“No worries, Jer,” said Grant. “Rick’s already bugged out, and the only other crew is training with Boog down the mountain.”
“An’ they ain’t gonna come wandering up this way?”
“Booger knows we’re here,” said Martin. “He’ll keep the rest away. Most of them’ll be gone by the time we’re done as it is. You probably won’t even see them.”
I raised my hand. I had to know. The question had been bothering me ever since Rick first mentioned it. “Who’s Booger? And does he know you call him that?”
“Lieutenant Boog. The nickname’s sort of inevitable. He told us to call him that when we first met in Basic. Boog helps run things when I’m out,” said Grant.
“Unfortunate name.”
“Keeps it real, man. Guys like Boog? That’s who we’re fighting for. I’ll tell you about it sometime. But right now, we got shooting to do. All right. Jerry, you take the field glasses. Martin’s with you.”
Martin took the rifle from Jerry and led him over to the far side of the summit. Grant knelt down beside me.
“This isn’t so different from your run-of-the-mill sharpshooting, son, but there are a few things you’ve gotta know. Number one, you and I work as a team. You time your squeeze to your breathing. You breathe out and squeeze the trigger. Just sight in on your spot, breathe and squeeze.”
“But the targets are moving.”
“Ah, you do pick up quick. You don’t sight in on the target. You sight in on your spot: a point the target is passing. I’ll be studying the same point through the glasses. When the target passes your spot, I’ll say, ‘Now.’ But don’t squeeze the trigger unless you’re breathing out. At this range, the slightest jolt will throw you off target. When my ‘Now’ and your breathing happen at the same moment, you take your shot. But only when you’re breathing out. Clear?”
I nodded and bent forward, sighting through the scope. On the far hill, I found a small tree growing beside a rock, just on the other side of the reconfigured ski lift. “All set.”
“Where’re you looking?”
“There’s a large rock beside a small birch, about a third of the distance between ends of the thingy.”
“I see it. Time your breathing. Wait for my go.”
I started measuring my breaths, keeping my eye glued to the tree. A moment later something large and blurry passed by my field of vision.
“Now.”
I shrugged. “Missed it.”
“Don’t worry it. Just time your breaths.”
I blew out a long breath and sighted in on the target again. A moment later, I heard Grant say, “Now.”
I let out my breath and squeezed. The gun bucked. Through my scope, I watched the mannequin blow apart, leaving only the head and shredded torso suspended from the pole. The remains swung wildly in the air a moment before collapsing to the ground.
Had that been a man...
“Oh my God. I just blew him in half.”
“Good shot,” muttered Grant.
I turned and stared at him. “This is what you want to do to someone? To the President?”
Grant studied me silently. There was a loud crack from my left. Jerry yelled, “Whoo! You see that?” He grinned at us. “Martin just blew his frickin’ arm off.”
I shook my head.
“Cherry?”
I looked up.
“Don’t think about it. It’s just a target. Nothing more.”
I stared across the valley, watching the sunlight play over the snow patched earth. To the northwest, the mountains disappeared into a slate gray bank. A storm was coming.
“How—?”
“Don’t. I know what you’re thinking. I know what you’re going to say. You’re over processing it. You’ve got to rein that in, Cherry. It’s just a target. I want you to say that. Right now. It’s just a—”
“It’s just a target,” I breathed. “Just a target.” My voice trailed off. It wasn’t just a target, and I knew it. It was a man. A man who had a wife and children, and whose only crime that I could see was that he thought differently than we did.
And what was this country, if it wasn’t a place where people could think differently? Could agree to disagree? Was being a Marxist really a crime? Or had we only convinced ourselves of this, because our arguments against it failed?
No, that wasn’t entirely true. The arguments against Marxism were solid enough, and anyone who wanted to transform the American system into a Communist utopia was, at the least, not acting in the best interests of the country, and at the most, an enemy of the state.
