The lights from the towering Hilton Hotel and all the surrounding restaurants, bars and nightclubs, pour down, shining at their brightest. Making the streets of downtown New York glow and flash like the strobe lights on a dance floor. Minimizing the night's ambiance and turning it into a false sense of day.
Party goers of all kinds roaming the sidewalks, holding tightly onto their pockets, while passing the myriad of beggars which loiter the alley way entrances, the half naked whores standing at traffic lights and their pushy, blinged up pimps, all the while looking for the next club entrance lines.
Miserable food critics and the hungry waiting impatiently to be ushered in through restaurant doors. Letting the aromas of the kitchen's specialities out, adding to the already mixed night air.
Hotel porters opening and closing doors. Unpacking vehicle trucks and pushing their luggage carts as they go about doing their jobs.
Random people just out for a night stroll. Some walking their pets and the rest without any.
Nothing unusual. Nothing out of the ordinary. It was just another busy night on a street in the middle of New York city.
Shaven on the sides, with a perfectly graded cut leading up to long, well styled locks. Professionally plucked eyebrows balanced by short, thick eyelashes which shade a pair of deep chocolate brown eyes. A long, thin nose that leads your eye down to a thin lip line in a constant frown, pointing down to a broad yet chiseled jawline. An overly thick neck which protrudes out like a tree trunk from a pair of wide shoulders cloaked in a custom tailored, dark blue blazer with a perfectly folded handkerchief peeking out of its chest pocket which is perfectly folded into a triangle. A pristine, crisp, white shirt, open a few buttons from the collar down in order to show off the thick, heavy gold chain just hanging there. Probably to try and detract from the thick, black, mat of hair the man wears like a vest. A matching pair of tailored blue trousers as the blazer and a pair of sleek, black and polished like a mirror, shiney, suit shoes with it's laces tied just right.
The 5ft3 man stands there, outside, close to the hotel glass entrance doors smoking his cigarette. Surrounded by an enourage of five men, dressed just as well as himself, standing a few feet away from him. Protecting him from the array of passersby. Making him look more important than what he probably is. Those five men, as awake and aware as they are don't really matter a god damn bit.
Two minutes into the man's cigarette a black, luxury sedan which was very well looked after, pulls up and parks next to the sidewalk, right in front of the glass hotel doors.
The man in the blue suit along with his entourage of five start moving forward towards the sedan. The man in the blue suit flicks his cigarette over the trunk of the sedan and watches it as it flies into the middle of the street, getting snuffed out by the tires of traffic.
Even before the back door to the sedan is opened, the man in the blue suit abruptly comes to a halt. His head, unnaturally flings backwards as a little red dot appears in the middle of his forehead, sending a spray of red onto three of the men in his entourage, standing behind him. Making them flinch and step back, before the man in blue drops like a rag doll to the ground.
The shocked entourage of men take a few seconds before scattering and diving behind the sedan for cover. Ocassionally popping their heads out with their guns unnecessarily drawn for a threat which is now over.
Target down.
The bustle of the street soon fills with the sounds of sirens as ambulances and a convoy of police vehicles pull up in front of the hotel. Blocking everything and everyone.
People being pushed back and yelled at as yellow tape is being strung up to keep the now growing crowd of onlookers at bay, as they all grab for their phones and start taking pictures of the fresh red carpet event at the Hilton Hotel entrance. All hoping that their photos would be the ones to go viral before anyone else's.
Cops, frantically taking notes, singling out the entourage of five, while their CSI counterparts start wiping, probing and taking photos of their own.
In less than 24 hours, news broadcasts announcing the assassination of a prevalent Russian businessman who was in New York on business.
The onlookers photos being uploaded online by the hundreds and being viewed across the globe in minutes by thousands if not millions.
Multiple sources of proof to back up the news announcements that the target had in fact gone down.
Confusion threaded its way through the underground world of the multiple mafia families who had put a bounty on the Russian man's head, even before he had landed on American soil.
Usually, a target is either assigned or their bounty is claimed within no more than three hours after the target has been taken down.
It's been more than the usual three hours and the assigned assassin was just as confused as everyone else at the smoothly executed take down of his target.
If it wasn't Blake who took the Russian down, then who was it? Would that assassin come foward to claim the bounty? Perhaps, in a few days, once the heat from all the news announcements have pittered out. Maybe.
The Romanov family, furious at the news of the brutal and sudden loss of one of it's members.
Someone must pay.
For the next few weeks, online chat sites and TV talk shows raising concerns of possible retaliation from the renowned Romanov family. Making authorities watch airports and harbours for any related Russian visitors deciding to enter into America.
A simple target putting everyone on edge.
Every police and FBI mafia connection reporting that the authorities had nothing on the shooter and that they were just as clueless as they were. There were no shell casings found on any of the possible roof tops that they suspected the assassin to have possibly been on. Nothing with any traces of DNA was found, nothing whatsoever. Only possible theories with absolutely no foundation.
An international case which would soon see the inside of a cold case box in a station's evidence storage room. As well as an open and unclaimed mafia bounty on a very publically dead Romanov family member.
This action and fact becoming just another driving force behind an already agitated anger for the Romanov family wanting to seek retribution.
YOU ARE READING
Target Down - The Ghost Assassin
General FictionWhen living a double life is in your genes and a father you never knew gets betrayed and murdered in his line of work. A young girl, that doesn't exist to the names in a little black book, destined to follow in her father's footsteps. Will she fill...
