Greg Rucka
Patriot acts

I have never wanted to kill anyone as much as I wanted to kill the son of a bitch in front of me right now.

He's standing thirty, maybe thirty-five feet from where I'm lying hidden in the reeds and mud of this marsh. Not the easiest shot in the world but not the hardest, either, and I've got a submachine gun set to three-round burst to help my chances, and I've got his head in my sights, and all that remains now is for me to get on with it, to get down to business. I've been lying here for almost four hours, feeling the autumn cold seep up from the wet earth and into my body, waiting for this moment, waiting to close the trap. Waiting for this.

Right now, in this moment, his life is mine.

I can't pull the trigger.

I list all of the reasons he must die. I conjure the faces of his victims, the small handful of them that I know about. The neighbor who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and suffered for it; the reporter who died as preamble to more death; the friend, stabbed in the heart while I watched, too far away to save him. He died in my arms, a good man who left this world too early in fear and pain.

Three people, all of whom had the misfortune to know me. Three murders added to the sea of the dead that this man now in my sights has caused. That's what he does, you see, he murders. He does it for money, and he does it so well and so carefully that he's considered one of the ten best professional assassins working in the world today. One of The Ten, they call him, the same way they call him Oxford because they don't know his real name.

My finger refuses to budge.

I give myself more reasons to kill him. The least of them is the gun that Oxford is holding in his hands. That gun-or at least its bullets-is meant for me, and for the woman I have given my word I will protect. The woman who has both destroyed my life and recreated it. The woman who, like Oxford, can bring death like birdsong on a breeze, who they call Drama because they don't know her real name.

Her name is Alena, and right now she and Natalie Trent are speeding far away from this place, to a house where she will be safe.

Leaving me, here, now, trying to decide who it is I will become.

Something gives me away. Oxford turns and the weapon in his hands finds me, and now I can add self-defense to my many reasons to cut him down. It isn't as if I've never killed before. People have decided to point guns at me in the past, and once or twice they've ended up dead as a result of my response. If there was ever a time to fire my weapon and kill this man, it is now. It is him or it is me, and still I can't manage it, and I think that perhaps it will be me.

Then his left knee evaporates in a cloud of blood and bone.

He staggers, losing his aim on me, searching for the muzzle flash, and I watch as his hip bursts, and the sound of the second shot barks through the darkness. He twists, falling to his last knee, and then the back of his head opens. The sound of the third shot chases him as he topples into the marsh water.

I'm up and running already, racing along the trail, knowing who it is I'm going to find, but not understanding why I'll find them. When I reach them, Natalie Trent is helping Alena down from her sniper's perch. Then Alena is hobbling towards me on her one good leg. I catch her before she can fall. She puts her arms around me, pressing harder, and I think it is because she wants to, rather than because she needs to.

"He would have killed you or you would have killed him, and I couldn't let it happen." Alena's voice is thick with her tears. "I couldn't let you die for me, you understand? I couldn't let you become me."

I think about all of the dead.

"It's too late," I say.