PROLOGUE

Richard and his colleagues huddled behind the wall.

It was a cold and windy night, the ground still wet from the heavy downpour earlier.

He felt his holster to see if his sidearm was still present. Obviously it was, but this was a habit Richard found hard to kick ever since the incident.

He was just a rookie cop then, an Inspector fresh out of the Academy and it was his first "real" assignment.

He had been tasked to supervise the cordon of a crime scene when he noticed a suspicious character lurking in the shadows. Full of verve and youthful enthusiasm, he confronted the suspect who ran, and he gave chase, neglecting to call for backup.

He ended up in an alley and soon found himself outnumbered three to one. Not that he was going to give up, but the odds were not in his favour.

He remembered reaching for his revolver and realising that it was not there.

Things almost went downhill when the thugs realised that he was not armed, and closed in for him.

Fortunately for Richard, a Senior Staff Sergeant in his cordon team had noticed his disappearance and arrived in the nick of time with four others and arrested the thugs.

But where was his gun?

The Senior Staff Sergeant pulled Richard aside and silently handed him his revolver. The retaining cord had been cut and it has fallen out from his holster while he gave chase.

Since then, despite being in plain-clothes most of the time, and having a secured holster, Richard always checked the whereabouts of his sidearm, in this case, a 9mm H&K USP.

Richard was now an Assistant Superintendent with the Specialised Crime Branch and his team were following up on a lead about an entity they only knew as "Uncle Alfonso". In this day and age, triads were relatively unheard of in Singapore, and the mysterious tip-off about "Uncle Alfonso" raised many eyebrows amongst Richard's bosses. However, no lead should be left alone and Richard's team was given the task of investigating.

The four of them, though it was not his full team, were lying in wait outside a warehouse in an industrial estate in the Northern part of the island. Preliminary scans of the area detected no activity, but Richard was none the wiser.

Having located a back entrance, they planned to breach the door and sweep the place.

They crept up slowly to the entrance.

Just as Station Inspector Tony was about break the door down, Richard's team received instructions over the communications set.

"Viper team, this is HQ, abort. I repeat, ABORT!"