Chapter 6: On Being Downrange

Delaney dragged the surplus artillery round transport tube out of the hide and pulled it out to the side with the others we’d selected, taking a second to brush the dirt off her face. Which, of course, just smeared it. “That’s ten of the fifteen good ones.”

She popped the latches on the final tube and slid the last Steyr AUG out so I could look it over and run it through a function check. Things go wrong in storage, no matter how careful you are. The assault rifle looked fine though.

Delaney checked each one over as well, for practice, and in case I missed anything.

After we put them back in the hide, I slid the heavy cover back on. We took a couple of minutes to make sure it was invisible to the naked eye. “That’s all we’ll need.”

We’d recovered eighteen of the AUGs from the wreckage of Jason Bradly Calloway, Esquire and his security team. Three of the weapons would need some repair to be functional again, but the others were pretty much in near-perfect condition. I’d mostly decided to take them to prevent the FBI and BATF from taking an interest in his death; the fewer federal agencies looking into our little problem, the better off we were.

Weapons are worth money, though; sometimes a lot of money. Well made, Austrian-engineered military-grade fully automatic weapons in near pristine condition are worth ridiculous amounts of money if you can find a way to sell them.

It turns out that some fourteen-year-old girls have contacts in the black market weapons arena. Technically, they were my contacts first, but Delaney had the secure email. It was pretty simple to figure out what to do. Kurt and Katie at K2 Security - Delaney’s “summer camp” - walked a lot of grey areas and had the contacts to find buyers and sell the weapons, and we had the huge advantage of knowing we could trust each other. After a series of extremely cautious, very-carefully worded emails over Delaney’s encrypted email account, Kurt agreed to facilitate a sale for us. They’d also apparently weighed in on our side with whoever was buying since our end was a lot higher than I’d expected.

The black market for full-auto weapons is always a little unpredictable, and as an outsider, I’d expected to get gouged hard. I figured a final price of thirty thousand for each of the weapons would be reasonable, but I’d thought we’d probably clear around ten thousand dollars per if we were lucky.

Kurt and Katie had managed to get us twenty-five thousand per weapon, and I had a suspicion Katie did it to avoid alienating Delaney and her friends. I was pretty sure she was setting the stage to get the “Camp Mayhem Girls” lined up for future employment. Shipping and payment were simple. The next of our usual shipments of beater cars to K2, supplies for their driving courses, would have hides built into them. Payment would be handed over by the truck driver before he left.

Delaney snickered. “Mother is going to be in shock when you just pay the caterer with a suitcase full of cash.” Even Charlotte’s extravagant “needs” for Tiffany’s wedding couldn’t keep pace with the black-market weapons money.

“I was thinking of using a blood-soaked duffle bag.”

“Oooh. I like that. Or maybe we can get a box like the case in Pulp Fiction.”

“I doubt Charlotte would get the joke.” I shook my head and closed up the bed of the truck.

“What about the box in Seven. Could we get one of those?”

“The box with his wife’s head in it? Way too tempting.”

Delaney choked down a barking laugh. “Oh yeah. That’d be bad. Really don’t need to be giving you ideas.”

“Wait, when did you see Seven?”

“Ummmm ... summer camp.”

“I probably need to talk to Kurt about what he’s letting you guys watch.”

She scrunched her nose in surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah. Too much violence in some of those...” I couldn’t do it; I started laughing.

Delaney snorted. “Oh yeah. I could start having nightmares because Brad Pitt pretends to freak out about a box...” She had to sit down and catch her breath. “Jesus. Katie only lets us watch the stuff cut for broadcast anyway. I never even got to see the head in the box.”

“They never show it. Everybody thinks they saw it. They’ll swear on a stack of bibles that they saw it, but they never show it in the movie.”

She blinked. “Seriously?”

I nodded. “It’s a trick; what people make up in their heads is more effective than anything they can put on screen.”

“That’s crazy.”

A glimmer on the ground caught my eye, and I bent down to look at it. A spent 9mm shell. Then four more. “Delaney? Have you been doing anything down here?”

She walked over, looking puzzled. “I haven’t been down here since we put the hides in.”

I held up one of the casings. “Maybe they washed out of the ground when it rained last week.”

She took it out of my hand and studied it. “Kurt has us do a bunch of shooting, but I don’t have anything to even use here.”

I didn’t even bother wondering if she was telling the truth. Delaney was obnoxious, disrespectful and had a whole stack of issues. She had might not tell me everything, but she’d never deliberately lied to me. If she’d have been up to anything down here, she’d have owned it and dared me to call her on it.

“So what’s up with Tara?”

I thought about it for a second. “Chuck had plans for Tara. Ugly ones. He didn’t think of her as his daughter either.”

Delaney’s eyes widened as she realized what I meant. “Shit.”

“He died way too easy.”

She suddenly slumped a bit. “What the hell is wrong with people?”

Billy dragged a box load of parts up to the steps of the office. “Hey, Doc. I’m gonna head back over to get a couple more pieces. Been a pretty good day.”

I glanced over the box. Over the last several days, Billy had been meticulous about recording every last piece on the forms. I gave him a pretty good break on most of the prices. He wasn’t making a helluva lot of money on this, and most of the parts he was picking were low-value parts that Delaney and I probably wouldn’t have bothered with.

Delaney pushed another tire up onto one of the stacks next to the car crusher. I made a metal note to give Stan over at Interstate Tire Recycling a call to make an early pickup. We didn’t make much money off of the tires, but that’s the secret to running a salvage yard. Lots of little income streams can make you a better-than-average living. Tire recovery, battery core charges, and recycled fluids coupled with the high-value parts Delaney and I salvaged made for a pretty steady income.