Mario looked hurt and let loose of the stock.
Canidy held up the gun to the light from the bare bulb. He looked it over, then read the stamping on the receiver. “Yeah, just what I thought.”
He looked at Fulmar, then handed him the gun. “Ever see one of these?”
“A Johnny gun, no?”
Canidy nodded. “A Johnson model 1941 light machine gun, chambered for thirty-ought-six Springfield. They’re rare.”
“And they’re a helluva weapon. They had the semiauto rifle version at the range in Virginia. Next to the Thompsons. I think the range master said that the LMG in full auto puts out four hundred and fifty rounds a minute. Reliably. Open bolt, no jams.”
The range in Virginia was at an estate that the OSS used as its agent training facilities. They called it “The Farm.” It essentially was an intense boot camp—one where all the agents in training went by their first name and only their first name—complete with instruction in all types of explosives and weaponry, domestic and foreign. The gun range had a wide range of pistols and rifles, anything the OSS could get its hands on from the field so that agents would have some familiarity in their use should they find themselves left with only, say, a German Mauser or British Sten to defend themselves.
“Johnny gun” was a word play on “Tommy gun,” the nickname for the storied Thompson .45 caliber submachine gun.
“They said the LMG was in short supply,” Fulmar finished, handing the gun back to Canidy.
Canidy pulled the twenty-round box magazine from its mount in the left side of the receiver, checked the action to ensure that a round wasn’t chambered, then handed the gun to Mario. He inspected the magazine and then tossed that to him.
“Do us a favor, Mario. Leave it unloaded till we leave, okay?”
Mario squinted his eyes to show his disapproval.
“Do as he says,” Nola added.
Mario nodded, then walked with the gun to the grimy couch on the far side of the office and took a seat, laying the weapon across his knees.
Canidy turned to Nola.
“Reason I asked where you got that,” he said evenly, “is that they are in short supply, and the ones available were supposed to go to the Marines.”
That’s one reason. Another is: I’d like to get my hands on one for myself.
“No,” Nola said, “that one came from a crate that was supposed to go to the Netherlands.”
Canidy’s eyes lit up.
“Really?”
He looked at Fulmar.
“Story I heard was that there was a real pissing match over the Johnny gun even being considered to take the place of the BAR,” Canidy explained.
The beloved Browning automatic rifle was the U.S.’s primary automatic weapon, tough as nails and reliable as hell. In many minds it had no peer, and never would, and when Boston attorney—and Marine Corps reserve officer—Melvin Maynard Johnson Jr. designed and built the first generation of the Johnny gun—a semiautomatic rifle that he felt was superior to the new M1 Garand—his battle for it to be adopted was straight uphill. In the eyes of the U.S. Army Ordnance Department, the Johnson had all the chance of being military issue that a Red Ryder BB gun or a slingshot did.
Johnson did get his M1941 LMG into the hands of some Marine Raiders. And the Marine’s First Parachute Battalion came to prefer the weapon because it weighed only twelve pounds (the BAR was a hefty twenty), and because its buttstock and barrel were designed to be quickly removed and replaced, allowing for more compact packing and easier servicing in the field.
“Then,” Canidy went on, “some Marines praised its performance in the Solomons and ’Canal—more than one swearing it beat the BAR hands down, especially in the jungles—and the Dutch got wind of that and ordered a bunch for their colonial troops in the East Indies.”
“But the Japs took the islands,” Fulmar said.
“Right. And after they did, the U.S. embargoed the weapons that had come out of the Rhode Island factory and not yet shipped. So at that point no one was getting them, except now…”
Canidy looked at Nola.
“Would I be guessing wrong if I said that friends of Socks peddled this one?”
Nola did not have to say anything. The answer was on his face.