The Assassin

The Assassin

The man watched the house with dark, uncaring eyes. He had been doing so for the past few hours simply watching for movement inside. The location of the house and the owner inside it was bad enough in this sub-urban area. The man would have preferred almost any other environment but this one. In a city or large town there would be plenty of high rise buildings from which to kill his target. In a forest or countryside there would always be vantage points to offer. Trees, mounds, ditches and boulders all provided cover from which to complete the job with ease.

And so the man was now sat on the top of a flat roofed building with a faded poster bearing the legend ‘Aquafresh Toothpaste’ watching the house. The buildings purpose may have been a shop but the man did not care about that. All his thought and concentration was focused on the house. His awareness of everything around him however was not lessened in any way. The night so far had been good to the man with clouds out making the night darker by covering the moon, and the street light nearby was broken shrouding the man in complete darkness. A small breeze blew against the mans face giving relief against the humid night. But the man hardly noticed this.

A noise from behind him made him glance behind him but upon seeing the cause being merely a cat he spared no more seconds of his precious time.
He had very little of that time tonight. He had been watching the house for the past week coming here from dusk till dawn and there was still no sign of the target in the house. Tonight was to be his last night and then whether or not he found and killed the target tonight he would have to leave. Already neighbours were becoming suspicious as they saw him coming up the street with a sports bag at night and back down in the morning. It would not be long before one tried to follow him to see where he went.

Inside the sports bag was the ‘tools’ he needed to carry out the job. The first ‘tool’ was a self-loading Ruger.22 rifle with silencer attached, second was a scope with night vision built in, third was a small pack of ammo just in case he needed more bullets and finally he also had a commando knife just in case things went wrong. The rifle could be dissembled and reassembled to fit it into the sports bag. The man smiled as he looked down at it. He always used this rifle and had cleaned it until it was smooth. He had also customised so it fitted him perfectly. These additions made the bullets passageway smoother as it began it’s rapid journey out of the gun and usually ending in someone’s body. It was one of the things he had learned while he worked with the Mafia. After he realised that more money was to made on his own he left. Of course this wasn’t too easy and so he had been forced to make a few people in the organisation disappear first.

Then the man noticed movement and heard an unrecognisable sound from inside the house and brought up his rifle and looked through the scope at the source of movement. In the cross hairs he could see the shadow. His finger rested on the trigger. The finger tightened. But then it loosened and came away. The source of movement and sound had been an Alsatian ,the targets dog barking at something. The dog continued to bark aggressively for a while and after a while it quietened down. The man lowered his rifle in disgust. How could he mistake a dog for a man. He almost made the stupid mistake of firing at the wrong target and although the gun had a silencer, the window would smash alerting the target. He was getting old for this job. He was only 30 but for this kind of work age really matters and humans start to get weakened senses around this age.

He settled again. He was annoyed despite his great patience that in a whole week the target had not shown her face. The target was in fact a Police Officer who had taken too much of an interest in his employers dealings. She was only trying to do what was best for the country but what she did gave her enemies. And so the mans employers had paid the man to silence the Police Officer for good. None of this mattered to the man. All he regarded her as was a target, like a duck in a shooting gallery. The only thing he cared for in this mission was the £9500 he was being paid to take the target out.
Then there was another movement but this time he made sure it was human before pulling up his gun. He brought up the gun and looked through the scope. The eerie green glow of night vision settled in his vision and he aimed the crosshairs at the target’s head. He rested his finger on the trigger. The finger tightened on the trigger. The finger pulled back on the trigger. There was a slight hissing noise as the gun spat it’s deadly load. A slight blotch on the scope appeared for a second but rapidly disappeared. The figure collapsed forward onto the ground.

Five minutes later a man was walking down the street carrying a sports bag.