Assassinate a semi-omniscient crime lord

Question

The setting is of 2010. No weird science nor aliens.

There's this crime lord who climbed too quickly up the power ladder. He has an uncanny ability to know exactly what everyone within his range (20 kilometer radius) is doing. Anyone who comes into his range is recognized, not by name but he can tell everyone apart without seeing them.

The means by which he obtained this ability is unknown (or irrelevant). He is, otherwise a normal human (with common sense). His seeing & hearing ranges are normal. A very skilled assassin is sent to kill him (as skilled as you could imagine within current technology level, no magic).

The requirement is only to kill him, by any means, but avoid killing anyone else. The maximum casualties allowed is 10 deaths.

Edit 1

His power range is a sphere.

His power only lets him know who does what, instinctively. He can't tell the intention.

He won't ever get sensory overload.

Edit 2

For some who are wondering why I won't just quarantine the area then send an army after him: he would see it from 20 kilometers away (maybe more if he has spies or scouts) he would have plenty of time to put on a disguise and slip away in the mass confusion (you're attacking a city after all) and if there's no mass confusion he would just explode some buildings (setup before-hand, it's sensible to have backup plan) to cause confusion and slip away.

Why I don't just send assassin to sneak into his building and kill him in his sleep: he's well aware of his vulnerability during unconscious hours and the ability to sneak into any building is overrated in movies. It's a den, of course there will be plenty of elite guards who, once they shoot, only miss half of the times (and there's plenty of them to make up for that). Beside, who said there wasn't something like an automatic turret with facial recognition that shoots anything unfamiliar? Remember, he's sensible. He doesn't have to be a genius, he can hire geniuses any day to design his den.

Why I don't rig some beggars and detonate when they got close to him: seriously, beggars have no chance to get close to him and why would he go to places where something like that could happen? When he goes out, he uses his armored vehicles, multiple ones just to confuse people. Again, he's sensible.

Why I don't send him an explosive gift: why would he read mails and open gifts by his own hands? He has assistants for that. Explosive phone? He's sensible, why would he want a stupid expensive iPhone for? He would order one, custom made, with highest security, encryption money could buy.

Drones: it's his obvious flaws, so it's only sensible to have his building or panic room protected from such. His anti-air should be as good as any warlord. And you don't see many warlords killed by remote controlled drones.

I must emphasize again that he's sensible. Meaning he won't work alone. He's not a genius but he has money to hire geniuses. He or his consultants would recognize his obvious flaws and should have some countermeasures.

The crime lord has been subject to previous assassination attempts and is very cautious.

Answer 1

Plant an explosive device ahead of time at a location he is going to/under his car/etc. Use cameras to cover the location. Activate it remotely. So long as all the setup is done outside of his perception range then he has no extra defenses compared to any other target.

Answer 2

Do it when he is asleep.

Pose as a homeless bum or something and hang around to learn when he is asleep and awake. He's an otherwise ordinary guy, so just use those standard assassin skills, wait until he sleeps, sneak in and take him out, or plant a bomb.

Answer 3

You need to check-mate him.

In chess, each opponent is also omniscient in the sense that they know where all the pieces are and what their possible next moves are. The best chess players are those that can predict all the possible future scenarios and avoid being left without an exit plan.

One relevant story that incorporates this component in a certain way is Death Note. One guy has a curious power and the best detective is sent to take him down. The detective has all the pieces in his head, but he only needs concrete proof of what is going on to link them all together. The whole time, they are "fighting" in the open, next to each other.

Answer 4

Brute force

There is a difference between knowing someone is going to kill you and being able to stop it. If your assassin is skilled enough, perhaps they can get there and finish the job anyways; they just need to be really, really good at what they do.

Espionage-like tactics

Send someone or something without the obvious intent to kill. Ship in a delivery of poisoned or allergenic food, a gun that fires backward, explosives, or an escort who doesn't realize their lipstick is laced with slow-acting neurotoxin. It may take some time, but you can minimize causalities without risking detection - and look damn cool in the process.

Sensory overload

@SRM has the right idea in the comments: depending on if they can sense everything at once, lure them into a crowded area where everyone has completely different objectives, make it hard to focus on one hostile individual, then finish the job in a nearby cafe bathroom, subway car, etc- somewhere where causalities will be reduced, but there are people relatively close by.

