by Jeff Siebold
“So, they were smuggled in?” asked Clive.
“Probably,” said Zeke. “But to what end? Certainly not to rob a few branch banks.”
“No, if you took the risk of smuggling those guns in, you’d be planning something bigger,” said Clive. “Probably something terroristic. Perhaps like Paris.”
“Incidentally, about Jay Clinton,” said Zeke.
“Yes?” asked Clive.
“He’s angry because the Feds are stepping on his investigation.”
“How do you know?”
“He was almost hostile. He wouldn’t look you or me in the eye,” said Zeke. “He didn’t contribute much. And he bristled at being ordered to do something to help us, to give us those videos,” said Zeke.
“Yes.”
“Did you notice that he’s not wearing a wedding ring, but has a tan line there, fourth finger left hand?” asked Zeke.
Clive shook his head.
“Judging by the fact that the line is still visible, he’s likely going through a divorce, which is probably the stressor. Makes him feel impotent, particularly when his boss directed him to help us,” Zeke continued.
“Hmm. Could be,” said Clive, thoughtfully. “But back to the smuggling of the automatic rifles…”
“I agree, it would most likely be for an act of terror,” said Zeke. “So where could they have originated?”
“I don’t see a terrorist group selling their best weapons to bank robbers.”
“No, not likely,” said Zeke. “But it’s possible that the banks were robbed to raise money to support a terrorist act.”
“Possible, but risky. If they were caught robbing the banks, the whole terrorism thing would probably have gone south,” said Clive.
“Right,” said Zeke. “But it could be someone involved in procuring the weapons to sell to the terrorists, who decided to run a game on their own. Maybe rob a few banks before they deliver the guns…”
“Possible, I suppose,” said Clive.
“So, other than direct smuggling, which would be very risky, where could they get their hands on the H&K’s?”
“Really only a few places,” said Clive. “Law enforcement or the military, as we said. And in both cases, missing weapons would be accounted for and reported.”
“Where else?” asked Zeke. “Where can you hide guns like this?”
“Where?” asked Clive.
“Among a host of other guns, I’d think,” said Zeke.
Chapter 3
A few months earlier, Zeke had been in Atlanta, Georgia, wrapping up a counterfeiting operation with ties to Mexico. Then he moved to Florida for a while until he received the call from ATF Special Agent in Charge, Dan Wheeler, a friend and former Military Intelligence officer. Dan called Zeke to ask for a meeting, then arranged for a ticket to be held at the American Airlines counter in Tampa, transporting Zeke through their Charlotte hub to the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Austin. From there, a Crown Vic driven by a bored ATF agent with short, white hair and a bad attitude met him and took him to the Texas Rangers’ state headquarters in the Highland neighborhood of Austin.
Dan had borrowed a small corner office and a conference room, which was presently set up with three agents working their phones and their laptop computers. Zeke entered the office and dropped into the spare chair.
Dan had started the conversation. “Zeke, partner, we’ve got a situation here. I have approval to hire you to help…as a contractor, of course.”
“This has to do with the Harry Francisco situation, right?” Zeke was aware of the recent fiasco and how the press had portrayed it. It had begun as a simple takedown of a suspect who had violated the Federal gun laws, and ultimately evolved into a hostage situation, with a half dozen Houston school children held at gunpoint.
Harry Francisco had been next door visiting his neighbor at the time of the raid on his house. He saw the approaching ATF agents getting into position and quickly exited the rear door, stole his neighbor’s car and drove to the nearby elementary school, two blocks away. There, he abandoned the car with its driver side door standing open in the street, and coolly entered the front door of the school by taking it from an exiting teacher.
Five minutes later, the place was surrounded. The ATF agents had seen him drive past them and had followed. The hostage situation went on for six hours, with the end result being that Harry committed suicide by cop. But only after three fourth graders were injured.
The press had portrayed the ATF agents as incompetent buffoons, allowing an armed suspect to escape and drive right past them, and had called for the Director’s resignation. The official investigations were ongoing fodder for the press and the politicians.
