Enemies Foreign And Domestic

by Matthew Bracken

  The .45 was a beautiful piece of custom gunsmithing, right down to its sharply checkered rosewood grip panels, which matched the presentation box. Ranya stood by the bed and jacked the slide back with her left hand, verifying that the chamber was empty, and then eased it forward with a smooth metallic rhythm. She tested the safety, clicking it up and down with her thumb, and then she took aim at a mark on the wall and slowly squeezed the trigger. The hammer snapped forward crisply with a loud click.

  There was no ammunition stored with the pistol, a wise precaution because it might have cooked off from the heat of the fire and ruined the rest of the contents of the safe. But without its cargo of ammunition, the pistol was no more useful for self-defense than a brick or a hammer. After seeing what men had done to her father, and feeling extremely vulnerable alone in the motel, Ranya put obtaining ammo for the pistol at the top of her list. It was out of the question that she would spend the night in the motel room defenseless and at the mercy of anyone who wanted to kick in her door.

  Ordinarily Ranya traveled with a smaller Kahr 9mm pistol, to defend herself if she broke down or ran out of gas in an isolated rural or dangerous urban area. Today she had been in such a hurry that she had left the pistol still hidden in her apartment back in Charlottesville. She did not yet have a concealed pistol permit, she had only recently turned twenty-one, but she had “carried” for several years anyway with her father’s knowledge and approval. The 9mm pistol was purchased in his name because she had been officially under age.

  Ranya Bardiwell had known she was attractive ever since she had been a young teenager from the way men often gazed at her. Sometimes leering men stared hard at her while unconsciously licking their lips, like a starving lion contemplating a gazelle. She knew what these men wanted, and that some of them would take it by force if they could.

  Both Ranya and her father had nothing but contempt for lawmakers who would prefer to see a young woman raped and strangled, than to see her carry a pistol for her own self-protection against much larger and stronger men. At five-foot-eight and 120 pounds, Ranya harbored no delusions about her ability to fight off a 200-pound rapist in a bare-knuckles contest. She much preferred the idea of presenting a would-be rapist with the choice of instant flight or sudden death, after being confronted with her unexpectedly drawn pistol.

  But without ammunition, the .45 was just a pound of steel. She tried to think of where she could buy ammo nearby late on a Saturday afternoon. The big national discount chain stores had stopped carrying ammunition, after repeated protests from gun control advocacy groups, and the other local gun store had also been burned out the night before. Then it occurred to her: the cache. She could get there easily before dark, and besides, she was curious to see what her father had left in it.

  Ranya dressed again in her jeans and tan boots, and as she closed the door she left a “tell-tale,” a small wad of rolled-up paper on the carpet which would be moved if anyone entered while she was gone. She felt it was a somewhat paranoid thing to do, but after what had happened to her father, she felt justified in her fears. The unloaded .45 was wrapped in a new t-shirt in her daypack.

  ****

  The last afternoon sun was slanting through the pines when Ranya parked her Yamaha near the “stone tower,” which was actually a chimney from a long-vanished house. The abandoned homestead sat in the middle of thousands of acres of immature new-growth pines belonging to the Federal Camp Timber Corporation. She had cautiously steered her street bike around the gate off the paved state road. It was only a heavy chain hanging between two steel posts, sufficient to keep out a car but not a motorcycle. After a mile of cautious riding on the dirt road (her low-slung café racer was not suited for rutted terrain to say the least) she found the old stone and mortar chimney, which ironically was the only remnant of another house fire generations before.

  Compass in hand, she set out through the forest underbrush on an azimuth of 300 degrees. It was not easy counting off precisely eighty paces while trying to walk a straight line through brambles and bushes and around trees, but she finished the course in short order, arriving at what she hoped was the correct location.

  “Look under the southwest corner.” The southwest corner of what? She hung her daypack on the stub branch of a pine tree and began a spiral search around it, studying the needle and leaf covered forest floor until she found a tiny clearing with only weeds and a few hardy saplings struggling to emerge. The clearing was a little higher than the surrounding ground, and when she brushed away the pine needles she found part of an old concrete foundation. She kicked the dirt and leaves away until she could see the edges of the fifteen by twenty foot slab; the earth beyond the southwest corner was lower where the ground sloped downward.

