We’re in one of the warehouses owned by the Cutters—the small one way the hell and gone out east of Lake Meridian—loading crates of Czech assault rifles into the back of a GMC Bulldog truck for transshipment to points south. I’m not supposed to know the rifles’ final destination, but I make it my business to know what I’m not supposed to. Call it fragging survival. So, anyway, this shipment’s earmarked for some hotheads down in Sioux Nation who apparently have some minor bitch with the local government that they think only high-velocity ammunition will solve. Just the kind of drek that’s business as usual for the Cutters. And, as far as I can figure, it always has been, even from their early days as just a local gang in Los Angeles back eighty years or so. The Cutters don’t do high-volume in the arms biz (you want to outfit an army, you go see the Mafia, the yaks, or some friendly government), but they do pride themselves on quality. Take the crated assault rifles that are doing such a number on my lower back: top quality vz 88Vs that fell off the back of a truck in Brno, or some fragging place, and somehow found their way to 144th Avenue Southeast. Of course, the Cutters are into hundreds of other kinds of biz as well—from drugs and chips to kidnapping and extortion to (I drek you not) freelance security work for the occasional corp. And that, of course, is why I am where I am.