The Absolver: Rome (Saint Michael Thriller Series Book 1)

by Gavin Reese

  A hot singe of pain burned across Michael’s stomach as John popped back up and stood off to his right side. Michael urgently stepped back and left to create distance and swiped his left hand across his ribs and stomach. Blood. “WHAT THE FUCK, JOHN?!”

  His adversary revealed the small box-cutter he’d concealed in his right hand and wiped Michael’s blood onto his pants leg. “Ooo, she did getcha a little bit, didn’t she?”

  Michael stepped back further and briefly looked at the cut, a minor laceration about two inches long and only skin deep. It won’t bleed much, at least not yet.

  “You wanna bitch about rigged scenarios, Andrew? They ain’t been rigged before, but this? This is rigged as fuck!”

  “You’re a goddamned lunatic!”

  “Whaddaya wanna do, Andrew?” John circled around to flank Michael’s right side, which forced Michael to his left and put him in a weaker stance. “This really a fight you wanna stay in?! The smart play is to run, ya know! You’re younger’n me, and probably a damned sight faster, especially since you’re scared and I’m just mad!” He precisely rotated the bright yellow box-cutter in his palm between presenting the blade toward Michael and concealing it back behind his forearm. “Huh?! Whatcha wanna do? You wanna stay in the fight with that stupid-ass butter knife?! I’ll cut you to ribbons!”

  Michael knew he had no chance to get past John and retrieve his actual knife from the discarded bag, so he let John and his arrogance close the distance between them. Keep comin’, keep comin’! John finally lunged again when he’d reached about the same range as last time, but now did so with the blade pointed forward toward Michael.

  Michael again set his feet and swung his left forearm up and struck the inside of John’s wrist to deflect the weapon’s momentum. This time, though, he simultaneously stepped into John’s center, rotated his torso left to push the cutter farther away, and drove his right elbow into and through the instructor’s upper sternum. In an instant, he propelled John’s shoulders backward behind the man’s hips, which pulled his feet up off the ground, and John reflexively dropped the knife as he fell. The instructor crashed down hard onto his shoulder blades in a heap at Michael’s feet and immediately struggled to catch his breath.

  Expecting the fight to continue, Michael took one step forward but saw John’s empty hands reach for his throat as he fought to get air into his collapsed trachea. Stepping back out of the man’s reach, Michael saw John’s eyes open wide in pain and fear. His legs frantically kicked at the ground to get away from Michael while he struggled to reopen his airway. Filled with anger at the man’s apparent betrayal, Michael consciously stopped himself from pursuing John, despite the righteous beating he deserved.

  BOOM!

  The close gunshot surprised Michael, and he instinctively looked up and stepped toward the threat. From about twenty yards away, Big Country approached him from the tree line with an AR rifle leveled at Michael’s chest. Recognizing he had no realistic options to fight, run, or hide at that moment, Michael put his hands up in a feigned surrender position in front of his shoulders and awaited an opportunity to disarm his new adversary.

  Big Country nodded toward Michael and stayed focused on his center-mass. “That’s enough, Andrew!”

  “End scenario,” John weakly gasped from the ground, now to Michael’s right, and coughed several times. “End, fuckin’, scenario!”

  “You good, John,” Big Country asked without taking his eyes off Michael.

  “Yeah,” he wheezed and coughed several more times while still sitting down. “I’m good.”

  Michael saw that Big Country had lowered the rifle and stepped back, but didn't alter his gaze. What the fuck is going on here?!

  “Nice counter,” John offered, “but that’s a poor tactical, and,” cough, “strategic choice, son. It also violates the R-O-Es for the exercise, right?”

  “You came at me with a goddamned blade, John, a real one! You can go fuck your rules at that point!”