  That has to be it, she thought, scooping away at the weedy soil beneath the corner. She wished she had brought a shovel, but still she made steady progress working her way under the cement until she came to a wall of rocks, which she quickly pulled down. There under the slab was a metallic case, with a folding handle facing her. She dragged the box out from under the concrete slab. It was green-painted aluminum, about four feet long by about eighteen inches high and wide. It had faded white Cyrillic lettering and numbers stenciled on it, and Ranya had no doubt that the case had once carried shells or grenades for the Soviet military. Now it contained another type of ordnance, for one private American citizen.

  The lid of the metal case fit over the bottom with metal clips around its perimeter. Ranya unsnapped them quickly, eager to see the contents. She had spent her entire life around hundreds of guns and now they were reduced to the contents of this one aluminum locker. She lifted off the lid and set it aside. Inside she saw three rifles nested together on their sides: two 5.56mm AR-15 variants similar to the military’s M-16s, and an FAL in the heavier 7.62 NATO caliber. The AR-15s lacked the usual M-16 style carrying handles. All three of these semi-automatic military-style rifles had small scopes mounted on top. One AR-15 variant was a short-barreled carbine with a collapsible stock and the other was the standard length. They were set in their own plywood rack with magazines and ammunition boxes packed between them. These so-called “assault rifles” definitely had their uses, and perhaps she would need them one day, but for now they did not suit her motorcycle lifestyle. Even taken down into its two parts, the carbine was too large to carry inconspicuously in a backpack, and anyway Ranya had no intention of engaging in shootouts with better armed and more numerous enemies.

  She lifted out the plywood shelf carrying these first three rifles and placed it on top of the locker’s lid on the ground. Next there were another three rifles, these were bolt-action hunting rifles mounted with large telescopic sights. All three of them had black synthetic stocks. These rifles were not just lying on their plywood shelf, but were raised above it on precisely made notched wooden stands with nothing else touching them. Their steel parts were coated in a thin layer of some type of clear grease. There was a paper and string tag hanging from each of their trigger guards, noting their calibers. They were in the utilitarian high-powered calibers of .243 Winchester, 7mm Remington magnum, and 7.62 NATO. Ranya admired the rifles without touching them, not wanting to disturb their protective coatings. She understood that these powerful and accurate long-range rifles might prove very useful in the future, but again she knew that it would be ridiculous to try to transport any one of them on her motorcycle.

  So she lifted out the plywood shelf containing the three sniper rifles and set it aside as well. The bottom of the aluminum box was jammed with cartridge boxes and bags and fabric zipper cases. Ranya rooted among the boxes until she found what she had come for: a bright yellow plastic carton labeled “.45 caliber.” She snapped opened its lid; each of the 50 hollow-point cartridges was standing in its own little compartment like so many tiny brass eggs in a crate. Right away, she loaded seven rounds into each of her three magazines, then slid one of them into her new pistol and jacked the slide to chamber a round, and finally snapped t
he safety up with her thumb. Her .45 was now “cocked and locked,” perfectly safe to carry but ready to fire in a fraction of a second.

  This simple process provided an immediate sense of comfort and relief to her. Loading the pistol transformed her from a basically helpless female, at the mercy of the next pack of toothless hicks or hostile home boys to cross her path, into a warrior who could confidently take care of herself in almost any situation. Anyone who had grown up around guns knew that the world was divided into two groups: unarmed potential victims, and armed survivors. Most of the unarmed potential victims didn’t have any awareness of this dichotomy. Like sheep grazing placidly in a pasture, they optimistically hoped that they would simply slide through life without ever being confronted by a violent criminal.

