“Well, Ralph, you certainly look strong enough to lug a big, heavy Squad Automatic Weapon around in the jungle, but I wouldn’t recommend it. How long have you been out of the military?”
“More than ten years. Army Special Forces.”
“What about you, Bob?”
“Me? I led a Marine sniper platoon and later a Marine Security Guard detachment, but I’ve also been out a long time. Why do you ask?”
“Because a lot has changed in ten years. Sure, they still use SAWs in the conventional forces, and they still use the M40A1 sniper rifle, which is probably what you were trained on, Bob.”
“Yeah, that’s right, I love the M40. When fitted with a night vision scope and suppressor, it’s absolutely deadly at night. I used one on an operation in Africa. It’s sweet.”
“Of course you love it. It’s a great rifle, just like the SAW is still a great weapon, but I’m gonna show you fellers some guns that’ll knock your socks off. Go ahead and fill up y’alls drinks and take’em with you.”
Barker led them into his ocean front office. The cluttered L-shaped desk faced sliding glass doors that led out to the porch. Barker pointed out three fishing pole racks loaded with poles and baited lines leading out to the ocean. “That’s so I can fish and work at the same time. Life’s laid back here in the Keys.”
Barker sat behind his desk and motioned for Culler and Mac to take the two chairs in front of it. He leaned back in his executive chair and studied his large fingers. “Now I don’t need to know exactly what you guys’ll be up to there in Northern Thailand, but I do know that the Golden Triangle’s up here. That’s a pretty dangerous area, especially if you’re goin’ to be runnin’ around in the jungle like you say. So, I’ll give you my unsolicited philosophy about things like this—Go light, use the darkness, be silent and be invisible. If we can all agree to that, I’ll fix y’all up real good.”
Mac and Culler nodded their agreement.
“Now, Bob, you said you were a Marine sniper at one time, and you’re familiar with the use of night vision gear and suppressors, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Mac.
“I am too,” said Culler. “The Army Special Forces isn’t that far behind the Marines.” He glanced at Mac and smiled.
Barker pulled out a pen and yellow pad and slipped a pair of reading glasses low on his nose. “As long as we’re on the same page, let’s get started making a list of the gear you’ll need for this here junket.”
Chapter Fourteen
Let’s get y’all started with the simple stuff. Then we’ll get into the guns. You need to be invisible in the jungle, so you’ll need Ghillie suits. I’d go with the standard Marine sniper Ghillie which you can adapt when you get in the field by adding some foliage and leaves and such. I’m sure you guys are familiar with them.” Barker glanced over at Culler Santos. “We’ll order one for you in extra wide, Ralph,” he snickered.
“Yeah, about your size except wider in the chest and smaller in the belly.”
“Touché, touché.” Barker laughed.
“Then y’all are going to need a couple of handheld GPS devices with maps covering the Burma, Laos and Thailand area. And about a case of granola bars and power bars. We don’t want you to starve, but we also don’t want you to be pooping all over the place out in the jungle. You guys know the drill, right? Leave nothin’ behind and travel light. ‘Specially if someone is lookin’ for y’all. And I suspect that might just be the case. I’ll also throw in a couple cans of my special concoction that erases the odors of poop and pee. Use it faithfully and even a good hound dog won’t catch the scent. Do y’all need boots?”
“No,” said Mac. “We’ll bring that kind of stuff with us. But we’ll need a couple of Camelbacs and some purification pills just in case we run out of water.”
“Of course.” Barker looked over his glasses. “I was comin’ to that. I wouldn’t let y’all go into the jungle without plenty of water.” He looked down at his yellow pad. “That’s about it for the personal gear. I’ll throw in some camping gear as well, shelter sheets and that sort of stuff to make y’all comfortable. Now let’s git down to the important stuff.”
He dropped his glasses on the desk, pulled himself out of his chair and walked across the room to a closet. Spreading open the bi-fold doors, he pushed hangers of shirts and jackets to each side and stepped into the closet. Once inside he unlatched a panel in the rear wall and revealed a hidden, four-foot by eight-foot room filled with racks of rifles and pistols and knives, boxes of ammunition, and a small desk loaded with gun cleaning gear.
