It’s over. Finally. That is not to say that all went well, I mean the client’s son mysteriously died; Karin, Rossi and Daniel have been shot; more vehicular damage has occurred, Clusine and le Couer have had a close encounter with a tree and the jaws of life; and Jack’s got a bullet hole in his back. Other than that – success! Now we can concentrate on patching up the wedding party.
You are probably wondering how we came to achieve this so-called success, so I’ll backtrack. Karin, Black and Rossi are on their way to Nice to find a hardware shop to break into in search of the requisite drill to break into the vault. They quickly locate a shop, but notice that it is bordered by a casino on one side and a movie theater on the other. Deciding that this location may not provide the optimum low-traffic conditions for a successful burglary, they look for another. They finally find one and decide that Karin and Rossi will break in and Black will drive Karin’s rental car for the getaway.
As soon as Karin and Rossi get near the door, they hear the sound of people approaching. Karin grabs Rossi and starts kissing him. Rossi struggles to keep his lips on Karin’s and his sunglasses on his face. Black takes pictures. Eventually, they realize that the couple has decided that this must be a good make-out place and shows no signs of leaving. Karin pushes Rossi away and starts an argument with him in German. The other couple finally leave and the two set about breaking in. Karin is having difficulty with the lock and the kiss-dazed Rossi is unable to locate any sign of an alarm system.
Eventually, they make it into the shop, but stop as they hear a beeping sound. The pair looks for the keypad – no small task in a store that sells numerous such devices and has a large display of them. Rossi manages to find it fairly quickly and defeats it. Then they go shopping. In addition to the drill, they take duct tape, spray paint, screw drivers, flashlights, batteries, eye protection, earplugs, and a number of other items. (Of course, their failure to take a standard-on-the-shopping-list dropcloth has been noted by all.) They look for the drill bits and locate them in a locked box. Karin tries to pick the lock, but Rossi, in true he-man fashion, wants to use extra large bolt cutters on the lock, so Karin lets him.
They grab their booty and run out to the car, where Black is waiting. On the way back to the ruins, Rossi reads the instruction manual for the drill.
Meanwhile, back at the ruins, Jack, Claire and Daniel are bored. Jack finally has had enough of the bat flying overhead and shoots at it. Daniel is dodging the potentially ricocheting bullet and the bat starts flying toward the stairs. Jack shoots again, hitting the bat in the wing. Jack puts his head down and tries to ignore Daniel’s complaints about Jack shooting the vampire.
The boredom continues. In fact, the only thing keeping Daniel awake now is the sound of Jack’s snores.
Outside, Claire, without the benefit of Jack snore No-Doze, drifts off to dreamland as her attempts to count moving targets (Claire’s version of counting sheep) fails.
My movie is over. I look at the clock. Where are they? I switch from Martikis to coffee.
Somewhere in the hills overlooking the ruins, Emma, at Diamond’s behest, is watching the events at the ruined bank. She sees activity off to the side and overhears some Slavic sounding language being spoken.
Down by the vault, Jack awakens with a start. He looks at Daniel, who was rather pleased that a sleeping Jack threatens to shoot no one, and asks how long he was out. Daniel tells him about an hour. Jack looks at his watch in frustration. Where are they?
I am exploring the features of the DVD remote control. Where the hell are they?
Karin, Black and Rossi arrive back at the ruins and begin carrying all of their booty up to the bank.
Jack goes out to talk to Claire. He finds her sleeping and quietly calls her name. She opens her eyes. Jack, not wishing to be hypocritical about the whole sleeping on the job thing asks, "were you meditating?" "Um, oui, I was meditating." They hear a bang followed by some German cursing, as Karin yells at Rossi for dropping the drill.
As they are lugging the goods toward the bank, Black’s phone rings. He drops his end of the large container that he and Rossi are carrying. Rossi struggles to hold his end up. Black ignores Rossi’s difficulties and answers his phone. It’s Emma. She tells him that there are Russians watching what the team is doing. Ah, so Plan B is underway.
Black hangs up the phone and joins the team by the vault. He tells them that the Russians are outside. Karin’s bloodlust awakens. "Russians, where?" After questioning Black, Karin learns that a good-looking Jewish woman phoned him to tell him that the Russians were outside watching the team. Of course, it all makes perfect sense now. He tells Karin that Claire has been on lookout, so she’ll know where they are. Karin and Jack go out to Claire.
