I pulled my mind back from Quinn and my view back from the one red shoe, training my crosshairs on the woman’s torso instead. We’d been reassured that the dissipating rounds were constructed for minimal penetrating power, and that it was safe to shoot at the usual target areas since the rounds would never punch through to the heart or lungs. I was relieved about that. During boot camp, Sarge had set up a terminal ballistics training session where we’d fired high-caliber, high-velocity rounds into blocks of ballistic gelatin — a tough, jelly-like substance that most closely mimicked the consistency of human and animal flesh. Afterward we’d been able to cut open the urine-colored blocks, to trace our bullet’s trajectory and see exactly the amount of damage the rounds caused as they tore through the substance, exploding into fragments of shell that radiated out from the wound path.
At the center of one of the blocks was a large pig’s heart sourced from a butcher or abattoir. Bruce had volunteered to shoot that block — no surprise there — and Sarge had filmed the shot. We viewed the footage in extreme slow-motion, watching the bullet punch into and rip through the block, sending shock waves pulsing and rippling through the gelatin as it discharged its impetus. The heart had exploded into bloody mush.
Watching the footage, the boys had whistled and cheered. I hadn’t.
“Instantaneous incapacitation of any mook,” said Sarge. “These .5 caliber rounds have total stopping power.”
“Imagine what it would do to a person’s head — deep tissue destruction!” said Mitch.
“Complete cranial evacuation, dude!” said Bruce.
“Decapitation,” said Cameron.
Destruction, evacuation, immediate suspension, target suppression, immobilization. These were the terms we used instead of saying kill, maim, destroy. Whatever we termed it, there would be no recovering from a wound made by those rounds.
It was unlikely that there would be a return to health for this poor M&M, either, but at least she would soon be comfortable in the hospital. Clean and out of pain. I reminded myself of that, reminded myself that I was only darting, not shooting, reminded myself why I was doing this. But my mind kept bringing me back to the inescapable fact that I had a rifle aimed at another human being.
My heart was racing, my mouth as dry as dust. I was in danger of getting full-blown “buck fever” if I didn’t calm down or get this done as soon as possible. I ran through the strategies we’d been taught to regain calm and focus. I checked my high-angle calculations, adjusted the elevation turret on my scope and steadied the rifle against my cheek. As I forced my breathing into a slow, steady rhythm, I cleared my mind of anything but the here and now. I stopped looking at the woman’s dirty, bruised face, stopped looking at her as though she was a “her”, and locked my focus instead on the golden triangle of her chest, adjusting my aim to the middle of the letter S on her cheerleader’s top.
Failure — not an option.
“Affirmative. Shooter ready,” I said, easing off the safety and putting the tip of my index finger on the cool curve of the trigger.
“Field is clear and we are hot. Send it.”
I breathed out, paused, and squeezed the trigger, just as the target angled her body sideways.
I missed. A splash of dust and debris kicked up beyond the woman where the round had hit the ground. Damn! Static hissed in my earpiece, but Sarge said nothing. Maybe he thought I’d lost my nerve, that I couldn’t handle these assignments. Maybe he was right.
I recalculated the angle, doped my scope, slowed my breathing as I tracked the torso turning circles below. Then I fired. The woman dropped like she’d had her lights punched out — which I guessed, in a way, she had. One hand fell across her chest, below where the small rose of blood bloomed. She wore a wedding ring, I saw now. I sighed and disassembled my rifle and collected my used cartridge cases as I’d been trained to do. Before I was back down on street level, the specially equipped ambulance — they called them “rabid hutches” — had arrived and taken her off to the hospital. All that remained of the mission was a teenager with a gym bag climbing into an unmarked black van. And a red velvet stiletto lying in a rain puddle against an alley wall.
I was still rattled that evening, and the congratulations and envy directed my way by the rest of the team didn’t help. Leya, who could see that I was upset, finally pulled me aside to give me a talking to — a verbal hug and slap combo.
