I was making my way towards the house, discretely looking around and ensuring I wasn't caught by any of the neighboring villa cameras, when I suddenly saw a food courier opening his delivery container mounted on his scooter. He took out two big bags with food that dominated the fresh coastal air and filled it with the beautiful smell of Indian Nihari - a slow-cooked stew complemented with what I imagined could only be the tenderest pieces of mutton. My stomach tightened and I recalled that I hadn’t eaten for three days. Not because of stress, or anything of the sort. I don’t even know why, actually. I just didn’t. But the empty stomach I was running on made me float three feet above the ground towards the spicy and meaty sauce hidden somewhere in that guy’s box. The courier was buzzed in and disappeared behind the gate.

I flew in when he was making his way through the driveway towards the house. I undid the velcro mounting the backpack-container to the scooter and threw it over my shoulder.

“What the fuck are you doing?” - Dave’s voice sounded in my earpiece, but I ignored it.

I kept moving towards the house, the smell of Nihari still marinating the inside of the backpack and penetrating my nose. The Indian guy that prepared it - it smelled too good to not be prepared by one - didn’t know that the smell of his dish would help me get inside of someone’s house and kill four people.

“What?” The unpleasant voice in the buzzer mumbled after I rang the bell on the target’s house fence.

“Kos delivery!” He buzzed me in, no questions asked. It was just too simple. There were five guys in total in there. One was the boss, three guys were monitoring the premises and the last one hid somewhere in some miniature room constantly watching the cameras' feed, I imagined. 

I made my way towards the doors, passing neglected rose-bushes on both sides of the driveway, keeping in mind that there’s a camera that points directly to the house entrance. It was on the right side above the porch, which made me grab the backpack and settle it on my biceps to hide my face from the lens. I opened it and discretely put the gun inside, the smell of mutton punching me in the face and making my eyes wet from wanderlust.

“Hei boet!” I shouted as a hello in my broken Afrikaans as soon as I saw the bodyguard opening the doors. Bald, muscled, tall - like every single fucking security contractor I met in this country. — “Hold the bakkie for me will ya,” I said while forcing the backpack onto his hands when I knew I was outside of the camera frame. Surprised, he grabbed it and I had a moment to take a peek inside of the house. No one in the closest vicinity, only a long corridor leading towards what I assumed was the living room.

I put my right hand inside the backpack and buzzed the ringer placed near the doors with my left, to mask the sound of a short “click” that the subsonic bullet produced. It penetrated the bag and his skull and he dropped to the ground in an instant. I didn’t know if anyone was close enough to hear it but I wanted to be on the safe side, thus the buzzer. Plus, I never shot this gun and knowing the sabotaging nature of Dave I didn’t want to take any chances in case he lied with the type of the bullets he inserted into the magazine. The sound of the normal one, even with the suppressor on, would put everyone in the house on high alert. Dave didn’t lie, though, and the fact that the subsonics were in fact in the magazine presented many more options to me now.

The entrance doors with hydraulic closer shut behind me when I made my way through the long and empty corridor. It led to a spacious and equally bare living room with huge glass sliding doors leading to the garden. There were two guys sitting on a big couch which was the single piece of furniture beside an equally huge plasma TV. They were watching sports and the voice was turned on loud. I looked outside of the glass doors and saw another two baldies, occupied with something, I didn’t see what it was. I didn’t focus, because I realized in that brief moment that Dave had lied to me.

There were supposed to be five in total. None of them was the target who - as Dave shared - had blue-dyed hair which was the single piece of information I worked on, beside the fact that the target was male. I felt the wrath washing over me because I was not sure how many more of them were there in the house.

With one smooth movement and two silent clicks, I ended the soccer match for the two baddies on the couch and quickly looked around. This was a tricky situation and I was unsure where to start. There was a single corridor leading to two rooms - one must have been the office with the bedroom, the second - the camera room? I wasn’t sure where to start until I saw a little tablet placed on the table where two dead bodies were now laying under. I looked at it and saw the camera feed which answered my question.

I made my way across the empty living room, opened the slide doors and shot two remaining guys. One was burning a steak on the grill and the second one was sunbathing. Professionals.

I proceeded to move towards the corridor leading to the two doors that faced each other at the end. I chose the right door first and saw two guys taking a nap on a bunk bed. They were the nightshift, I presumed. Were. I produced two clicks, got out, and kicked the door leading to - what must’ve been - the target’s office. The house was secured and I needed to vent.

The guy with blue hair jumped from behind his desk with his hands up. I didn’t recognize him at first. I quickly glanced around the small room. It was empty, like the rest of the house, just two chairs and a wide wooden table situated opposite to the doors.

My attention was now focused on Tony the Turbot, and I lowered my gun once I recognized his face and clicked the button on the earpiece, disengaging the communication between me and Dave.

He called me by the name I hadn't used since I left the Academy and started to approach me. I put up my gun again and shook my head slightly. Tony was tall and thin. An ideal candidate for every intelligence agency in the world because of how average-looking he was. Two things that differentiated him from the typical look of a 30-year-old Caucasian - beside the hair - were his bulging eyes and large mouth. 

