Taking care not to jar the scope, I dropped my rifle and other weapons into the back of the car, before coming around to the front, and clambering in. As soon as I had shut the door, the sleek black car glided into the night.
"Success?" asked Jess?
"Yep. Covert shot as well"
"Nice. I wondered why you took your time unloading just then"
I didn't reply.
There was something about one of the guards that simply wouldn't leave my head.
As the target had left the crowd with her boyfriend, just beforehand, someone had been amid deep conversation with her. And I couldn't help but feel that I knew that person, not personally, but from somewhere...
"You alright?"
"Yeah, just thinking..."
"What about?"
"Oh, nothing much."
A girlish smile flashed across her face for a second, when she realized that I was keeping something from her. She turned and looked at me.
I just looked on into the night, and tried to make the minutes, the meter's beneath the tires fly faster. Realizing that she wasn't going to know any time soon, she readjusted her gaze back onto the road.
"Section Chief will be pleased"
"Well, I bloody well hope so too."
My nagging thoughts were beginning to get to my temper now. Not just said mysterious figure in the crowd, but having to take out a couple?
That must have left it's mark.
"Something's really on your mind, isn't it. I can tell"
"NO THERE BLOODY IS'N-"
"Look" She said, cutting me off in her 'Authority' tone. "Once we get home, once all the work's been done, I'm gonna find out what it is, it's evidently bugging you. You need to get it off your chest."
That's the trouble with girlfriends. They know you all too well. In fact, I can't remember a single situation where I've won a fight against Jess.
She's just too nice...
I smile.
"Thanks."
Just as the sun began to break across the horizon, the first beams of light picked out an old farmyard. Pulling into it, Jess parked the car behind a few bails of hay, while I grabbed my tools and headed inside.
From the outside, the barn was an image repeated across the country, probably the world: Locked doors, boarded up windows, it looked like it might have been used as a stronghold by kids at some-point. The interior of the barn looked no different from any other barn, however. As he walked up to the center of the building, now visible from all 4 corners of it, a voice cried out behind him.
"Eagle."
"Stealth." I responded
"Howya doing? I take it you took em down then?" The section chief, a tall guy with greasy, black hair, wandered out of the corner.
"Yes, sir." I replied, slightly shaken.
"Anyways, down to business." The chief opened a large metal suitcase, and placed it down in front of them.
"Now, ammo."
"1 Springfield round."
The chief selected a long, copper bullet, and placed it, it's vicious point directed at the roof of the barn, onto the cold concrete floor.
"That's everything ammo wise?"
"Yes, sir."
"Wow, when they said you were a pro, they weren't kidding! And, here's the cash. £1,000, as agreed."
The chief dropped a bundle of £20 notes in front of me. I scooped them up, and slid the bullet into my bag that always hang around my waist, full of them. As I turned to leave, a voice pierced the silence of the barn. It wasn't me, or the Chief, or Jess.
It was German, and the voice's owner, stood in the doorway, was armed. I was just about to grab my own pistol, when I saw the black secret service hat he was wearing.
"If you would like to come with me, herr..."
"Hidden Ace"
"Herr, err, Ace, then."
The secret service officer lead me around the barn, and over to his car, an ugly blue Ford Fiesta.
I smiled.
As a secret service officer, it didn't really fit the job he had.
"Herr Ace. I am here to congratulate you on the task you have just achieved. Indeed, it appears you didn't know just how important that kill was."
"No si-"
"Well, as you will not, I sincerely hope, know, I am the head of the secret service for this local area. And I have been sent to give you the full payment of what you have achieved, and to give you your next mission."
A secret service mission? I didn't know there was a secret service until about a week ago! Hell, some places in Wales haven't even got electricity yet, and there's already a secret service...
"During the mission, I don't suppose you saw this man at all?"
He held out a photo. I picked it up, and put it to the light.
And at that moment, my blood froze.
It was the man I had identified last night.
The one that was bugging me.
The one that shouldn't have been there.
The one that was, according to the archives in London, dead after an assassin destroyed his vehicle.
The one that should have died in the explosion I set up and caused 1 year ago.
The man that almost took Britain as a Nazi dictatorship, under himself.
That one.
David King.