Chapter 3

The man in the unbutton crisp black suit with an undone black tie in the resturant sat almost transfixed watching these two men wisecrack on each other back and forth. He couldn’t make out their exact words but that’s not what he was hearing for. He shuffled his feet and leaned back a bit. He rubbed his eyes, and then stretched a bit and breathed in deep. They had been late he began to reason whilst looking around and recalling his course of action.

There it was, he heard; his gaze quickly shifted towards to the two men as they were getting up out of their booth. Now he knew they had been late. The cell phone in his pocket vibrated and he stopped.

What was this, he thought, had something gone horribly wrong? This was not protcool and this wasn’t  what they had planned. He grabbed the phone and answered it.

“Twenty-five minutes,” a voice said and the call ended. He put the cellphone back into his pocket as he briskly followed after the two other men. Once out the resturant he made a mad dash to the right of the parking lot as the two men slowly walked forward to their car. He had to time this just right. He opened his car and quickly turned it on. He had parked horizontally across from where the men had their car. He watched as the men neared their car. Now looking at them by aid of his mirror he waited for the sound, the sound of their car turning on. All of this had to be done in one fell swoop or it wouldn’t work. Loosening his body up he took a few deep breaths, looked back once more to see where the two men’s car was and settled into the seat. Then it came, his cue, the sound of the engine. He peered at the car’s end slowly coming out it’s parking space and at one third of the two men’s car out he floored the car’s gas pedal for exactly 10 seconds, steered the car a tad to the right and then let go of the steering wheel. The sound of metal crunching, metal to metal, the center of the passenger side of the two men’s car had met with the back of his car. A disaster. He had made two other cars besides the two men’s car be invovled in this disaster. He was hurt, he had hit his head against the steering wheel; purposely he hadn’t worn a seatbelt. His mission was complete. He laid with his head on the passenger seat. This would surely take  a nice while to clear out. He smiled and looked at the ceiling. “Twenty-five minutes,” he said softly.

***

Four minutes, the total time the two men who had paid a visit  to the Congressmen had been on the metro train back to Franconia, Springfield. Twenty-five minutes was what they had asked for so they could arrive back into Springfield Mall. Fifteen minutes of which were due to the elderly man’s sloppiness. He who had once carried the briefcase now stood and the other sitting down looking at the floor. The elderly man had endangered the entire operation but he who was sitting could not think of these things as of yet as there were still yet greater things to tend to. He cracked his back, his neck, and finally his jaw. He looked up and raised his hand. Thomas, the one who was standing reached for his cellphone when he saw this. He called, “Five minutes,” Thomas said and hung up. Thomas then took the battery out of the cellphone and dropped the phone followed by stepping on it. He picked it up and put in a ziploc bag. Thomas then thought he heard something, he had. He never had spoken during an operation, it was the way he had taught him. He who was sitting down had said, “Good.”