“What are you doing here?” He stopped moving and looked at me with raised eyebrows.

“I could ask you the same thing, Turbot.” - I said, moving the gun from him towards the desk and back at him.

“Long time no see, I guess, huh?” He took two steps back and returned to where he previously stood. “We were wondering where you ended up after they kicked you out from the Academy.”

“Sit. Hands on the table.” He followed the command, and I sat on the chair opposite to the desk.

“So, when did you start working for the Fat Man?” Turbot asked casually, diverting himself from the gravity of the situation.

“I’m here with Dave. He waits in the car,” I ignored his question and saw as his pupils dilated, his mouth opened slightly. “This can go two ways. You can give me the location of the stash, or I can call Dave, and you’ll tell him.” I monitored his reaction, and every mention of Dave made his face twitch slightly.

“You know what he does, right?”

“I don’t care, Turbot.”

“He’s a fucking psycho.” He leaned towards me from his desk, and I raised my gun slightly to calm him down. — “I sat where you’re sitting now. He uses a fucking wood grinder to carve down your teeth, you get it? I even fucking Googled this shit, man. You know how many fucking nerves are there in the teeth?” He started to cry at that point. — “The last guy fucking shat himself four times in a minute!” His face was red and looked as if it was going to explode. — “And I didn’t even fucking tell you the best part! The guy told him where the fucking money was before he even started, you get it? You get it? Tell me you get it. He’s a fucking psycho, man!”

“What’s with the hair?” I said casually.

He sank in the chair again, defeated, and hid his face in his hands. He paused for a minute to compose himself.

“I always wanted this color, but couldn’t. You can’t play the spy game with blue fucking hair,” he said with a shaky voice.

“Tony,” I put the gun on the table in front of me and leaned towards him. “This house, it’s a company house, isn’t it?” Security contracting firms such as the one he hired offered package deals that included both the safe houses and mercenaries for protection.

“Yes,” he said, showing me his face again, mouth still opened, and a delicate gleam in his eye.

"And I guess it does have the underground tunnel leading to the sewers?"

“Yes,” his eyes were now blazing with light.

“Take a piece of paper, write down the coordinates to the stash,” it was always the coordinates. — “Hide it inside the desk. I will tell Dave that you were not here, we’ll sweep the house, and eventually find the note. Don’t you fucking dare get any ideas, do you understand, Turbot?"

“I understand,” he mumbled humbly with a lowered head, his hopeful eyes still illuminating the room, and I needed to turn the lights down a bit.

“I’m being fucking serious. Call the guys from the burner and tell them to pick you up. You’re getting out of the country. You think of something stupid, and I’ll find you, and it won’t be Dave who’ll grind your fucking teeth.”

Turbot kept thanking me as he produced the note with coordinates before passing it to me.

“Write another, with random numbers.” He paused for a second and did what I asked.

“Another, with the right coordinates this time.”

He produced them quickly, without any hesitation and passed the paper along. The numbers matched with the ones on the first note. I raised the gun and shot him in the head. His face fell on the keyboard of his opened laptop placed in front of him.

I put on my gloves, picked up the three pieces of paper, opened the first desk drawer, pulled out the gun Turbot had hidden inside of it and dropped it by his feet. I opened another and hid the false note between random documents. I walked out of the room and went to the doors opposite to the office, cleaned its handle with my shirt, and clicked the button on my earpiece.

“House’s secured. Buzz the doorbell three times so I know it’s you.” Dave would cover the last of my fingerprints with his own.

The buzzer went off three times shortly after. He walked over the body of the first bodyguard with a big fucking smile on his savage face. I stood at the end of the corridor to meet him. My face was covered with the remains of Turbot’s brain. He smiled even wider when he saw me.

“Target’s dead.”

“Don’t worry. It wasn’t really about the money,” he said as if nothing happened.

He approached me, and I hit him in the solar plexus which took his breath out. He grabbed some piece of his body where his neck was supposed to be before I slammed his head on the wall. He slid on it, and I kicked his nose with my knee. His head didn’t bounce from the wall this time around.

He was on the ground, his head resting inside of the hole it produced. I knelt beside him.

“We’re going to do some math now, Davey,” I said, putting the karambit inside his mouth because it’d taken me too long to find his neck. “How many rounds were in the magazine?”

“Fifteen.”

“You mentioned there were five guys inside. I put a single bullet in each of them. How many bullets are left in the magazine?” I slapped him on the forehead so that he didn’t get any ideas of asking whether I shot the walls for fun.

“Ten,” he mumbled after a pause, not because he could barely breathe or because I slammed his head on the wall.

“Then…” I pressed my face to his, “why the fuck am I left with seven?"

Dave looked at me and gave a big smile, which staggered me.

“You passed,” he said, before starting to laugh maniacally.

I stood and went up the corridor. I grabbed the food container, put it up on my arm again to hide my face, and exited the house.