I'd like to share with you all the very real story of The time I knew someone who I believe was a real international mercenary/gun for hire. (Long ass story time)

So it never really dawned on me just how strange this story from my teenage years actually was until I really sat down and started to think about it. Everything I am about to tell you is 100% true and may be a bit long so buckle up because this is one hell of a story.

When I was about 16 I played in a band who regularly practiced out of my friends garage in an upper middle class average suburban neighborhood. We had been playing together for about 6 months or so and were on a smoke break hanging around out front of the house when we a saw man coming towards us from his place about 4 houses down. At first we thought he might be coming over to complain about noise or something but as he got closer we saw he looked quite happy and was carrying what looked to be a large audio mixing board in his hands.

He greeted us with a smile and said "Hey guys my names Jeff, I've heard you playing for the last couple months and it sounds pretty good. I had this laying around the house and I don't use it so I thought you guys might want to." It turns out the audio mixing board he had was actually a digital audio workstation which is an all in one digital studio device that records, mixes, adds effects and burns cd's all from one machine and these things were not cheap, in fact at this time during the early 2000s they were around $6000 - $7000 dollars or more.

So Jeff hung around with us for a while on our smoke break and talked to us about the machine he was giving us and what all it could do. He told us he dabbled in music a bit himself when he was younger and wanted to help us out and what not. At the end of the conversation he said that if we wanted to come by his place and have some beers and shoot the shit to just stop in. It was a little weird because we were teenagers and this guy looked like he was maybe in his early 40s but hey he just gave us a piece of equipment we could never afford on our own and invited us over for free beer which any teenager would be stupid to turn down.

So later that evening the 4 of us made our way down to his house and rang the doorbell. We were all a little nervous not really knowing what to expect from this older guy we just met who wanted to drink beer with a bunch of teenagers but what the fuck y'know we were young and reckless and duh...free beer. When he opened the door he was genuinely happy to see us and greeted us with handshakes and smiles before inviting us all in. Now like I said these houses were upper middle class so they were pretty nice houses to begin with but stepping into this guys house was something else, it was like stepping into a palace only with the layout of your average suburban home. Everything had been redone from floor to ceiling and was exquisitely decorated with fine art and expensive furniture. Looking back on it as an adult who now owns a home of my own I can only imagine the cost he put into everything but I would guess it was at least half a million dollars realistically.

After we entered in awe of the palace we were just transported to I had my first real moment of terror. Only a few feet away from us and until now completely unnoticed was the biggest dog I had ever seen my life. This creature was quietly sitting in the shadows of the main room not moving an inch at all but starring at us with the most intense look I have ever seen an animal have. Jeff noticed my wide eyed fear at the presence of such a large animal and tried to calm me down by saying "Oh, that's my boy Bo. Don't worry about him, he's the best dog in the world. He won't hurt a fly...unless I tell him to."

Jeff then proceeded to give us a quick tour of his house. It was a simple single story design, 4 bedroom 2 1/2 bath but each part of the house as I mentioned had been completely remodeled floor to ceiling and were decorated with expensive art and furniture or collectables which looked to be from all over the globe. After the tour he brought us to our main event, the beer. Now when he invited us over for beer we were thinking a couple of 6 packs maybe, but no this guy had taken what would have been the dining room of his house and completely remodeled it into a fully functional fully stocked bar. The counter had several built in keg-orators with 4 different beers on tap and the wall was shelved with probably 40 bottles of different top shelf liquor. There were neon lights lining the room and it was decorated with various decor that you would find in any humble watering hole.

We spent the next couple of hours drinking with Jeff and getting to know him a little better which as it turns out he was a really interesting guy. His story goes, or at least as he told us, was that he was born in Hawaii and lived there with his parent till he was 15, when he was 15 he ran away from home with all the money he had saved and bought a one way boat ticket to California. He lived in California for many years working odd jobs and barely scraping by but had started to get some real money by competing in surf competitions and ended up becoming kind of a minor celebrity in the sport. With all of his tournament money and endorsements he got a masters degree in business and started making his real money doing international trading (or something like that I don't recall exactly) which is how he could afford all this stuff in his house. He had traveled all over the world after leaving California including places like China, Russia, Germany, and Switzerland. He seemed particularly fond of Russia and said it is one of the most beautiful places he has ever been to.

