Green Desert - Chapter 4.3.5 - Umo

I turned my car into a temple parking lot, Lango following behind in the brown Sonla. Only one other car was in the lot, over by the temple entrance. I parked thirty meters away, which was all the further the size of the lot allowed. I backed in, my rear bumper almost touching a hedgerow. Lango did the same, parking beside me.

I popped the trunk and got out. Lango stood up on the other side of the vehicle and smarmed, “Let’s see what we got here.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose under my sunglasses and went to the trunks. I flipped open the lid of our mostly-empty trunk and stepped over to the Sonla. Lango raised the trunk lid.

Two cardboard boxes, folded shut, about a half-meter cube each.

“I didn’t think automatic rifles came that small.”

I removed my sunglasses, put them in my shirt pocket, and replied, “Shut up or I may have to kill you.”

Lango whined, “Gods. It was just a joke.”

I opened a box. Unlabeled packets of seeds. Trowels and similar gardening tools. Various-sized pots. Lango opened the other box, tearing the cardboard. Bags of potting soil. This had to be a joke. A hideous joke.

Lango pulled the police report out of his pocket, checked the license plate. “It’s the right plate, and the description matches. But the delivery isn’t here.”

Zhíno Zhudırı had tricked us. He’d taken the guns and explosives and disappeared. He tricked us.

I did not like being tricked.