Claire has no information on the whereabouts of said Russians. Daniel comes out and heads for Black’s camper to get a fire extinguisher. As Karin, Claire and Jack are arguing over how to go about looking for the Russians, Jack is hit with a tranquilizer dart. He starts slurring that Karin should go for his first aid kit (back in the car) as Claire is firing at the dart shooters. Karin asks for Jack’s silenced weapons and he hands them over. Claire is hit by a dart and falls asleep, but Jack is still trying to maintain consciousness. Another dart is fired, but misses Karin. Jack goes nighty-night. Karin grabs Claire’s tranquilizer rifle and dives for cover. She takes aim on the location of the shooters and waits for them to appear. When a head pops up, she fires and hits the shooter. Not knowing how many people are firing, she waits for another body. Shortly, she sees one and fires, hitting the man as she is also hit. Karin goes night-night.
Black has the team set the generator up on the main level of the bank, and begins drilling the combination mechanism.
Daniel approaches the van and sees four men examining it. He tries to hide, but they hear him. They yell out in both Italian and English that this is none of his business and he should leave. He is still trying to hide, so they begin firing near his location. He starts running and goes back to the bank.
Seeing the sleeping team members outside, he grabs Karin and drags her inside. He gets Rossi to come out and bring Jack in while he gets Claire.
Black’s cell phone vibrates and he answers it. His Jewish angel tells him that the Russians are approaching and asks if there is anyone she can call in to help them. He gives her the villa phone number and tells her to tell the person that answers that Jack is asleep and in trouble at the bank.
I am angrily flipping the channels (where the fuck are they?) when the phone rings. I answer and hear Emma’s voice giving me the sleeping Jack message. I grab my gun and the keys to Claire’s rental car and head out.
Rossi and Daniel take the guns from Karin’s sleeping body and Rossi runs up the stairs despite Daniel’s protests that he should stay downstairs. As Rossi emerges from the stairs, bullets are fired from four points in front of the counter. He dives for cover. When he feels it is safe, he pops up and fires at one of the shooters, hitting him. Bullets fly toward him again and he is hit in the leg. He shoots, they shoot back, he is hit in the leg again. He shoots, they shoot back, he is hit in the leg. No, you're not seeing double. It’s like one of those movies where the protagonist, given multiple opportunities to replay events, keeps making the same mistake (sorry, I spent the night watching movies). Anyway, Rossi is really fucked up.
Daniel has reached the top of the stairs and begins firing at what he believes is a weak point in the ceiling over the Russian’s heads to try and collapse it on them. It works and the roof comes down. However, his attempt to assist Rossi down the stairs fails and Rossi descends a la gravity, landing in a heap at the bottom. Daniel returns Karin’s gun to her.
Amid all of the sleep and destruction, and despite the fact that the lights went out when the ceiling collapsed on the generator upstairs, Black has managed to finish drilling out the mechanism from the vault and calls Daniel over to turn the wheel.
Jack awakens and looks around him with a flashlight. He sees Black and Daniel about to open the vault door, Karin and Claire asleep on one side and Rossi in a bloody heap on the other.
As I arrive at the ruins, I experience what we excellent drivers commonly call an inability to come to a complete stop before impact. I crash into a car. The driver gets out and starts yelling at me. It’s Benoit. I tell him to wait here and start heading up. He pulls out a gun and tells me he is coming with me, because it’s his family’s stuff. I ask if he knows how to use the gun and he tells me he points it at the bad guy. Good enough. As long as he isn’t pointing it at me, we’ll be fine. We head up.
Meanwhile, a figure has appeared behind Emma. It’s Arturo. He asks what she is doing here. She tells him her friends are down in the bank. He responds in Russian. She asks him to repeat what he said, although she clearly understood what he said. He switches to Italian and tells her that he will go with her to help her friends.
Downstairs in the bank, Black has opened the vault and entered. Jack is greedily looking toward the vault when a voice behind the team tells him not to turn around. The surviving Russians tell Jack to strip to his boxers. They tell Jack that he and his team will carry the goods down for them.
Karin is starting to come around.
Daniel starts yelling, "don’t shoot me, I’m not with them." Not realizing that Russian is a language of double negatives, his words have the opposite effect and one of the Russians shoots him. Daniel falls and plays dead.
