The moving truck pulled into a parking lot, stopping near the back. Fresh bullet holes and debris still scattered around.
“We’re here, the address you insisted.” Mike said shutting off the engine.
“Listen. You say nothing to anyone but me, only what is necessary. We go inside separately, you pick what rifle you want and what bullets you need. Most accurate rifle, money is not a problem. You have ID, you can buy a rifle, yes?” Nadja asked directly.
“Yea.” Mike nodded.
“Good. Remain here.” She said locking him in place with a ziptie on his wrist. “When I come out, You go in.” she finished, placing a roll of money in his lap with a pat, less appropriate than expected.
Nadja squinted skeptically over the counter of the little gun shop at the old man behind the counter, the darkness of night in the window behind her.
“What is this?” she asked, holding up the paper he printed out.
“Print of specifics. You wanted every last detail, I provided it.” he yawned.
“This is unacceptable. What are these numbers?” she asked, tapping the row marked Muzzle Energy.
“That’s how much force the bullet-” he started.
“I know what muzzle energy means, I have internet on my phone.” She interrupted, showing the chart. “Why is this number so low? This is shit. This is…22 pistol.”
“Yea, it’s a 22 caliber pistol cartridge, honey.”
“I…” she fumed. “I mean plinking 22 round, not 5.7FN cartridge. Why is this so weak?” she asked.
“You asked for, and I quote because I wrote it down. 100 rounds. 5.7x28mm caliber, most powerful, accurate SUBSONIC for suppressor. Custom if necessary. And I said Custom IS necessary if you want a good subsonic for the 5.7. This is a custom shop, I made custom rounds exactly as you specified. The problem is that it’s a skinny damn bullet and the biggest commercial 22 bullet I can get are the hundred grain Spitzer. If I add more than 6 grains of powder, it’s not subsonic anymore. So you’re pushing the limit here as it is and 150 yards for that caliber is iffy, let alone slowed down.”
“I did research, 5.7 is accurate at 300 yards, heavier bullet means more power and range while still subsonic. You can’t make heavier bullets and use full amount of powder?” she asked.
“…no. There’s barely enough room in the case for the powder I got in there, and that’s a damn subsonic projectile for AK74 reloads. They don’t make 22 caliber projectiles any heaver than that. The bullet damn near touches the bottom of the brass, it’s a thin jacketed lead round and lead is about as heavy as it gets. Unless you got a single shot bolt action that’s custom-made with a way longer bolt, that’s it. It won't feed longer. Anything sticking further out the case, won’t fit in a magazine, anything thicker won’t fire out of a 22, and any hotter powder won’t be subsonic and to get maxed out power you need to not have a damn long bullet all the way down the case. This is just not a round designed for long range OR full power subsonic, let alone a subsonic long range.” He shrugged
“I read from a reliable source about a 400-yard shot made with a 5.7, using a suppressor. So how does this become achievable?” she asked, reciting the police records on one of Mike's kills.
“It’s not. Unless someone is using magic fancy gunpowder hotter than they make on the market, and some…alien metal bullets that are way heavier than anything you can get in lead, the laws of physics are in the way here. I don’t know what you want from me. Nothing is heavier than solid lead, the brass cartridge is as full as it gets for subsonic projectiles that damn big, in a space that damn small. At 300 yards it’s gonna be dropping 12 feet or better, and hit like a little 22 short pocket pistol.”
“Fine… what is effective range with these? Say, small deer, headshot.”
“I dunno, if you aim 5 feet high and have absolutely no wind, hit dead flat on the side of the skull, 200 yards MIGHT be possible. You’re still hitting like a 22 pistol but maybe a slightly spicy 22. You ever think about just getting a bigger gun or hunting smaller game?”
“No.” she said angrily flopping down the cash and grabbing the box, trudging out and feeling like a joke. “I like my gun, and I like my deer.”
“Better get closer or aim 5 feet above the eye socket then.” He said as she walked out. “Fuckin novice shooters, thinking they know everything they googled online. Got news for you honey, nobody is taking down a deer with a 5.7 at 300 yards, let alone subsonic.” He muttered, shaking his head as Mike entered a minute or so later.
“Good afternoon.” Mike smiled.
“Was one, till just now. You can’t believe the crazy people I get in here and what they ask for.” the owner chuckled.
“I bet I could imagine. Hopefully I’m not one of them. I need a long range gun for deer hunting.” Mike said looking at the rack.
“Gotta be in a pistol round and dead silent?” he chuckled. “Sorry, weird day.”
“I was thinking more 7mm Remington Magnum, doesn’t need to be quiet. Needs to shoot flat as hell, so an old fart with glasses can hit something.” Mike said.
“I hear ya there. You got a budget range?”
“Money is not a problem.” He grinned.
