Theaella

35

“I can’t show my face at this particular café again. So I need you to go in my stead.”

“And do what?”

“Eat,” Matthew said. “And look around.”

“Why do you need me to look around?”

“Because you see things I can’t.”

“Like what?”

Matthew told him precisely like what

Despite the Las Vegas midday sun, a November chill prickled the skin at the back of Matthew’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, Matthew 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.

Matthew 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 Matthew 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. Matthew 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 Matthew’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.

Matthew 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 s**t. 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 Matthew 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.

Matthew 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 Matthew 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.”

Matthew 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.