John left at his usual time to go home. He had some inkling as to what they were about to do but didn’t ask questions to which he didn’t want an answer. Balt was relieved he didn’t have to suggest John go home early. He wanted a drama-free night and a clear head for their first op.

Balt needed to get his mind off what was about to happen. With nothing to do but wait for Jack Nosey to show up, he stepped into the winery to hang out with Amanda. She was straightening up, and it occurred to him he would feel better if she weren’t around. He started hovering around the tasting counter and cleaning wine glasses to speed up her departure.

“What are you doing?” asked Amanda, looking at him sideways.

“I’m helping. I thought I’d clean some glasses and straighten up so you could go home early,” said Balt.

“Are you OK? You’re trembling, and your voice sounds strange,” said Amanda.

“I’m fine. Too much coffee and too many long hours lately,” said Balt.

“Well, if you really want to help, you can take the cases of empty bottles out to the garage for recycling. That’s my least favorite part of this job, and besides, I don’t want you cleaning glasses. You have many talents, Balt, but cleaning glasses is not one of them. You don’t have to sort through them in front of the customers.”

Balt got the hand truck from the garage, stacked the cases of empty bottles, and took them to the garage. He was still trembling, and Amanda was watching him like a hawk. Now, his stomach was cramping. He suspected he would spend the next two hours in the bathroom disgorging the contents of his bowels. At least multiple rounds of intestinal distress would provide a distraction. “All right. I guess I’ll leave you to it,” said Balt as he went back into the small dome and directly to the bathroom.

Amanda’s eyebrow went up as she watched him disappear into the dome.

As he predicted, he spent the next two hours going in and out of the bathroom, dealing with waves of nervous diarrhea that were wringing every last drop of water out of his body. On the plus side, he felt almost serene after re-hydrating and oddly prepared to execute their first op. Balt hoped he could go through with it when the time came. He had convinced John and Ethan to do this, and he didn’t want to let them down.

Ethan had the video feed of Jack Nosey’s deck projecting on the dome’s ceiling. The dome looked like mission control at NASA. Right on schedule, Jack Nosey climbed the handful of steps to the upper deck and sat in the chaise as they had expected. He usually brought papers to read, but tonight, he was empty-handed; all the better to get a clean shot. Jack Nosey settled into the chaise, stretched his hands behind his head, and looked up at the sky. It couldn’t be more perfect.

Ethan sent the command to reverse the bias on the thermoelectric cooler to begin thawing the outer skin of the ice bullet to free it from the helical mold. Suddenly, Jack’s wife came into view carrying a wine bottle and glasses.

“Shit!” yelled Balt.

“What do you want to do, Balt? If we wait too long, the ice bullet will melt too much and lose velocity. We have to shoot within the next minute or not at all,” said Ethan calmly.

“Wait. We can’t shoot with her there. We can’t have any witnesses to how he was killed. Traumatizing his wife wasn’t part of the plan,” said Balt.

Then, Jack Nosey gestured to his wife as though she had forgotten something, maybe cheese and crackers. No. She didn’t have a wine opener. She made a gesture of frustration and stomped off the deck, mad she had to walk all the way downstairs to the kitchen to get a wine opener; first-world problems. Jack settled back into the chaise, put his hands behind his head, and looked up at the sky again.

Ethan increased the magnification on the targeting camera, reducing the field of view to just Jack Nosey’s head and neck. Balt watched as the piezoelectric transducers made a fine adjustment so that the crosshairs came to rest on a spot below his chin.

“Balt? Can I fire?” asked Ethan.

Balt was silent and seemed frozen.

“Balt! Can I fire?” asked Ethan again.

“Yes,” said Balt in a timid voice.

Ethan pressed the ENTER key, and a few seconds later, the video image jerked and became foggy as the mist from the barrel briefly filled the field of view. They were temporarily blinded until Ethan lowered the magnification on the targeting camera to take in the whole scene again. There, slumped in his chaise, with his chin resting on his chest and a stream of blood pouring out from a wound they couldn’t see, Jack Nosey was dead. There were no death throes, only a limp, dead body. The bullet had hit him under his jaw and hit the brain stem. It was as clean a kill as they could have hoped for, with no suffering. The lights were on one second and off the next.

“Balt. Do we go or do we stay? The wife could be back any moment,” said Ethan.

Balt was transfixed by the reality of what they had just done. He didn’t answer immediately but then regained his composure. “Go, go, go!” yelled Balt.

Ethan hit the ENTER key again to execute the preprogrammed EXFIL protocol. The image vibrated as the motors spooled up. There was a sudden jerk as the tentacles unevenly let go of the branch, causing the drone to pitch about thirty degrees before the microelectromechanical gyros reestablished level flight. Balt and Ethan watched as the video showed an overview of the scene, indicating the drone was slowly rising and extricating itself from the branches of the Cypress tree. There was a minor jerk as the tentacles retracted against the body. The drone accelerated rapidly away from the scene. They watched a scenic aerial tour of the Cliffside neighborhood as the drone headed for a water tower at the top of the hill.

The water tower appeared less than a minute later as the drone zeroed in on its GPS waypoint. As it approached the water tower, the AI turned on the chip-scale LIDAR sensors, and the screen was filled with a ghostly 3D image of the tower’s surface. The drone selected a spot with a southern exposure near the top of the water tower and deployed the tentacles. There was a violent jerk as the magnetic clamp held fast to the steel surface of the water tower. Then, the image was still. Ethan rotated the targeting camera down and in a circle to inspect the tentacles. All four tentacles flattened against the rounded surface of the water tower to stabilize the drone against high winds. Ethan spun the camera so that it was looking at the Pacific Ocean, sat back in his chair, and took a deep breath. It was a perfect op, and it was over.