“You love to hear that these days. You need this bad boy. X-bolt max LR is about the flattest thing I got in 7mm mag. With that scope, that’s a 2 grand rifle.”
“Is it bore sighted in or just cold mounted?” Mike asked.
“Bore sighted in, zeroed for a hundred, I’ll guarantee that thing to 600 yards, past that you gotta fine tune a little." the owner shrugged.
“Right, like I’m taking a shot past 500. I’ll take it, gimme some paper targets, a box of Hornady SST. Any extra magazines?”
“I can order some, but just the 3 round mag in the gun at the moment.”
“Shit. I’ll just…pray harder, miss less.” Mike sighed.
“I can get them in stock in 2 days.” the owner added.
“Well, I’m heading out in about 5 minutes to go hunting. The girlfriend and I just got invited to shoot with a friend, he’s from out of town, we didn’t get much notice. .”
“Pretty last minute.” The owner nodded.
“You are not shitting me. I would have loved a little more heads up. He kinda just showed up and hit us with this situation broadside. I’m just doing this for her.” Mike smiled.
“Your gal happen to be about 5 foot 8, blue hair, weird accent?” he asked.
“…No. What an oddly specific guess. 5 foot 2, short haired brunette, the sweetest little gal I ever knew. I’d move the world for her, so what’s a little cash and rushed hunting trip compared to that?” he shrugged. “And a hat. Throw in a hat. She’s paying. Her grandfather is more loaded than these guns.”
“Well good luck. Hope you get something good.”
“Oh I’ll be amazed if I do, but one can hope.” Mike said, filling the paperwork and signing.
The range was quiet, a desert stretch of nothing with a cooler and some blankets out like a sniper's picnic.
Mike and Nadja sprawled out behind their guns, the matte black hunting rifle at Mike’s shoulder and what resembled an oversized pink and black Uzi in front of her, with an uncomfortable aluminum folding stock and a suppressor the size of the gun itself. She slapped in a full magazine of armor piercing black tips and took aim, the sudden roar of the rifle next to her jarring her slightly as her gun made a softer little hiss of two rapid shots.
“CUSH SOBACH’YA!” she barked, watching dirt kick up way low of the 200 yard target. Mike struck paper, still disappointed with half his rounds missing the head from 500 yards.
“Aren’t you glad I moved your paper closer?” he asked.
“This gun is terrible.”
“The gun is fine. The caliber is not right.” Mike sighed.
“I like the caliber. Caliber is fine.” She insisted. “How do you do that?” she added.
“With a lot of squinting. Everything is blurry and wobbly.” He complained, switching to his MPX. He got into position with an empty magazine, 3 strange silvery white rounds between his left hand fingers like demonic brass knuckles.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“What are those? How does that even fit in the magazine?” she asked, losing interest in her own shooting.
“They don't. That’s the problem.” He said firing a round as the chamber kicked back and stayed open. He took his left hand off grip position, spinning one of the rounds from between his fingers and poking it into the open receiver manually, and then pressing the bolt release that sprung forward just before he fired again, the bolt staying open, no shell ejecting. Mike shoved another round in, repeating it 3 times. “Yea, that’s about the same speed. Way more awkward to load and a little slower, but that’s 2out of 3 rounds in the head."
“What…is this not 45 ACP gun or is it?” she asked.
“It’s 45 when I want it to be. Unscrew that 19 inch barrel insert and put a Glock 21 magazine in there and yes, it’s a 45. Full auto, folds down to 22 inches. Spring loaded stock, 6 pounds. But she’s beefed up to handle about the same power as the rifle I just bought in a magnum rifle caliber, just drop in the 7mm barrel insert and screw it on. Almost the same energy, with a 32 percent lighter solid brass bullet made on a CNC lathe and pointed like a needle. I’m probably getting 500 feet per second more velocity out of this gun. It’s shooting way flatter, but the scope sucks in comparison.
“So why did you buy the other rifle?” she asked.
“I didn’t. You did. I wasn’t about to drop 2 grand proving my gun is slightly better than a 2 thousand dollar gun, and you wouldn’t believe me if I claimed it. I’m switching scopes, though. This is a way better scope. Sorry sweetheart, but I can always use new guns for parts, and you were paying the bill.”
“So why not just use better scope to begin with? Why not make a gun with a larger clip? And why are the damn aluminum bullets so much quieter and smaller if just as powerful?”
“Because I can’t fit that rifle under my coat and hide it with the bigger scope. The reason I didn’t design a gun with a bigger magazine is because it would end up being a bigger gun and not fit under my coat, and I didn’t build this gun anyway. Sig built this gun. I bought an aftermarket kit to 45ACP convert it, and then made the parts that needed to be tougher out of tougher shit, bigger springs, thicker bolt lugs, fatter chamber ported barrel. Integrated gas system, recoil reduction and noise reduction. It’s easier to modify a gun that works than invent one that might not. Here.” He said digging a bullet out of the bag, equally long and odd looking but with a much blunter tip and dark brown. He popped it into the gun and casually fired it, with the clink of the slide being the loudest part of the shot.
