The Sniper

The first movement of Beethoven's 'Sonata quasi una fantasia', the one everyone calls 'Moonlight' for some reason, was playing gently in my earpiece as I watched my target leave the crowded nightclub. Others in my profession swear by sedatives, dosing themselves up with valium to keep their hands still and their hearts calm, but I have had a few too many close-calls and quick getaways to feel comfortable dulling my senses.

Classical music and breathing exercises are almost as effective and leave me more able to react if a plan falls apart. I might not have such impressive scores over longer distances, but anything over 600 yards is just showing off in my opinion.

Crowds have always irritated me; I am a precision instrument, so even the risk of collateral damage is unacceptable. More than that, it would likely lead my employers to offer me a one-way trip to the bottom of the River Thames.

I took a deep breath and waited, calming myself again.

The man walked casually enough, but he seemed to linger near groups of people. Each time he seemed to be heading toward a clear space, the natural flow of pedestrians and hopeful guests would shift to offer him protection. It was almost certainly deliberate, but my instincts said that it was habit and not advanced warning of my presence. I still needed to be sure that he was not just trying to delay me though; he was taking a great risk, having briefly given me two clean shots already, but ours was a culture of calculated risk.

"Control; please confirm that I am alone."

On another roof, a spotter ran a quick check of the buildings opposite me. He or she (they never tell me, just in case anything goes wrong) is there to make sure that I don't get caught by surprise while I am staring down a magnified scope and ignoring the rest of the world. I'm told they use all sorts of high-tech infra-red and night-vision tools, but that's another thing that's never been confirmed.

I know that I trust them, that they have suddenly warned me off in time to escape a bad situation often enough that I am happy to put my life in their hands. Even when I was looking for trouble, the spotters have picked up signs too subtle for even someone as paranoid as me.

"Spotters confirm it's clean."

Spotters? I wondered. It's not often I get support from multiple spotters. I'd wonder who the target is, but I know it's not healthy. Wondering aloud especially would be bad for my health.

"Acknowledged."

-----

You might be wondering how I ended up here, sitting in a small flat with a high-powered rifle in my hand, but the answer is probably not what you'd expect. I'm here because the career's advisor at school thought I had potential...

Talking to colleagues, it sounds like the staff in certain schools actively keep a look out for the right kind of borderline-sociopath. I'm not talking about the ones who would ever have grown up to become serial killers, but rather the ones whose morality is flexible enough to let them do bad things for a good cause.

I got picked up when I was fourteen. A friend of mine got his dinner-tokens stolen and his family wasn't too well off, so I knew he couldn't afford to buy any more. In hindsight, I could have just bought his meals for him, but I took it personally for some reason. The kids who did it were the other kind of borderline-psychopath, the kind who like to kick the weak and usually have a future in either prison or the police.

I'm not that kind of psychopath. I'm the kind who helped one of them to fall down a flight of concrete stairs onto broken glass, while another broke his leg playing rugby when the scrum collapsed on top of him and... well, you get the message. I'm not a sadist unless they deserved it.

The school was not fooled, of course. They couldn't prove anything, not this time or any of the half-dozen times before. I was the kid who could break bones in self-defence, purely by accident. They even sent me to a counsellor once, though that never went anywhere; I knew my Freud and Jung well enough to have the poor woman eating out of my hand.

After the accidents, the school called me to the careers-advisor's office. They didn't say why, but I expected it was another chat about reforming, about 'bucking up my ideas' or similar. What I didn't expect was a man in an RAF uniform with a deck of cards.

We played poker as we chatted about my career plans and I told him as politely as I could that I was not really cut out for the military life, even if I did like the idea of flying fighters back when I was younger. He nodded amiably and proceeded to beat me three hands out of every four. I was glad that we were not playing for cash.

After that, the career's advisor took me back to my lessons and left me with the distinct impression that I had just been had. The impression only got stronger when I was handed a letter at the end of the day which they said they had told my parents to expect.

I'm no fool, I opened it.

You might have some idea about my steaming open the glue, but even at 14 I knew that's a terrible idea; people notice a damp letter. No, I just slipped into the secretary's office to ask some banal questions about my time-table and swiped a spare envelope while his back was turned. I wouldn't have even bothered with that, but they'd invested in some custom stationery a couple of years back when they 're-branded' the place.

