Did God breed men for such battles?
I polished off the last of my beer, finding answers in neither the empty bottle nor the blank reflection in the window, and shuffled off to bed.
As I lay down, wincing at the creaking mattress, I found myself looking into Martin’s eyes. He lay on the bed next to mine, still awake, blinking languidly. I watched him watching me, something unseen passing between us. On the far side, I could hear Grant or Jerry snoring softly. We were alone.
He smiled sadly and whispered, “I want you to know: I’m proud of you.”
I furrowed my brow. “Why?”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. I knew why. I’d done well. I’d measured up, rewarded his confidence in me. Today, on the face of the mountain, I’d bested them all, beating them at their own game. No matter what came next, or whatever ways Grant might find fault, nothing would take that from me.
“Martin?”
“What?”
“What did—” I swallowed. “What did Grant say to you...outside?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“You weren’t—good—when you came back in. What happened?”
“Go to sleep.”
“It’s okay. You can tell me.”
He smiled, his eyes flicking to the right. “He told me he thought your shooting needed work, and I said he was full of crap, ‘cause you’re the best damn marksman who ever picked up a gun.”
“Bull crap.” I almost laughed.
“Well, it was something like that. Good night, Peter.” He rolled over, and left me staring at his back. I watched him until the fire died, and the silver moonlight lengthened the profiles of the windows on the floor, until all was lost in darkness.
***
The next morning I relieved Jerry—and the rest of us—of the burden of breakfast. He grumbled while drinking his coffee, as if he couldn’t decide between feeling rejection or relief. But no one else complained, and I took that as more proof of my newly won status. I wasn’t sure how long the good will would last, but I fully intended to milk it for as long as possible.
We finished breakfast and packed up our stuff for the hike back down before heading out to the summit one last time. Martin and Jerry wandered over the valley to the ski lift to load up the last of the mannequins, and I waited with Grant on the mountainside, grateful I didn’t have to plow through the snow, but wondering equally what the operation over there looked like. During our stay, I’d never actually seen it.
Grant poured me a fresh cup of coffee from his thermos while we waited. I wrapped my hands around it and shivered, sipping it slowly.
“Gonna miss this,” he muttered, looking southeast toward the high peaks.
“Which part?”
“All of it. The peacefulness mostly. Peace is precious. Paid for in blood. There’s always someone trying to take it from you, wanting to horn in on your little slice of happiness. Used to be a man could live off the land, unmolested by government. Then we got pushed further and further west till we ran outta land. Now there’s nowhere left to go.” He sighed heavily and looked at me, as if taking my measure. “We can’t live free, Peter. Not like we were meant to. Now we’ve got to fight for it. We’ve got to push ‘em back.”
I drank my coffee and said nothing, pondering what the American Indians would think of Grant’s nostalgia, his take on Manifest Destiny and the American Dream. He stood there on a mountain in a private campground named after a noble people long bereft of real freedom, in the largest state-controlled area in the contiguous United States. I wondered what he meant.
“More and more the government’s trying to control our lives.” He continued to wax eloquent, seeming to enjoy the sound of his voice. “Now they’re talking about taking over health care, deciding who lives and who dies based on the word of a bureaucrat instead of a doctor. The Marxists won’t stop. They’ll worm their way into every corner of our lives, dictating what we think, who we love, and God knows what else. Know what I’m saying?”
I nodded and said nothing.
“Didja ever read 1984?”
“George Orwell.”
“Exactly. That’s what I’m talking about. Orwell saw it. He knew where we were headed. He might’ve got the date wrong, but not the agenda.”
I wondered what Grant would say if I told him Orwell himself was a socialist.
“See, that’s what I like about you, Peter. You get things. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders and a hell of an aim. There’s just one thing that worries me.”
I stopped in the middle of sipping my coffee and looked at him. He fixed me in his gaze. I swallowed. “What?”
Without blinking he said, “Whether or not you’ll pull that trigger when the time is right.”
