#snipershot

"You're M, Sir?" 

Mundy was just exiting the diner he had breakfast in and a young boy came to him. 

"Yeah."

"I come from Maurice. He says he couldn't make much of the place and you should go and check it yourself. Today at the end of the afternoon should be ideal, he says." 

Mundy nodded. 

"Alright, thanks, mate. If you see him, tell him I got it and thank him, alright?" 

"Yeah, okay, bye!" The little boy went running back to his group of friends and as he did so, Mundy noticed the soles on his shoes were green. 

He smiled and hopped on his van again. 

"Guess I have a bit of time to kill." The hunter drove around town slowly and took the time to look at the shops, the buildings, the streets. His eyes lazily followed the signs of the shops, the logo, the lights, the colours, people wandering left and right. 

He pressed a button that he had rediscovered on his campervan and the music started floating. He smiled. It had been extremely hard to find that cassette but by God he won't let go of it! He had gone through every music shop in town and asked them all. 

"I'm looking for a specific song,  was wondering if maybe you had it?"

"What is it?" 

"It's called something like 'Solitude' I guess, I don't really know, it's a French song." 

Every music shop owner looked at him differently. Some gave him surprise followed by disdain. How the hell did he expect them to know if they had the cassette if he didn't even know the title of the song?

"Do you know the singer or the band perhaps?"

"Uh, no, not sure about it either…" 

He had repeated that more than half a dozen times with an unbearable feeling that he was asking for something impossible, and that he was bothering the person he was talking to. 

Thankfully, one of them managed to find the song. Mundy tried the cassette on the spot and instantly recognised it, right from the first arpeggios on the piano. He now listened to it on loop in his van. 

It did some good to him somehow. That, and writing to that bloke. Yeah, he would never admit that it was him who wrote that letter, but he did. It wasn't something he usually did, eh. But he felt like he needed to tell someone about what he had felt that night at the Queen Victoria. The question was, who would be willing to listen to his sentimental nonsense? Eddy wouldn't get it, Matt was far away and surely busy, and Maurice surely had better things to do. Besides, Mundy didn't like to share what he felt and thought with Maurice too much. He already knew a lot and didn't need to know more. 

So yes, Mundy had found a blank piece of paper and a pen in his van and had sat down to write what he had thought of the song, what it had made him feel. Surprisingly enough, the simple fact of writing it down relieved him. He didn't really care if the singer read it or not. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more Mundy was convinced that it was all a show. There couldn't possibly be another bloke on Earth who had to go through the same hell as he did. But then again, what Mundy had felt on his seat that night, the sheer force of the emotion that he had been put through head first…! 

Damn, that singer really was something. 

-- Near the old sugar factory, 7 pm --

"That's a lot of people to watch over some beasts…"

Mundy was looking through binoculars from a tall boulder. He had parked the van behind it. 

The old sugar factory was a vast complex of buildings that had been abandoned since Mundy was a little boy. Now, it was nothing more than emptied hangars neatly lined up; free real estate for a criminal like Duchemin. 

Mundy sighed. What he saw through the binoculars wasn't promising. Too many people, the rounds were complex, no way to remember them all, surveillance cameras… 

"How the hell am I ever gonna get inside…?" He wondered out loud. 

"With a professional." 

Mundy froze. He turned and there he was again, that same bloke. He was in a dark red suit and tie and matching ski mask. 

"What the hell are you doin' here?" 

"Repaying a favour." Lucien lit a cigarette and started smoking it.

"What?" 

"You did save me, even though I hadn't thought so at first." Lucien said. 

"Nothing you say makes sense, mate."

Lucien smirked. 

"Oh but it does. You see, when you freed me from Duchemin's men last time, you do remember, don't you?"

"Yeah, I do, what about it?"

"Had it ever occured to you that I wanted to get caught?" 

Mundy frowned. 

"Why would you do that?" He asked, confused.

"Well, I wanted to convince them to take me straight to the man, by which point I would deal with him." 

"You'd have died right after though." Mundy answered. 

"Oui, but to quote a hunter I recently came to know, 'don't care.' However, thinking about it again, you did save me." Lucien said. 

"Oh, what's changed now?" Mundy asked. 

"Someone erupted in my life that I cannot afford to leave behind." He answered. 