“What happened? Misfire?” Nadja asked.
“Nope. Fired fine. That’s how quiet it is with a 454 grain copper jacket round filled with tungsten carbide powder. You’d never hear the shot. That’s how I did the Mister Black Jobs.”
“Then why are you not using those all the time?” she asked.
“Aside from the fact that they take forever to make, the accuracy isn’t as consistent as a brass solid, and they’re expensive as shit to practice with, They have to be hand fed into the gun. And did you see where I hit the paper?” he asked.
“No.” she said.
“Ne neither. At 500 yards, I’d be lobbing it 25 feet up in the air like a damn grenade, hoping to hit somewhere kinda near something. The 50 cal had more range, but sadly Gwen is retired now. I overheated the receiver during the safehouse massacre. The fact that it didn’t blow up in my face was a miracle. Even out of this gun, these rounds vaporize on impact and do some vile shit to soft targets, but on quality body armor that just won't penetrate, even if you did mortar it into the sky and actually hit someone. Now at 200 yards with a 3-foot-high adjustment, that hits like a 357 magnum and sounds like a humming bird wink. These brass solids are 3 times as powerful, less bullet, more room for propellant. More accurate and at 500 yards, instead of dropping 25 to 28ish feet, I’m aiming 33 inches up and hitting right in the face…when I don’t shake. This gun could reach out and end you at a thousand, no problem. Me on the other hand…well, only with divine intervention. You see, the right bullet is everything. Your gun shoots the wrong bullet for this job. Carl probably has an M200 Intervention with double the range of my Sig, and he’s 20-something years younger. That’s why I wasn’t shooting back. Knowing this is how I do on my best days on a stationary target, I placed myself, with low wind and nobody shooting back, and after seeing you shoot. We’re both fucked unless we get him within 200 yards, preferably point-blank. I may be a little disappointing this far out. But you’ve seen me perform up close. Now you tell me if I can still operate in a building with a handgun.” He said confidently, with that look of cocky edge he was known for.
“There is that charismatic little bastard I met the other night. You know I did try to kill you. I was not going easy. If I went easy, I wouldn’t know if you were the real deal. But you hesitated. Why?” she asked.
“I didn’t. It was just an off night.” he lied slyly
“No it wasn’t. You had me twice. You waited once thinking I wouldn’t risk moving, and you got distracted the other time by Tanner, because you didn’t know if I could kill her before you could kill me. You hesitated. Did Mister Black hesitate…before Tanner was around?” she asked darkly.
“Fine. I hesitated. You’re very distracting, and sometimes when I don’t prepare for a gunfight and have my plan figured out, I get shaky. You ever tried to get blood pressure medicine after moving out of state illegally with no doctor, on the run from cops? I ran out, I’ve been cutting them in half. Still get anxiety attacks.”
“Excuses. Michael, you are still fighting your inner monster. Tanner makes you weak because you don't fear death, but you fear HER death. You are not old and shaky, you are suppressing your inner demon and weakening yourself. When they had Tanner and you had 30 men armed and ready to kill you, were you shaking then?” she asked.
“Not a clue. I went in drunk and ready to die. I didn’t have the luxury of caring. No choice but to go all out.”
“There’s always a choice. What made you go from shaky old man to poor Deacon’s worst nightmare? An infamous hitman half your age who would have killed you at the slightest hesitation if you did. Yet you walked away and police found him mangled like an animal had caught him in its teeth. Tanner did not kill him. This old man hesitating and holding back did not either.” She said, suddenly grabbing his shoulder tightly and placing her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat, lightly scratching with her lengthy nails. “That thing inside did…why do you bottle it up? How do you bottle it up?”
“That monster is like a genie, it’s easy to control as long as you keep the cork on the bottle. Once you let it out, getting it back in isn’t so easy. I don’t like what I am when I open the bottle. I don’t think, I don’t plan, I don’t reason, I just react and move. I find out later what I did. That’s a problem any time there’s something to lose or mistakes to make, but when you believe the only thing you care about is already dead and God’s voice doesn’t comfort you, you don’t care of it consumes you. You just need to kill a lot of people.”
“So that is why you didn’t drink with me. You don’t like who you are when you drink?” she asked.