“This is hard for you, I can see that. I can understand it. Shooting people? That’s heavy stuff. But you can’t let it become personal. It’s not personal — it’s your job. We all have to do things we don’t like in our work, but we have an obligation to do the best job we can. If feelings get in the way, you have to shut them down.”
I tried to calm myself by picturing the woman lying calmly in the Community General Hospital plague ward. I even asked Sarge if I could go visit her there — a request which provoked a sharp bark of laughter in addition to an extra-maniacal grin.
“No, Goldilocks, you may not. Of all the sharp-eyed, steady-handed bleeding hearts, I had to land you! Next thing you’ll be asking if you can go scatter the ashes of your poor little rat-kills in the woods, lay a rose at the kill-site, maybe sing Kumbaya. It’s a job, soldier! Do you think you could possibly be a bit more professional about it?”
That stung. I resolved to dial down the volume on my tender-hearted and sympathetic impulses, but while I could make myself be coolheaded during the subsequent M&M missions in the city, afterwards I could only fake hard-hearted. Beneath the tough outer coating of don’t-give-a-shit was a squishy mess of confusion and doubt.
Chapter 21
Blondes in Pink Satin
I had completed four human-target missions by the time I was sent on my first terr takedown. I thought it would be easier. It was harder.
Partly, this was because I had to take the shot from close-up. Partly, it was because despite all Sarge’s talk about me being a professional soldier, they had dressed me like a little girl. They’d stuck me in a pink dress, and Fiona had brushed my hair up into a high ponytail. I even finally had patterned latex gloves — white with pink polka dots to match the girly ensemble.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, aghast, when I saw myself in the mirror. I looked about thirteen years old.
“Camouflage,” said Fiona, unfastening the hog’s-tooth thong from my neck and laying it aside on my bedside cabinet. “No one will guess anyone who looks like that might be about to shoot them.”
I suspected that the truth of why I had been such a valuable recruit lay at least as much in my ability to pass as an unthreatening little girl as it did in my marksmanship skills. They’d probably chosen me to be the first sniper in human-target missions because I was the youngest and most innocent-looking. How would they be dressing me when I could no longer pass for a juvenile? I imagined Fiona styling me with a look somewhere between honeypot and hooker, and shuddered.
Sarge and Roberta Roth dropped in to check me over before I set out, and Sarge let out a cackle of glee. “Those mooks won’t know what hit ‘em!”
“You’ll do,” Roth said, giving me a sharp nod of approval before turning to Sarge. “Wayne, a word?”
Down in the hallway outside the transport bay, the whole unit was waiting. Mitch whistled when he saw me, Tae-Hyun and Cameron applauded, and judging by his appreciative grin, Bruce seemed to have a thing for blondes dressed in pink dresses.
“Shu-weet!” he said, stepping towards me. “Wanna —”
“Stop right there,” I said, poking a forefinger into his chest to hold him at arm’s length and giving him a death-stare. A movement in my peripheral vision caught my eye, and I turned my head to see Quinn was standing to my right, looking me up and down, from the tips of my pink-laced Hello Kitty sneakers to the top of my ridiculous ponytail.
“You’re a real heartbreaker in pink,” he said, shaking his head. “Literally.”
“Piss off,” said Leya loyally.
“Don’t let the d
ouchebag dent your confidence, Blue,” said Bruce, as Quinn walked away. “I think you look —”
“Bruce, if you say another word, just one more word, to me right now, I swear on my rifle that I will break every single finger on your shooting hand.” I spat the words out with such intensity that Bruce’s mouth fell open.
He blinked. “Jeez, Jinx! Overreact much?”
“Actually, I don’t think I’ve reacted enough. Let me correct that right here and right now. I’m sick of your stupid, sexist comments and insinuations. That shit stops now! Get it?”
“Loud and clear,” he said in a mocking tone, looking around at the other guys as if hoping they’d back him up. When none of them came to his support, he muttered, “Can’t even take a joke,” and slouched off.
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Remind me why I’m doing this,” I begged Leya.