Mundy's eyes went back to the sugar factory in the distance. 

"Good for you." He simply said. "But why d'you want to help? I thought you didn't care about animals." 

Lucien chuckled and slid his gloved hands in his trousers' pockets. 

"I told you, I have a favour to repay. And I do care about animals. What do you think I am? Heartless?"

"Well, you didn't think twice when you tortured that poor Eric, eh…?"

"Non, I did not." Lucien answered, looking at the sugar factory. "And if I had to do it all again, I would not change a thing. How is he by the way? His thigh should be completely healed by now." 

Mundy's eyebrows jumped. What kind of an emotionless machine that bloke was? A second ago he said he would gladly torture a bloke only to then ask about his well-being?

"He… He's alright, yeah."

"Très bien. So, what was your plan, Monsieur M?"

"Well, I had a look at things and it doesn't look too good. I can't shoot one without at least a dozen of them seeing it, I can't just barge in, and I don't really know." 

Lucien pulled his hand out of his pocket and elegantly removed his cigarette from between his lips. 

"What is the point of your intrusion?" He asked. 

"I wanna know how many beasts there are and what sizes. Then I can call for the right number and sizes of trucks."

"Hm, I see." Lucien finished his cigarette and dropped it to the dry orange ground before crushing it under his sole. That's when Mundy noticed his varnished shoes. 

"But you were sayin' you were a professional, so go ahead then, how am I gonna get in?" Mundy asked. "There's no way on Earth I can slip past them all." 

"Non, it is true. Look at you, almost two metres tall of rough and beyond any kind of fashion fabrics, non, that will not do." 

"Oi, I'm not commenting on your looks, eh." Mundy answered, offended. 

Lucien turned and raised his ice drop-like eyes to the hunter. 

"Oh but I did not. I just stated the obvious, you look like a Bushman." 

"Well, as if your fancy arse could get in there with your tuxedo and ski mask!" 

"It is called a balaclava, but I don't blame you, you would not know." Lucien said before he turned away. "Lucky you…" He whispered to himself.

"Whatever it's called, we can't get in there." Mundy sat down at the edge of the boulder, his feet dangling off into the emptiness of the desert while he stared at the buildings in front of them. 

"If we are done chatting…" Lucien spun on his heels and went away. 

"Oi! Wait, where are you going?! I thought you were going to help me?" 

The man in the suit elegantly climbed down the boulder, his silhouette almost slithering down like vapour. When he landed on the ground, he dusted his gloves and his suit off. 

"And I am keeping my word. I presume you have your rifle with you?" Lucien asked. 

"Yeah, in my van." Mundy landed on the ground next to him. 

"Do you have something silent for close quarters?" 

"I have my kukri." Mundy answered. 

"I meant something like a gun." 

"Nah, I have an SMG, but that thing makes a lot of noise." 

Lucien winced. 

"Non, that will not do."

"Blowgun?" 

The Frenchman raised his eyes to the hunter. 

"Are you kidding me?" 

"Nah, I have a blowgun, works well with the sleeping darts. Would that work?" Mundy asked. 

"I… I guess so, if you know how to handle it." Lucien answered, astonished by the idea of a blowgun.

"Course I do, come along." 

Lucien followed Mundy and they arrived at his van. 

"Ah, so this is how you move around when you are not in trucks that contain alligators and the like, hm?" Lucien asked.

"Oi, show some respect. She's the reason why I'm still alive." 

Mundy's sentence cut Lucien in halves. The serious tone with which he spoke left no space for jokes. The hunter opened the backdoor and slipped in. Lucien waited outside, smoking another cigarette already, reflecting on what he had just heard.

"Right, I'm ready." Mundy hopped off. "What's your plan?" He locked the backdoor. 

"Follow me closely and don't make a sound." 

"Alright." 

The hunter followed the spy to the fence on the side of the impressive complex. It looked like the old fence had been cut, offering them the opening they needed. They slipped in and walked as silently as shadows. Lucien turned and put his gloved index on his lips. Mundy nodded and followed him. They walked along the wall of one of the buildings. Lucien slipped in through the large window and Mundy peeked in first, just to see. There was no one but the spy who was gesturing him to get in. Mundy obeyed. 

"Holy-mh?!" 