  As an added measure, Ranya dropped the magazine out and loaded one more bullet in it to replace the one she had chambered, providing her the full complement of eight rounds that her .45 could carry. Other pistols carried more rounds, but her eight fat .45 caliber bullets were each showstoppers, and would not require more than one shot delivered per attacker. Being a “single stack magazine” pistol, with its bullets resting one directly on top of the other in the magazine, the overall width of her .45 was still slim enough that she could carry it stuffed halfway down inside the front of her jeans. Held firmly in place by her leather belt, it would be virtually invisible with her jacket hanging over the exposed grip.

  It was growing dark and Ranya had accomplished the task of acquiring ammunition for her .45, but she was still curious to see what other useful items were in the small cases at the bottom of the locker. These zipper cases also had paper and string tags tied to their carrying handles. She saw tags for various pistols, but one tag in particular caught her eye and she pulled out its black nylon case and unzipped it. Inside was an unusual type of firearm completely unknown to the vast majority of people, a single shot Tennyson Champion long-range target pistol. These pistols looked like a cross between an antique dueling piece and a science fiction movie prop gun. This one had a walnut grip and a fourteen-inch-long blued steel barrel. A telescopic sight was mounted on top of the rear of the barrel, and the muzzle end was threaded to accept a compensator or other devices. The Tennyson Champions were unique in that their grip and trigger assemblies could accept a wide variety of interchangeable barrels in literally dozens of calibers. These ranged from .22 rimfire, to rifle cartridges capable of taking down an elk—if the shooter had wrists capable of handling the brutal recoil.

  This particular Champion’s barrel was chambered for .223 caliber, also called 5.56mm, the same cartridge fired by the military M-16 and its civilian version, the semi-auto AR-15. With a quality scope and superior ammunition, and fired from a steady rest position, the Champion was capable of rifle-like accuracy. Best of all, the Champion would fit easily into Ranya’s daypack. If and when she ever found the federal agent who killed her father, she intended to pay him back in kind, and the Champion could be exactly the right tool for the job. Her new .45 was a fine pistol for close range defensive use, but it would be nearly useless beyond 50 yards, the range at which her father had been killed. And Ranya had no desire to engage in a close-quarters-battle against agents armed to the teeth with the latest German submachine guns. The 5.56mm Champion could give her a rifle’s long-range stand-off distance, but in a portable low profile package.

  The black pistol case had three pockets on the outside, and Ranya glanced into each. Two contained special ammunition in red plastic cases the size of cigarette packs, but the third Velcro-flapped pouch contained the real prize, a black sound suppressor no bigger than a fat stogie cigar. Sound suppressors could not remove the cracking sound of a supersonic rifle bullet flying through the air, but they could remove most of the sound of the muzzle blast as the bullet cleared the barrel and the expanding gases hit the air. Anyway, the “sonic crack” did not point to a shooter’s position, since it was created by the passing bullet. Even when firing supersonic rifle bullets, a good sound suppressor would serve to keep a shooter’s position from being discovered by greatly reducing the far louder muzzle blast.

  Ranya decided to take the Champion with her, so she loaded the big pistol case into her daypack along with the rest of the .45 ammo and two more spare .45 magazines. She stuck her cocked and locked .45 into her jeans just inside of her hip on the left side, its grip toward her right hand in the “Mexican carry” position. As soon as she could, she intended to get a decent inside-the-pants concealment holster that would hold the gun more securely.

  The rest of the cache would await her return on another day. She replaced the stackable rifle shelves in the locker, gasketed down the aluminum lid with its metal latches, and shoved it back into its hole under the cement slab. She quickly rebuilt the concealing wall of rocks, then heaped dirt against it and finally covered everything she had disturbed with a layer of pine needles.

  Now Ranya not only felt the security of being able to defend herself with her pistol, she also enjoyed the new power of being able to reach out and touch an enemy at any distance out to several-hundred yards away. With her better-than 20/20 vision and her steady hands, combined with what she now carried in her pack, she began to entertain thoughts of turning the tables on her father’s killers, and hunting the hunters. Left alone in the world, she had no other remaining goal.

