Gangsters

The blue flame of the welding torch hissed in the darkness.

Loran knelt on the cold cement floor of the barn, his eyes behind his goggles fixed on the weld that was gradually taking shape before him.

The curved steel plates of the turret shell are being welded to the base bit by bit, with molten iron filling the seams and forming silver-gray scars after cooling.

His wrists were numb. He had been working continuously for eight hours, from the afternoon until now.

What time is it now? Loran glanced at the clock on the wall: 11:47.

The turret is almost finished.

A simplified, non-rotating turret, but realistic enough in appearance, with sloping sides, a hemispherical top, and an opening on the front to house a steel pipe disguised as a main gun.

As long as the last section is welded.

The sound coming from outside the door made him freeze.

It wasn't the sound of the wind, nor a broken branch, but the deep rumble of a car engine, approaching from afar before fading away.

Immediately afterwards, the sound of the car door opening and closing was very soft, but clearly audible in the quiet winter night.

Someone is coming.

Loran quickly turned off the welding torch, the blue flames went out instantly, and the barn was plunged into darkness.

He took off his goggles, held his breath, and crouched behind the unfinished turret, reaching for a toolbox in the corner where a heavy wrench lay—the closest thing he could find to a weapon.

Footsteps, not just one, but at least two, crunching softly on the frozen mud. Growing closer.

The barn door was pushed open, the lock was still on, and the door was only pushed open a crack.

"Is anyone there?" came a deep male voice with a Parisian suburban accent.

Loran didn't move, his fingers tightening around the wrench.

The door was pushed again, this time with more force, and the hinges groaned, but the lock remained firmly in place. It was an old-fashioned cast iron padlock that LeBron had given him, and it was very sturdy.

"It looks like nobody's here," another, younger voice said. "None of the lights are on."

"But the chimney is smoking," the first voice said. "No one would light a fire to keep warm in an abandoned barn on such a cold day."

Footsteps circled the barn. Loran could hear them inspecting the walls and probing the sealed windows.

"The windows are all nailed shut," the young voice said. "The door is locked; either a homeless person has taken over, or..."

"Or are you up to something shady?" a deep voice interjected. "Remember this place. Come back tomorrow during the day."

The footsteps faded into the distance. The car door opened, the engine started, and the tires rolled over the frozen ground, the sound growing ever more distant until it disappeared into the sound of the winter night wind.

Loran waited another five minutes before slowly standing up. He walked to the door and looked out through the crack. It was pitch black outside, with only a few scattered lights in the distant town of St. Reese.

He locked the door again, but did not turn on the light or continue welding.

He slid down to the ground against the wall, still holding the wrench in his hand, sweat streaming down his forehead, leaving cold marks on his face.

Who is it? A policeman? A military policeman? Or just a thief looking to see if there's anything valuable in this abandoned farm?

But the chimney was indeed smoking; he was right, the stove's chimney was indeed smoking.

This was an oversight, a fatal oversight.

Loran shook his head. He thought no one would notice in this desolate place, but clearly someone had.

Loran stood up, walked to the corner of the barn, lifted the tarpaulin, and examined the pile of precious tools and materials.

Everything is still there, untouched.

He breathed a sigh of relief, but immediately became alert again. What if those people really came back tomorrow?

He needs to speed things up. It must be finished before anyone finds out.

But we can't work tonight; the sparks and sounds of welding will give us away.

Loran packed up his tools and turned off the heater. He had risked lighting it because it was so cold; at minus five degrees Celsius, his fingers were frozen stiff and he couldn't operate the delicate tools at all.

But now it seems that the risk wasn't worth it.

He put on his coat, locked the barn door, and walked toward the town of St. Reese.

The next morning, Loran did not go to the General Staff.

He made a phone call to his office from a public phone booth at Gare du Nord in Paris, and his secretary answered the phone.

"I'm Lieutenant Loran. I'm sorry, I'm sick, I have a fever, and I can't make it today."

"Should I inform Colonel Delian?" the secretary asked, her voice tinged with formulaic sympathy.

"Don't bother the colonel. If Lieutenant Marchand asks, just say I'm on sick leave and should be back tomorrow."

Although Marchand verbally distanced himself from the matter, once the truth comes out, he will definitely be found out. So the current situation is that the two of them are in the same boat.

After hanging up the phone, Lorraine bought a ticket for the earliest train to St. Regis. In the swaying carriage, he took out his sketchbook and began to reorganize his schedule.

The turret must be completed today. Hull welding will take three days. Engine installation and testing will take two days. Transmission system integration will take two days. Testing and adjustments will take at least three days.

It will take at most ten days, but if we work twelve hours a day, it might be possible to compress it to a week.

The premise is that there is no interference and those people from last night do not come back.

