Page 2 of Sins of Arrogance

“I saw a weapons pro­to­type at an arms show­case in Is­tan­bul two months ago. Off-the-books pre­sen­ta­tion. Rus­sian en­gi­neer, des­per­ate for back­ers, act­ing the mag­got fired too many shots to im­press his pro­ten­tional clients. Sloppy build, it over­heated af­ter four.”

Bro­gan will un­der­stand my Irish slang. The man was a to­tal fool.

“To­tally ban­jaxed,” Conor says with dis­gust. “And it was his only pro­to­type.”

“Prac­ti­cally melted the demon­stra­tor’s hand off too.” Rory’s eyes gleam with grat­i­fi­ca­tion from the mem­ory.

The en­gi­neer had been so des­per­ate for cash that he’d stuck around to bar­gain for the schemat­ics of the non­func­tion­ing gun. It had fired two shots with non-lethal force and enough ac­cu­racy to hit the tar­get, if not the cen­ter of it.

The third shot had gone com­pletely wild and the fourth had given him third-de­gree burns and lost any chance for him to get back­ers on his project.

Once we had the schemat­ics and all the re­search doc­u­men­ta­tion, we torched his lab and put the en­gi­neer out of his mis­ery.

I was go­ing to of­fer him a job – not run­ning the project, be­cause he’d al­ready shown his in­ad­e­qua­cies for that – but his knowl­edge of the tech would have made him an as­set to the re­search team.

How­ever, while Rory was scrub­bing the hard drives, he came across some sick shite and we ended up killing the en­gi­neer in­stead.

“Mick saw the po­ten­tial.” Even af­ter nearly eight years in New York, Brice’s deep voice still has a hint of a Dublin ac­cent.

“The con­cept is game chang­ing,” I say. “Zero noise.” Un­like gun sup­pres­sors that can­not dampen all the noise from a shot. “No foren­sic trail other than the unique char­ac­ter of the ammo it­self.”

In­stead of gun­pow­der, the bul­lets have to have a fer­ro­mag­netic core to work with the mag­netic ac­cel­er­a­tion of the fir­ing mech­a­nism and bar­rel.

We have a sup­plier, but I’m look­ing into build­ing our own re­fine­ment fa­cil­ity to de­crease the chances of the ammo trac­ing back to us through a third party.

But with­out bar­rel stri­a­tions, the bul­lets can­not be matched to an in­di­vid­ual gun, or per­son pulling the trig­ger. And the heat of the fir­ing propul­sion burns any resid­ual DNA on the ammo it­self.

I let that set­tle. Let Bro­gan con­sider what a gun like that would mean for hits and close-range pro­tec­tion.

It has taken me two months to fig­ure out and source the nec­es­sary pieces for re­search and de­vel­op­ment with­out tip­ping any­one off to my in­ter­est in the field. With my most re­cent hire, I’ve got ev­ery­one I need on board.

Ex­cept Bro­gan.

“Foren­sic-proof. AI-de­tec­tion proof.” The zeal in Rory’s voice makes Bro­gan sit back a lit­tle. “So quiet even the most sen­si­tive mon­i­tor­ing equip­ment isn’t go­ing to read the shots for what they are.”

Some men watch porn. Rory watches videos of weapons be­ing fired. He prob­a­bly gets just as turned on do­ing it too.

“It’s the kind of weapons tech that changes how syn­di­cates can op­er­ate.” These weapons won’t just make us money, they’ll make the Shaugh­nessy Mob and its al­lies vir­tu­ally un­touch­able.

Bro­gan whis­tles low. “So, you want me to be­lieve this isn’t sci-fi bull­shit. That it’s some­thing we can ac­tu­ally build?”

I lock eyes with him. “We’re not go­ing to build one. We’re go­ing to build hun­dreds.”

And they won’t burn away the flesh from the hands fir­ing the guns.

“But first we have to de­velop one,” Bro­gan says, show­ing why the Shaugh­nessy busi­nesses have thrived un­der his lead­er­ship. “What kind of in­vest­ment are we talk­ing here?”

“First, we need to re­haul the Bunker for se­cu­rity and us­abil­ity and then we have to out­fit and staff the re­search lab.”

Bro­gan looks around the room we’re in. “This place is se­cure. Built like a Cold War panic room. And we’ve al­ready got a weapons de­vel­op­ment lab. What else do you think you need?”

“A fa­cil­ity built for to­day’s war­fare, not what we faced in the last cen­tury.” I press the but­ton on a re­mote and the large screen tak­ing up most of one wall comes to life. “And a clean lab de­signed for the kind of pro­jec­tile tech­nol­ogy we’ll be test­ing.”

Fi­nan­cial line items and fig­ures I’ve mem­o­rized fill the screen, in­clud­ing subto­tals for the dif­fer­ent stages of the project and an over­all pro­jec­tion of to­tal cost.

Bro­gan’s in­drawn breath says there’s noth­ing wrong with his eye­sight.

“This kind of ghost tech doesn’t ex­ist. Yet.” I pause, let­ting that one word sink in. “But I’m not the only one who saw that demon­stra­tion.”