His real name was Henry. Henry Trent. But that wasn't what they called him. To them, he was 'Tredskow', the mysterious assassin with the rich and equally mysterious backers. He smiled to himself, and readied the scope against his eye. Behind him, the various members of his group were arranged around him, mostly a collection of petty murderers. In front of him was a Barrett sniper rifle, pointed across the street at a window not quite directly opposite the room where he and his 'colleagues' were located.
Henry aimed down the weapon. At the other end of the bullet trajectory was his target. Van Helsinki. Detective, cop, and near-enough the best man the Force had. Yes, he was unstable, and yes, he was unorthodox. But he got things done. He'd killed men, women, even demons, if the stories were true. Henry was here to see that these things were never done again by him. His backers, the men and women who had turned him into a highly trained, highly paid killer, wanted Van gone. Yes, they had found him useful in the past, but now he knew too much. He needed to be dealt with. Van was walking, pacing up and down in his apartment across the road. Henry was pleased that he had disregarded the suggestions of his colleagues to simply 'stab' or 'shoot' the detective, especially from close range. There was a reason that Van was still alive, after everything which Henry's backers had thrown at him. There was a reason that they had brought 'Vladimir' along to do the job. Van had survived everything. One attempted stabbing in a dark alley. Van had taken the knife, rammed it into the assassin's skull, and then walked away. A 'mag-dump job' where a would-be assassin would ride up to Van on a motorcycle, empty an entire gun's magazine into him, and then ride away. The weapon, a MAC11, had jammed, and Van had hit the assailant in the face with his fist, pulled him off his bike, and beaten him half to death. Another stabbing had been successful, but Van, with three deep gaping wounds in his chest, had somehow managed to stumble out of the gutter in which he had been dumped, and walk to a hospital. A first attempt to shoot him with a sniper had been foiled when he had not turned up. Reports indicated he'd been with a woman. The sniper had found out where, and then she had tried to enter the woman's house. Bad move. Both Van and his lover had emptied their guns into the assassin. She had not survived. 'Tredscow' was her replacement. He had found a perch, high up across the street from his intended quarry. He couldn't see Van's face, had never, in fact, seen Van's face. He didn't need it. The lived-in hat and coat were unmistakeable. Now was the chance. Henry lined up his scope reticule. Adjustments for wind and distance were second nature to him. He took a deep breath. Around him, the other criminals clustered, waiting for the strike.
It never came.
The door to the apartment he had taken was suddenly struck from the outside. Henry started, losing his shot. He swore under his breath, rolled away from the weapon, and drew his Glock 19 from his hip holster. His men took up positions around the room. Henry moved into cover, and waved one of them forward. The man moved up to the door, to look through the peep-hole.
There was an explosion of pellets and wood splinters, and the man stood up no more.
The door gave one shattering crack, and swung off its hinges. There was a brief pause, and then a woman rolled into the room. Henry swore again. It was Her. It just had to be Her. He opened fire, but it was too late. Her roll carried her across the room. As she went, the USP in one hand barked and one of his men went down. The SIG-Sauer in the other did the same. Henry swore a third time.
Sophia came out of the roll firing. She emptied the P230 in her right hand into the nearest man to her, and the USP in her left kicked up again, hitting another man in the leg. Henry ducked back into cover as Sophia swept the room, firing off several more USP shots into the wooden cover. One bullet punched through, narrowly missing his head. This was too much. Henry turned and sprinted for the door. Sophia turned with him, and as he neared the exit she slid her now empty right hand down to grab the Colt Vest Pocket in her boot. Sophia raised the gun, but her aim was off, and the shots only hit the doorframe. Henry took only a second to take his opportunity. He swung round in the doorway, and fired back with the Glock, hitting the coverless Sophia in the extended right arm. The shot knocked her back, and she dropped both her weapons. Henry had continued his movement as soon as he fired, so that he ended up in cover on the other side of the door, but hearing Sophia's cry he ducked back round the door. She was on the floor, reaching for her USP with her uninjured left hand, when Henry dove onto her, grabbing her neck in his non-Glock hand. Sophia's flailing arm knocked the USP further away, spinning it into the corner of the room. Henry squeezed down on her throat. She gargled, and thrashed about, but he was fresh, uninjured, and stronger. Her legs spun her about, to no avail.