Lucien smacked his hand on Mundy's mouth. The hangar was full of cages and inside them, more felines than Mundy had ever seen in a zoo: jaguars, leopards, lions, panthers, even cheetahs…! Mundy's eyes opened wide. 

"We are alone in this hangar but I would appreciate it if you could whisper." Lucien murmured. 

"How d'you know we're alone?" 

The Frenchman walked along the cages confidently. The beasts left and right from him sometimes growled, or meowed, but showed no sign of wanting to assault either of them. In any case, they were behind sturdy bars.

"This is how I know that we are alone." Lucien stopped in front of a cage.

"Bloody hell… Did you do that?" 

In the cage were half a dozen men, unconscious or asleep, Mundy couldn't tell. 

"Oui, I did. Now, there is one who is roughly your height. Get a change."

"What about - oi! L?" Mundy turned and the man had disappeared. 

"I am ready." Lucien emerged from a shadow wearing one of the mercenaries' grey uniforms and a helmet that still hid most of his face. 

"Crikey, you're fast. Alright, gimme a minute." 

Lucien walked around, looking at the animals in the cages. He stopped in front of a black panther and crouched down to be at eye-level with… her. 

"C'est drôle de penser que tu es la cousine éloignée de ma petite Perle." 

[Quite amusing to think that you are the cousin of my little Perle.]

The feline was lying on the floor, her big golden eyes looking at the spy. 

"Tu es magnifiquement dangereuse, ou dangereusement magnifique, tes yeux sont sublimes." 

[You are magnificently dangerous, or dangerously magnificent, your eyes are gorgeous.]

Her pupils went from slits to circles and her tail waved lazily on the floor. He smiled at her. 

"Dommage que Perle ne soit pas là. Je suis sûre qu'elle aurait aimé te voir elle aussi."

[Shame that Perle isn't here with me. I am sure that she would have loved to meet you.]

"Talking to the big kitty, eh?" Mundy appeared, dressed in the grey uniform too. He put his helmet on his head. 

"She is gorgeous, I couldn't take my eyes off of her." Lucien pushed himself up on his thighs. "Look at her eyes. She stares at me and I cannot but avert my gaze." 

Like a reflex, Lucien went to Mundy's collar and adjusted it. The Aussie looked slightly up, to give him better access. The Frenchman then dusted off the jacket with his gloved hand.

"You'd better." Mundy answered as he let Lucien adjust his clothes. "Most animals take starin' as an act of dominance. If you stare straight in her eyes, you're telling her that you're a predator and she's the prey." 

"Oh, my apologies, Madame." Lucien lowered his eyes and bowed to the panther. 

"You're a good comedian, I'll give you that."

"Pardon?" Lucien asked in his mother tongue. 

"You nearly had me believing that you really had something for that panther." 

Lucien frowned. 

"I do. Look at her." The Frenchman said as he looked at the panther again. She stopped cleaning herself and raised her golden eyes to him. "It is all as though she could read my most intimate thoughts with those eyes of hers. She reads what is inside my head. It is very pure." 

Lucien paused and looked at the black panther's body entirely. 

"She is gorgeous. But you are free to think that I am lying, of course." The Frenchman walked to the front door of the hangar. "So, will you follow?" 

Mundy had stood there, unsure if he was believing his improvised colleague or not, but above all, he had been struck by the poetry with which Lucien had spoken.

"Y-yeah, coming." 

"Take one of their rifles. I have one with me." Lucien said and they both exited, looking like ordinary mercenaries. 

The Frenchman led the way and the Aussie followed closely.

"Why are you breathing so loud? Relax." 

"I'm… I'm trying. It's just hard, ok? There are a lot of them. What if we get caught?" Mundy stammered through his nervous whispers.

"Oh we definitely will if you continue behaving as you are right now." Lucien stopped walking and looked up at his nervous colleague. "Take a deep breath."

Mundy obeyed. 

"Let your shoulders sink. Non, don't look around, look into my eyes." Lucien raised his index and pointed at his own eyes.

"Uh…" 

"Look here… Oui…" Now his hand was sinking down, away from Mundy's field of view.

