Copyright © 2020 Barrett C Carver. All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a review. This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Chapter One: Sightseeing
Agent Winters saw this guy, once. A dedicated fan. A true believer.
What a fuckin' idiot.
This guy loved the U.S. Navy Seals, like they were his favourite rock band. He had buzzed hair, military clothes, the well-practised scowl... He probably had their posters all over his bedroom wall. Agent Winters would bet a hundred bucks on Navy Seals pyjamas.
His military coat was thoroughly used. It must have been used by someone before him - someone who actually served in the military.
He wore dog tags, which wouldn't help him cross any borders or prove his identity. They weren't photo I.D., and the cops would think he was just a survivalist nut.
His boots were obvious. Black. Shiny. Loud. They announced him, wherever he went. They drummed like a one-man parade.
But the worst? His pants.
His pants had blotchy grey squares, like bad modern art by robots. It was like old newspapers going to a disco - Wednesday Night Fever. Yay. Let's get rectangular, baby...
His pants were supposed to be 'urban camouflage.' That's what the grey, blotchy pattern was supposed to be. Roland Winters spotted him from a few blocks away, so... it didn't work. Not very camo.
In fact, it was pretentious bullshit. All of it. He was a mythological creature.
Winters, himself, was wearing a dress shirt, a blazer, and light beige slacks. He had a little bag for his laptop. He had glasses that made him look competent at something. Something professional and dull. Something he'd do on his laptop, with lots of spreadsheets.
Winters looked like every other schmuck trapped in a forty-hour work week. He was a commuter with his computer. A wage slave. If he wore a fedora, he'd put it on the hat rack by his front door, and call out, "Honey, I'm home!" And his wife would have meatloaf ready in the oven, and little Billy would say stuff like "Gee, pa! Golly, you're swell!"
Winters would puke, if he had to endure that in real life. How those people survived the 1950s? He had no idea. Just respect. He had solemn respect.
Back then, they knew how to make spies. Old school.
But now, Roland Winters looked like another cookie-cutter suburbanite. If you could see the forest for the trees, you might see him. He was the wooden one. He was so damned normal, it was stifling.
And he just shot three assassins in the face.
Twenty minutes ago, his laptop snapped apart into clean, distinct pieces, and reassembled with its 'power adapter' to chamber 7.62mm AP rounds. He took a sniping stance on the roof of the library, and aimed at a building across the street.
The story was this: three assassins were about to kill a federal judge. Political shit, as usual. Winters was sent to intercept them. He tracked them, and watched them from the roof of the library. He watched them for an hour. They'd set up an ambush point, using a third-floor apartment.
He waited for the word from The Agency - he waited for confirmation. That last buzz in his earpiece, telling him the hit was imminent. The last word, telling him the judge was truly in danger.
"Winters? You're cleared to engage."
That was all he needed.
-PLEET-
A gunman stumbled back into the apartment's bathroom. Winters shot him neatly in the forehead, and his whole upper body snapped upward before crumpling into the tub behind.
The other two heard the burst of window-glass, and the spotter whipped his head up. The spotter was alert enough to react.
The lead assassin had been waiting... just waiting there, focused, ready with his rifle, as his spotter did perimeter checks. The sniper used a long, broad-lensed scope for precision.
-PLITT-
Winters planted a bullet right next to the scope, between the sniper's eyes.
His ghost must've been humiliated, to die like that. A sniper being shot so cleanly? Winters scoffed. He'd rather have a poisonous shark jump out of his beer glass, when he was drunk, blind, crippled, and 140 years old. Something impossible. Something insane. Winters didn't want to die on the job - he didn't want failure to be the cause-of-death. That was the worst insult ever.
By now, the spotter freaked. He was the last man alive, but knew he was next. He dove for cover, and froze there. He yanked the sniper rifle down, and pulled it with him. Then he crawled to another window. He tried to find Winters.
Winters had his 'laptop display' that gave him thermographic imaging: it still couldn't see anything in the ambient heat of their room. They cooked the whole place by cranking the thermostat. They were smart enough to take that precaution.
He saw cold colours streaming into the room from his bullet-holes.
The assassin was still somewhere inside. He was hiding. It was impossible to make a shot with thermo. Winters needed to see him at a real, unobstructed angle. He had to see the assassin clearly, and the assassin was already searching for him. Sniper versus sniper.
All the assassin needed was to see Winters once. Just once. One shot.
All Winters needed was to see the assassin.
The situation seemed to equal. A coin-toss.
However, NOBODY had training like Winters. He was with The Agency. He was in the business of Getting Shit Done, and he was professional.
Winters shook his gear to expose his position. The sniper looked up and found Winters, clear as day. All Winters saw was the brief flicker of his scope. A flash in the dark, like a tiger's glare.
The assassin targeted him, but in that instant he gave access to his eyeball.
Within tenths of a second, Winters fired a shot.
-PLEET-
The round pierced straight in. Glass splintered like flechette into his skull. Scopes and lenses are NOT bulletproof. Neither was the assassin's eye.
Dead. Finished. Agent Winters scanned, and confirmed the site was clear.
He called back to The Agency.
"Vicki? That's a ding. Your pop tarts are done." He had the swagger of a game-show host.
"Uh... what?" The voice in his ear was more annoyed than confused.
That voice was a "Vicki." That was the nickname of The Agency's courtesy service, the department known as Vindication. This department defended honour, and was about hard, straight justice. It was as fair as the rest of the world, but without any bullshit whatsoever. It was a courtesy, in that sense - ugly grudges were settled. Some joked that Vicki was about kicking ass and writing epitaphs.
This counter-assassination had some extra motive behind it. The federal judge that had been targeted was especially valuable... she absolutely needed to live, because of work she'd do in the next few years.
The regular security goons missed this threat. The judge would've been killed.
'Bunch of dumb-asses, Winters thought. Yeah, they dropped the ball this time.