  “Calm down, it’s just a damned box cutter, and I had it locked on the shortest setting. Wouldn’t do nothing but change your priorities, if you’d kept your wits about ya.” John paused to cough again and gently massaged the front of his throat as he spoke. “You’re missin’ the message, Andrew. You knew all the trainers was op-for L-E-Os, and that you couldn’t use violence against them. Your best option was to run. Even if you’d been in a fair fight, you should’ve recognized the near certainty that you’d be injured or killed, and run. There’s no benefit to the choices you made, and you got lucky that you’s better’n me, at least this time. There’s no shame in a tactical retreat, and you stayed in a fight you shouldn’t have survived. Don’t ever expect to get that lucky again.”

  “I dunno, looks pretty good from here. I’ll bleed a little bit, but you’re only alive because you’ve got more assholes here than I do.” Michael nodded at Big Country, who showed no reaction.

  “Andrew, you’re a smart sum-bitch, but this one’s just flat gettin’ past you. One of the most important skills you can know in this line of work, is when,” cough, “you’ve gotta step back and abort the mission. You say that my training scenario’s rigged, but my three decades of experience is here to tell you they’re actually set up to help guarantee a single, reasonable outcome. I gotta try to think of everything to control the variables and potential outcomes so that we can train hard all the time. This shit ain’t easy, you know? How’s the cut? You gonna live?”

  “It’s fine, John, I’ve had cat scratches worse than this. How’s the throat?” I hope it’s goddamned killing you!

  “It’s fine,” cough, “about like a Texas mosquito bite.” John worked himself up to his feet.

  “What the fuck’s wrong with you, man,” Michael protested, still enraged by the altercation. “You couldn’t think of anything safer than coming at me with a real goddamned blade to get me to turn and run?! Especially after everything that’s happened over the last couple weeks, you wanna put me in a position where I think I’m being targeted for payback out here in the sticks, and then wonder why I don’t give you my back?! When I know you could have a gunman waiting to put some new holes in me?!” He pointed to Big Country and his rifle as evidence.

  “Andrew, listen to me now, son,” John pleaded. “Hear what I’m tellin’ you, please! Haggamore needed to go, and he didn’t deserve to be here training y’all. I ain’t gonna go into the details, but, by the time I’m done with him, he won’t even be able to work the register at a convenience store. I’m seeing to it that he never works anywhere near this field again. We’ve been hard on you the last couple weeks ‘cause I can’t reward the way you handled that, even though he fucked up, too, and was about to get fired, anyway. I’m hard on you because I need you to make some tough internal changes, not because I got any heartburn with you.” He pointed his thumb over at Big Country, who still intently watched Michael. “These guys hated that asshole, too, and they wanna see you become a teammate they can trust to go outside the wire with ‘em.”

  Big Country nodded his agreement. If it’s true, that’s a massive weight lifted, Michael thought. If they really wanted to hurt me, though, this was the time and place to do it.

  John coughed and cleared his throat. “After all the years I’ve done this, today’ll be the first time I’ve had to reconsider this particular evolution. You won this round against an old man, Andrew, but you used piss-poor strategy and judgment to do it. You can’t take every fight head-on. Someday that’ll kill you.” He pointed to the hillside north of them. “Get your bag and head up to that big stand of aspens. There’s food and water up there while everyone else meanders in. Get movin’, ‘cause some other asshole’s gonna roll through here soon, and I gotta figure out how to avoid repeatin’ this shit. I don’t think my throat can’t take being this right twice in one day.”

  FORTY-THREE

  Training Day 120, 0835 hours.

  Rural Compound. Niobrara County, Wyoming.

  Michael wipe
d dust from his eyelids, adjusted his “windproof” goggles, and returned his focus to his rifle’s iron sights and the distant, torso-sized steel target. Open sights, four-hundred yards. No problem. Just need the gusts to die off a little.

  thmp

  ting

  “Nice shot, Andrew,” John offered as he walked behind Michael and the other students lying next to each other across the designated firing line. “Try to get it off quicker next time, wind or not. That little A-R round’s pretty small and fast, so you don’t gotta make a big adjustment for it, usually.”

  “Thanks, John,” he replied without taking his eyes from the sights and the same target. We should’ve assaulted each other months ago. Guess that’s what it takes to finally get along with this guy.

  thmp

  ting

  thmpthmp

  ting

  “Too quick on that follow-up, Andrew,” John loudly chided him, “you can never miss fast enough to win the goddamned gunfight!”

