨his life insurance's life insurance¨. In case everything else failed, he still could count on himself. He never shot with it before, but the internet was full of manuals that taught him the inner functions of the 9 mm. hand gun. The initial clip that the salesman put in it twelve years ago was still intact. ¨The Chosen¨ would freak out when they'll see the security footage, but John didn't care. He was scared for his life and no one was in reach.
He walked cautiously to the front door with his gun in hand. He looked through the magic eye and the colors didn't quite made sense at first. There was a clown with balloons on his porch.