I turned and looked across the valley to where I’d just blown a mannequin in half. Something Saint Paul once wrote trailed through my head. It was from the twelfth chapter of his letter to the Romans, I think. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.”
And if he disagrees with you, blow his frickin’ head off.
Somehow that didn’t seem to mesh with what I’d learned in Sunday School. More “Whoohoos” came from Jerry. I glanced at my brother and my friend. They were clearly in their element, thoroughly enjoying blasting away with the cannon at the string of make-believe people wandering harmlessly on a hillside a mile away.
Martin looked at me and grinned. “Come on, Petey! Think you can outshoot your older brother?”
Martin. He was why I was here. Somehow, I had to find a way to get him out of this.
Grant shifted his feet and kicked some dirt. “You gonna make me stand out here all day, Cherry, or you gonna start shooting?”
I seriously thought about telling him off, but it wouldn’t help me save Martin. I had to get them apart, get Martin away from Grant. And I couldn’t do that here. If I left now, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else. I had to stay.
I lay down again, sighting in on my tree, waiting for the next victim to wander into view.
I had no other choice.
***
Later, after we’d blasted through the remains of the mannequins, Grant and Jerry headed over to the far hillside to reset the gallery while Martin taught me how to field strip the weapon.
“In case you have any problems,” he explained.
“D’you mind if I ask you a question?” I said as we worked.
“Shoot.”
“It’s about this whole thing. Shooting the President. You really think it’s necessary?”
Martin didn’t even bother to look up. “Hell, Peter. How many times do we hafta go over this? There is no other way.”
“Yeah, but...” I searched for the words. “I mean, splitting a man in half...”
“Is that what’s eatin’ you? The firepower?”
I shrugged. “I guess. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, there’s no recovery from this.”
“True that.”
“So wouldn’t it be better just to, you know, wound him?”
He chuckled. “Never thought you were such a pansy. You remind me of Jocelyn Elders. You remember her? ‘We can build safer weapons,’” he slurred his speech to mimic Clinton’s ill-fated surgeon general. “‘We can make safer guns and safer bullets.’ What a moron. Guns are designed to kill people, Petey. That’s their only function. Well, animals, too, I guess, but not something like this. These guns kill men. They have no other purpose.” He caught my gaze and held it. “And don’t tell me you didn’t know that when I brought them home. You can talk about peacekeeping and deterrence all you want, but in the final analysis, it’s about killing someone. Plain and simple.”
“He’s got a wife and children.”
“So do most soldiers. They still die.” He started putting it back together. “It ain’t just the firepower. It’s the range. We’ve got to be far enough away that they never see or hear it coming, and we’ve got to have the means to kill at that distance.”
He finished reassembling the weapon and handed it to me. “This man we’ve elected? He is an evil man. He believes an evil doctrine that he will not hesitate to impose on the
rest of us. Marxism has been responsible for more death in the world than any other belief system, including Islam. A hundred million people have died because of it. A hundred million. Can you wrap your head around that? The Marxists make Hitler look like an amateur. Marxism isn’t just an economic theory, Peter. It’s a worldview, and it elevates the masses above the man, ignoring the fact the masses are made up of men! Marxists and socialists will cheerfully kill in the name of achieving their utopia.”
“I know what Marxism is.”
“Do you? You remember what Che Guevara said in Motorcycle Diaries? ‘Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands... With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl.’ Does that sound like a reasonable man to you?”
“Yeah, but that’s Guevara.”
He snorted. “It doesn’t matter, Petey. Marxism leads to death everywhere it’s tried. ‘Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.’”
“John Maynard Keynes.”
Martin put his hand on my shoulder. “He gets into power, he will kill.”
I shook my head, bewildered. “This is America.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “And we know how to handle tyrants.”
Twelve
I hated to admit it, but Martin was right. Not about the killing the President thing, but about the way we were going about it. The gun freaked me out. A hit with one of those .50 caliber rounds meant it was over. Whoever we shot would be dead. Period. There was no getting around it.