Culler gave a low appreciative whistle. “You’ve got a bloody arsenal in there.”
“Just a few of my favorite things, and this is my absolute favorite.” He took a rifle from one of the gun racks and held it out to them, beaming. “It’s a thing of beauty, a Noreen 338LM Lapua sniper rifle with an 8 x 32 variable power day/night scope. I can drop rounds in a four-inch bull at fifteen hundred meters with this baby. An average sniper can do it at one thousand meters. It’s the finest sniper rifle ever made, and this model’s a semi-automatic to boot. Never know when that might come in handy.”
MacMurphy took the rifle and sighted it toward the ocean. “Fifteen hundred meters?”
“Sure, that’s normal for the best snipers. Nothin’ strange about that. She’ll take out a target at twenty-five hundred meters. I mean, you can take a guy out at that range—a far cry from that old sniper rifle you’re familiar with. Check out the sights.” He held the gun out to MacMurphy. “You zero the gun with the ‘day’ eyepiece. At night you just push the release button on the eyepiece, pull it off and put on the light intensifying ‘low light’ eyepiece. Easy as one, two, three, and bingo, you’ve got night vision.”
Culler said, “I’ve heard of those guns. The Delta teams and SEAL teams use them in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re even dribbling down to the Special Forces and Marines these days.” Culler took the gun from Mac. “You ever shoot one of these, Bob?”
“No, never had the pleasure,” said Mac. “I was long gone from the Marine Corps when these were introduced. But I’ve heard of them. And of course I’ve fired the .50 cal. Is it true they pack a punch like a .50 cal?”
“Sure can, with the right ammo,” said Barker. “The .338 caliber is the first and only bullet designed specifically for sniping. The bullet will arrive at one thousand meters with enough energy to penetrate five layers of military body armor and still make the kill.
“Effective range is about sixteen hundred meters, that’s about a mile, but under the right shooting conditions it’ll reach out beyond the two thousand meter mark with no sweat.”
“Unbelievable,” said Mac, taking back the rifle from Culler, sighting it and caressing it admiringly. “I want this gun.”
“We’re not planning to be doing any sniping on this trip,” Culler chided, “and we don’t need to be carrying around any extra baggage.”
Mac sighed. “You never know. Does it come with a suppressor, Bill?”
“Got one right here.” Barker removed a Sierra suppressor from its box and screwed it onto the gun’s barrel. “It fits on like this, easy. And like a lot of suppressors, it actually improves the ballistics of the rifle and the ‘crack’ sound becomes a soft ‘poof.’ I’ll give ya’ll a chance to try it out tonight with a little test firing in the dark.”
“I sure do like that rifle. You sure we can’t find some use for it on this trip, Ralph?” Mac joked.
Culler said, “You sniper dudes are all alike. You fall in love with your guns. Buy it if you want it, but I’m not carrying the sonofabitch.”
Chapter Fifteen
Putting up the Lapua, Barker selected a short automatic rifle from one of the gun racks.
“This here is a POF 416. POF stands for Patriot Ordnance Factory. Fires a 5.56mm round and looks kinda like an M4 submachine gun, but it’s a whole hell of a lot better. And it don’t gunk up like the M16 and M4. I’ve put fifteen hundre
d rounds through it non-stop without any malfunction.
He handed the gun to Mac who examined it and passed it over to Culler.
“This is more to my liking,” said Culler. “Short, light, and lots of firepower.”
“That’s because you can’t hit anything, Ralph,” chided MacMurphy. “You need to spray things like a garden hose.”
“And if that’s what you like to do, this is the weapon for you,” said Barker. “The one you’ve got in your hand has a twelve-inch barrel. It also comes with a fourteen and a half inch barrel which will give you a little more accuracy, but this will definitely do the trick. The regular magazine holds thirty rounds, but I’ll give you three Beta C-Mag drums for each gun. They hold a hundred rounds each, so you’ll have plenty of firepower. One drum’ll last you a long time.”