Arturo and Emma arrive and the Russians instruct them to come down and help with the labor. Emma has picked up the dropped weapon of one of the dead Russians upstairs, but Arturo grabs her right hand to keep her from firing and says that they will help. He leads Emma down.
Karin detects the sound of Russians in her midst and notes that her gun is lying on her stomach.
Claire is starting to come around.
Jack is stripping.
Karin, unable to withstand the temptation of shooting a Russian, grabs her gun and fires. He shoots her, hitting her in the abdomen and arm. Claire, Jack (who still has one gun tucked into the waistband of his skivvies), Emma and Daniel return fire on the Russians. The Russians shoot again, as does the team. Arturo is hit and falls down. Karin is hit again. Jack is shot in the back and thrown into the vault, where Black hands him a grenade on a stick that he found inside.
Outside, Benoit and I approach the bank and see two Russians with weapons in front of us. I tell Benoit we have to shoot them. I kill one of them and wound the other. Benoit delivers the killing shot to the second goon. He stares in amazement at his weapon and says, "I killed a man!" I tell him he killed two (hey, why not blame it on the idiot), but it was self-defense. We head into the bank where the sound of gunshots can be heard.
I run toward the stairs and shoot at the Russian standing on them, just as Jack is shooting from downstairs. He falls dead to the floor and I run down with Benoit.
Now imagine my surprise as I reach the bottom. Jack is standing in his undies, Karin, Daniel and Rossi are bleeding, and, despite the severity of his apparent wounds, Arturo is standing up, although he does have a mysterious scrape on his wing, I mean hand. What the fuck is going on here? Don’t these people know I have a wedding coming up? Half of my bridal is lying wounded on the floor! We are giving new meaning to the phrase 'shotgun wedding!'
I ask Jack what happened.
He tells me he was told to strip and Daniel mentions that Jack was also shot. I give Jack first aid and turn toward Karin. I may have hurt her a little bit. Oops.
Jack then works on Rossi. Emma runs into the vault. I suddenly become concerned that Benoit will note the exact amount of the booty and, knowing that Jack will surely skim some of it, I try to trip Benoit so he has a gentle meeting with the floor. The plan: he loses consciousness and doesn’t know exactly how much was found. The actuality: he hits the floor with a terrible thud and dies. Damn it! Why does that keep happening? I need to obliterate the word gently from my vocabulary.
Anyway, inside the vault there are a number of very valuable wine cases, some pretty worthless Deutsch marks, and oodles of gold bullion. Arturo, in return for a case of valuable wine, gets some of his cronies to help us and we load the stuff into the truck that is supposed to carry the race car.
Emma takes some of the gold and leaves. We see her, but thankful for her help, nobody says anything.
We put Benoit’s lifeless body in his car. Since the bumper is already damaged (from my prior collision avoidance failure), it will look like he was in an accident. I scrape the paint from Claire’s rental off of the bumper.
The team heads out – I am driving my car with Jack in the passenger seat, Karin is driving the wounded mobile carrying Rossi and Daniel, and Claire is driving the truck with Black riding shotgun.
Meanwhile, in Monte Carlo, (Nun)Chuck has seen several Russians go to the room of the Triads. He makes his way onto their balcony and listens to the conversation after the Russians leave. It seems that the Triads know where Jack and I are and are sending the Russians to get us. (Nun)Chuck goes back inside and then sees the Triads leave. He scales down the outside of the building (can this guy never use the appropriately marked exits?).
(Nun)Chuck finds a road running alongside, but elevated above, the road that the bad guys are on and jumps his bike over the edge of the path, landing on the hood of the first car. It skids to the side and the middle car takes over the lead.
As we are leaving the ruins, I note a car coming to head us off. I put the car into what we excellent drivers call a controlled spin and turn Claire’s car while sideswiping the approaching vehicle.
My cell phone rings and I answer it. Jack, less than pleased with my driving while engaged in conversation skills, grabs the phone from me. (Nun)Chuck tells him that the Russians and the Triads are coming after us.
I take off towards France and the car, whose occupants are shooting at us, follows. I tell Jack to call Clusine and inform him that terrorists are after us and he should intercept. Clusine wakes le Couer and they head out.
Karin and Claire head back into Italy. Karin decides it’s time to go back to Germany. Rossi and Daniel groan.
Clusine and le Couer are cut off by a convoy of Russians/Triads (and an Oriental of mysterious origin on a motorcycle), they experience what we excellent drivers commonly call a failure to maintain contact with the road surface and their car careens off the highway, landing in a tree.