Mundy stared and neither of them blinked. They weren't in the sugar factory complex anymore. They were alone, no one was around them for miles. Mundy saw the arctic blue irises, with very thin streaks of a slightly darker shade of blue, like threads intertwining behind the delicate glass of the Frenchman's irises, the black pupils, the long black eyelashes, bending poetically, all pointing outwards to the nothingness. And time stopped. 

"You have nothing to worry about. We will find the animals you seek and I will help you free them, d'accord?"

[Agreed?]

Lucien spoke slowly, with a very confident yet calm voice. He let the silence weigh and his eyes do the work. His gaze was intense, powerful. There was something magnetic about it. Mundy couldn't possibly avert his gaze.

"Voilà, now you are calm again. M?" 

Mundy blinked repeatedly, his eyelashes fluttering, and he felt as if he was waking up from the most serene dream. Their surroundings slowly appeared again, the orange floor, the grey concrete buildings around them, the sky turning dark purple, oh now the other mercenaries appeared. They weren't caring about either of them. Mundy's breath had cut short. 

How the hell did he do that? How did that Frenchman manage to just make everything disappear around them. And now it was all back. Did Mundy hallucinate the whole thing? Had time passed at all? Wow...

"M?" 

Mundy blinked again. 

"Come along." 

He obeyed and they soon entered another hangar. 

"I haven't cleared the guards here, so don't make too much noise. Understood?" 

"H-how did you do it?" Mundy was still confused.

"What?" 

They started walking in the aisles of cages. 

"How did you manage to calm me down like that?" 

"Does it matter?" 

The sound of their black boots were barely audible on the concrete floor. Lucien noticed it and nodded to himself. There were a few guards here and there but nothing to worry about. 

"Are you a magician or something?" Mundy asked and Lucien chuckled. 

"Almost." He answered. 

"A wizard then?" 

"I know I am quite older than you are but come on." 

"Fair enough. What are you then?"

"Someone who seeks to help." 

"Why?" 

"Does it matt-"

"Yeah, it bloody does." Mundy's voice had been cold and assertive. Lucien stopped walking. 

"Why?" He asked. 

"Whatever the reason you want Duchemin for, I've set my mind. I'll find him and end him." Mundy said.

"Ah, so you will climb a boulder a kilometre away from his bedroom window and shoot him from far away in his sleep, oui?" Lucien mocked. 

"No, I'll get my hands on him and make him suffer before he dies." 

Lucien's eyebrows jumped up and he smirked. 

"You couldn't even enter this facility without me, how on Earth do you plan on getting close to him, hm?" 

"I don't know, I'll think of something." Mundy resumed their walk and tried to make a mental note of all the animals left and right from them in the cages. 

"M, I will find Duchemin before you do and will deal with him my way. However, you are welcome to strip him off of his animals before I kill him, if that makes you feel any better." 

"Listen here…" Mundy towered Lucien and pointed his index at him, tapping his chest as he spoke. "I'll find that bloke if it's the last thing I do."

"Steal his animals and you won't even have the opportunity." Lucien calmly said.

"What's your point? You say you're gonna help me to free those animals back but then…? Then what?" 

"Then you will have the entirety of Duchemin's army on you. From there, I give it all one week, maximum, before you are found dead." 

Mundy sighed. 

"So what should I do then? Leave those animals to die?" 

"I did not say that." Lucien answered. 

"What then?"

"Wait for me to kill him. Then you will be able to take the animals for free." 

"Pfff…" Mundy walked away resolutely. He continued making a mental inventory of the place before exiting and walking to somewhere calm. Ah, the fence would do. He walked near the limits of the complex and stood there, staring at the nothingness of the desert. He crossed his arms on his chest.

"This is the help that I offer, all these animals against a bit of time; enough for me to kill Duchemin." Lucien had of course followed the hunter. 

"You don't get it." Mundy said with his low, husky voice. 

"What is it that I am not getting?" 

"Freeing the beasts is one thing, killing Duchemin is another, and I need to do both." 

"Non, you don't need to. I can take care of killing him and you then get the animals, what is it that you do not like in my offer? I am sparing you the risks of his army coming after you." Lucien asked. 

"I wanna kill him." Mundy answered. 

"Who?" 

"Duchemin." 

"Why? Is it simple revenge for these animals we have seen? This is ridiculous!" 

"No. It's not for the beasts. You don't get it." Mundy sat on a crate. "You can't get it. I need to kill the bloke myself." 

