24.

HE PUT THE RECEIVER on the vise block, then threaded the magazine catch into its hole. Then he flipped it around and slid a spring over the magazine catch, and tested the movement. It had to be smooth, because this was the mechanism that would drop the magazine out of the rifle so you could reload. He tested it. He stuck an empty magazine into the receiver and it locked in place. Good. He pressed the button and the magazine slid right out. Good.

Next he attached the bolt catch into the receiver, so that after firing the last round the bolt would stay back. That way if you sprayed a whole magazine at a bunch of targets, you could stick in another magazine and the bolt would already be back, poised to fire another round.

He lubed up the roll pin and tapped it into the hole for the bolt catch. He threaded on the safety selector, slid the grip onto the receiver and screwed it down, watching closely to make sure he didn’t kink the spring. The safety had to move smoothly too, so that when he was ready to shoot it would snap easily and definitively to “fire.” So far so good.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead and stretched his neck.

Next the trigger spring over the trigger, the hammer spring over the hammer. He flicked the safety to “fire” and stuck the trigger into the opening in the bottom of the receiver, the disconnector on top, put the hammer down, and tapped a pin in place to secure the whole assembly.

Now the weapon had a trigger. He attached a trigger guard, the barrel, gas bolt, and a flash suppressor. Then a scope.

After four hours of careful work, he was done.

He lifted it up and inspected it. He flicked the safety on and off, pulled the trigger back a few times, ejected and reloaded empty magazines. Everything worked. He carried it over to the table in the rec room and set it with the others; he’d assembled an arsenal. He had assembled weapons for long-range, AR-10s equipped with scopes, and AR-15s with red dots for closer range, the red dots being lighter and quicker at acquiring targets in close quarters. Urban environments; vehicles.

He was doing this mostly from boredom. Also he wanted to earn a few extra dollars while waiting for his journey to begin. He’d asked friends in Afghanistan if they wanted weapons, and if they did, he offered to build the weapons for them, customizing the guns for whatever their needs were. All they had to do was the background check for the lower receiver, the part the government considered a firearm, and the rest Alek could handle. He liked working on weapons anyway; it was quiet meditative work, time by himself with his thoughts, and it was positive, constructive work, bringing something into being. It was like painting, which he used to love, and anyway he had a month after his deployment before he was due to meet Lea in Germany. By the time he left, he’d made a dozen semiautomatic weapons for his friends.