“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.”
“How is it done?”
“A little kit thing. Just sold as a curiosity. Most people I know use ’em for… paperweights. But if you get caught putting one of those assemblies into one of those weapons and turning it automatic? You’d go straight to the federal pen. Hell, now you can’t even own that. The ATF has taken all the fun—”
“How much are these replicas?” the man asked.
“A lot.”
“How much?”
“Where are you boys from?” Wideman asked. “I can’t place your accents. You from Nevada? Just move here?”
“Does it matter?”
“Sure. I’ve got to do a license check. Then I’ve got to do a felony check.”
“Is there any other way?”
The man sighed. “Nope, really isn’t.”
“You said the guns were expensive. How expensive?”
“Seven-fifty apiece.”
“We were prepared to pay a thousand apiece.”
“Whoa.” Wideman laughed. “That’s a lot of money. They’re not worth that—”
“We would pay a thousand apiece if they were automatic and did not include a background check.”
“I don’t think you understand,” the owner said as he hitched his pants up quickly over his belly. “I have to do a background check. Where are you guys from?”
“We will pay you twelve thousand dollars for twelve ‘replica’ AK-47s. We were told they would be available here.”
The man’s eyes got large. “Who the hell told you that?”
“Someone who knows. Was he wrong?”
Wideman glanced at the door to see if anyone was coming. “No, he wasn’t wrong. Let’s cut the bullshit,” he said as he walked to the front and pulled down the shade that covered the glass front door. “You want fully automatic AKs?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got them, and I’ll sell them to you. None of this trigger kit shit. These are authentic, Russian made. The real things, still packed in cosmolene. I’ve got a source. Fully auto, and,” he said, glancing around at the four men, who had come closer, “I’ve got the ammo for them. And there aren’t any serial numbers on them, so if you hit something when you’re doing your target practice, they can’t be traced here. And if you ever get caught for hitting something, you’ve never been here and I’ve never seen you. Agreed?”
The leader nodded.
“Fully automatic AKs with no numbers are rare. They will run you more than those replica pieces of shit. They’re two thousand apiece. And I’ll throw in five hundred rounds of ammo for each and five banana clips.”
“Fifteen hundred and a thousand rounds of ammunition for each.”
“Two thousand.”
“Eighteen hundred.”
“Done.” Wideman headed to the back of the shop.
The four Pakistani men went out the back door and looked around anxiously as they stood by their trucks while Wideman stacked the crates. The second in command looked at the bearded leader of the group. “Who goes first?”
The leader looked at his digital watch that had the time and date. “You go first. One truck at a time.” The four brand-new commercial Ford trucks were lined up behind the gun shop. “We cannot draw attention to ourselves. We don’t have much time.”
“Leave from here now?”