Asesino Sol

[Stevie_boy]

Here's a long-short story I've written quite recently and I'd just like to know your opinions on it and all (admittadly the whole idea may not be terribly orginal):

Asesino Sol

It was sunset in the small Spanish town of Muerte Fría. The deep red light cast long shadows across the square whilst the sun bled onto the hill behind. All was quiet and unmoving; the town was asleep, all except for a black Mercedes slowly crawling into the town square.
The car stopped. A man stepped out. His deep black suit with a starched white shirt stood out against the bright colour of the evening sunset. A shot rang out, sharp and cold against the quiet of the evening. The man’s knees buckled, he fell back against his car and slowly slid down. A woman screamed. The man lay on the floor, blood sluggishly flowing out of his body, as if trying to fight against its forced departure. Several men from a nearby house came running but they had a feeling it was too late. The expression on his face and his gasping breath could have given the innocent impression that he had just run a long race, pushing himself as hard as he could, yet had still come last. He closed his eyes, barely aware of the large group flocking to him, the town having suddenly burst alive at this unexpected event. Then his heart stopped beating.

On a distant roof, a dark and indistinctive shadow slowly moved. A young man, dressed entirely in black slowly brought the scope of his British, bolt action L96A1 sniper rifle down from his eye. He was getting the sudden rush of adrenalin he got just after whenever he took a life. But then almost as soon as the adrenalin had started, it had gone.
The assassin started to wonder about the man whose life he had just stolen. He knew nothing about him, he did not even know his name and he had never seen his face. Even through his LR/T Mark 4 Tactical Long Range scope the man’s face was a fuzzy, indistinctive haze. All he knew was that the man was a Foreign Ambassador trying to intervene with Spanish laws. He wondered if he had new the man, in his previous life, when he was a high-class member of British society. But he had thrown that life away and donned the secretive guise of ‘Asesino Sol’, one of Spain’s top contract killers.
It was best not to think of his previous life, or his targets. He persuaded himself that his targets were not important. After all, death is inevitable; everyone has to die someday. Some people just live longer than others. It wasn’t important; the only thing that was important was the €500,000 he would be getting paid shortly for the elimination of his most recent target. He carefully and silently slid off the roof and landed, cat-like in the dark alleyway below. He quickly looked around himself before hastily disappearing into the night.


Adrian Heaton woke up to find himself in a small Spanish hospital with a terrible pain all over his body. For a brief moment he could not remember anything, who he was, or what had happened to him. Then his memory came flooding back, he was driving to his meeting with one of the Spanish ministers, he stepped out his car when he felt a sudden wrenching feeling in his chest, like something was trying to force its way into him. Having realised he was awake, a Spanish nurse bustled into the room.
‘¿Qué sucedió? ¿Cuál es incorrecto con mí?’ he asked her, in fluent Spanish.
She explained to him that he had been shot. A bullet aimed for his heart had missed by inches and lodged in his chest. He was lucky to be alive, and he certainly wouldn’t be if a doctor had not been quick to the scene and stopped the bleeding from his chest.

Adrian groaned. When the government proposed to him the notion of becoming the British ambassador in Spain, he had not realised how stressful and dangerous it was going to be. All he had done was try and change Spanish law, creating a law to protect unaccompanied migrant children. Of course he knew that the Spanish Government would not be very happy with this ‘red-necked’ Englishman coming along and trying to change the laws. But he knew that the assassination attempt was due to the drug companies that used unaccompanied migrant children as practically slaves, to work on their factories processing imported drugs.
He would of course contact the British government and tell them about this assassination attempt, though he doubted they would rush to his aid. They had been more than happy to ship him off after the public scandal of his wife leaving him and his son running away from home. He thought about his wife and son often, he knew it was his entire fault. He had concentrated on his work first, last and everywhere in between, and had therefore been completely oblivious to the trouble brewing at home. His son was gone for two days before Adrian even realised that he had run away. Of course, his wife blamed him entirely and after that she could not even bear to look at Adrian without feeling an overwhelming sense of rage. So she simply packed her bags and left, and that was the last Adrian ever heard of her. But that was all in the past, and Adrian had to put the past behind him, or at least he tried to. He had to just keep telling himself that he was lucky to be alive.