My first shock was finding two letters; one was addressed to me, detailing my many indiscretions and generally about as incriminating a document as any sadist could have slipped into a letter to my parents. They listed everything, even the ones they only suspected and could never have proved.

The second letter was an invitation take part in a student exchange program and talked about opportunities to study foreign culture, but the letter in my name described a very different opportunity; they thought a boy like me had potential, if properly moulded. 

It was obviously a test; I was meant to open it, I thought. I was meant to hide it from my parents. I was no fool, I burned it as soon as I had the chance, to make sure it never came back to haunt me.

My parents were thrilled at the chance of course, I accepted the place and... well, eighteen years later, here I am in a small flat with a high-powered rifle and the best training Her Majesty's finest could offer.

-----

It was probably no more than thirty seconds later that my target stepped out of the crowd and slipped into an alleyway between two buildings, but it felt like an eternity. I saw the tension drain from his body-language as he leant against the wall, lighting a cigarette. He did know I was here then...

"Control, I need masking and a pick-up."

Somewhere nearby, a firework whistled into the air, bursting into light. The target flinched, but seemed to relax as he saw the coloured flame expanding overhead. Another exploded above him and he smiled. Red and green lit his face, joined by a subtle hint of the strobing blue of an approaching ambulance.

Next came a Roman Candle, its uneven pops the cue I had been waiting for. The round was low-powered and I had attached a sound-suppressor to my rifle, but there is no way to disguise a gunshot. Cinema lies to you; even with a suppressor, the report of a gun sounds like a heavy book slammed against a desk. Thankfully, it also sounds a little like a Roman Candle.

As he turned to flick ash from his cigarette, I fired and the bullet hit the medulla oblongata, severing the spinal cord at the second cervical vertebra. It was a clean shot and I watched him fall like a puppet with its strings cut.

The crowds didn't even look in my direction, stopping only to make way for the paramedics rushing to the target's location. They'd almost been too early, but they moved to confirm the kill. It had never happened to me, but I'd heard of botched assassinations finished by the paramedic crews; that's why we kept them on standby, after all.

My work done, I capped the lense of my scope and gently lowered the weapon. I was just reaching the cup of tea to one side when I heard the sound of a heavy book slammed against a desk and the clink of glass yielding to a high-powered projectile. Instinct dropped me fully prone and I did not move until I heard the sound of a heavy body hitting the floor behind me.

"My compliments to the spotters, control," I said, finally drawing myself to my feet.

I drew a slender dagger from my boot and walked over to finish the job, but my saviour had been almost as good a shot as I was; the bod on the floor was not breathing and a hole was clearly visible at the base of the skull.

"Spotters say that's what they're there for. Now finish your tea and let's get you home..."

Reviews

[Anthony Gerrard]

I love this. I can clearly visualise the surroundings and there are many questions in my head now which would make me want to read on to answer. Even though this is self-contained, I would be happy to read a book with this as the opening chapter. The paragraph about the two letters was one I had to read a few times to get the gist. I couldn't work out, at first, whether the parents did or did not have the indiscretions letter. Perhaps this needs to ba made clearer.
Overall, an excellent piece of writing. Thanks for sharing.

[Robin]

You know I love your writing so don't take this the wrong way but two things jarred for me in this story. That is not me analysing the story to pick holes but me as a reader unconsciously being shaken out of my enjoyment of the story.
Firstly, the letter. It was a presented as a kind of test but my brain automatically looked for what the alternative was and it did not work i.e. his parents get a letter accusing him of being a borderline psychotic monster then saying he has huge potential and is being offered some kind of scholarship.
Second was the ending, again an automatic reaction, but I am left thinking "If they have a highly capable sniper watching him then does that mean the second sniper has a spotter watching him and another sniper protecting him and who is protecting the third sniper and if the second sniper is that good why not just use him?" Perhaps you have thought these questions through and feel the answer is obvious but I, the dumb reader, missed the obvious so perhaps it needs to be clearer. One possible answer to the second sniper is for the first sniper to realise that the second sniper was not watching him to protect him but to take him out if he screws up or looks as if he is about to be caught?

[Anthony Hart-Jones]

You make a good point. Even in this second version, I am not happy with the bit about the letters. I think I was trying to be too clever and it just fell flat. The spotters were me trying too hard to do something new and ignoring the reason why real sniper-teams have spotters; real spotters should be in the same room, helping to keep an eye on the big picture while the sniper is concentrating on their target.