A long, black suppressor was threaded into the muzzle of the gun. On his right bicep was a small tattoo, cut in black ink, no bigger than a dime: a lightning bolt.īeneath the man’s left armpit was a worn, custom-made leather holster. On his left shoulder was a jagged, wide, thick scar. He had thick shoulders and arms, ripped with muscles. A mess of mustache and beard covered his face, which was tanned a deep brown. In fact, it’d been more than a week since soap or shampoo touched him, though he’d swum in the ocean many times. The man’s hair was down to his shoulders and messed up, even a little oily, as if he hadn’t bathed in a few days. It was a serious crew, all ex-military and armed to the teeth. This was the security cordon, there to guard the occupants of the yacht. He counted two men on the stern of the boat, a man at the bow, and one other man who was walking along the near side-the port side of the yacht. He studied the decks of the two-hundred-foot yacht. Inside the cabin, fuzzy white silhouettes appeared as if in a photo negative, as the occupants of the yacht were revealed, their bodies emitting enough heat to enable the binoculars to relay the fuzzy white carapaces. Near the front, a cloud of white showed the large boat’s motor as it idled. The yacht, and everything around it, went black. He’d activated the binoculars’ thermal imaging system and was now able to look at the yacht’s heat patterns. The man slid a small switch on the side of the binoculars and all colors disappeared.

He could see people inside the main cabin of the $190 million yacht. He kept them aimed at the ocean and a large yacht moored offshore, its lights still blazing yellow despite the late hour. In his hand was a pair of large stainless steel, high-powered binoculars. It was nighttime and he’d been standing in the same place for two hours.

On a small terrace outside of a hotel room on the coast of North Africa, a man stood. LA VILLA BLEUESIDI BOU SAÏDTUNISIANORTH AFRICA

Bloody Sunday by Ben Coes