At the end of the block and just off the playing area was a building marked ARMORY, though unlike the other buildings on the block, it was an actual, fully enclosed building. Once Chris unlocked the door and they walked inside, Sam could see that his old friend had fully invested himself in branding. In addition to guns and helmets and gloves and other normal paintball accessories for sale, there were also ladies’ style T-shirts, coffee cups, license- plate frames, mousepads and anything else that might be enhanced by the Battle: World logo. Hell, Sam thought, Chris had spent half of his life fighting for the freedom of capitalism; he might as well get some for himself.
“Don’t bother looking at that stuff,” Chris said. Sam was admiring a rack of guns that were painted pink in honor of breast cancer. They even had one of those ribbons painted on the barrel, which was a nice touch. “I keep the test guns in the back.”
Sam tried to envision Fiona carrying a pink gun of any caliber or style and decided that part of her charm was that she could probably pull it off, at least once. Sam followed Chris past racks of shirts and hoodies, past a rack of commemorative postcards and through a set of double doors, into what ended up being the meat of the building-a large warehouse stacked high with merchandise on one side, and a test firing range on the other. Sam thought it was weird to have an indoor range, particularly when the entire park was made to shoot in. Or at least he thought it was weird until Chris unlocked an upright chest and began unloading paintball guns that looked heavier and more complex than one you might buy at Sportsmart.
Chris handed one to Sam. “That’s the Titan Legion Z-200 you’ve got there,” he said. “Stainless steel. Expanded barrel. Enlarged chamber. Officially, it doesn’t exist. Or not yet, anyway. They’ve had me testing it out here for a few weeks, and I’ve been adding my two cents to the designers. We’ve got it torqued up to go six- hundred-fifty feet per second without any problem, but I’ve been working to get it closer to eight hundred.”
“Wouldn’t that be lethal?”
“You’d have to be a sniper and you’d have to hit a defenseless person for it to have that effect,” Chris said. “And even then you’d have to be pretty close.”
“Wouldn’t that be the point?”
“And you’d have to want to kill him,” Chris said. He shrugged, and Sam remembered that this was a guy who used to really like killing people, until he started to notice the wider world outside his kill zone. “You’re not gonna kill someone shooting them in the foot. You aim at someone’s head, yeah, you could kill them. Most likely, you’d just put them down for a bit. Bruise their brain a bit. But if you’re coming at me to the point that I need to unload, then I’m happy to bruise your brain.”
Sam wasn’t really sure a person could bruise his brain, but he was certain that if he got hit in the head with just about anything traveling eight hundred feet per second, there was a good chance it would serve as a pretty good deterrent to whatever abhorrent behavior he was engaged in.
Chris loaded the gun and handed it back to Sam. “Shoot it,” Chris said.
There was a full human target made of ballistics gel about thirty yards away. Chris wasn’t screwing around out here. Sam took the gun and aimed it, thinking, Well, if it even breaks the skin, I’ll be surprised, and fired away. It didn’t have that same satisfying sound that a Glock might make, or an AK, but it did make a nice pop, and when the ball hit the target, there was a loud slapping sound. Sam had aimed for the midsection, hoping to hit the pubis bone, a spot that when punched tends to crumple an assailant.
Sam and Chris walked out to the target and examined the damage. There was a spatter of red paint where Sam had hit the body, and the flesh was torn open. Sam shoved his index finger inside the gap-it was about a third of an inch.
“Not a great place to get stitches,” Sam said.
Chris waved him off. “Cuts are nothing. Who cares about a flesh wound?” He went behind the dummy, and that’s when Sam saw that it was hooked up to a laptop. Chris tapped the keys a few times and up came a series of three-dimensional re-creations of the shot. “That poor bastard you just shot? You separated his pelvis.”
“Really?” Sam said.
“According to the computer model,” Chris said. “He’ll be in the hospital for a week. Probably will have a problem sitting for a long period of time for a while after that. No career in the truck-driving arts. I’ll tell you that.”
“And these are nonlethal weapons?”
“You didn’t kill the guy, did you?”
“No.”
“You put anything illegal into the gun?”
“No.”
“Then it’s nonlethal.”
Sam turned the gun over in his hand. “I conceal this,” Sam said. “Any problem with that?”
“If you conceal a water pistol, is there a problem with that?” Chris said.
Sam pondered this. “I need a dozen of these,” he said.
“I’ve got three,” Chris said.
“How much time would it take me to modify a regular marker to do this?”
“You got access to a torch?”
“Sure,” Sam said.
“About five minutes,” he said.
This was getting better and better. “Let’s say I needed some CS gas balls.”
“Let’s say.”
“You could get a person those?”
“Where’s the fight?” Chris seemed genuinely intrigued by all of this, which wasn’t a great thing. Sure, the guy could keep a secret, but the less anyone knew, the better, as ever.
“It’s a top-secret thing, Kick-Ass,” Sam said. He tossed in Chris’ old nickname just to let him know they were back on military ground. You know-Band of Brothers. All that.
“Bullshit,” Chris said. “If it was top-secret, you wouldn’t be out here buying paintball guns.”
“You remember my buddy Michael Westen?”
“Spy?”
“That’s the one.”
Chris put up a hand. “Say no more. Whatever you’re doing with him, I want no part of that. You know how many different agencies, foreign and domestic, have come to me, seeing if I’d be interested in relieving that asset?”
Sam wasn’t surprised, really. A guy like Chris Alessio would be who he’d call if he needed someone to kill a person and do it right.
“I appreciate your not taking any of those jobs,” Sam said.
“Well, I value my life,” Chris said, which was a surprise. Anytime an ex-SEAL can admit to being over- matched on anything was cause for a national holiday. “Whatever you guys are into, I’d just as soon put you in touch with someone who can get you some real guns.”
“Real guns I’ve got,” Sam said.
“Ah,” Chris said. “I see what you’ve got going on. Like Latvia? Break no laws while breaking someone’s back?”
“Right,” Sam said. He’d told Michael about the teeth flossing, but really couldn’t remember the meat of that story, though apparently it was a good one.
“Hold on,” Chris said, “I’ve got something for you.” Chris went into a storeroom and came out with a long, cylindrical box. “I got these when I was thinking about taking the park in more of a historical direction, but, you know, people just want to shoot each other. Nothing wrong with that, right?”
“Right,” Sam said.
Chris opened the box, and Sam saw what looked like, well, whips. “Whips?” Sam said.
“Florida stockwhips. Cowboys used them on cows back in the day. They’re considered farm implements. I got three boxes of them.”
Oh, Sam thought. Oh. He took one in his hand and walked over to the ballistics dummy and snapped the whip on its knee, opening up a gash at least five inches long. Oh.
“I’ll take them all,” Sam said. “What can I do in return?”
“Nothing,” Chris said, and gave Sam a wink. “Besides, I heard from our old friend Virgil that you do people
