She held me by my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “Be careful.”
“We will.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bruce, John, and Walter decided that we’d go all the way to Redding instead of just Susanville. It was a bigger town, and one that we’d—hopefully—never have to go back to. It added two hours to the drive each way, which gave the highway patrol two extra hours to catch us if they caught wind of what we’d done. But we needed good guns, and this was our best bet.
We woke Eugene and filled him in on the plan.
“I don’t suppose this place will have any night-vision devices?” Eugene asked. “Porky Pig coulda come over that rise last night when I was on watch and I never woulda seen him.”
“It’s a gun store, not an army-surplus store,” Bruce said as we climbed into the van. “Besides, those things have got to be so expensive that no one would ever let one wind up in a gun shop in Redding.”
“Who knows?” Julia said. “Like John said, vets coming home might have anything with them.”
“What’s the deal with you?” Bruce asked. “You’re an artist. I would expect you to be one of those hippie antigun types. Why are you hanging out with us?”
“Why are any of us doing this?” Julia asked. “We’re trying to save the world.”
“There’s got to be more than that to this.”
“Well,” she said, “I was too young to take part in the civil rights protests. Now I finally have the chance to do my part for a cause that’s important to me. I can’t just sit back and let Endgame happen.”
We drove on through the farms and forests of Northern California, and every time I saw a cabin or cottage, I imagined Mary and me living there, getting old together there.
I dozed off, and Tommy woke me up just as we came into Redding. We drove around for a little while, just looking at businesses, before Bruce finally stopped at a gas station and tore the map from the phone book while I topped off the tank.
Aside from pawnshops, which Bruce said would be more trouble than they were worth, there was only one gun shop listed: Dead Zone Guns ’n’ Ammo. Once Bruce figured out the maps, it was a short five-minute drive.
“You know what you’re going to do, Julia?” Bruce asked.
“Relax,” she said, “or you’re going to get people killed. I know what I’m doing. Pull the van right there, right under the phone line.”
The store was a freestanding building, not part of a strip mall or anything like that. It was cinder block, painted white, with one door in the front and no door anywhere else that we could see. We parked in the back, out of sight from the street and the front door.
Julia had to climb through the back of the van to get out—Bruce had pulled in so tightly against the wall and under the phone line that she couldn’t open her door. She was dressed in a pair of very tight-fitting bell-bottom jeans, a plaid shirt (strategically unbuttoned to show just enough), and a pair of worn boots.
As soon as she was gone, Bruce climbed in the back and handed a submachine gun to Eugene and another to Tommy. “These are simple. S&W M76. Okay, this tab switches from single shot to full auto. Let’s leave it on full. Now hit the magazine release button here to put in a fresh mag. Easy. Take an extra each. Always best to have extra. Now pull back on the charging handle to chamber a round. Okay. You’re ready.”
“What about me?” I asked.
“Mike,” Bruce said, “I only have so many guns, and none of the deer rifles from Mary’s gun safe are going to be useful in there. You’re going to be watching the door, making sure nobody comes in behind us.
But if something happens, here’s this: M1911. Simplest pistol there is. Safety is up here. Just use your thumb. It’s already loaded. Just pull the slide back and it’s ready to rock and roll.”
I looked at the pistol, hefted its weight in my hand. It weighed more than I expected. “How many bullets are in here?”
“Thirteen,” Bruce said.
I pointed the gun at the floor and pulled back the slide.
Bruce nodded. “Now you just point and pull the trigger. Just try not to. Okay, guys. Masks. Eugene, you cover the door Julia saw.”
We all pulled our ski masks on—we’d picked them up in Reno too. There was a knock on the van door, and then it opened. Julia stood there with two boxes of shotgun shells. “Only the owner. There’s a door to a back room, but it was closed, so I don’t know if anyone’s in there. No customers.”
Julia pulled a pair of bolt cutters from the van and moved to the front to climb up to the phone line.
“Okay, guys,” Bruce said. “We hit it hard and fast, before the owner has a chance to get his gun. Eugene and I go in first, then Tommy, then Mike. Let’s go!”
Bruce and Eugene jumped from the van.
They ran to the front door and threw it open. Tommy and I were right behind them.