The train arrived at the station just as dawn was breaking.

Lorraine didn't take the main road, but instead crossed the fields, taking a long detour before approaching the farm. He squatted at the edge of the oak grove for half an hour, observing the barn and the surrounding area.

There were no cars, no people, everything was as usual.

But as he approached the barn, he discovered a problem: there were new scratches around the lock, as if someone had tried to pick it.

Loran's heart sank.

He unlocked the door and went inside. Everything in the barn was the same as before, but there were a few blurry footprints on the ground. They weren't his boots; they were larger and had different patterns on the soles.

They came in.

He quickly checked everything. The tools were all there, the materials were untouched, and even the progress chart was still tucked inside the sketchbook. But the toolbox was in a different place; he usually kept the wrench on top, but now it was on the second shelf.

Someone is checking what's here.

Lorraine leaned against the worktable, taking a deep breath. Panic crept up her spine like cold vines. What to do? Give up? Leave with what was already done? Or take a gamble, hoping they were just curious thieves and wouldn't come back?

He looked at the unfinished turret, then at the completed chassis. Months of painstaking effort, countless nights of sweat, his father's trust, LeBron's help, and Marchand's dangerous tacit approval…

He cannot give up.

Loran made a decision.

He walked to the corner of the barn, lifted a loose floorboard, and found a small space underneath, which was probably a cellar where seeds used to be stored.

He put his most precious tools, blueprints, and the iron box containing all his savings inside, then covered the floor again and dusted it.

Then he started working.

Today's goal was to finish the turret and begin welding the vehicle body. He stopped using the heater, even though his fingers were numb with cold. While welding, he covered the gaps in the doors and windows with thick canvas to minimize light leakage. He would stop welding for half an hour at a time to listen to the sounds outside.

The turret welding was completed at 2 PM.

Loran hoisted it onto the chassis and operated it single-handedly using a homemade pulley system.

Once the turret was in place, the whole structure finally looked somewhat like a tank.

He stepped back a few paces and looked at the pile of steel.

Rough and rudimentary, but the outline was already there. The sloping frontal armor, turret, and tracks, if painted with the gray-green camouflage of the German army, would be enough to fool the eye from a distance.

Next are the sides and rear of the vehicle.

He cut a 5mm thick steel plate into the required shape, with vertical sides but covered by side skirts, and an opening for the engine cooling grille at the rear.

These details are important; the goal is to make it so that anyone who sees it can immediately recognize it as a German tank.

As evening approached, Loran heard the sound of a car.

This time he didn't turn off the lights; it wasn't dark yet, and the barn was already dim. He put down his tools, walked to the door, and looked out through the crack.

The same car, a dark-colored sedan, stopped at the farm entrance. Two people got out; they were the same group as last night.

They headed straight for the barn.

Loran quickly scanned the barn. The welding torch was still hot, steel plates were scattered all over the ground, and the turret had just been welded; everything indicated that some kind of construction was underway.

There's no time to pack it up.

He grabbed his coat and crawled through a hole in the back wall of the barn, which he had discovered a few days earlier. It was just big enough for one person to pass through, and the outside was hidden by dense bushes.

He hid behind the bushes and watched the two men walk to the barn door.

"The locks have been changed?" a deep voice said.

The padlock from last night is gone, so Loran replaced it with a smaller one today, which isn't very noticeable from the outside.

The younger man tried pushing the door: "It's locked. Want to pry it open?"

"Wait." The deep voice circled the barn and spotted the hole Loran had just crawled out of. "Someone's been going in and out of here."

He crouched down to examine the marks around the hole, the trampled withered grass, and the broken branches of the bushes.

"They just left recently." He stood up, brushed the dirt off his hands, "and they'll be back."

"So now..."

"Wait," a deep voice said. "Go wait in the car. Let's see who's up to in this godforsaken place."

The two got back into the car, but didn't drive away. They turned off the engine and parked it in the shadows at the farm entrance, almost invisible from the barn side.

Lorraine's heart pounded like a drum.

He lay prone on the cold earth, peering through the gaps in the bushes. The sky grew darker, the temperature plummeted, and his hands and feet began to lose feeling.

can not wait.

If they really stay up all night, or bring more people back tomorrow...

He remembered LeBron. The old man had said, "If you get into trouble, go to town and find the postman Gaston. Just say I sent you."

The post office in St. Regis. It should be closed by now, but Gaston might live behind it.

Lorraine began to slowly crawl backward, away from the barn and the vehicle. He circled around, crossed a frozen stream, climbed over an abandoned stone wall, and entered the oak grove from the other side of the farm.

He started running through the woods. Dry branches snapped under his feet, and the cold wind cut his cheeks like knives. By the time he reached the edge of town, it was completely dark.

