“Dickie already told us half an hour,” Lewis said.
His mama gave Nickels a withering look. Then she turned it on Peter. “What do you idiots want?”
“I’m sorry about your son,” Peter said. “I told him to put the gun down but he didn’t. It was him or me.”
“You think that makes me feel any better?” Her voice was high and bright. Her piercing eyes reminded Peter of a raptor’s. “Anyway, I don’t need your damn condolences. Between war and cancer, this hard old world already took two husbands and two sons. Now it’s taken Craig Jr. I’ve no more grief left. So I won’t be giving you the satisfaction of my tears.”
Lewis turned to Nickels. “Like I said, we need three good rifles and three pistols, clean and new. Two extra mags for each. And a couple boxes of ammo. Tell me what you’ve got and give me a price.”
“You’re really going to pay me?”
“A fair price. Even though you were gonna hold me up. Where’s your inventory?”
“We’re not selling guns.” Nickel’s mama raised her voice, brassy and sharp. “We need every last one of ’em. Because of people like you. Barbarians at the gates. Your time is coming, and sooner than you think.”
Lewis gave a tired sigh. “Nickels, the clock is ticking. Where are the weapons?”
Nickels led them to the three fireproof cabinets. Each had a hardened padlock, but Nickels had the key in his pocket.
Lewis opened the first cabinet and gave a low whistle. “You boys been busy,” he said. It held two tight rows of AK rifles, twenty in all, with a grab rack of Beretta pistols and two full shelves of neatly labeled plastic reloader’s ammo boxes. Lewis opened the next cabinet. More of the same.
The third cabinet was different. It held a dozen Benelli combat shotguns and four M24 sniper rifles. One shelf was full of the same plastic ammo boxes labeled for the M24 and the shotguns. The other held boxes labeled 7.62x39AP.
Lewis stood back to take it all in. “This isn’t a gun collection, it’s an armory. What the hell are you keeping all this for?”
“Just in case,” Nickels said.
Peter’s eye had caught on the ammo boxes.APusually stood for armor piercing. Peter pointed. “Grab one of those.”
Lewis pulled down an ammo box and popped the cover. He tipped it to show Peter. Inside were fifty rounds, long and deadly, with the telltale black tips used to differentiate an armor-piercing round. On the brass, someone had handwrittenAPin black marker.
“Holy shit.” Peter looked at Nickels. “Armor-piercing rounds are restricted to law enforcement. Where’d you get these?”
Nickels didn’t answer, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
Lewis’s eyebrows went up. “You’remakingthem? In this crappy little shop?” Armor-piercing rounds were made with super-hard tungsten carbide instead of lead or steel. It was a complex and highly technical metallurgical process.
Nickels shook his head, but the pride on his face was unmistakable.
Peter looked back at the shop equipment. The century-old milling machines were functional but cheap. The new machines, whatever the hell they were, would have been very expensive. He turned to Nickels. “Who’s funding all this? Who are the rounds for?”
Nickels shrugged. “Business is good. We sold off some inventory and invested in new machines.”
“Bullshit,” Peter said. “You either have a customer or a partner. Who is he?”
Nickels started to speak, but his mom overrode him. “Dickie, you keep your big mouth shut. You two, this is none of your business. Take your guns and go. This world will catch up with you soon enough.”
Peter’s jaw was knotted up, his stomach sour with bile. Armor-piercing rounds of that caliber had only one purpose, to punch through body armor, killing soldiers or cops. When he blinked, he saw Ellie staring at her mother’s dead body. He walked over to Nickels, put the.357 right in his face, and thumbed back the hammer. “Answer the question or join your brother. Who are you making the AP rounds for?”
Nickels raised his chin. “Go ahead and kill me. Kill my mama, too. That’s nothing compared to what he’ll do if he learns we talked.”
The older woman had the same defiant look as her son. “Do your worst, barbarian. We won’t betray him. And not because of what he’ll do to us. But because we believe he’s right.” She glanced at the clock. “Vance is on his way. He’ll be loaded for bear. You want to live, you better git.”
Peter put the pistol barrel against Nickels’s forehead. “Give me a name.”
Lewis put his hand on Peter’s gun arm. “Peter.”
Peter felt the air go out of him. He stepped back and decocked the pistol. “Let’s take what we need and get the hell out of here.”
