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yet?” a thick Russian accent mocked. “Well that will soon be problem easily solved.”
    Everything seemed to slow down. The Russian raised his gun, pointing it directly at Martin’s face, while at the same time Martin lifted his own weapon through a frustrating fog, managing to squeeze off a single shot before sliding into nothingness.
     
    * * * *
     
    Martin awoke to pain. Pain and the sound of sirens blaring in the distance.
    His entire left side erupted in flames and briefly he wished to return to the absolution of unconsciousness. His head slumping to the left, Martin saw what remained of his friend and partner. Half of Steve’s skull had been sheered away and he now lay crumpled on the floor, a look of terror still glinting in his eyes.
    A low cough turned Martin’s attention towards the gunman Steve had wounded. Remarkably, the man was still alive and crawling towards the staircase. The body of the second gunman lay dead on the carpet, blood dribbling from the wound in his chest: the shot Martin had somehow managed to discharge before passing out.
    What happened next would have appeared comical were it under different circumstances. Martin commenced probably the slowest pursuit in his police department’s history. Crawling excruciatingly after the Russian, finally managing the strength to stand and stumble across the hallway, he caught his prey at the top of the stairs.
    The Russian resisted, but Martin managed to overpower him and awkwardly cuffed his hands behind his back. Kneeling beside the gunman, he took a moment to catch his breath. The sirens were almost at the apartment complex, and Martin knew he had to work fast to get the information he needed.
    “Who do you work for, you Ruski bastard?” he growled at the bleeding Russian.
    “I don’t talk to dead men,” rasped the man on the floor. Blood gurgled from his mouth, and Martin knew he had little time before the man died. He glanced back at the body of his dead friend and took the first step on a path that would eventually dominate his entire life. 
    Martin grabbed the hair of the dying man and pushed two fingers from his other hand into the hole in his chest. The man howled in torment. For a moment Martin thought he’d gone too far, and the man would pass out or die from the pain, but the Russian held strong. He slumped back to the carpet when Martin removed his fingers, disbelief flashing across his features.
    “You police cannot do such things,” he gasped incredulously.
    “I just did asshole. Now tell me what I need to know.”
    The Russian paused, seeming to consider the request, but when Martin moved his hand back to the man’s wound his eyes widened in fear.
    “Romolov! I work for Romolov!” he rasped through the blood now steadily flowing from his mouth. “It does not matter. You are dead man.”
    “Speak for yourself,” Martin snarled. The Russian’s lungs filled with fluid and he finally expired.
     
    * * * *
     
    Several weeks passed before Martin finally left the hospital. He’d managed to attend Steve’s funeral where little Angelique placed a single red rose on the coffin. A tender sign of farewell. Steve’s wife Samantha had been an inconsolable mess. At the wake she drank herself into a stupor and had to be carried to the bed she would no longer share with her husband.
    The investigation into the killing was taken over by the FBI once the name Romolov appeared in Martin’s report. Apparently they’d been building a case against the syndicate for several months, and Martin’s testimony would hammer the final nail into the coffin.
    So they said.
    After the murder of his friend, Martin felt only too willing to be the one to put the offenders behind bars for good.
    His wife Catherine wasn’t so sure. Since Martin’s release from hospital, the family had begun to receive strange phone calls. The receiver would echo eerily, or reverberate with a singular hiss:
    “ Silence! ”
    Martin had no doubt as to the origin of