Lee Child - Persuader

“It’s plenty,” I said. “Go make the arrest.”

“Where do I go?” Duffy said.

“I’ll show you,” I said.

I moved past her through the open area. Into the back office. Through the door into the warehouse cubicle. Angel Doll’s computer was still there on the desk. His chair was still leaking its stuffing all over the place. I found the right switch and lit up the warehouse floor. I could see everything through the glass partition. The racks of carpets were still there. The forklift was still there. But in the middle of the floor were five head-high stacks of crates. They were piled into two groups. Farthest from the roller door were three piles of battered wooden boxes all stenciled with markings in unfamiliar foreign alphabets, mostly Cyrillic, overlaid with right-to-left scrawls in some kind of Arabic language. I guessed those were Bizarre Bazaar’s imports. Nearer the door were two piles of new crates printed in English: Mossberg Connecticut. Those would be the Xavier Export Company’s outgoing shipment. Import-export, barter at its purest. Fair exchange is no robbery, as Leon Garber might have said.

“It’s not huge, is it?” Duffy said. “I mean, five stacks of boxes? A hundred and forty thousand dollars? I thought it was supposed to be a big deal.”

“I think it is big,” I said. “In importance, maybe, rather than quantity.”

“Let’s take a look,” Villanueva said.

We moved out onto the warehouse floor. He and I lifted the top Mossberg crate down. It was heavy. My left arm was still a little weak. And the center of my chest still hurt. It made my smashed mouth feel like nothing at all.

Villanueva found a claw hammer on a table. Used it to pull the nails out of the crate’s lid. Then he lifted the lid off and laid it on the floor. The crate was full of foam peanuts. I plunged my hands in and came out with a long gun wrapped in waxed paper. I tore the paper off. It was an M500 Persuader. It was the Cruiser model. No shoulder stock. Just a pistol grip. 12-gauge, eighteen-and-a-half - inch barrel, three-inch chamber, six shot capacity, blued metal, black synthetic front grip, no sights. It was a nasty, brutal, close-up street weapon. I pumped the action, crunch crunch. It moved like silk on skin. I pulled the trigger. It clicked like a Nikon.

“See any ammunition?” I said.

“Here,” Villanueva called. He had a box of Brenneke Magnum slugs in his hand. Behind him was an open carton full of dozens of identical packages. I broke open two boxes and loaded six shells and jacked one into the chamber and loaded a seventh. Then I clicked the safety, because the Brennekes were not birdshot. They were one-ounce solid copper slugs that would leave the Persuader at nearly eleven hundred miles an hour. They would punch a hole in a cinder block wall big enough to crawl through. I put the weapon on the table and unwrapped another one. Loaded it and clicked the safety and laid it next to the first one. Caught Duffy looking right at me.

“It’s what they’re for,” I said. “An empty gun is no good to anybody.”

I put the empty Brenneke boxes back in the carton and closed the lid. Villanueva was looking at Bizarre Bazaar’s crates. He had paperwork in his hands.

“These look like carpets to you?” he said.

“Not a whole lot,” I said.

“U.S. Customs thinks they do. Guy called Taylor signed off on them as handwoven rugs from Libya.”

“That’ll help,” I said. “You can give this Taylor guy to ATF. They can check his bank accounts. Might make you more popular.”

“So what’s really in them?” Duffy said. “What do they make in Libya?”

“Nothing,” I said. “They grow dates.”

“This all is Russian stuff,” Villanueva said. “It’s been through Odessa twice. Imported to Libya, turned right around, and exported here. In exchange for two hundred Persuaders. Just because somebody wants to look tough on the streets of Tripoli.”

“And they make a lot of stuff in Russia,” Duffy said.

I nodded. “Let’s see what, exactly.”

There were nine crates in three stacks. I lifted the top crate off the nearest stack and Villanueva got busy with his claw hammer. He pulled the lid off and I saw a bunch of AK-74s nested in wood shavings. Standard Kalashnikov assault rifles, well used. Boring as hell, street value maybe two hundred bucks each, depending on where you were selling them. They weren’t fashion items. I couldn’t see any guys in North Face jackets trading in their beautiful matte-black H amp;Ks for them.

The second crate was smaller. It was full of wood shavings and AKSU-74 submachine guns. They’re AK-74 derivatives. Efficient, but clunky. They were used too, but well maintained. Not exciting. No better than a half-dozen Western equivalents. NATO hadn’t lain awake at night worrying about them.

The third crate was full of nine-millimeter Makarov pistols. Most of them were scratched and old. It’s a crude and lazy design, ripped off from the ancient Walther PP. The Soviet military was never much of a handgun culture. They thought using sidearms was right down there with throwing stones.

“This is all crap,” I said. “Best thing to do with this stuff would be melt it down and use it for boat anchors.”

We started on the second stack, and found something much more interesting in the very first crate. It was full of VAL Silent Sniper rifles. They were secret until 1994, when the Pentagon captured one. They’re all black, all metal, with a skeleton stock. They fire special heavy nine-millimeter subsonic rounds. Tests showed they penetrated any body armor you chose to wear at a range of five hundred yards. I remember a fair amount of consternation at the time. There were twelve of them. The next crate held another twelve. They were quality weapons. And they looked good. They would go really well with the North Face jackets. Especially the black ones with the silver linings.

“Are they expensive?” Villanueva asked.

I shrugged. “Hard to say. Depends on what a person is willing to pay, I guess. But an equivalent Vaime or SIG bought new in the U.S. could cost over five grand.”

“Then that’s the whole invoice value right there.”

I nodded. “They’re serious weapons. But not a lot of use in south-central LA. So their street value might be much less.”

“We should go,” Duffy said.

I stepped back to line up the view through the glass and out the back office window. It was mid-afternoon. Gloomy, but still light.

“Soon,” I said.

Villanueva opened the last crate in the second stack.

“What the hell is this?” he said.

I stepped over. Saw a nest of wood shavings. And a slim black tube with a short wooden section to act as a shoulder rest. A bulbous missile loaded ready in the muzzle. I had to look twice before I was sure.

“It’s an RPG- 7,” I said. “It’s an anti-tank rocket launcher. An infantry weapon, shoulder-fired.”

“RPG means rocket propelled grenade,” he said.

“In English,” I said. “In Russian it means Reaktivniy Protivotankovyi Granatomet, rocket anti-tank grenade launcher. But it uses a missile, not a grenade.”

“Like the long-rod penetrator?” Duffy said.

“Sort of,” I said. “But it’s explosive.”

“It blows up tanks?”

“That’s the plan.”

“So who’s going to buy it from Beck?”

“I don’t know.”

“Drug dealers?”

“Conceivably. It would be very effective against a house. Or an armored limousine. If your rival bought a bulletproof BMW, you’d need one of these.”

“Or terrorists,” she said.

I nodded. “Or militia whackos.”

“This is very serious.”

“They’re hard to aim,” I said. “The missile is big and slow. Nine times out of ten even a slight crosswind will make you miss. But that’s no consolation to whoever else gets hit by mistake.”