and Confederate flags and cookies. And some of those didn’t even have a booth.

They were simply walking around with sandwich board signs inked with what they

had to sell.

 

When the space in front of a particular seller cleared, Rogers walked over and

looked at a pistol in its original packaging. The seller was a big flabby man in

his forties wearing a camo shirt, jeans, and combat boots.

 

He eyed Rogers. “Beauty, ain’t it?” Rogers looked over the pistol. He said,

“M11. Military use only.” The seller smiled and put out his hand. “Name’s Mike

Donohue, and I can tell you wore the uniform at some point if you know about the

vaunted M11.” Rogers shook the man’s hand, careful to avoid squeezing it too

tightly.

 

Donohue took out the gun and held it up. “Collector’s item.

 

Explains the price.” “Why a collector’s item?” “Some time back the Air Force

ordered a bunch of M11s but ended up not taking fifty of them. By contract Sig

couldn’t sell the M11 to civilians, like you said. But Sig Sauer could get a

grand for each, and that was fifty thou potentially down the toilet, so they had

incentive to get around that somehow. Then somebody had the genius idea that if

you added another letter to the model number it would no longer technically be

an M11, right? The A had already been taken for another M11 model, the M11-A1,

so this became the M11-B.” He handed the gun to Rogers and pointed out the

letter. “Sig had it reengraved. You can see the B right there. And voilà, a