“Morning.” Smiled Mike. “Sleep well?”
“Little hung-over, nothing I haven’t had before.” she groggily groaned.
“Well, here are some eggs, you need the protein. We need to start as soon as possible training you on the basics. You’ve met one of the team so far. This is Rachel, my HK45.” Mike said, presenting the familiar handgun.
“Stupid name for a gun.” Tanner huffed.
“It was my daughter’s name, remember?” he asked.
“Lovely name for a murder weapon. Beautiful name. S-tier name.” She cringed. “And I’m sure this gun is very special.”
“Actually the gun itself isn’t very special, it’s what else is in the gun case that makes it special. Lesson number 1 about killing people. Never just kill someone with a normal gun you don't intend to destroy. No matter how good you are, no matter how careful you are, there will always be evidence of you left behind, and I’ve cleaned yours. All guns are unique, and if I killed someone with a regular HK45, Forensics would find the bullet, determine it was a 45acp round from this style gun. The grooves in the barrel that spin the bullet will match the unique gun, and now you’re fucked. Now you could use the gun, dispose of the gun, melt the barrel down. Cost about 800 bucks minimum, ruins a perfectly good gun for one kill, paper trail buying new ones. So when the cops ask where your HK45 is, and you say it was lost or stolen, or you don’t know…well that’s suspicious as hell, you may as well turn yourself in.”
“So only buy black market guns.” Tanner suggested, shoveling scrambled eggs down.
“From whom… Mister Black Market, the conveniently blind and deaf guy we all know that doesn’t talk, who can’t be interrogated or bribed? No matter where you bought a gun, someone saw you buy a gun. Even if they don’t know your name, they have a description, cash payment, police can still track that gun down, and now you match a description of a guy who illegally bought the same gun that was used in a crime you were a suspect in. People talk, serial numbers trace, no gun is a true ghost gun unless you made it yourself, and making guns isn’t easy, you wouldn’t spend all that time making one for a single use and dispose of it.” Mike informed.
“Not if you stole it…” she said, stretching her arms and displaying the snatchgun. “And the guy you stole it from is dead. So…checkmate. No record.”
“And you could be arrested for jaywalking and just having that. The moment you fire that gun at a living being and commit a crime, that gun is hot and ready to burn you. Kinda hard to melt down a steel barrel before you get back home too, what if they stop you on the way home from the crime scene?” he asked, making her look uncomfortable.
“So then, what makes Rachel so special? Where did you get her?”
“Bought her at a legal dealer for home defense, and bought one box of target ammo, one box of self-defense signed my legal name and FBI recorded everything, so it’s legally registered in my name.” he noted.
“I soo don’t get it. That’s the worst idea ever, Mikey.”
“Sounds like it. That’s why it’s brilliant. Nobody is gonna register a gun and then commit a series of murders with it. You’d have to be one dumb bastard. Too dumb to pull off the job. However, nobody whose wife and kid died in a shooting is going to live without a gun for protection, so not owning any guns, when my grandfather was a gunsmith and my childhood was around guns, that’s suspicious in itself. So the first thing I did was ask for a good home defense gun, shoot it a few times at a local range, and that’s where I got Rachel here. If the cops ask if I own any guns, I do, I have a pretty normal 45 handgun registered in my name for home defense, and a personal carry license, as well as the 22 on the wall for target practice. That’s as normal and legal as it can get, and if I had to defend myself with her, right now she’s loaded with 45 hollowpoints from Freedom Street Guns and Ammo, still got the receipt taped to the box. Now here’s the special part.” He smiled, removing the padding from the case and revealing a row of shiny copper tubes.
“Now I’m really confused.” Tanner sighed.
“Good, that’s the idea. Everyone should be. These are specialized high-copper bronze alloy barrel inserts. Externally, they all fit perfectly down an HK45 barrel and stick out the end enough for a threaded nut that fits standard hardware store pipe fittings. That means they can be threaded into standard hardware store pipe fittings and the threads can be cut with standard hardware store dies. The kind any handyman might have…well, just conveniently handy. Threads like one might use to make a home-made untraceable copper silencer as well, theoretically.” He said screwing on the silencer. “These inserts allow the gun to fire custom rounds, anything smaller than 45acp. So 40 cal, 10mm, 9mm, or anything I made up just to confuse the cops. The rifling matches the inserts, not the barrel. So when you’re done you just melt down the insert, drop in a fresh one. I make them on the lathe, multiples in advance. The shell casings are made of a cast magnesium and alloy propellant, no gunpowder, so they burn up when you fire them, all you eject is a flash of smoke. No brass to pick up. Anything with a 45 caliber rim can be necked down to any other caliber, matching these inserts. These here are disposal sticks.” He said, producing a flair from his pocket.
