2Galea threw her cigarette out onto the pavement casually, breaking into a run as she heard the explosion sound behind her, bursting into a flaming cloud where a building once stood. She spoke quickly and quietly into her lapel as she ran, using a complicated code based on Italian and Chinese languages. The basic message was "mission completed".
She waited about ten minutes in a coffee shop 200m down the road, where she simply seemed to be one of the crowds eager to see what was going on, before slipping out subtly and checking the scene for a free passage out of this sector. She spotted it in a red convertible; Caucasian male driving, 50-ish, his smirk apparent even from her distance, the comb-over even more glaringly obvious. A smug smile lit her features and she smoothed her skirt and hiked it up a few inches, walking over to him, trying to be enticing. His eyes were roaming around the street and he spotted her and whistled lamely, causing her to almost lose her cool by grimacing and fleeing. Instead she implemented years of training to grin widely at him. Within half an hour she was back about a block from base, clear of any trackers.
She walked the rest of the way and took the time to analyse what the next step of her mission would be. She was currently working on a plot that to her seemed to drip of clichèd actions- a rooftop shooting. But it was with a twist. She was going to assassinate a Cardinal, or more specifically, the one who was most likely to be the future Pope, if you could bet on such things.
As she entered the building she was immediately subjected to the security measures they had in place.
The suprisingly brainy brawn of their small operation, Johan, patted her down and checked all her codes before she was allowed to enter. He didn't ever get to know her name, though he knew her by face well enough- but this didn't stop the security. Espionage was a tight operation, and she personally knew over twenty methods of disguise that would fool even a man who saw her every single day.
The main hall that she now graced was a spartan set-up, with only a few long wooden tables, atop which sat three small laptop computers, an array of weaponry, some food, and odd pieces of technology. In the center of the room was placed a ring of chairs, all simple fold-out metal chairs. In fact, most of the things in the room were easily stored, stacked, assembled easily and fairly disposable- minus, of course, the laptops, which were an integral to her livlihood.
She brought out another cigarette as she reached the lone person basically "as one" with the middle laptop, unshaven, unwashed, unslept. Bryan. He spun around and looked blearily at her, holding out a piece of paper.
"Ya bomb's on the news again, Gal. You killed a few this time. Three, I think. But don't worry, they were meant to be," he said, smirking slightly.
She grinned and nodded, staring at his untidy scrawl with an increasingly aggravated expression.
"I leave for UTAH?" she asked incredulously. Bryan nodded, scratching the three day growth.
"Mmm hmm, our Bible-boy's touring remember?Johnno's already over there, waiting for ya with the weaponry...you just gotta do the-" he made a shooting motion with his hands and she rolled her eyes in response.
"Fine. Have we got a plan of the buildings?" A nod greeted her request."One of the building I'll be on?" Nod. "He's making a speech on the balcony, right?" Nod. "We found out why the client wanted him dead?" Nod and smirk.
"It's great," Bryan said, like a little kid with a new toy. "Like something out of a trashy magazine. In "His Holiness's' younger priest days, when he wasn't too big on rules and all, he had it off with this 17 year old girl, right? That's our clients mother. He also had a bit of a fling with her twin, too, shocker, they both got pregnant and the priest's just packed up and gone like that, no word or anything. One of the twins dies in childbirth -and the kid dies too- and the other's stuck with our client."He recited it with a certain amount of sadistic glee, a gleam in his eyes.
"And there is born a psycho?" Galea asked.
"Got it in one, he's absolutly skitz but he pays well. Huge athiest, too, he'd probably hire us to kill the entire church if he thought he could do it..."
"You spent all morning searching up that sick bit of gossip, didn't you?"Galea said mock-patronisingly. He swung back around to the computer, blushing slightly.
"May...be...go pack!"
She chuckled as he started typing furiously, pre-emptively doing all he could to cover her tracks- for example, from the untraceable e-mail he'd sent to a few Utah authorities, a Seventh Day Adventist extremist cult was threatening to kill the Cardinal.
Heading up to her room, she sighed as she saw the family photo Bryce still kept with him, even though he hadn't seen them in six years and his wife was remarried. This business, this mercenary exsistance, had no chance for anything like company. Bryce really was one of the only people in the world she talked to and interacted with on a regular basis. Sure, she sent her mother the odd untraceable email from the security obsessed laptops downstairs, but her mother was still under the impression that she was an actress, in England- their current residence- for theatre performance.
Her mother didn't get out much.
