The Warrenton ranch had horses.  An amiable Chinaman owned it, or said he did.  He and Lucky spoke Mandarin, so I hadn’t a clue. After a bit, an odd-job looking guy showed Lucky and me to our room.  

Lucky didn’t stay long.  It was very posh, though.  She went out.  Soon I heard shots ringing.  When I hopped onto the widow cell, I saw Lucky at distance.  She had her Colt 1911 and PPQ out.  As she marched through a range of moving targets, she rang up target after target.  She was a dead shot.  After pushing through 3 or 4 times with her pistols, she put them down.  She then worked out on a larger course with a shotgun and then she started using an SA80A2; sometimes she added an AAG36 to it.  Her mastery of the grenade launcher was obvious.  Whatever she used, she was unerring in her marksmanship.  She finished up with sniper rifles. 

After she finished, Odd-Job started to clean her pistols.  She shooflied him away.  When I asked her why rejected Odd-Job’s cleaning, she said cleaned her own guns. “Dead people let others clean them.”  I watched.  Her routine was like a lot of soldiers at Fort Leonard Wood.  The guns a going over with Break Free CLP, a bore snake, cotton swabs, some paper towels , and gauze squares.  Once done cleaning, Lucky reloaded with special ammo from China.  Not yet finished, she took a whetstone she had left to soak in our sink, and then used it to bring her Police Spyderco to a razor’s edge. 

Warrenton’s a quiet place.  From time to time, a husband shoots a wife and anybody she’s rutting with, or a wife gets fed up and puts a bullet in her hubby’s head.  You know how it is . . . the usual rich people’s shenanigans.  

Who knows what time of night or early morning Lucky awoke with a start.  She gave me a shoosh..  Boom.  She was in a black ninja outfit with a black kevlar vest.  She had her Spyderco and her pistols arrayed on her duds.  Rather than use the door, she was out into quiet, still air to get her feet onto a slab of roof outside our room’s window.  I got an order to stay put.  I waited, and then ignored the order.  I tracked her. 

Lucky must have taken a drainpipe to the ground.  I had to find a tree to hop to and then shimmied down.    Going full speed, I did what I would to make a large arc that would intersect my best guess of Lucky’s route.  It worked.  I’m good at this.

I came first across a Range Rover that was parked  parallel to a fence outside the ranch’s gate. I went through the open passenger’s side window.  It was still warm.

Ohh-oh.  The driver was dead.  Lucky (who else?”) had shoved her Spyerderco through the underside of the man’s head.  The tongue was badly severed.  She had then, by the looks of it, slammed his face onto the steering wheel leaving blood and teeth.  With driver’s head forced forward, he then had taken an upward thrust of the knife at the base of his skull. So much for him.  Oh, well . . . 

I got queasy.  I started back toward the house.  As I did so, I heard the whop-whop of a helicopter.  As it began to come down, I heard what i recognised from the morning as the report of Lucky’s SA80.  I heard two short burst. I then heard something else.  Woe! It was the sound of the SA8-‘s grenade launcher.  I saw the helicopter turn to flames.   Lucky stood back and shot the scorched survivors.  I still didn’t see her.  By now, Team Constance had lost six men.  Two others rushed to the scene.  Lucky’s fire from the SA80 cut them down.  She moved laterally.  When I saw her, she was putting it to an armed chap.  She had her Colt 1911 in her hand, having slung the carbine.  Pop.  He dropped dead. 

I was impressed. Lucky was stingy with ammo, a real friend of the one-shot-one-kill school.  

Because I was feeling vulnerable, (I’m sane after all) I slithered back toward the house. I may have nine lives, but I’m not going to make myself a big, juicy target.   I saw the Odd-Job poseur with a phone in his hand.   He seemed to be screaming into it.  All  at once, I saw his head s burst open.  Then I saw Constance about 10 feet to Odd-Job’s left.  She had fired one round from her trusty Colt Python.  Bad break for Odd-Job.  He did seem to have got a call off.  I then saw the Chinaman sprinting towards Odd-Job firing a pistol I didn’t recognise as he screamed, “Stand fast. I love you, Beetle.”  

To my gobsmacked horror, his message of love enraged Constance.  She drew a bead, shooting Beetle’s lover deliberately in the crotch.  She walked over, kicked his body onto its stomach.  He was crying.  Constance had no mercy. She yanked down his pants and pink panties. She gave the exposed butt a hard slap.  And then she shoved her Python’s barrel between his buttocks.  “Enjoy this one, faggot.”  She pulled the trigger.  Blam!  His whimpering stopped. 

Her attitude shocked me. I knew Constance was a traditionalist, but surely the chap never did anything to or with anybody that Constance hadn’t done countless times herself. Nor, for that matter, Wolverine. At least now I had the amusement of being sure she was a RePub and not a Dem.  I did see a  streak of stern Catholic moralist in her.

Having slithered by now to the house’s porch, off I scampered into the house, I made it back to the room.  Once in, I hid under the bed.  

Lucky strolled in coated with blood.  She sweet talked me out from my hiding place, then began to towel off.  She stepped into a shower with her ninja kit on.  She stripped, scrubbed off fast, and put he bloodied, muddied ninja duds into a canvas bag.  

I mentioned my terror of Constance continuing the fight. “Not tonight, sweetie  Constance knows Odd-Job’s call summoned our posse.  She could leave fast or die.”  

Voila, a Chinese gang arrived.  They began to clean up the battleground.  A clique of them spirited us from the house.  Into a nice truck we went and away we went.

Meanwhile, as I learnt from future conversations, an aggravated Constance made her way back to her pickup point that night.  She put three new rounds in her Python as she went.  The empty casings from her work with the Chinese went into a pocket.  Even when I talked to her, she was miffed at her driver. “The fool got himself killed without a fight. Screw him.   I hear even Cornpone the worthless fired his freaking gun.”  What did please her, she told me,  is that she was not picked up by her backup car.  Instead, a Caddy Escalade rolled up to her.  From the back, she heard Wolverine’s voice.  “Get in mum. Tomorrow’s another day.”  What mother, she asked me, does not adore hearing her son’s, especially when he brimmed with optimism?