The man in the driver's seat clicked his tongue and the guy in the passenger seat looked up. The man in the backseat said, "Go."

The two men in front rolled down the balaclava masks so that their faces were obscured. The vehicle was parked in the middle of the block, away from streetlights. They came out of it in a smooth flow and immediately found shadow. One man moved after the other, in a single file. The point man swept his eyes left, right, and center. The man in the back focused upon their flanks. He wasn't concerned with the rear because the one they'd left in the car was now standing outside of it, keeping watch.

Up ahead was the target location, the rear door of a two story building. The bottom floor contained the offices of a real estate attorney's firm, the upper story was a company office suite. What all three of these men knew was that the entire building was owned by the same entity, even if that ownership was spread out and divided among several front companies and offshore accounts.

But, that was par for the course when it came to Miami real estate.

The point man arrived at the door and used a programmed key card to beep into the secure lock. Once inside, the men withdrew suppressed 9mm Glock 19 pistols from where the weapons had been seated between waistband and small of back. The second man's weapon caught on his jeans and he gently set it free with a gloved index finger.

The first noticeable thing, was the music blasting from the front of the building. Neither of the masked men were very educated, besides the school of hard knocks. They were unable to identify the music in any specificity. It was classical, sure, but it could have been composed in either the eighth century or the nineteenth, for all they knew.

In any case, they didn't care.

A murmur of conversation floated underneath the loud music. The men walked down a short corridor. The man in front took a position by the door and waited for the man behind him to catch up. The looked at each other and the man in front nodded, receiving a nod in reply.

He turned the knob and moved smoothly into the room, keeping the left wall at his shoulder. His partner took the right side. Weapons came up. Three men were seated around a circular table. These were body guards. Their weapons were on the table. It took two of them a second and a half to react. The third bodyguard was much faster. He had the reflex to take his weapon and in an almost simultaneous action, hurl his body from the chair, falling hard to the floor.

The two others were shot in the head immediately. The suppressed rounds making thin ugly sounds as the metallic objects found flesh and bone, smashing in and through, liquifying brain matter. The man on the floor had time to aim at one of the hitman's legs and fire. His shot smacked into the second killer's shin, shattering the bone and rendering that leg completely useless.

The first killer walked around the table and shot the quick body guard in the face. In this race, both the turtle and the hare got killed.

The second killer had arrested his fall with a hand braced to the table. He said under his breath, "Fuck."

The first killer nodded. "Stay here."

The first killer walked to a second door and opened it. The door was clearly soundproofed, because the classical music that had seeped through earlier, now came blasting like gang busters, or Beethoven, as was the case. The room was a wood paneled office with a leather bound mahogany desk and a library of legal texts, as well as an ostentatious sound system with analog amplifiers and multiple vacuum tubes glowing softly in the dim light.

The occupant of the room was a corpulent man in his sixties, currently smoking a cigar and enjoying a glass of brandy. A woman in her twenties knelt before him, performing fellatio in slow measured strokes. Both of them had their eyes closed. The first killer looked at the scene for a moment, taking it in. Long enough that the woman on her knees noticed. She stopped her activity and came to her feet, separating herself quickly from the fat man and wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

The killer put two 9mm bullets into his target's chest, and one in the head. The woman couldn't do much but stare at this in shock and awe. A few seconds later she also lost her life and joined the community of the dead.

* * *

Nine hours later, Viktor Reznikov leaned back in an easy chair. The conference room was up on the third floor of a commercial building in Allapattah. The morning view out the window was all beige and gray cement punctuated by the ubiquitous green. If the buildings disappeared, the jungle would take over.

One large screen showed the killing from last night. The bodyguards, then the fat man and his girlfriend. Reznikov reflected on that for a moment, a real girlfriend, now a whore. Not only the fat man's girlfriend, but everyone said it was love.

Well, that was sad enough. The other problem was on the other screen. The boss was beamed in from back home in Russia. She watched the feed with great intensity. For Zoya it was just after lunch, in St. Petersburg, and she looked hungry. Her eyes were heavily made up. Reznikov watched her for a while, Zoya leaning in watching the hit go down. They'd been over it at least five times already and she seemed mostly focused on the blow job.

They used the Russian language.

She said, "The way she tends to him so gently. I've never seen that before. Never even imagined it." Zoya looked right into the camera. "You ever get a blow job like that Reznikov?" She laughed, the sound coming out like a raspy cough.

Reznikov said, "We know who's coming at us Zoya. My plan is operational."

She just looked at the camera. Reznikov wondered how she had that kind of online presence. Usually people seemed remote, but Zoya was looking into his soul or something.

She said, "Tell me."

He said, "It's an asymmetrical approach. We go at them from the edges so that it's all rolled up cleanly."

"You're not just putting a fucking bullet in the bald guy's head - pizdets?"

Reznikov kept the mask on. He'd practiced in the mirror enough to know that he had a special face. The pale expressionless mask had carried him through the army, through several stints in prison, and finally through the year and a half training ordeal to be reborn as a Chekist.

He said, "I'm all for bullets in the head, but have some patience Zoya, if we engineer them into an American prison it'll be much better all around. We can even fuck with them harder and harder over time, while they're being pinned down by the law. I'm telling you, the fucking American cops are intense bitch."

Zoya grinned. "Who you calling bitch bitch."

On the monitor in front of him Reznikov watched the fat man getting shot in the face once more. He hadn't even managed to orgasm.

Zoya said, "You don't get blue balls in hell do you Viktor?"

Reznikov said, "Maybe that's all you get in hell."

She sobered up.

"Do your drip feed to the American law. That's fine. I'm sending the Kozlov brothers just in case. I don't want to see any more blue balls videos. You understand me?"

Reznikov said, "Loud and clear boss."

The video feed to St Petersburg was cut, and Reznikov was left alone in that anonymous Miami conference room looking at the fat man's CCTV loop starting up again. On the other side of the screen, the hit men entered the room and shot the bodyguards again. The fact that Reznikov knew all of the dead, personally, didn't change his feelings for them now, or lack of feelings. He felt literally nothing.