Answer 5

Sniper/Bomb Drone

As the title says, a small flying drone equipped with a gun can do the trick, it's improbable he won't be outside for at least a few minutes, so you could snipe him from above.

Another way is with a drone with a bomb on it, just reverse the propellers, and drop as fast as possible on him, detonating near his head. A rolling one might work too, but it is a bit more obvious. (Maybe just a kid playing with his toy truck and suddenly boom.)

Of course the drone is piloted outside of his range.

This is also assuming he can only detect humans.

Answer 6

Mechanical view on the problem

The problem is akin to the issue of radio silence in the military -- there is a time for secrecy, but when action starts, secrecy gets in the way of action. The idea is to keep secrecy as long as possible.

When the action starts, secrecy is dropped and the key is to hit quickly enough and hard enough, that:

1. The target has no time to avert the threat once it realizes what's going on

2. It cannot recover from the blow.

The problem of your limited-range-omniscient is thus the same as any ordinary target, but just expanded: there is always a point where a target will realize that someone is after them: at the latest (for any ordinary person), at the exact moment when the body is hit. But at that point it is too late and the hit is too hard.

Your target has an "outer envelope" of 20 kms. It means that you have to put them in a situation where they cannot react fast enough, once they realize about the threat.

The idea of bringing the person into a booby-trapped area, all by itself, has a shortcoming, in that it is slow. Also, you would have to evacuate anyone who knows about the attempt from a radius of 20 miles around ground zero. It could work, but they are many ways it could fail in such a long time span.

Aside of sensory overload (@Zxyrra: brilliant idea, which can be used in conjunction!), I guess the simplest way would be to take off the individual from a distance. They are no long-distance rifles that can reach that far (a pumped-up howitzer could, but the damage would be too large and that's explicitly forbidden).

So one might perhaps go in the direction of a very fast self-propelled weapon, radio-controlled (or better self-controlled), what we would call today a drone. The drone would have to be pretty fast, and be pretty fast to redirect their course, so that the person cannot escape it, no matter what they do.

Combining the solutions into an elaborate trap

Since the art of war is deception (Sun-Tzu), one would have to attract the target in some place where it would be an easy prey, through some lie. A good way to do that is to use his sensory ability against him, by making threats appear all over the place, obscuring the actual source. That sensory overload (like movie scenes in a house of mirrors) could be used to upset the target and lure them into an open place where it can be taken out in the most unexpected way (e.g. a drone or a bystander).

So

1. Trick the person into believing that some place is booby trapped and get them to panic, through the use of sensory overload ("hall of mirrors").
2. Get the person to "hurry out of there" into an open and empty location.
3. Take the person out with a fast moving, self-propelled, self-directed weapon... or get the person to do something stupid that will inevitably get them shot on sight by a bystander (e.g. a policeman or security guard)!
4. Or combine the two: the person realizes a drone is coming and is drawing a rifle to take it down. Armed guard, not knowing what's going on, yells "drop that weapon!" and finally shoots.

Warner Bros. could have written a scenario for a cartoon, with more or less with that kind of formula (with the coyote going mad in a hall of mirrors and finally realizing they are doomed in front of a live artillery shell that keeps rotating so as to always point at them).

That's not the only solution to the challenge, but could make for quite a fun and grandiose finale?

Of course, not all of it could be planned beforehand by the assassin. Perhaps they went as far as the drone, and the shot by the policeman was an unexpected twist that saved the day. In real life, things never go exactly as planned and good/bad luck enters in.

Answer 7

Send an unintentional "assassin", that has no intent to kill him. The assassin could be a pizza delivery guy, delivering pizza bomb, he never knew anything about the special pizza delivery. For extra sadism, the "assassin" could be his family or close friends, they thought they're giving him a gift for the Holiday season. Little did they realize that you've spent the last few months to socially engineer them to choose a particular gift that you've bobby trapped.

Or you can send a hitman that has a regular job, like construction worker or a postman. Hire the hitman for his regular job nearby the crime lord's residence, the hitman must never suspect that he's being hired to do a hit. Get him close enough so that the hitman himself don't come with any intent to kill. At the planned moment, tell the hitman that his hiring was actually a facade and make him an offer he can't refuse, with the condition that he immediately do the hit within an hour, equipments are already provided nearby.

