#thedayofthejackal

A 'Day of the Jackal' (TV series) fanfiction. ⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀ →⠀FANDOM: The Day of the Jackal (2024) →⠀RATING: NC-17 (No children under 17) →⠀WORD COUNT: 1,927 (Chapter 1) →⠀CHARACTERS: Alexander Duggan x Fem! User

↑⠀WARNINGS: Obscene lexicon, Violence, Deviations from the canon, cruelty, Rating for sex, Murders. ↑⠀TAGS: AU, Drama, Dark, Action, Thriller, Fem users, Second-person perspective is used, Female-pronouns is used, Depictions of blood. ⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀↓ SUMMARY ↓

Two elite hitmen — Alexander Duggan ("Jackal") and you ("Vex") receive parallel assignments from a mysterious client named Law, both targeting locations within the same building in Brussels. Unaware of each other’s presence, their operations collide, sparking a deadly game of survival that evolves into an uneasy alliance. ⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀CHAPTER 1: BLIND ORDER ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀→ BRUSSELS, LOUISE DISTRICT. TUESDAY, 9:47 P.M The rain had been pouring like a tipped-over bucket for four days straight, as if someone upstairs had forgotten to close the heavenly faucet. You stood by the window of your temporary hideout — an apartment on the sixth floor of the building opposite the Léopold Plaza, that glass‑and‑concrete monster where your client was supposed to appear tomorrow at noon. You looked at your own reflection in the wet glass: dark hair, almost black hair in a square, cheekbone sharp enough to cut paper, eyes devoid of any spark. You are Paloma Vex. Mercenary. A woman who was worth exactly as much on the black market as your last shot was worth. And the last shot had been cheap. Offensively cheap.

“Eight million euros,” you said out loud, and your voice sounded hollow, like a grave. “For a middleman. For some fucking middleman who just transfers money from one account to another. Law, you stingy bastard, shit.”

Law. No first name, no last name. Just a voice on the phone — calm, almost affectionate, like a psychiatrist telling a terminally ill patient that he would die in terrible agony. Law didn’t haggle. He just gave the number: “Eight. Clean work. No one should ever know he existed.” And you agreed. Because eight is better than zero. Because a month earlier you had blown a contract in Marseille, lost two intermediaries, and nearly lost your head. Your reputation was slipping through your fingers like meltwater. Eight million isn’t life‑changing money. It’s money that keeps you from starving for the next six months.

You stepped away from the window, poured whiskey into a cut‑glass tumbler (cheap bourbon bought at a supermarket — you weren’t drinking for company, just for ritual). You took a sip, coughed from the cheap bitterness, and looked at the weapons laid out on the table. Glock 19 with a suppressor for close contact. Sig Sauer P226 backup. The knife you called “Eleanor,” because all your knives had female names (a psychological quirk you never told anyone about). And the main piece — the rifle. Accuracy International AX308. Small, compact, mean. You ran your finger along the barrel like a lover’s spine. That thing had never let you down. Unlike people.

In a past life, before the world knew about you as the deadly Vex, you were a different person. The daughter of a Polish army officer who learned to strip an AK at seven. At eighteen you were recruited by the Polish Intelligence Agency. At twenty‑three you went freelance because the state paid peanuts, and killing for an idea was for fools. By thirty you had become what you were: a cold‑blooded bitch with nineteen confirmed kills and not a single arrest. But Marseille ruined it. A witness who survived. Cops who raised hell. An intermediary who leaked your name. Now you were here, in Brussels, for eight million, and it felt like exile.

“Tomorrow,” you said to the empty room. “Tomorrow I’ll blow that bastard’s brains out, get my pennies, and fuck off to Thailand. To hell with everything.”

You lay down on the sagging sofa without undressing. You didn’t want to sleep. You just wanted the rain to stop. But the rain didn’t stop. ⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀→ BRUSSELS, THE SAME NIGHT. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀HÔTEL MÉTROPOLE, NINTH‑FLOOR SUITE. Alexander Duggan looked at the city through a Leupold Mark 8 scope – not seriously, just to calm his nerves. The optics pulled in roofs, spires, wet streets where rare passers‑by hugged the walls. Through the scope the world seemed cold and distant, like a math problem. And that pleased the Jackal. Because he solved problems. And for solving them he was paid properly.

“Ninety million,” he said quietly, and his voice held neither mockery nor reverence. Just a statement of fact. As if he’d said “water is wet” or “tomorrow is Wednesday.”

Ninety million euros for one shot. The target – a man whose name the Jackal hadn’t even been told. Law, the client, had called through three reroutings and said only: “Brussels. Léopold Plaza. Second entrance. At twelve hundred hours. The target will be visible for fifteen seconds. That’s enough.” Alexander didn’t ask who it was. Didn’t ask why the fee was so insane. He answered: “Send coordinates and the advance. Thirty percent.” An hour later the money landed in a Cayman Islands account. Thirty million dollars for something he hadn’t even loaded his rifle for yet.

The Jackal lit a cigarette. Davidoff Magnum – the only luxury he allowed himself in the field. Smoke rose slowly to the ceiling, and Alexander watched it like an omen. He didn’t believe in omens. He believed in ballistic tables, wind‑to‑humidity ratios, and the certainty that the bullet from his Accuracy International AX338 would land exactly at the designated point at a distance of 878 meters. He had checked every calculation three times. Tomorrow at 12:00 local time he would pull the trigger, in 1.2 seconds the bullet would smash through an unknown man’s head, and thirty minutes later he would be on a plane to Singapore. Clean. Professional. Ruthless.

