Chapter 43: The Grand Shopping Spree

"Seriously, if it weren't for the 'Boss' connection, I wouldn't dare let the border patrol people in."

"Ghost Wolf" sat behind the counter in the massive gun store showroom, wearing a faded indigo denim shirt with the collar hanging loosely open.

Milton glanced at the black-and-green tattoo on his chest, then swept his eyes over the goods in the showroom, frowning. "Just these?"

The guns in the showroom looked intimidating enough, but in Milton's eyes, they were basically a pile of scrap metal.

There was a Carl P9 women's pistol that looked somewhat like a Glock 17 at first glance, but upon closer inspection, it was noticeably a size smaller.

There was also a sawed-off Remington 870 with the choke replaced by a welded piece of iron; Milton seriously doubted this thing would survive firing without exploding.

In the showroom beneath Ghost Wolf sat a decent-looking AK-47, but upon closer inspection, it had neither a milled nor a stamped receiver, but a welded one; the feeding port was unchamfered; and the wooden stock looked like it had been sawed off an old piece of furniture.

This was obviously a handmade imitation crafted from God knows where.

The black market sold this kind of junk?

Ghost Wolf grinned, releasing foul breath from his mouth. "You can speak up completely, not even God can hear who you're planning to kill here... There's more than just this in the shop, but these sell the best and make the most money, which is why I put them in the most prominent spots."

Milton asked with clear disgust, "Do people actually buy this junk? To be polite, at least 20% of these guns of yours would have trouble even firing."

"Of course people buy them," the store owner Ghost Wolf laughed heartily. "First of all, the vast majority of people here buy a gun just for self-defense, to scare people. As long as it scares people away, that's enough; it doesn't need to fire. Secondly, these guns are very cheap... Mr. 'Hell's Taxman', do you know how wonderful and tempting the word 'cheap' is?"

The vast majority of people here made 12,000 Quetzals a year, equivalent to $1,500. With an income of $4 a day, how could they afford a good gun?

Poor people had poor people's needs, and this place was crawling with poor people, so the gun store owner naturally had to find a way to cater to them.

Not only did people buy bad and broken guns, but quite a few people bought them.

Wealth was hard to imagine, but sometimes, poverty was even harder to imagine than wealth.

Even though he had lived in this country for some time, Milton's habitual thinking prevented him from going down that train of thought for a moment.

Milton was stunned for a moment, then shook his head slightly. "You know I can't possibly want these things. Bring out your real good stuff."

Ghost Wolf nodded. "Alright, then what do you want?"

"What do you have?"

Ghost Wolf sighed. "I can't possibly list my inventory for you. Just tell me what you want, as long as it's not heavy weapons. Rocket launchers and recoilless rifles are on the way, but for anything else you name, even if I don't have it, there's a high probability I can get you something similar."

Oh, quite a bold statement?

Milton sneered, preparing to put Ghost Wolf in his place. "Fine then, I want a night vision device, an M224 mortar, 30 rounds of M720 shells; a PKM general-purpose machine gun, five 100-round full ammunition belts with B-23 armor-piercing incendiary rounds; an M24 sniper rifle with any Leupold Mark 4 scope, and you can throw in a bipod and silencer as you see fit."

Ghost Wolf was dazed for a second, then overjoyed, his voice even turning a bit flattering. "You really want them?! Wait for me, I'll go carry them over for you right now, and I guarantee they're all over 80% new!"

Milton was also dazed for a second. "You actually have them?"

"Of course I do. Even though big clients are scarce, I can't ignore their demands either. It's just that piling such high-value goods in the warehouse really hurts my cash flow," store owner Ghost Wolf said as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Let me ask again, are you sure you want them?"

Milton took a deep breath. "Bring them out for me to look at first."

"You got it! Sit here for a moment, Danny, come with me to haul the goods, and Ruul, hurry up and get Mr. 'Hell's Taxman' a glass of water—clean water!"

Ghost Wolf scurried excitedly into the warehouse and before long pushed a cart out with his assistant.

"It's all right here. Care to check?"

Milton suppressed the look of astonishment on his face and briefly inspected the gear. They really were quite new!

Especially the PKM; Milton couldn't bear to look away from it.

The PKM—the best general-purpose machine gun in the world, bar none!

The weight of a squad automatic weapon with the firepower of a company machine gun, heavily utilizing stamped parts with a simple structure and extreme reliability, capable of being used in all kinds of extremely harsh environments with a very low failure rate, its versatility unmatched by any similar firearm.

It had a god-tier feeding mechanism. To a certain extent, even if the bullets in the belt weren't fully seated or the tails of the ammunition belt were ragged, as long as it wasn't too outrageous, feeding failures wouldn't occur!

