Half an hour before the shot.
Not far from the basement.
The air in the alley was thick and still, smelling of dust, heated asphalt, and the sweetish stench of overripe fruit from the garbage bins. Behind a low concrete fence, from which gray paint was peeling, a man with dark-blond hair that fell to his eyes in the front and nearly to his shoulder blades in the back was moving unhurriedly, almost at a walking pace. His white shirt with small black patterns, like a scattering of spiders, was the only bright spot in this dismal landscape.
He walked the entire length of the fence, and his gaze, cold and distracted, slid over the rusty garbage bins, as if checking their location against some internal map. Without slowing his pace for a second, he headed towards an inconspicuous entrance door, once painted dark green, now faded to a swampy hue. But a couple of steps away from it, his smooth movement was almost imperceptibly disrupted — not a stop, but rather a barely perceptible hesitation in his rhythm, a micro-pause, when his whole body froze in anticipation.
"A-a-a-a…!"
As if from underground, a muffled, impersonal echo of someone's scream was heard. The sound was short, cut off mid-word, as if someone's hand had abruptly cut off the source of the sound. The man did not turn around, did not change his posture; only his lips, until then pressed into a neutral line, slowly spread into a wide, joyless smile. It did not touch his eyes, which remained cold and focused.
His attention switched to the object opposite the entrance — a black dome of a surveillance camera, discreetly embedded under the eaves. The man made a wide arc, deliberately moving himself out of its field of view. He bent over a pathetic lawn with withered yellow grass and, without haste, picking up a flat stone that fit comfortably in his palm, threw it with a short, sharp movement. The stone hit the lens with a click. The glass crunched, and the small red light on the camera body immediately went out.
Only now did he return to the door. The click of the lock sounded deafeningly loud in the sudden silence. The door gave way inward, and in the doorway, blocking the semi-darkness of the corridor, appeared a sullen guy. His skin was dark, as if saturated with sun and wind, and a carefree Hawaiian shirt with bright flowers screamed of a desire for a vacation that never came. The guard's gaze slid over the white collar, rose higher — and his face, despite the deep tan, seemed to turn gray from within.
"T-Tae Sagi!?"
The other man just smirked.
The guy instinctively jerked backward, his hand, as if on autopilot, reaching for the back pocket of his pants, where the heavy outline of a weapon could be discerned. But his movement was doomed from the very start.
Tae Sagi, without making a single unnecessary movement, with stone-like efficiency, pivoted on the ball of his foot and delivered a short, whip-like blow with his elbow. The trajectory was calculated to the millimeter — the hard joint crunched into the opponent's neck, right into the hollow under the ear. The guard's body went limp, as if his power had been suddenly switched off, and fell heavily to the floor without making a sound.
Tae Sagi stepped over the shapeless heap in the Hawaiian shirt as one steps over a puddle. He pushed the door, and it swung open, releasing a wave of dense, stifling air saturated with the smell of cheap tobacco and the spicy, insistent notes of Thai music coming from the depths of the building.
He stepped inside, into the semi-darkness of the corridor, and moved forward along the squeaky linoleum. His footsteps were silent. At the end of the corridor, by the only door, another guard was on duty — a muscular, tanned guy in a tight red tank top, showing off his biceps. Tae Sagi stopped in front of him, and the guard, lowering his gaze to this uninvited guest, uttered with a note of stupid surprise:
"Hm?"
"You're not much of a talker," Tae Sagi chuckled. "May I pass?"
The muscular guy in the red tank top didn't answer. Instead of words, his high-cheekboned face twisted into a grimace of rage, and his hand jerked towards the holster on his belt. But Tae Sagi was already moving, his body, relaxed a moment ago, coiling into a lethal spring. He didn't jump back, but, on the contrary, took a step forward, into the zone where an elbow strike is more effective than a shot. His left hand, like a hammer, came down on the guard's wrist, knocking the pistol out with a crunch. His right hand, describing a short arc, drove its knuckles into the solar plexus.