He was not the only one lucky to be alive. When the assassin’s employer learned that Adrian Heaton was not dead, merely severely wounded him, he was not happy. If the Spanish police ever found out who had been involved in the assassination attempt, he would be in big trouble. He considered silencing the assassin. The biggest silence of all was, of course, the silence of death. But he chose against it, for that would involve hiring another assassin and besides, there is always the possibility of another opportunity. He would bide his time.


Adrian was quite surprised with the British government’s reaction to the assassination attempt. He had been moved immediately to a high security ward and he had heard that the British government were thinking of transporting him back to England for safety. But it all made sense when he was given the previous day’s copy of ‘The Times’ newspaper. The tabloids had got hold of the information of his attempted assassination. It wouldn’t look good if the government were seen to be neglected his safety and well-being. They didn’t care about him in the slightest, after all.


The phone rang in the assassin’s hand. He had no choice but to pick it up. He didn’t even have to look at it to know who the call was from. Only one person had his number.
‘Good evening Paul’. This was not good news. His employer had gone to the trouble of finding out his identity. The voice was also speaking in English, Paul’s native language.
‘How do you know my name?’ Paul demanded.
‘Oh, so Paul is your name. It was, after all, only a hunch, but I must admit, my hunches are very good’. Paul cursed, one of the oldest tricks in the book, and he had fallen for it.
‘Though I must say, you’ve covered your tracks very well. It was very difficult for me to find even a hint of your identity. But enough of the personal chatting, time for business.’ Paul gave an involuntary gulp. ‘Adrian Heaton is not dead’. This is what Paul had been dreading, what every assassin dreads – failure.
‘I am not pleased with you, Paul. Not pleased at all.’ His employer spoke as if Paul was just a schoolchild who had not done his homework. But there was a layer of threat underneath the words.
‘But you are lucky Paul; you will be given another chance. Your target will be boarding a private plane to England next Saturday at 5:30 am. There will only be the target, two doctors, the pilot and the co-pilot on board. You will stow away on the plane and kill the target, and anyone who tries to stop you. The co-pilot is an agent of MI5 and will be armed. This time there will be no failure. Failure will result in death.’
The employer put down the phone. He wondered how the assassin would react when he discovered the identity of the target. He decided to place another assassin at Heathrow airport. It was better to be safe than sorry.


Paul clipped through the wire of the mesh fence and pulled out a piece, leaving a hole just big enough for him to crawl through. He pulled out his binoculars and peered through the lenses. He could just make out the plane he was to board through the morning mist. He put the binoculars away and half crawled, half ran to the side of the plane. He could hear the breathing of a guard on the other side of the plane. He couldn’t kill him, it was too risky, there was no where to hide the body and someone on board the plane might hear. He was just going to have to avoid the guard. It was a small, private plane so there was no luggage department, but Paul had been prepared for this. He holstered his 2.5mm Colt 1911 Automatic pistol and pulled two magnetic handholds out of his bag. There was a button on each of them to activate or deactivate the magnetic force. He then fitted magnetic clips onto his boots and crouched down under the belly of the plane. Suddenly the engine roared into life, the plane was about to take off. Paul quickly reached up, pressed the handholds to activate the magnetic force. Then he swung himself up so he was lying flat, upside down, with the magnetic clips on the toes of his boots clinging to the plane.
The plane taxied down to the end of the run away. It turned and travelled down the runway, picking up speed. The ache in Paul’s arms grew and grew until it became almost unbearable, then the plane left the runway and travelled up into the sky. It was time for him to move. He only had a few minutes before the plane would travel too high up for him to breathe.
Using the activating and deactivating tools on his magnetic handholds he managed to crawl along the bottom of the plane and up, to the right of the door. There was no way he could enter the plane without the occupants realising it. He had no other choice than to kill everyone in the plane. He reached out for the hatch on the door. It took all the strength in his left arm to push it down and open the door. He then flattened himself against the wall and waited for the people in the plane to make the next move.

Inside the plane the pilot and co-pilot knew something was wrong. A warning light was winking at them, to alert them to the fact that a plane door had opened and compression was leaking out of the plane. Plane doors do not just open by themselves. He told the pilot to level off the plane before the reached an altitude that would make them unable to breathe. Then he undid his seatbelt and walked through to the main compartment of the train. All the light things that had not been fastened down had been sucked out of the plane. The two doctors were crouching under their seats. The co-pilot took his gun out of his holster and walked to the open door. He grabbed the edge of the opening and, crouching down, slowly looked round the edge of the door. Suddenly a hand shot out and grabbed his right arm and he was hurled from the plane.

