Gun Work

Carl was usable, so Felix Rainer had used him. Erica had probably played them both. Wasn’t that how the food chain worked? The big ones got eaten by the bigger ones, who got gobbled up by the biggest ones, and it didn’t matter how big or bad you were, there was always some carnivore bigger or badder. If they couldn’t make you chum, then they made you a chump. True predators could whiff this vulnerability with a surety that gilded their genes all the way back to caveman days. The ground rule of predation: eat instead of being eaten.

The theory of the mark was that you invited usury by being too eager, greedy, gullible, or all three. Barney’s ego image of himself as fixer for the halt and clueless had doomed him.

You had to not care about anything. Sacrifice anyone. Scoot with no baggage. And keep breathing — that was the end that justified any means.

One trick of psychology was to disempower your tormentors. That mate of yours who fucked you over? Think of them as decayed, diseased, repulsive. Stop tacitly forgiving them and go on the offensive. Barney realized with an acidic jolt that he was still cutting slack for Carl Ledbetter based on events of years past. Carl was not that guy now. He had to be a new guy, somebody Barney could despise enough to kill.

As for the repulsive part, well, Barney had worn that suit already. It wasn’t his, didn’t fit him, and wasn’t it time to pass it on to somebody who really deserved it?

He could be like the Old Assassin, immune to feeling, his emotions shut down and turned off, all human sympathy on mute. Or he could be like he was now, a victim, a mark, a schmuck. There had to be another option, a middle ground, and Barney found its boundaries when he allowed himself the luxury of pure hate, unadulterated by self-pity or misplaced notions of fairness.

It took ten months before he felt as whole again as he was going to be for the rest of his life. By that time he had reconnected with the art of the true gunman. He had re-learned everything, traveling back beyond novice to start as virgin. The grip, the stance, targeting accurately, knowing your loads, sensing how many rounds remained from the weight of the firearm in your hand, it was all an uphill climb on a mountain of shit, hoping that when you found the single rose at the summit, you hadn’t lost the sense of smell.

It was a rebirth.

Newly born, Barney found that only the hatred had endured, and now it was purer than ever.

Part Three

Gun Work

“Now, this here is a beauty for close-ups,” said Karlov. With a showman’s flourish he displayed a Smith & Wesson revolver with an eight-inch barrel. From the side it looked like a real hand cannon.

“Twenty-two caliber, ten-round cylinder, the trigger is a feather and it shoots like a horny teenager. No kick at all.”

Superior caliber did not always mean bigger, fatter bullets. With a .22, you could put all ten rounds into someone without killing them, and usually by round five they would tell you whatever you wanted to know. It was all in the application.

“Moving to slightly larger armament...” Karlov opened his jacket to reveal a complicated web holster of his own design. It held four pistols, two on each side, revolvers on top, semi-autos below. He enumerated the guns: “A .357 Magnum... Super .40... 9-mil... .45. The spine rack holds three mags each for the semi-autos. Speed loaders for the revolvers up here.”

“Damn,” said Armand, stroking his chin.

“Body armor,” said Sirius, laying out what looked like a floppy, lime-green wetsuit top on the gun range counter. “Standard Kevlar is comprised of thirty or forty layers of synthetic fabric. It’s bulky and restricts movement. This is some new shit they came up with for the Army.”

“The liquid armor?” said Armand.

“Yeah. This is a sandwich of Kevlar fabric encasing a polymer infused with nanobits of silica. Basically, polyethylene glycol and purified sand. It’s called ‘sheer thickening liquid’ and it stiffens instantaneously into a shield when hit by a bullet. It reverts to liquid state when the energy from the hit dissipates. Even a top of the line bulletproof vest can’t protect you from stabbing, say, or shrapnel. This can. It’s lighter, more flexible, allows maximum mobility.”

Barney just whistled silently. “It’s a science fiction suit,” he said. “No way this is legal.”

“You didn’t say anything about legal,” said Sirius with a knowing grin.

“Yeah, that’s right, I didn’t. Hmm.”

“Let’s see your hands,” said Karlov to Barney, who displayed them.

The thumbs flowed toward the (former) middle fingers with a natural web of skin. Except for the fact that each hand was one digit shy, they appeared normal. When Barney made a fist, you could pick out a white webwork of scar tracks. That Dr. Brandywine wasn’t an artist; he was a sorcerer.

Karlov handed him the customized .22. “Let me see your reach.”

Barney extended the gun in the general direction of a paper target about forty feet downrange.

“Okay, now hold that extension for five minutes.”