“Looks like a road flair.” she sighed.
“That’s because it’s a road flair, with a hole in the middle and enough thermite to melt the inserts. So before I do my job, I select the caliber I want, pop in a fresh insert, take a flair with me. When I’m done, I pop the insert into the flair. If I had cops on my tail, set the flair off. Toss it somewhere, evidence melts down. They could find me, bring me in 2 minutes after the killing, all I have is a personal carry 45, I legally bought, that hasn’t been fired that day, no gunpowder residue on my hands or the gun, not since the last range day, and I was just suspiciously in the area of a crime where someone was shot with a 357, or a 10mm pistol. But officer… this is a 45, I have my pink card right here, is there a problem?”
“That’s brilliant. And you don’t have to buy special supplies for these?”
“It’s my own secret alloy blend, Melts easy, stands up to any normal bullet for a few clips, I cast them myself. I have a drawer full of 5 inch by half inch rods marked “punches” with the Kennedy tool box. You could even use them for punches, actually. All made my memory by hand, on the mini-lathe, few little tools I made, nothing left of the evidence but chips I can throw in the casting bags and re-melt for more, along with the used ones. Sometimes I just bore them out larger and put new rifling in to save time. The ammo is the hard part to make, but if you make your shots count, it’s worth it. We’ll get to that part. The Silencers are also disposable, mostly made of plumbing parts, a little custom lathe work. Time-consuming and tedious, but tossable, you could unscrew the parts and throw them away in 3 different spots as you went, nobody would connect them or even know they were part of a weapon unless you saw them assembled. So Rachel is just an ordinary HK45, legally owned by a guy with a carry license, and with this handful of parts, she becomes an untraceable assassination tool that in seconds can be torn apart and reassembled, and the police could never tie it to a crime.” Explained Mike.
“Okay what did you really do before this? Black Ops, Russian KGB, military weapon designer for fucking…spy agencies?” asked Tanner.
“I was a pastor at a small church, did plumbing on the side for extra money. Finn Plumbing Repair. Just like it says on the van registration.”
“So you just…invented your own assassin cheat code, pulled some special alloy out of your ass that melted down easy and stood up to gunfire, learned explosives and reloading and woke up one day thinking this would be impossible to trace, I should kill people with these. Bullshit.” She scoffed. “No way.”
“I learned a little gunsmithing from my grandfather. The brilliant spy shit, I just listened to the voice of God and did what he said. The fact that it all works does a good job of strengthening your faith. The first time you try it, oh boy, there is some real doubt creeping up your back and making you think…am I just insane? And then it works, and it shouldn’t, everything just happens like it should, and you realize you had no way of accidentally knowing that. Crazy people believe they can do things, when you actually can, you’re not crazy, you’re just correct. My grandfather used to say…it’s only paranoid if you’re wrong about it. If you’re right, that’s just being smart.”
"So what about the rest of the evidence? DNA, hair, footprints, blood. How does God make that vanish?” Tanner asked.
“Dumpster diving for old shoes and cutting off the treads, random sizes, shred and burn them later. I don’t wax my beard just to look snazzy, the wax I use sticks it down and washes off in the shower, masks and hats works well too. Leather work gloves for fingerprints, and as for DNA, I don’t fuck or bleed on the job, so there’s not exactly a lot of blood and semen to trace back. The blood tends to belong to the body. Vary up your tactics, watch some movies, copy what someone else has done, and omit the flaws. I’ll even discard some empty brass. Leave some clues of my own just to screw with forensics. They probably have 200 suspects with no motives or ties to the closed cases they gave up on, and have no idea any of them are even connected. Just random killings, a lot of crime goes unsolved, that’s why I do what I do. Because the laws don’t work right. If they worked right, there’d be no need. I would just be a plumber.” Mike shrugged.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“So bad people get away with shit, and God does the crooked system’s dirty by hiring you. Where does the money come from” This shit can’t be cheap.”
“Gambling. Online mostly, horse races, I avoid casinos tables except as a cover, they cheat too much to really win more than you lose.”
“So you’re a Holyman, a hitman and you got a gambling system? Shit, just do the gambling thing, get rich, and stop risking your ass all the time.” Sighed Tanner.
