66 Banged Up in All the Right Ways

“How’d it go? The Somali-pirate routine?” Tommy Stojack ambled across the cave of his armorer shop, passing warped speedloaders, cutting torches, a stray crate of antitank grenades with Cyrillic lettering on the shipping label. He reached into a jumble of ARES pistol frames stacked like chicken bones atop a Pelican case. Each frame was a forging of aluminum — basically a solid piece of metal shaped like a gun.

Evan said, “It went just fine.”

“You rescue the princess, slay the dragon?”

“Something like that. I came to settle the bill.”

Evan handed Tommy a thick roll of hundred-dollar bills. Tommy hefted it, as if gauging its weight, then smiled his gap-toothed smile and tapped the roll into his shirt pocket.

Evan looked at the aluminum forging. “You said you had the upgrades for me?”

Tommy crossed his arms, mock annoyed. “‘Hey, Tommy, by the way, thanks for producing a cutting torch, a suppressed subgun, and a skiff for me out of thin air from ten states away on twenty-four hours’ notice.’”

“Right,” Evan said. “Thank you.”

Tommy jabbed at Evan with a forefinger that had been blown off at the second knuckle. “‘And a grappling fucking hook.’”

“And a grappling fucking hook.”

“‘And how have you been, Tommy?’” he said, circling his hand in a prompt.

Evan said, “How have you been?”

Tommy shrugged, dropped the shit-slinging routine. “Nothing but high-speed, low-drag antics here. This new broad I’m seeing, she wanted me to try yoga. I told her I wasn’t in touch with my inner vagina enough, ya know?” He raised that stub of a forefinger. “Then I tried that shit. And I realized. I’m not in touch with my inner fuckin’ SEAL enough.”

“It’s that hard?” Evan asked.

Tommy dug through the mound of ARES frames, grabbed one in particular. He’d machined out the interior, drilling the pivot points for the fire-control group. Pistol frame in hand, he limped back toward his workbench. “Those skinny bitches, they can balance on a pinkie finger for longer than I can stand up anymore.”

“So you’re doing yoga now?”

“Hay-ell no. But I will tell you. Yoga pants? Best invention of the past hundred years. Let’s just say downward dog gives me upward dog. But even that ain’t worth it.”

Tommy half tilted, half fell into his rolling chair. Though he never talked about where or how he’d served, he had enough hearing loss, blown-out joints, and surgical scars for Evan to know he’d been a tip-of-the-spear operator. He was banged up in all the right ways. Now he worked as a contract armorer for various government-sanctioned black groups, specializing in procurement and R&D. Or at least that’s what Evan had gleaned. Their conversations had always been light on proper nouns.

Tommy’s shop, a desert-baked building rearing up from the sand in off-the-Strip Vegas, looked like an auto shop from the outside. Few people knew its location, and fewer yet had earned the right to visit. Tommy kept a surveillance camera at the door, which he‘d unplugged when Evan called on him.

Tommy took a swig of black coffee across a lower lip packed with Skoal Wintergreen. “I got no interest in working out no more. Makes no sense at this point. Spend what? Two hours a day? They say exercising can add seven years onto the end of your life. But I figure those seven years are about what you get if you add up all the hours you’d spend sweating your sorry ass on a treadmill. So I figure, why not skip all that misery, live out the good days, and hit the dirt when it’s time?”

He rolled the chair away from the ammo and over to his smoking station, an ashtray made from a ship’s battered porthole. A Camel Wide lipped out from the edge. He pulled on the cigarette, then dropped it into a red keg cup filled with water.

A kick of his combat boots set him shooting back across the floor toward Evan. Even as he glided, he popped a new slide assembly onto the aluminum frame. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t wanna slow down. You know me — Animal from the Muppets is my spirit animal.” He leaned over the pistol at his bench, adding the extras. “But man, I’ll tell ya, more and more I feel like I been shot at and missed and shit at and hit.” He paused to flex his remaining nine fingers, working out a cramp.

Evan thought of Assim with his hand tremors and unsteady gait, the physical toll of a lifetime of rough play. Was this what was in store for them all? A hard end to a hard life?

I wanted you to get out. I wanted you to have a chance.

It was nearly impossible for Evan to recalibrate to the fact that Jack was still alive, that when he heard Jack’s voice in his head, it was not from beyond the grave.

Tommy had said something.

Evan snapped to. “What?”

“You lose your holster, too?”

“Yeah. I need a Kydex high-guard.”

“I know what you use.” Tommy scooped the wad of long-cut tobacco from his lip, thumbed it into an empty Red Bull can, washed out his mouth with more java sludge. “How’d you misplace your gear? Got held up by a troop of Girl Scouts?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Ain’t they all.”

Tommy handed over the new 1911. Eight in the mag, one in the spout. High-profile straight-eight sights. Low ambidextrous thumb safety, since Evan preferred to shoot southpaw. Aggressive front-frame checkering. Extended barrel, threaded for a suppressor. Beavertail grip safety so it wouldn’t fire if not in hand. Matte black to disappear in shadow.

It wasn’t merely sterilized — it had never had a serial number.

A ghost weapon that, like Evan, did not exist.

Evan hefted the ARES. “It’s lighter.”

“Bet yer ass it’s lighter,” Tommy said. “Thing practically floats. But everything else is as lined out as the steel Wilsons I used to make you.” His biker mustache shifted above his grin. “It’s just homemade.

Evan handed him another wad of hundreds and stood.

“Hold up, hoss.” Tommy slipped the cash into his shirt pocket. “When have I ever let you leave without test-driving a new gun?” He chinned at the sand-filled steel pipe slanted downward next to the cutting torch. “Eyes-and-ears are in the bin.”

Evan donned protective gear and then fired a full mag down the mouth of the pipe. The gun, tuned with throat-ramp work, fed smoothly.

When Evan turned around, Tommy had tugged out his earplugs, one cheek gathering to the side in a fan of wrinkles.

“You okay?” Evan asked.

“Tinnitus. From all the…” Tommy waved a hand by his head. “I live with it nonstop, pretty much. I think of it as a reminder of all the shit I’ve done. Jiminy Cricket in there, making sure I don’t forget a red second of it.” His smile was bittersweet. “Every year I feel like I’m hangin’ on to a little less. And for a little less. You know?”

Evan clicked the ARES into his Kydex holster. “I know,” he said.

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