Chapter 321: The Mission
"Ron, you'll never guess who I just ran into!" Caroline jumped onto Ron like an excited puppy as soon as she stepped out of the church. "I actually ran into Meg, Antonia's comrade-in-arms from the service! She still remembers my nickname 'Chicky,' which Antonia told her. Antonia always talked about me to her!"
Caroline was incredibly excited. "I used to think that Antonia didn't love me, which is why she didn't mention my name in front of her family. Now I know that she only talked about me in front of the people she loved most. You'll never guess what her relationship with Antonia was—they were partners!
Can you imagine? Serving in the same unit, and then loving each other for over thirty years—a same-sex couple in the military during 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'!"
However, Caroline noticed that Ron wasn't too excited. "Wait, Ron, are you okay? What happened?"
"It's just work stuff, my guys ran into a little trouble," Ron didn't intend to elaborate on Arthur's situation to the two women. "Could I ask you for a favor? After we finish our Philly cheesesteaks, could you please drive yourselves back?"
"Hey! Don't try to dump this huge problem on us and just bail," Max joked. "Why don't you just turn me into a burger and eat me?"
"Sure, but if it's a burger made by Caroline, I think Heinz ketchup would be better." Ron patted Max's head. After spending so much time together, how could he not know that Max always hid her concern behind jokes?
"Don't worry, it's just a minor problem. I probably won't even need to go. My guys can handle it themselves. You know, every one of my men, including little Carl, is a capable operator."
The sound of a helicopter came from the sky. Ron looked up, and the helicopter dropped a rope ladder in front of him. "Goodbye, ladies..."
In a 58-story building in downtown Sydney, Australia, Arthur, disguised as a maintenance worker, found an empty room he had scouted out. Just as he closed the door, someone patted him on the shoulder. Startled, Arthur instinctively reached for his gun at his waist.
But the hand that patted him was faster, pulling the gun out before he could reach it and pressing it against the back of Arthur's head. Arthur was utterly terrified. Everyone has a different habit of drawing their weapon; unless it's someone very familiar, it's impossible for someone to be faster than the owner of the gun.
Who was this?!
Fortunately, the other party didn't keep him guessing for long before revealing the answer: "Arthur, you're too slow. If I wanted to take you out, you'd be dead by now."
Ron turned around, reversed the grip on the gun, and handed it to Arthur, inwardly letting out a sigh of relief: thankfully, he had used his skill to steal the gun; if he had stolen the underwear like he did with Rajesh last time, that would have been embarrassing.
"Ron!" Arthur exclaimed in surprise, "When did you get here?"
"About half a minute after you. Actually, you were locked onto by SkyEye as soon as you entered Australia. It's just that there are too many people in this world who look similar to you, so I had to spend more time distinguishing you from the lookalikes. Weren't you in Southeast Asia? How did you end up here?"
"Cook," Arthur pointed upwards, "the second person Crane asked me to kill, like the arms dealer I took down in Malaysia, also needs to be disguised as an accident. My specialty, you know, my nickname is Mechanic, making assassinations look like accidents is what I do."
"You mean the first target you mentioned was that small-time arms dealer who died from a drug overdose in prison?" Ron rolled his eyes. "Okay, that hit was ordered by Yuri. That guy got in Yuri's way. Even if you didn't take the job, I was originally planning to have you help him out. I never expected that your old organization would take on this contract and assign it to you. It's really a small world."
"You did a great job, though. The Malaysian police have closed the case, determining it was a drug overdose. But are you planning to keep working for him for free like this? You know perfectly well that even if you kill all three people he asked for, he won't let you go."
Ron adopted a capitalist's tone: "I won't allow my employees to moonlight for someone else during working hours while drawing my salary. Let me remind you, in your situation, I could consider you as having resigned automatically, without paying you a penny in severance."
Arthur almost fainted, his gratitude towards Ron vanishing instantly: "Of course I know, so I planned to find his location after this job and rescue Gina. Lucky you came."
Arthur took out a photo and handed it to Ron: "This is Gina's photo. Can you use SkyEye to help me find her location?"
"She's gorgeous!" Ron exclaimed, putting the photo in his pocket. "Of course, but there needs to be a camera nearby that can capture her so we can use SkyEye to locate her through facial recognition algorithms. But I think your opponent's name is..."
"Crane."
"Right, Crane. He's not stupid enough to livestream your girlfriend and tell the whole world, 'She's right here, come and get her!' Do you have any way to get her on camera?"
Arthur responded without hesitation, "That's easy. After each hit, Crane gives me five minutes and a call to confirm Gina's safety. You can use that time to hack his camera and pinpoint his location!"
"Okay," Ron sighed, "So, I, the boss, have to finish my employee's work for him first, right? What are you planning to do?"
"Of course," Arthur pulled a support frame from his toolbox, opened it up, and braced it against the middle of the room. Then, he used a utility knife to cut the seal on the glass window, removed the entire pane of glass from the inside, and casually tossed a set of ropes to Ron.
"Cook is swimming in the rooftop pool right now. We have twenty minutes to operate. Now, get out there, rappel down the wall to the bottom of the pool, drill a small hole at the bottom, insert this, and the tempered glass pool will crack on its own, as if subjected to excessive natural stress, and then..."
"Then, Cook will be swept up in the whirlpool like a toilet flushing, swept down from the bottom of the pool and crash to the ground below?" Ron's eyes lit up: "You really are a genius at this!"
(End of Chapter)
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