After a while that night he brought out his acoustic guitar and we all took turns fiddling around on it talking about music and what not. When his turn came around he started to play a Dave Matthews song and we all groaned a little because quite frankly Dave Matthews was not really our cup of tea. Jeff became a little visibly irritated and asked us what was wrong with that song. When we started to poke fun at it he he barked out "Fuckers I wrote that song." We laughed out loud at him because it was a Dave Matthews song, it was on the radio for god sake and now this drunk guy is telling a bunch of teenagers he wrote it. So Jeff gets up without saying a single word and goes into one of the bedrooms in his house. He comes back a minute or two later holding a few photos and sets them on the table in front of us. As he spreads them out on the table it's very clear these were taken in the very living room we're currently sitting in and sure as shit Jeff and Dave Matthews are sitting on the very same couch that we were each holding an acoustic guitar and clearly having a good time.

Now I know some of you if you've even made it this far into reading the story are asking "What the fuck does this have to do with guns or even mercenaries for that matter?" Well this all so far to establish a few things. First, we know that this guy has no family as such since the age of 15 and lives alone in his house with only a huge dog. Second, he clearly has a lot of money as we see from the inside of his house yet he decided to live in a moderate home in the middle of suburbia. Third, his job requires him to travel to all different parts of the world and fourth is that he has some insane stories with evidence to back them all up.

So as weeks went by we continued to hang out with Jeff sometimes several nights a week and drink beer and shoot the shit as he told us stories of his travels and adventures. For the most part Jeff was always nice and friendly but sometimes he would be piss drunk at 5pm and rambling on about non sense or being kind of aggressive but never anything more than just asshole drunkenness. Sometimes Jeff would not be at his house for a week or more at a time and then show up again saying that he had business in Russia or China or somewhere else in the world and would show us pictures from his trips. Then after a few months things started to get weird.

We'd still come to visit Jeff two or three nights a week and he'd still invite us in and offer us drinks but now he was much more on edge. He was always pacing around when we were there and was snappy and rude and then one night there was a ringing of the doorbell and he demanded to know if we had invited anyone else over. When we said we hadn't he pulled out a pistol from inside his waistband that he had been concealing and slowly moved to his front door and opened it only a crack. After a few moments conversation in whispered voices with who ever was outside he shut the door and came back acting like his normal self and all was well for the evening. But the next day Jeff was not home or anytime after that for the next 2 weeks.

Some time later I was out front of the band house having a smoke and I see Jeff pull into his driveway. Happy to see him back and hoping to have a free drink I went over there and greeted him. He seemed rather somber and kind of dazed like he wasn't entirely all there. He invited me inside and while I had a beer he proceeded to take shot after shot of hard liquor until he was quite drunk. That's when things got very real very quick.

Now as I said earlier Jeff always had pictures of places he had been on business and since this was in the early early 2000s it was still on actual film and had to be developed. But now in a drunken stupor of himself he says that he wants to show me something and produces a small digital camera from his room and starts to show me different pictures of what looks like a pretty remote area somewhere in Eastern Europe. For the most part the pictures were just of him riding in a train car or taxi or surrounding areas but then sure as shit he's in full military gear with a few other guys all holding rifles.

Now I don't remember everything entirely clear because I was 16 and at this point kind of scared because this guy is showing me pictures of him and his buddies making their way through rubble and ruins somewhere in Eastern Europe armed to the teeth and he's drunk and getting kind of belligerent but it had something to do with this last time he went out there he almost got killed by "those fucking rebels" He then proceeds to tell me he was stuck in the bush for 2 days in a stand off with another sharp shooter (enemy at the gates style) but came out of it alive because the other guy shot first which hit his rifle giving away the enemy position and he was able to return fire killing the guy. I called bullshit.

So Jeff tells me to follow him and takes me into another room of his house and sitting on a makeshift work bench among other firearms is something very similar to this with what is very clearly damage from a bullet hitting the rifle. Now at the time I didn't really know a lot about guns but I'm pretty sure somebody wouldn't shoot their own rifle just for the sake of convincing a 16 year old kid that somebody tried to kill them. I stayed with Jeff for a while after that because he was having a really rough time and started crying and telling me about his wife. Apparently he had met here in Russia years earlier on business and they got married. The dog he had was hers and they had moved back to Arizona together and were married for about 8 years before one day he returned from a trip and she was just gone never to be heard from again.

I only saw Jeff another time or two after that in passing and then not at all once the band broke up and we all went our separate ways. I never really did figure out exactly what he did for a living or much else about him. Everything he said he did always had some kind of proof to back it up and there was definitely something different about him. Looking back I realize just how weird the situation was now.