Iron River Read Online Free PDF

collapses in one-inch increments to fit smaller people.
    I snug the butt against the inside of my elbow and look at Bradley Smith.
    “Stallone should play you,” he says.
    “It’ll burn through those fifty rounds in five seconds. Or you can use short bursts. Do you notice anything else different about this little genius?”
    “The raised comb along the barrel top. It’s like on a trap gun, but wider. It has nothing to do with the sights.”
    “Correct.” I turn and aim the machine gun downrange, with telescoping butt still braced against my elbow. Then I place my free left hand over the comb and push down.
    “For the muzzle rise,” says Bradley.
    I nod. Machine guns are notorious for rising as they burn through the rounds. The barrel wants to shoot the sky. Many an inexperienced submachine gunner has pulled the trigger, let the barrel jump up, and pretty much invited the bullets into his head. So long. But not if you brace down on the barrel with your free hand. The brace comb on the Love 32 is raised for cooling because the barrel itself gets hot.
    “Allow me,” I say. I set the Love 32 on the bench and bring in the old target, put on a fresh one, and send it back fifty feet. Then I take up the Love and stand just in front of the bench, feet spread, retractable butt snug in my elbow, left palm firm on the comb. I look downrange at the target, glance once at the barrel of the gun, then I let it rip. There’s a five-second Armageddon of noise and smoke, then silence, and the black silhouette has a ragged hole in the middle about the size of a grapefruit.
    “Wicked cool,” says Bradley.
    “Your turn.”
    I reload and Bradley puts up a fresh target. He’s practically beaming as he steps up and gets ready. He’s slow and meticulous about it, savoring the prep and the moment, not a trigger-ditzy moron like half the people I’ve sold weapons to. I hear the safety click off.
    Five seconds later he’s standing in a cloud of fragrant gun smoke, and the bottom half of the target is almost detached.
    “Unreal.”
    “It’s real,” I say. “And there’s more. ”
    I take the noise suppressor from the lacquered box and screw it on. The barrel threads are recessed into the frame, such that a casual observer won’t see that the gun is fitted for a silencer.
    “That’s your reason for the thirty-two ACP,” says Bradley.
    “Right. Nine hundred and five feet per second. Subsonic, no boom, easily quieted.”
    “I’m starting to like you, Ron.”
    “You’re going to love this. Put up some fresh paper, please.”
    I reload and step up and fire. You can hear the muffled tap of the rounds going off and the cartridges chattering through and the ejector spitting out the brass, and you can hear the empties pinging on the carpet and you can even hear the ringing in your ears from the prior shooting, but what you mainly hear is the paper silhouette being torn to shreds and the bullets spitting into the sandbags at the distant far end of the range.
    “I’ll remain briefly speechless,” says Bradley.
    “There’s more,” I say. “These guns are untraceable to me. Untraceable to Favier and Winling. No serial numbers. Nothing that says Pace. Just Love 32, etched with subtle beauty on the forward slide. I can see legions of law enforcement officers worldwide mystified by these guns. Where did these come from? Did they simply spring from the earth, like the skeleton men in Jason and the Argonauts? Or drop from the sky, like manna? Something tells me that you would like to bedazzle law enforcement, Bradley. I think you like the outlaws more than the lawmen.”
    “How much per gun?”
    “There’s just one small catch. They don’t exist. This is the prototype. Do you like martinis?”

4
     
     
     
     
    H ood got up early to move the last of his possessions into his Buenavista rental home. The dawn was pink, and a vapor light on the carport burned white over the driveway. He carried the boxes into the house. His old