Kim Oh 2: Real Dangerous Job (The Kim Oh Thrillers) Read Free Page B

easily take out a single target, or a whole bunch of ’em, at about 250 meters with that puppy. Somebody who knows what they’re doing – like me – could take the operational range up to 350 meters, in single-shot mode. Or maybe a little more – the rounds are lethal over a thousand meters. Problem is, you sacrifice some long-distance accuracy with that short barrel. So if we were setting up for a sniper-type operation, it might not be our best choice. But for close-in work, it’s a sweet piece.”
     
    I had only a hazy understanding of half of what he was talking about. Hanging out with Cole was a whole education in the lethal arts. And I was maybe a C+ student. Which pissed me off – not at him, but at myself. First time in my life I wasn’t scoring an A or at least a B on every test, even though I was doing the scoring myself, inside my head. Just my luck that with this subject, I’d be dead meat if I didn’t get my grades up.
     
    “Bring it over here,” said Cole. “I’ll show you how it works.”
     
    “Is it loaded?” I gingerly handed it over to him.
     
    “Not yet. We’ll get to that.”
     
    He ran me through some of the AR-SF’s details, like how to unfold the butt and adjust the front sights, with their little luminous dot. I pretty much got that stuff. The deep technical bits – something about how the propellant gasses got diverted through a vent in the weapon’s barrel – seemed to jazz him up considerably, but went right over my head.
     
    “This is your magazine.” Cole held up a smaller, slightly curved object that he’d just pulled out of the duffel bag. “With this gun, they’re set up for coupling.”
     
    “How nice for them.” It sounded as if our equipment was going to get more action along those lines than I ever would.
     
    “Just means you can join two of ’em together. End to end. Increases the capacity and cuts down your reload time.”
     
    “Is that a good thing?”
     
    Cole heaved a sigh. “For us, yeah. For the people we might be pointing this thing at, not so much.”
     
    “People?” I gazed at him blankly. “I thought we were just going after McIntyre.”
     
    “Kim . . . sweetheart . . .” He spoke with elaborate patience. “There are going to be people standing between us and him. They’ll have to be taken care of.” He held up the AR-SF. “That’s what this is for.”
     
    “Like who?”
     
    “Like Michael, for one.”
     
    “That’s cool,” I said. “Him, I don’t mind including in the job. That guy’s a dick. I still have a bruise on my hip, from when he tossed me out in the alley.”
     
    “There’ll be more besides that one.”
     
    That took some thinking about. Thinking I should’ve been doing before, but hadn’t. Inside my head, on a little screen, there was a movie about what killing McIntyre would be like. Sometimes it got pretty graphic, depending upon my mood and how much I’d been sulking about the sonuvabitch and what he’d done, but it had pretty much involved him and me and a gun. Like the .357 that Cole had given me previously, which I’d already used on one occasion to lethal effect. The way he was talking now, it was like we were about to go up against some army or something.
     
    Killing that many people – I was concerned it might have an effect on me. What would my dating prospects be like then?
     
    “Here.” Cole was way beyond any such considerations as he slammed the magazine into place. Leaning forward in his wheelchair, he held the loaded weapon out to me. “Take it.”
     
    The weight of the bullets didn’t account for all of the difference I perceived, as I held the gun in both hands.
     
    “How’s that?” A bit of his off-kilter smile showed. “How’s it feel?”
     
    “I . . . don’t know.” I gave a slow shake of my head. “I’m not sure . . .”
     
    “Are you still freaked out?” Cole peered more closely at me. “By some of the stuff you’ve had to do?