The senior cop — a sergeant — checked Tom’s and Prentice’s papers. The other two gave them a brusque, pat-down body search, before going to look over their car.
Inside, the Anglo clerks — a couple of nerds with long stringy hair and heavy-metal T-shirts — affected not to notice the police presence. When, eventually, Tom and Prentice approached the counter, the clerks treated them as they might any other customers.
‘How may I help you today, sir?’ said one to Tom. He looked along the cavernous aisles that stretched beyond the counter. Their racks were stacked with all manner of equipment required ‘over there’: bales of wire, canvas tarpaulins, water butts, pickaxes, waders, collapsible boats, enormous decoy moai, hanks of rope, stacks of spare tyres and capstans wound with chain.
Further back, the downlights picked out hessian sacks of foodstuffs, and plastic demijohns of chemicals, fuel and potable liquids.
‘Uh, well,’ Tom said, summoning himself. ‘I don’t need much.’ Involuntarily his hand went to the thick wad of bills he’d concealed in his crotch. ‘I need some cooking pots, and, well, a couple of hunting rifles.’
‘Okey-dokey, can do, mister, can do.’ The clerk wind-milled his skinny arms. ‘First things firsty: what kinduv mob are these for, hill? Desert?’
‘Desert.’
‘Righty-hoo. So, Aval, Inssessitti, Tayswengo, or. .’ He dropped his voice. ‘Entreati, maybe?’
‘Tayswengo. Look, does it really make a difference?’
‘Oh-ho, yes. Yes, indeedy,’ the clerk crowed. ‘Your Tayswengo are cooking big auraca out there, right, not much else, and that needs a special kinduv pot. It’s the same with the guns — they do a very special kinduv hunting way over there.’
His explanation completed, the clerk squeaked across the rubber floor, then swung himself on to a wheeled ladder that scooted off down an aisle.
He was gone for some time. So long, that Prentice’s clerk was able to fetch, from a locked pharmaceuticals box up near the rafters of the giant shed, the boxes of ribavirin and amoxycillin that his customer required.
Prentice stood tapping his hat against his leg and clicking the heels of his boots together. He engaged the clerk in knowledgeable banter concerning the drugs. ‘This here Apo-Amoxi stuff, is it in 200 or 500 milligram caps?’ And when the ribavirin appeared in boxes stencilled SANDOZ, Prentice said, ‘Hm, didn’t know the generics were available here.’
‘Why?’ Tom hissed. ‘Do your reparations consist of these drugs in particular?’
‘Dunno, old chap. I mean, I do know there are plenty of hepatitis cases in the Tontines, but there’s as much — if not more — HIV. The amoxycillin will deal with a whole host of infections — chest, ear, urinary. .’ He affected a ruminative expression. ‘Look, Brodzinski, I’m not sure how well up you are on the townships — or over there, generally — but don’t imagine for a second it’s anything like Vance. We’re talking Fourth World conditions for the bing. . for the native people.’
‘I know that, Prentice,’ Tom said. ‘What I don’t get is why you’ve gotta take drugs and I’ve gotta take guns.’
‘Something to do with the nature of our offences, I expect.’ Prentice answered blithely; then, turning back to the clerk, he asked him: ‘This Apo-Amoxi stuff, suitable for children, is it?’
Tom might have had it out with him there and then, under the very eyes of the cops, who had returned from searching the car and regrouped, gollyfollying by a water cooler. However, his own clerk came squeaking back, dragging behind him a shopping cart cluttered with rifles.
He lifted these out, one by one, and laid them on the counter while spieling: ‘This here is an H & K PSG-1. It’s a.308, see, five- or twenty-round detachable box. Takes a tripod — and that’s a Hendsoldt scope with reticle illumination. . And this baby is a Parker-Hale M-85.’ He nodded at Prentice. ‘Which your friend here might be more familiar with. It’s another.308, ten-shot detachable box, scope’s fine. It’s a cool, accurate, long-range firearm. Some say it’s a shade too long, shade too heavy — I wouldn’t know ’bout that, maybe your friend does?’
Prentice preened. ‘I’ve handled one, certainly,’ he said. ‘I didn’t find it too heavy.’
Tom didn’t believe him for a second, but the clerk nodded, hooking his hair behind his ears. Then he took the final weapon from the cart, saying, ‘We’ve got an offer on these, the Galil, er hunting rifle. $355 each, or a thousand bucks for five. It’s another.308, this time with a twenty-shot detachable box. This is a neat piece: twenty-inch barrel, and the stock folds down to eleven inches. There’s a Nimrod scope and an integrated bipod. At 6.4 kilos it’s weighty without being too hefty — a lot of bang for your buck.’
As the clerk detailed each feature of the gun, he ran his boy’s hands over it. Now he unfolded the stock and pulled out the two little legs attached to the barrel’s housing. He set up the rifle so that it was aiming through the open doors at the afternoon downpour. A barrage of thunder rolled across Vance Bay.
Tom had no interest in firearms. Friends back in Milford hunted, but he himself had only ever gone out for jackrabbits with a.22 when he was a kid. Apart from the ones on cops’ hips, he’d only ever seen a handgun, in the flesh, once in his life.
Despite this, as soon as he’d seen the rifles in the cart, Tom knew there was something wrong with them. The Galil was the wrongest of the lot. The barrel was perforated at the end, and its housing was olive-green metal. The stock was heavily grained wood, the long strap khaki canvas, and the magazine — or ‘box’ as the clerk dubbed it — curved like those on the paramilitary police’s assault rifles.
The cops now strolled over and began examining the merchandise. The sergeant — who’d introduced himself to Tom as Elldollopollollou — picked up the Galil and checked the safety. Then he aimed towards the far corner of the store and pulled the trigger.
‘Two-stage trigger system,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Don’t really cut it, so far as I’m told.’ He removed the magazine and placed the rifle back on the counter. ‘Tell me one time again,’ he said to Tom. ‘Where you blokes are headed, yeah?’
‘We’re both going to the Tontine Townships,’ Tom told him. ‘Then I’m going on into Tayswengo country — all the way down to Ralladayo.’
Elldollopollollou smiled at this, a long, lazy smile. He pointed at the Galil rifle. ‘That’s your baby, then,’ he said. ‘It’s more like an accurized assault rifle, yeah. The Israelis devised it for’ — he smirked — ‘suppression in urban contexts. Kinduv hunting the Tayswengo get up to. . well, pretty much the same damn thing, ain’t it.’ He turned to his comrades and his voice rose: ‘Now, ain’t it?’
They all laughed full-throatedly, while Prentice joined in with his snide little snicker.
The sergeant turned back to Tom. ‘You’ll be needing kecks, boots and such for over there. Thorn scrub’ll rip you to shreds. Flake rock an’ pummy-stuff’ll tear yer feet up ’n’ all. Your mate, here’ — he thumbed at Prentice — ‘he’s got the right idea.’
He turned to the clerk. ‘Get this bloke here down some desert kecks and the rest of the clobber he’ll need. Get some ammo for these rifles while you’re at it, yeah, and some eskis for this bloke’s pharmaceuticals. There’s no aircon’ to speak of in that clunker,’ he said to Tom and Prentice. ‘Drugs’ll be perished before you get through cane country.
‘And make it snappy!’ he called after the clerk. ‘We gotta get these two to city limits and make it back in time for the game.’