The guy gasped, the air whistling out of his lungs. He tried to grab the attacker in a bear hug, but Tae Sagi was elusive. He jumped back half a step, allowing the opponent's inertia to work against him, and, catching his thrown-back head, jerked it sharply towards himself, meeting it with a rising knee. The sound was dull and wet. The guard silently sank to the floor, turning into a shapeless heap of muscles.
Tae Sagi paused for a moment, adjusting his shirt cuff. The same carefree smile played on his face, as if he had just exchanged a few pleasantries with an old friend, and not neutralized two men in ten seconds. He stepped over the body and pushed the door.
The room turned out to be a spacious hall filled with poker tables. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the smell of cheap whiskey. The music coming from the speakers muffled his quiet entrance, but not for long. Six men sitting at the cards froze, staring at the uninvited guest. Their eyes showed not so much surprise as a slow, heavy realization of the threat.
One of them, a stocky Thai with a scar across his eye, was the first to come to his senses.
"Tae Sagi?" he hissed. "You were put away!"
"So I was," Tae Sagi agreed easily, slowly moving deeper into the room, his eyes sliding over their faces, assessing, calculating. "But, you see, the prison library has such a meager selection of literature. I decided my education required continuation here."
He stopped in the middle of the hall, spreading his arms to the sides, showing his empty palms.
"I'm not here for blood. Although," his gaze fell on a pistol lying on the table, "judging by your expressions, you insist on a more dramatic scenario."
Two men to the left of the scarred one rushed for the weapons hanging on the backs of their chairs. Tae Sagi didn't wait. He sharply kicked the nearest table, and it slid with a crash towards the attackers, knocking one off his feet. The second one managed to draw a Beretta, but didn't have time to fire.
Tae Sagi, using the sliding table as a springboard, made a short jump and, landing right in front of the shooter, seized his armed hand. A jerk towards himself, a sharp turn of the back — and the opponent flew over his shoulder with a cry, landing on the floor with an unnaturally twisted limb.
The remaining three froze in indecision. Tae Sagi's strategy was simple: he never remained in the line of fire of more than two people at a time, constantly moving, using furniture and the opponents themselves as living shields.
"I just want to talk," he continued, as his leg, following through with its momentum, slammed into the kneecap of a third fighter, forcing him to double over in pain. "About who so kindly provided my dossier to the law enforcement. An interesting puzzle, don't you think?"
The scarred Thai, clearly the senior in this company, slowly rose to his feet.
"We don't know anything!" he growled. "You've got the wrong address, you bastard!"
"Oh, I'm rarely wrong," Tae Sagi smiled, picking up a knife someone had dropped from the floor. He spun it in his fingers with incredible dexterity. "For example, I know for a fact that your weapons cache is behind that very door with the red 'No Entry' sign at the end of the corridor. And I know the code for the lock is the birthday of your boss Chanrat's son. Sentimental, but short-sighted."
Genuine horror flashed across the Thais' faces. This information was known only to a select few.
"How did you..." one began.
"I know a lot of things," Tae Sagi interrupted him, his voice suddenly losing all its playfulness and turning cold as steel. "I know that one of you received a very large transfer in exchange for pointing the finger at me. I know that someone is looking at me right now, trying not to give himself away. But you see, that's the beauty of it—I don't need you to name him for me."
He took a step towards the scarred Thai.
"I just need you all to understand: the game has changed. Your informant is already mine. Your security is compromised. Your weapons..." he glanced at the door with the red sign, "...are already mine."
With these words, he abruptly threw the knife. The blade thudded into the wall a centimeter from the scarred Thai's ear, not touching him, but utterly severing any will to resist.
"Y-you...!"
"Heh-heh." Tae Sagi swiftly drew a Glock from under his shirt.
BANG!
"Huh?"
BANG! BANG!
The echo of the gunshots rolled through the entire building. Before the scarred Thai could process that the first shot had been into the ceiling, the other two bullets from Tae Sagi flew right into his forehead. His head snapped back with an unnatural, frightening suddenness, like a puppet whose strings had been suddenly cut. His body, not yet receiving the signal of death, went limp and crashed heavily to the floor. Muscles, deprived of control, lived their own convulsive life—fingers curled, limbs thrashing in agony beat against the sticky, warm floor, tracing clumsy patterns in the scarlet muck.