  “Thanks, John,” Michael responded just the same as he had for his instructor’s accolade.

  “Andrew,” Alpha quietly sought his attention.

  “What’s up, man?”

  “I can’t get mine sighted-in right, are you willing to help?”

  “I can give it a shot, but Jude’s a lot better and faster at that than I am.” Michael sat up on his elbows and looked to his left, over Alpha, and called out his friend’s pseudonym. “Hey, Jude.”

  “Heard ya,” Sergio responded. “I’m on it.” After carefully laying his rifle on his green foam shooting mat, muzzle downrange, he shuffled over to his immediate right to help Alpha.

  Confident in his rifle’s accuracy and precision, Michael watched Sergio quickly work through the fundamentals of adjusting the rifle’s front and rear sights. While other students continued to fire sporadic rounds along the rest of the line, Alpha seemed to grasp Sergio's instruction and directives. In only a few minutes, he struck the four-hundred-yard steel on his first effort.

  Impressed with Sergio’s combat knowledge and his willingness to share it with those around him, Michael returned to his rifle and brought it back up on the same steel target.

  thmp thmthmp

  ting t-ting

  “Guess what,” Thomas loudly asked from his foam mat on the other side of Sergio, who responded with a succession of quick shots.

  thmpthmpthmp thmp

  ting ting

  Michael looked at Sergio and Alpha. All three ignored Thomas and returned to their rifles.

  “HA, you missed the first two,” Thomas exclaimed. “’Guess what,’ I said!”

  “No, I didn’t, you dipshit,” Sergio impatiently replied without moving his focus from his distant target, “you can’t hear the steel report from four-hundred yards over a rifle firing two feet from you.”

  thmpthmp thmpthmp

  tingting

  “Hey,” Thomas exclaimed, “I said, ‘guess what?’”

  I hope John hears him fuckin’ around and comes down here just to monkey-stomp his dumbass, Michael thought.

  “What,” Sergio impatiently responded.

  “You two assholes are rule breakers, and I can prove it!”

  “What’re you talkin’ about, Thomas,” Michael asked, not concerned that John might actually hear him. He sat up on his elbows again and looked over at the sycophant.

  Thomas set his rifle down on the mat and leaned up on his elbows to make eye contact with Michael over both Sergio and Alpha. “I’ve never heard you and Jude talk about these guns,” he explained, “so there’s no way for you to know about what experience he does or doesn’t have, unless, of course...” Thomas paused and smugly glanced between the two men. “...you’ve broken the rules and trusted each other with personal information.”

  “Eat shit, Thomas, you can’t even pretend to know that,” Sergio replied, having never left his rifle’s sights. He released a short barrage that Michael thought he intended to stop the conversation.

  thmpthmp thmpthmp thmpthmpthmp

  tingtingting

  Michael nodded his head in disappointment at Thomas and laid back down on his shooting mat.

  “There’s always the other option,” Thomas announced loudly enough to attract additional attention from Phillip and Matthew, whose mats were just beyond Thomas and Michael. “You two could’ve known each other from before, and just lied about it for the last four months.”

  Sergio continued shooting.

  thmpthmp thmpthmp thmp

  ting

  “I overhead Jude mention it on one of our first range days,” Michael defensively explained. “You’re not as smart as you think you are, Thomas. Don’t start makin’ shit up now just to take the heat off of you.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Andrew, I heard the instructors were gunnin’ for you up in the hills. Bet they’d love to know what you’ve been hiding.”

  “Hey, Thomas,” Sergio asked loudly enough for all five men to hear him, “I’d keep my mouth shut if I were you. I heard that you screamed and pissed yourself when they ambushed you up there. You don’t have enough credibility to make ‘em believe in gravity, pendejo.”

  thmpthmp thmpthmp thmpthmpthmp

  Sergio’s bolt held open after he sent the magazine’s last round downrange. A thin wisp of gun smoke wafted up from the open chamber as he turned to his left and glared at Thomas. “Don’t you have enough of your own problems without actually trying to draw out more hate and discontent from the rest of us?” He expertly reloaded a full thirty-round magazine and turned back to the steel torsos. Sergio pressed the rifle’s beavertail button with his left hand, which slammed the bolt closed and automatically loaded the top round from the magazine. “Mind your own fuckin’ business,” he advised and returned his right eye to the rifle’s sights. “You got eyes on the gong, Phillip?”