Then came the second unpleasant experience.
Henry suddenly felt a flash, and his right shoulder burst into pain. He sprawled off Sophia, and lay on his back on the floor. Both the half-throttled agent and the newly-injured assassin lay where they had fallen for a moment, and then Henry and Sophia were up and crawling away from each other. Sophia urges every muscle in her body to breaking point, ignoring the pain, in the ultimate need to find a weapon. She saw Henry's Glock first. Sophia dragged herself up to it, and then turned round, scanning the room. Her adversary was crawling away from her, towards her dropped USP. Sophia sighted along the pistol, and squeezed the trigger twice. Twice was quite enough. Sophia's ear crackled. It was Van.
'Did you get him?' asked the cop. He was looking up at the window. Van couldn't see Sophia from his vantage point. He laid aside the Dragunov sniper weapon he had used to shoot Henry. Through his earpiece, Sophia sighed.
'I got him. I got the rest'. Van smiled to himself. He might not have been able to beat a trained assassin, so he had decided to preempt him, in a situation for which Van had planned everything. Even then, it had been unpleasantly close. Normally, Van would have been up there, breaking and entering, but Ford and the Inspector had insisted he stay in his room, to make it seem more genuine.
'Okay, I'll come to you' Van said. Sophia snorted.
'Don't bother. There's nothing up here for you'. Van thought she sounded hurt, about something, but whatever had upset her, evidently she was not going to share. She seemed to be distant, ever since…well, even before his return. Admittedly, he had tried to kill her, but that wasn't it. It was earlier. Van snorted to himself. It was not his problem. Best to get on with the job, and then get back to Ford. The two had been out, once, for a drink. Van didn't remember all that much, but apparently he had been…well, Ford has said 'lively'. Van was distracted from his reverie by the sound through his headpiece of Sophia walking, slightly scuffing her foot. She was definitely annoyed about something. Van had learned it was probably better not to ask what.
Sophia walked over to the assassin's body, lying on the ground. In a fit of sudden fury, at Van, at life, at everything, she kicked the corpse. Sophia immediately felt unprofessional. She was here to investigate, to get a lead on the people who hired the assassins, not to get rid of her spurned furies. Sophia bent down beside the body, grasped the torso by one of the struts off the tactical vest, and rolled it over.
There was a click. Sophia, in that moment, could do nothing but close her eyes and curse herself. She tried to move, to jump or roll out of the way, but her legs had barely tensed under her before it happened.
Van heard the click too, over the earpiece. He too could do nothing. Even as he looked up towards the window, across the street and up two floors, an explosion rippled out of it, and the window blew outwards. Van shouted. There was no name or title in what he said, but, still, it was a call for a lost and dying past, sacrificed on the altar of freshness and new life. It was the death of the old, and the victory of the new. And Van screamed at his own survival, in the face of a changing world.
It took him perhaps five minutes to get down to street level, and then run up the stairs to the blasted level. And yet, somehow, Sophia was still alive when he got there. She was lying where the explosion had tossed her, half-in and half-out of the doorway. Her entire right side was horribly blackened and mangled. Her left arm lay at an awkward angle, almost certainly broken. Van cradled her in his arms. It was far too late for medical help, for consolation, for anything. Van just held her. Sophia seemed to try and say something, but whatever it was, she couldn't enunciate it. Eventually, she gave up, and just lay there, silent, until she died. Van stared into her eyes. All he could think was that, for a woman who had lived a life where in every moment she looked perfect, without trying, when even after torture she could look as if she had just stepped out of her beauty parlour, how unfair it was for her to die a soot-blackened, mangled death in an empty, dirty apartment block in a dirty, with half her side ripped off, and her right leg missing below the knee.
Van said nothing when the police found them. He said nothing to the Inspector when he turned up to debrief him. And all he said to Ford, when she saw him and immediately ran up and hugged him, was 'It's over'.