A year had passed since I moved to Africa, following the fuck-up I committed back in Baghdad. The guy I had started working for dealt in weapons and drugs. His prime source of income came from dealing in North Korean meth - yes, that’s right, North Korean meth. The product they made in their state-sponsored labs was characterized by the highest quality and purity worldwide. It was smuggled through the Chinese borders where the Triads sold it in bulk to the Fox, or as we called him, the Fat Man.

The Fox had been responsible for co-creating one of the first deep-web Amazons for drugs. Unsatisfied with the low-levels of adrenaline from sitting behind his computer in his grandparents’ basement, he had begun to pursue other ventures. Two of these - weapons and human trafficking - had resulted in him moving from the quiet neighborhood of Cape Town to the lawless outskirts of Manila - a fact I learned from Abbas when he organized my transport to meet the Fat Man’s guy operating in Somalia.

Eli, a stick-resembling man, was in his early forties. The mental strain put on him by his boss was evident in the white set of hair and numerous cracks in his forehead, which made him look twenty years older than he actually was. He carried himself like an English gentleman, but due to the environment he operated in, wore only light shirts and cargo shorts, both always neatly pressed and cleaned. He had soft hands, a delicate indication of his civilian background, in contrast to the vast majority of guys working for the Fat Man.

Eli spoke quickly and was constantly stressed about something, but it didn’t stop him from making deals with the locals, famous for their particular fondness for privateering.

Somali pirates were another product of Western fucking civilisation interfering and putting their capitalist dick where it didn’t belong. To prevent foreign fishing boats from stealing from their tuna-rich waters, Somalis began hijacking them. Soon, they realized they could make more money by kidnapping ships and holding people for ransom than they ever could through tuna fishing and trade. Enter Fat Man, a guy in desperate need of a safe haven.

Eli was well-respected by the buffs reporting to him. He let the mercenaries do the heavy-lifting on their own terms, while he managed the intellectual side of the operation in Somalia. This was the kind of guy you couldn’t possibly dislike. Eli was loved by the locals too. He would often go out of his way to assist those we worked with and arrange for a delivery of medications for their sick children or spouses.

He had to hide such expenditures, though. The Fat Man kept close tabs on even the smallest of expenses. Eli wouldn’t have survived so long if not for his excellent accounting skills and habit of keeping every receipt.

Eli and the Fat Man met on a quarterly basis, and this time around, the big boss was finally allowed to travel to meet his protege in Cape Town after nearly a four-month-long stay in Rio, where he hid because of some heat, the details of which I wasn't aware. I did know, however, that he wanted to meet the guy he had heard so much about since I first started working with Eli.

I’d started on the muscle-side of the business, scaring away the local terrorist groups that were unhappy with the local populace engaging in business dealings with foreigners, but my other talents soon came into play. Eli was good at accounting, but he wasn’t good at moving the money without raising the red flags. I had advised him on a couple of transactions, and I knew that he suspected that my introduction as a former French Foreign Legion Corporal was a lie.

We had been sitting in Eli’s rented car, parked in front of the Silo Hotel - one of Cape Town’s most luxurious hotels - when he told me about the true reason behind my presence here. I was to do a job directly for Fat Man. He had briefed me on the details. I listened carefully before exiting the car to meet my employer.

"Nice to finally meet you," he said, extending his fat hand. I imagined it had been smeared in grease from the whole chicken he'd obliterated before meeting me outside the hotel’s poolside.

"Likewise." I shook his hand and grinned, not in a smile, but at the sad realization that I was right. It was disgusting.

"Eli spoke very highly of you. I understand he brought you up to speed?"

"He did."

"Good." He closed one of his nostrils and aggressively blew his nose onto the ground. As if that wasn't revolting enough, he proceeded to wipe the remaining slime that dangled from his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. — "You'll go with Dave." I turned my head to see the comic-book character standing beside Fat Man. He was as wide as a piano with a small, coconut-sized head seemingly glued to his chest - the guy had no neck.

Dave was the seasoned team leader of the mercenaries working for Fat Man, to whom he reported to. He was nearing his forties, former Green Beret who transitioned to the private sector following his dishonourable discharge from the Special Forces. His staff-sergeant found him raping an underage Afghani girl during the War on Terror. Similarly to the rest of the guys under him, he kept taking up jobs characterized by raising degrees of degeneracy until he finally made it to the top - the Fat Man. I didn’t know his backstory yet, but more importantly, I didn’t know that he was a complete, text-book definition of a psychopath. I would find out about the latter soon enough.

Dave didn't utter a word. He just stared at me, trying to figure me out. I looked him straight in the eyes before moving them to the Fat Man, who continued making sounds with his pig lips.

“The intel that we got is that there are five of those guys in total.” I imagined him reading cheap spy novels, noting down the cool words that he could use during conversations such as this.

