Regrets: A Primer

1

I think I have never had a regret before. Now, maybe, I have one.

On that night, I was wearing the black spandex pants, a black spandex turtleneck, and black sneakers. My hair is black too and it falls a little below my shoulders. If I allowed it to hide my ears, it would also conceal my neck and part of my cheeks. But my unfortunate habit is to comb it over my ears with my fingers. I am more comfortable with it there, and in this job, comfort is paramount.

To conceal much of my face and my neck, I could have worn a balaclava. But the night was moonless and dark, so I did not.

I seldom wear one, though I have done so on some occasions when wearing one was more prudent.

For example, when witnesses might plainly see my face, the anonymity the balaclava affords enables me to let them live. Witnesses who say the woman they saw is thin, around 5’2”, and dressed all in black offers little help to authorities.

2

Of course, I do not regret my job.

Once you move beyond the initial taboo—and if you cannot move beyond it, you cannot do the work I do—taking a life is not difficult. It is among the easiest of accomplishments.

But doing the job well is key to your own survival. And to do the job well, there are certain steps you must take.

One, unless you know the target personally—and knowing the target personally to any degree is seldom a good idea—you must do at least minimal research. For just one example, you must obtain a clear photo to ensure you are hitting the correct target. You do not want to appear the fool.

Two, although an initial plan will seldom survive your arrival on site, the proper planning is necessary.

A. You must research the overall target site for entrances and exits. This is important for two reasons:

1. It will smooth your ingress and lessen your time on-site, thereby improving the overall efficiency of your task.

2. It will also help ensure your safe egress, thereby improving the chance that you will survive to accept another assignment and complete another task.

B. You must research the immediate target site, the specific room in which you will do your job:

1. Where is that room located in the target site?

2. What entrances and exits are available to and from that particular room?

Knowing this is as important as knowing the entrances and exits to and from the overall target site. Those will provide the benefits I listed in A:1 above. These will provide you with preliminary options for the angle of attack, thereby improving your efficiency and enabling you to move through your egress more quickly.

C. To the degree possible, research the target’s personal habits as they apply to the immediate target site:

1. Does the target watch television or do crossword puzzles or whatever else at a certain time and in a certain place each night?

2. In the living room or at the kitchen table or in the bedroom?

3. If you prefer to do the job while the target is asleep, see B:1 and 2 above.

4. If the target watches television or engages in other activity in the bedroom, are you prepared to wait (or do you already know) when the target will turn off the television or disengage from the other activity?

Notes:

a. I recommend a waiting period of at least ten minutes after the television goes off or the target disengages before executing your final ingress. Of course, the waiting period is flexible and dependent on where you are waiting, how busy or quiet is the general area, and so on.

b. If possible, especially if you intend to do your job in the living room, I recommend you learn in advance where specifically the target is likely to position himself. You may do this in a variety of ways:

1. In online interviews or articles, the target might mention his favorite chair or his favorite end of the couch.

2. Or from your car, parked across the street on a dark night, you might spot his silhouette through the sheer curtains drawn over a window on the room as he moves about and sits down.

That knowledge will provide you with more detailed options for the angle of attack once you are inside. It will also possibly save you a millisecond of time.

If that sounds insignificant, consider: A millisecond saved during the execution of the job is a millisecond applied to your egress. It can mean the difference between hearing a bullet screaming past your ear or never hearing it at all.

D. And of course, your plan must include your safe egress. Do not go in unless and until you know the three stages of your route of egress: from the immediate site of the hit, from the overall target site, and from the general area of the target site.

If you drove into the general area, that last stage will conclude when you blend into traffic on a major highway. If you flew into the general area, it will conclude when your plane goes lifts off the runway.

In all cases, during your egress, be invisible. When you cannot be invisible, blend in to people on the sidewalk, the bicyclists in a race, the traffic on the highway, or whatever your surroundings may be.

There. That should suffice as a primer for working as an operative for the company for which I work.

But I will give you an example.

3

In preparation for the job I mentioned above—the one from which I took away a possible regret—as part of my research I had studied the target and his habits:

He was influential and a busy man-about-town. He was unmarried, wealthy, and older. He was also wise. His daily movements were never subject to routine. He worked from any of five different offices in his building, sometimes even switching during the day. He left with or met different people for lunch at different places at different times each day. And he was always accompanied by able, attentive bodyguards.

But he lived alone.

His home was the only place where he followed an established routine, so his house went into the plan as the overall target site. I would drive to the target area.

But he arrived at his home at various times on various days. He stayed (or not) for varying lengths of time. He even dined at different times and in different rooms of the house. He never settled in to watch television or listen to music.

His one routine was the certain time he went to bed each night.

So his bedroom went into the plan as the immediate target site.

With that much settled, all that remained were my own ingress, the execution of the job, and my safe egress.

To determine my penultimate and final ingress, I obtained and studied the blueprints of the target house. Of course, that did not show the location of his furniture, for example. But it did indicate the most likely places for furniture. That was important because I would be moving through the house in total darkness.

As I studied the blueprints, I also noticed an alarm system. I studied them more closely and followed where the tiny wires led.

The front door, the back door that opened onto an expansive patio, and every window was wired.

The garage door was not. And the door that led from the garage to the mudroom and then to the kitchen was not.

