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.