Testing the Guns

Lin An had no intention of personally getting involved in Allen's arms deal. The Bullet Screen viewers were very disappointed; they really wanted to see how the weapons transaction would go down.

But Lin An wasn't interested. He had plenty of reasons for not wanting to get involved, and the most important one was that it would be boring.

Allen's deal with his friend was scheduled for the evening. So after talking with Lin An, Allen took the money and guns, got into the car Catherine was driving, and set off.

[Those two are going by themselves? One man and one woman. I'm worried they'll run off with the money.]

[Exactly, exactly.]

[All right, quit with the snide remarks. If you're really worried, open another camera feed and control a Crow to follow them.]

[Yeah, we've still got Crows. Big shots with points, get moving and let us benefit, too. Let's see how Allen handles the arms deal.]

[What if they get robbed? At least we'll know right away and can tell the streamer to go save them.]

The Bullet Screen viewers were making dire predictions, but the worst-case scenario never came to pass. Around eight that evening, Allen and Catherine drove back to the abandoned factory district. Then they walked through the alleyways and slipped back to the furniture factory hideout.

"Darnell, go bring the stuff upstairs."

After Darnell went downstairs, his footsteps thudded across the iron staircase, sending a series of muffled echoes through the building. Then came the sound of the ground-floor iron door opening and closing.

[Five thousand dollars, and he just handed it over like that. The streamer's got nerves of steel.]

[So boring. A cripple and a mom with a kid went to buy guns, and nothing happened.]

[Hey, that's a nasty thing to say.]

[Allen's an honest guy, and the person selling the guns was honest, too. I can't believe it. Nothing exciting to watch.]

Lin An glanced at the Bullet Screen and felt a little speechless. It was unclear whether he had a mental illness, but the viewers posting those comments definitely had something wrong with them.

Darnell and Allen's low voices came from downstairs, followed by the sound of three people climbing the stairs.

The three of them carried the weapons up to the second floor.

Darnell was in front, carrying an AK. He barged in with swagger, like a Ni Ge robber about to hold up a bank. He also carried a duffel bag in his left hand, which rustled as he moved.

Catherine followed behind him, carrying a canvas bag in each hand. The young mother struggled a little as she walked.

Allen came last. Though he leaned on two crutches and had difficulty moving, his back stayed straight.

Old Joe had rearranged the second floor.

The room that had once been piled with trash had been cleared out. A homemade wooden door separated the entrance and was locked shut. A few simple folding stools and a folding table donated by a Bullet Screen viewer turned the room into a meeting room.

Lin An was already inside. He had moved the folding table to the center of the room and spread the neatly cut piece of cardboard across it. An LED light hung from a steel beam overhead, turned up to full brightness and casting a stark white glare over the tabletop.

Darnell leaned the AK against the table. Its stock struck the cardboard with a heavy thud.

He set the duffel bag beside his feet, and Catherine placed her canvas bags beside it.

Then she stepped back and stood by the door with Allen.

Lin An drew his gaze back from the two of them and looked at the weapons on the table.

"Did the deal go smoothly?"

Allen nodded.

"The other guy was a friend of a friend."

Lin An rested his hand on the edge of the table, his fingertips tapping it once without thinking.

"How much of the five thousand did you spend?"

"Three thousand one hundred on guns and ammunition," Allen said.

"One AK for eighteen hundred, five hundred rifle rounds for two hundred, two M9s for five hundred, two hundred pistol rounds for a hundred, and ten grenades for five hundred."

He paused for a second.

"Nineteen hundred left."

Lin An looked into his eyes and waited a moment.

"No other expenses?"

Allen shook his head.

Lin An watched him shake his head and scratched his own.

To be honest, Lin An hadn't initially thought Allen was a good person. Though he looked miserable, with a broken leg that had left him disabled, Lin An had considered his military service and instinctively regarded him as an executioner.

Unlike the American military in World War II, the modern U.S. military was a massive mercenary force made up of thugs and murderers, fighting for money rather than honor. Lin An didn't want to list examples. In any case, he hadn't trusted Allen at first. He had offered him money and made promises just to buy his loyalty and get him to work for him temporarily, purchasing weapons.