After that experience, the ATF leadership was anxious for deniability. And especially in Texas, no one at the ATF wanted to be perceived as infringing on a citizen’s Second Amendment rights. So, Zeke and The Agency were hired to provide a buffer between the ATF and the seller of automatic weapons.
* * *
There sure are a lot of tables, Zeke thought. He saw between four and five hundred of them, all lined up, end to end in maybe 15 rows of 15 tables each. They were all eight feet long and doubled to about five feet wide, those folding tables with the dark veneer surface and the tubular metal legs that locked in the “down” position, giving each table its 29-inch height.
That’s why they had to have such a huge place. It was a convention center, or an arena or something. Zeke could see where seats had been removed to make room for the endless lines of tables.
And every table was covered in guns. Zeke saw pistols, revolvers, semi-automatics, long guns and short guns. He saw snub nose and long-barreled handguns. He saw H&K’s and Glock’s and Smith & Wesson’s and Colt’s and Sig Sauer’s everywhere. They were just about piled up. Well, the handguns were mostly lying on the tops of flat, square boxes with the guns connected to each other by random cables that wrapped in and out of their trigger guards in a complex, snaking fashion.
Some were lying on their box top, a red cable wrapped around the package like a Christmas ribbon, with the weapon attached as the bow. There were wooden racks everywhere, designed to present rifles and shotguns. Most of them looked homemade. They were all full of weapons with zip ties through their trigger guards.
And there were signs all around, mostly advertising the sale of ammunition. A large white flag on one wall showed the silhouette of an AR15 M4 rifle under the tag line, “Come and Take It.” Not original, but it probably makes an impact on the clientele, he thought.
There were hundreds of people, too, milling around between the tables, looking at the guns. Men and women were walking in file like people at the buffet counter, starting, stopping, touching a gun, asking a question of the sellers.
The Austin Gun Show was actually held north of Austin, in the suburb of Cedar Park, straight up Interstate 35, and then to the west. Zeke Traynor had been to gun shows before. This one was an average size. The shows in Dallas and Houston were much larger.
For the past ten minutes, Zeke had been watching a fit man with a buzz cut. The man was dressed in jeans and cowboy boots and wore a camo shirt tucked into his pants. He was tall, maybe six foot three or four inches, and he was in good shape. His face was chiseled with geometric lines and flat planes on its surface, and he didn’t show much expression. He looked like a paramilitary cowboy, which was apparently how he pictured himself.
The man was engaged in a discussion with one of the gun sellers, a shortish, round man with a beard, who was standing behind his table of merchandise. The beard was scraggly and growing wild from his sideburns to his Adam’s apple. He wore a red t-shirt and jeans and had a Colt Anaconda in a leather holster on his right hip, like a gunslinger. He was older, maybe seventy, and had a face that looked like a baseball glove, lined and weathered and tan. The two men seemed to be discussing the advantages of what looked to Zeke like a two-tone Sig Sauer SP2022. The one they were looking at was the FDE model, FDE for Fl
at Dark Earth, a beige coloring on the barrel and much of the weapon. The back of the grip was black.
Zeke knew that particular gun was available for either a 9mm or a .40 caliber S&W cartridge. He preferred the 9mm version. It held fifteen rounds while the .40 caliber version held only twelve rounds of the Smith & Wesson cartridges, plus one in the chamber. But the choice was mostly personal preference. That’s a $700 weapon, Zeke thought.
Camo shirt handed the Sig Sauer back to the shorter man who turned away and replaced it in a glass case sitting on a table. He pulled on a ring of keys and extended a lanyard from his belt, selected one key and locked the case.
The room, large and open, smelled like oil and gunpowder. People continued to mill around in an informal pattern, stopping and starting occasionally, and tolerating the slower pace of the people in front of them. There was a murmur of voices and activity, and occasionally the hard metallic snick of a gun cocking.
Zeke looked at a carousel of hunting rifles on the adjoining table. They were offset with a variety of hunting knives laid out across the white tablecloth.
