Fallout (23 page)

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?”

“Yes,” he said, concerned that such a simple plan could be misunderstood. He examined his lieutenant’s eyes for fear or panic. There was none. “We stay in the four hotels separately, as I have told you. We will not see each other again until the night before.” He watched the crates being loaded. “Do you remember where we meet?”

“The exit on the freeway. Where there is nothing. One hundred miles north.”

The one with the beard nodded. “Don’t be late.”

Vlad settled down in front of the television in his BOQ room with a German beer and some sausage on a paper plate. He was fascinated by American television. It was so different from Russian television. Luke had made satellite television available in every BOQ room. Vlad was shocked not only at the number of channels available but at what you could find on the television at any hour of the day. Sports, drama, movies with naked women, Russian-language shows—which he found particularly humorous—anything one wanted was on the television. He especially liked the Wings shows; they detailed the history of the development and operation of famous airplanes. Vlad watched every episode he could find. Tonight was the show about the F-117 Stealth fighter. Vlad was excited about seeing it, not only because he wanted to know everything there was to know about the Stealth fighter but also because they had been based at Tonopah when they were still secret, the very base on which he now sat.

He watched the Discovery Channel logo fade in as the music started. He smiled in anticipation. The picture went dark, and one could see a vague, strange shape against the moon in the background. The sound of the lethal jet was coming into the picture from the left. Vlad leaned forward, drinking in the shape, the silhouette, plugging it into his fighter pilot data bank of possible future threats.

He snuck a deep drink from the bottle of beer as he kept one eye fixed on the television screen.

The phone rang in the kitchenette on the wall behind him. “Arrr,” he said as he stood up. He slammed the empty bottle down on the coffee table and walked to the phone. “Da,” he said.

The voice he heard chilled him instantly. “Vladimir, it has been too long,” the man said in Russian.

“Who is this?” he replied in Russian.

“How quickly you forget your friends.”

“I don’t forget my friends. You’re not one of them. Who are you?”

“If not a friend, then at least someone to whom you are greatly indebted, Major Vladimir Petkov.”

No one had called him “Major” since he left the Russian Air Force. “What do you want?”

“Did you think your perfect job with MAPS would be without cost to you? Did you think you got to the United States because of your skills and reputation?”

Vlad’s heart started beating rapidly, as if someone had placed a noose around his neck some time ago and was only now alerting him to it. “What do you want?”

“It is time to pay the debt to those to whom you owe your entire life, Vladimir.”

“Gorgov!” Vlad suddenly realized.

“Ah, you do remember me.” Gorgov laughed. “I thought you might. I told you I would get you out of that shithole, didn’t I?”

“I would have gotten out—”

“No,” Gorgov said tersely. “You wouldn’t have. Not ever. I am the only reason you got out, the only reason you are where you are.”

Vlad didn’t reply. He suddenly wished he hadn’t just had a beer.

“So. You wonder why I call, no doubt,” Gorgov said.

“It is not safe to talk,” Vlad said, stalling.

“Of course it is! America is a country of laws! They can’t listen to your phone calls without a warrant, and they must suspect you of something first! It is a marvelous country! How do you think we operate so effectively there?”

“You . . . are here?” Vlad gasped. He had felt safer in the United States, away from Gorgov and his type. He assumed they’d forgotten about him.

“My friends are there. How do you think we can be effective businessmen in the United States without being there?”

“Like the Russian hockey players you extort money from.”

“You have been reading the American papers again. They accuse Russians of so much.” Gorgov laughed, knowing it was completely true. “I am just a businessman.”

“What do you want of me?”

“Yes, it does come to that, doesn’t it? I will not deny it. I do want something of you. Something in payment of what you owe me for getting you the job you have.”

“What?” Vlad grimaced, waiting for whatever it was, which he knew would be unpleasant.

“I cannot tell you exactly. Both because there may be someone listening, which I doubt, and also because your ability to help will be fluid, changing, responding to the moment—”

“Get to the point!” Vlad raged.

“Don’t ever yell at me,” Gorgov growled, then waited to see if Vlad was going to respond. He continued, “Something is going to happen soon. When it does, you will know what you are to do. It will be bad for the United States. Your job is to make sure it happens without interference.”

“What bad thing? What are you talking about?”

“You will see.”

“Why me? Is it going to happen near here?”

“It is going to happen right there. Right where you are.”

Vlad shifted the phone to his other ear and peeked outside in the darkness at the base. Everything was quiet. He had no idea what Gorgov was talking about. “What exactly? Tell me!”

“No. But you will see, and soon. And it will be clear to you what you must do. Then . . . you simply do it. That is all. And if you don’t . . . well, then very bad things will happen. You don’t want that, do you?”

“I cannot help you if I don’t know what you want!” Vlad exclaimed.

“Yes you can, and you will. You will see. Do svidaniya,” Gorgov said, and the line went dead.

Brian struggled against his MS as he fought his way up the unending hill of the StairMaster in the immaculate gym at the south end of the second deck of the hangar. All the pilots were required to keep track of their workouts lifting weights. It had long been recognized that muscle mass helped resist the G forces encountered in flying jets. Although the Navy didn’t require a particular workout regimen, Luke did. And he checked the records every week. Brian always had the fullest sheet, the one who’d spent the most time in the gym, fighting the demons that were wrecking his body.

Luke walked in, ready to start his early-morning workout. They were the only two in the gym.

Brian immediately slowed his climbing. He motioned to Luke. “You got a second?”

“Morning, Brian. Fine, thanks. How about you?”

“Sorry. I was thinking about some things when you walked in.”

“What’s up?” Luke replied.

“I’ve been thinking about Vlad.”

Luke looked at Brian. “What about him?”

“We don’t really know all that much about him.”

“You’re just a suspicious guy. First it’s the Paks, now it’s Vlad.”

“Seriously.”