Adam leaped over the desk until he hovered over the still seated Victor Holomos. He jammed his gun into Victor's nose and yelled, "I see one more human in this room. and your boss loses his brains. You got that? I said YOU GOT THAT?"  

​     No one answered. There was no one there to answer. Adam grabbed Victor's jaw and lifted it so that he could look Victor full in the eye. "You've got to tell them, Victor. You've got to tell them to lay the fuck off!" 

​     Holomos did as commanded. "Everyone stay right where you're at!" he bellowed. "No more bullshit!" Then, under his breath, he muttered, "This guy's too good." 

​     "Damn right I am. Okay, question number one: Who am I" 

     "Who..." 

     "What's my name? Who am I?"  

     "You're...​You're..." 

​     "Hurry up. Spit it out." 

     "You're...You're Adam Forwarder!"  

     Adam made a mock cheer with the hand that didn't hold the gun. ​"Good. Good. This is going good. Okay, on to question two: What does Adam Forwarder do for a living?"

     "You...You..."  

     "Come on. Come on. You know. You hired me yourself."​  

     "If..."

     "I'm a mercenary, Victor. You know that. I take on extremely difficult assignments for a living, isn't that right?"   

     "If..." 

     "Okay, you know what? I'm getting real tired of this one sided conversation." Holomos' hands rested on the arms of his leather chair. Adam took his gun away from Holomos' head long enough to blow off two of the fingers on his left hand. 

​     Victor wailed like a banshee. Blood flew everywhere, all over Adam, all over Holomos. Adam jumped around behind Victor. He more than half expected another attack from one of the many doors that lined the office. He didn't worry about gunfire from outside, from beyond the picture windows. The glass had to present a distorted view, in some manner. Otherwise, Victor himself would have been too vulnerable to a sniper's bullet.  

     Surprise. Surprise. No attack. Five dead soldiers in as many seconds was enough to give them pause, apparently. Good. They wanted to keep their lives. 

     Adam aimed his gun at the back of Victor's skull. He didn't want to take anymore showers in splattering blood if he could help it. "Okay, now that I've got your attention, we can continue. Where were we? Oh yes, about me being a mercenary. But that's not exactly true. I'm more than that. I'm the finest mercenary in the world of mercenaries and history of mercenaries. And you know why I feel free to say that?" 

​     "You shot my..." 

​     "I can honestly claim that I am the finest assassin in the world because I get paid more than any other assassin in the world. ​And how much do I get paid, Mr. Holomos? Exactly how much?"    

     Blood spurted from each of Victor's two severed fingers. He jammed the stubs as hard as he could into his chest in a crazed attempt to staunch the bleeding. He was sweating all over. He was in shock was what he was. Adam wasn't going to get anymore answers out of him. Still, he had to finish his little speech, if not for Holomos than for anyone else who was listening.  

​     "I get paid a billion dollars, Victor, that's how much I get paid. One billion per mission. Half down. Half the second I complete the mission. And you know why I ask for so much, Victor? Why I work constantly even though my fee is so staggeringly high?"

     "It's because I'm that good."

     "I'm beyond the best, way beyond."  

     "I am very thorough and very good." 

​     "I do my homework."  

​     "For instance..." And now Adam walked completely away from Holomos, headed towards the center of the nearly empty office. Victor's teeth clattered. He shivered as blood continued to pour down the front of his chest. He was now, for Adam, the least interesting thing in the room. "Before I accepted this assignment from your boss, Mr. Holomos here, I did a little research on him, on Victor Holomos personally, on his organization, on this compound, and I don't mean by research a quick look at the internet and a few newspaper articles and court transcripts. No, my research goes much deeper that that. I spend millions on research. Let me show you. Get a look at this."  

     Into his com, Adam said, "Put up those images now, would you Claudia?"

     "Of course."

     At which point, Adam's images appeared on the screen of every computer in the facility, one image after the other. There were seven of them. They indicated where bombs were planted in seven separate areas of the facility. One was attached to the underside of a toilet. Another was attached to the inside of an air duct.

     "You see what I'm saying?" Adam continued. "I've already been to this facility a dozen times without any of you knowing a thing about it. Those seven bombs? Those are only seven of the fifty I've planted. And get this: I say a single word, and all fifty of those bombs go off all at once. They'll also go off if my com suddenly goes silent, say if any of you want to obliterate me or whatever. Now think about that for a moment. You've got a pretty secure facility here, wouldn't you say? Certainly as secure or more secure than most military facilities I've been to. I'm certain that Victor paid a fortune so that no one person or group of people could attack him or take by force anything that was his, yet here I got around all that so-called unbreakable security, not once but several times, to install some four dozen bombs without anyone being the wiser. And that's before I even started working on Carter Paul. I had a sneaking suspicion that Victor had no intention on delivering on the other half of what he owes me, so I wanted to be prepared."  

     "But you see? You see how I cover my bases? Understand that, then you must further understand why your only recourse now is to, first, allow me to finish killing your boss here, then allow me to leave without bothering me anymore in the slightest. Anything other than that, and I will blow this place entirely to pieces. You got that? Oh yes, and here's something else: there's more than just one single code word, and every word triggers a separate event. For instance, watch this..." 

​     "...mouseshit."  

​     In the distance, there came the sound of a single exploding bomb.  

​     "You see? One word. One bomb. That went off in one of your warehouses, by the way. I can't imagine that anyone got hurt. There's another word I can say, though, and half the bombs I planted will go off. Say another word, and only four of the bombs will go off, but they're the most strategically placed bombs in the compound. I've had all of this planned for a very long time. Your boss has to die no matter what. I can't just let people rip me off for half a billion dollars. Word of that gets around, and the next thing you know everyone's jerking me. So he has to die. It's the rest of you who can walk away from this relatively unscathed. What do you say? I get Claudia to bring the Stargod here, I kill Victor Holomos, then I'll be on my way. If...you know what? Fine."  

     He sensed that, in spite of the wisdom inherent in what he'd just proposed, in the end he'd probably have to shoot his way out.  

​     "Have it your own way, then."

     Victor Holomos, with what little energy he had left in him, used it to lurch for his desk, presumably to grab a weapon to blow Adam away as his final act in life. Adam put a bullet through his forehead with a single shot. Here he was, with his own army and raking in billions a year, and he welches on a mere five hundred million? 

​     "Dumbshit," Adam muttered. 

                                                    CONTINUE