James Huston - Fallout

“What extra pay?” the driver asked, surprised. “We get paid by the company.”

“There’s a bonus.”

The driver frowned, then shrugged.

The crane lifted the first container off the truck and moved it slowly to the side. The truck stood up higher, grateful for the relief from the tons of weight it had been carrying moments before. Once the container was freed from the back of the truck, the driver clambered back up into his cab, started the truck, and drove out from under the crane. As soon as his truck was clear, he pulled to the side, climbed back down, and headed toward the office. The second driver pulled in behind him, right where he’d been, and began unloading the second container. He, too, was told to be sure to pick up his bonus in the office.

He followed the first driver into the office, where they sat down and waited. The small man in charge nodded to two men standing next to the office. They opened the back of one of the new trucks, took out the submachine guns, and strolled into the office. The shots were barely audible above the motor of the crane inside the warehouse.

“You Kevin Hayes?”

Kevin looked up from his computer screen at a man he’d never seen before.

“Yeah. Can I help you?”

The man walked in and sat down in the chair next to Kevin’s desk. He was in his early forties and looked authoritative. Not a good sign, Hayes thought. “What’s up?”

“I’m Bill Morrissey. Central Asia.”

Kevin extended his hand, and the man took it. “Nice to meet you. What can I do for you?”

“You’ve been talking with Renee.”

Here we go again. “Couple of times.”

“You had her contact agents on behalf of your brother, who’s working for a private company.”

Kevin was immediately defensive. “I asked her to look into something that I believe has implications for the United States. My brother told me about it. I didn’t think anyone else would consider it a big enough deal to look into, so I did it myself. How she was to look into it was her decision, and it was official government business. Why is it that everybody is on my ass for trying to do what we’re supposed to do?”

“It looks like you’re simply running a job for your brother. But if you’re really onto something, I want to hear about it. Tell me what you know.”

Kevin did. Then, “It’s mostly speculation. The latest stuff from Renee makes me really wonder about this guy, though.”

Morrissey thought for a while, then said in a clipped manner, “We really have no indication that he has anything in mind, or even remotely what it might be if he does.”

“What about showing up at the docks in Karachi? Don’t you find that odd?”

“Very,” he replied. “But what was he doing there? Why would he care about shipping? And if he was sending people over to that school, wouldn’t they ship over some of their equipment? Airplane parts?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t either. We should find out. Find out what’s been shipped from Karachi to the United States around those dates, what its destination was, and what has come of it. We could have customs take a look at it.”

“Could do. Then there’s the whole connection, the whole way that they got into the class. The Undersecretary of Defense.”

“What do you know about that?” Morrissey asked.

“Struck me as truly odd. Sounds to me like they’re a little too close.”

“Meaning what?”

“No way to know. I don’t want to accuse anybody of anything. It might pay to have the FBI look into it, though.”

Morrissey stood to leave. “They already are.”

Good, Kevin thought. But then he wondered what they knew. “Why?”

“They started wondering about him all on their own.” Morrissey paused. “Right after he disappeared.”

“What?” Kevin gasped. “Disappeared? Are you shitting me?”

“And a lot of money went through his bank account right before he skipped.”

“We may really be onto something.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I want you to start checking all the shipping records—”

“No way,” Kevin said, leaning back in his chair and putting up his hands. “I’ve already gotten my ass chewed once.”

“The witch?”

Hayes’s eyes got big. He didn’t dare confirm her name.

“She knows.”

“It’s okay with her?”

“She’s on board with you helping me. We’ve got to get more people on this. That’s why I’m here to ask for your help. This one is starting to worry me. A lot.”

“Shouldn’t we send someone to Nevada?”

“CIA doesn’t operate inside the U.S.”

“Well, then get the FBI to send someone.”

“They’re thinking about it.”

Wideman’s Gun Shop closed at exactly six o’clock every night. Greg Wideman was meticulous and punctual. He never stayed open late. As he turned the sign around on the door and prepared to pull the steel bars home, he felt a push on the door. He looked up and saw four men staring at him. “We’re closed!” he said loudly, annoyed. His annoyance was quickly replaced by apprehension when he got a good look at the faces of the four men who pushed through the door and stood in front of him.

They were small men with dark skin and hard, angry looks. They were all unshaven, and their clear leader had a thick black beard. They looked around his gun shop, the largest in Nevada, as if they’d never seen anything like it. The two in the rear were walking backward, looking at the machine guns suspended from the wall above the door through which they had just entered. They continued toward Wideman.

“You the owner?” the bearded man in front asked.

“Yes.”

“We need to buy some of your weapons.”

“We’re closed.”

“No, you are not,” the man replied confidently as he strolled casually through the store and gawked at the hundreds and hundreds of weapons.

“What did you have in mind?” Wideman asked grudgingly.

“Machine guns.”

The owner, who wore a Rueger baseball cap, frowned at the request. “Machine guns are illegal.”

“You have semiautomatic, right?” the man continued.

“Sure. All kinds. What did you want?”

“We want the most powerful you have.”

“What do you mean by powerful?”

“Largest caliber.”

The owner looked at the man’s face momentarily. He didn’t want to cross him. “We’ve got several types, nine-millimeter, even a ten-millimeter MAC-10—that’s a rare one, can’t even get those anymore—and, let’s see, an AR-15, that’s a .223-caliber, not big around but tremendous muzzle velocity, and”—he turned to look at the rack, which had a steel cable passing through the trigger guards of the guns—“lots of things. Depends on what you want it for.”

“We need twelve of them,” the tall man said matter-of-factly. “To take now.”

“Can’t do that. Only three guns per buyer per month.”

“Yes. There are four of us. That makes twelve,” the man said, unsmiling. The other three were looking around the gun shop for any other patrons, and one was looking for hidden cameras.

“Damned if it don’t,” the proprietor said. “Which kind do you want?”

“Do you have AK-47s?”

“Nah, those are impossible. Illegal to import them. But I do have a few… ‘replicas,’ “ he said.

“Are they automatic?”

“No. Like I was saying. That would be illegal.”

“Can they be made automatic?”

The proprietor chortled with his smoker’s laugh. “You with the ATF or something? You ask the most direct damned questions. Sure, somebody dedicated to doing it could do it easy. But that would be a felony , see. And I’m not doing that.”