He found a drill press advertised online that was almost new. A metalworking business had gone under, and the shop equipment was being liquidated. This one was perfect for precision work. It was laser guided, with a one-and-a-half-horsepower motor that turned at 4,200 rpm, and it had a work light over the oversize table. He had to drive to Santa Ana to pick it up, but that meant he would be able to install it in his garage workshop right away. When he got to Santa Ana he also saw a lathe for sale, so he bought that too, and set both up in his shop.
The next day he planned his trip. There were a surprising number of AK-47 rifles for sale by licensed dealers across the country, but he couldn’t afford to let them make background checks. Instead he looked for gun shows in states where a seller who didn’t earn most of his living as a gun dealer didn’t have to report sales.
In a couple of hours he had plotted a route between large gun shows. He would start in Las Vegas; go next to the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Phoenix at the Arizona State Fairgrounds; then stop for a show at the Tucson Pima County Fairgrounds, one in Tucumcari, New Mexico, one at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center, and then one in St. George, Utah. He added a few running across Texas in Lubbock, Houston, and San Antonio.
He judged he would probably have what he needed long before he ever got near Texas. And if he didn’t by then, he could continue on through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. None of those states required private gun sellers to report anything to anybody.
When he was ready, he packed a suitcase and put it in a metal storage box in his van. He also had four empty metal storage chests running along the floor. He had locks for them, but to start out he didn’t use those. Sometimes a lock just attracted attention.
As he drove along Interstate 15 toward Las Vegas he reviewed his strategy. He would walk around the show looking for AK-47s on the tables. He had selected big shows, so there would be at least a hundred tables with guns of all kinds lying on them. It would be fairly easy to tell which sellers were licensed gun dealers with lots of merchandise and which were private collectors with a few pieces they wanted to get rid of for cash or trade for something better. He would select a likely seller and watch for a while. Sometimes a licensed dealer might be willing to run checks on customers for a nearby collector, or even serve as a middleman for a modest cut of the profit. The bomb maker would watch and see if anything like that was going on before he inquired about an AK-47.
After his first circuit of the Las Vegas show, he made his first inquiry to a man about sixty-five years old who had a row of AR-15-style rifles of various makes with a range of configurations. Beside them he had five AK-47 rifles. The bomb maker said, “Can I take a look at your AKs?”
The man nodded, and said, “Help yourself.”
The bomb maker was excited. He could feel that, of the usual three positions, the selector lever had only two: the Safe position and the third, lower one that permitted semiautomatic firing. There was no fully automatic position. The older man said, “They’re semiauto only. You can’t bring one into the country until it’s been modified.”
“Where are these from?”
“What used to be Yugoslavia. All of them were made for the army, but they were never issued.”
The bomb maker could see from the wear patterns that two of the rifles had been fired a lot, and carried in the field. The wooden butt pieces and forestocks had lighter places where being touched had rubbed and discolored them. The bomb maker decided not to mention that. He said, “How much for all of them?”
“A thousand apiece.”
“I’ll give a thousand each for these three,” he offered.
“No thanks, they’re sort of a collection, and I want to get rid of the lot.”
“How about eight hundred each for all five? That’s four thousand bucks, in cash.”
“All right,” the man said.
The bomb maker counted out the cash and the man began bundling them up in a tarp for him. The man threw in four extra thirty-round magazines, but charged him three hundred more for the five hundred rounds of 7.62 × .39-mm ammunition. He made three trips to load his car.
A couple of days later at the Arizona State Fairgrounds he noticed a woman selling off a collection of rifles and pistols. Her sign said: DIVORCE SALE. Each of her weapons had a sticker with a price written on it with a magenta-colored marker. She was about forty years old, blond with skin that had been in the sun too much. She wore tight jeans and a Western shirt with pearl snaps instead of buttons. When she turned in his direction he saw she had blue eyes that were almost startling in her reddish face.
“Sorry about the divorce,” he said.
“Not me. How can I help you?”
“I like AK-47 rifles. You don’t have any, do you?”
“I got one,” she said.
“Oh?” he said. “I didn’t see it.”
“Bobby?”
A man about fifty-five who sat at the next table looked at her.
She said, “You going to be around for a while, Bobby? Can you watch my table?”
“How long were you thinking of?”
“Half hour or so.”
“Sure.”
The woman tapped the bomb maker’s solar plexus with the back of her hand. “Come on.” She started walking fast along the aisle in front of her table. The bomb maker followed her outside onto the vast parking lot and up to a red pickup truck. He veered toward the cargo bed, but she got into the driver’s seat. “It’s not back there. Get in.”
He climbed into the passenger seat and she drove across the lot, turned right, and then drove into the lot of the closest hotel. She jumped down. “It’s upstairs.”
He followed her into the hallway and into an elevator. She took him to the third floor and through the door of a room that was littered with clothes, an open suitcase with the clothes mixed up and hanging out of it, and several gun cases and some cardboard cartons. She dragged a gun case into the center of the floor, unzipped and opened it so he could see the AK.
“Where’s it from?”
“It says Bulgaria on it.”
He looked at the lower receiver and saw something written in the Cyrillic alphabet and some Arabic numerals. “Can I touch it?”
She smiled. “You can touch anything you can reach.”
His eyes met hers. “A half hour?”
She shrugged. “So it won’t be a long courtship.”
He stepped close and put his arms around her, and she leaned into him to kiss him. He pulled the sides of her Western shirt apart so the snaps all opened, and then she was working the buckle of his belt apart while he unhooked her bra. She shrugged it off and backed onto the bed. He pushed her over and tugged off her cowboy boots, so she could wriggle out of her tight jeans.
“You’ve done a cowgirl before,” she said.
“No, you’re my first.”
She laughed. “Cowgirl is the name of a position, dumb ass. It’s a joke.”
He flopped onto the bed beside her, naked, and touched her, his hands moving everywhere, arousing them both.
“Use a condom,” she said.
He paused, panicked.
“In my purse,” she said wearily, and nodded toward the desk across from the bed.
He swung his legs off the bed, stepped to the desk, and riffled through the purse. He felt a familiar square packet and the ring shape inside, tore the pack open, and unrolled the condom onto himself before he returned to the bed. As he began to find his way she thrust her hips forward, clutched his buttocks, and seemed to climb his body to take him in. The sex was eager and rushed, almost violent.
It occurred to him that he had not had intercourse with anyone since he caught his wife cheating and threw her out of the house. It explained to him why he felt so excited. But then the thought of her made his lust for this woman less compelling, and he found the distasteful memory of his marriage was helping him control his sexual urge, delaying the end.
He tried to reestablish a friendly feeling about this woman. He tried their one joke. “Cowgirl.”
She giggled and pulled away, pushed him on his back, and straddled him.
“Oh that,” he said. “I didn’t know there was a word for it.”
“But you’ve done it?”
“Of course.”
“Then shut up and do it again. Hard.”