Thoughts of the past came rarely, but at night they always crawled under his skin. Alexander Duggan hadn’t been born a killer. His family was unknown, but it came from an ancient Scottish family. Sandhurst, the Life Guards, the elite sniper school. Then Afghanistan, where he first understood that killing wasn’t frightening. It was easy. Even pleasant if you watched through the scope as bodies fell and you knew that you were the god at that distance. After Afghanistan came special forces, missions never spoken of. And then came the incident. A village massacre. An order he didn’t obey. Well, he did obey it, but not the way his commanders had wanted. He killed his own men. Everyone who had given the orders. He staged an explosion, took the documents, and vanished. From that day, Alexander Duggan ceased to exist. There was only the Jackal. A loner. A legend. A man who never left witnesses, who worked without middlemen, who charged ninety million for a shot.

He stubbed out the cigarette, walked to the table, and turned on the laptop. On the screen – a diagram of the building. Léopold Plaza: 24 floors, three entrances, two levels of parking. His target – the second entrance, eighteenth floor, an office facing southeast. The Jackal had chosen a position at the Bristol Hotel, 21st floor, a suite with a balcony. Distance to target: 630 meters. Not a very difficult range. Wind – 3.2 meters per second, gusts up to five. Humidity – 89%. Rain would be an inconvenience but not critical. The 338 Lapua Magnum bullet with an expanding core would pierce the glass and continue into the skull. Entry point – left eye. Standard.

Alexander closed the laptop and lay down on the bed. He would sleep for two hours. At exactly 5:00 a.m., wake‑up, final gear check, disguise. He had already chosen tomorrow’s face: a bald man around sixty, with a beard and thick‑rimmed glasses. The prosthetic makeup would take an hour. Another hour — travel to the hotel, checking corridors, setting up the rifle. At 11:30 he had to be in position. Not one second later.

The thought that in the same building, one floor below, someone else was preparing an operation never crossed his mind. Because the Jackal didn’t know about you. And you didn’t know about the Jackal. Loo, your mutual client, hadn’t seen fit to warn you about each other. It was in his interest that you not cross paths. Two targets in one building, two operators, two different contracts. What could go wrong? ⠀⠀

⠀⠀ You were already on your feet. You drank three cups of instant coffee, ate an apple, and put on a black pantsuit that made you look like an insurance agent. Hair in a bun, thin‑framed glasses, low‑heeled shoes. In your bag – a disassembled rifle, two pistols, three magazines, gloves, and a passport in the name of Marta Kowalska. You left the apartment at 8:15, rode two stops on the metro, bought a croissant at a bakery (took a bite, spit it out – tasteless). At 9:00 you were already in the building opposite Léopold Plaza. On the sixth floor, in an empty office you had rented through a shell company.

You assembled the rifle in seven minutes. Checked the optics, the sight rail, the suppressor. You knew your target – a middleman named Hendrik van der Meer. Dutch, fifty‑two years old, works for the Medellín cartel. Lives in the suburbs but comes to Brussels once a week to pick up money. Today he would receive a suitcase with three million euros and take it to Antwerp. But he wouldn’t get there. You had been ordered to eliminate van der Meer at the moment of the money handover. At 12:00 he was supposed to drive up to Léopold Plaza, enter the second entrance, go up to the twelfth floor, to the cartel accountant’s office. You had a direct line of sight – that window there, fourth from the left, on the twelfth floor. Distance – 290 meters. Laughable for you.

You set the rifle on its tripod, sat down on a chair you’d already tested for squeaks, and froze. Two hours and forty minutes to wait.

“Law,” you whispered, “if you screw me over, I will find you, your mother, and your cat. And I will bury all three in one grave. Two meters deep. Headfirst.”

The thought that on the eighteenth floor of that same building, in two hours, someone’s head would explode from a 338 caliber bullet didn’t cross your mind. Because you didn’t know about the Jackal. And the Jackal, for his part, didn’t even suspect that one floor below a cheap mercenary would be working for a pathetic eight million. Two worlds. Two targets. One spectator – Law, who was probably sitting somewhere in the shadows, smiling at a screen where two red dots were converging toward noon. ⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ → BRUSSELS, WEDNESDAY ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀11:47 A.M. The Jackal took his position. Bristol Hotel, 21st floor, suite 2104. Rifle assembled, suppressor screwed on, scope calibrated. Alexander looked at the window on the eighteenth floor of Léopold Plaza. The light was on. He saw silhouettes moving inside, but not his target. The target would arrive in thirteen minutes. The Jackal breathed evenly. His heart rate did not exceed fifty beats per minute. His inner monologue was empty. No “what ifs.” No doubts. Only calculation.

Downstairs, in the office across the street, you were also waiting. You saw the black Mercedes stop at the second entrance. A man in a gray coat stepped out — Hendrik van der Meer. He lit a cigarette, glanced at his watch, walked toward the door. You aimed the scope at the fourth window from the left. Soon. One more minute.

Law, wherever he was, looked at two screens. On one — the thermal imaging from your position. On the other — the Jackal’s ballistic calculator. He smiled. Two bullets. Two corpses. One day. Works like a fucking charm.

But a charm is also an illusion. Because in three minutes everything would go off plan. And the Jackal and you would hear each other. Not directly, but through the echo of gunshots, through the tremor in the walls, through that very second when your bullet would miss its target because his bullet would distract, shift, change the trajectory.

But for now silence. Only the rain. Only shadows on the glass. Only the tips of your fingers on the trigger.

“Time,” whispered the Jackal. “Come on, bitch,” you whispered. And at 12:00, both of you pulled the triggers. ⠀