You never hear the shot that kills you

Anthony had been watching things play out in a reinforced room two stories below street level. Five fully armed and armored men stood behind him, like statues modeling SWAT gear, and their goggles reflected the grid of screens on the wall. Someone had been looping camera feeds from the outside and the one-man grenadier attack on the lobby hadn’t been expected, but it didn’t matter. The job was as good as done.

A big guy in an overcoat passed a camera in the staircase and his P90 sliced the area with expert precision. He moved as quiet as a ghost.

“House, you’ve got one coming in from above. Get the client out of the stairwell and engage.”

The guards snapped their guns up the stairwell and moved to the door. The big guy stopped just after the sixth floor and listened, still as if the camera feed had frozen. Suddenly, with unexpected agility, he glided down the last flight of stairs and opened the door.

“He went out on the fifth floor,” Anthony said, trying to keep the awe out of his voice. He hadn’t seen anyone move like that in a long time.

EP picked up the exchange on the guard’s cell phone mic.

“Boss, they know where you are. They must have more cameras on an air-gapped system.”

Michael moved away from the door and went down the hall, looking for a good position. He passed a window conference room, facing out over the highway towards an upscale apartment complex. Something flashed on the roof and the windows on both sides of the conference room exploded.

Michael slumped to the floor in a burst of gore as the bullet cracked in the air. By the time the gunshot boomed through the window frame, he was gone.

“Boss? Boss!” EP shouted in the headset, but his heart monitor had already flatlined.

“I heard it. Sounded like a fifty.” Philip hissed and dropped behind the back bumper. Flashes of the carnage on the ramp turned his fear to anger.

‘Where did it come from?” EP screamed.

“South, I think. Fuck! I’m out here in the open!”

He looked around frantically, ready to look death in the eye when it flashed in some distant window, and realized the live oaks rising out of the medians screened him from anything beyond the lot.

“Oh fuck, the trees.” He looked back towards the wide-open cement in front of the lobby. Broken glass glittered in the sunlight.

“I can’t move up unless that sniper gets dealt with!”

The police sirens had risen to a crescendo and held it without advancing. He placed a grenade, the tape and safety clip already discarded, carefully in his coat pocket. So much for moving up now. He backed up from the car with his gun raised. It had been quiet for too long. As he cleared the roof, the guards on the loft opened fire.

Two rounds hit his chest plate. One tore a gash in the top of his arm above the elbow and a ricochet slapped another gash in his thigh before he shot one guard in the face.

Philip dropped back behind the car as bullets ripped through the roof.

“I’m running out of time here!”

“I’m working on the sniper!” said EP.

Besides her late-night interview with Paul and a few minor social engineering tasks, Celeste hadn’t seen much action on this job, which was fine with her. She didn’t have the same addiction to violence that seemed to possess the rest of the team. She was sitting at a table in a Starbucks half a mile away from the office, sipping a frappe and picking at a Danish, watching the news footage on her phone. Police sirens wailed in the distance and the few other people at the tables around her held panicked conversation.

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Her phone rang on the encrypted line and her heart stopped. Michael had told her to stay in the vicinity just in case, but she never expected to actually be fielded. Maybe the job was already over!

“Hey, this is Rochelle.”

“Carolyn here. I need you active. You’re on a bike, right?” said EP.

Shit.

“Yea, do you need eyes, or—”

“Get on the road right now.”

Celeste felt the half danish jump in her stomach.

“What is it?”

“Rochelle, get on the fucking road and I’ll tell you!”

She sprang up and got as much out of the frappe as she could before trashing it.

Outside, next to her matte black Yamaha YZF-R1, she took one last look at the massive row of outlet stores and specialty restaurants. Why couldn’t she ever just come here and have a good time?

As she took off down the quiet streets, following the route EP had pinged on her navigator, sirens rang all around like she was in the eye of a robotic hurricane. She passed wide ranch houses lined over precision cut lawns and didn’t see another driver anywhere. It felt like the opening of a zombie movie.