The additional four guys were a new piece of information that Eli didn't provide. There was supposed to be just one guy, inside the single-story house, from whom we were to get the information. He allegedly stole from the Fat Man, and we were to make him tell us where the money was. I say "allegedly", because Eli briefed me on his paranoid character, which more often than not, produced fake scenarios based on abstract thoughts.

“Do you have any questions, mate?”

“No.” The smell of his sweat penetrated the expensive perfume he wore, and I wanted to get this conversation over with.

“Okay. Break a leg, boys,” the sadistic barrel-man chuckled and rolled back to the hotel’s restaurant.

Dave and I got inside the pickup truck, and he handed me a loaded 9mm gun with a silencer already on it. I checked, and I was right in assuming that he’d pass it to me with the disengaged safety catch as a test. I engaged it, ensuring no accidental discharge to his coconut face. I checked the empty barrel, then proceeded to inspect the silencer. It was loosely attached, so I screwed it on tightly and moved to check the magazine before properly seating it in the gun's grip.

He side-eyed me closely throughout the process, and I could feel him nodding his head upon completion of the basic gun handling check. He mentally noted that I knew what I was doing, and I noted that he was an unsubtle fuckface.

“The rounds are subsonic,” he said, referring to the bullets designed to travel below the speed of sound, which means they don't produce the supersonic shockwave—the big bang—which occurs even when the suppressor is on.

“It won’t matter inside.” Even with the suppressor on, the sound of subsonic bullets will still produce the characteristic “click” that the target’s bodyguards will recognize immediately.

“It’s only precaution. Here.” He handed me the military-issued karambit knife. It was short and curved, with a ring for your finger placed at the butt of the grip. It resembled a tiger claw and was initially designed in Southeast Asia for agricultural purposes, not close combat or throat slashing.

The house was located at the road junction. The guy had uninstalled all the cameras inside due to his fear of the Fat Man’s hacking skills. And rightfully so. Six live cameras were placed at each corner of the house, above the front doors, and in the pool garden. Getting inside was the hardest part if you disregarded the four security guys on constant alert and a single paranoid junkie with a price on his head.

Dave instructed me to enter the premises by jumping through one particular fence that led straight to the garden. I'd be visible to the camera, but if I were fast enough, it would be impossible to notice me since Fat Man would turn the one pointing in my direction once he saw me in the frame. A 2-second cut shouldn't alert the guy sitting behind the monitors, and I would be in the clear.

“I’m in touch with the Fox. He’s got the live feed and will tell me when it’s fine to start.” This was another information I wasn't aware of, and I immediately reassessed the situation. Fat Fuck, obviously, couldn't turn them off because it would result in a total lockdown of the house we were breaking into. The issue here was that he would have the video documentation of me murdering the guards if the fight moved to anywhere but inside.

“Let me guess, he told you to get rid of the guy in the garden, didn’t he?” I turned my whole body towards Dave, feeling the rage building up inside of me.

“How’d you know?” I rolled my eyes at his response and thought about what a dumb fuck he was.

We still had a bit of the road ahead of us, and I got lost in thought, contemplating my predicament. I had been working for them for a year now, and this was my rite of passage. It wasn’t so much just a test but a selection. Eli had told me about the changes coming to Fat Man’s organization and that he was looking to move some guys around and consolidate responsibilities that, up to this point, were chaotically allocated. Until then, I had worked for Eli, assigned to him as his personal muscle. But I had proven myself more than a protective chunky monkey, news of which had reached his boss.

He needed more Elises and fewer Daves. But he still needed both. If he could have a guy with the intelligence of the first one and tactical skills of the second, he wouldn’t have to rely so much on either one of them. I would jump in and temporarily cover the work of each before a full-time replacement was found. That was, in case his evidently schizophrenic mind produced voices urging him to kill one of them. Should I do the job as per Dave’s instructions, I’d prove that I was only a brainless gun, unable to do anything besides killing. His confirmation of the Fat Man’s little live-streaming entertainment was the subtle signal of whether he could put a leash around my neck before he kicked me back in line where the rest of the dogs were.

We were moving slowly through one of the seven richest neighborhoods of Cape Town, called Bishopscourt. The road was lined with big Monterey Pine trees on both sides, hiding the street from Africa's raging sun. Green forest mountains showed themselves in the spaces where the trees didn’t meet. The air felt fresh and salty, the wind was strong, signalling an upcoming storm. If I knew how to surf, I’d use the 9mm subsonic bullet and put it through Dave’s head and go and do just that. The weather was perfect for riding the waves, I thought. I imagined the tides getting higher and higher with every passing minute.

“Oh, and one last thing,” he said, stopping the car diagonally across the street from the villa and jolting me from my contemplation. "You’ll be going in alone.”

I put on the earpiece he had handed me earlier, his full attention on me now, looking for any sign of surprise or discontent.

“Ping you once the house’s secured.” I got out, leaving him dumbfounded and unaware that my lack of surfing skills was the single thing that made him survive the day.