The rivalry may not hurt Offerdahl, brought into Traq as a hired gun last year.

FORBES: Cell Cop

But Quentin Hardy and I suspect an outsider, perhaps even a hired gun, who is being fed gossip from a high-level source.

FORBES: Who Is Fake Steve Jobs?

The fashionable young Gunner became a hired gun, moving to Motherwell from Fratton Park, heading to Canberra City in Australia, to Fulham, Phoenix Inferno in the USA, Hearts and a final pit-stop at Partick Thistle in a career that ran from 1967 to 1984.

BBC: SPORT | Scotland | Hey Hey Marinello

It is a very good thing that the man writing the US's National Intelligence Estimates and briefing the president on intelligence matters is not a hired gun for the Saudi and Chinese governments who believes that Jewish Americans have no right to participate in public debate about US foreign policy.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Intelligence and the anti-Israel lobby

Chesley maintains he was a mere hired gun, involved in the case only to lead the settlement negotiations.

FORBES: Superlawyer Stanley Chesley Faces Reckoning Tuesday

As a character, he's a career criminal, hired gun and professional thief, a pulp-fiction prince of America's seedy underworld.

CNN: Crime classic Parker is back in black

Mike Jones is the hired gun executing a new strategy that News Corporation expects will take MySpace back to the top.

FORBES: MySpace's New Defense...Or Offense?

The money controlled by institutional investors is a key lifeline for these gun makers, who have chosen to hide behind their hired hands.

FORBES: Gun Makers Take One to the Gut

In a separate case, star litigator Boies, who was the U.S. government's hired gun in its partial antitrust victory against Microsoft in 2000, has filed an antitrust suit against Qualcomm on behalf of chipmaker Broadcom.

FORBES: Cellular Scion