"Uh Oh"

Breathe in… breathe out.

He crouched there on the shadowed ledge, unmoving. A soft breeze rustled his hair.  In the dark corners of the city he had waited and watched ceaselessly: first through cameras, then through binoculars, and now through his sniper scope.

No hesitation, no delay. He had the shot. He knew it was him. …This was it.

Breathe in… breathe out. He squeezed the trigger.

The muted shot rang out. The bullet raced the nine hundred yards in a blink of the eye and flew clean through the head of the silhouette and onwards to embed itself in the wall behind him.

Silence. He peered through his sniper scope. …The silhouette had not fallen, or even moved. It was a decoy. “Uh oh,” he muttered, eyes wide.

A millisecond later a second shot rang through the night, flying from the west towards that shadowed ledge. It hit its mark… the sniper’s head crashed to the cement, blood oozing out of the hole in the back of his neck.

Somewhere out there in the western edge of the city, white teeth glistened in the darkness, revealing a smile.