Sarah - Inventory

From last time ...

"Right. Now. Where's all this inventory Jake set out for you?"

"In Ma's attic. When you finish eatin' that slop, we'll go up and take a look."

"Slop? Honey, put a little pepper in this, and there ain't a finer breakfast anywhere - and this, by the way, is some of the best I've ever had. Where'd this guy learn to cook?"

"That's a long story, Sergeant Mackey. But I think I'll let Ma tell you when she comes back."

And now ...

"Holy crap, Sarah. You've got enough ammo up here for a whole Company of snipers."

Mackey had been looking over the boxes that lined the outside of the attic floor. He reached down and opened one box and took out a few of the rounds. "What's all this .32 caliber stuff for? What have you got - a little Browning automatic?"

"No. I've got this."

Sarah reached down and picked up a duffel bag off the floor and pulled her Skorpion 61 out. She slapped in a magazine and snapped the bolt home with an efficiency born of practice. Mackey was impressed - both with her obvious skill and familiarity with the weapon, and with the weapon itself.

"I didn't think there were any of those outside of Czechoslovakia. How did he get his hands on that?"

"You know what this is?"

"I may be retired from the Corps, Sarah, but military weaponry has been my life for more than 20 years - and that's the finest weapon for close in work that exists in the world today, except maybe for the UZI the Israelis make."

"So why don't I have an UZI, I wonder?"

"I doubt even Jake could get his hands on one of those. The Israelis are very concerned that the UZI doesn't wind up in anyone else's arsenal. But don't worry - the big difference is the size of the round - your Skorpion uses a .32 caliber round and it doesn't have a lot of stopping power. The UZI shoots a 9mm, which is about the same size as a .38. But it's only a little more stopping power - besides, if you hit someone with a burst of several rounds, they're going down no matter what size the round is."

"Yeah. We tore up some watermelon with this thing. I'd hate to think what it would do to a person."

"Well, hopefully, nobody's going to get close enough to you to find out."

"Right. Look, we'd better get downstairs. I think Two Feathers wants to get back to the Res and he mentioned something about taking you out to Jake's new place."

"Yeah. I asked him to take me out there. I want to see where it happened."

"Well, it's about half an hour up the road and the wrong way for Two Feathers. Tell you what. We'll take my Jeep. Jake's place is on the highway - we should be able to find it."

Sarah and Mackey climbed down the pull down ladder from the attic and into the hallway that fed into the two rooms in the main building.

"You'd better make arrangements with Ma for the other room - otherwise you'll be sleeping in one of the cottages, and they don't have air-conditioning."

"Yeah, you're right. I've gotten soft in the last few years - San Francisco doesn't get hot enough to keep me in shape for sleeping in the desert."

"There isn't ANYTHING that'll get you in shape for sleeping in the desert."