Answer 8

Smartphonebomb.

Build a smartphone, way out of his range. Name it the new iPhone X or Samsung Starshine 7. Let him know this is the state of the art cell phone for the crime lord of the 21 century. It is a must have! Give it to him as some sort of present, e.g. crime of the year. He has some ego, so he will accept it. Because it's golden and with fancy diamonds.

Inside this phone is a small portion of explosives, triggered by a certain phone number / SMS.

The phone is given to the boss by some innocent bystander how doesn't know about the explosives.

Let the boss get used to the phone and use it regularly and at some time, call him, wait until he's at the phone and boom.

• Triggered well out of 20km Range.
• Casualties: one.

Answer 9

If he expect his enemies to coply with the Geneva Protocol, then shell the entire area around him with sleeping-gas, go there in a gas mask and stab him with a cheap kitchen knife. Dependent on the crowd-density and the used ordnance, the accidental casualties would be < 10.

Answer 10

Get a job at whatever liqourstore this guy gets his fancy wine/beer/vodka/whateverthehellcriminalsdrinkthesedays from (he's been getting his liquor here for years so he trusts it and won't have it pre-tasted)

A fine rich gentlemen such as himself doesn't have the time to go to a store and get some fancy liquor, so he sends some grunt to pick it up for him. All that is left for your assassin to do is make sure the liquor is in the back of the house. (and hope it's something that can be re-sealed without it looking to suspicious)

Poison the liquor, give it to the grunt, and pray to the God of Murder that your crime-lord takes the first sip.

Answer 11

Use two (or more) people with extemely specified instructions

He knows the intentions of everybody in a sphere of 20km around him and he is a crime lord, which means he is generally surrounded by other criminals (his bodyguard, hired assassins and on). This means that there are a lot of things you can think around him while being ignored (if he or one of his lieutenants hire assassins he will probably rule out as safe intentions like "I will kill X", everytime X is somebody else). If the real assassin does not know his target until the very last moment he cannot be alarmed by him (there is nothing wrong with a compound security guard who has been ordered to shoot whoever enters that corridor, right? It's his duty, I just need to stay away from that corridor). You can push this even more if the assassin isn't aware of the lethality of the actions he is to perform (he simply has to press a button whenever somebody enters the room, it has been somebody else to rewire the button from the light to a landmine - and even in that case you can split up the task so, in the end, nobody knows exactly what's going on, and so it is impossible to detect the outcome of their combined actions from their intentions).

After you set up the situations, you have to drive the target in position and, this time, his power is going to help you. He is bound to have an emergency response procedure for when certain things happen, but you don't need to make them happen, just to be read while thinking about making them happen. The best bet here is something flying since 20Km isn't really a lot in the air and, worse, striking down something over you can still be lethal, so the safest course of action is to hide first and react second. At this point you have your target running straight in to the trap.

Answer 12

Build a ninja-robot

It's unclear whether his power works on all objects or just on people (and if it worked on everything than that invalidates quite a few answers posted here). So just build a machine without a consciousness and program/remote control it to sneak into his house and kill him.

Answer 13

Railgun

If you are looking for a way to kill him and not just fixated on the assassin method then you could look into railguns since they can fire from up to 300km away. The projectiles hit speeds of around 2km/s so it would take 10 seconds to hit your target from 20km away.

I'm guessing a railgun attack won't even cross his mind, and since he knows everything in a 20km radius I'm thinking his room would have a big window facing the city because he knows he won't be hit by a sniper.

So all you have to do is fire a railgun and hope that he doesn't get up from his seat in the next 10 seconds. However you would need to build or bring a railgun without him or his trusted people knowing. My best bet would be bringing and firing the railgun from a boat (if his house is close to a coast).

Answer 14

The hypnotized hooker.

Even crime lords have needs. A high class escort girl had some hypnotic programming in her subconsiousness, she doesn't know about.

She'll seduce him, get him into bed, trigger the programming and the hooker will kill him with an ice pick in her bag.

Or place some HMX in her bag, that'll go off, when they go off.

Answer 15

His power's main weakness is the distance limit. Is he a complete reclusive hermit? If not, there will be places he goes even if only occasionally,which are more than 20km away.

