Free Undeclared War by Dennis Chalker

been in the civilian world and not in the military, Reaper had to have a need to go armed. Security was always something you had to think about in a gunshop, even one frequented by customers who were in law enforcement. The shop hadn’t always been a gathering place for cops, and civilian customers still came in. It would take a fairly stupid crook to rob a gunshop, but dumber things had happened.
    Moving across the workshop, Reaper went over to the opposite wall where a large utility sink stood next to a long, shallow, steel tank with a tight-fitting cover.
    There was a smell of solvents coming up from the covered cleaning tank, but the smell would have been a lot worse if the shop had been hot. The tall, barnlike shop building was well insulated against the winter cold or summer heat, both of which could get pretty extreme in southeastern Michigan. But even if it wasn’t as heavily insulated as it was, there would be little enough to hear in the way of noise this far out in the country.
    The steel building was attached to the back of atwo-story brick farmhouse and sat on twenty-five acres of land less than five miles from the Saint Clair River and the border between the U.S. and Canada. The location was closer to Port Huron than Detroit, both cities being less than an hour’s drive away. The area was open countryside with stands of trees separating fields. The house and barn were set back from the main road, a quarter-mile of blacktopped driveway leading to a semicircular drive at the front of the house, with an extension leading out to the back shop building.
    It was an out-of-the-way location for a business, but that’s what the farmhouse and steel barn had been converted into. The front part of the first floor of the house was a gunshop, the barn a well-equipped machine shop with facilities for polishing and finishing metal and wood. D & R POLICE SUPPLIES AND GUNSMITHS was all it said on a small sign on the white siding at the front of the house. The sign was a fairly new one, the paint on it being much fresher than that of the tan-painted twin doors leading into the house. The doors were at the top of a long ramp, allowing the owner’s wheelchair easy access to the building.
    There would be plenty of room for additional workers once business picked up. The gunsmithing and small gun shop had been at the farm for a number of years, but the police supply business was new. So for now, there were just the two men living and working in the building.
    The farm and buildings were both owned by Keith Deckert, a big, gray-haired ex-Army sergeantwho had lost the use of his legs several years earlier in a racing accident. Outside of the limitations on his mobility, the only thing remarkable about Deckert’s body was that his arms, shoulders, and chest were even more muscular than when he had been an Army Ranger.
    As Reaper was scrubbing his face and arms, Deckert was polishing the grip and hilt of the sword with a soft cloth.
    â€œDamned big for a knife,” Deckert said with a chuckle. “This from some movie or something? One of those Harry Potter books? Conan?”
    â€œSort of,” Reaper said from across the room. “Ricky saw one like it in that Hobbit movie, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Apparently, there’s a sword like it in some role-playing game he’s into with his friends.”
    As he was drying his face and hands on a wad of paper towels, Reaper walked over to where his friend was placing the sword in a long, wooden box. The shining blade, diamond-shaped and double edged, was thirty-six inches long with a simple blued-steel cross guard. The round disc pommel was also blue steel and secured an eight-inch grip that was covered with twisted steel wire. The pattern of the wire seemed to almost flow in an optical illusion as you kept looking at it.
    â€œHopefully, he’ll like it,” Reaper said as he tossed the wad of towels in a trash can. He looked with a