I wanted to agree with him, but sensed it would be unwise. I had no interest whatsoever in pulling that trigger, but how could I tell him that? Instead, I replied, “What makes you say that?”
“You’ve got to have something in you that’s hard as steel. Call it a streak of cruelty, if you like. There’s got to be something in you that’s hard enough, strong enough, to take another man’s life, to kill one man to save the many. First time for me came about six years ago. I was stationed in Baghdad, in the Green Zone. Pulled guard duty with some buddies at a check point. This Hajji comes barreling through in a minivan, ignoring the signs to slow down. I could see his face, his eyes—glaring at us with all that fear, that hatred and rage. He was shouting.” He grimaced and sniffed. “My buds around me were scrambling. Paralyzed. I raised my weapon. Squeezed the trigger and held it fast. Emptied my magazine into his windshield. The whole thing exploded. Cut him to ribbons. Two seconds later the back end of that van blew up. Knocked us down. Shattered windows around us. If I hadn’t shot him, he’d have driven right into us. Blown us all to hell. Friggin’ shaheed. Two months later I applied for Special Ops training. Killing that man changed my life.”
“And you don’t think I can do that.”
“I haven’t seen it yet.”
Should I take that as a compliment? I know he didn’t mean it as one. “So what do I do now? Strangle a puppy for you?”
He laughed and clapped my shoulder, glancing down the mountain. Two figures were meandering back across the valley toward us. “Naw,” he said, “you ain’t gotta kill your heart, Peter. You just gotta harden it a little bit is all.”
***
We blazed through the rest of the ammunition just as soon as Martin and Jerry got back to the summit. Grant tossed the last of his flash grenades and smoke bombs in front of us, but it didn’t make a difference. I hit my target every time I took aim now. I’d mastered the weapon, just like Martin had said we would.
Martin continued to have difficulty with his shoulder. I suspected that lying prone on the cold ground for so long wasn’t helping matters. He kept sitting up and rubbing it, grimacing, and after a while, I started trying to burn through the remaining ammo just so he wouldn’t have to sit there anymore, and we could get off this mountain and rejoin civilization.
When the last mannequin fell to earth, Grant had us clear and clean the guns, then we shouldered our bags and started down the mountain. The descent was slightly more treacherous than the trip up, both for the angle and for the patches of precipitation that had snuck past the crown of trees and frozen our path.
We said little on the way back, and even though it felt like we were making good time, it was still dark before we reached the camp. True to what Grant and Martin had said, the rest of the militia had bugged out while we were gone, with no vehicles in the parking lot beside Grant’s snow-encased SUV, and the main hall and other buildings locked up tight. Grant let us into the mess hall, where we built a fire and loaded up on dinner. Outside, the weather decided to remind us it was winter, and without argument we chose to spend the night there rather than driving home in the dark and the snow. We rolled out our bedrolls around the campfire and soon drifted off to sleep.
Somewh
ere in the middle of the night, I felt someone shake me awake. I started to say something, but a hand covered my mouth, and against the dwindling light of the fire, I saw Jerry put his finger to his lips and motion me to follow. Pulling free of my sleeping bag, I glanced at the supine forms of Martin and Grant, snoring quietly near the fire, then turned and followed my childhood friend out into the kitchen, where he closed the door behind us and flipped on a light. It was then that I saw his hands were shaking.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
Jerry ran a hand through his hair. “I got to talk to you real bad, Peter, and it can’t get back to those other two.”
I glanced behind me, seeing no one. “Okay.”
“I got your word on that?”
What was eating at him? “Yeah, sure.”
“Okay. Here’s the thing. Martin—oh man.” He blew out a long breath.
I grabbed his shoulder. “Jerry, what about Martin?”
When he looked at me again, there were tears in his eyes.
Seventeen
“What about Martin?” I repeated.
He pushed his palms into his eyes and took another breath. “Did Martin talk to you?”
I frowned. “About what?”