I suppose I ought to have understood that from the beginning. Dad always taught us: never point a gun at someone you don’t intend to kill.
Which meant it was about killing the President. Flat out. We had to go into this meaning it. Scratch that. I had to go into this meaning it. Martin wasn’t the one struggling with this. I was. If I was going to sight in on the President of the United States, then I had better intend to kill him, and that was the end of it.
Which meant I was right back where we started. Martin had me. I couldn’t disagree that Marxism was evil, or that it was wrong to kill an evil man. I couldn’t even argue against the preemptive strike—that whole ‘chance to kill Hitler before he’d done anything,’ argument. If an intruder breaks into your house with an axe, you don’t wait until he swings it to take him out. You just shoot the bastard and have done with it.
What bothered me was simply this: I didn’t want to be the one to pull the trigger.
I was afraid. Plain and simple. Afraid of losing my brother. Afraid of losing my own life. Afraid of doing something so utterly indelible. I wanted anyone else to take care of things for me, rather than risk taking action myself.
I was acting like a coward, and for that, I felt ashamed.
It wasn’t long before Grant and Jerry came trudging back up the mountainside, and I was sorta glad to see them crest the summit. Grant handed me the field glasses and said, “Take a look.”
I peered across the valley, and this time, rather than seeing mannequins sailing through the air, I saw white and black targets—each about three feet tall, suspended from the poles.
“Run out of mannequins?”
He shook his head.
“Oh hell no,” gushed Jerry. “You should see the set-up they got over there. There’s got to be like, hundreds of them all stacked in this pole barn behind the lift.”
“What did you do? Raid Macy’s?”
“Something like that,” said Grant. “Whenever a department store closes down, we gotta guy who gets in there and buys ‘em up cheap. It’s kinda like our own little revenge against the government driving folks outta business. But I thought this might be easier to start with. Something a little less dramatic, eh Cherry?” He clapped my back, shoving me forward a step. I felt embarrassed.
“This isn’t easy,” I muttered.
“What’s that?”
“C’mere, Jerry,” said Martin. “Let’s get some grub going.” He steered Jerry away from Grant and me.
“Whaddya want me for?” Jerry whined. “I can’t cook.”
“Everyone takes a turn. C’mon.”
I watched as Jerry and Martin ambled toward the cabin. Martin didn’t want him listening in on us. I wasn’t sure why. It might’ve been to protect me from embarrassment, but I think it had more to do with keeping Jerry away from me. Jerry’d had no trouble at all shooting the targets. Why he didn’t was a mystery to me, but it didn’t look like Martin wanted me messing with his head.
“So what’s wrong?” said Grant.
“Shooting someone. Killing them.”
Grant blasphemed. “Told you not to think about it, Cherry.”
“That’s like asking me not to breathe.”
“Whatever works.”
“Cute.” I handed him the field glasses and stuck my hands in my pockets. “How do you get over it?”
“You don’t. Not without killing your heart. It does get easier, though.”
“So I gotta kill him before I feel good about killing him?”
“Feel good? You think this feels good?”
“Well, no. That’s not what I meant.”
“Let me tell you something, Cherry. It never feels good. I think about every man I’ve killed. I still see their faces at night. Not every night. I ain’t going all P.T.S.D. on you. But yeah, I still see them. Make it feel good? Not gonna happen.” He gulped the air, staring over the valley at his targets. “Nazis wanted to do that. They gave each of their S.S. officers a puppy. Had them feed it. Take care of it. Bond with it. Then after a couple of weeks they ordered them to kill the puppy. Those that couldn’t didn’t make it through. Those that did? It desensitized them. Made it easier to impose the Final Solution. That’s how you make it feel good. So unless you wanna turn into a sadistic killer, don’t go looking to get over it.”
I swallowed. “So what do you do?”
