James Gordon thought he might be hallucinating.
He stood before a conspicuously thick, reinforced metal door on the second basement level of the Eastern District Precinct's new building, watching Li Jie pull a ring of keys from his pocket and slip one into the lock. With the heavy grinding of its mechanism, the door slowly swung inward.
"Come on, Jim. Let me show you something fun." Li Jie went in first and flicked the switch on the wall.
In an instant, stark white fluorescent tubes lit up one after another, illuminating the space beyond the door in stages like stage spotlights. Gordon instinctively narrowed his eyes. When he finally made out the sight before him, his breath caught, and every complaint on the tip of his tongue was forcibly swallowed.
Rather than an equipment room, it was more like a small warehouse. It was far larger than Gordon had imagined, taking up almost half the floor. The cold, forbidding smell of gun oil and rustproof paper reached his nose, jolting him to attention.
Dark green wooden crates were stacked in neat rows almost to the ceiling. They were made of thick planks with metal-reinforced corners, stenciled with indistinct Slavic letters and serial numbers. Some still bore faded packing lists.
They were piled like bricks into imposing walls.
In the open space at the center of the room, several crates had been pried open, revealing yellowish objects wrapped in oiled rustproof paper. Those familiar curved magazines, the signature stamped receivers, those distinctive integral front sight blocks... Gordon could have identified them by touch with his eyes closed.
"AK-74s..."
He murmured to himself and instinctively took a step forward, his gaze sweeping over the open crates. Inside lay neatly arranged rifles, their cold steel gleaming darkly. These few open crates alone probably