“Sacrifice.”
I shook my head. “I dunno. Maybe. Why?”
“What about Grant? When Martin and I went to reload the targets this morning. Did he say anything?”
I relayed the content of Grant’s soliloquy to him. He sniffed. “But nothing about sacrifice?”
“No. He just wanted to know if I could do it, if I had the balls to kill a man.”
He looked down at the floor. “Martin asked me if I thought I could die.”
“What?”
“He said it could happen, in the operation. He said it might have to.”
“What do you mean? Was he threatening you?”
“No. Just that it could happen. He wanted to know if I could lay my life on the line. You know, take a bullet if... if I had to.”
I shook my head. This didn’t make any sense. “I’m—I’m sure that’s just Martin being melodramatic. Did you see him today? His shoulder’s been acting up lately. I think it’s from the cold. It’s probably just on his mind. I don’t think he meant anything by it.”
“That’s not the way it sounded.”
“Well, how did it sound?”
He was silent a moment. “Just—I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. I shouldn’t worry myself like that.”
“It’s been a long week.”
“Yeah. Crazy week.” He smiled. “Least I don’t have to cook no more.”
“You were getting better at it toward the end.”
“Was I?”
I slapped his arm. “Sure you were. You just gotta practice is all.”
“Yeah? Guess so. Thanks.”
“No problem. Let’s get some sleep.”
“Sure.” He started to follow me out, then he hesitated and said, “You’re a good friend, Petey.”
I stopped and met his eyes. “You too, Jerry.”
He snorted and followed me back to the fire. As we tucked back into our respective sleeping bags, I caught Grant watching us out of the corner of my eye, and I wondered how long he’d been awake. Shaking my head, I rolled over and went to sleep.
***
The next morning we grabbed a quick breakfast before loading up the SUV with our stuff. The weather let up enough for us to escape the confines of Camp Nundawa Ono, but by the time we cleared the log barring our path back onto the main road, it was snowing again in earnest.
We rode in near silence down from the mountains, the driving sleet and wind lashing our every move, threatening to bury us if we stood still, but at the same time hindering our progress forward. Once or twice Grant lost sight of the road, nearly embedding us in a snow bank amidst the trees. Without cell service, we’d have been trapped there for days, if we’d have ever gotten out at all. Fortunately, the SUV’s four-wheel drive matched the blizzard’s fury and kept us moving inexorably back to civilization.
For most of the drive, I stared out the window, watching the sodden trees slip by, listening to the occasional comments from Martin to Grant about the weather and the roads. Jerry was silent beside me, lost in his own thoughts.
There was something going on between the three of them, and whatever it was, I couldn’t help but feel like I was at the center of it. Between the private talks of Grant and Martin, and Martin and Jerry, something important had happened, but what it was escaped me. I couldn’t quite make sense out of what Jerry’d tried to tell me last night, or why he wanted me to keep it from Martin and Grant. He acted like it was something he was afraid to say aloud.
What concerned me most was the way they all spoke to me. Despite their sullen moods and downcast looks, every last one of them had nothing but praise for me. Grant pulling me to one side to pump me full of rhetoric. Martin letting me know how proud he was of me—even manufacturing tears. Jerry telling me what a great friend I was.
I felt love-bombed, and no matter how much I tried to deny it, it could only mean one thing. I was being set up.
It didn’t make sense though. I was the best shot out of all of them. Why would they need to play me for the patsy?
Unless they didn’t need someone to be a great shot. Maybe an average shot would do just fine. I leaned my head against the glass, feeling the cold press into my skin. I didn’t need to understand it to believe it. Jerry had never tried to tell me what a great friend I was in his entire life. Truth be told, we weren’t even that close. Martin connected us, and if Martin were willing to sell me out, Jerry wouldn’t be far behind. All his talk about sacrifice the night before. Taking a bullet for the team. What was that? Some kind of mind game Grant put him up to? It explained why he was all shaking and nervous standing there. And Grant watching us the whole time, pretending to be asleep while really making sure his minion did his job.
