CHAPTER 6: THE GUNMAN'S SHADOW
The monsoons had turned Veraopur's streets into rivers of black ink when Kahlil received the report. His contact inside the CBI—a gaunt, hollow-eyed clerk who sold secrets for morphine—had whispered the name over static-filled phone lines:
"They're calling him The Gunman."
Kahlil's polished Oxfords clicked against the marble floor of Hamir's war room as he paced past the evidence boards. Black-and-white CCTV stills showed blurred figures near Edwin's assassination site. Grainy, useless—except for one frame. A man's silhouette, half-turned from the camera, the outline of a long coat, and the unmistakable angular bulge of a rifle slung across his back.
"Ex-military," murmured Vasily, the Serbian mercenary hunched over the images. His tattooed fingers traced the posture. "See the shoulders? Only trained men carry weight like that."
Kahlil's network of spies—embedded in police stations, hospitals, even the coroner's office—had spent three sleepless nights cross-referencing disgruntled ex-soldiers. The list narrowed to fourteen names. Then to six. Then to one.
Ratan Raj.
Discharged two years ago after the border skirmishes. Expert marksman. Reported missing by his sister last month. The address led them to a crumbling tenement in the old textile district, its stairwell reeking of urine and stale opium.
Kahlil kicked in the door with the barrel of his suppressed HK45.
The apartment was a tomb.
Neatly made bed. A single photograph of Raj in uniform on the nightstand. And in the center of the room, Raj himself—slumped in a wooden chair, hands bound behind him with military-grade zip ties. The bullet hole between his eyebrows still glistened. Fresh. Very fresh.
"He was waiting for us," Vasily growled, nudging the corpse's knee. A spent shell casing rolled from the man's lap—7.62mm. Soviet. "Professional courtesy."
Kahlil crouched, examining the dead man's fingers. No gunpowder residue. "He didn't fire this."
From the shadows near the bathroom, a child's voice piped up:
"The tall man did."
A boy of no more than eight stood barefoot in pajamas, clutching a rusted toy truck. "He gave Uncle tea. Then... pop." The child mimed a pistol with his fingers.
Kahlil's stomach iced over. "What tall man?"
The boy shrugged. "Smiled like the bad men in movies."
As if on cue, the apartment's lone lightbulb flickered. The boy vanished into the hallway shadows. Outside, thunder cracked like a second gunshot.
Vasily exhaled through his nose. "The Gunman knew we'd come."
Kahlil stared at Raj's lifeless eyes. Worse—he'd left them a message.
Tucked in the dead man's breast pocket: a playing card. The Ace of Spades.
The jungle breathed.
Kahlil stood frozen as Vasily’s body collapsed behind him, the rifle’s thunder rolling through the mist-shrouded trees. Warm blood sprayed across his neck before he heard the shot—a sniper’s trick, the bullet traveling faster than sound. The round had punched through Vasily’s forehead with clinical precision, leaving a fist-sized exit wound that painted the ferns crimson. The Gunman wasn’t just still here. He was toying with them.
Six hours earlier, the war room had been thick with the scent of expensive cigars and fear. Satellite images of Veraopur’s northern jungle glowed on the screens, that emerald hell where the second suspect—an ex-Special Forces sniper—had vanished. “He’s not running,” Hamir had purred from his leather chair, swirling amaretto in a crystal glass. “Men like this don’t run. They reload.” The ice in his drink had clinked like a countdown.
Now, under the jungle’s suffocating canopy, Kahlil’s men scrambled for cover that didn’t exist. The drone footage had shown them everything and nothing—five abandoned trekker camps with tents flapping like ragged ghosts, bootprints swallowed by mud, and finally, the bunker: a concrete tomb half-buried in the earth, its rusted door grinning at them. Then static. The Gunman had shot their $2 million surveillance drone from the sky like it was a clay pigeon.
They’d come in Jeeps, fanning out through the jungle to converge two hundred meters behind the bunker. Too confident. Too loud. Kahlil’s Italian loafers sank into the rotting vegetation as they advanced, the stench of cordite and wet earth choking them. The bunker loomed ahead, its open door a black joke.
