"Nice to see you my old friend, it's been too long." Arriving back from the front end of the range, having set the targets separately, one in each of four lanes, the factory technician took position behind her. As if briefing her on shooting-range procedures, he put the hearing protectors over her head, all the while memorising her armament order she was discussing.
Anne squeezed the trigger four times. Each time while she slowly exhaled, after a deep inhale in-between. Astonished looks replaced the loud chit-chat in the arms stall outside the shooting-range.
A large portion of the deafening echo of four separated, three-shot-automatic-bursts rang out to the surprised audience outside, while the rest of the automatic echo bounced off the carpeted sound-absorbing walls inside, followed by total silence. The seemingly bewildered factory technician took the Glock pistol from Anne, removed the empty magazine and cleared the last round from the chamber. He then inspected the pistol by removing the slide - with his back towards the audience outside the glassed-off range. After he forced the factory-standard trigger assembly back into its original position, he pulled the slide back over the frame and showed a thumbs-up to his colleagues and wide-eyed audience outside. Outside in the shop, a button was pushed and Anne's target glided closer.
"OK, twelve shots, and she hit the target three times. Not bad for a beginner..." The men shared a giggle then looked up at the red electronic display that had indicated the total hit-and-miss rate for the ammunition used.
"You got the target!" The men applauded her by clapping as Anne exited, hearing protectors in hand, and answering her phone which just rang out Queen's another One Bites The Dust. By then the men were finished and held their sides as the laughter had just become too much, and they allowed her to pass for some privacy during her call.
With Anne still on her mobile phone, the three other men strode into the range to inspect the Glock the technician had held out to show that there had been no fault with it. The uncommon three-shot-bursts, squeezed off by the older woman had the men totally baffled as it had been a known fact that the pistol had been a semi-automatic, allowing for a single discharge only, with each squeeze of the trigger.
Of all people, Anne knew that there are two kinds of people when it came to commercial and military style arms and ammunition. The one knew everything there was to know about published reloading and ballistic trajectories of bullets, even accurate data on the impact at various distances for sniping. But those were not the men, and on occasion a few Israeli and Russian women she required for recruiting. What people like Anne was looking for, were the ones skilled in applying the correct pressure to not-so-well-known points to minimise severe blood-loss, thorough knowledge of the difference between the temporary wound cavity of a gunshot wound versus the more desirable permanent damage of a short and inconspicuous blade, and lastly, the handful of creative ones, that have been amidst a conflict and have figured out for survival’s sake, with the assistance of a regular nail clipper or paper-clip, to change a regular commercial semi-automatic automatic pistol, into a fully automatic device to invite death in a clean and repeated fashion. If these men had an idea what she had done, they would be the ones behind the dark doors she was hoping to knock on, quietly.
Just then, prior to handing each their hearing protectors, the technician motioned to his colleague outside to bring all the targets up, in case the woman had missed her's but punched holes into theirs.
"What the..." The three French men were dumbfounded and walked right up to their targets to rub their fingers over the holes Anne had punched through. Their was nothing indiscriminate about her shooting they learned, as not a single round had been waisted. Each target had been punched no less than three times, each with well-placed and most peculiar holes, in identical fashion. The lowest was, what would have been a wound cavity between the groin and inner-thigh, ensuring major blood loss - had the target been human - it would have presented a severed main artery, just below where even a low reaching bullet proof vest neglected cover. The second one had been centre-of-mass, in the heart, and third, had been positioned right between the eyes. The men stared at each other, and back at the technician again, who replied with a head shaking from side to side and almost indifferent shrugging shoulders. Turning their heads to the back, outside the protective glass where they last spotted Anne, they discovered she had apparently left during her call. Anne saw what she needed to see, and she was unimpressed.
"Possibly kind men, mixed with a measure of macho-ness - Rejected..." Would be her valuation on their declined applications.
The expansive dark red thickly carpeted auditorium that had been sparsely filled and was a "by invitation only" event, and the dimming stage spotlights had it slowly changed colour as expensively suited men slowly entered. Most were paging brochures on the latest hi-tech gadgetry and satellite tracking.
Closing a booklet on Global Positioning Systems, Anne breathed deep and sighed as she hoped to wish back the old days of improvisation, before technology replaced ingenuity and creativity. A few slow but absent-minded patient wipes and her thin-framed reading spectacles were clean again. She glanced down to the glossy program and brochures on her lap, with 5 minutes remaining prior to the presentation, and she continued adding the manufacturer's details from both the muzzle suppressor booklet and the long range .338 Lapua Magnum ammunition brochures, to her mobile contact list.