Any amount of preparation can be made to kill him in any place more than 20km from where he is at any given time. So if he visits a sick relative or a fellow criminal more than 20km away, if one of his kids (if any) or his mum or some relative is deathly ill, in trouble, or badly hurt, or something else happens that takes him 20km away, your assassin has an easy time of it.

Update to elaborate on this

He can't tell what someone did in the past, only what they are doing now. He can't read intentions, only actions.

Very likely, he travels, or has a friend or relative or somewhere he goes more than 20km from home. If needed arrange a traffic accident for his out of town mother, or a serious sports accident for his kid, or just wait till he goes to his favourite hotel or whatever he does for vacations, or buys something from a regular supplier not in the same town. He cannot know what has been done in those remote locations. Plant a lethal device in the place he's enticed, with a wifi based trigger, and a nearby webcam to keep an eye on the scene. Then create your enticement or wait for his arrival, and retreat 20km. When he's visible in the webcam, trigger the device. Nothing will give away the explosive placed under the driveway, the poison spray in the airvent, or whatever else you choose, because at no time is he within 20km of anyone doing any action that would catch his attention.

Answer 16

If there are few people in the area, you could send a missile with too great a splash range for him to avoid. Otherwise you could use some other inanimate object he can't recognize since he only recognizes people. A remote controlled robot if you're lazy or a trained poison monkey if he doesn't see animals. A flood is a possibility, or a fire. You might even be able to lure him out of wherever he's staying by just doing something extremely unusual repeatedly like throwing a typwriter at a wall repeatedly within his range in the hope he can't stand t=not knowing and comes to check it out out of curiosity. also planting a bomb before he arrives is the obvious choice.

Answer 17

Cell Phone Bomb

This is not a science-fiction creation, either; the Israelis used a cell phone bomb to assassinate Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash on January 5, 1996.

Shin Bet made up a cell phone that had bugging devices inside it and gave it to Kamil Hamad, who was the uncle of a childhood friend of Ayyash's. Kamil gave the phone to his nephew Osama, knowing that Ayyash sometimes used Osama's cell phone.

What Shin Bet didn't tell Kamil Hamad was that in addition to the phone being bugged, there was also a bomb with 15 grams (a little more than a half ounce) of the high explosive RDX inside the phone.

When Ayyash used the phone, Shin Bet detonated the bomb and killed him.

See the Wikipedia article about Yahya Ayyash.

Also, if you think 15 grams of explosive doesn't sound like very much, here's a video showing the detonation of 9 grams of RDX. Watch it, and imagine a charge 2/3 larger going off right next to someone's head.

Answer 18

Just shoot (or stab) him.

Presuming the assassin is unknown to the target, if the target can't tell the intention, all the assassin needs to do is prepare in advance to only do usual stuff inside his range. Once inside, the target will see the assassin "walking" and such. If needed, the assassin can wear disguise (a policeman carrying a gun seen from 20km is the same as 2m). When the assassin is in range, strike as usual.

Answer 19

Sniper at long range. He knows somebody is pointing a gun in his general direction, but he can't be sure he's the target. Especially if your assassins are like the Weavers in Wanted.

Edit:

New idea just popped in. Find somebody utterly incompetent and accident prone. Find a way to assign him as a bodyguard to the crime lord. Wait for results.

Answer 20

He know people is coming to kill him, he has no other magic powers to prevent people killing him, he could hide, but he has no more super powers to run away at super light speed. There are a number of variables that can influence the result.

If you know a building is going to explode in 60 seconds, but you are on the top floor and you cannot get out in 60 seconds, your knowledge of the imminent explosion is of no use.

• Do the police/military know what is actually the appareance of this villain?

If there is a sufficiently large task force seeking for him, a SWAT team or a military squad, he would be forced to escape. He do not have the powers to escape forever, nor the "superior smartness" to find original escape routes.

At some point he would do a wrong step and get caught/killed. Or he could escape enough to reach a lowly dense populated area so that also "medium area of effect weapons" could be used.

The plot become more complex if the police actually does not know the appareance/identity of the villain, he could disguise at his will any investigation (he could already know answers to questions police ask to him, or avoid at all investigators by being in the wrong place at the correct time).

Again he could do at anytime a wrong step (because he is not a crime genius), that lead police first find his identity and then to hunt him.

