You never hear the shot that kills you

  Anthony had been watg things py 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 ss on the wall. Someone had been looping camera feeds from the outside and the one-man greta 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 iaircase and his P90 sliced the area with expert precision. He moved as quiet as a ghost.

  “House, you’ve got one ing in from above. Get the t out of the stairwell and engage.”

  The guards sheir 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 ued agility, he glided dow flight of stairs and opehe 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 exge 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 a down the hall, looking food position. He passed a window feren, fag out over the highway towards an upscale apartment plex. Something fshed on the roof and the windows on both sides of the feren 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 ftlined.

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

  ‘Where did it e 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 fshed in some distant window, and realized the live oaks rising out of the medians sed him from anything beyond the lot.

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

  “I ’t move up uhat sniper gets dealt with!”

  The police sirens had risen to a cresdo and held it without advang. He pced a grehe tape and safety clip already discarded, carefully in his coat pocket. So muoving 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 pte. Oore a gash iop of his arm above the elbow and a ricochet spped anash 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 w on the sniper!” said EP.

  Besides her te-night interview with Paul and a few minor social engineering tasks, Celeste hadn’t seen much a on this job, which was fih her. She didn’t have the same addi to violehat 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 pig at a Danish, watg the news footage on her phone. Police sirens wailed in the distand the few other people at the tables around her held panicked versation.

  Her ph on the encrypted line and her heart stopped. Michael had told her to stay in the viity 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 rht now.”

  Celeste felt the half danish jump iomach.

  “What is it?”

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

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

  Outside, o her matte bck Yamaha YZF-R1, she took o look at the massive row of outlet stores and specialty restaurants. Why couldn’t she ever just e 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 hurrie. She passed wide ranch houses lined over precision cut wns and didn’t see another driver anywhere. It felt like the opening of a zombie movie.

  “There’s a plex up on the left called Beaverwood. Go inside.” EP said, now in her earbuds. Such a trol 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 pced little green hedges. The sky had gone slightly overcast iernoon, and everything was lit by a soft silver light. It all made her wish she could go in one of the units and y 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 sed to st 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 st 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 windoatg her. The entire plex seemed frozen in fear. When she was halfway across the lot, EP told her.

  “Turn right, gh the courtyard, and stop uhe stairs oher side.”

  She crossed the deathly silent courtyard of piic tables and standing charcoal grills and stood in the shadows o 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 yoing home. Do not look up!”

  In a sileouched only by distant sirens and the faint cracks of guhe keys jingling sounded loud enough to carry for miles.

  “Go.”

  Celeste hoped her life didn’t depend on ving a shat she was a resident just by her walk and how she held her keys. Her fts ccked dumbly oreet. She saw herself square in the ter of a set of crosshairs, a fiip 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 bckhole waiting to swallow her.

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

  She raked the lod turhe hahe door opened and she was still alive. Inside was a cozily furnished apartment. A long-haired tortie stretched on a cat tree i window and watched her creep in.

  “Up the stairs, quietly. Get yun out.”

  Being armed in a house like this felt like a dream. Floral sts 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 ers.”

  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 er with her gun poiraight up.

  “Ok, when I tell you to, hold dowrigger ay 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 fked down on her like snow and brass piled in the er. Immediately after she was empty, something hit the roof with a thud and scraped off the side.

  “Good, fug 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 g ked under her foot.

  “Now what?”

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

  Episode: Boom.