500 Words a Day — theinkwell fiction challenge | Week 11 — 30.7.2020

”Did you say camel?”

“Oh, so you are paying attention. Yes. He’s got a pet camel that runs free at the back of his property where you’ll breach the fence.”

“Why does he have a camel?”

“He got it as a gift while he was in Mongolia visiting mining operations for his company before he went into politics. Bactrian, two-humped. A big sucker, must weigh about a ton.”

“I’m supposed to kill it with this little 3D-printed peashooter?”

“Um, no. Just give it a wide berth. And watch your step. I don’t want you getting injured because you slipped in some camel shit.”

We went over every part of the plan in great detail. Again and again. After a while it started to feel like that scene in The Great Escape where they’re chanting out the plan in unison from memory.

Except we weren’t planning an escape. We were going to beak in to Senator Sinclair’s compound.

This was Eddie’s operation. He was “the brains”, I was “the tool”. He actually said that. We were getting paid a lot for the job (half up front, half upon completion) and Eddie was a stickler for detail. Gotta give him that. He’s good, real good. But he can be a condescending rat bastard. Like when he said that if I screwed up, I’d be known as Sinclair’s murderer. I wouldn’t just be his killer, I’d be known as his killer. Why not just say don’t get caught? Eddie is anything but subtle when he gets to the point.

He’d had Sinclair’s compound under surveillance for over a month. Knew where all the motion detectors were. Knew that the ones at the back of the property had been removed because the camel had kept setting them off — too many false positives. Knew that Sinclair’s wife wouldn’t tolerate him smoking in the house or even close to it so the Senator had to enjoy his after-dinner cigars on a lawn chair out past the edge of his back patio. I wonder what the poor guy did in bad weather.

It would have been so much easier to just use a rifle. At a hundred yards or so it would have been an easy shot. But Eddie wanted it to be point-blank to the back of the head with a small caliber round so that it would look like a mob hit. To further cover our tracks, he’d 3D-printed a little single-shot .22 LR pistol. Basically a derringer. It even had a suppressor, the thing made almost no noise, no way his wife would even hear it. And the barrel wasn’t rifled. When they dug the slug out of his brain and had ballistics analyze it, they’d come up blank.

The mission is tonight, with the new moon. Probably all over the news within an hour. We’ll get the second half of the payment at midnight.

If Eddie was as smart as he thought he was, he’d know that I’d printed a second gun.

This was written for the theinkwell fiction challenge | Week 11 at https://peakd.com/hive-170798/@theinkwell/theinkwell-fiction-challenge-or-week-11-all-writers-welcome and the #500wordsaday Community.

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