She also carried a thick case which held Carl’s two black-powder 1858 Remington Beale’s pistols she’d kept in the vault, the heavy .44 caliber pistols Carl had carried during re-enactments of Gettysburg and First Manassas and the Wilderness campaigns, the ones he’d taught her to use, after he’d won that action-shooting match in up-state New York last month. The ones her father would’ve exploded over, had he known Jenna was keeping them in her bank box. Armstrong eyed the heavy pistols silently, that glance neither approving nor disapproving, merely calculating. “Do you have ammo for those?”
Jenna nodded. “In the bottom of the gun case.”
“Good. We’ll have to ditch this modern stuff before we enter TT-86. I’d just as soon be armed with something. How do you load them?”
Wordlessly, Jenna began loading the reproduction antique guns, but Noah’s steel-cold voice stopped her. “Not yet.”
“Why not?” Jenna demanded shrilly. “Just because it’s illegal? My own father wrote those laws, dammit! It didn’t stop . . .” Her voice shattered.
Noah Armstrong’s voice went incredibly gentle. “No, that isn’t it. We just won’t be able to take loaded guns through TT-86’s security scans. We can take them through as costume accessories, but not loaded and ready to fire. Tell me how to load them, and we’ll do that the second we’re on station.”
Jenna had to steady down her thoughts enough to explain how to pour black powder into each cylinder and pull down the loading lever to seat bullets, rather than more traditional round balls, in each chamber of the cylinder, how to wipe grease across the openings to prevent flame from setting off the powder in adjoining chambers, how to place percussion caps . . . The necessity to think coherently helped draw her back from raw, shaking terror.