“Grow a pair already, will ya? You do what you hafta do. It’s the mission, Cherry. Take out the bad guy before he takes you out. Listen, this why we frickin’ brought you up here, okay? We get it. Martin and I? We’ve been there. We’ve both been where you’re at. It’s called Basic Training. You learn to shoot. You learn to run. You learn to fight. And you learn to obey orders. You learn to do your frickin’ job. Nobody wants to kill people. Those that do don’t last long. But this is a war, Cherry. Maybe they haven’t openly declared against us, but it’s a war, nonetheless.
“Now you can die the death of a thousand cuts, and the rest of us go down with you, or you can take up arms and shoot the bastards before they bleed us all dry. Which is it gonna be?”
“I don’t know if—”
“Quit thinking! I didn’t ask what you knew. I’m asking you to choose. Which is it going to be?”
I pressed my lips together. There wasn’t any choice. Not with him standing there ready to throw me off that mountain if I answered wrong. “All right.”
“What’s that? Sorry. Didn’t hear you.”
“I said all right.”
“All right what?”
“All right I’ll do it.” I felt my face flush.
“Do what?”
This was it. There was no way out. Grant and Martin were right about one thing, at least. When you came right down to it, the decision really was quite simple.
The words were barely a whisper in my throat. “I’ll... I’ll kill him.”
Grant half-smiled. “Or you’ll be killed,” he said quietly. “And you don’t want to die, do you?”
I shook my head.
“So let’s say we train you in this weapon, so you can stay alive.”
***
Grant had me shoot through three magazines before he was satisfied enough to let me up again. By now, the smells of cooked meat had pierced the acrid tang of gunpowder and made my stomach rumble. Grant complimented my shooting as we packed up the weapons and headed toward t
he cabin.
“Your brother was right,” he said. “You’re a crack shot if I ever saw one.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled. My chest hurt from lying prone on the ground so long. I wondered if I’d ever get the feeling back in my shoulders.
“Still, you need to relax. You’re tensing a bit whenever you shoot. You’re hitting a pattern just fine, but it could be tighter. I’ve seen snipers bull’s eye penny nails at a hundred yards. You could be that good. Honest to God.”
I wanted to tell him this wasn’t like shooting penny nails, but thought better of it. I’d been lectured enough for one day. Inside the cabin, Martin was tending a fire while Jerry stirred a pot. “I think it’s burning,” Jerry was saying.
“Get it off the flame, dummy!” called Martin, still working the fire.
I handed the rifles to Grant and went to the stove to rescue Jerry and what was left of dinner.
“Told you I can’t cook,” he muttered.
Inside the pot was a scorched mass of dry noodles. I wrinkled my nose and started scraping them into a bowl, picking the charred ones out while trying to rescue the macaroni. It was then that I noticed the smoke rising from the oven.
“Looks like the meat’s done,” said Jerry.
I swore and grabbed an oven mitt, pulling open the door to release a cloud of smoke into the room.
“Oh, that’s just beautiful.” On the broiler tray were four charred steaks. I set about prying them free of the pan.
“I told you I can’t cook,” Jerry said again.
“It’s not like it’s hard, Jerry,” said Martin. “You just gotta pay attention to what you’re doing and follow the instructions. How’re you ever gonna stand on your own two feet if you can’t fend for yourself?” He came to my elbow, inspecting Jerry’s work.
“I ain’t,” Jerry retorted. “That’s why I still live at home. I plan to stay there until I get married, then let my wife cook for me.”
“What makes you think anybody’d marry you?” I said.
“Well, it ain’t for his cooking,” Martin rejoined before Jerry could answer.
Grant shook his head. “Looks like you’ll be cooking all week, Jerry.”
I set the spatula down, hands braced on the sink. “Why in the name of all that’s holy would you do that?”
“Seriously,” Jerry said, eyes wide.
The Spirit of Resistance Page 7