He hadn't expected that the money—which had been meant for Allen in the first place—would go almost entirely unspent.

Allen had bought equipment for $3,100 and brought back the remaining $1,900, placing it on the table in front of Lin An.

Lin An didn't know what to make of Allen. He decided to keep observing him.

"Keep it," he said.

"It's your bonus, along with this month's wages."

Allen's gray-blue eyes shifted.

"Boss..."

"You're in charge of the security team," Lin An said.

He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out a wad of bills bound with a rubber band. U.S. dollars, mostly twenties and fifties, compressed into a thick bundle with the rubber band pulled tight.

He placed the bundle on the table and pushed it toward Allen.

"There's ten thousand here," he said.

"If you can find people selling weapons and ammunition, buy whatever seems appropriate. I need all kinds of weapons. Some of this money is also for the security team, and the weapons you buy later can be used to equip them."

He paused.

"Come back and talk to me when the money runs out."

Allen didn't look at the money. He looked at Lin An and saluted.

"Yes, Boss," he said.

"Anything else?"

"Nothing to report."

"Then you and Catherine can go get some rest," Lin An said.

Allen put the money away, turned, and limped out with Catherine.

"Bro, do you really trust that white... Allen?"

"Trust him?"

Lin An smiled.

"That's a luxury."

"Then why give him the money?"

Darnell was confused. Ten thousand dollars was no small sum. An ordinary blue-collar worker, like a driver, would need to work for half a year to save that much after essential taxes and expenses.

And that was assuming he didn't eat, drink, or spend money on anything else.

Still, as much as it sounded like, the money would only buy a decent car and two guns in the Jamaica Community, then pay two cannon fodder to run errands for a month.

"Bro, you should've given that ten grand to me..."

"If you need money, I can give you as much as you want... But I won't give you that ten thousand. This is a test."

Lin An turned his gaze to Darnell, the black guy who looked older than he was. Lin An didn't like people of color, but Darnell was the one exception.

"Do you want me to test you?"

"Uh."

Darnell didn't know what a test meant, but he sensed it wouldn't be anything good, so he immediately shook his head and waved his hands.

"No, no... Actually, I'm not the kind of Ni Ge who talks about money..."

Lin An looked away from Darnell and at the AK on the table.

The Bullet Screen began to scroll.

[Streamer, take the gun apart and check its condition. Don't just take his word for it. See if it's worth eighteen hundred bucks.]

[Streamer, can you take apart an AK?]

[If you can't, you can learn. The Bullet Screen will teach you.]

[First, remove the magazine, then pull back the bolt to check that there's no round in the chamber.]

[That's step one. No matter who hands you a gun, check the chamber first.]

Lin An reached for the AK and picked it up.

His first impression of the assault rifle was that it was rough.

Its finish was iron gray or dark brown. The grip, the edge of the ejection port, and the selector switch showed patches of bare silver-white steel, marked with fine scratches.

The edges of the wooden handguard had been worn smooth and shiny, and the surface was covered with countless tiny scratches and dents. The moment he laid a hand on it, he could feel its uneven texture.

[First, remove the magazine. The catch is in front of the trigger guard. Just push it with your thumb.]

Lin An did as instructed. The steel magazine slid out of the magazine well, its weight pressing into his hand.

[Check the bolt. Pull it back and take a look.]

Following the Bullet Screen's directions, Lin An found the charging handle on the right side of the receiver. He pinched it between his index and middle fingers and pulled it back.

The bolt slid through the receiver with a dry, crisp clack, exposing the chamber.

Lin An brought his eye close and saw that there was no round inside.

When he let go, the bolt slid forward on its own with a slightly louder sound than it had made when he pulled it back.

[Good. From the sound, the recoil spring's got a problem.]

[Now check the receiver cover. An AK's receiver cover can be removed. There's a catch at the back; press it down and push it back.]

Lin An turned the gun over and found a square metal tab at the back of the receiver cover. He pressed it with his thumb.

It was tight. The spring tension was much stronger than he'd expected. By the time he pushed his thumb all the way down, his fingertip had gone white, but he still couldn't move it.