“For the war against the plague. For the future of your country. For us,” she said.
Again, I had that sense of the plague as a looming, evil foe. I straightened my back as I marched past amused and interested stares, through the decon unit and doors to transport bay C and into the armory for my weapons and ammo issue. Juan handed me one of the new dart guns. It looked like a semi-automatic pistol with a longer-than-usual barrel out front and an internal dart magazine, loaded with three darts, protruding out the back. There were sights on the barrel, but no optics — this was more short-range sidearm than long-range sniper rifle.
“Remember, the ideal range is less than five meters,” said Juan. “After that, you start losing accuracy.”
I stuffed the weapon in the shoulder-strapped denim bag Fiona had handed me and reported for duty. The take-down was due to happen on a street.
“It’ll be easier to take him when he’s on his own and outdoors. Luckily, this tango is cocky. He doesn’t feel the need to exercise indoors on a treadmill. He runs like a rat on the roads, as if the plague doesn’t apply to him. Thinks he owns the city,” Sarge had briefed me. “Doesn’t even bother to vary his route much, according to intel.”
Had Quinn supplied that nugget of information? Or Sofia?
“Did intel say whether he was likely to be armed?” I asked.
Sarge paused a moment too long before replying. “In the man-hunting game, it’s always a case of take before you’re taken. You get me, soldier?”
“Message received, sir.”
Now I was grateful for my absurd outfit. Anything that would buy me a few extra seconds’ advantage was welcome. I only hoped that the target would be taken in by my girlish appearance, that he didn’t have his own intel or a mole in our organization who had relayed our plans to him as efficiently as his had been passed on to us.
“And why can’t we use the rifle with the dissolving tranq bullets for the terrs, Sarge? Then we wouldn’t need to get so close.” As a sniper, distance was my friend.
“We don’t want to perforate them unless we need to, Blue. Time they spend recuperating is time we could already be questioning, getting information in time to stop their next attack. Doesn’t matter so much for the rabids — they’re going to be in the hospital anyway.”
The insert vehicle was a battered old tan sedan that fitted inconspicuously among the two other rusting vehicles abandoned outside a derelict McDonalds in an abandoned strip mall located in a rough part of the city. I pulled up my small white mask, one of the lightweight surgical jobs that Quinn had been wearing the first time I met him, climbed out of the car and headed for an old playground nearby, directly on the target’s running route. It was overgrown with tall grass and weeds, the purple-and-yellow merry-go-round was rusted to a standstill and the see-saw had toppled off its fulcrum, but a couple of the swings still looked functional. I seated myself on the higher of the two and rocked back and forth, gritting my teeth against the protesting squawk of the chains in their rings. The day was filthy hot and so humid that breathing felt like drinking air. The metal seat of the swing burned my butt and thighs through the light fabric of the dress. I sighed and straightened the fabric. My feet itched to dig into the earth and propel me higher into the air — to catch a hint of breeze, a moment of freedom — but I resisted the temptation.
“Tango approaching from the southeast.” Fiona was calling this mission, as she had the last two M&M take-downs. “Juliet, you are good to go, we are live.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see him running, fast and graceful as only a true athlete could be, down the road in my direction. Thoughts raced through my mind, even as I dragged my feet in the dirt to slow my swing to a stop. What if I missed? There were only three darts, not much room for error. What if he did have a weapon on him, or a syringe like the one they’d stuck my father with? What if some instinct told him I was dangerous before I could take him down?
Fighting the urge to shoot too soon, I slowly blew out a deep breath, wiped my right hand dry against my dress, then thrust it into the bag and grasped my weapon.
As he ran up level with the playground, the man’s eyes scanned the area and rested on me. His shoulders, which had tensed as he first registered me, now relaxed. He wasn’t wearing a mask, so I could see his lips curve slightly at the sight of a girl playing on a swing — such a normal, happy sight. He waved at me, and I forced myself to return the wave. Perhaps it looked off — it totally didn’t feel natural — or perhaps a warning bell pinged in his brain that a lone kid playing in a plague-riddled city wasn’t so normal after all, because moments after he passed by me, he turned to look back. This time he wasn’t smiling, even before he registered that the swing-seat was empty, that the little girl was now standing on the sidewalk, less than six meters away, holding a weapon in a two-handed grip, firing it at him.