Or maybe I was just paranoid. Then again, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” Joseph Heller said that in Catch-22, though both Woody Allen and Kurt Cobain stole it. People really should learn to source their material.
The only thing that made any sense, that connected the dots for me in a meaningful way, was the resistance I kept showing. Everyone else was on board but me. Everyone else embraced the madness, which was maybe why they were ready to throw me under the bus. Grant had pushed me hard on the mountain—but I still didn’t know if I could do what they wanted of me. How could anyone know what he would do until he faced the challenge directly and in person?
More importantly, how much longer could I keep this up—deceiving them? Or deceiving myself into thinking I would go through with what they wanted?
I smiled in the stillness. There was a certain kind of romance to it. An adventure, of sorts. In all my days, I’d never really strayed that far from my own front porch—and maybe that’s why I couldn’t get anything published. My thinking was too insular, and my writing reflected it. Certainly, hanging out with Martin, Jerry, and now Grant had broadened my horizons. I’d been places now, seen and done things I’d have never had attempted. I was now in a group bent on doing something dangerous. Something radical and world changing. It was exciting, to say the least. The only thing I lacked was an exit strategy for Martin and I, some way to avoid the inevitable. I’d have to come up with something before it was too late.
Maybe I could fake an injury...
“Uh oh.”
That single sentence from Martin broke my reverie, shattering the boredom in the car as well.
“Don’t nobody panic, now,” Grant replied.
I looked through the window at the road ahead. We’d come out of the Adirondacks some time ago and were on the final stretch home, just outside of Ontario. Spanning the road ahead of us, red and blue lights flashing frenetically across the pavement and the serried trees on either side of the road, sat a couple of patrol cars. Cops in full weather g
ear stood waving a small line of cars forward with flashlights.
“What is it?” I asked. “Was there an accident?”
“Don’t know. Maybe.”
“Oh crap,” said Jerry.
“Check the guns, Jerry,” said Martin. “Make sure they’re covered.”
“Oh crap,” he said again, undoing his seatbelt and reaching over the backseat. I undid my belt and leaned over to help him. The black cases of the guns were stacked on the bottom, with the coolers in front and our duffel bags tossed loosely on top. I helped him rearrange the sleeping bags until they covered everything.
“Get back in your seats, Cherries.” To Martin he said, “Open the glove box.”
I turned to see Grant pulling up as a cop waved us forward with a flashlight. Martin opened the glove box and pulled the .38 from its holster. He passed it to Grant, who quickly checked the barrel before burying it beneath his thigh.
“What are you doing with that?”
“Just shut up and sit down.”
“It’s just in case, Petey,” answered Martin. “You’d better pray we don’t need it.”
I dropped in my seat and grabbed my lap belt, clicking it into place as Grant stopped and unrolled his window.
“Oh man,” said Jerry, breathing heavily. “Oh crap.”
Eighteen
“Shut up,” Grant hissed.
Jerry continued to fidget in the back as the cop aimed his flashlight beam into Grant’s face. Grant shifted in his seat, but he kept his hands on the wheel. I had no doubt I’d yell to the cop the moment his hand dropped.
“Evening,” said the officer, shining his light into Grant’s face. “Can I see your license, please?”
Grant reached above to the visor and pulled down his license, handing it to the officer. “What’s the problem?” he said.
“No problem. DUI checkpoint. How much have you been drinking, tonight?”
“Not a drop,” said Grant.
“Where are you going tonight?”
“Just headed home.”
“Where from?”
“Mountains.”
“Mountains, huh? You boys out hunting?”
“No sir. Just camping.”
“Camping? In this weather?”
“Aw man,” muttered Jerry. The cop aimed his flashlight at Jerry’s face. I glanced at him, too. Jerry’s face had drained of color. A bead of sweat trickled down his cheek.
The Spirit of Resistance Page 10
