The Second Saladin Read Online Free PDF Page A

But also a Skorpion. Very unusual for ’Nam in ’sixty-seven because the Czech stuff didn’t start showing up until much later. But there was a single mint Skorpion in this dump, still packed in grease, and thirty-five hundred rounds of seven-six-five.”
    “And you’re telling me this is one of those thirty-five-hundred rounds?”
    “Yep,” Bill Speight said almost proudly. “The arsenal marks check out exactly. See here on the base. It’s marked ‘VZ-sixty-one.’ That’s their manufacturing code for the Brno Arsenal and that lot of seven-six-five was made in January ’sixty-six. Same lot as we found in ’Nam. It can’t be coincidence. You know what happened to that ammo?”
    Chardy said nothing.
    “Well, sure you do, Paul,” Bill said. “We took that Skorpion and twenty-five hundred of those rounds into Kurdistan with us in ’seventy-three In the operation we called Saladin Two, the Kurdish show. My show, your show. Especially, at the end, your show. Along with the other stuff, the AKs, the RPGs. Enough to start a small war. And we did start a small war.”
    Bill knew all about gear. His specialty was logistics, clandestine resupply, and he had organized the distribution of arms to guerrilla operations all over the globe, back when he was one of the cowboys of the Special Operations Division. He had been through some hairy moments himself.
    Chardy nodded, as if in memory of the small war and its hairy moments.
    “And you recall that you gave Skorpion to a certain man?”
    “I gave it to Ulu Beg,” Chardy said. “Where’d you get it?”
    Speight told him of the deaths of the two Border Patrol officers.
    “That case was one of forty recovered on the site. He fired two magazines. Those officers were torn up pretty bad. You know what a Skorpion can do.”
    The Skorpion was a Czech VZ-61, a machine pistol. Ten inches long with its wire stock folded, it weighed three and a half pounds and fired at 840 rounds per minute, cyclical. It was one of the world’s rare true machine pistols, smaller than a submachine gun and deadlier than an automatic pistol.
    “Bill, it’s just one shell. You’re dreaming. You’re building crazy cases from nothing. A shell, an arsenal mark, a scratch in the brass.”
    “And there’s this, Paul,” Bill said. He reached into his briefcase and after thumbing through the reports from Science and Technology, the airline tickets, the maps, he came up with a picture of a body in the desert.
    Chardy looked at it.
    “How was he facing?” Chardy asked.
    “He was facing east. The report says the body was moved. They think the killer was searching for money or something. Yet the wallet was left untouched. They can’t figure it. But you could figure it, couldn’t you?”
    “Sure,” Chardy said. “He didn’t mean to kill the guy. He didn’t want to. He felt bad about it. So in the frenzy of the moment, he tries to help his soul to paradise. He turns him on his right side, and faces him toward Mecca, as the Kurds bury their dead.”
    “You saw enough of it, Paul.”
    “I guess I did. A Kurd is here. Maybe Ulu Beg himself.”
    “Yes, Paul. After all, we never got any confirmation of his death after Saladin Two went under. And if it’s any of them, it’s him. And you know how the Kurds feel about vengeance.”
    A bell rang.
    Bill looked to Chardy. The moment was here; shouldn’t Chardy be reacting? A man he’d trained and fought next to and lived with seven years ago in Kurdistan was here, with a gun, willing to kill.
    The children began to collect in a riotous mass near a set of steel double doors. Nuns appeared. Small skirmishes broke out.
    “Mr. Chardy—” a nun called from the doors.
    “Paul, it’s—”
    “I know what it is, Bill,” Chardy said. “Goddamn you, Bill, for bringing all this back.” He turned and went inside with the kids.
    So Bill had to wait after all. He found a bar, a seedy, quiet little place in the next town up the road, and killed the