The hum of power consumption surrounding me is constant enough to be classified as white noise, and the blue light of a wall of monitors set to dark mode is too faint to be perceived through extra dark window tinting. The screens don’t make a sound as they cycle through the various windows I always call up—hacked traffic and nearby security cameras, weather, and satellite updates, local police scanners, my command terminal, code editor, system logs, comms control for the earpieces we all wear, and local network security monitors, to name a few.
It’s cramped, so not the most comfortable place for a long-term stakeout—but I have plenty of nutritionally barren snacks, extra energy drinks, a padded chair, and a job to do. I’ve already disabled our target’s home security and hacked into any cameras that might capture our misdeeds, as well as a few others in a several-block radius, casting their feed to keep our perimeter secure and rerouting their footage so it won’t be saved.
Mac is in place, set up with his sniper rifle in a vacant home across the street. He’ll keep watch over our favorite Russian through the lens of his scope. There’s no safer—or deadlier—place to be. And Dimitri just slipped in through an unlocked window with a grace in total contradiction to his physical enormity. Though his prized Japanese steel is in hand, that’s simply a precaution. Our target shouldn’t be home.
The target in question: Javier Alfano, Ulysses drug lord, and the man single-handedly creating and feeding the fentanyl problem in our fair city. The bachelor pad where he runs his drug empire is on the outskirts of Ulysses, in an area where all attempts at gentrification have run screaming in the opposite direction. With so many neighbors, it’s not the ideal place for a hit if things go south, but Alfano is about to leave the country for a month and this is the best chance we’re going to get.
Normally after this many weeks of surveillance, we would have killed the dickhead by now. But we’re being extra cautious because, frankly, we all need this job to go smoothly. It’s the first hit we’ve taken since a certaincleanergot a little too involved in our business, and since Felix has become the proverbial needle in a haystackandthorn in our sides… well, we’re all a little on edge.
“Fuck. I have a… situation. A cold one.”
“Who?” I ask, stomach sinking. It’s never a good thing to find an unexpected dead body in the home of the man you intend to kill eventually. “Alfano?”
“I believe so. His face is a mess, so we will need to use his tattoos for the ID.”His thick Russian accent is slightly more garbled through the earpiece, but it’s clear enough to hear his irritation.
“So much for that payout,”Mac grumbles.
“James, you said there has been no movement in the house?”Dimitri asks, voice strained with effort, like he’s lifting or moving something.
“I haven’t seen anyone in or out, and I’ve been sitting here with my thumb up my ass all fuckin’ day,”Mac grumbles, his southern drawl somewhat acidic. To be fair, our eyes in the shadows rarely miss any important details, so it’s understandable why he’d be defensive.
“What’s the state of the body?” I ask.
“Room temperature, but still stiff. In his pockets”—there’s a rustling noise—“a wallet full of cash with no identification. No weapon on him.”
“Who kills someone and takes the ID out of the wallet, but not the cash?”Mac wonders aloud, echoing my thoughts.
I frown. “Wait a minute. If he’s room temperature but in full rigor mortis, that means he’s been dead at least half a day, but not more than two. We saw him this morning, and if Mac hasn’t seen anyone go in or out, thatmeans—”
“The killer is still in there!”Mac finishes in a hiss.
Suddenly, there’s a sharp flurry of Russian curses, the sound of an impact of flesh against flesh, and a roar of pain… and then the explosion of a gunshot, audible but clearly silenced from the lack of echo in the night air.
Fuck!
“Fuck!”Dimitri yells.
“D? What the fuck was that? You good? Too many goddamn fucking curtains… What’s happening?”Our levelheaded gunman’s voice is rigid with concern.
I switch between camera feeds, trying to find some way to see into the house to check on Dimitri, and catch movement in the bottom corner—a man, sprinting through the back door of Alfano’s place.
When I chose this spot to park the van, I noticed the other car parked in the alley next to Mac’s, but took it for one of the neighbor’s. It’s a mid-tier sedan, too old to be police-issued and too low grade to belong to anyone connected to the flashy drug lord who likes to display his wealth with diamonds and Escalades.
But as the shooter comes bursting around the corner, I realize, “He’s headed this way!”
“Grab him, Wes!”
With mere seconds to hatch my plan and no easily accessible guns within arm’s reach, I grab the closest weapon—a tyre iron—and time the opening of my door perfectly. Even bracing myself, the impact of his face into the metal bar reverberates up my arms.
Clotheslined, he goes down, cracking his head hard on the pavement as he falls. Blood pours in rivers from his nose where he hit the iron, pooling under his head, but his chest is moving.
I tap the earpiece using my shoulder, knowing that unmuting myself will allow them to hear my ragged breathing and strained tone. “Got him.”
“You’re the man. Big D, how you doin’?”
“I have been shot,”comes the grumbled reply, anger dripping from every accented syllable. There’s a rustling, like he’s checking for damage.“Again.”
Leave it to Dimitri to consider a gunshot wound a mere inconvenience.