“Risking my ass is part of the job, as long as I listen to God and don’t deviate, there’s no risk. So it’s a game of temptation, and not getting greedy. And there’s no gambling scam, it’s all legit gambling, people win all the time. I just listen to what God wants me to bet on and when I stop winning, I know I have enough. Greed and thinking you’re in charge is how you get cocky and caught. Betting a little more for your own personal gain is how you start losing your money. God doesn’t give you tips and hints to have new cars and a mansion on the beach, he does it so you can make a living and afford to do your real job.”
“Funny, God gives a lot of mega-church pastors mansions and cars. Why not you?” She questioned.
“Those people are the fuckers we kill. So God clearly doesn’t favor them too much, or he wouldn’t keep sending me to their mansions, would he? Those are the people ruining this world. The crooked billionaires, the corporate CEOs that think they can abuse their employees and the politicians and bishops fondling kids thinking that God don’t know it. You wanna know the secret? He doesn’t know everything that will ever happen, just X number of many moves ahead, and he doesn’t have infinite power. He has the power to help and change our lives, but we don’t listen or believe anymore, so more people ignore than obey, and sometimes you gotta send the flood to clean the mess and start over.”
“And you’re Noah?” She smirked. “With your big boat?” she eyebrowed.
“No. I’m the rain. Just a few drops of cleaning potential sent by God like many others that add up and start to pool. I just listen to him when he says when and where to fall and whose head to land on. Some people water crops, some people keep the rivers flowing, and some of us drown pedophiles. Frankly, I enjoy my work.”
“So if that’s the gun named after your daughter, where’s the gun named after your wife?” he asked.
“Oh, you don’t need to meet her yet. My Rachel was a very sweet girl, quiet and discreet but with a fiery passion for life. My wife was a force to recon with. If you get to meet Gwen it either means you’re ready to start doing my job for me, or we’re in some serious shit, because when Gwen gets angry, you’ll know it. She tends to make noise.”
“I like her already. Where do you get bullets at? Looks suspicious as hell if you’re buying reloading bullets for guns you don’t own in every caliber a crime was committed in except the one gun you have.” Tanner noted.
“Very observant question. Let’s go for a drive, I’ll show you.” Mike said, ruffling her hair.
The van pulled up on a foggy morning to an old shooting range, the sound of guns going off in the background. Mike rolled the window down as the man at the gate waddled over.
“Just let me do the talking.” He whispered. “Hey frank. How is the knee?”
“Oh, bad as usual, Mike. Range closes at noon on Sunday.”
“I know, It’s just, work has been hell lately and with all the cold weather and people firing up their furnaces, the problems never cease. How bout you take that daughter of yours out to a nice dinner on me.” He said handing him a 50.
“Mike you know I hate taking your money like that, but money is tight and I appreciate it. You plan to stay long? Gun rack is already locked up for the day, so I can’t let you play with the new toys.”
“That’s fine. I brought my own ammo. Just came to spend some time with Rachel and a new friend of mine.”
“Well, lock the gate when you’re done,” said the old timer, making his way to the car to go home. The window rolled back up.
“You got connections?” Tanner asked. "Is he your Alfred?"
“Old frank is 91, he makes almost nothing with his little gun store and outdoor range. I got his daughter all new gas lines put in for practically free a while back. You treat people nice, they treat you nice back. He knows I don’t like the crowd, knows about my wife and kid, so I show up at closing sometimes, and he locks the store, lets me use the range. I buy ammo from him, tip well, and I bring the metal detector and pick up some extra brass casings. He thinks I’m selling for the scrap metal, so I pay him half the imaginary scrap, and it keeps the range cleaner. I also pick the lock, and steal a few rounds of surplus raw bullets from the reloading bins. I always give more than I take, and lock the gate when I go. Sometimes we just talk and shoot. It’s slow, but it works, and it leaves no paper trail, unlike the wrapped rounds I make. You can take a clean bullet and tap it through a barrel cutter and make any rifling you want, with a little practice. Just wrap it in a little news paper and fire it through a slightly oversized barrel, paper just tears up or burns. I can put a 32ACP barrel insert in my 45, make a few pre-rifled and wrapped Ak47 bullets in a 45 magnesium case, load them both in the same clip with the same barrel, shoot someone with the AK round, finish the next guy off with a 32acp in half a second, ballistics can’t tell that it was from the same barrel, 2 rapid shots and walk away, looks like 2 shooters with different guns. Possibilities are endless.”
“Any chance I can get my own custom inserts for Carrie?” she asked.
“Kid, give me one night, and I’ll have new inserts made. I’ll let you use the MP5 if need be. You’ll need the extra firepower until you get more accurate."
