The Consignment by Grant Sutherland Page B

to various regimes in Central America. Trevanian acted interested when I gave him the history, but Lagundi didn’t bother.
    From there we went out to the assembly lines, stopping behind the guy doing quality control on the night-sights. Trevanian gestured down the line of workers dressed in white overalls, hunched over a long bench, assembling electronic parts. He asked if we were busy. No more than usual, I told him. In fact, it was relatively quiet, we were almost down to a skeleton staff, but there was no sense letting Trevanian know how much we needed his order.
    Next I took them out to the munitions line, a separate part of the Haplon plant, set away for reasons of safety. Though we’d never had an accident, there was enough missile propellant and gunpowder stored in our bunker to blow the average-sized neighborhood to hell. It was only a grandfather clause in Connecticut state law that allowed this part of the plant to operate at all, but Rossiter had grown tired of fighting the endless local petitions, and this whole operation was scheduled to move out to the Greenfield site in California before year-end. We watched some specially enhanced mortar shells being assembled on the line for a while, but when Trevanian started casting his eyes toward the giant wall clock, I knew that the recreational part of the tour was over.
    Out back behind the plant, the Haplon firing range was about a hundred yards long, grassed banks to either side and a high earth bank behind the targets. Someone was already firing from one of the concrete bays when we entered the gallery. Micky Baker, who’d been standing behind the shooter, came over.
    “We’re about done.” He jerked his head toward the armory. “Darren’s gone to get your stuff.” Darren, the Haplon rangemaster, the guy Rossiter had bawled out over the intercom. A yard broom, I noticed, was propped by the ammo cases, and the floor was clean.
    I nodded to the shooter, asking Micky who the guy was.
    “Rangemaster from Springfield,” he told me, and when I cocked a brow in surprise, Micky explained, “Cops were giving him the total third degree. Kind of blaming him for how that Fettners guy got killed. He figured he should get his own ballistics done on the pistols from the Springfield range. If the cops ever find the bullet that killed the guy, he figures he’ll be able to prove it didn’t come from the range.” Micky’s tone suggested that he thought the exercise was a waste of time.
    Tapping my shoulder, Trevanian asked if there was a queue.
    “You’re done,” I told Micky, and he went to tell the shooter.
    Darren arrived then, pushing a trolley-load of weapons. While I looked the weapons over with Trevanian, Lagundi pulled up a chair. Micky and the Springfield rangemaster went to retrieve the bullets from the sand traps behind the targets.
    “Someone said you knew Spandos,” said Trevanian, pulling the magazine off a P23 and inspecting the breech. I looked up. “Outside of business,” he added.
    “We went through West Point the same time.”
    “West Point.”
    “What was he to you?”
    “He handled some orders for me awhile back. Wouldn’t have picked him for a West Pointer.” He was fishing, but when I didn’t rise, he snapped the magazine into the gun, then turned to the range. Micky was still up at the targets, sifting the sand traps, so Trevanian replaced the weapon on the trolley.
    “We had some Nigerian generals down here last month.” I gestured to the weapons. “They didn’t ask to see any of this.”
    “Is that right?” said Trevanian. He couldn’t have cared less. Cecille Lagundi, seated behind the first firing bay, gazed up to the targets as if she wasn’t listening to our conversation.
    Then Micky Baker’s voice came over the bunker speakers.
“Ned? You want bodies or circles?”
    I glanced at Trevanian. Half and half, he said. I relayed the instruction over the intercom to Micky, who immediately set to work at the far end of the