I couldn’t see him, because I wasn’t looking. I kept my head still and saw with peripheral vision. A dark shape about a foot away from me, moving, scanning. But he wasn’t looking close, he was looking far. He was scanning the house and the trees and things, not looking into the Hortensia bush on his left. He was feeling covered by the bush, hiding with his side leaned against it. Then I heard what I was waiting for, a quick double click on his radio unit. A signal to his team that he was inside the perimeter. I didn’t hold my breath. I breathed quietly and easily, and waited for him to make a move.

I heard him repositioning his weapon, which must have been slung for the wall jump. I couldn’t see anything clearly, just vague motion at the edge of my right eye. But I knew he was getting a weapon up, I heard him take a deep breath. Then he started to move, pushing off of his back leg, and I exploded out of the bush.

I did two things almost simultaneously, but not quite. First, I jumped on his back by launching myself off the stone wall and into the air. Once I was in the air and on my way to the guy, I stuck out my left leg so that when I landed on him I was already hooking his legs out from under him. That happened in less than a second. Then I was up on his back, my weight bearing down, taking full advantage of the guy’s forward momentum to bring him face-first into the dirt.

Once I had the target down, I slipped my right leg over the other side so that I was wrapped around him like a snake. At the same time I was pushing his face into the ground with both hands. He squirmed around vigorously but I held on. I released my right hand and reached into my left sleeve for the sharpened flat-head screwdriver taped to my forearm. It came loose without hassle. I was looking at the back of the guy’s head. I slipped the screwdriver in right where the nape of the neck meets the base of the skull, going in from the right side at an upwards angle. That was meant to avoid the spinal cord and drive right at the medulla oblongata.

The tip of the flat-head went in like a needle, it was that sharp. The edge parted the skin without struggle. Three drops of blood welled up from the insertion point; that was it. I’d got it right. No resistance from bone or ligaments. Just a straight drive up through soft tissue and into the brain stem, destroying it. No sigh, no twitching. The guy died instantly.

I wiped the screwdriver on his collar. I was almost jealous. They say that death has no mercy. Show me a more merciful death.