A tomb-like silence fell over the room, broken only by the hiss of the speakers from which a saccharine Thai pop medody still played. The three remaining Thais froze, their faces masks of shock. Two of them—a stocky guy with a snake tattoo on his neck and the one whose arm Tae Sagi had dislocated just a minute ago—slowly shifted their gazes to the third, a skinny man in glasses.
Tae Sagi leisurely shook the drops of blood from his knuckles and turned to them. The carefree smile was playing on his lips again.
"Well now," he said, his voice obscenely loud in the silence. "Consider act one complete. Your acting skills, my friends, are simply boundless. Especially yours, Pon. The scream when I broke your arm was very convincing. A real Oscar performance."
The skinny man in glasses took them off and nervously wiped the lenses on the edge of his shirt.
"It wasn't difficult, Sagi-nim. Chalerm was always an idiot. And when an idiot believes he's in control, he goes blind."
"Precisely," Tae Sagi walked over to the table, picked up a half-empty bottle of whiskey, looked at it against the light, grimaced, and set it aside. "The local boss has gone to feed the worms. The weapons he was hoarding now belong to the Tae family. It's a good day."
The second Thai, with the snake tattoo, nodded, approaching Chalerm's body.
"He recognized you immediately. Said if you showed up, we were to shoot without talking. Pity he didn't know his right and left hand had been working for you for a long time."
"Information is currency, Kan," Tae Sagi stretched, his vertebrae cracking with pleasure. "And in prison, I was forced to become a very, very rich man. Now, the plan. Pack everything. Every piece, every pack of powder. You know where to take it."
Pon and Kan nodded, setting to work. The third one, with the dislocated arm, just sat there, paling from the pain.
Tae Sagi walked over to him.
"And you, my friend, we need to work a bit on your believability."
With a sharp, precise movement, he popped his arm back into place. The man cried out, but then exhaled in relief.
"Thank you, Sagi-nim."
"Don't mention it. Now listen carefully, all of you," Tae Sagi sat on the edge of the table, his posture relaxed, but his eyes, cold and sharp, scanned the room. "When your real boss, old man Chanrat, asks what happened here, you will tell him this. You will say one man stormed in here. You will say it wasn't a raid, but an execution. Targeted and merciless."
He paused, letting the words sink in.
"You will say this man left a message for Chanrat. You will say he called him an 'old blind dog who forgot who feeds him.' And you will say that if he wants to know what happened to his weapons and how his personal spy led him by the nose for years, he can find me the day after tomorrow at midnight at the place where the Tae family and the Thais usually meet. Only him and a maximum of three people, which, as you've guessed, will be you, but don't you dare ask to come along, he'll invite you himself. And if he doesn't meet these conditions, the next bullet won't be for his lackey, but for his only son in Bangkok. Did you get that?"
"Yes, Sagi-nim," Pon and Kan chorused.
"Excellent. Chanrat is a panicker and a paranoid. He won't investigate. Hearing that his scheme has collapsed and his son is under threat, his first move will be to call my uncle, Tae Hwan. He will scream, accuse, demand explanations. And my uncle..." Tae Sagi grinned widely, and there wasn't a trace of warmth in that smile, "...my uncle can't stand being yelled at. Especially by losers. This will sow discord. It will make him doubt the loyalty of his old allies. And it will buy me time."
He jumped off the table and headed for the exit, stepping over Chalerm's body.
"And now, gentlemen, clean this place up. And make it pretty. We have a reputation, after all."
Pon, adjusting his glasses, coughed uncertainly.
"Sagi-nim... what about the snitch? The one who turned you in to the police?"
Tae Sagi stopped at the door, without turning around. His shoulders tensed slightly.
"Oh, don't you worry about him. I've already arranged a meeting."
He walked out, leaving them in the room reeking of gunpowder, blood, and betrayal. Pon and Kan exchanged glances. In their eyes was not just fear, but a soul-chilling understanding.
"So... Chanrat was the one who turned him in!?"
"!!!"