Click… click… click…

Sighing as he finished the 13 minutes of angle adjustment on the rifle scope, Sam Caulfield considered how he had come to be in this position. Following the kidnapping and subsequent murder of his wife nearly a year ago, he’d hunted, interrogated, and assassinated his way up the rungs of the cartel responsible for her death.

However, after tracking Eduardo Montoya, the upper level cartel boss responsible for ordering his wife's death, to Tucson, the trail went cold. He spent a good two months practically living at the bottom of a bottle until a chance encounter at a local cathedral had led him to a man that he recognized from Eduardo Montoya’s security detail. Subsequently tailing the man to his hotel room, he had extracted Eduardo's location from him through a combination of drugs, threats, and physical persuasion.

That had brought him here, 10 miles south of the U. S. Border with Mexico, on the 13th floor of a vacant office building in Nogales, watching the penthouse suite of a squat hotel 560 yards away, through the scope of a custom built rifle his wife had bought him as a first anniversary present.

A lump formed in his throat at the thought of that evening. Anna’s smile was radiant as she handed him the rifle case, her glee only building as he unwrapped his gift. When he finally unwrapped the last bit of the sparkling metallic giftcote and pulled out the long weapon, she’d pulled out a piece of paper while giggling, and began to read off row after row of custom modifications, specifications, and attachments, managing to mispronounce well over half the manufacturers.

A light turning on in the hotel suite pulled his attention back to the task at hand, and he pulled the rifle deeper into the pocket of his shoulder, wrapping his index finger in the small loop of paracord on the back bottom part of his stock to steady it.

“That’s right fucker, just walk into the bedroom without a care in the world,” The cross-hairs hovered on the couple as they moved through the suite to the bedroom, oblivious to his voyeurism.

“Show me your face, asshole,” Sam growled. The man had been walking in profile next to the woman with his face turned toward her, making identification near impossible. He watched as the man grabbed her, kissing her passionately on the lips and neck. Sam was beginning grit his teeth in frustration when the target promptly kissed her on the lips, spanked her bottom, and pointed in a direction down the right hand side of the room. The woman sauntered off in the indicated direction, and the man turned and sat down on the bed, now facing Sam.

He was, in fact, Eduardo. A bloodthirsty smile split Sam’s face as he flicked the safety on his rifle to the vertical position. Pulling in a deep breath and exhaling slowly, Sam took one last solid look at his target and squeezed the trigger.

The rifle barked loudly, the three prong flash hider emitting the telltale tuning fork sound at the rifle going off. Sam waited for what felt like seconds, but in reality was less than 1, and grinned when his round took his target in the chest, right where his heart would be. Never one to leave a job unfinished, Sam put three more rounds into the man as he curled up in the fetal position in the bed, two striking his chest and abdomen, and one taking his skull cap off and painting the room with blood and brains.

With a feral grin, Sam popped the two pins that separated the rifles upper and lower receivers and stuffed it into his backpack, then moving to the front pouch of his pack, he pulled out a belt with magazines and a holster as well as a small Personal Defense Weapon. The PDW was actually just a large handgun inside a reinforced plastic frame that allowed it to be shouldered and used like a compact rifle.

He pulled his handgun out of the bag and placed it in the holster on the war belt. Sam slung his PDW over his shoulder, put on the belt, then his large flannel jacket, and finally his backpack. Chambering a round in the PDW, he checked the extended magazine through the small holes on the back of it to confirm that it was full. Of course, it was; Sam had spent hours before coming here in his dingy motel room loading his magazines, cleaning his weapons, replacing the batteries in the optics and lights he would be using, and just generally checking every bit of gear he would be bringing with him on this particular excursion.

With his gear in place, Sam opened the door into the dimly lit hallway. Emergency exit signs at the far ends of the building provided the only illumination. Sam flashed his light up and down the hallway long enough for him to be certain he was alone. Satisfied, he pushed down the right hand side of the hallway to the stairwell, weapon held at a low ready. He paused at the stairwell door, listening for the sound of climbing footsteps.