The dart hit him directly above the heart, and he teetered for a second or two before he collapsed. His head cracked against the sidewalk with a thud that made me wince.
I dropped the dart gun into my bag and walked away from the scene while I waited for the extract vehicle to catch up with me.
“Good job,” said Fiona when I climbed in.
She must have been commending me on staying cool, because the shot itself had hardly been difficult. It would take an effort to miss at that distance.
I twisted in the car seat to stare out the tinted rear windshield. An unmarked car had pulled up beside the downed jogger, and three men who I presumed were police officers were hauling him into their vehicle.
“You okay?” Fiona said, scrutinizing me with her sharp eyes.
“I guess.”
Truth be told, I wasn’t sure how I was.
That didn’t change over the next two weeks. I was determined, squarely committed to fighting this plague in the best way I could — even if that meant shooting people with tranquilizer darts and dissolving sleep-bullets. Images of my father, suffering and crazed, would flash into my mind at the oddest times — over lunch, or while I was brushing my teeth — and I’d feel a swell of rage surging through me, a craving for revenge. Then I’d catch Quinn’s eye across the cafeteria, and doubts would kick in. Damn him. If he was so opposed to what we were doing, then what the hell was he doing working here? Waves of irritation at the pirate were almost always followed by riptides of heartache which knocked me off my precarious emotional balance. I missed his warm hands massaging my back and his soft lips closing over mine. I missed the way he laughed from his whole body and got me to do the same. I missed how whole and safe I had felt with him. I missed his good opinion.
I missed Robin, too, and felt guilty every time I remembered how he still didn’t know what had really happened to our dad. I had written and rewritten a letter to him explaining what I’d discovered, but it still sat unsent in my draft email folder. It was something I had to tell him in person. Then again, perhaps he would be better off never knowing. He was such a gentle dreamer, this might crush him. One thing I was certain of, I would do anything I could to prevent him seeing that horrific footage. For the first time in my life, I understood a litt
le what it must be like to be my mom. Huh.
Adding to my all-round un-okay-ness were the flashbacks and nightmares I got from the missions. That red shoe, walking around and around in uneven circles. The small blooms of blood on chests and necks and backs. The runner’s friendly wave. The crack of his head against the sidewalk. And over and over again, that damned photo propped against the cage with the hopping, chirping canary.
That image got burned into my brain in my second terr-takedown, on an unusually cool and rainy day in early August. The setup for this one was to send me to deliver ordered groceries to the target’s apartment. At least I didn’t have to wear the girly getup this time. I wore jeans, the store’s orange branded t-shirt and an unzipped hoodie. Sarge instructed me to cover my hair and face as I entered and exited the apartment building. As he put it, “We don’t want word getting out on the street that a young blonde has been seen in the vicinity of recent hits, or they’ll put two and two together and set a bounty on your head. I don’t want to think about what the goblins would do to you if they got a hold of you.”
Great. Something else that had been omitted from his and Roth’s sales pitch.
“Sarge? There’s something I wanted to ask you.”
“Yeah?”
“You’ve shot … I mean, you were in the wars, as a sniper. What was it like for you — to shoot people?”
“I didn’t shoot people. I shot tangos.”
“Okay then, what did you feel when you shot tangos?”
He stared at me for a long moment then shrugged and replied, “Recoil.”
There was nothing to say to that.
The apartment building was in a run-down part of the city, and the elevator groaned and creaked ominously as it lurched up to the ninth floor. I pulled my hood off my head, fluffed my hair around my face, and fitted my mask into position, staring at the girl in the speckled mirror opposite the button panel. I was on my own on this mission; my closest backup was down on street level.
Recoil Page 16