As her old habit demanded of her, she attentively scanned the auditorium around her from right to left, looking for familiar faces as she'd been doing for many years.
Apart from a limited number of government officials; whose memory still served them well, she managed to locate two hardened ex KGB officers, a Chinese counterpart, a stand-in for Korea and a handful of mixed, South African, Greek, and English ex-naval officers, just as the projector lights bounced off the silver curtain, lighting the area then dimming again.
"I do apologise Ma'am." A seemingly embarrassed clean-cut, thirty-something man went down on one knee.
'Fine specimen, it really seems like someone who spends a lot of time in the sun.' She thought and then smiled as he almost in a servant-like way started collecting what soon morphed into a heap of exhibition pamphlets, that he caused to fall from her lap as he attempted passing her.
"In a rush are we?" Anne smiled and leaned forward to assist.
"Personally I'd suggest a "small-of-back holster for better concealed carry..." She put out her hand smiling.
"Anne." She offered her hand.
"Angus the second." The man replied and unusually winked at her. He repeatedly turned his head back as if looking for someone and faced her again, then pulled on his jacket behind his left hip and covered the butt of his pistol.
"You're very observant." He let out as his eyes darted past Anne into the mingling crowd that had formed below on the ground level, apparently still searching for someone.
"Thank you young man, if you keep your girlfriend waiting, you're bound to bump into someone else."
"Girlfriend? I wish my time was my own, like that." And he kept searching.
"Mind if I...?" He pointed to the vacant seat to her right.
"Please do." Anne, politely lifted her heavy black canvass handbag and moved it over to the empty seat on the opposite side as the lights adjusted dimmer and blacked out.
The action packed thirty minute introduction film to the newly assembled SPES-Corp that had lit up the auditorium, had the entire audience at the edge of their seats. Anne noted how familiar looks were shared back and forth as portfolio managers of hedge funds as well as private investors made frame-for-frame notes on both prospective pre- and post political-turmoil-financing opportunities.
SPES-Corp miraculously managed to pull itself up within three grim years from infamous beginnings in Angola and other mineral rich countries, having trained and equipped rebel groups and recruited new and upcoming political activists. Although on the ground, dreadful political chaos seemingly reigned, Anne knew the process had
been perfected elsewhere, and duplicated with lucrative future rewards for anxious investors and mercenary groups alike. The age of both information and disinformation had dawned, but the world had only turned slightly to make itself more comfortable for a longer deeper outside sleep...
Their infamous octopus-like acronym "GIDEON" was never boasted as being their true backbone in their promising investment prospectus, but for Anne, it was crystal clear.
(G)athering of (I)ntelligence,
(D)issemination of political propaganda for forced elections via campus level recruitment,
(E)quipping and training of rebel groups, and the,
(O) And "N" that had been known only to the handful who shared the security-clearance that Anne had.
'Overthrowing a government is such an ugly term'. Anne thought as she confirmed payment from her mobile handset to an American charismatic religious group who had been readying a small handful of missionaries who passed their Theology studies Cum-Laude.
'Old school...' Anne told herself.
Passing a few minutes, waiting for the arms-show to commence, she paged the research listed on a book that had been published, with a follow-up that had apparently been pending. She looked up at the man next to her, then strained her eyes as she ontinued reading under the dim lighting that had been present.
"An oldie, but a goody to put in those moron-filled liberal pipes - and smoke 'em up. Argue this one in support of a 'gun-free South Africa where the citizens are defenceless - and for what passes as Police and Army, who seems to have an anxious competition on who can lose the most firearms.
Of course, it became more in vogue to refer to some terrorists as politicians, but many were overlooked when the looters-list was compiled - And the likes of Anglo mining and the other robbers in the UK who needed to remain relevant and keep the supply of gold and others going, while in control (by replacing a white-puppet-run economic system with a more representing of the population - black-puppet-run one) - and expensive suits and property and cars were dished out. So, what happened to those 'freedom fighters' - if it's more palatable... and the rest of the 'Soweto Cheque-books' - the preferred slang for Makarov and Tokarev pistols, not to mention the different Kalashnikovs such as the AK47, AKM, and Draganovs, as they used to be referred to?
According to the World Bank (and they would know, as it took a great deal of fancy footwork to finance and create the terrorist groups on African soil, where mineral deposits warranted it) for using the 500 million small arms in the world, 100 million are AK-47s and its variants and of that 100 million, 75 million are AK-47s as opposed to its other popular descendants like the AKM and AK-74.
This glut of weapons is almost entirely due to overproduction of 'the rifle" in Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War.