The Camo guy stepped up to a nearby table displaying a couple of Heckler and Koch semiautomatic rifles. “Hello,” he said. The seller behind the table was a thick man in his 40’s with a small ponytail and a trimmed, gray beard. Like many sellers here, he wore a Glock pistol in a belt holster on his hip. His clothes had a European flavor to them, based on their cut and style, and he confirmed his nationality with a brisk, German “Guten Tag.”
“These look like they’re new,” Zeke overheard Camo guy say.
“Yes, sir,” said the man. He held out his right hand. “I’m Martin,” he said. “Martin Burton.”
Camo guy shook the offered hand. “Jack Knowles,” he said. “Good to meet you. Are these the SL8 model?”
“Sure are. That’s what I’ve got.” He unlocked one of the rifles and handed it across the table. “It’s got a nice feel.”
“It does,” said Jack, as he balanced it. “Nice. I’ve wanted one of these. How much?”
The seller named a price. “If you buy it, I’ll throw in a couple of boxes of NATO rounds,” said Martin. “But you can get more from any of these guys,” Martin swept his arm around the room. “There’s a lot of ammunition available for sale here.”
“Sounds great.” Jack reached into his pocket, took out a large wad of cash and counted off the correct amount. He handed the rifle back to Martin. “Can you box it?” he asked.
“Sure.” He reached under the table and pulled out a hard plastic rifle case stenciled “H&K SL8”, and handed it to Jack. “This one’s already packaged. You’re legally allowed to buy this, right?”
“I sure am,” said Jack. He opened the case and looked inside, then closed it again.
Martin wrote a receipt and put it and the two boxes of rounds into a plastic bag and handed it across the table. Jack took the case by the handle, took the bag in his other hand, and headed for the exit door.
“Can he do that?” Zeke asked, pointing at Camo Jack’s back as he wound his way through the crowd. “Just buy a gun and take it with him?”
“Sure he can,” said Martin. “I’m a private seller. I’m not a dealer and I don’t have a lot of inventory. Just buy and sell for myself. It’s all legal and above board here in Texas.”
“That’s good to know,” said Zeke, and he drifted away.
It had been a legal transaction, within the boundaries of Federal and Texas law. Private citizens can buy and sell weapons without doing a background check, Zeke knew, and without a waiting period. The practice had been discouraged in recent years, but the so-called “gun show loophole” was alive and well. But there was a limit to the volume one could buy. And automatic weapons were illegal.
Zeke Traynor was fit, and he wore his blonde hair a bit on the long side. Today he wore jeans and a plaid shirt, and a pair of Frye boots. In Texas, he seemed to fit in well, with a sort of a ranch-hand look. He could easily have been mistaken for a bull rider with his medium, muscular build.
Truth was, Zeke had lived in a number of cities in a number of states. He was as much at home in Texas as he was in San Diego, and he’d spent a respectable amount of time in both places. Although, if you were to guess his origin, you might lean more toward San Diego, based on his current look.
Zeke left the arena, about 60 feet behind Camo Jack. Jack was moving at a good pace, but not quickly enough to draw attention to himself. In the parking lot, he passed a security guard on a golf cart who was talking with a uniformed police officer. As he approached, Jack veered a bit to the right and walked down an aisle one-over from the officers. Zeke slowed, hung back and watched. It was noticeably hot outside, but there were people all around him, getting into cars, talking, walking.
Jack walked another forty feet and then turned to the right, between two cars. He crossed the next aisle, and stopped at a panel van. It was a light gray van with tinted windows and Texas plates. Jack opened the sliding side door and set the H&K rifle box in the van.
Chapter 4
Zeke found his vehicle in Parking Area B, where he’d left it, and drove back to his hotel room. He was occupying a room at a mid-priced, business traveller’s hotel that promised to make you smarter if you stayed there long enough. It was four minutes from the arena and looked lot like the Alamo. But around Austin, a lot of buildings looked like the Alamo.
