There's a certain art to waiting. Trust me, I'm in a position to know.

As a teenager, I got bored with stuff in practically no time at all. Patience was one of the things I had to really work at to acquire in some measure. I still work at it, as a matter of fact. For me, waiting is an intellectual exercise, a chance to find out if I lack the capacity to come to terms with monotony.

However, there's only so much about waiting I can describe. If you've never sat next to the open window of an abandoned third-story office for five hours doing nothing except watch the barely illuminated street below, well, I doubt anything I tell you will be able to adequately convey the mind-numbing tedium. And the worst part about it all is the fact that during all this, you're reminding yourself that you could be mere seconds away from the most exciting, nerve-jangling part of the job . . . the moment when you line up those sights and you pull the trigger.

Try to imagine that you're a sprinter at the olympics. You're in the starting blocks, the timekeeper has just yelled 'Get ready, get set-', and you're now waiting for that sharp retort of a pistol firing into the air before throwing yourself forward as quickly as humanly possible. Now imagine that they've introduced a new rule about when the race can begin, and the starter's pistol can go off at any time . . . two seconds from now, or ten hours. And the whole time, you're crouched there, tensed like a coiled spring, waiting for something that could happen at any second . . .

As you might have already guessed, while attempting to come to terms with mindless tedium, one of the things I end up doing is coming up with metaphors that will adequately describe the mindless tedium. For the purposes of brevity let's just say that it's really, really boring, and really, really exciting, and leave it at that.

I felt three light taps on my wrist. Grunting, I reset the timer on my watch and scanned the nearly empty street again, both through the glass of my M24A2 sniper rifle, and through the image-enhancing near-infrared viewfinder I'd mounted on the window bracket. Then I let my gaze roam over the now-familiar pattern of objects and locations that were part of my naked eye visual patrol - street, alley, alley, door to the building Sack was in, garbage dumpster, homeless drunk, parked car, parked truck, other parked car, window, window, window, window, pier, window, window, side-street, and back to main street below. Quick scan over to the left, over to the right, and horizon. Patrol finished. I checked the time.

One-thirty in the freaking morning. What fun.

It was all I could do to keep from sighing out loud. I'm sure there were places out there that had even less going on, but even if I were told of such a place I'd probably need a little convincing. The most exciting thing that had happened so far had been the homeless guy arriving on the scene, weaving his way over to the dumpster with a mostly empty bottle of Southern Comfort, singing a song that had something to do with goblins. He'd sparked my interest at first, raised my suspicions a little, but after inspecting him a great deal I'd concluded that he wasn't anything more than what he seemed to be - a harmless drunk with decent taste in liquor and a rather unfortunate snoring problem.

Every so often I'd look through my sights at him, idly wondering what article of clothing I might be able to hit without waking him up. If he'd been wearing a ratty hat or something of that nature, I might have actually been tempted.

Just training a gun on someone who isn't aware of you is a strange feeling. You start thinking about it in terms of your own experiences, and how little you really know about what's going on around you. How many times had I been in someone's sights, completely unaware of the fact that my brains were in eminent danger of seeing the light of day? Considering the nature of the organization that I'd managed to leave behind me, I'm pretty sure it had happened more than a few times. If I'd actually stuck around, maybe someone would have pulled the trigger by now.

That was sort of a sobering thought.

My watch tapped my wrist three times again, distracting me from my thoughts. I sighed, returning my attention to the glass on my rifle, followed by the infrared display. Visual patrol, left, right horizon . . . done. My watch now said it was one-thirty-five in the freaking morning.

When I'd called Diavolo's man, Sack, late in the afternoon, he'd told me he would be working until three. He didn't tell me what he'd be doing, or where in the building he'd be, so I figured that whatever he was doing was kind of illegal and didn't bother to pry. It did mean that I only had another hour and a half left of this before Sack made an appearance in the alley and left, at which point the whole night would become a wash. I'd go home, get cleaned up, get some rest, see if any new information came in and then decide how to proceed with evening number two.

I get about half of my targets on the first night I go out, as surprising as that might seem. Usually it's because I have concrete knowledge of a routine they're following, and ninety-five percent of the work can be taken care of ahead of time. In most of those cases, the only real thing left to do is to show up and actually do the job. It helps when contracts don't have any specialized requirements, of course . . . the ones where I'm simply shooting someone, or where it's left up to me how to actually deal with them.