Paul watched the man fall. In the light of the morning he had not been able to tell whether it was the co-pilot or one of the doctors, he knew that the pilot would not leave the cockpit of the plane. Then he grabbed the side of the opening, swung himself into the plane and drew his pistol in one swift movement. He instantly saw the two doctors watching him with horrified looks on their faces, as if he was some ghost or apparition of the night. There was no time to think, he just show them both square in the forehead, the bullets embedding themselves in their skulls. Then he went through to the cockpit. The pilot turned round as he entered. Paul shot him straight in the heart. The man didn’t even have time to cry out; he just lolled in his chair.

Paul looked out of the cockpit. He could see the nose of the plane and beyond that the view of the ocean. The rising sun was weeping its light onto the vast waters of the ocean, as if mourning for the terrible crimes he had just committed. Paul stopped for a moment and thought about the men he had just killed. Had they deserved to die? That had, after all only been doing their jobs. He wondered if they had families – wives, children, waiting for them to come home that evening. Paul shook himself. It was best not to think about these things. It did not matter. They did not matter. All that mattered now was his target, and his reward.
He returned to the main compartment of the plane and, to avoid looking at the two bodies, looked at the door leading into the end compartment. Inside the room was the man Paul had come so far for, and killed innocent people for, the man that his employer wanted dead so badly, that even having him fleeing to the protection of his own country wasn’t enough. What was it about the man that meant he deserved to die? From what Paul had learnt all the man had done was to try and enforce some laws to protect immigrant children. Again, Paul wondered if he knew the man. The man, after all was definitely a high-class member of British society, to become a British ambassador. But there was only one way to find out. Paul walked up and opened the door.


Adrian had blissfully fallen asleep in his room at the end of the plane, just before the plane took off. He was still recovering from the assassination attempt and was not at his perfect health. He still ached and he almost always felt tired. He fell asleep almost as soon as he had lain down on the bed. He had a fitful sleep, full of images of assassins, the British government and quite often, he dreamed of his wife and son. He woke quite abruptly to the sound of his door opening. He assumed it was one of the doctors come to check on him, so he rolled of to greet him, but instead he found himself face to face with his assassin.

Paul gasped, his brain stopped working, and his heart stopped beating. He found himself frozen in time, staring into the face of the man. Here was the man who he hated more than any other. The man he run away to escape, who loved his work more than his own family. Here he was standing face to face with his father.

When Adrian found himself looking at his own son, dressed entirely and black and holding a pistol that was pointed straight at him, he assumed he must be having another dream. He instinctively rubbed his eyes, to wake himself up. But then he stopped. He could quite clearly see his room around him and everything was not clouded, as it was in his dreams. No, he must be awake.
‘You!’ Paul could only manage to say the one word, but he still managed to surge all his anger and spite into it. He couldn’t believe it; here he was standing in a room, with a gun held against his father’s head. He had pictured this situation after some of their fights, but it had soon passed, after the red veil of anger had fell from before his eyes.
‘Hello, Paul’ The man spoke as calmly as if Paul had just stepped in to check that his father was okay, but Paul could see him shaking. He almost felt a surge of pity for his father, but he stopped himself. He hated this man; this man had made his life a living hell. If anyone deserved to die it was him.
‘What have you done to yourself, Paul?’ Adrian exclaimed. He was still trying to get his head around the whole situation. He could not believe that his son was an assassin. Every day he had wondered about his son, where he was, what he was doing. But he would never believed, not for the slightest moment, this his son was a cold blooded murderer.
‘There you go, blaming me as usual!’ Paul tried to bring himself into a rage. If he managed to pull the red veil over his eyes then maybe he could do it, he could pull the trigger.

