Chapter 69: The Arms Dealer
The rolling door went up to reveal a man who looked like he'd been assembled from spare parts — big, heavyset, with a beard that had grown past the point of intention into something that simply existed on his face. He looked at Simon, looked past him at the empty street, and stepped back to let him in.
The warehouse's interior was approximately what the exterior had promised. Electronics salvage competed for space with empty liquor bottles, unidentifiable mechanical components, and the kind of general accumulation that happened when someone had been operating out of the same location for a long time without developing strong feelings about organization.
"Talk," the man said, settling onto a stool and displacing a pile of clothing onto the floor. He gestured at another stool. Simon noted the pizza on it from several days ago and elected to stand.
"Sniper rifle with matching ammunition," Simon said. "Twenty kilos of C4, detonators, and remote triggering components."
He glanced at the electronics scattered across the nearest workbench and added: "Remote detonation hardware if you have it."
"You bring money?" the man said.
"How much do you need?"
"Two hundred thousand."
Simon picked up his bag. "Goodbye."
"Hey — wait. Wait." The man raised both hands. "I can work with you. Price is negotiable."
Simon set the bag back down. "Explosive material, detonators, and components — fifty thousand. The rifle I'll price when I see it."
"Fifty's too low. This is military-sourced."
"Fifty thousand is market rate for what I'm describing," Simon said. "I'm not paying a premium for the origin story."
The man held out for about three more seconds, then dropped his shoulders. "Fine. Doc's people don't haggle — I respect that. Deal."
"The rifle," Simon said.
The man stood, crossed to the back of the warehouse, and pulled a stained mattress aside to reveal a floor panel. Under the panel was a large case. He opened it in layers — handguns on top, submachine guns in the middle, and beneath those a sealed hard case that he lifted out and set on the floor.
He opened the case.
The MK14 Enhanced Battle Rifle sat in foam cutouts, fitted with a Harris bipod and a Leupold ten-power scope. Military-spec hardware that hadn't made it to the civilian market yet — Simon could tell by the proof marks and the serial number format.
He took it, worked the bolt, checked the action, balanced it in his hands.
"Three thousand," he said.
The man looked pained.
"It's worth considerably more," the man said. "You know that."
"Thirty thousand," Simon said. "I know what I'm doing — I'm also the customer who doesn't ask where it came from, doesn't negotiate on the explosive material, and came here because Doc sent me. Thirty thousand keeps the relationship clean."
The man was quiet for a moment. Then: "You can call me Thomas."
"I'll remember that," Simon said.
Thomas restored the case to its compartment, lifted the mattress, and revealed the C4 beneath it — individual blocks, uniform, stacked in orderly rows.
Simon looked at the man sleeping on top of military-grade explosive and made a note not to comment on it.
Thomas counted twenty blocks into a plastic bag, moved to a shelf and added a handful of electric detonators from a metal box, then collected a set of electronic components from a workbench and dropped those in as well.
Simon opened the backpack and counted eight stacks of bills onto the nearest cleared surface.
"Count it," he said.
"Doc's people don't miscount," Thomas said, and took the money without looking at it. "You need something specific, give me a week. Standard equipment, I usually have it."
"I'll remember that too," Simon said.
He carried the rifle case and the two plastic bags out to the borrowed SUV, loaded everything into the back, and drove out of the street in the direction that looked like someone heading home.
He wasn't.
He ran three unnecessary turns, doubled back twice, sat parked in a loading zone for four minutes watching his mirrors. When he was satisfied no one had picked up his trail, he drove to the parking structure where the Mustang waited.
He transferred everything from the SUV to the Mustang's trunk, left the SUV where he'd found it, and drove home.
He worked at the kitchen table until two in the morning.
The C4 blocks were stable — one of the characteristics that made it useful was that it required a specific shock wave to initiate, which meant dropping it, burning it, or applying direct electrical current wouldn't cause detonation. You needed a detonator, and the detonator needed to be triggered.
The electric detonators Thomas had provided were instantaneous — apply current, and the initiating charge fired within milliseconds.
The triggering mechanism Simon was building was a phone-based circuit. It was an old approach, reliable precisely because of its simplicity, used in improvised devices in conflict zones for decades because it didn't require specialized components and didn't fail in the ways that more sophisticated systems failed.
The concept was straightforward: a modified phone, wired to complete a circuit to the detonator when it received an incoming call. The phone's ring current activated a relay, the relay connected power to the detonator, the detonator fired the C4.
Ten of the phones he'd bought at the pawnshop were going to become ten independent triggering systems, which gave him flexibility — he could place multiple charges at multiple positions and fire them selectively or simultaneously depending on what the situation required.
The Weapons Design knowledge from Laszlo's profile had the schematics in precise detail. His Mechanic skills handled the electronics. His hands were steady.
He worked through it methodically, component by component, testing each circuit with a low-current probe before connecting it to anything that could actually fire. By one AM he had five complete units tested and ready. By two he had eight.
He set the remaining two aside for morning.
Then he looked at what he had assembled on the kitchen table — rifle, ammunition, eight phone-triggered detonation units, remaining C4 — and felt the particular focus of someone who has converted a problem into a set of concrete tools.
Sarah and Casey were being held somewhere in this city.
Tomorrow night at ten, Sasha expected Chuck to arrive alone with the chip.
Between now and then, Simon needed a plan that accounted for the probability that Sasha was expecting exactly that kind of rescue attempt, which meant the plan couldn't look like a rescue attempt until it was too late to respond to it.
He put everything back in the bag, cleaned the workspace, and went to bed.
Tomorrow was going to be a long day.
[Milestone: 500 Power Stones = +1 Chapter]
[Milestone: 10 Reviews = +1 Chapter]
Enjoyed this chapter? Leave a review.
20+advanced chapters on P1treon Soulforger