I have moved millions of dollars worth of merchandise, all of it illegal and dangerous, but I had never moved something as big as the velvet gloves before. It arrived the way of most of my merchandise, in the back of semi truck late at night. I waited for the shipment standing in the freezing cold waiting for the truck to arrive. At least I got to be inside the warehouse and out of the snow. Too bad there was no heating unit in the place. It was a half hour late, another ten minutes and I would have assumed the law had gotten on to us and fled the building. The battered truck rolled up, the diesel engine spitting out noxious fumes and making way more noise than I wished.

I gave the driver a glowering look that would have boiled an egg right in its shell. I motioned for him to back the truck up to the loading bay and motioned for the forklift guy to get ready. No one wanted to be out here in the cold unloading goods that could cost you five to seven years; if it was your first time getting caught. No one took to kindly to gun runners these days, tougher laws were meant to keep me and my kind behind bars longer. Of course we learned our trade and made our connections in prison. Most of us didn’t start off as smugglers, we started off as petty crooks who got caught, sent to prison and learned a new trade. You have to love a system that rehabilitates you from one crime and educates for a new profession.

The truck smacked back into the rubber padding and came to a stop. I took a key that had been mailed to me a week earlier that fit the lock. Walking briskly I approached the door and and put the key into the lock. I hesitated prior to turning the key, McPherson had not said what the contents of the truck were, only that he needed to get them out of his warehouse and somewhere safe for a few weeks. I wasn’t so much worried about the law, I was worried about the cargo being dangerous to me. McPherson had never endangered me yet, so I unlocked the lock and flung the door up. I shone a flashlight into the dim interior of the truck and saw four long pallets loaded in. Somehow I expected a larger cargo to come. I walked over and inspected the first pallet, it was a little over twelve feet long and five feet tall. The markings identified it as Canadian.

I moved aside and signaled to the forklift to bring them out. Canada wasn’t known for it’s biological warfare, so I figured I was safe, at least for the moment. I went around the outside of the truck to talk with the driver. “You tell McPherson that he owes me and that he has three weeks to come and get these back out of my warehouse or I am selling them to the highest bidder.” The driver smiled and then nodded. I think he wanted to laugh at me, maybe he saw through my tough guy act. McPherson could have buried me, his operation was ten times the size and a hundred times better connected. When the pallets had been moved he drove off without even waiting for me to close the back of the truck up. Four days later McPherson was arrested. No one came for the pallets.

I waited the prerequisite three weeks, even though I knew no one was coming. McPherson’s operation was filled with Feds, who were going to throw the book at him, make an example of him. At first I was worried that maybe they had gotten wind of him transferring the cargo to me, but no Feds came knocking at my door so I assumed I was in the clear. I thought I could still come out ahead on this, I just had to sell the package McPherson’s boy had brought that cold night. We went down to the warehouse to pop those pallets open and see what hidden treasure was inside.

We cracked the first one open, lifted the lid off and studied the case inside. There was both English and French writing covering the case, which should have made it easier for us to figure out what was inside. I was not familiar with Canadian Military anachronisms though, nor with their hardware. I could not make heads or tails of the various lettering and numbering printed all over the thing. Whatever it was each pallet contained two boxes, each at least eleven feet long and four feet high. Growing impatient I popped the banding off of one and opened the case up. As I looked inside you could have knocked me over with a feather.

Inside was a missile, not a little one, a big one. I looked over at the two guys I had with me opening and closing my mouth like a fish out of water. They both craned their necks to get a good look at the thing themselves. Puzzled they looked at me and asked who we were going to sell a bunch of missiles to? I suddenly knew what they truck driver had found amusing, we had no market for these, just as McPherson had no one he could off load them on before he was arrested. He didn’t want them back, he wanted to bury them with some two bit smuggler who couldn’t get rid of them either. When that guy gets out of jail I am going to launch one of them right into the front door of his house, that ought to be a good way to dispose of it.