  “The four-hundred,” Phillip asked as he bent down to look through the large spotting scope in front of him.

  “No,” Sergio clarified, “the eight.”

  Phillip adjusted the scope so he could clearly see the heavy steel circle eight football fields away from their firing line. “Send it.”

  The five men fell silent. Michael knew the small round’s accuracy dropped off significantly after five hundred yards, especially from their shorter barreled rifles. At eight-hundred, it’ll take almost two full seconds for the bullet to get there.

  thmp

  All five men strained to listen for the hit.

  “Hit!” Phillip announced seeing Sergio’s success through the scope before the audible report reached them.

  gonggggg

  “Like I said, Thomas,” Sergio ominously offered without taking his rifle off-target, “don’t go shitting on everyone else to try and save yourself. You won’t like the outcome.”

  “Who did that?!” John’s unmistakable voice shouted from the far end of the firing line. “Who the fuck decided to put rounds on my gong?!”

  “I did, sir,” Sergio announced as he stood up to accept his punishment.

  “Is it bolt-gun day, Jude, and no one told me about it?!”

  “No, sir, it’s pew-pew day!”

  “That’s right, it’s goddamned pew-pew day! We’re shooting the little rifles with the little bullet at targets inside five-hundred! What’d you shoot at my precious steel gong, then, Saint Jude?”

  “The pew-pew, sir!”

  “Shit, son,” John exclaimed and sounded impressed for the first time in weeks. “You hit that with a 5-5-6?”

  “Yessir!”

  “I see Phillip has the big scope nearby, he walk ‘em in for ya?”

  “No, John, no observer, no one helped.”

  “How many rounds does the Patron Saint of Lost Causes need to harm my favorite steel?”

  “Just one, sir, the rifle’s dialed in real well right now.”

  “Well, God damn, man, carry on,” John replied in apparent disbelief, “if you ain’t gonna miss, who the hell am I to say you can’t shoot
it? Of course, you’re gonna sleep on the floor for the night, anyway, so you may as well have at it, son! Zebulon Floorboard!”

  Michael looked around at the other students, hoping one of them would correct John’s error. I don’t wanna be the one to publicly tell him. He looked over to their instructor to see how he responded to the expected silence.

  John put his hands on his hips, clearly growing more impatient. “I said, Zeb—,” he shouted, but then stopped, looked down, and shook his head. “Goddammit, I yelled at that kid for so long I forgot he left. Jude!”

  “Yes, John?”

  “Congratulations, you’re the new ‘Zebulon Floorboard' until I say different. If I were you, I’d try to make sure one-a these other assholes takes over for you soon. All the rest-a you shitheads,” John addressed the group at-large, “quit yer yappin’ and go back about your business.”

  As Sergio laid back down on his shooting mat, Michael focused on his own rifle and thought about what Thomas’ revelation could mean for him. If that asshole runs to John and squeals about what he thinks he knows, that could well be the end of this thing for me and Sergio. At this point, though, I don’t think he’d have any more mercy if I came clean. It’s not like either one of us just now realized we know each other, so, however it comes to light, we’re outta the program. May as well keep my mouth shut, and go with the union rep’s advice: deny everything, demand to see the evidence, make counter-accusations, and ask for a damned lawyer.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Training Day 125, 0507 hours.

  Rural Compound. Niobrara County, Wyoming.

  John had started their morning PT even earlier than usual and had designated this morning’s efforts as a group run. Michael had long stopped wondering what might await them on any given day. John rarely tells us anything more than a few minutes before it happens. Probably a psychology tactic to get us comfortable with a life of surprise and spontaneity. Most priests’ existence isn’t like that at all.