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…

with anti-tank weapons. A bazooka nestles in one corner, shoved close to a rocket launcher. Stacked crates are marked up for the old L2 grenades as well as their smoke

hand to the

finger… “Those…” I head for a display of assault

grins, giving me a better view of his putrescent teeth than I would like. The gold tooth winks at me. “Perhaps you not just nice English

not,” I agree. “You want to make a

a key and unlocks the

good ones. The paint is shiny and the metal polished, but it’s cheap civilian junk designed for rich idiots that

when my own neck’s at

still be ‘sport’ if lions

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

senhor.” Toothy raises

Hmmm…

a firing

“Senhor?”

weapon to my shoulder, mime

long narrow street, perhaps two hundred yards long, contained between the high brick

targets invite assassination: paper and cardboard outlines; some fixed to frames, others dangling from strings, swinging in the slight

“Ammunition?”

a box, the card soft with age, speckled with mould. Even as I snap off the magazine, feeding in the rounds, it doesn’t feel right. The

Fucking fake…

Go through the motions…

my point

As a

Probably jam anyway…

the trigger isn’t as

Burred?

Unfinished surface?

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 a genuine AR-15, Paper-Boy should have three neat holes puncturing his chest. As

One round veers off to the left. One drops low. On the third shot,

Fucking waste of time…

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

He sets the ‘AR-15’ to one side. Perhaps you want this?” He

unlocks a second cabinet. And it’s a completely different collection. The weapons inside are old and clearly second-hand. Pretty 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