“Hey, Preach…”
“Mike.” He said, handing her the HK. "Just Mike"
“Okay Just Mike. Just curious. If you believe, these people aren’t human anymore, they don’t even have human body temperatures. What happens after they die? You ever examine one?” she asked, taking a few shots at the target. Mike pondered the idea.
“I guess I assumed when you kill one, whatever evil in them that dies just leaves behind the human body, like the person was before. I never thought about it.” he pondered further.
“You never thought about dissecting one, finding out what they really are? Government project, aliens, vampires, you never thought to crack one open and see if they have anything different? I mean they’re dead, so if the body just turns back human, what’s dissecting a dead asshole to a guy who decapitates em with hollowpoints?” She asked.
“Shit, now you got me curious.” Mike sighed.
“You know there’s only one way to find out. Bag one and go digging. You have any labs or anything, industrial buildings you own for storing shit?” She smirked.
“Kid, I’m not batman, I make slightly more than most plumbers, I have a hidden tornado shelter under my bed, barely big enough to make ammo and move around. I have a truck, and 2 vans. Little house in the woods.” he explained.
“I actually know some places that might work. I’ve been to places for drug deals and sold a few stolen handguns in some shady spots. Not a lot of people go there.”
“You’re really asking to get caught keeping a body. I stay a ghost because I hit and move. I’ve never stored a body. The bodies stay where they drop.”
“Well, if God thinks I’m your best replacement, maybe it’s because I have ideas you’re too oldschool and fixed to try. Come on, man. I don’t even know if I believe this demonic stuff, and you don’t even know what you’re hunting. Maybe it’s time to mix up the game and see what they’re made of. God sent you a cutie killer, and you won’t even get any use out of that, so at least give my ideas a test run. If they’re anything but another dead guy, I might stop being so skeptical. Nothing jumpstarts faith like proof.”
“That’s not how it works, but you have a point. God provided you for a reason, so it’s worth considering the ideas. Let me think about it. You just hit the target.” He said, pondering the concept. “Shame, we don’t have any place to even do that if we wanted.” Mike sighed.
“I can find a place, trust me. You find the monsters, I’ll provide the laboratory.”
“What the hell do you know about body disposal locations. You always left victims where you killed them.” Mike inquired.
“I’m a deranged teenage tweaker with the internet. Never underestimate the internet, gramps. There’s youtube channels just dedicated to people who search and spelunk abandoned underground tunnels and shit. Warehouses, factories, entire abandoned malls. I bet I can find a video with like no views in the last 2 years, places nobody cares about. We break in, set up shop, put some locks and chains on the doors. Plenty of places to get high and fuck for cash, that are off limits and unguarded. Abandoned prisons and maintenance crap. I’ve seen lots of those videos. Give me 24 hours and a bottle of vodka, I’ll find us a place to crack open a monster. If it’s anticlimactic, we just leave them there.” She said taking a few more shots with the big MP5. “Damn I love this gun, not really concealable tho, is it?”
“It’s a free unregistered gun, don’t look a gift submachine gun in the mouth.” Mike said taking a few shots with it, feeling the heft. “But we do have to get you some field experience soon. Something easy, low profile. I got a list of potential targets in the basement, in case I run out of high profile work. You think you’re ready?” he asked.
“Does a priest shit in the woods?” Smirked tanner.
“I’m ignoring that and pretending you just said yes.”
“I don’t know if I said this yet, but…thanks.” she smiled.
“For hitting you with a van and making you work it off?” Smiled Mike.
“No seriously. I didn’t really have much of a life, and I don’t have any friends that I can say truly have my back if shit got weird. I respect that you’re not just treating me like a dumb child, or some useless addict…or worse. Some psychopath. I slept in a bed and felt safe for the first time in a while, instead of sleeping with one eye open at some flop house or an abandoned Arbee’s hoping not to get stabbed or robbed. You’re a good guy. Maybe too good. You might bend that a little, just suggesting.”
“Yea, you think?” he nodded. “Just us alone at night armed and dangerous, you think I should just go for it and do something wild?” he asked.
“Party at the range.” Tanner said, eyebrows raised.
“I’m 51 and harboring a homeless serial killer. You really think I wanna complicate things? Let’s just get the metal detector out and find some treasures.”
“Passing up this treasure right now, but okay.” She said, making a face at him as his back turned. “Little temptation never got anyone in trouble.”
“Temptation is literally what gets people in trouble.” Mike reminded.
“Yea, but I’m fun trouble, and you’re stuck with me.” She winked.
“Most of that is definitely true.” He said grabbing the shovel.