This is My Moment

[The archives may be helpful.]

This is my moment.

Here it is and I can hardly believe it as I let out one long breath to fully steady the crosshairs on my target, or should I saymy victim?

As the moment of total relaxation approaches, he comes into focus in all his deadly beauty. To me, he is beautiful, as Van Gogh's fuzzy flowers were beautiful to his insane eyes. He is beautiful because he is my end. How many miles have I walked? Countless steps leading to this, like brushstrokes on a canvas. Each one by itself means nothing, but put them together and you get this: a face in a frameor in a telescopic sight. And there it is, in full focus now, that which I have sought for what seems a lifetime. In his face I see the sorrow of the lovers betrayed to find him, in his eyes the pain of the murdered, in his smile the false trust placed in me by hundreds. Who, I wonder is the real monster?

Meor Knifekitten?

I push the thought out of my head, because here he is, and this is my moment. He has been like the fog I tried to catch on the moors in my youth: always two steps ahead, disappearing from wherever I stood. The Company warned me, but really any description would be inadequate. The gleam of his body in the Sun, silver and blinding, the scything of his ribs as he breathes. His form brings it all home. This creature is murder itself.

And he must be stopped.

I brace myself on the fallen log before me and begin to squeeze the trigger. I'm about to drop the hammer and close the curtain on Knifekitten's play when a blur obstructs my scope. I am forced to relax my finger and refocus my eyes on the back of a bald head. One of Knifekitten's associates bought the creature a few seconds more on this earth by pure dumb luck.

Wait that blur had a familiar shape.

I know I have time, so I track the blur.

Once focused, the blur becomes distinct, a bald pointy-head atop a fat, trundling body. It is a form I well recognize for its clumsiness and treachery. But what's it doing here? Ennio should be in Monterey, not in this god-forsaken jungle. Good lord, he's even fatter than before. My first thought is to make him my second target. I've never liked Ennio, with his greasy shirts and even greasier smiles. One less corrupt government official.

One less asset in Mexico, says a voice in the back of my mind. Tina's voice. Separated forever in body, she's still the voice of reason. Really, it's her memory, I guess. When you're dead, you're gone and that's that. I wish I could have Ennio's strong, if hypocritical, faith, but I don't. Oblivion is all I await when someone is sent to shut me down; Tina is really nothing more than an imagined counselor anymore.

I bite my bottom lip to bring myself back to the task. There will be time for reverie when I'm hitching a ride back on some military plane. Right now, it is time to kill. I push thoughts of Tina and speculation on Ennio's grotesque presence to the back of my mind, where it will fester until I have to clean it with a bottle of Scotch, the antibiotic of the soul.

My finger tightens again, just enough to push the trigger to its breaking point, but not past. Some men prefer low pressure triggers, I like to know I'm doing something, and I always fear an untimely sneeze will put a bullet in the wrong place at the wrong time, like Prom date at a family brawl.

Knifekitten has walked back near the cargo plane that landed what seems a lifetime ago. Ennio follows, obscuring my vision again, the bastard. I almost decide to take him right there. I'm not certain I would get another shot off. Still, he's in my way, and I hurl epithets silently at him, praying for his overworked heart to finally tell its boss where to shove the job.

Ennio begins mopping at his dome with a red handkerchief, the same one he hides his bribes in, as though he were a third rate magician. I can tell what he's saying: "Ai, eets so hot out here." And he begins looking around, for a seat. I brace.

He finds a crate and flops his flab on it. Now Knifekitten is there, ready for the taking.

I exhale, and the world outside the scope goes away, fading like the lights in a movie theater, leaving a circular screen with a cross in the middle and a creature of pure murder on it like an insane man's deity. I do not even feel my finger as it squeezes the trigger, nor do I blink as the bullet strikes Knifekitten on the forehead.

But he does not go down. The blade over his hateful right eye shivers, like a gong struck in a Daffy Duck cartoon, and his head whips to look in my direction. He can see me; I feel it to the depth of my being. He knows where I am, and he comes for me.

And he can run so very, very fast