He parked the car on the side of the building, near the pool, and returned to his room. He spent a few minutes writing up his account of that Saturday, making particular notes about Camo Jack and Martin, and then he picked up his cell phone and dialed it.
“Texas Rangers,” said the voice, probably a duty officer.
“Dan Wheeler, please,” said Zeke. Dan Wheeler was technically with the ATF, but was using office space at the Texas Rangers’ Headquarters in Austin. ATF Headquarters was located in Houston, on the North Loop Freeway, about 150 miles away.
He heard clicking, and phone sounds, and then Dan’s voice, sort of weary. “Hello?”
“It’s Zeke, Dan. What did you find?”
“Hey, partner, I hope you’ve had more luck than I have,” said Dan. “We’re still working through the facial recognition software and the mug shots with the bank security videos, but we haven’t identified any of the suspects yet.”
“May have had some luck here,” said Zeke. “That’s why I’m calling. Let me bring you up to speed before I head back to the Gun Show.”
* * *
The three men had been busy. Since Zeke spotted them at the Austin Gun Show at it’s opening on Saturday morning, Camo Jack and his two friends had each purchased two rifles from Martin Burton, one at a time and each contained in a rifle box with ‘H&K SL8’ stenciled on it. The weapons in the cases were actually H&K G36’s, automatic assault rifles. Each man took his boxed rifle out to the panel van, opened the side door, and set the rifle box inside, under a blanket in the back seat. Then he returned to the Gun Show, went directly to the snack bar, ate and wandered, browsed, and waited about two hours before buying another rifle from Martin Burton.
Zeke walked out of the arena doors into the bright afternoon sunlight and stopped for a moment to put on his sunglasses. To his right, at the next set of doors, he saw Camo Jack with his back to Zeke, stubbing out a cigarette in an outdoor ashtray. Zeke turned left and walked to the corner of the building.
The van came into view as he walked. It was just a few years old and appeared to be clean and well maintained. Zeke guessed it was a rental.
He returned to his car and took a GPS tracking device from his glove compartment. It was a long-range tracking item, like those used by the military, and had been programmed to periodically report its location by cell service to a receiver located in the Texas Rangers headquarters in Austin. The device used a pre-paid SIM card and had a battery life of a couple of months with its present settings. It was slightly larger than a deck of cards.
This GPS tracker had a strong magnet on
one side, and Zeke walked from his car to the panel van, careful to keep the van between himself and the entrance to the arena. In a single, quick movement, Zeke bent down and placed the tracker under the wheel well above the van’s rear passenger side tire. The device snapped against the metal with a solid, satisfactory sound and Zeke turned and backtracked to his car, again keeping the van between himself and the arena doors.
* * *
Zeke had accounted for the three men he was watching at the gun show. One was in the parking lot, putting a fully automatic H&K G36, just purchased from Martin Burton, into the panel van. Another had gone to the rest room. And Camo Jack was outside, smoking a cigarette.
That’ll shorten his life by 10 years, Zeke thought with a wry smile. He waited another twenty minutes, until the three men got into the van and drove away. The GPS tracker will let us catch up with them, he thought.
Zeke paused a moment, then went back into the arena and approached Martin’s table for the second time that day. He looked at the H&K rifle on display. “I’m back. Nice weapon,” he said, pointing.
“Yes, it sure is,” said the man. He held out his right hand again. “I’m Martin,” he said with some accent. “Martin Burton.” They shook hands without warmth. “I’m packing up,” he added.
“I’ve always wanted one of these,” said Zeke, touching the impressive looking H&K SL8. The rifle had the look of a Special Forces assault rifle. It was matte black, with a floating barrel and a threatening looking polymer stock.
“I’m glad to sell you one,” said Martin Burton. His accent put Zeke in mind of western Germany, and it had a distinct rural quality to it. Like a man one generation off the farm in agricultural Europe.
How much are you asking for one of these?” asked Zeke.
“Oh, not so much,” said Martin. He named a figure, which was quite a bit less than he had mentioned to Camo Jack, Zeke noted.