Suddenly Adrian understood. It was his entire fault. Paul killing people was his way of getting back at him. Of realising the anger and frustration he felt about his father. Paul was doing this because of him, because Adrian had neglected him for his work, been disappointed in him, never truly showed his son just how much he loved him, never showed him any affection at all.
‘I’m so sorry Paul. You’re right, it’s my entire fault. I’m so very sorry Paul, but please try to understand. It was for you I did it all. It was all for you and your mother. So you would never have to worry about anything, such as money or food. So you would grow up to be a fine man. It’s because I loved you Paul. Please understand.’
‘You lie! You never loved me! You only had me for your job, because you needed a family to become a politician!’ Paul forced himself to misunderstand. Everything was this man’s fault. Paul’s whole life was this man’s fault. The death’s of the four innocent men was this man’s fault. Most of all, the fact that Paul knew that no matter how hard he tried, he could never pull the trigger of his gun was this man’s fault. That meant failure and failure meant death and it was all this man’s fault.
‘Paul I do love you! I always have! You’re my son, my one and only son! How could I not love you?’ Tears fell from the old man’s eyes. He had to get his son to understand. He held out his arms.

Suddenly memories flitted across Paul’s mind. He was 4 and his father was sticking a plaster on his knee after he had cut it tripping over. He was 6 and he was running up to greet his father as he came home from a meeting. He was 11 and his father was taking him to his new school, squeezing Paul’s shoulder because Paul was so very afraid. He dropped the gun, it rattled on the hard floor. Tears sprung unbidden from his eyes.
For the first time in Adrian’s life he and his father hugged. The plane began to shake around them, but they did not notice. In the cockpit, by the dead pilot’s head a warning light began to flash.

Inside Heathrow airport control tower, they knew something was wrong. The airplane was coming in too fast and the pilot had not retracted the wheels. The plane crashed down and skidded half the length of the runway, before bursting into flames.
When the runway crew searched the plane later they found no survivors. They reported afterwards about that they found a father and son locked in a cold, dead embrace.


MERGED POSTS


Hey, I'd just like to say that if you have taken the time to read my long-short-story they please would you just take a little more time to give me some feedback. Did you like it? How could it be improved? I don't mindyou hated it as long as you give me some constructive criticism so it could be improved or for me to improved my whole writing style in general. Thanks.

[DragonHeart]

Here’s a quick crit of the first two paragraphs. All of the notes are just my opinions as usual, hopefully there’s some truth in it that can help you out.

It was sunset in the small Spanish town of Muerte Fría. The deep red light cast long shadows across the square whilst the sun bled onto the hill behind. (Nice imagery.) All was quiet and unmoving; the town was asleep, all except for a black Mercedes slowly crawling into the town square. (A whole town asleep by sunset? That seems a little strange to me. Different cultures most likely.)

The car stopped. A man stepped out. His deep black suit with a starched white shirt stood out against the bright colour of the evening sunset. A shot rang out, sharp and cold against the quiet of the evening. The man’s knees buckled, he fell back against his car and slowly slid down. A woman screamed. (Isn’t the town asleep? ) The man lay on the floor, blood sluggishly flowing (Sluggishly flowing is weak wording. Try something like “trickled” or “oozed” and lose the -ly.) out of his body, as if trying to fight (More weak wording. I’d remove “as if trying to” and change fight to fighting.) against its forced departure. Several men from a nearby house came running but they had a feeling it was too late. (Again, isn’t the city asleep? ) The expression on his face and his gasping breath could have given (Could have given = gave) the innocent(Unnecessary) impression that he had just run a long race, pushing himself as hard as he could, yet had still come last. (Very nice clear image.) He closed his eyes, barely aware of the large group flocking to him, (Maybe mention how he sees them, like washed out faces or something, for effect.) the town having suddenly burst (Suddenly bursting alive, removing having.) alive at this unexpected event. (Oh. Maybe mention that sooner? Otherwise it seems like a contradiction of your first paragraph.) Then his heart stopped beating. (Excellent ending. Definitely makes me want to read more.)

Overall, very well written. You’re very good at precise imagery, which gives that much more impact to the story. The only complaint I have so far is that some of it seems unnecessarily wordy. There are several places where as much as half a sentence could be changed into a couple of words to tighten up the writing, make it more concise. Other than that, I really liked it.

~DragonHeart~

[Stevie_boy]

Okay, thanks very much for your feedback, there's some really helpful stuff you've pointed out there that I didn't notice. In fact I rekcon I'll use most of your suggestions. I really appreciate it, thanks dude.

[DragonHeart]

Dudette, actually. It's no problem at all, I always like helping out when I can. Only good thing about being a perfectionist is that I got really good at self-editing lol, and it's even easier to see the same things in other writers' work.

Your writing has a lot of potential. Keep working at it and I bet you'll be published in no time. If that's what you plan on, anyways. Would be a shame to let it go unread.

~DragonHeart~