“There’s a complex up on the left called Beaverwood. Go inside.” EP said, now in her earbuds. Such a control freak. What’s the point of the GPS?

She turned in at the big wooden sign that said “Beaverwood Estates” with an image of a fishing pond in the middle of a pine forest and geese flying overhead. The buildings were a friendly grey with thick whitewashed wood trim and well placed little green hedges. The sky had gone slightly overcast in the afternoon, and everything was lit by a soft silver light. It all made her wish she could go in one of the units and lay down on someone’s couch. Whatever she was here to do, she wasn’t going to like it.

“Head straight back,” EP said. When she had gotten to what seemed to be the second to last lot, EP told her: “Stop here, park in that lot to the left.”

“So, what am I doing—”

“There’s a sniper—” Celeste ducked down “—at the top of a building on the far side of the last lot. Get your sub-gun out.”

She got the P90 out of the tail bag. So there was going to be some shooting. She felt like throwing up.

“Take the camera out of the helmet and mount it on the rail.” Her hands were shaking. It took her a bit.

“Put it on under your jacket and do exactly what I tell you.”

She attached the P90 to the strap already slung under her jacket and zipped it closed.

“Take the sidewalk to the left.”

She walked beside the three-story apartment faces, feeling that every window was watching her. The entire complex seemed frozen in fear. When she was halfway across the lot, EP told her.

“Turn right, go through the courtyard, and stop under the stairs on the other side.”

She crossed the deathly silent courtyard of picnic tables and standing charcoal grills and stood in the shadows next to the stairwell between two units. She looked out on the sunlit parking lot beyond and took deep, slow breaths.

“Ok, when I tell you to, walk directly ahead across the street and take a right on the sidewalk. Get your keys out like you’re going home. Do not look up!”

In a silence touched only by distant sirens and the faint cracks of gunfire, the keys jingling sounded loud enough to carry for miles.

“Go.”

Celeste hoped her life didn’t depend on convincing a sniper that she was a resident just by her walk and how she held her keys. Her flats clacked dumbly on the street. She saw herself square in the center of a set of crosshairs, a fingertip slowly pressing a trigger.

“Number 459,” EP said.

It was just like any other door. Bronze colored numbers, eggshell paint, but the peephole looked like a blackhole waiting to swallow her.

“Very quietly, open the door and go upstairs.”

She raked the lock and turned the handle. The door opened and she was still alive. Inside was a cozily furnished apartment. A long-haired tortie stretched on a cat tree in the kitchen window and watched her creep in.

“Up the stairs, quietly. Get your gun out.”

Being armed in a house like this felt like a dream. Floral scents poured down the hall from a wax-melter somewhere. Upstairs, the gentle silver sunlight glowed in a bedroom to her left.

“The room at the end of the hall. Check your corners.”

Somehow Celeste remembered how to do that and, after nervously aiming her gun into the bathroom, where another cat watched her from the tub, stepped through the door. More worn-in furnishings. The bed only half made. No one in sight.

“There’s—” she whispered.

“Aim at the ceiling! Ok, step up a bit. Aim right—”

EP directed her until she was standing almost in the corner with her gun pointed straight up.

“Ok, when I tell you to, hold down the trigger and empty the mag into that square. Is your safety off?”

It wasn’t. She flipped it to full auto and tried not to cry.

“Ok. Now!”

The gun was loud as hell, but she did exactly as she was told. Drywall flaked down on her like snow and brass piled in the corner. Immediately after she was empty, something hit the roof with a thud and scraped off the side.

“Good, fucking perfect!” EP said, keys tapping under her voice. Celeste lowered the gun, and the smoke caught sunlight through the blinds. Wind whistled through the holes in the drywall and a casing clinked under her foot.

“Now what?”

“Wait.” More tapping and clicking. “Oh, fuck yes. Ok, one more thing. I need you to get on the roof.”