Hearing nothing, he pushed onward down the stairwell, pausing on each landing to peer through the small pane of reinforced glass. Nothing stirred in the quiet caverns of the dark building, and he continued his downward spiral, taking each step gingerly, moving from heel to toe towards the bottom of the stairwell.

As he opened the door to the lobby of the vacant office building, Sam settled himself into a shadowy nook just to the right of the doorway and watched, blending into the shadows of the darkened building.

As he kneeled for what seemed like minutes, Sam was assured that no one was there waiting to catch him in a trap and he moved along the wall until he entered a hallway, as he pushed down it he found what he was looking for; the exit sign. Walking closer to the door, Sam lifted his PDW to his shoulder and opened it a fraction, the dull buzzing of the light above him making the only sound as he walked out into the night air.

‘This is all going too well, isn’t it?’ Sam thought to himself. There had been no security for the vacant building, no police patrolling the streets on his way here, and no one in the building he could see, not even the usual squatters you got in dilapidated and abandoned buildings. Something was definitely not right here, but Sam just couldn’t put his finger on what it was. His plan had gone perfectly from the get-go, and, other than a drunk woman accosting him on his way here, nothing had gone sideways on him. Which, to Sam's logic, meant the other shoe was about to drop. As Sam pushed out the side exit of the building and across the street hurriedly, he heard the sirens in the distance.

Well, there’s the other shoe. He thought to himself as he slunk into the alley between two storefronts. The mask he had would protect his identity from any wayward security cameras, and even if it didn’t, he wasn’t a citizen of this country. once he crossed the border, the police were far too corrupt and incompetent to mount an effective pursuit.

Moving with military efficiency, he rotated at an angle around the corner of the alley in a practiced maneuver. When he was in the Army, they had called it “slicing the pie,” or more colloquially, “pieing” the corner. Moving down the new alley to a break in the buildings, he crossed a small street and cut into another alley. The helter-skelter construction of the city made it a frenetic mess of houses, businesses, and streets, with a plethora of alleyways and back yards for him to escape through.

Sam pushed to the end of this alleyway, he lowered his PDW to his chest, and looked at the smart-watch on his wrist. Turning it on, he flicked to an app that tied back to a small camera placed above the front door of the lobby and analyzed what he saw. The small screen showed him a total of 6 police cars, two swat trucks, and two unmarked white vans all parked in front of the office building. The police were spread out in front of the building, all watching from behind the cover of their vehicles, waiting for some unknown signal. Zooming in to get a better view, Sam found an older, grizzled officer talking with two well dressed men.

‘Are they feds?’ Sam frowned. The federal police wouldn’t show up so fast. There had to be something else going on. He squinted at the tiny screen, his mind racing, and then he saw it. One of the well dressed men pulled a fat envelope from his sport jacket pocket and tried to stealthily pass it off to the old officer, who took it, weighed it in his hand for a few seconds, and pocketed it.

‘Great.’ Sam thought. ‘More cartel members.’

Yelling something that the microphone didn’t pick up, and spinning his index finger in a circular motion above his head, the older officer turned and walked back towards a police car parked in the back, with the other police officers looking confused, but slowly holstering their weapons and cautiously walking back to their cars themselves.

‘Yup, police are on the take. I wonder if it's the whole department, or just the higher-ups? Gotta stay on my toes if that’s the case.’ Sam thought.

Threading his way through the labyrinth of garbage in the alley, he stopped dead in his tracks. At the far end of the dirty path was a man covered in tattoos, with a shaved head, a wife beater, shorts, and an AK pattern rifle in his hands. Sam froze, watching the man's back as he rhythmically swayed back and forth in the mouth of the alley.

Cocking his head to the side, Sam realized he was listening to music on small earbuds that Sam could just barely make out. A grave mistake for a sentry to make, but he wasn't one to complain as he stalked up behind the man, pulling the tanto from the sheath on his belt.