“Don’t touch it,” Bruce barked at the man behind the counter, who was just ducking down as Bruce burst through the door. “Stand up real easy, you son of a bitch. Show me your hands.”
Very slowly, the man stood.
Eugene hopped over the counter and trained his gun on the store owner too.
The shop was dark, compared to the midday light outside, and wood paneling gave everything a golden hue. There was a glass counter that ran the length of the shop, turning at the end to make an L shape, and behind it the walls were lined with long guns: shotguns at our end, deer rifles next, and then combat weapons—submachine guns, assault weapons, and antiques. I didn’t know guns well enough to put names to any of them, except to say that the assault weapons looked like the guns I saw every night on the news, being carried by soldiers in Vietnam. Some of the submachine guns looked vaguely like ours, but others looked tiny—I’d seen them in movies, being carried by bodyguards. The glass counter was filled with pistols, revolvers—every type of handgun. The only thing on our side of the counter was a floor-to-ceiling rack of ammunition.
The steel door was at the far end of the L. We guessed there was no back door to the building, so it was likely an office or storeroom. Maybe a bathroom.
I tried to aim my gun at the shopkeeper and found that my hand was trembling far too much to keep the sight on him. I used both hands, and that barely helped. Sweat poured down my back. I turned back to watch the door.
“You’ve got three guns trained on you,” Bruce said. “Are you right-handed or left?”
“Right,” the man answered.
“Use your left, just two fingers. Pick up your gun and place it on the counter.”
We all watched as he reached for the gun. I kept glancing back and forth between the owner and the door.
“Put your other hand on your bald old head,” Bruce said.
He obeyed, and then continued to reach for the gun. And then he shouted, “Morris!”
The steel door flew open, and an elderly man fired blindly at us. The shopkeeper raised the barrel of his sawed-off shotgun, but Eugene and Bruce blasted him in a cacophony of gunfire. I fired at Morris, once, twice, and then Bruce turned his gun on the old man.
In less than five seconds it was all over.
“Nice work,” Bruce said to me. “Next time just aim a little higher and . . .”
We both saw Tommy at the same time. He was slumped against the back wall, behind all of us. His green shirt was black with blood. I dropped to my knees beside him, immediately checking for a pulse, knowing that of course there wouldn’t be one. He’d taken Morris’s shotgun blast full in the chest.
This was nothing like the movies. No eyes open to tell me a last request, to tell me it was okay, to make an ironic joke. He was just dead.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” Eugene said.
“This was your fault, jackass!” I yelled at Eugene. “You were supposed to cover that back door.”
“I did! As soon as I saw the guy, I dropped him.”
I felt hot tears on my cheeks. “I don’t give a shit, man. Tommy is fuckin
g dead because of you.”
“Come on,” Bruce said, and then pointed at my arm. “It looks like you’re hit, Mike.”
For the first time, I noticed that I was bleeding down my right arm. I pulled up my T-shirt sleeve and saw two entry wounds in my shoulder. I didn’t feel any pain, but knew I would soon.
“I can patch that,” Eugene said, taking hold of my arm.
“The hell with you,” I snapped, shrugging him off me.
I should have been watching, I thought. I was supposed to be with this group because of my instincts, but what good had they done me? What good had they done Tommy? I shouldn’t have been there. It should have been John the Green Beret, or Henry, or Jim, or anyone else who actually knew what they were doing. I was there, I was supposed to be protecting everyone, and now Tommy was dead.
Bruce had already found the keys locking the chains on the long guns. “Guys, I said come on.”
Julia came in and saw Tommy’s body. “What the fuck happened? Oh my God.”
“Yeah,” Bruce said. “Help us with these.”
We weren’t picky. We scrambled to collect every assault rifle and shotgun in the shop and carried them, one in each hand, to the van. When we had a full layer across the floor of the van, Bruce and I laid a tarp over the top of them, and Bruce started bringing out pistols. He ordered Eugene to start packing ammunition into boxes he found in the storeroom.
Bruce stopped me from carrying and had Julia bandage my arm—I was bleeding everywhere. After she patched me up, I went back into the store to help with the last load.