Initially the Soviet Union kept tight control of the factories and the weapons (the US did not get a hold of examples of the gun until 1955) but slowly allowed production in Warsaw Pact countries starting with Poland in 1957, followed by Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, China, East Germany, Egypt, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Romania, Yugoslavia and recently the United States.
China did its own bit in propagating AK-47 manufacturing capabilities: after Albania fell out with the Soviet Union and was cut off from Warsaw Pact weaponry, China helped Albania set up its own factories making AK variants. At the height of its production Albania was making 275,000 rifles a year.
Weapons get into the hands of terrorists and others by a variety of routes.
Collapses of states, particularly in Eastern Europe, have put huge numbers of AK-47s on the market. When Albania suffered from civil unrest in 1997, 700,000 firearms and 1.5 billion rounds of ammunition went missing, perhaps up to 80% of the firearms in Albania.
Southern Africa - for one - is awash with small and light weapons. Most of these weapons are the material legacy of the Cold War. During the 1970s, '80s and '90s the superpowers pumped massive amount of guns and ammunition into this region. Many of these now are controlled by bandits in Mozambique or unemployed demobilized soldiers and black market syndicates in Angola. These weapons were issued as government grants during the Cold War. The Soviets supported Marxist movements and regimes, while the U.S. supplied pro-capitalists with weapons. The intelligence organizations of the superpowers (CIA and KGB) facilitated this.
Angola - Since Angola got independence in 1975 from Portugal a bloody civil war has dragged on. Throughout this conflict the U.S. pumped millions worth of weapons to the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and its military component, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) through its military assistance program. U.S. military aid increased from $15 million in 1986 to $300 million in 1992, the year aid it was suspended. China was another military supplier of the FNLA. South Africa's capability of supplying weapons to Unita was boosted by its internal industry, pumping more than $80 million of military aid to UNITA throughout the war until the early '90s. Russia is said to have supplied most of the military aid through KGB routes to Angola's Marxist-aligned government, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Available figures state about $2 billion of weapons annually was received from the Soviets, while Cuba supplied $200 million of Soviet arms.
Open military government grants were complemented by covert deliveries, for which statistics were never opened to public scrutiny. It is known that between 1975-76 the CIA secretly supplied anti-Communist insurgents in Angola with mortars, anti-tank rockets, rifles, ammunition and communication equipment . On top of this supply the MPLA and UNITA spent huge amounts on other weapons, with MPLA running a debt of $4 billion.
Mozambique - The superpowers waged the Cold War through proxies, and one such conflict was the Mozambican civil war that broke out in 1975. The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) controlled the government and received military support from USSR, while the Mozambique National Resistance (RENAMO) rallied support from anti-communist states. Throughout the 16-year war the FRELIMO government supplied an estimated 1.5 million assault rifles to civilians who supported their cause.
The war ended in 1992, followed by United Nations-sponsored demobilization and disarmament. Unfortunately, the United Nations operation did not destroy the weapons after demobilization. These arsenals were open to corruption and mismanagement after the U.N. had left and some 6 million AK47s are still at large. Up until 1998 South African and Mozambique police continued to recover abandoned arms caches on the borders and inside Mozambique.
The Southern African Region Countries - Some other countries survived this massive pump of weapons because of their internal political dynamics. Swaziland, for example, is a stable mountain kingdom that experienced little conflict throughout the Cold War and had little need for arms. However, it was an arms smuggling transit point from the rest of the region to South Africa until 1993 and many weapons ended in Swaziland without moving on to intended destinations.
Botswana is another country that does not have a big firearms' problem; most guns there are licensed and strictly regulated, though some are stolen from legal owners. However, during the apartheid era, arms smuggled from African National Congress (ANC) camps in Zambia went to Zimbabwe and through Botswana to South Africa. It is this use of Botswana for transit that created the firearms problems.
Zambia's problem of weapons came from harbouring liberation movements such as the ANC inside its borders. Arms from superpowers intended for left liberation movements landed by plane in Zambia and were smuggled through Swaziland or Botswana to South Africa. Even though Zambia authorities claimed to be in control of this influx of weapons, the easy availability of weapons in that country have proved otherwise.
During its struggle for independence, Namibia, on the other hand, was a scene of tense battles between the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) and the South African Defence Force (SADF). Independence calmed the situation. Demobilization and disarmament through the United Nations were successful. The main problem
for Namibia is its proximity with Angola, which uses it as a transit point for arms smugglers.
The Black Market - The end of the Cold War has dramatically reduced military support in the region, but the weapons themselves have remained and have led to the growth of the black market. In Mozambique, for instance, stockpiles of weapons that were seized during the U.N. disarmament were never destroyed. When the U.N. mission left, corrupt officials sold these arsenals.
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