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The trigger was the kind you stroked. Pull on it too hard and the gun would jam. 'Like you would your lover,' Alec's contact had said, laughed. Alec had only had to look at it to realize how perfect it would be for James.
The bullet would spin as it left the chamber. You could shoot a target five kilometers away in the darkest part of night at the new moon and as long as you had a clean line of site, you'd kill your man. The bullet would take only a breath to find the target, and then it would keep going. The target would need to have a spine of titanium steel to stop the bullet. Usually, the contact said, it would go through one and stop in a building. If you were really unlucky, it could kill three.
James would love it. He was always looking for new sniper equipment.
James, he liked the thrill. He would perch on a rooftop or near the window in a rented flat and, once, in a stalling helicopter, and with a pinch a man would be dead. James liked to watch through the green-tinted scope as the man jerked back, blood coming from his mouth, arms flailing about, dead before he knew it. James would stroke the trigger again and again, not needing the extra shots, but loving the way a bullet would turn a stumbling man around, make him thrash around in new pain. It was every voyeur's dream, James said. Perfect power, perfect vantage point. From the top of a building, a drug cartel in your sights, there's nothing more perfect than that moment. There's no one more powerful than you.
Guns, they're a great offensive weapon, but impossible to use for defense. It doesn't matter Uzi, M-16, Colt-45. You can kill and you can be killed, but a scrap of metal can't stop a bullet.
It's something everyone knows, James liked to say while under Alec, counting thrusts between sermons. Something they know, but don't like to think about. It's never been whoever has the biggest toys wins. It's always been whoever can survive the toys wins.
It's never more clear, James liked to say, than when the crosshairs are being lowered and you're deciding if you can risk a stomach shot. Stomach shots make for much more theatrical deaths.
And sometimes Alec would go up with him, but not often. James never liked an audience. The most complicated kills, he needed to be alone. Said he couldn't think when Alec was around.
Alec, he sent James all over the world to do his killing dance. James never asked who they were. It didn't matter. They were men that James could play with.
One time it was a hundred yards and James lay flat on his stomach between wheatgrass and squinted against the noonday sun. He'd captured the target the day before and had tied him to a tree and given the target a knife. James took out the man's kneecap after the first hand had been freed. He tried for the groin but missed and hit the left thigh when the second hand was freed. As the blood dripped down and the flies gathered, James hit him at the top of his spine.
James never liked clean deaths. Any fool with a tracker, he liked to say, and a bit of aim can do a clean death. James liked them dirty.
James liked the power. And it was always power with him.
Alec fingered the telescopic sights and checked the kickback. He ran an oil rag across the barrel and rubbed the trigger. He loaded again and listened for the click. He gave it a full run through and then took the entire supply. It had been a limited run, the contact had said before the first bullet came on a downward trajectory, and passed through the base of his spine before burrowing in the dirt. Outdoor use only, Alec made a mental note. He didn't want to run the risk of ricochet. The rifle was even more indiscriminate than James.
He'd keep these for a time, he decided. Make a present out of it. And one night when James was lying sweaty on the bed, his arms curved lightly over his head, his legs spread, Alec would draw on him and watch how quickly James would have the knife quivering in the wall an inch away from Alec's left ear. And then he'd show the empty clip, toss the gun to James, and wish him a happy killing dance. He'd give James the name of the target, the possible location, the habits, the statistics, the name of the girlfriend, the model of personal bullet propulsion, and then James would have his fun.
And he'd come back with the blood on his hands, the dark brown dried blood of a three day old kill. It would be in streaks with grass stains and the almost clear dried semen. And Alec would take James' hands in his and kiss them, cover them with his own, and give his favorite assassin a welcome back kiss, harsh and demanding and bloody in ways no dance could ever be. James was Alec's weapon, cold and indiscriminate as he was, and Alec loved every bloodthirsty cell in his body. He loved the way he could get James hard by talking of old jobs, by whispering the stats of his favorite Beretta, by talking to him about caliber and years and manufactures. If there were two words Alec learned to never put together it was Smith and Wesson.
Of course, Alec had his own words. James could whisper to him about revenge, about white wine, any white wine, about rose petals falling into gutter puddles. James would lick Alec's ear and breathe out about Dostoyevsky, about Tolstoy. He'd stroke Alec's cock and mutter Yeats, about twenty centuries of stony sleep. About being poor and having only your dreams. About loving the pilgrim soul in you. About finding such good a thing as what has been lost in the blinding light beyond the grave.
Alec was always so easy to read. To manipulate. If you knew the right triggers, and James did. He would stroke them, squeeze them lightly, slide the pad of his thumb along the sensitive part and then a tiny pinch. And Alec could play him the same way, like any good instrument, like any good weapon. They were two of pair, Alec and James, night and dark, blonde and black. Balance and truth, justice and wisdom.
Pain and death.