Featured image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay

Wait, I’m a bit lost” interjected Giant. A really nice guy, but a long way from the sharpest tool in the shed. “You were disassembling the gun on the way down and everything was inside of the building where security was streaming from in your direction.”

Correct.”

Well, wasn’t it a custom gun so it would trace back to you or your supply chain? How long were you there if you had to make a custom bullet? And how did you manage to get the diamonds and Krugerrands?”

God no. I couldn’t even tell you what the gun was, exactly. I stole it out of his inventory. He had a warehouse not too far from where he lived. The gun should have been in a museum. Then again, so should much of what I found at that end of the warehouse. The irony of him being killed by one of the very guns he was trying to sell made me smile. It was exactly what I needed and there was even a small box of ammo. Well, the ammo was never small, but there was a field bag which had a handful of rounds, each in an individual slot. The only thing I had to do was obtain a rubber butt pad for it and pray the ammunition was still viable. The bullets for it are pretty much what I described to you. A hardened steel core with softer metal on the outside to get it down the barrel. Roughly a 13 mm bullet. Massive in size though. It was designed to let a two man team take out the kind of armored vehicles they had near the end of World War I. At 100 meters it could go through a ¾ inch steel plate.”

Then why tell us how to make such a bullet?” queried Giant.

If you live long enough in this line of work you will need to know” piped up Stretch. “We can’t always get up close and personal and we can’t always sneak a Henry into the kitchen.”

Besides” I answered. “Just how many of those World War I era things are still around and only lightly secured? Anything newer and better will have to be provided by some government or military and they aren’t big on handing out the good toys to in and out contractors. If you are going to be boots on the ground in some theater for six months or more, sure, but for a single hit, they won’t part with it.”

You were lucky that thing still fired without blowing up in your face” said Slim. I noticed he was using the burner smart phone and looking up the weapon. He currently had up one of those black and white photos showing a two man team operating the thing.”

When you are twenty-something you believe you are both bullet proof and immortal. When you are thirty-something you believe you are immortal. After you crest past forty you realize the cart is getting full and the check out counter isn’t that many isles away” I responded.

You still haven’t answered about the diamonds and Krugerrands” piped up Giant. “They were on the other side of security.”

So?”

So, you want us to believe that you hacked your way through a Russian mob security force?” asked Giant a bit emphatically.

I like the emphasis placed on the word you, Giant. While it’s true I’m a long way from the picture of youth and physical fitness you lads present, I wasn’t always a tired old man. To answer your question, no, I didn’t hack my way through them, I ran towards them, pretty much through the center. They were fanning out trying to encircle an escaping assassin. I tried to stay on clear frozen ground after making some tracks in the snow going the way they expected, tossing parts of the gun. Everybody expects a sniper to either hold still or run away. Nobody expects them to run through the center of a line. Even fewer expected me to run inside the house and crack the safe in the same room as my target.”

Our employers paid me ten thousand dollars and provided transportation to do that hit. I was told that small pouch of diamonds was worth north of twenty million. To this day I have no idea what the Krugerrands were worth. Some were melted down and sold off to fund other operations.”

Make no mistake about it lads” I continued. “What we do is not meant to be special or in a Hollywood movie. We are never supposed to live to tell about it. I was supposed to die in the field a long time ago. I’ve worked with a lot of different mechanics. None have ever retired to a beach. Some have had good lives but none were allowed to ride off into the sunset. At least none that I can confirm. We are supposed to die on a job, leaving everyone’s hands clean.”

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