Hot Revenge Box Set 4

Klempner

A quick trawl of some of the greyer websites I use from time to time quickly produces what I want: contact details for an arms merchant who isn’t too fussy about inspecting, or even asking for, documentation or licences relating to either his merchandise or his clientele. Online, it seems ideal, but when I arrive at the address, I’m unimpressed.

I could be in the set of some clichéd hack movie. The side alley is dark and damp. The building is of the would-fall-down-but-is-held-up-by-the-dry-rot variety. It’s even better as I enter.

The proprietor has, apart from a serious case of halitosis, a gold tooth. Why I have no idea. It glints from among a sundry dental collection in black, brown and yellow. Apart of course from the three which are missing altogether from the front. Maybe he lost them in a fight. Or perhaps they ran for cover from their horrible housing.

Having wandered into the area wearing my don’t-mind-me-I’m-a-tourist uniform, I’m beginning to regret the cream linen suit. Stained jeans and a dark tee-shirt would have been more appropriate.

Or perhaps a wetsuit.

I move carefully, preferring not to brush against the walls or furniture, and wishing it were as easy to close the nostrils as the mouth.

Toothy snaps fingers at me. “Sua permissão para comprar.”

I allow confusion to cross my face. “I’m sorry, do you speak English? I want to buy a gun. You were recommended to me.”

His features display a running battle between Irritation and avarice.

The opportunity to sap the ignorant but wealthy foreigner…

“I talk English small, yes.” He holds out his hands, fingers wriggling in a Gimme gesture. “Your permit for gun?”

Making a show of taking the paperwork from my wallet, I unfold it, stroking out the creases, It’s part of the ‘toolkit’ Dakho routinely runs up for me. I’ve no clue whether it is completely fake or a copy of something he hi-jacked from elsewhere. It could even be the genuine article. But he’s never let me down yet. In any case, it’s good enough to pass Toothy’s cursory examination.

“Okay, you want gun for nice English tourist. To protect, yes?”

“That’s right.” I award him a small smile. “To protect myself.”

Toothy sniffs with a sound like bad plumbing, then heads for a door, jerking his thumb at me to follow.

In the next room…

Ah-ha…

That’s more like it…

variety of merchandise. Pistols and revolvers share one display. Rifles fill another. Grenade launchers rub shoulders with anti-tank weapons. A bazooka nestles in one corner, shoved close to a rocket launcher. Stacked crates are marked

offers out a hand to the rack of

not those…” I aim a finger… “Those…”

than I would like. The gold

not,” I agree. “You want

produces a

good ones. The paint is shiny and the metal polished, but it’s

option when my own neck’s at

be ‘sport’ if lions could

eye the manufacturer’s mark and heft the thing in my hands. The weight’s wrong and the balance is off. “This supposed

senhor.” Toothy raises a

Hmmm…

a firing

“Senhor?”

shoulder, mime aiming and firing it with a couple of

the back into what looks to be a bricked-up alleyway: a long narrow street, perhaps two hundred yards long, contained between the high brick walls of adjacent buildings, and blocked

some fixed to frames, others dangling from strings, swinging in the slight breeze. Some are human silhouettes, concentric circles marked on the chest. Many are home-made: printed off, then pinned to

“Ammunition?”

snap off the magazine, feeding in the rounds, it doesn’t

Fucking fake…

Go through the motions…

my point

should take 20 rounds. As a

Probably jam anyway…

action on the trigger isn’t as smooth as it should be. As I squeeze back, something clicks

Burred?

Unfinished surface?

target at the far end of the alley, a paper cut-out of a six-foot human figure, aiming for the heart, firing three rounds in quick succession. At this range, were it

sight a touch, I give it another go. One round veers off to the left.

Fucking waste of time…

shove the useless heap of junk back at Toothy, hard enough to stagger him backwards as I propel the barrel at his chest. “You going to show me the real thing now? Or do I have to get annoyed? I’m not here to be ripped off by some cheap grifter who thinks I’m

see now. You not tourist. Perhaps…” He sets the ‘AR-15’ to one side. Perhaps

they’re not. But this time, it’s the real McCoy: AK-47s and AKMs. Soviet-made rifles, built for fighting wars. Not sophisticated, and lacking most