It's funny - when people think of 'hit-man' they usually picture some guy with a gun. There's a veritable plethora of other ways to get rid of people when it comes right down to it . . . a rich history of assassination methods that span the ages, as varied as the minds and personalities that used them. There's explosions, which are messy and attract attention, which, oddly enough, is precisely what some people end up wanting. There's also poisoning, which is much stealthier, though uncertain. Drowning, cutting, inducing a heart attack, electrocution, drug overdose, asphyxiation, freezing . . . you name it. There are unlimited potential murder weapons everywhere you look, from high-tech guns and toxic poisons, all the way down to a fist-sized rock, or a plain, ordinary wooden pencil. The only practical limit is your imagination, really.

Usually though, when given the choice, I end up doing precisely the sort of thing that I was doing here, which-

I felt three ticks on my wrist again. Sigh. Glass, infrared, visual patrol. Left, right-

Wait a second . . .

I could feel myself becoming more alert, and I sat up a little straighter on the impromptu chair that I'd fashioned out of an old drawer and a couple of ancient phone books. Reorienting and then looking through the infra-red display confirmed that there was something in the shadows near the back of the street, and to my right. I leaned a cheek against the butt of my rifle and looked through the high-powered glass of the scope I'd mounted atop it, training it on the object I'd noticed.

There was definitely something there. About the size of a person.

And it was moving.

It wasn't moving fast, or even moving around . . . it was just sort of moving in place, as if considering, or trying to keep warm. The night wasn't a cold one - I wasn't wearing much more than a spring coat over a thin t-shirt at the moment - so it probably wasn't the weather.

The shape was sticking to the shadows beside the street, not actually walking into the relatively scant light of the tired street lamp next to the building. Moving, but not moving into the light. Like it wasn't certain if illumination was such a good idea.

A feeling came over me, one honed by decades of this particular activity. Without looking, I depressed a small, black button on the side of my watch. It vibrated for a moment, warning me that it was about to turn itself off, and then went to sleep. I knew I wouldn't need any more ticks to grab my attention, or keep me awake.

This was my guy.

I barely had to wait a minute before my gut feeling was confirmed by my target walking two steps into the illuminated area and stopping, his eyes on the scarred, yellow door of the warehouse Sack was in. I saw his profile clearly, and it was definitely the face I'd spent those hours memorizing earlier.

My heart sped up a little bit, and I did a quick stretch of all the important muscles - fists clenched and then fingers spread, arms out to either side, neck left, neck right, bunch the shoulders, and then relax.

The occasional popping sounds from my neck reminded me that visiting my chiropractor tomorrow would probably be a good idea. I made a note of it, blinking several times in rapid succession to ensure that the vision in my right eye was nice and crisp.

"Okay, boy-o . . . by the numbers," I murmured softly, resting my cheekbone against the familiar matted metal cradle of my rifle and pressing my eye against the scope, staring down the barrel at my target. "Breathe deep, center mass, near the collarbone on the side nearest me. Then tap the head with my second shot when he's reeling and going into shock. No surprises, no noise, no witnesses except for mister Southern Comfort, who is currently-"

I flashed the street a quick look with my other eye, making sure everything was still clear.

My breath caught in my throat.

I slowly pulled my cheek away from the butt of my rifle and stared at the scene before me with both eyes, just to ensure that I wasn't seeing things.

I wasn't.

"-who is currently wandering straight towards the mark!" I hissed under my breath.

The raggedy figure had stopped his snoring, had somehow managed to lurch to his feet, and was walking unsteadily away from his bed of refuse. He was weaving drunkenly from side to side, but was heading straight for the solitary figure hovering just outside the edge of the street's illumination.

I noticed something . . .

Step, step-step . . . reel drunkenly to the left, a small stagger. A light shuffle, a step, and another step. Reel to the right. Repeat.

This drunk . . . wasn't. It was an act.

His left hand was still clutching his mostly empty bottle of Southern Comfort, but his right hand was behind him, hiding something from the mark's line of sight. It wasn't hidden from mine, however.

Handgun, large caliber, with integral sound suppression, and a 'hush puppy' on the muzzle. It wasn't something you got off the rack, or put together on a weekend. I mean, I didn't have a handgun that was that difficult to machine properly. This was a powerful, undoubtedly effective, evil, expensive labor of love.

A professional.

"Bloody hell," I whispered. "I've been double-booked . . ."