Galea had these urges to settle down at least twice a year but then she remembered that she had no hope. She'd gotten into this at 17, she'd actually quit halfway through her last year of school because she figured it was her best hope for work after school. She'd started out legit, working for the government, but soon got tired of the lack of pay and lack of respect that it afforded her, and she had to make up these really lame stories about where she worked. It just wasn't working out for anyone when she killed one too many men on an operation. They said she was reckless and she said she was through with it. Then she joined up with a couple of other agents, sick of the system, who wanted to make money out of what they liked doing, and six years goes by and now they're the most secretly requested trio of assassins in the world. She supposed she had job satisfaction but then, was it worth it? Like a workaholic lawyer, she had these decisions to make.
But not now. Now she had to focus on her task. She quickly packed all her travelling things into a case and grabbed up one of her fake passports, slipping it into her pocket and heading out the door with a quick stop by Bryce for the info needed, then out to a cab that had been called for her.
The hours-long flight was boring and uneventful. She was sickly hoping for some kind of terrorist attack at least. Sitting still was a hard task for her. But eventually the plane landed in some dreary little town nearby the city where the cardinal was to make his speech. Twenty minutes drive and she was able to access the hotel where she would be climbing the roof, one that had been checked and didn't have any security cameras. Prime position for the task too, it was almost overly convenient.
She met up with Johnno in her room, he was waiting draped across the bed like a lazy cat, acting as if he owned the place. He addressed her with his usual drawl, idly chewing on something.
"Gal, finally, thought you'd never get here..." He started the customary greeting.
"And I was hoping you wouldn't be. Hey, Johnny," she finished. "OK, so what's doin'? Whaddya got for me? I want my little blue one..."she whinged, talking about her favourite silencer gun, custom-made for her specifically. He grinned, teasing her.
"Aww l'il baby's gotta have her favourite. Well, you're actually in luck, as it's the best one for this job." She squealed and went to where he was pointing, a room off to the side that held the weaponry she loved to be with, felt naked without. Unfortunately, they were her best relationship...
"So what's the timing on this thing? You've got two hours or so, right?" Johnny's voice rang clear from the other room and she nodded before remembering he couldn't see her.
"Yeah, I need it to study the plans properly though..." she called back, loading the gun efficiently as she talked.
"I'll clear off then. Good luck," he wished her, and she could hear footsteps and a door slam at the front of the room, signalling her chance to fully relax like the inner slob she was and study the plans. It'd be leather-and-silent-precision time in an hour.
************
After what seemed almost too short a time she was swinging herself up with agility over the guttering and onto the tiles, falling back on the strenuous gymnastic training of her youth. The gun was heavy in her side jacket pocket, zippered away and close to her body, ready for use on the count.
Across the street the crowd was bustling, booming, excited and exhilarated with the prospect of such an important religious figure staying at their humble town in their country and wanting to really honestly speak to them. As much as Utah was like any other part of modern America, this town seemed too small to be part of anything older and bigger than the year 1959. It was laughable.
'But a great place to raise a family...' she thought stupidly, physically slapping herself as a reminder to get out of that train of thought. She was being stupid, she thought to herself, clucky, listening to a silent, make-believe biological clock.
"And here's action," she whispered as the Cardinal stepped out to make the ramble. He was to do it in three parts and she had a cue to follow, not too early, not too late, an exact cue.
The speech seemed to drag on for endless time, morals this, don't do that, remember God this, sacrifice that, fun youth groups this, blah blah blah. It seemed like pointless drivel to her atheist mind, but she could see the crowds lapping it up as if it was chocolate-flavoured-air coming out of his mouth.
Finally, finally, it was almost...3...2...1...As a thousand pigeons were set free in honour of the last statement - whatever it was - she fired, one shot, one carefully aimed brilliant shot (if she did say so herself), caught him in the throat. As she watched him topple and fall , she remembered exactly why she'd never leave this job - the satisfaction of a completed task when it was something such as this, had to be so much more than finishing that report for your tight boss with the overbite and comb-over. It was a rush, a thrill, a natural high.
Weeks later, when she was already on another mission, the high was slightly dampened by discovering the actuality of what his last words were. He had martyr status because of them, irritatingly.
"If I died today, I would be happy, because I have served God on Earth and am as prepared as I can be to serve Him in the heavens. I would almost ask Him to take me now." And whack, bang, he's popped his clogs.
Although, she could look at it as a comedy. Which she did. People would ask many yers later why she, an 80-year-old woman, would laugh like a schoolgirl whenever the name was mentioned. She always answered with the same words.
"It seems, according to that one late Cardinal, I am God."
***and done. there's a little button down there that wants to meet ur mouse, c'mon, let it have it's fuuuuun:D***