Free The Battle: Alone: Book 4 by Darrell Maloney Page B

leave.
         Then the old man’s face brightened and he said, “Wait. Maybe there’s one more way I can help you. Wait here.”
         He turned and shuffled slowly over to a large gun safe at the back of the office. He took a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and balanced them on the end of his nose, then slowly turned the combination lock.
         The heavy door creaked as it opened.
         “I’ve been meaning to oil that. But I guess it doesn’t really creak any more than my old bones do.”
         He took out a long rifle, with a scope setup as big as Dave’s forearm. And on the front of it was something Dave had seen in movies, but never in real life.
         The old man seemed to take great delight in Dave’s smile.
         He asked, “You know what this is?”
         “A big damned silencer, is what it looks like.”
         The man laughed.
         “Well, you’re half right. It’s a big damn silencer, and a big damn flash suppressor.”
         “What kind of rifle is it, and where the hell did you get it?”
         “It’s a sniper rifle. It uses a regular .556 round, but it’s meant to take out targets at up to a thousand meters. At least that’s what Billy said. I don’t speak metrics myself. I wouldn’t know a thousand meters from a hole in the ground. I’m too old to learn a whole new measurin’ system just ‘cause the government said we oughta.”
         “Who’s Billy?”
         “Billy was one of my son’s deputies. He was killed in the same ambush as my son. Billy was an agent for The Drug Enforcement Agency before he got tired of the federal government and decided to try something a bit slower. They took this off a couple of nomads right after the blackout. No way of telling where they might have gotten it.
         “Anyway, Billy said he’d only seen one other one like it, when he was working for the DEA. He said they confiscated it along the border with Mexico, not far from El Paso. The drug lords down there were hiring snipers to shoot their rivals from long distances.”
         “He said it was a shame the night vision don’t work. Takes batteries, you see, and as you know they’re a thing of the past. But you can still use it in the daytime. The silencer suppresses the muzzle flash, so not only can they not hear where the shot came from, they can’t see the flash either.”
         Dave almost told him that he had batteries, but he thought better of it.
         “Can I borrow it?”
         “Hell, son. You can have the damn thing. No one used it while we had it, and now there’s no one left to use it. And if you take out just one of those bastards who escaped prison, then I reckon it’s for a good cause. Because every one of those scumbags you shoot will help make this county just a little bit safer.
         “And besides, it’ll help ease my conscience a bit. See, as much as I’d like to, I can’t help you with reinforcements. If you walk out of here with this, then I won’t feel quite so bad. I’ll know I helped you in another way.”
         “You got any ammunition to go with it?”
         The man produced two boxes of shells and placed them on the counter next to the weapon.
         “There you go, son. Good luck to you. You’re gonna need it, going up against that kind of odds.”
         “I’ll prevail,” Dave stated matter-of-factly. Because I have right and justice on my side. And the good guys always win in the end.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 15
     
         Dave said goodbye to his new friend, and decided to stay in Dugan until nightfall. He couldn’t retrieve his vehicle until after dark anyway, and he didn’t want to carry his new sniper rifle down the lonely road in daylight.
         He was afraid that if he came across a band of armed men, they might try to take it from