Gun Work

His “rental” turned out to be an armored limousine, actually a Town Car with the stretch deck, a bomb shell underbelly, solid rubber anti-deflating tires, a personnel-carrier suspension for the extra weight, and bulletproof tinted windows.

“They had three of these things,” Carl said rather sheepishly. “They made me a deal.”

“Soft market?” said Barney.

Carl shrugged. “Look, it’s got the GPS. I thought, it couldn’t hurt, right?”

“As long as it goes over sixty on the flats.”

Barney spent the next hour or so dismantling the map-tracker. He had watched one of his shooting range regulars do this once and retained the knack of learning and extrapolating through observation. You never knew what weird skills you might need someday. Then he performed surgery on the nylon cargo bag in which Carl planned to store his million bucks in cash. It was big. A single banknote, no matter what the denomination, weighs a gram. If the $1,000,000 had been in one dollar bills, it would have weighed over a ton. In fifties, forty-four pounds; in hundreds, half that. A million bucks in reasonably clean, circulated bills only fit into a slim Halliburton briefcase in the movies.

Barney stitched the tiny microprocessor board behind the thick vinyl logo riveted to the bag, honestly the only place to hide it.

“Do you really need to have that gun?” said Carl, eying the .45.

Barney looked at his friend as though he had just stepped out of a flying saucer. Waited. Then, calmly: “Yes. I need it.”

“Damn, it’s... heavy.”

Barney’s hand lashed out like a striking cobra, slamming Carl’s wrist to the table. Pure instinct. He had looked up from his work to see the muzzle of the pistol directed at his face. Now it was angled at the ceiling, potentially bad for other guests.

It was like a bad joke version of Barney’s range test for newbies. Hand them an unloaded piece and see where they wave it. A good quick way to discover who might or might not handle a firearm responsibly. Carl had just failed with flying colors, picked up a loaded weapon, put his finger on the trigger without thinking, and pointed it right at Barney. The only thing he had not done was try to imitate Cagney and make little pchew-pchew gunshot noises... which would have been obliterated by the sound of the weapon discharging and spreading Barney’s inmost thoughts all over the water-stained wallpaper of their amenity-less hotel room.

Carl stammered, “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, man, I—”

...haven’t held a gun in twenty years, yeah, I know.

Barney never felt sorry for ordinary folks, regular citizens, the law abiders, the walking dead. But sometimes he did pity them. Carl had put weapons handling, and Iraq, far behind him. Even there, Barney remembered him with an AR-15, mostly for show, but never a handgun.

Carl was frittering, nervous with anticipation. He needed a chore.

“Have you got a picture of Erica?” said Barney, stowing the gun, which had been cocked and locked.

Suddenly it was very important for Barney to obtain a mental image of the person they were supposed to rescue. He certainly wasn’t going to get an accurate account from Carl. Too much emotion polluting the information. Barney needed to see a photo.

Predictably, the snapshot Carl produced was from the humid depths of an overstuffed wallet. At least he hadn’t stored a thousand pictures of his beloved on his phone or iPod.

Erica Ledbetter, née Erica Elizabeth Stolyer, appeared to be a gamine redhead with Bombay Sapphire blue eyes and a wide, generous mouth; pure Midwestern corn-fed all-Americano hotcha; the girl who had fled the small town for better things. Because she was standing beside Carl in the photo, Barney put her height at about five-four, give or take heels. Something in the glint of those eyes gave Barney the feeling that she was very camera-conscious, and always tilted her head down and looked up when there was a lens present. It did not make her look older but did make her look dangerous beyond her apparent youth; Carl had mentioned that she was currently thirty-three years old. Fair complexion; freckles. No wonder they had snatched her. She could not have looked more out-of-town, a pale, white, well-appointed, red-headed target.