“When I drink, I’m not me anymore. I don’t check and make sure the people I’m killing deserve and need to die, I don’t plan my escape and my backup routs, I just wanna kill something. If I had sat and had a few drinks with you. You’d be dead right now. Because I wouldn’t have thought to check on Tanner and look for cover, I would have just saw red. Like a bull. Whether you shot me or not, you’d have died first. The sober adrenaline and the fear lets me focus. It lets me reason, and it lets me hear God's voice. That has saved me more than the drinking has. But when I thought Tanner was dead, I didn’t want a backup plan or a way out, a way to survive and plan, I wanted blood and death and I wanted it all right there. There wasn’t an innocent life in that building to worry about, and if I got killed in the process, who gave a shit? Not me. God waited in the parking lot that day, and a lot of people died. Pretty handy in that one situation, pretty disastrous on any normal Monday.” Mike admitted.
“So why do you care now? Why is being bad so bad? The strong survive, the weak and hesitant old men get killed before they get even older. Your life will be shorter playing hero, less fun, so many rules.” She whispered, leaning in close and nudging her head against his, the light click of a safety being taken off and the gleam of his pistol barrel pointed up at her face.
“Oh you’re good, bitch, but you’re just not good enough. Ten years ago, before I got sober, and before I ever met Tanner, sure. But I like my little killers cute, compassionate, under a moral code, and doing what they believe is right, not doing what they think is fun because the monster in her has zero restraint and monsters like you just like to kill things."
“Like US, Michael. Monsters like US. Maybe your bottled up monster would prefer me over Tanner. Maybe you should have a drink and ask him. I’ve traveled a long way to meet… Mister Black. That’s not very nice to keep him locked up and making me wait.” she taunted.
“Then don’t wait. Go home. Give up. I’m as deadly as you point-blank, and clearly better at a distance, so I can get killed just as easily by Carl with or without you, and I don’t give a shit if you go home or die here with me. Girls who control their emotions live longer, so little discipline, so few rules. All fun, no plan.” He said coldly mocking her while staring her down.
“Hello in there…” she playfully giggled, touching his forehead and blushing almost sarcastically, somehow. “There will be time for fun. Have you not heard of balance, Holyman? Sin a little, forgive yourself? Without the sin, what is there to forgive? You have to fall to rise, Michael. Try a little compromise. Your God has made so much sacrifice to forgive your blemishes, so if you always stay clean and white like a pressed shirt, he did all that for nothing, and you didn’t even get to have fun fucking up now and then. Isn’t that just spitting in his face a little bit?” she whispered.
“Damn, they weren’t kidding.” He sighed, shaking his head and staring into her eyes.
“Who was, and about what…me?” she asked.
“Genesis. The devil really was one of the most beautiful angels with the most rotten soul down deep. I just figured out why you stay so close to me.” he smirked.
“Why is that?” she asked, coyly as he leaned in beside her to do his own dark whispering.
“Because if you run over 200 yards out, I fucking have you, and you can’t return fire for shit.” He smiled, pushing her away lightly with the pistol in his hand. She leaned away, still fearlessly grinning.
“Now Michael. Are you so sure that drunk little demon in you isn’t just a little bit in control all the time? He’s just behind the eyes right now. I can see him. The bottle is just your excuse to give that demon a name and a separation so you don’t have to admit you’re just half holy man and half sin…all the time. Trying to pretend it’s not really you. It’s just the evil liquid strengthening the spirit possessing you. Without him, you’re a good person, are you not? Or are you just an incomplete person? Maybe you’re a monster possessed by a good spirit, and Mister Black is too thirsty and weakened to bottle up his possessing holy man. Maybe you’re just like me, but with some annoying little angel crawling around in you telling you that you’re better off submissive and contained. It’s afraid of you. It should be afraid of you. Deacon was afraid of you, all those people you killed were afraid of you. They were just…correct, and you’re in denial. God did not wait in the parking lot. You just stopped believing in your imaginary god and remembered what you are. I’m the one who’s free. You’re the one who hesitates. You’re dying, I’m living. You would die so much slower if you let yourself live more.” She said, suddenly sitting up and putting away her gun. “Or you can just let the chains you made slow you down, so Carl can kill you and take Tanner to spite you. You think I am the devil? He is the one lying like a snake to your lover while I tell you the truth you don’t want to hear. Let him win for all I care. If you kill him and leave with me, Tanner will be safe, she is no threat to me. If he kills you, is she ever safe? You became yourself once to save her, so why is this any different? Did little Tanner fear you that night, look at that monster and recoil away, or did she embrace you and call that monster her hero?” she said, turning and wiggling her ass the whole way to the truck. Mike’s eyes were more focused on the sights lined up with her head, two temptations at the same time, but the slight urge to pull the trigger seemed so much harder to resist for some reason. Was it because she was right, or because he just knew she was evil and deserved it. Mike firmly shouldered the MPX and switched on the thermal scope… 77.6 degrees, and his trigger finger simply froze in place.
"God, damn it." he sighed, taking his finger off.