"You will die straight after, or worse, you could end up jailed for it." Lucien answered. 

"Yeah well same for you, isn't it?" 

"Non." 

Mundy's eyebrows jumped. 

"And how d'you think you'll escape his goons or a trial, huh?" 

"The trial has happened a long time ago and I am the executioner." Lucien answered. "You wanted to know what my job was. This is it. I am sent when no one else can, for justice to be served." 

"So pompous you are, listen to you speak! As if your little arse here was justice itself, pff, you're a bloke, nothing more, nothing less." Mundy said. "Whoever kills him will have to face the music." 

He sighed and Lucien sat on a crate next to him. Mundy looked at him. 

"Look, you said you had someone to go home to. I don't. Let me kill the bloke and whatever happens to me after that, I don't care." 

"Surely you do have some interest in staying alive." Lucien answered. "Don't you?" 

"N-not really." Mundy lowered his head. "Killing Duchemin, it's, uh, it's something I need to do, and then I can go in peace." 

Lucien frowned. He had never heard the voice of despair come out of another pair of lips than his. But there he was, next to a man who knew he walked to his death and was gladly doing it. 

"Who will take care of your van?" 

Mundy's eyes snapped wide. 

"What?" 

"Your van. Who will take care of her when you… are gone?" Lucien asked.

Mundy looked left and right. 

"I don't know…" He thought about Eddy but with all the respect he had for his friend, he knew Eddy wouldn't know what to do with his campervan. 

"And your rifle, your blowgun?" 

"I don't know…" Mundy repeated and he stared at the dark ground between his feet. The night was wrapping them both tightly under a lamp post that shed its yellow light. 

"You have some family, maybe friends? You are a native of these lands, I can hear it in your accent." Lucien went on. 

"Yes, I was born here." Mundy was gritting his teeth. Lucien felt he had struck a nerve. "And I'll die here, ok? Nothing ties me to anything anymore!" 

The hunter's eyes shone fiercely under the electric light, his jaw was clenched hard as if he was biting into life itself, trying to hold on to it. It had been hard to get those words out. They were heavy, they weighed a ton each, and they hurt. What's more, Mundy had now uttered those words to someone when he never even said them to himself out loud  Lucien frowned. 

"You don't get it and you won't ever get it." Mundy said. "I need to make Duchemin pay."

Lucien's lips parted. What the hunter just said, it was exactly his feeling too. He realised that he wasn't looking at the hunter speaking, but at his reflection in a mirror. He shook his head and blinked a few times. 

"What did you just say?" He asked. 

"Pff, you're not even listenin', are you? Bah, it's fine. But what you said is right. I can't free the animals before I kill Duchemin or I might not get a chance to kill him before he does me. So I need to get the bloke first." Mundy thought. 

"What did you just say…?" Lucien repeated slowly and when Mundy turned his head to him, he read the astonishment painted across Lucien's masked face.

"I said I'll kill him first, then free the beasts." 

"Non, before that, what did you say?" 

"I don't know…" Mundy frowned, trying to recollect his thoughts. "That Duchemin needs to pay?" 

Lucien shut his parted lips and frowned. 

"Now, Monsieur M, time for you to tell me the truth. Why are you after Duchemin?"

Mundy's eyebrows jumped. 

"I'm not tellin' you! Why would I? And what difference does it make for you?" 

"Just tell me and I will tell you." 

"No." 

Lucien sighed. He thought fast in his head and an idea popped up in his mind. 

"Fine." He said as he stood up. "I shall find out myself." 

"Pff, you can't." 

"Of course I can. Do I look like a resourceless man?" 

Mundy frowned as he didn't understand Lucien's point. 

"M, last time we met, I was in that particular hangar you went to. Then, you left me there, stranded in the middle of the desert and now what?" Lucien explained. "Now, I reappear like magic on your very heels. Have you ever stopped to wonder how I came to know Duchemin's moves?" 

Mundy followed Lucien's train of thought and saw the final stop. 

"Maurice?" He said to the Frenchman. 

"If you don't tell me why you so adamantly want Duchemin, I will go and ask him." Lucien threatened him and Mundy burst out laughing. 

"Mate, he won't ever tell you!" 

"You think so?"