“He’s gone,” muttered the mercenary to Kahlil’s left, sweat glistening on his shaved scalp. “Saw the drone and—”
The shot took him mid-sentence.
This time Kahlil saw it—a flicker of movement 300 meters east, sunlight winking off glass. The Gunman wasn’t in the bunker at all. He’d been waiting in the trees the whole time, watching them walk into his kill zone.
As his men’s screams filled the air, Kahlil understood with icy clarity:
They weren’t the hunters anymore.
They were the prey.
The explosion tore through the jungle like a thunderclap. One moment the Jeep was reversing through the ferns—the next, a perfect shot to its fuel tank turned it into a fireball, the concussive blast sending Kahlil sprawling behind a moss-covered boulder. Shrapnel whined through the air as the realization struck him: this was no ordinary sniper. No military-trained marksman wasted ammunition on vehicles when personnel were available. And the precision—God, the precision—to hit a moving target at this range without zeroing in first? This was something else. Something worse.
The jungle had gone eerily quiet. No traps. No mines. Just the occasional crack of a high-caliber round finding another skull. The Gunman wasn’t just killing them—he was hunting them. Personally.
Kahlil pressed his back against the boulder, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Most of his squad had melted into the green hell, their retreating footsteps swallowed by the undergrowth. Alone. He was alone.
”Oh, Lord—“
The bullet came so close he felt its heat. It sheared off his right ear in a spray of blood and cartilage before he even heard the shot. Pain exploded through his skull, white-hot and nauseating. He collapsed, biting back a scream that would have given away his position, his fingers clawing at the damp earth as blood poured down his neck.
Training took over.
Gritting his teeth, Kahlil dragged himself beneath the gnarled roots of a kapok tree. His vision swam as he grabbed a fallen comrade’s AK-47, its stock slick with rain and sweat. The first aid kit came next—field dressings torn open with his teeth, a tourniquet cinched around his ruined ear, painkillers dry-swallowed. His hands shook as he keyed the walkie-talkie, voice barely above a whisper.
”All units... converge on my position. Bring snipers. He’s still—“ A pause. A bloody cough. ”He’s still here.”
Then he began to dig.
The trench took forty minutes—a shallow, body-length scrape in the earth, just deep enough to bury himself up to the chest. He packed mud around his legs for stability, slapped a helmet over his bleeding head, and braced the AK-47 against the roots. No more Italian leather. No more vanity. Just the waiting.
Five hours passed.
The jungle breathed around him, its chorus of insects and birds taunting his paralysis. Every rustle of leaves sent his finger to the trigger. Every shadow seemed to shift.
Then—
A sound. Deliberate. Close.
Kahlil swung the rifle toward the noise just as the grenade arced into his trench.
”Grenade!”
Instinct hurled him clear before his brain registered the truth—it was a dummy. A fucking training grenade. His own scream echoed back at him, raw and humiliating.
The Gunman stepped from the foliage like a ghost materializing.
The punch came faster than thought. Kahlil’s head snapped back, his spine slamming into the kapok’s roots. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard the click-clack of his AK being dismantled with methodical precision.
”Soldier.” The voice was a graveled whisper, close enough to taste the mint on the man’s breath. ”Get up.”
Kahlil’s knife flashed from his boot—a last, desperate lunge.
The Gunman caught his wrist mid-thrust, twisted, and drove a fist into Kahlil’s sternum hard enough to lift him off the ground. He landed in a heap, ribs screaming, as the shadowy figure loomed over him.
”You’ve got skill, boy,” the Gunman chuckled. The jungle’s dappled light glinted off the matte-black half-mask covering his nose and mouth. His eyes were voids. ”Your reinforcements coming to get me?”
Kahlil spat blood. ”To put you down.”
”They’ll need better toys.” The Gunman tilted his head, long hair swaying like a pendulum. ”Tell your Hammir... next time, he comes himself.”
He turned to leave.
Kahlil launched again—a wild, pain-blinded tackle.
The counterstrike was inhuman. A single open-palm strike to the chest sent Kahlil flying backward, his body crumpling against the kapok like a broken doll. By the time his vision cleared, the jungle had swallowed the Gunman whole.
Only the Ace of Spades remained, impaled on a branch where no card had been before.
