Despite the Las Vegas midday sun, a November chill prickled the skin at the back of Evan’s neck. The low-slung building ahead rose from a stretch of dirt road and desert sand like a woebegone settler’s cabin in a Western. A rusting auto-repair sign threw shade across the sturdy metal door, but the neon was unlit as always, the business unlisted in any directory. Husks of cars and the occasional engine block rested in the scrubby brush, arrayed like props, which was precisely what they were.
Carrying the weighty medical-waste bucket under one arm, Evan lowered his face from the sign where the front security camera was housed and rapped on the door. A popping sound from within answered him.
Gunshots.
Or, as he thought of it, the soundtrack of Tommy Stojack.
Evan pounded more loudly with the heel of his hand.
The gunfire ceased.
Silence.
And then the door yawned open, a burly figure standing in the dismal lair, pistol in either hand. He was backlit by a feeble shaft through a barred skylight and the glow of a gooseneck lamp clipped to one of a half dozen workbenches. A range of machinery completed the torture-dungeon motif of the shop. It smelled of gun grease and spent powder, coffee and cigarettes.
A Camel Wide lifted to the man’s face, the cherry illuminating the stub where the forefinger had been blown off at the knuckle. An inhale crackled the paper, the orange glow at last bringing the face to the edge of visibility. Biker’s mustache. Lip bulged out with a tobacco plug. Deeply expressive, melancholy eyes bedded down above crescent bags of puffy skin. A tumble of gray hair falling over a lined forehead twisted with wry amusement.
Tommy’s machine shop, which Evan thought of as a lair, provided a variety of services for a variety of government-sanctioned black-ops groups. Preproduction. Proof of concept and R&D. Prototyping and fabrication. Weapons procurement. Evan didn’t know specifics about Tommy any more than Tommy knew specifics about him.
He knew only that he trusted Tommy absolutely and that he was a world-class armorer.
Tommy spit a comet of tobacco juice skillfully past Evan’s shoulder, took another hit off the cigarette, and scratched at a nicotine patch adhered to his neck that had peeled away from the skin in either protest or despair.
“I’m glad it’s just you,” Tommy said.
Evan stepped inside, crouched to reach for a hidden outlet, and unplugged the security camera, as was their policy. “Who were you expecting?”
“Got a new broad hooched up with me. Figured maybe she was feeling lonely, talked herself into making an unannounced drive-by. That woulda gone down like a Japanese Zero. But forget that shit. How’s things?”
“Good. You?”
“Any better, I’d expect to get indicted.” Tommy jogged the pistols in his hands, showing each one off against a callused palm. “Working on some modifications for a couple of the ninja ballerinas.”
“Ninja ballerinas?”
“SWAT. This puppy’s an FNX tactical.”
“A .45?”
“Nobody makes a .46, do they?” Tommy let one palm drop, lifting his other one, Lady Justice with a gun fetish. “And this thing of beauty is an S&W .359 NG. Fixed combat sights, beveled cylinders, Crimson Trace grips. It’s got built-in laser, puts a dot on the forehead—insert offensive Indian joke here.”
“You got my next batch of ARES pistols?”
Tommy swiped the gun back and ambled toward the nearest workbench. An oft-injured warhorse, he had the broken-down gait of a retired bronc rider.
As Evan followed him into increasing dimness, Tommy stepped across a roll of what looked like green conveyer belt. At least fifty feet long, it stretched along the oil-spotted concrete floor, a python lying in wait.
Evan squinted down. Puttyish substance, thirty-six inches thick, like a parcel of linoleum ready to be unrolled. “Is that— Wait, Tommy. Is that C-4?”
Tommy paused, tugged at his mustache, and looked down. “Not just any C-4,” he said. “Detasheet from a stash that predates the mandatory addition of taggants. Totally untraceable—no coded microparticles in this slab o’ goodness. I took the lot off the books in ’82.” He smiled, showcasing the slender gap between his front teeth. “‘Expended in training.’ Had it in my inventory ever since, but I finally got around to slicing and dicing it for the Balls-Deep State.”
He detoured around a heavy-barrel Browning M2, giving it a loving nudge with his boot. “Been restoring this .50-cal meat chopper. It ain’t the aircraft version, but you’d better eat your Wheaties if you wanna lug this hog around. And over here…”
Years of experience had taught Evan to pry Tommy off show-and-tell as quickly as possible, so he set down the medical-waste bucket on the workbench, the ARES pistols inside clanking like hammers. “I need you to puddle these, turn them to slag.”