The plan was complete. All that remained was to do my job during the time span I was given in the assignment. And to specification.

The assignment had specified the hit should look as if someone from New York or Chicago or Las Vegas had flown in to exact revenge.

4

I drove to the target area, an upper-middle-class neighborhood, and arrived shortly after 1:30 a.m. I parked around the corner from the target house, my vehicle aiming in the direction of my final egress, and tugged on a pair of latex gloves.

Other than the occasional forgotten porch light, all the houses were dark. There was a quarter-moon high in the southern sky, and the weather was cool, but not cold. There was only a light breeze, and only one dog was barking in the neighborhood. But he was not barking at my approach. He was at least few blocks distant.

The black spandex was important to the plan too. It enabled me to blend into the shadows both outside and inside the house. And once I was inside, the slick material would not snag on anything and raise an alarm.

I picked the lock on the garage door, raised it only enough to roll under, then lowered it and locked it again.

I made my way through the soft mudroom (nothing in there makes noise), then carefully through the kitchen and dining room and living room, listening with every step.

Where the living room met the hallway, I crouched and pulled my silenced .22 caliber revolver. I took a moment and a silent breath, then peered around the corner and swept the hallway with the gun.

As I had expected, there was nothing.

I retracted into my original position, straightened from my crouch, took another breath and rounded the corner to move down the hallway.

At the end, I put pressure on the doorknob, turned it, and pressed the door ope—

It stuck on something soft.

I laid the gun on the carpet, crouched and reached my hand through the narrow opening, and bent my wrist.

Nothing.

I reached in farther and bent my elbow.

My fingers contacted cloth. With two fingertips I pulled it along the base of the door and out.

A discarded t-shirt.

I laid it along the wall to my right, picked up my gun, and straightened. I put pressure on the doorknob again and eased the door more widely open.

Fully paned French doors appeared a few feet in front of me. The dim glow of the quarter-moon, but not the moon itself, was visible through thin, gauzy curtains. A minimal amount of moonlight entered the room through the panes.

The bed lay to my right.

I turned silently, assumed a stance, and—

Instead of a round shadowy head on a pillow, there were two heads on two pillows.

He was not alone.

He was probably right handed. Most are. Most men who are right handed sleep on the left side of the bed as viewed from the foot.

I raised the revolver, pointed it at the round shadowy head on the left, and fired three times.

The head did not move. It lay still, emitting only a quiet sigh to indicate it had been part of a living thing.

The sigh itself was only minimally softer than the sound of the three low-velocity, 40-grain bullets that drilled into his head.

But of course, the click of the trigger and the hammer slapping the action three quick times was a little louder.

Still, the other head only muttered a quiet, “Hmm?” And the narrow, dim lump that I thought was probably a woman’s forearm beneath the sheet did not move.

Until I lowered the revolved and turned, still silently, to exit.

Then she sat straight up. Her eyes went wide and white and her mouth dropped open. Then the mouth slapped closed in preparation for an utterance. Still beneath the sheet, the forearm jerked up in an attempt to point at me.

In the darkness, I raised the revolver again, cocking it with my thumb.

She yelled, “Harold? There’s a—”

And the three bullets drilled into her forehead.

She dropped straight back as the raised forearm relaxed back to the mattress.

For a moment, I watched her, deducting milliseconds from my egress.

No sigh. No movement.

I unscrewed the sound suppressor from the end of the revolver and slipped it into my pocket. It wasn’t even warm, not after only six rounds.

I had acquired the revolver only a few day earlier from a local drug dealer in exchange for not turning him in. I acquired it specifically for this hit.

I dropped it on the floor, thereby closing the trail of evidence.

5

I left through the front door, after disarming the alarm by pressing one button and then resetting it by pressing another.

A short time later I slipped into my car, peeled off the latex gloves, and departed the target area.

*

As to regrets.... No. I still have no regrets.

If I had worn a balaclava on that night I would have allowed her to live. So perhaps in that way, her death was my fault, and therein would lie my regret.

But she was not supposed to be there at all.

And she also had done something utterly foolish. I do not mean sitting up quicky in the bed. Startled as she was, she could hardly have kept herself from doing that.

But she had indicated to me that she saw me. Her eyes had gone wide and her mouth had gaped open and she had even attempted to point at me.

All of which shifts the blame solidly back to her.

Or perhaps to her unfortunate timing. She should not have said yes to that particular man on that particular night. Or she should not have insisted upon or agreed to stay over.

I do not take unnecessary chances.

*******
About the Author

Harvey Stanbrough was born in New Mexico, seasoned in Texas and baked in Arizona. For a time, he wrote under five personas and several pseudonyms, but he takes a pill for that now and writes only under his own name. Mostly.

Harvey is an award-winning writer who follows Heinlein’s Rules avidly. He has written and published over 100 novels, 9 novellas, and over 270 short stories. He has also written 18 nonfiction books on writing, 8 of which are free to other writers. And he’s compiled and published 27 collections of short fiction and 5 critically acclaimed poetry collections.

These days, the vendors through which Harvey licenses his works do not allow URLs in the back matter. To see his other works, please key “StoneThread Publishing” or “Harvey Stanbrough” into your favorite search engine.

Finally, for his best advice on writing, look for “Harvey Stanbrough’s (Almost) Daily Journal.”