Lin An had to tuck the stock under his arm, change his angle, and press down hard with his thumb...

Lin An took his time taking the gun apart, and the process was difficult. Even Darnell, who knew just as little about guns, could tell that his bro seemed to have all the theory down but was handling a gun for the first time. He knew the assault rifle's design very well, but his movements were clumsy.

Still, despite the struggle, he managed to remove the receiver cover and take out the recoil spring and bolt carrier. He found a ring of dark carbon deposits inside the gas tube and concluded that the barrel had about sixty percent of its service life remaining and that its accuracy at a hundred yards was fine.

[Wait, streamer, turn the gun over and look at the left side of the receiver, above the magazine catch. Something's off.]

[What's off?]

[This gun doesn't look like an AK-47.]

[?]

Lin An was in the middle of putting the gun back together when he stopped, turned it over, and faced the left side of the receiver upward.

Above the magazine catch, he felt an irregular indentation in the surface of the receiver. His finger could make out several small metal points protruding slightly from the surrounding surface.

"There are a few little raised points."

[Confirmed. This is a Type 56, China's copy of the AK-47. Judging by the elm stock and handguard, it should be an early Type 56.]

[Wait, what's the difference between a Type 56 and an AK-47?]

"The Type 56's receiver is milled, while the AK-47's is stamped."

[Also, the Type 56's front sight is enclosed, while the AK's is open. There's an easier way to tell: check the bayonet lug. The Type 56 came standard with a folding triangular bayonet welded beneath the barrel. You can't remove it.]

[This gun doesn't have a triangular bayonet.]

After reading the Bullet Screen, Lin An turned the gun over and checked beneath the barrel.

He hadn't noticed it before, but now he saw a piece of cut metal at the front of the handguard, underneath the barrel.

[Now we're a hundred percent sure it's a Type 56. The triangular bayonet was forcibly cut off here.]

[Why would they take it off?]

[It wasn't necessarily done on purpose. Judging by the gun's condition, it was probably captured by an American soldier on the battlefield. Captured weapons often have damage. The bayonet probably broke, so the soldier who got it simply used a grinder to cut it off.]

[So is this gun good or bad? How does it compare with a real AK-47?]

[It depends. The first-generation Type 56 was better than the AK-47 Type 3 it was based on, thanks to China's dedication to precision manufacturing. Judging by the wooden stock and handguard on the streamer's Type 56, it's clearly a first-generation model.]

[Later, they started making Type 56s with plastic parts and skimped on materials, so the quality fell a little short of the AK-47. But that means it was worse than the genuine Soviet-made AK-47, not the knockoffs from countries like Romania, Poland, or Bulgaria.]

[The AK-47s made by those countries may be cheap, but they're not actually as good as the plastic Type 56. You could say most of the AK-47s still around today are Type 56s. The AK-47's reputation for being cheap and reliable was mostly propped up by the Type 56.]

[Genuine Soviet-made AK-47s weren't especially cheap to produce. It was only after the country collapsed and began dumping them on the market, combined with the Type 56's influence, that people got the impression AKs were dirt cheap.]

As he watched the Bullet Screen, Lin An handled the Type 56 assault rifle, reluctant to put it down.

[So, was eighteen hundred dollars a good price for a Type 56?]

[Not in China. In the United States... yeah.]

After playing with it for a while, he put it down. Without loading it, he had practiced the movements of using the Type 56 in combat, then picked up the other two guns to inspect them.

The M9 Beretta military pistol needed little explanation. It had officially entered service in 1987. The early models had a major flaw: there was a chance they would explode when fired, blasting the shooter in the face. Later revisions addressed that, but the gun still had plenty of problems.

Its advantages were a decent capacity, with a double-stack fifteen-round magazine, and good handling and accuracy. Its drawback was a somewhat large grip. When Lin An aimed it, he felt it was less comfortable than a Glock.

After briefly checking the chambers and barrels of the two Berettas, he found plenty of signs of use, as expected. Still, their previous owner had taken decent care of them and kept them well-maintained.

Overall, Lin An thought the two military pistols were usable. Whether they were any good would depend on how they performed in actual combat.