Evan always dispensed with his pistols after using them. The ARES were impossible to trace, sure, but each round still bore the signature from the individual barrel it had been fired from, as well as scratches introduced during the loading-and-feeding process. This meant that if he used the same gun in two shootings, a connection could be established between the incidents. Even if the projo was mangled, a fired case left on the scene carried distinctive tool marks from the firing pin, extractor, ejector, or the breech face. He always collected shell cases when he could and wore latex gloves while loading magazines, but if there was one thing Jack had drilled into his bone marrow, it was that you could never be too sure.
“You’re spoiling another set of perfectly good pistols,” Tommy said. “You do realize that this little security measure of yours is an affront to my fine handiwork?”
The Second Commandment, Evan thought. How you do anything is how you do everything.
He gave Tommy a been-there look.
“Okay, okay.” Tommy showed him his palms, relenting as he collapsed into a rolling chair behind the workbench. He spun a Pelican case to face Evan and popped the lid. Nestled in foam were a dozen fresh ARES 1911s. “I got your new EDCs here. Did an action job on ’em. Smoother than a frog’s asshole.”
“They’re notoriously smooth, are they? Frog assholes?”
“I ain’t field-tested it. But so says the literature.” Tommy slid the case across to Evan. “If they don’t understand English, make sure they understand lead.”
Evan picked one up to feel the familiar heft, like an extension of his arm. Yet another reason he’d chosen the aluminum pistols as his everyday carry.
He lined the sights on the coffeepot gurgling behind Tommy like a witch’s cauldron. Then he ran a quick target-acquisition drill, swinging the muzzle to a cutting torch, a set of welder’s goggles, an ashtray made from a ship’s battered porthole. He was pleased to note that his vision stayed crisp—no double images, no blurring, no light streaks. Getting the concussion behind him was a necessity, given what lay ahead.
“That’ll steer you into the fray,” Tommy said, chinning at the pistol. “Then you hit ’em with the ‘iles.’ Agile, mobile, and hostile.”
Evan started to turn away, but Tommy snapped the intact fingers of his right hand. “Take it for a spin, please.”
At the back of the space, Tommy had a few paper targets strapped to bales of hay and more bales stacked up against the wall. Evan put on eyes-and-ears protection, firmed his stance, and went for the one-hole drill—all the rounds through the same hole.
The first eight shots went according to plan, but then a rush of light-headedness fuzzed his vision, his brain reminding him that it was still displeased about being slammed into parking-lot asphalt. His ninth shot edged south, turning the solitary hole in the target into a figure eight.
Intense focus or quick movements seemed to dial up the symptoms. Not helpful given that everything to come would be dependent on intense focus and quick movements. He lowered the pistol, blinking himself back to normal and hoping Tommy didn’t notice the sheen of sweat that had sprung up on his forehead.
Tommy cluck-clucked. “You got ‘How’d I do?’ syndrome. Peeked up and dropped the last shot. Didn’t no one teach you shit?”
When it came to shooting, Evan knew better than to compete with Tommy even when his head was clear. He returned the ARES to the foam lining and clicked the Pelican case lid shut. “I also need a sniper rifle.”
“For what?”
“To snipe.”
“I’m getting some FN Ballistas in next week that’ll make your socks roll up and down.”
“I don’t have till next week.”
“What range we talking?”
Evan told him.
Tommy waved him off with a four-fingered hand. “You don’t need a highly specialized sniper gun for that. You can just zero a deer gun.”
Evan said, “You’re thinking a 700 Remington?”
“Most common hunting rifle in North America. Millions of them. Hits your checkmarks for traceability and availability. Hell, I got a heap in the back. We pimp it out with an old-school Swarovski scope, you are GTG.”
Tommy kicked back in his Aeron chair, rolling across the slick concrete and disappearing into the shadowy fringe of the lair. A racket ensued—rusty hinges lifting, curse words, something clattering to the floor. The whir of the wheels presaged Tommy’s return. Sure enough, he sailed back into view, Remington rifle across his lap. He lifted it in triumph.
Evan said, “You got it in tan?”