There were eleven names left on the to-do list.
Ten of them had come out from under Snake Shield's umbrella, while the last one worked for Oscorp.
The Oscorp employee could wait.
As for the remaining ten, three of them had fled to Detroit.
Cross-referencing the tracker data with a map, Henry discovered that they had ended up at OCP—the corporation behind RoboCop.
Perhaps they had applied there because it operated in a similar field.
Or perhaps OCP had heard rumors that Cybertek had recently acquired new talent and had sent headhunters to poach them.
Either way, it proved one thing:
These people never learned.
Splitting up and fleeing had actually been a fairly clever choice.
Of course, against a Kryptonian's mobility and tracking abilities, unless they separated across different planets, being apart anywhere on Earth hardly mattered.
Yet these people were still sticking together.
Which meant either they didn't take the mysterious threat seriously, or they believed that moving as a group would somehow keep them safe.
Feeling mildly provoked, Henry headed to Detroit late that night to conduct some reconnaissance.
Once he arrived, he realized things were not quite what he had imagined.
The three families were temporarily staying at a motel in the suburbs.
Their rooms were adjacent to one another.
Surrounding the area, however, was a multilayered surveillance network and several temporary observation posts.
Unless the people hidden inside the vans and the personnel occupying several rooms packed with monitoring equipment around the targets' rooms were actually watching someone else who just happened to be staying at the same motel—
Which they clearly were not.
Without X-ray vision, Henry had to rely on his hearing, and it took him a little while to confirm the truth.
The whole place was a trap.
There were no nearby high-rises or neighboring buildings suitable for long-range surveillance.
Anyone who wanted to approach those three families would have to show themselves and walk directly into the net.
So Henry immediately made the correct decision:
Go home and sleep.
Tomorrow, he would deal with the other targets.
Besides those three, seven more names remained elsewhere on the list.
People always said the difference between hunter and prey came down to patience.
Henry certainly wasn't foolish enough to spot a trap and then voluntarily jump into it just to prove some theory about Kryptonian invincibility.
That kind of idiocy could be left to someone else.
Lack of sleep was the enemy of beauty.
At least, that was what Henry told himself.
This was despite the fact that back when he had a girlfriend, he frequently spent entire nights after particularly vigorous bedroom activities sneaking off to the ocean floor to work on his secret base.
Before going to bed, Henry checked the status of the ten remaining targets.
There had been another development.
One of them had arrived at Toronto Pearson International Airport and was already airborne on a commercial flight.
As the most advanced mode of transportation available, airports and airlines had embraced computerization remarkably quickly—almost rivaling the information systems of the twenty-first century.
This made it easy for Henry to infiltrate airport surveillance systems and airline passenger databases.
Before long, he identified the destination.
The target was flying with Air Canada to Cairo.
The flight departed at 7:45 p.m. and would arrive at approximately 12:15 a.m. two days later.
Total travel time: twenty-one and a half hours.
There would be a transfer in Munich Airport, Germany, with a layover of roughly nine hours.
As usual, engineering an air disaster was immediately ruled out.
Airplanes, like trains, were enclosed environments—but infiltrating one was vastly more difficult.
An unfamiliar person aboard a plane stood out far more than one aboard a train.
Getting in or out unnoticed would be nearly impossible unless he used areas reserved for flight attendants.
Moreover, there were only so many "accidents" that could occur in the air.
If a serious emergency arose, the aircraft could always divert and land early, drastically reducing response times.
Which meant the best places to act would either be Munich Airport during the layover or Cairo International Airport after arrival.
The flight was scheduled to land in Munich at approximately 9:50 a.m. local time.
That translated to 12:50 a.m. in Los Angeles.
The connecting flight departed at 7:30 p.m. Munich time, or 10:30 a.m. in Los Angeles.
Perfect.
He could head to Germany in the morning and assess the situation.
If no opportunity presented itself there, he could simply wait in Egypt.
Once the target left North America, Henry could employ considerably bolder methods.
After a good night's sleep, Henry sent away the food delivery guy, fed both Katie and himself, then dropped the tiger off near the Sheep Cave Valley laboratory.
Afterward, he grabbed a rifle and headed for Germany.
The AK-47 in his hands was an old weapon he had picked up from a Black dealer in South Los Angeles.
The rifle itself had originally leaked out of a police evidence locker and carried an extensive criminal history.
Simply possessing it was already a crime.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
If the Los Angeles Police Department ever discovered it in his car or house, they could arrest him as a felon on the spot.
But as a backup black-market weapon stored at the Sheep Cave Valley lab, it was perfect for situations like this.
No one could trace it back to any particular individual.
The dealer who had surrendered the rifle had done so unwillingly—and only after being knocked unconscious.
He probably never even saw who had taken it.
Henry had quietly accumulated quite a few untraceable weapons like this during the period when he was preparing for a possible war against vampires.
Originally, they had been intended for dealing with vampire collaborators.
Even if he couldn't completely dispose of a body, he could at least reduce the chances of investigators tracing anything back to him.
The weapons had gone unused back then.
Now they finally had a purpose.
Since airports lacked tall buildings suitable for sniper positions, Henry concealed the rifle beneath his overcoat and relied on his super-hearing and near-sighted eyes to locate the target.
It didn't take long.
Soon he found the family.
Two adults.
Two children.
The kids looked to be elementary-school age.
They had already entered the terminal, meaning they had passed security and customs.
Henry was slightly surprised they had gone inside so early.
Then again, they had only been in America for two or three months after leaving Russia.
They couldn't have accumulated much savings.
Their long layover in Munich probably consisted of nothing more than sitting around and waiting rather than sightseeing.
That realization earned no sympathy from Henry.
He was here to cross a name off a list.
Recalling the airport's surveillance-camera locations and angles from his earlier investigations, and combining them with the structural model he had built of the airport itself, Henry quickly identified a suitable firing position.
Combining super-speed, flight, and molecular phasing, he appeared at the chosen location almost instantly.
The AK naturally lacked any kind of high-powered optic.
Henry didn't need one.
Relying entirely on instinct, he fired without even properly aiming.
Most people thought of the AK-47 as a rugged and reliable weapon.
Those who actually understood firearms knew that its lethality was even more impressive.
Contrary to what movies suggested, people rarely got shot by an AK and then continued fighting heroically.
The 7.62mm round created devastating cavitation effects, often leaving exit wounds more than ten centimeters wide.
Even without striking a vital organ, the injury was usually permanently disabling.
A body armor hit might stop the bullet, but the bones underneath would still be shattered.
That was why the AK-47 remained beloved by Third World militaries, guerrilla fighters, warlords, and drug cartels.
Just like now.
Henry had carefully chosen his angle so that the exploding fragments of skull wouldn't injure anyone else.
A spray of blood and brain matter erupted several meters behind the target.
The children's mother screamed and immediately covered their eyes.
Other travelers in the terminal broke into panicked shrieks.
Henry's compassion extended only as far as not harming innocent people.
The psychological well-being of the target's children was not his responsibility.
By then, however, the sniper position was already empty.
Henry had packed up the rifle, returned home, and gone to work.
Now it was Germany's police who would have the headache.
Though they were destined to find nothing.
Remaining to-do list: 10.
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