As Culler was sighting the rifle in the direction of the ocean, Barker said, “It’s got three separate sighting mechanisms on it. The sight on top is for shootin’ in the daylight. It’s the darling of the sandbox. See the red chevron in there? Well, no matter where the chevron is within the scope, when the tip of the chevron is on the target, that’s where the bullet goes, every time. Very fast to acquire target. And over here is the built-in iron sight backup.”
Both Culler and Mac paid close attention.
“Now, for night shootin’ this is really neat. On the top of the grip’s forearm is an infrared laser. It works with head mounted night vision which I’ll give you. It’s very, very effective. The laser beam is invisible at night unless you’re wearing your head mounted night vision gear. But with that gear you see a green line of death. That’s what the guys in the sandbox call it. And whatever the green line touches, fire the gun and bullets impact there—just like that garden hose of yours, Ralph. Unless the bad guys are equipped with similar night vision, they’ll never know they’ve got death kissing their brows.”
“Damn, that’s cool,” exclaimed Culler.
“And not only will they not see what is hitting them, they won’t hear nothin’ neither,” said Barker with a big grin. “Here at the end of the muzzle we’re going to screw on this here Gemtech suppressor. It’ll add another seven and three-quarter inches to the length of the gun, but you’ll be happy it’s there when the shootin’ starts. All they’ll hear is a bunch of poofs, if anything.”
“Okay, you’ve convinced me,” said Mac. “We’ll take a couple of these with all the accoutrements and six hundred rounds of ammo. You got any more stuff we should take with us? I want to talk to you about side arms and chemicals. Willett may have mentioned that we needed some chemical advice. He said you were a chemist.”
“Yep, I am indeed, and Tom did mention somethin’ about that to me. I’ve got just what the doctor ordered, I think. But first let’s get through the gear you’ll need, and then we’ll get to that business. What about grenades? I’ve got some neat concussion and fragmentation grenades to show you if you want.”
Mac shook his head. “We’re not going to war out there. At least I hope not. We may have to use the automatic weapons, but I don’t see any use for heavy artillery. We’ll pass on the grenades, but we will need pistols and knives. I’ve got a good hunting knife at home and I carry a Kahr PM45 sidearm. Maybe you could just ship those out to Thailand for me.” He turned to Culler. “We could ship your 9mm Glock out there as well.”
Barker thought a moment and then responded. “As I understand it—and I don’t need to know everything, just enough to get ya’ll equipped properly—you’re goin’ to be out in the jungle doin’ some suspicious stuff with a lot of bad guys runnin’ around in the same general area. That about the size of it?”
“That’s about it,” said Culler. “If we need to shoot our way out of a bad situation, we’ll need to be able to do that, but we’re not going to be out looking for any trouble.”
“Right,” said Mac. “We need to be invisible and silent, but if someone steps on us we need to be able to strike back.”
“Okay, got it. Then leave your Kahr at home, and that goes for the Glock as well. I don’t go anywhere with less than a .45, but yours is too small for what you guys need. I mean, the PM45 only has a three inch barrel and only holds five rounds. Great for concealment but no good for this. And the 9mm doesn’t have enough hittin’ power.”
Barker went back to his closet and returned with a pistol in hand. “This here’s a Heckler and Koch MK 23. Leave it to the Germans to make an awesome, offensive .45 caliber handgun.”
“The .45s definitely pack a punch.” said Culler.
“My favorite caliber too. This here gun was developed for U.S. Special Operations Command in the late nineties, probably after you left, Ralph. It’s pretty big, certainly not the best for concealment, but you guys won’t care much about that where you’re goin’. And it’ll shoot two-inch groups out to fifty yards. It’s a mean sonofabitch.”
“What about a suppressor?” asked Mac.
“Oh, yeah, you bet. It’s a quick detach suppressor. On and off in an instant.” He demonstrated. Mac and Culler nodded their heads in approval.
