Corporal Linda Craven stood at the window, looking out discreetly front behind the curtains, watching a merchant sloop sail past on a parallel course with the shore. She was twenty-two years old and this was her third mission. She had received her baptism of fire during her first assignment, in 19th-century London, when she was just a rookie, part of a support unit attached to the team of Delaney, Cross, and Steiger. When it was all over, only two of that support unit had been left alive. She had learned fast and she had learned the hard way. Since then, she and the other surviving member of that unit, Corporal Scott Neilson, had completed one other temporal adjustment mission, during the Second World War. On that occasion, they had been teamed with Lt. Wendell Jones, but the logistics of this assignment had required a new partner for them this time. Jones was black and there were certain historical scenarios where a black man simply couldn’t function very well. In colonial Boston, there was a fairly large population of blacks, but most of them were slaves, and even though many of the Boston colonists-such as Sam Adams, who objected to slavery in principle-had freed their slaves, they still did not possess the same rights as white men did and would not for many years to come, Because of this. Craven and Neilson had been teamed with Master Sergeant Rico Chavez, a veteran of Anglo-Chicano ancestry, whose physical characteristics could easily allow him to pose as anything from a Spaniard to an Italian to a Balkan or what was known as a “black Irishman.” descended from mixed Irish and Spanish stock, In addition to them. Forrester had dispatched another team, two being all that he could spare, consisting of Capt. Michael Seavers, one of the original members of the First Division. Sgt. Ivan Federoff, a veteran of over two dozen missions, and Lt. Geoffrey Stone, a former field agent for the T.I. A,
As Linda Craven was getting her first look at colonial Boston. Stone, Federoff, and Seavers were in the other bedroom, taking advantage of the time to grab some sleep. Chavez was behind her, relaxing on the bed and reading, but Nielson, as usual, was too keyed up to rest. A trick-shooting enthusiast and collector of antique firearms, he was eagerly examining the small arsenal of handguns Hunter had obtained in the 20th century.
‘A Cz-75.” he said admiringly, picking up a black 9 mm. Czech-made semiautomatic. “This one’s a collector’s item. And a 45 Colt Combat Commander; a couple of Berettas, a Model 84. 380 and a 9 min. 92F; a snub-nosed Colt King Cobra. 357 Magnum; a couple of small double-action Walther. 22s: a 10 mm. Springfield with convertible barrels and magazines; and Christ, look at this thing!” He picked up a huge cannon with a dull black steel frame. “An Israeli Desert Eagle. 44 Automag with a ten-shot clip! He’s even got a reloading press complete with dies! You’d think he was expecting an assault team!”
“He was,” said Chavez. without looking up from his book. “Us.”
“Us?” said Nielson, puzzled. “Well, not us specifically,” Chavez said, “but he didn’t trust Priest and the others any more than they trusted him. Not that I can blame him. If I were in his shoes, I’d have done the same thing. Prepared a safehouse and laid in some weapons, just in case. Looks like he picked some good ones, too.”
“Why only lead projectile weapons?” Linda asked. “If he thought he might have to go up against the agency, we’d have him easily outgunned.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” said Chavez. “Never underestimate any sort of firearm,” he said. “I’d sooner go up against a street punk armed with a laser than a good shooter armed with a. 22 rimfire. In the hands of somebody who knows what they’re doing, it would kill you just as dead. In the 20th century, where Hunter picked these up, a semiauto. 22 rimfire was frequently the chosen weapon of professional assassins. It’s a very high-velocity round, and soft, so you get good expansion with practically no recoil. Light and very accurate.”
“No stopping power, though.” said Neilson.
Chavez chuckled. He made a “gun” with his thumb and index finger and pointed it at Neilson. “I know what you’re thinking.” he said in a slightly breathy, menacing voice. “This here’s only a. 22 rimfire, a piddly little round with no stopping power to speak of. So I’m just going to have to shoot you six times in the head.”
Neilson grinned. “I see your point.”
“Actually.” said Chavez, “what the pros used to do with those things is a technique they called ‘the zipper ‘ They’d start at your midsection and work up in a straight line, rapid fire-bang, bang, bang, hang, bang.’ he demonstrated with his finger gun, moving up an imaginary line along Neilson’s body. “That way, even if none of the individual shots proved fatal, the cumulative effect of the trauma would be. All this talk about stopping power you antique collectors get into is just a lot of nonsense. Shot placement is what counts. Of course, you don’t have that problem with lasers, plasma pistols, or disruptors. You don’t need to be as accurate, but then it would have been difficult for Hunter to get his hands on those without some connections. Hell, even the regular troops don’t get issued disruptors, they’re so paranoid of letting those get loose. And they’re not easily concealable. Let me see that automag,” he said to Neilson. Neilson picked up the Desert Eagle, made sure the safety was on, and handed it to him.
“Jeez. heavy sucker, isn’t it’!” said Chavez, hefting it experimentally. “Never fired one of these myself. Must have one hell of’ a kick.”
“About the same as a compensated. 45.” said Neilson. “I have a. 44 Magnum in my collection, but it’s a revolver. Kicks about twice as much as that thing. But the nice thing about that round is that it gives you a lot of versatility it you load your own cartridges, which is what that press is for. See, depending on what kind of bullet you use and how much powder, you can pretty much tailor-make your ammunition to suit your purpose. You can load a soft-point bullet that’ll spend most of its energy on impact and hit like a sledgehammer or you can load for penetration. Use a copper-jacketed hollow-point bullet, stoke the casing with enough powder, and you can shoot through walls or vehicles.”
“Primitive, but nasty,” Chavez said. “I wouldn’t underrate them.”
He gave the pistol back to Neilson.
“With weapons like that, I’m surprised they didn’t have stricter firearms regulations in the 20th century.” said Linda.
“The laws varied, but they’ had the same basic problems we’ve got.” Nielson said. “The law of supply and demand. Hell, look at Boston. Right now, the British are enforcing the customs regulations more stringently than ever, with the Royal Navy backing them up, yet at least half the merchants here are into smuggling. If people really want something, somebody will provide it. You could ban weapons manufacture, but someone would simply set up a machine shop and start turning them out illegally.”
“I remember an assignment I had in L.A. back in the 20th century,” said Chavez. “We had to bust up a Network drug-running operation. The kids in the barrio could get just about anything they wanted, but even if they couldn’t buy a gun, they sometimes made their own by breaking a radio antenna off a car, taping it to a wooden handle, and using a piece of metal and a rubber band for a firing mechanism. Stick a. 22 shell in the damn thing and you’ve got yourself a single-shot zip gun. as they called them. Liable to blow up in your face, but it could be surprisingly effective if it didn’t.”
“They tried gun control laws.” said Neilson, “but they only wound up taking weapons out of the hands of honest people who deserved the right to protect themselves. If a person takes it in his head to kill somebody, he’ll manage to find a way. You can control weapons to some degree, but you can’t really control people.”
“So what are you saying, Scott?” Linda said. “Let anyone who wants to buy a plasma gun or a laser? The streets would be a war zone.”