Lashing out with practiced speed, Sam grabbed the cartel member's face and kicked his right knee out from under him. With the sicario’s mouth covered and unable to scream, Sam plunged the sharp knife into the side of his neck, just grazing the spine, and then jerked it around to the other side of the man’s throat. The man thrashed violently, but within seconds the massive, hemorrhaging wound in his neck rendered him unconscious.

“Sorry buddy,” Sam said as he dragged the body back into the shadows of the alley. “You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, workin’ for the wrong people.” Sam sighed and closed the man's eyes. Looking at him now, up close, he realized that the “man” couldn’t have been older than 20.

‘This is a fucked up part of the world.’ Sam had to remind himself. He didn’t like ending lives like this, especially since the kid in front of him probably had no other viable option. But it was either Sam or the kid in the end, and he knew his decision had been sound. Pushing out of the alley, Sam reviewed the map on his watch.

He would have to cut down this street, cross it, and move to another alley a couple hundred yards ahead. He tucked the PDW up into the side of his jacket, covered his belt with the bottom of it, and rolled the balaclava up over his head so he would just look like a vagrant walking the streets a little too late at night. He walked a little over a hundred yards before he heard a shout from across the street. It sounded like someone in distress, and he really hoped it wasn’t what he thought it was.

‘Don’t get involved’. Sam thought to himself, ‘Don’t insert yourself where you don’t belong. You’re here for one reason; To end the man who had Anna killed. You killed him, and now all you need is to get the fuck out and drown your sorrows in some forgotten hole on the ass end of nowhere.’

‘What would Anna want you to do? Leave someone to their fate? Didn’t she tell you that bystanders are just as bad as perpetrators?’ The thought hit him like a mental freight train and he sighed audibly before growling, resigning himself to action. ‘No, no, I’m not just gonna leave them to their fate. If I die, then so be it. I've already finished everything I set out to do.’

With that, Sam pulled the mask back down over his face and sprinted across the street toward the opening of the alley that he had heard the cry from. Pulling the pistol from its holster, Sam reached into a small pouch on his belt and withdrew a small metallic cylinder. Threading the suppressor into place on his handgun, Sam moved to the mouth of the alley and peered around the corner. He saw two men leering at a woman, who looked rightfully terrified. One man had an AK slung to his side, and the other held a large knife pointed at the woman. She pulled a small pouch from her purse and tossed it at the man's feet.

“Here, that’s all the money I have!” There was a slight quaver to her voice. “Just take it and leave!”

The man with the knife responded with something in Spanish that caused the man with the AK to laugh menacingly. Sam didn’t speak Spanish, but the intention was clear. They wanted more than just the money.

Sam breathed deeply and braced the pistol on the corner of the building, leveled at the man with the knife's chest. They stood about 20 feet away from him, with the woman backed against the left side of the alley and the two men in the middle, staggered just enough for Sam to have a clear shot on them without risking her safety.

Then, the woman did something unexpected. She froze, canted her head back and forth, and smiled wickedly.

“Oh, oh yeah, you’re both so fucked,” she said with a chuckle in her voice, “How about you both get on the ground, and you’ll live to see tomorrow?”

‘Did she see me?’ Sam frowned in confusion. She hadn’t looked his way, but the rapid change in her demeanor was disconcerting.

“No, I don’t think we will,” responded the man with the AK, menace in his eyes.

“Ah well,” The woman sighed dramatically and shook her head. “Can’t blame a girl for trying, can you?”

Suddenly she piped up, and said with some volume. “NOW!”

Sam took this as his cue, and put two rounds into the chest of the knife wielder, followed by two in the chest of the man with the AK. The suppressor, combined with the subsonic rounds in his pistol made only enough noise to be noticed in their immediate vicinity.

Sam pushed into the alley, putting one more round through the rifleman's head as the man began to stumble. Moving along the wall in a practiced manner, Sam lined up the knife wielding man, now curled up on the ground, and put one round through the side of his head. Turning to the woman, Sam kept the pistol low but ready.

“You okay?” He asked gruffly.

“Oh I’m more than okay,” the woman gave him a winning smile. “I’ve got you.”