  In a half hour she was back at her motel room. Her tell-tale wad of paper had not been disturbed.

  11

  Just after nine PM, after another scan of the “top of the hour” news summaries on the cable news channels, Ranya was pacing back and forth in front of her television. Even the coverage by the ordinarily more balanced TOP News Network was disappointing. The local Norfolk stations were teasing the gun store arsons for their late news programs, but there was no film footage of Freedom Arms or any mention of her father by name. His death was referred to only indirectly, as one of the victims killed in the Virginia attacks.

  Ranya held her unloaded .45 pistol in her hand and practiced racking the slide and dry-firing it, aiming at television talking heads the instant a new face came into view. She practiced dry-firing right and left handed, with both single and double-handed grips, frequently spinning around and drawing from inside her belt. She was working on acquiring a perfect sight picture on each newly appearing reporter as swiftly as possible, using them as convenient reactive targets. Besides becoming familiar with the pistol’s sights, she was committing the pistol’s operation to instinctive “muscle memory.”

  She stalked her drab room like a caged animal, constantly drawing, turning and shooting at the TV. Snap down the safety as the sights settle on the target, squeeze the trigger dropping the hammer, rack the slide, safety on, over and over again. She was imagining the federal agent she knew only as George, a “crew-cut gorilla.” She was visualizing blowing his brains out with a 200-grain hollow-point.

  At 9:30 she clicked off the television and sat cross legged on the bed, staring at the cheap seascape print on the wall of waves crashing on a rocky beach. Enough. What next? She didn’t remember to bring her phone and address book with her from her apartment in Charlottesville, and anyway most of her Virginia Beach lifeguard crowd had scattered after Labor Day. Then she remembered the new phone number she had on a scrap of paper.

  Brad Fallon picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Brad? This is Ranya…Ranya Bardiwell.”

  “Ranya! Hi, what’s up?”

  “Remember you said to call you if I needed anything? Well, I’m staying in a crummy motel and I’m going nuts. Do you… are you busy tonight? Anyway I’d like to see your boat, can you handle a visitor on short notice? Just to talk…”

  “Sure, why not? No problem. Do you know how to get here? Sodermilk’s farm at the end of Old Cypress Road, all the way around the back.”

  “I’ll find it. Can I bring some beer or something?”

  “No need, I’m testing out my new fridge even as we speak. It’s loaded with
cold beer already.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Just to talk, okay?”

  “I’ve been such a hermit lately I’m kind of out of practice, but sure, come on over.”

  ****

  Brad pushed the end button and set the cell phone down on his dinette table. His phone, not Hammet’s, which he had left in a Tupperware box on the dock. It figures, he thought, that when I finally get a nice looking female visitor, she’s involved in the local trouble and has personal problems up to her eyeballs. Ever since last Sunday’s Stadium Massacre he had felt as if lighting bolts were landing in succession closer and closer to him, and he wondered just how wise it was to invite a lighting rod like Ranya Bardiwell aboard Guajira.

  He wasn’t much of a believer in fate, but he still found all the coincidences beyond merely bizarre. Two months earlier, he had almost closed a deal on a sailboat in Fort Lauderdale, and he had also taken a close look at one in Charleston. Both boats were under forty feet long, which was more in his price range, and were available almost “cruising ready.” If he had bought either one, he’d have been in the Bahamas by now, sailing and snorkeling in warm clear turquoise-colored water.

  Instead, he had chosen Guajira, a larger ex-racing boat that needed a new engine, a new mast, and an interior makeover. And so here he was, as far up the eastern branch of the Nansemond River as a mastless forty-four foot sailboat with a seven-foot draft could get. Now he was landlocked and trapped under the FBI’s thumb.

  So far his credit cards and bank accounts seemed unaffected, and on Monday he’d motor Guajira down the river and over to Portsmouth, to the boat yard where his mast was already waiting. Once she was rigged and ready he planned to haul ass out onto the Atlantic just as fast as he could. The thunderbolts were already landing too close to him, and he didn’t want to be waiting around for one to land on his head.