His kind of powers are usefull for any "low-profile" criminal for to a real evil genius. He could also be a perfect gambler in games like Poker because he know if other people really have a good hand or not.

Answer 21

He has an uncanny ability to know exactly what everyone doing in his range He is otherwise a normal human (with common sense). His seeing & hearing range are normal. A very skilled assassin is sent to kill him (as skilled as you could imagine within current technology level, no magic).

The crime lord can't read minds, so the assassin sets up shop well outside the target radius and hires a dozen guys with some story - they need to wear Google Glasses and accept to be remote controlled through radio earbuds. They can believe that they're pawns in a RPG for the filthy rich; they just need to never break character or they lose a hefty sum for services rendered.

Under this guise, the assassin can inspect the whole area and determine where to strike.

One way he could do this could be with another remote-controlled squad posing as a TV news team, or something like that. Unbeknownst to everybody inside the crime lord's radius, the TV cameras also contain powerful remote-controlled rifles. One of the guys gets instructed to get a good head shot of the crime lord while he's crossing the street, and...

Answer 22

Several approaches:

SUICIDE BOMBER

arm him well out of range and just have him drive to the mob boss's location and have him go about a routine until he's within range of the boss. If you don't care about dead civilians, this is a sure-fire way to get him.

REMOTE DRONE

Have a drone operated beyond his range. Kill him when in range. Use a small drone with a single-shot to keep the drone small and hard to detect, giving the added bonus of a stealth weapon so that normal means of detection are less useful as well.

Answer 23

Killing him in his sleep is one good, clean but perhaps an anti-climactic end to such an enemy.

TLDR:

The information he gathers from his power will inform him of where to go, you just have to read how he will react to a situation and then create that situation and be waiting for him.

Another possibility lies in his ability know actions, not intentions. Your assassin would need an accomplice. The assassin enters the 20km radius and carries out rather mundane tasks regularly - visiting a shopping area for example. One day the accomplice enters and does something which seems suspicious, he rents a hotel room near by, prepares a bomb, loads some smuggled guns - all thing that draw the crime lord's attention. The exact workings of the power aren't too clear to me but some how get across to the crime lord that this man with the bomb has no qualms about killing his men but doesn't want too many innocent people to die.

The crime lord will have had attempts before and, as before, he will send some of his men to get rid of this man. To make the accomplice think twice he will relocate somewhere with innocent civilians (you can choose any public place you like as long as a bomb can't be used an a clear shot couldn't be got).

Your assassin also visits that public place and in a crowd walking along he will seem no different until he is close enough for the power not to make a difference.

If your assassin is armed it must be with something day to day, no knives or guns. He has to use his environment most likely.

The exact details depend on the setting you choose but I thought this was perhaps better for story-telling.

Answer 24

Use two people.

The first poses as a repairman, painter, electrician or street cleaner, and hangs around on the street with a view of the crime lords entrance.

The second guy comes a bit later, driving up, parking his car near the bosses entrance (driveway, garage, etc) and gets out and goes shopping or trivial activities nearby.

Nothing suspicious yet. Now when the boss moves close to the parked car, the first guy reaches into his pocket and presses the button on the detonator. Car bomb explodes dramatically, taking out the boss.

If you think the triggerman glancing at the boss will be detected, have several different triggermen wandering around, each looking less often.

Answer 25

Poisoning might work.

Poison the food outside of his realm of cognizance and then bring it in. He can't sense intention, so he won't have any reason to suspect the food is non-standard.

A slow-acting toxin would be sufficient to avoid a taste-tester detecting the poison.

Answer 26

So many "Sensory Overload" fails!

Since the person CANNOT, EVER! Become sensory overloaded..

Use sensory deprivation..!

1. Stop all food going to him. This you can actually do with the intent of him starving to death.. Because he can NOT read a persons intention(s).

2. He sleeps. In middle of night, send and EM-pulse so that every electrical device is shorted out. He cannot see, he cannot hear, he cannot smell nor feel or taste. Now all you need is some imagination. Cause your last stage is to just throw, like non-working flashlights. Not to kill him. But confuse him.. You cannot now when you actually throws in a pre-made bomb. And then, to late..