The entire gun had harmonious and beautiful proportions, possessing a Soviet-style aesthetic.

The 7.62x54R ammunition it used was also more powerful than 7.62x51mm NATO rounds.

It was three tiers better than industrial garbage like the M60, which suffered from the dual major flaws of pulling the trigger and nothing happening, and releasing the trigger only for it not to stop firing.

Moreover, once he had a real machine gun, his own standard-issue FN FAL could be freed up to be used as a designated marksman rifle.

Putting on a reluctant act as if he were just making do, Milton spoke unenthusiastically, "Acceptable. Name your price."

"AN/PVS-4 night vision device, 20,000 each. I mean USD. I have two of these in total. If you take the bundle, I'll give you a slight discount and throw in a pair of helmet mounts and 10 batteries. These are good stuff left over from the Gulf War, they're worth this price!"

Milton checked his system panel, and unsurprisingly, they were smuggled goods, though similar accessories were only classified as Tier 2 contraband...

On the panel, the price of this night vision device was displayed as $12,000—the panel didn't display military procurement prices but local market prices, so this was the normal black market selling price.

Well, aren't you a profiteer, ripping me off this hard?

"This kind of monocular night vision device is at most $12,000 each," Milton said without hesitation. "Don't kid me, I know you still make a profit selling them at 10,000."

The smile on Ghost Wolf's face stiffened—uh-oh, he ran into someone who knew their stuff.

The other party directly slashed the price down to market value in one sentence, which meant they definitely knew the pricing.

He coughed awkwardly and continued to enthusiastically pitch the other merchandise: "The PKM general-purpose machine gun and bullets—look at the legs of this Soviet girl... ahem, the gun is easy. But the armor-piercing incendiary rounds you want aren't cheap, they're $12 a round, and I'll throw in the ammo box for free. Added together, it's a total of $16,000."

Milton sneered, "Go rob a bank. This isn't even legally imported merchandise; how could Soviet-made weapons be that expensive nowadays? The bullets are at most $8 a round, and taking the whole lot is fourteen thousand at most. Or you can keep selling at this price and let the bullets rot in your warehouse."

"...How come you feel a bit like a Chinaman I once met?" Ghost Wolf could indeed make a profit at this price, but he hadn't expected Milton to slash it so precisely. "Every time you haggle, you manage to hit my bottom line right on the head? Alright, alright."

Seeing that Milton truly knew his stuff, Ghost Wolf stopped trying to rip him off in his subsequent quotes.

"The M24 is new stuff; it has to be smuggled from a US military base. 18,000 per piece, including 2 magazines. I really can't go any lower on this one. Including accessories, that's a total of $23,000."

"As for the M224 mortar, you know, it's company-level support weaponry, hard to get. $28,000 each, M720 high-explosive rounds at $400 a piece, the mortar and shells together total 40,000, and I'll throw in 3 original US military firing tables for free."

"If you want 2 night vision devices, the bundle for all this is... uh, how much was it again? Let me calculate..."

Milton blurted out subconsciously, "$101,000."

The gun store owner finished pressing the buttons on his calculator and looked somewhat startled. "Huh? It really is $101,000... Are taxmen this good at math? Well, forget the $1,000, let's call it an even 100,000. Take the whole lot, what do you say? Can you accept that?"

100,000... Milton only had a little over 80,000 in liquid funds on hand. Unless he squeezed the funds used to maintain the underground bunker and his emergency reserves dry, there was still a 20,000 shortfall.

However, trading with Red Points was also a terrible deal; for example, this mortar actually cost 150,000 points!

Points couldn't be spent recklessly; he was still waiting to redeem armored vehicles later on!

Milton was tempted, true, but he was broke, so nothing could be done.

Forget it... He didn't need a mortar right now anyway.

"I don't have that much money. Skip the mortar, and give me the rest."

"Alright..." Ghost Wolf looked slightly disappointed, but an order worth 60,000 wasn't bad either. "I'll have someone deliver it to..."

"Wait!" Brandon, standing behind them, saw that Milton actually really wanted the mortar. He reached out and grabbed Milton, looking up to say to Ghost Wolf, "We'll take that mortar and the shells."

Milton quickly told the rumor-loving guy to shut up: "Stop talking nonsense. We can only scrape together 80,000 right now, and the remaining 20,000 has to be kept in reserve."

"I still have over 20,000 on me, Boss, did you forget?" Brandon endured the pangs of financial pain, flashed a smile, and patted Milton's shoulder. "After all, these weapons are for our own lives too. How can we let you pay for everything alone?"