The CCTV system ignored my approach.

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Woods’ surveillance set-up was a poor one. It had been installed by an outside security firm and was linked over the internet to the company, so they could provide assistance in the case of breakdowns. Connecting a system to the net meant someone like me could hack it. I’d done this a day earlier and programmed the system to redisplay the previous night’s footage. Since the location and weather were the same, and since all the guards wore the same smart grey uniforms, no one studying the CCTV feeds would be any the wiser until it was too late.

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I climbed up onto the brick wall beside one of the sightless security cameras. Lying flat and hidden by the shadows of a nearby tree, I peered into the inner garden.

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The guards were patrolling as they always did: three two-man/one-dog teams plus the solo-big-SOB team, all moving clockwise around the house. Every team maintained an equal distance between the team behind and ahead. They used their torches like mini-searchlights.

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If you attack such patrols clockwise, your first kills will be found by the time you attack the third group. Instead, you go anticlockwise, so every team is walking towards you and no one finds a victim.

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Silence was the key. First, I used a small handset device to jam all radio transmissions – so no guard could call for help – then I drew both pistols and moved in for the kill.

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Normally, my scent would have alerted the dogs from a distance. My body odours were masked by a rub-on tonic. I smelt partly like foliage, partly like soil and a little like dog crap. However, this wasn’t enough to fool the animals up close. I had to crouch in the zone of blackness inside the brick wall, weapons-ready and absolutely still. When the first team were in range, I aimed and fired with devastating results.

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The dog took a bullet in the head, killing it outright. This gave the two guards an instant to stare at their collapsing animal before a shot slammed through each man’s forehead. I approached, putting another round into each victim just to be sure. Once their torches were switched off, plunging the corpses into darkness, I moved on.

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My first targets had been located to the right of the main section of the building – at a position out of sight from the glass windows of the mansion. I killed the second group just beyond the next corner of the building, and the third dog-leading team behind the house. Everything went smoothly. I could imagine those six men standing outside Heaven’s Gates asking: “What the hell happened?”

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I had left the big man for last. Experience told me to be wary of such a giant. Some big men had thick skulls and even my heavy-piercing rounds might have trouble punching through into his brain. Others could take a lot of bullets to the chest and still not go down easy...

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And the man who I knew to be approaching was ‘big’ in a league of his own. I’d spied him to be well over seven feet tall. Rather than being slender like a basketball player, he was almost as broad as he was high. A brutish mountain of muscle. His head seemed oversized even for such a giant, with a mop of greyish hair and a thuggish, heavy-jawed face. I wanted to take this guy down fast and hard. Bullets might just piss him off.

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I took a torch from one of the dead guards, placed it right next to the wall and switched it back on. The flashlight’s lens was touching the brick and this created a small, strange halo of light. I climbed up the wall and waited, soundless and motionless.

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My final guard’s approach was akin to the slow tread of the Frankenstein monster. From fifty yards away, he discerned the light-spot I had created and he ran for it. His torch-beam zigzagged ahead of him...

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If I could still my heartbeat, I would have. I was lying a dozen paces along the wall, but bad luck might have had him glimpse me. Instead, the huge man stomped past and I found myself behind and left of him. Rising stealthily, I came up into a crouch and then leapt... feet first.

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The first thing he would have known was my legs soaring down past his right shoulder. The second was the steely grasp of my hands around his head... Followed by his head and neck being twisted viciously by the combination of my grasp and the arc of my rushing body. His head was twisted right around over his left shoulder with a sickening snap of breaking bone...

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Releasing hold, I landed nimbly on my feet a few paces from the giant. I turned around to watch the dead man fall...

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And the impossible happened.

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The giant was standing, teetering. Although his broad chest was facing me, the back of his head was visible above it – I’d turned the head 180 degrees. His hands went up and grasped at the head...

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“Fall, you bastard...” I found myself hissing.

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He didn’t. His hands wrenched at his twisted head and rotated the face back forwards. Beneath the chin of his Neanderthal face, the flesh of his neck looked like a towel that had been wrung out tight... The hands lowered... And his head lolled to the left on the broken neck.

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An expression of supreme agony had marred the man’s ugly visage. Now this twisted into one of utter hatred and fury.

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When he attacked, it wasn’t with the lumbering speed of Frankenstein’s monster – he was fast and as agile on his feet as a dancer. He took a single stride forwards and lashed his right foot out and upwards for my face—

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The blow would have disintegrated my skull, leaving only a mix of mushy brain matter and broken bone... I reacted by crossing my hands in front of my face and relaxing my body... So instead of shattering both my arms, the giant only managed to send me hurtling back.

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I twisted in mid-air, landed on my right shoulder and rolled over. In a split-second, I would have been on my feet and striking back – but the big man was already attacking again. A foot crashed down where my head had briefly been and a hand arced in a karate blow, akin to a swung steel spade.

Only my continuing motion kept me from suffering the full force of his deadly hand... Fingertips grazed my right shoulder blade, bruising flesh and bone.

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I rolled, scrambled and lunged using all the speed I had. If I didn’t put some distance between us, I was dead.

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I heard the heavy thuds of the giant rushing after me.

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Being a professional, I normally sought elegant, skilled solutions to problems. Facing this... this whatever-he-was... I knew I had to abandon skill and just go for raw power.

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I rose to my feet, drawing my pistols with the speed of a gunslinger. Another man might have gasped in disbelief at how close my enemy was – his outstretched hands were almost upon me, about to shatter my head and punch through my chest. I simply fired, point-blank into the giant’s face, even as it lolled about on the broken neck.

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Holes slammed into his cheekbones; into those hating eyes; into his forehead; into his open, roaring mouth...

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He reeled back, clutching at his ruined face.

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And crumpled to crash onto the grass.

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The giant was motionless and unquestionably dead. I stood over him and emptied the rest of my bullet-clips into his head, to be certain.

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A minute later, I was heading towards the front of the house. My reasoning brain was trying to explain the big man: surely, he had some kind of bone malformation, which meant I had dislocated rather than snapped his neck..? Yeah, that was it. All the breaking bones I’d heard were only my imagination...

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I kept looking back. Just to check, you know... that he was... still dead.

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