Blackout - By Tom Barber Page 0,8

himself living in the same building as lawyers, accountants and businessmen, a world away from his old neighbourhood in Brooklyn. Finally, after twenty years of toil and graft, the man felt like he’d made it.

Working for the Sheikh was a dream come true. The bodyguard still couldn’t believe his good fortune at landing it. He had been referred to the Arab through a businessman he’d worked for during a conference in New York in 2010, and when the offer of steady employment had been put on the table he had jumped at the opportunity. At that point, he’d been out of work for almost two months, living on canned food, and was watching his meagre savings slowly dwindle away. And so far, the job had been everything he had hoped for and more.

He had been on numerous trips to the Middle East, basically paid vacations, flying First Class alongside the Sheikh every time. His boss liked to stay at expensive western hotels on the coastline, so the ample sun, sea and exotic women on view didn’t hurt. And the cheques he received each month were ten times what he had ever earned before, despite being mere drops of water in an ocean to a man as wealthy as his employer. The bodyguard had always been diligent in what he did, never afraid of a hard day’s work, but now he couldn't help but feel that life was finally starting to pay him back.

The Sheikh was staying across town at the Trump International Hotel, by Columbus Circle, and his protector would be back over there at six a.m. sharp, ready and waiting to do what he was paid for and protect his boss when he went out and about. After all, he couldn’t afford to get sloppy or careless. A man as wealthy and powerful as his employer would always have enemies, and if the bodyguard let his guard down all this could be over. He worked five days on, two off, and he'd hit the sack around midnight, early for him, wanting to get a good night's sleep and start his upcoming five day shift, rested and alert.

The man was flat-out in the wide double bed in the main bedroom, fast asleep, snoring gently, the open curtains of the high-rise apartment showing just a solitary tugboat moving slowly up the East River outside in the darkness far below. He had no wife or girlfriend or even a dog and was all alone, his hard and scarred body stretched out on the soft and accommodating Egyptian-cotton sheets. The silence was rhythmically broken by gentle snoring from the man in the bed, the only sound in the apartment. The place was dark and still.

The door to the apartment had no latch, only a lock on the handle.

It was silently picked with ease.

The door was pushed back smoothly and slowly, and a large figure in black moved silently into the apartment, shutting the door noiselessly behind him. The intruder was wearing dark gloves and medical wraps on his feet, and carried a stubby silenced pistol in his hands, a round in the chamber, the safety catch off, his finger on the trigger.

The door to the main bedroom was open and the intruder crept forward slowly, feet silent on the carpet. As the stranger approached the door, he heard the man’s rhythmic breathing increase slightly in volume. The newcomer slid into the room through the crack in the door, coming to a halt at the foot of the bed and stared down at the sleeping man. He was flat out on his back, like a guy who had just got in from a hard night's drinking, dead to the world.

The stranger in black raised the pistol double-handed, centred on the guy’s face.

‘Hey,’ he said, quietly, almost a whisper.

The bodyguard in the bed stirred.

He opened his eyes and looked down the bed, lifting his head up, like one of those red and white bulls-eye targets at the fair.

He frowned as his jumbled brain tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

There was someone standing there.

He blinked, confused, wondering if this was a dream.

It wasn’t.

The intruder shot him between the eyes. The weapon was silenced but there was a loud thump as the hollow-nosed bullet smacked into the sleeping man’s forehead, instantly blowing the back of his head apart. There was a spray of blood, bone and brains and another white thump of feathers in the air as the bullet passed through the pillow and