(Nun)Chuck phones me to tell me that Clusine and le Couer have gone off-roading and he thinks they are dead. What??? Great, we call them to come out and they get ambushed. It’s going to look like we set them up. I tell Jack to call Clusine and see if they are okay.
Karin has turned towards Germany. Claire, who was going to head for Rome, decides that it will be easier to lose the helicopter that is following her in the foggy Alps. She follows Karin, hoping to make it to Switzerland. She calls Karin and tells her where they are going.
Jack has reached a really irritable Clusine and finds out that his car is precariously perched in a tree. Sure, we are being followed by a bunch of bad guys and the cops are playing rock a bye baby in a treetop (and since he is with le Queer, the whole K-I-S-S-I-N-G thing may not be far off). Jack attempts to find out where he is so we can call for help, but Clusine can’t see the forest through the tree branch. Jack hangs up.
The helicopter is firing on Claire’s truck. Karin suddenly experiences what we excellent drivers call an inability to follow the yellow line, loses control of her rental car and crashes. Claire manages to stop before hitting them and Daniel, Rossi and Karin jump out. Karin is lamenting yet another ruined car and the loss of her safe driver’s insurance discount.
The team fires on the helicopter, but fails to damage it. They pile in the truck.
Claire starts driving again and approaches a tunnel. Karin manages to shoot the helicopter and damage it. The truck enters the tunnel. As they emerge from the other end, they see the helicopter going down. It is perilously close and Claire struggles to control the truck. She skids and finally comes to a stop. The team takes a collective breath of relief as they realize that the ass-end of the truck is hanging over the cliff but the front is still on terra firma. Claire realizes that there is winch on the front of the truck and they set about pulling it up.
Meanwhile, Jack is firing at the car following us, which has shot several holes in the back windshield of Claire’s rental car, but I see that we have bigger problems in front of us, as three cars are headed straight toward us. However, there is a single taillight in front of me belonging to none other than (Nun)Chuck. He pops a wheelie and drives over all three cars. The first skids out of control, the second crashes into the mountain before exploding and the third car experiences a catastrophic engine failure. Jack manages to blow up the car following us with a well-placed shot (did I just write that? - I must need some alcohol). I drive through the carnage and make Jack call Clusine back to ensure that he knows that none of this is our fault.
Clusine, over the sound of the jaws of life cutting away the mangled car is less than enthusiastic about Jack’s avowal of our innocence.
We then contact the team and find out where they are headed. I turn the car towards Switzerland with (Nun)Chuck following on his bike.
When we catch up with the team, it is early morning. I am jonesing for a cup of coffee and head out in search of caffeinated sustenance. Black comes with me. The team is arguing over what to do with the goodies, as Jack doesn’t want to hand it all over.
I am on my way back with an arm full of Colombian gold when my cell phone vibrates. I drop my precious cargo and answer the phone in a less than polite manner. It’s Clusine. He is less than thrilled that the police have managed to nab several hired thugs, but no terrorists. He tells me not to come back to France. What?!?! I tell him I have a home and a business there, not to mention an upcoming wedding, of course I am coming back. He hangs up. I call him back while Black goes for more coffee.
I try and explain the situation to Clusine (you know, about the team’s innocence and all that). The last thing I need is Clusine questioning/detaining/harassing the bridal party, Jack or me this close to the big day. He is less than polite, so I tell him to fuck off. I know, probably not the best course of action, but he made me mad. He hangs up again.
Black and I return to the team. I am forced to tell Jack that the take belongs to Uncle Sam. We have a little argument. Jack takes some of the gold, but nobody says anything. We split up and head back to France. Claire is taking Cavalier’s stuff to his home and Jack and I head back to Paris.
So, all’s well that ends well, right? All that remains is to patch up the team, avoid Clusine, enjoy the bachelorette party and get married. Sure, we will make the sorriest looking bridal party ever, but who cares? I’m quite sure that nothing else can go wrong, as we have stretched the limits of the universe’s ability to fuck up our plans. Shit! Did I actually just say that?????
Awards
Jack
Daniel
Claire
Karin
Rossi
Alex
Sheila
Black
(Nun)Chuck
The Team
Jack and Claire
Training Recommendations
Jack
Daniel
Claire
Karin
Rossi
Alex
Sheila
Black
(Nun)Chuck