POWER

“The road to power is paved with hypocrisy, and casualties”

- Frank Underwood (House of cards)

The sky was vast, flooded with transparent mauve, sunrise creeping like a wisteria but cloudless.

At the rooftop of the church building; the bell tower, Hitman Tony Vasquez set up his McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle with armor piercing rounds, unnecessary but effective nonetheless.

They called him the angel of death for many reasons, but you should know he never misses, best man

for the job. Not surprisingly, it’s been ages since an assassination attempt, besides, these third world

countries didn’t do security sweeps at these distances before these events. He had flown in to Nigeria two days before the inauguration, his client had wired him half a million dollars, and was intent on sending the other half once the job was done.

His source was impeccable, the convoy would come in at 11am, with his target waving to the crowd,

out of the rooftop of a Mercedes S560 Benz.

Accurate, locating his target, he pulled the trigger. A single shot to the head, there was no surviving

this. The body of the Nigerian president-elect jerked backwards as he fell.

Chaos erupted, as a once orderly event turned to a crazed frenzy, security agents securing the vice

president elect and the president-elect’s wife. The president-elect’s head had been shot open on national television.

Vasquez lays slouching on his couch in his California home, it has been 5 weeks from his daring feat in Nigeria, he is watching the live YouTube broadcast of the presidential inauguration, the swearing in of the vice president-elect, a Mr. Saraiki Dogara as the president in succession. Nothing was personal to Vasquez, it was all just business. Listening to his opening speech, his voice was oddly familiar.

It had been carefully executed Mr. Saraiki Dogara thought to himself, a lot of money to pay also, but

being the Nigerian president for four years would generate him a lot more than, not legally of course. Nothing could tie him to the assassination attempt, extreme precautions had been taken. He had reached where he was, by being a ruthless tactician, through blackmail and occasional elimination, no one and nothing would deny him what he wanted. A vow he made under gruesome circumstances.

The death of the president-elect, his friend, was unfortunate but necessary. In this power play, climbing to the top of the food chain, there can be no mercy. There is but one rule: hunt or be hunted.