Page 118 of Vameer

“The feed, they’re ready.”

“Fine. Play it.”

He goes to work on his laptop, and I get up and go to the liquor cabinet along the back wall.

One call. I missed one fucking phone call. And what should’ve been a simple surveillance assignment turned into a massacre.

I uncap the bottle of whiskey and, not seeing a proper fucking glass, I pour two fingers into a coffee mug.

I’d been on the toilet, fighting for my life against food poisoning, missed one fucking phone call, and then the watcher called Johnson.

I set the bottle on the table. “How did Johnson even get on the fucking call list?”

The lackey looks at me. At the empty room. Then back to me. “Uh, I’m not sure. Sir.”

I grit my teeth.

I know he doesn’t know.

That was a rhetorical fucking question.

Fucking fuck. I’m surrounded by fucking idiots.

Lifting the mug, I knock back half the whiskey.

Breakfast of winners.

The large TV screen on the wall comes to life with a video streaming from someone’s eyeglasses.

I lift the mug and swallow the rest.

The view is of a quaint downtown street, lined with colorful old houses that have mostly been turned into businesses.

I recognize it from the file currently being compiled on Rune Destin.

A file for a case I’m supposed to be in charge of.

But one call. One motherfucking phone call and it’s all gone to shit.

The man wearing the camera glasses is standing in the center of the road. To his left is a blue house, Rune’s residence. And to the right is a swarm of people bent over what I assume are the dead men.

Straight ahead is a ten-foot-tall white barrier that spreads the width of the road, blocking any potential onlookers. And there will be an identical barrier behind the glasses wearer. But with how commonplace civilian drones are, we need to start employing aerial coverage as well.

“He can hear me?” I ask the lackey.

The view on screen bobs, and a voice sounds through the TV, answering me. “I can hear you, sir.”

“Good,” I grunt. “Go to the bodies.”

Eight dead. That’s all the information I have.

Eight special ops assholes.

Johnson’s own personal squad of killers. Eliminated.

“They’re in two spots.”

I roll my eyes. “Just show me.”