Home - Floating Ideas by Jason Black

The two men and Deborah were sitting at the rear of the middle deck of a 107 foot Drettmann motor yacht discussing how to do various hits. The bar man delivered some drinks, some food and walked away.

"So, how do we kill target 45, her name is June, she is very fit, doesn't do a dangerous job, no health problems ?" said the first man leaning back in his seat glancing down a sheet of paper.

"Does she have any dangerous hobbies or sports ?" asked the second man admiring the sea view.

"She does many sports: running, tennis, skiing, motor racing, rock-climbing, mountaineering, judo, parachuting, all kinds, she's a regular action-girl, she even did a bit of modelling !" said the first man " ... so we need to pick an activity where she could die of misadventure."

"Couldn't we do a hit-and-run when she's out running ?" asked Deborah.

"We could but I want to keep that in reserve for the really hard cases, there has to be a way to kill this woman without leaving any traces or raising any suspicion." said the first man.

"We could sabotage her car when she's motor racing." suggested the second man.

"No, we've done several variations of the car-hack too many times." responded the first man.

"Excuse me sir !" said one of the yacht staff from the top deck.

"Yes." replied the first man.

"We have finished scanning the yacht for bugs, and we're all clear, sir." announced the staff member.

"OK thank you." said the first man waiting for him to get out of earshot. "She also does a lot of online dating !"

"So we arrange for her to meet an axe murderer ?" asked the second man "I might know a few !"

"You know some pretty scary people !" said the first man.

"What about the rock-climbing ?" asked Deborah.

"What about it !" said the first man.

"If we could cause her kit to fail somehow ... like the pegs working loose or rope snapping." said Deborah.

"... or shooting the rock around the pegs !" interrupted the second man.

"So it would seem like she didn't hammer the peg into the rock properly !" interrupted the first man.

"I haven't quite figured out how to do it yet but I'm sure that could work." said the second man.

"Cool ! That might work !" said Deborah.

"I do know a few ex Army snipers." said the second man "If I pass the details onto Debz she can track them down."

"OK" said Deborah.

"We need to find out where she climbs and then look for a place to snipe her from" said the first man.

"The best snipers can hit a man from about 2 kilometers away so we need to find a point inside that distance from the face she will be climbing. The sniper would need to hit a spot about 4 inches from a peg to shatter the surrounding rock." said the second man.

"Would a bullet strike be enough to shatter rock ?" asked the first man.

"Well, as an example the old British SLR used a 7.62mm ball round. When fired it creates a breach pressure of about 22 tones per square inch and leaves the barrel at roughly twice the speed of sound. It will penetrate breeze-block and several inches of wood, so I reckon there is enough there to shatter rock." Explained the second man.

"Can we use armour piercing ?" asked Deborah.

"Armour piercing would be better but could be hard to get." said the second man.

"What about a larger round ?" asked the first man.

"There are larger rounds like .50 or we could use the Russian OSV-96. It fires a 12.7mm round. It has a range of about two thousand meters which should be enough." explained the second man.

"She could have a few pegs in the rock face, so we would have to shoot them all out." said the first man.

"She might use her mobile phone or even a sat-phone." said the second man.

"It's unlikely there will be coverage near mountains, but we could use a jammer." said Deborah.

"But even if we do shoot out her pegs she can still hang on to the rock." said the second man.

"OK, if she doesn't fall we shoot the side of her head to make a wound consistent with falling hundreds of feet onto rock." said Deborah.

"Why the side ?" asked the first man.

"Well, if the police see a round hole in her head, they will assume she was shot and start an investigation. But if there is a chunk missing from the side of her skull, that could have been the result of her fall." explained Deborah.

"So, we need accuracy and hitting power and the OSV-96 seems to give us that." concluded the first man.

"We should conduct some tests just to make sure this works as expected." said the second man.

"Agreed." said the first man "What do you need ?"

"A very good sniper, a OSV-96 plus appropriate ammo, some rock-climbing kit, a place to test shoot and the blonde sunbathing on the lower deck." said the second man.

"The blonde downstairs is Anna. Debz see if any snipers are available." said the first man.

They sat for a while the first man read further. His phone buzzed and he read the incoming message.

"Oh for fucks sake." said the first man.

"What's up ?" said the second man.

"One of the black-hats was rummaging through our client's PC and found photos of child abuse !!" said the first man.

"He's a paedophile !!" gasped Deborah.

"Yes, it seems so." confirmed the first man.

"Oh shit, what should we do, we can't go to the police !" said the second man.

"No we can't, but I have an idea. We still need to take his cash, but we also need the police to find him and put him away for a few decades" said the first man.

"Do we still kill his wife ?" asked Deborah.

"No, we pretend to kill his wife, get the cash and create a digital trail for the police to follow back to him." responded the first man "He is probably using Tor to hide his tracks, so can we plant a fake Tor on his machine ?"

"A 'fake' Tor !!" said Deborah.

"Ah ! you mean he thinks he is running Tor to cover his tracks but in reality he is wide open and easy to track." confirmed the second man.

"Yes, get the black-hats on it." said the first man "And get them to create a photo of his 'dead' wife".

"OK, I'll get them on it when we're done here." said the second man.

"I think we should bump him off instead of framing him." said Deborah. "At least his wife, now that we're not going to kill her, won't have to endure the police investigation and the press crawling all over her life once his revolting activities get out."

"Hmm, that's a good point, " said the first man. "although I think she suspects hence the divorce and the online dating, so I think we should quietly 'disappear' him after we have taken his money."

"So, what we need are photos of her looking very dead, any ideas ?" asked the first man.

"She did some modelling, does she still have an agent ?" asked the second man "We could ask her to do a photo shoot about rock climbing safety, we get the make-up artists to make her look like she's fallen to her death and use the photos to convince the client."

"She might not go for it but we can get the graphics guys to create a photo of her laying dead at the foot of a rock face." said the second man.

"We need to back it up with a police visit and a phone call from one of her rock-climbing friends. The police visit is fairly straight forward but the phone call ?" said Deborah.

"We can spoof mobile numbers and there is equipment that can change your voice. Hopefully he won't insist on seeing her body especially if she is in another country." said the second man.

"We can ensure some payment by demanding half up-front, so if he doesn't go for it we still get paid." said the first man.

"I think we're missing an opportunity here !" said Deborah.

"How so ?" asked the first man.

"We encourage him to fly over to where his 'dead' wife is and 'disappear' him when he arrives. There will be a nice paper and digital trail leading from his house to the airport and then to his destination. The only problem is we just have to wait for her to go a rock-climbing trip." said Deborah.

"I like it !" exclaimed the second man.

"OK, so lets go over the plan. We tell the client that we have accepted his job, he pays us half, our preferred method of execution is to wait until she goes rock-climbing or mountaineering, we supply a photo of her 'dead' body, we get one of our guys to pretend to be a policeman and give him the bad news about his wife, we pretend to be the rock-climbing organization and invite him out to see her body, he believes the rouse and pays us the other half, he travels, we 'disappear' him when he arrives." said the first man.

"And we shut down the rest of his peodo network ?" suggested Deborah.

"Yes, good idea. So, do we all know what we're doing ? I'll write a detailed plan later. OK, we will be arriving soon." said the first man.

They all adjourned to the Jacuzzi while the bar staff kept them supplied with drinks.

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