“One more thing. Wait’ll you see this…” Barker walked back through the closet and returned with a sheathed knife in his hand. He pulled the knife from its sheath and held it out in front of him.
“It’s a Russian made Spetsnaz Ballistic knife, a real good fighting knife under normal circumstances, but this one has a special characteristic. See here on the handle?” Culler and Mac moved closer. “That’s a safety pin. And see here on the blade guard? That’s a trigger. Now, if I remove the safety pin like this, and then press the trigger, the blade flies out. No shit, I mean it flies out with a lotta speed and energy. Damn accurate too. It’ll penetrate a two-by-four at twelve feet but makes absolutely no sound. Great for takin’ out a sentry real quiet like without havin’ to get too close. Real nifty.”
MacMurphy shook his head. “Amazing. Really amazing stuff. I want all of it. Go ahead and talley up the bill, pack everything up and get it shipped out to your guy in Thailand. I’ll get your money transferred as soon as I get back home.”
“You want me to include the Lapua and spotter gear?”
Mac glanced over at Culler with a longing look and then turned back to Barker. “Aw, what the hell, you never know. Go ahead and stick it in the box with the other stuff.”
“Well then, let’s join Ruthie at the bar for a cocktail or two before dinner. She and I are goin’ to take you down the road a piece, so you can taste some of our local delicacies. Then we’ll come back here after dark and I’ll let you guys fire off those weapons you just bought. Best to have a little familiarization before you gotta use’em for real.”
Chapter Sixteen
It was dusk when they left the restaurant and headed back to Bill’s place. Except for becoming more jovial and relaxed, Bill did not seem too impaired by the three martinis he had consumed. He drove two miles back home along the narrow, two-lane road without a waver.
Ruth busied herself brewing a pot of coffee and setting out cups and saucers and desert cookies on the bar while Bill Barker assembled the rifles and pistols. When he had everything together in his back yard, he joined the group at the bar and helped himself to a cup of coffee and a handful of cookies.
“Ruthie makes the best damn chocolate chip cookies this side of heaven, and her coffee’s not too bad either.”
Once back at the house, Barker sobered up completely and began to inventory all of the weapons and gear.
“Once I get this list together and the prices, how am I goin’ to communicate with you fellers?” said Barker..
“Jot this down,” said Mac. “[email protected]. Send me an Email with a list of the gear and prices along with your wiring instructions. I’ll get the money off to you right away. Also, don’t forget to send me the contact instructions for your police general friend in Chiang Mai. Send everything air freight so we can pick it up within the next week or so.”
“No problemo. I’ll see how fast I c
an get everything out to you and let ya know.”
Culler nudged Mac. “There was one more thing,” he said.
Chapter Seventeen
Mac lowered his voice. “The chemist thing. You said you could give us something that would make people sick if they swallowed it. We need something untraceable, tasteless and odorless.”
“That’s right, I can cook you up just about anythin’ ya want, but I’ll need to know a little more about what you need it for before I can give you a good answer. I’ve got lots of concoctions that’ll make people sick, if that’s what you want to do, but a lot depends on what you want to put it in and how sick you want to make the people.”
“How much did Tom Willett tell you?” asked Mac.
“Not much. He mentioned something colorless and odorless that could be put in something somehow that would kill or make seriously ill anyone who ingested it.”
“And what did you say?” asked Mac.
“Told him ricin would do the job nicely. First thing that jumped to mind. I told him there were lots of things that could make people sick, but then they’d recover and wonder what made them sick and then go on about their business without thinking much more about it. But if what ya’ll want to do is take down a couple a drug lords,” he lowered his voice, “and that’s what I suspect you want to do, then makin’ some people a little sick won’t do it for you.”
“What then?” Mac asked.
“Then you need something stronger, like ricin. A little bit of that and, well, shit, they’d be dead, and then there’d be hell to pay. That would be the end of the drug lords who produced the shit that caused the deaths.”
Culler said, “Ricin. That’s what the KGB used to kill that guy on the bridge in London. Remember that Mac? They stabbed him in the leg with an umbrella.”
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