3. Use him against himself. There are ALWAYS extremely positive things that if given to the wrong person, would completely derail this persons life. Remember, everything is in the eye of the beholder, so! Do something that this person cannot handle mentally. Your intentions are good from start to finish! It will be himself that will end his own life because he cannot live with; Guilt, shame, beliefs, etc. Everyone has such weak spots..

4. There is extremely easy to make a poison, out of very ordinary products (which I won't list nor explain, of course..). But this travels through mold spores. They cause Cancer within a year, and is virtually untraceable due to the lenght of the death.

5. Discipline. Extreme mental discipline. (If you cannot think out the rest for your selfs, well, then I guess you have to riddles.. ;) )

Fun, but a little "easy", thought-experiment! =)

BR, Don't assassinate people, please.

Answer 27

Speed kills.

His knowledge radius is 20 km. Knowing something and doing something about it are two different things. By involving speed, you let him determine there's a problem, but don't give him time to avoid it. More dramatic tension if he knows what's coming and it's increasingly inevitable.

Example:

A modern passenger airplane can go perhaps 900 kph, which is 15 km/min. An approaching plane on an intercepting vector can then further shorten that interval resulting in an approach speed up to double (if head-to-head). At a combined 30 km/min, the target would have about 40 seconds to respond to a threat, while in a closed space not under his direct control.

A Gulfstream 650 approaches 1000 kph, so there'd be even less time to react on a faster private plane (that every crime lord who is anyone would simply have to have). To minimize casualties, the pilot (or a small skeleton crew) on the target's flight could know what's coming and swap auto-pilot/bio-break time for an escape just prior to danger arriving.

In all cases (mine and others), he can only tell what people are doing, not what they're intending. It seems like anyone who can behave normally until they get close could be undetected enough to do the deed. That's what the original Assassin cult did. Add in a diversion (or a lot of them) to occupy his attention, and you can get even closer.

"the slow blade penetrates the shield" - Frank Herbert, Dune

Overall, it sounds pretty easy to get him, relatively speaking, as long as you don't act squirrelly. The tough thing is getting in and back out safely. Suicide Mission assumption (like original Assassins) solves a lot of problems. The creativity could be in making something that isn't normally considered a weapon into a weapon - a pub dart (or a Jart), a baseball (or a bat), a beer bottle (broken), a steamroller (suddenly veering into his car), etc. - to get it close enough to do damage without causing alarm.

Answer 28

Hire a semi-omniscient assassin. Preferably one with a wider effective range than the target.

If one semi-omniscient being can exist there, so can another.

Or, plant lots of little bombs, possibly car bombs, around streets he has to walk/drive down eventually. They have cameras in them, linking back to your operatives over 20km away. Wait for him to walk past a camera, then detonate the bomb.

Or, use a long-range telescope from a high vantage point, just over 20km away. It has to be a high setting, to counteract the curvature of the earth. From ground level, the horizon is normally around 5km away. The vantage point would have to be 100ft off ground level (or higher), for a 20km view. This assumes we're on Earth. Other planets would have difference ground curvature, and thus different horizon calculations. Wait for him to emerge via your telescope, then use a long-range near-instantaneous weapon to kill/disable/blind him, maybe a laser. Then take out the area around him with a slower long-range weapon, maybe a missile.

Answer 29

Use a two part poison agent.

The news today gave me an idea for this. A two part poison, something that kills only if two chemical agents are injected.

Take the first agent and add it to a thousand dollar bottle of brandy. Send it to him as a gift. All his tasters can try it, the bottle is harmless. Once he has had time to drink some move on to phase 2.

Pick a place you know he will remotely be and set up a large number of containers with chemical 2. Ween he is in the area release the chemical. You will get a lot of people but again harmless. Your target, and maybe his food tester that cane with him are dead.

Answer 30

This is from RED2.

Since he is a Crime Lord, he must give out assassination orders too. He must hire people too, and in doing so, he has to share details of the people he wants out. Assuming, he has full trust on his power of Perception, his Intuition on full regalia mode and that the person hired to carry out the job has to pass through This Crime Lord. SO,

• create an online threat to Him
• When he puts out the Word, get hired [because of your level of skill]
• Origami a 'kunai' out of the photo of the soon-to-be-dead. Puncture his jugular artery in the throat ending him but finish the job you were hired to do. He knows you are an assassin, but his hindrance is that he cannot find out each person's intention {stone cold assassin killer}. -:)