Barcelona Bodies

My heart ran with bulls while my breathing slowed. I counted the seconds between, at least five. I break in pattern would ruin a shot. Mistime a breath and you're nicking ears, yawn shots hit walls, but a cough or a sneeze and you'll drop the guy standing next to him. At 700 yards a bad blink will move your shot an inch to the left.
Through the scope, I had watched thirty party dressed Spaniards walk through the wood double doors dusk and twenty-nine stumble out at dawn. Their high end sports cars didn't do a good job of staying between the yellow and white lines but no ambulances had come to scrape body parts off the highway.
On another day I might be looking for one of them, but that'd be another day. I had watched the one I wanted go in, but he was going to be the last one to leave. He sure took his sweet time.
For nearly ten hours my face had rested on the stock of my 7mm Sharp's. The rifle had been in my possession since my grandfathers death in 2016. He used it to hunt deer in Southeast Arkansas. I use it to hunt too, but people aren't quite so simple as deer.
I adjusted the sight, zooming in and out to kill time and agitation. Marksmanship called for patience and a steady hand. I had the steady hand. The black metal burned my hand with an icy touch, I never though Spain could be so cold. I imagined it dirtier California. It is. It's just damn cold too.
Two guards stood on either side of the door, talking. If it had been the US I'd have read their lips, maybe figured out what time my guy would be walking out. I didn't know a lick of Spanish. For all I knew, they were talking about tacos or how good their ex-girlfriends' head was. They didn't seem to be in a hurry. I passed the time bouncing my crosshair between them, pretending to shoot one after the other.
In the next hour the sun crept full over the mountain slopes behind me, warming my back. I felt like the tin man after the oil application. My joints loosened and my rigid body melted into the groove I dug in the loose gravel. Below, men poured out the door armed to the teeth in black body armor with AK-47s. A black sedan pulled around the loop of the drive and stopped in front of the door. At least three men stood around the car. Another searched under the car and in the wheels, perhaps doing a routine check, maybe searching for potential IEDs. I didn't know my target, but if someone hated him enough to pay me to get rid of him the having your armed guard check for bombs didn't seem too unreasonable.
The doors opened again and I readied myself. A tall man with slick hair in a navy suit strode out wearing sunglasses. He had a phone to his ear in one hand and a silver mug in the other, probably coffee to kill a hangover. He set the mug on top of the car and opened the back door closest to the house.
Two guards walked out shoulder to shoulder, followed by a man in a white suit with a black tie, a red kerchief in the breast pocket, two more guards trailing, bringing the guard count to somewhere about ten. I had stopped counting at four. I shot people, not algebra.
My crosshair fell on the man's right pupil, not the right side of his face or his eye, his pupil, aim small, miss small. The guards did their best to hurry him into the car but the man, my clueless prey, was in no hurry. I talked to the guards, to the man in sunglasses and somebody in the car, hidden behind tinted windows. He put his hand on the top of the car and gazed around, taking a moment to look at the house, at the landscape, and at the men around him. He smiled wide, a gold tooth shining among a set of pearls. He turned his head at me and I fired.
I blinked, either during the shot or after. When my eyes opened splashes of blood sprayed across the faces of the closest guards. They wiped the red out of their eyes with clumsy hands, pointing their guns at invisible targets. Others ran around searching in bushes and behind rocks. Two men and the man with the phone climbed into the car, closing the door behind them. The car sped off and drove down the highway behind the hill and out of sight leaving behind a pool of blood on the cobble drive.
I dropped the action and the silver shell popped out. My hand missed the catch and it rang as it hit the rocky ground. The metal was still a little warm when I stuffed it into my pants pocket. I closed the action and got up, slinging the gun over my shoulder. A few feet down the hill behind me a motorcycle laid on its side with a green blanket thrown over the top. I tossed the blanket to the side and started the bike, revving the engine. I coasted through the pine trees until I hit the road. It was a thirty minute ride to Barcelona, and I had breakfast on my mind.

The next morning I sat at a corner table, drinking coffee after a short breakfast. My dirty plate rested on a newspaper. The serving girl had brought it to me, but it was in Spanish. Still, you didn't need to know Spanish to be able to read a photo. My man's dead face filled half the page, a bullet hole going through an eye socket. It was the wrong side, but it was my man. "Damn," I said to no one. "I shouldn't have blinked."