WILLIAM E

WILLIAM E. LOPEZ

Approx 1,070 words

An Englishman, training in the US during WWII, fathers a child but only finds out many years later.

The Englishman

W. E. Lopez

San Jose, California: August 12, 1985, 4:47 p.m.

Dieter Schoen glanced at his watch for the nth time on a Monday afternoon just before 5:00 p.m. He made sure to keep his body deep within the shadow of the air-conditioning machinery atop the 36-story building just a few blocks from Mercantile Street. It was unlikely that anyone from the neighboring buildings might see him, but he did everything possible to make it difficult to discern his appearance on the roof.

He put his eye against the Serkov 6-power scope and watched the men and women leaving the office building. If the target kept to his predictable routine, he would be showing himself in just a few more moments.

Dieter caressed his weapon, a modified Barrett M82A1, first introduced in 1983 and later customized by several nations around the world. The “light-fifty” was chambered for a standard .50 caliber cartridge, long used as an anti-aircraft weapon and possessed with an armor piercing capability. In Dieter’s version, however, the cartridge had been necked down and the barrel customized to accept a 55 grain .223 projectile first used by the US in the Viet Nam conflict. The result was a weapon accurate to a range of nearly two miles with an unthinkable muzzle velocity approaching 6,000 feet per second.

A figure emerged from the building several blocks down the street and Dieter’s pulse quickened. He glanced again at the photo he had been provided and reassured himself he was at last looking at the target. Yes, it was Nikky Ahern, the 42-year-old man he had been sent to eliminate.

Dieter pressed the range button on the Serkov 6 scope and a red-dot bloomed on the target’s chest. In the eye piece he saw the figures 1745 illuminated. Ahern was but 15 yards less than a mile away! The micro-chip built into the Serkov scope would calculate the bullet drop at that range and adjust the laser aiming point as needed. At the same time, a micro-sensor just above the telescopic sight would measure wind-velocity and direction and apply the necessary deflection to put the bullet on target with the closest degree of accuracy. The Serkov scope was widely reputed throughout the world to have an accuracy of 1.64 inches at 1760 yards.

Dieter relaxed his breathing, forcing his lungs to draw in a full breath and let half of it out while he steadied the laser-dot on the target. His finger began a slow and deliberate squeeze on the trigger….

* * *

Trueblood Wilkins rounded the corner at Victoria and Seventh and paused long enough to light a cigarette as he sized up possible targets. He spotted the slim brunette leaving the office building, purse tightly gripped under her right arm, as she stepped toward the curb where a gray BMW was just pulling to a stop. The brunette gave a wave of her hand, greeting the driver, and moved her purse to her left hand while grasping the door handle with her right.

Hesitating a mere second, Trueblood glanced to make sure no cops were in the immediate vicinity. The yuppies on the street were all desk types, spending their days in a swivel chair while writing software programs, manipulating stock transfers, or a hundred and one other things that made them rich. None of them would take the trouble to help a mere woman while he grabbed her purse.

He flipped the butt into the street and sprinted the fifteen yards to the brunette, grabbed her purse and was fifty yards down the street before the brunette had time to scream. When he heard her voice, he turned back a second to see if anyone was pursuing him. Facing forward again he was about to careen into a conservatively dressed business man and had no way to avoid the collision. Trueblood lowered his head and right shoulder….

* * *

With the laser aiming point centered on the target’s chest, Dieter slowly took up the remaining slack in the trigger. “BOOM!” The firing pin struck the primer cap and the hand-loaded cartridge detonated. The .223 projectile accelerated down the 29-inch barrel and exited the muzzle with a brief flash and a loud bang. Unlike Hollywood screen writers, Dieter had not affixed a silencer to his weapon, knowing that the hyper-velocity projectile would break the sound barrier all along its 1700 yard flight to the target, making its presence obvious to anyone in the immediate vicinity by a miniature sonic boom.

Dieter’s eye had been fixed to the telescopic sight when he selected the target and fired. Zooming out now, to his horror, he saw a street punk, with a purse clutched under his left arm like a pro-quarterback, sprinting from right to left and into his line of fire.

At nearly 6,000 feet per second, the time of flight to the intended target took less than a third of a second. The young punk was about to run full-force into Dieter’s target and there was not a thing the marksman could do now the bullet had been launched!

* * *

Trueblood’s hundred and eighty-pound body struck the businessman with all the force of a linebacker protecting his zone. Nikky Ahern was thrown down and back toward the office building he had just exited. His hip hurt as it contacted the sidewalk. His shoulder hurt when he crashed into the building. He saw stars when his head hit the wall and he lay there unconscious and unaware of his narrow brush with death.

Trueblood was not as lucky as Nikky Ahern. His neck was in the precise spot where Nikky had been standing a split-second before. The hyper-velocity bullet reached its intended impact point and exploded Trueblood’s carotid artery like a bowl of strawberry jello with a fire cracker stuck in it. Due to the tremendous muzzle energy of the bullet, the muscles and tendons in Trueblood’s neck, as well the bullet itself, were instantly transmuted into tiny particles of mushy gore. The vertebrae in the cervical spine were pulverized and Trueblood’s head was separated from his body.

The tremendous energy of the bullet was imparted to Trueblood’s severed head, causing it to leave his body in a shallow arc, the trajectory of which impacted with the building which Nikky Ahern had been pushed into. Obeying the law of gravity, the skull fell to the ground, unceremoniously ending up in Nikky’s lap.

Overview of the completed piece.

1. Nikky Ahern has several close brushes with death before he realizes someone is trying to kill him.

2. Nikky was raised by an Aunt in Philadelphia because his mother (a black woman) was institutionalized when he was born during WWII in a Southern State where miscegenation was still against the law. Nikky’s father was an English military officer assigned as liaison to the American military.

3. While in prison, Nikky’s mother wrote to her lover in England, but his lordship’s wife intercepted the letter and kept it hidden until she died in 1984. After her death, Lord Nelson Tewkesbury discovered the letter and found he had a son, although illegitimate, in America.

4. He has another son, born shortly after the war, but the fellow lacks ambition and has been convicted several times for possession of drugs, so Lord Tewkesbury does not want him to inherit the title and estate. He sends a confidential agent to America to locate and report on his American boy’s circumstances, with the intention of adopting the fully grown man if he should prove a suitable heir.

5. The confidential agent decides he can make a small fortune from the legitimate heir if the illegitimate son dies and the real son should inherit.

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