The post office was a two-story building with dim light shining through the windows. Loran knocked on the door.

After a long wait, the door opened a crack, revealing a man in his fifties with half his face, gray hair, and wary eyes.

"What is it?"

"Mr. LeBron sent me," Lorraine said in a low voice. "To find Gaston."

The man's expression changed. He opened the door, let Loran in, and then quickly closed it.

The room was warm, with a fire burning in the fireplace. The furnishings were simple but neat, with a post office calendar and a few faded landscape paintings hanging on the walls.

"This is Gaston," the man said. "LeBron called and mentioned you. Having trouble?"

Loran briefly explained the situation: the car, the two men, and how they were guarding outside the barn.

Gaston listened carefully, then nodded: "Gino brothers, everyone in town knows them. They do petty theft, sometimes they keep watch for gangs from Paris. What valuables do you have in your barn?"

"Some tools, some materials," Lorraine said cautiously. "I'm working on a mechanical modification project."

"Mechanical modifications," Gaston repeated, a hint of understanding in his eyes. "LeBron said you're a 'young man with ideas.' Okay, I'll help you deal with the Ginobili brothers, but you'll owe me a favor afterward."

"How do we solve this?"

Gaston walked to the phone, cranked the handle, and waited a moment: "Connect to the sheriff's house."

The call connected. Gaston's tone became relaxed and cheerful: "Good evening, Madam Sheriff! Yes, this is Gaston. Is the Sheriff home?...Great, please tell him that someone is illegally dumping industrial waste on Old Morrow's farm north of St. Reese's. The smell is awful, and the nearby residents are complaining. Yes, that's it. Now? The Gino brothers' car is parked there; it might be related to them. Okay, thank you."

He hung up the phone and looked at Lorraine: "The military police vehicle will be there in twenty minutes. The Gino brothers have a criminal record; they won't dare to confront the military police head-on. They'll leave."

"And then what? Will the military police inspect the barn?"

“I’ll tell the sheriff that it’s rented by LeBron as a ‘Veterans’ workshop,’ where he’s repairing farm tools and preparing to donate them to poor farmers in the neighborhood in the spring.” Gaston laughed. “The sheriff is my cousin, and his wife loves my applesauce.”

Lorraine breathed a sigh of relief, feeling utterly exhausted: "Thank you, Mr. Gaston."

"No need to thank me." The old man waved his hand. "LeBron saved my son's life in 1917, during the Battle of Alaska. He said you were doing something important, though he didn't say what it was, but I trust LeBron's judgment."

He glanced at the clock on the wall: "Wait here for an hour. Then I'll take you back to Paris on my motorcycle. Don't come over for the next few days; wait until things calm down."

"But my project."

"You can only finish the project if you're alive," Gaston said sternly. "If the Gino brothers target you, or worse, if there are gangs interested behind them, you're in big trouble. Take my advice, take a few days off."

Lorraine knew she had no other choice.

An hour later, Gaston rode an old motorcycle, carrying Lorrain towards Paris. The winter night wind felt like ice water, but Lorrain barely felt the cold.

All he could think about was that unfinished tank.

It was late at night when Lorraine returned to his Paris apartment. He slumped into a chair, too weak to even take off his coat.

There was a letter on the table. He reluctantly reached out and picked it up; it was Charlotte's handwriting.

"Mark, it's been a long time since I heard from you. I went to your apartment, and the neighbors said you were very busy. If you need any help, please let me know. I'm waiting for you. Charlotte."

At the end of the letter, there was a small heart drawn in pencil, inside which was written "I believe in you".

Loran held the letter for a very long time.

He recalled Marchand's words in the tavern: "Some battles are not fought on the battlefield."

He remembered the look in his father's eyes when he handed him the farm keys.

I recalled the yellowed, rusty edges of the blueprints LeBron gave me.

And then there's Charlotte, the one who says on the balcony, "I'm willing to be your first soldier."

He cannot give up.

Even if we are being targeted, even if there isn't enough time, even if the risks are increasing day by day.

He must finish it as soon as possible.

......

Three days later, the barn stood silent like a tomb in the midnight wind.

Loran stood at the doorway, the glow of the kerosene lamp in his hand trembling in the empty space.

When I left three days ago, this place was still piled with tools, materials, and unfinished parts.

Now, apart from that lone tank skeleton in the center, there's nothing left.

The welding gun was gone, the toolbox disappeared, and only a few scraps remained of the steel plate pile.

Even the iron box he hid under the floorboards was pried open and taken away, and the cellar cover was thrown aside like a torn wound.

Only the tank skeleton remained—the chassis, tracks, and half-welded turret—like a steel skeleton stripped of its flesh, casting a distorted shadow in the dim light.

Lorraine's hands were trembling.