This Must Be The Place and Other Stories

When It Comes True 🏆

"Two," Clyde said and slid the cards he didn't want across to Bobcat. Bobcat tucked the cards back into the stack and fast-flipped Clyde two new ones, one of which nearly went sailing off the slick table top before Clyde managed to slam his hand down on it.

"Good reflexes."

"That could've landed in some beer and then what would've happened?"

"We'd have ended up outside with you attempting to punch my pretty face in and me not letting you."

Clyde snorted and arranged the cards in his hand. Bobcat looked at John Boy, the third man at the table in the back of the honkytonk bar, and raised an eyebrow.

"Three," John Boy said, sliding his cards over and getting three back. Bobcat contemplated his own splay of cards, toothpick wandering from one corner of his mouth to the other, before he dealt himself one.

Clyde was too keyed up to concentrate on his hand. The twangy country music playing over the bar's sound system grated his nerves and he didn't like the way the bartender stood staring into space as he polished glasses on slo-mo.

Like he was a zombie.

Or a Fed.

"Calm down," Bobcat said, not raising his eyes from his cards.

"I am calm," Clyde said, pushing two peanuts into the centre of the table from the pile next to his soft drink. "If I were any calmer, you'd have to check me for a pulse."

John Boy giggled and added his two peanuts to the kitty.

Bobcat flicked in his two and said "You don't believe he really has it then?"

"I believe he can get his hands on it, is what I believe. Beyond that...." Clyde shrugged. Under the table, he tapped his worn cowboy boot against the carrier bag to reassure himself that the twenty thousand dollars was exactly where it was supposed to be.

Twenty thousand.

Clyde shook his head. And that was just the rental price, the stranger on the phone had said. Thirty grand more for his time and effort, payable up front and in used bills.

And that for only two days use. Tops.

Clyde had almost hung up on him. Who did the stupid punk think he was, making absurd demands like that?

Someone with access to an experimental military-grade drone fitted with photon positioning and nanoparticle detection, that's who.

Clyde had heard rumours. The Pentagon was fed up with having to publicly say whoops, our bad every time they blew up some third-world shepherd's wedding party in the mistaken assumption that it was an ad hoc terrorist camp.

How embarrassing.

That's why they'd been all too willing to pour billions into the development of a sexy piece of tech no bigger than your hand that was so sensitive, it could detect if highly specific elements were present at a site or not.

Like cake, presumably.

And this guy was offering him the opportunity to get his hands on it before even the military did.

For fifty thousand.

"Perfect for what you have in mind," the voice on the other end of the line had said.

"How do you know what I have in mind?" Clyde had answered, peering through the curtains of his hotel room at the strip mall on the other side of the road and the distant peaks of the Sierra Madre beyond.

It would be perfect, he admitted to himself, if it could detect the exact location of four-hundred-year old timbers, rusted-out muskets and a mega-ton of gold bars.