Bruce had two assault rifles in his hands, and Eugene was carrying a box of ammo, when we heard a voice: “Morris, I’ve been trying to get you on the horn for ten minutes. What’s with this call I got about gunfire . . .”
A sheriff walked into the shop. He froze, eyes going from Tommy to Eugene to Bruce to me.
He started for his gun, but mine was in my hand—I didn’t have a holster. I fired, just like Bruce had told me, but aiming a little higher: sternum, throat, chin, face.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I sat and stared at the sheriff while the others flew through the store, filling boxes with ammo and searching for anything else of value. Time seemed to stop for me. I saw the sheriff’s face, saw the cop’s face back at the protest, saw the hole in Tommy’s chest.
Bruce found all the Vietnam contraband in the back room: dozens of grenades, three claymores, five flak vests, two portable radios, and a mortar with four rounds. I had no idea what we’d even do with half the stuff. Bruce drove very slowly back toward Mary’s ranch. As my head began to clear, I could see that he was driving five miles under the speed limit, giving the highway patrol no reason to pull him over—and avoiding the risk of a bump in the road setting our whole van ablaze.
We’d had to leave Tommy there, after putting all the bodies in a pile to make them harder to identify. The building was cinder block, but the gun mounts were wood, and the rest of the walls had wood paneling. The incendiary grenade we threw onto the pile would cause havoc for a small town’s law investigation. With any luck, they wouldn’t even realize that there were four bodies there. One of them was my roommate. My friend.
But we needed the guns, didn’t we? We were trying to save the world. We’d agreed to be full participants of this group. If we hadn’t done this, then we wouldn’t be prepared for the mission ahead. And we had to stop the Players. We had to. I had to fight even harder now, so that Tommy’s death wouldn’t have been in vain. I’d make it up to him.
Then something occurred to me. What would Mary think when I told her I’d killed someone? This was so much worse than just punching a cop in the middle of a protest. I’d ended another person’s life. The whole reason I’d gotten involved in Zero line was for Mary. The whole reason I’d gone on this robbery was because she’d told me she couldn’t do this without me. But would she still want me when she found out what I’d done?
Mary had told me to come. She’d known what could happen. It wasn’t her innocence I should worry about—it was mine. I was a murderer.
I felt filthy, covered in other people’s blood and my own. My arm stung and ached at the same time. I had buckshot in me—the buckshot from the same blast that had killed Tommy.
Julia sat in the front seat while Bruce drove. Eugene was in the back, silently staring out the window.
I moved a box of ammo and reached down to pick up an assault rifle with a scope. I rooted through the box of ammo until I found one that said 7.62X51.
“Julia? Do these match this gun?”
“Yes,” she said. “Why do you want to know?”
Bruce looked back at me through the rearview mirror.
“I want to be a scout. I want you to leave me at the front when we get back to the ranch.” I couldn’t see anyone at the ranch. Not like this. If I did, I’d crack. My doubts about Endgame would come flooding out, and I couldn’t voice them. They couldn’t be true. If they were, all would be lost.
“Can’t do that,” they both said, almost in unison.
“You’ve never shot that gun before,” Bruce said. “I’m not going to put you in charge of guarding the camp.”
“And your arm’s going to need attention. You’ve got buckshot in there,” Julia said. “If you don’t get that out, it’ll get infected.”
“I can’t go back to camp,” I said.
“Why not?” Bruce asked. “And it better not have anything to do with you shooting that sheriff. You saved all of our lives.”
“Four people are dead right now who woke up this morning feeling fine. Lives are destroyed.”
“Lives get destroyed every day, damn it,” Bruce said, “by car accidents or house fires or getting a knock on the door from the Department of Defense. You need to suck it up and realize that we’re not on a Boy Scout camping trip. This is war. War to save humanity. Unfortunately, there will be casualties.”
I looked down at the floor beneath me, guns stacked six inches deep. At the blood covering my arm and shirt. At the gun I’d used to kill the sheriff. I don’t know if I can do this, I thought.
Bruce turned off the road. I hadn’t realized we were back at the Golden Pines Ranch. Even though I knew where our scouts were, I couldn’t see them.
“Kat bought medical supplies in Reno,” Julia said, not looking back at me. “She’s not an ER nurse, but I think she should know how to suture a wound.”
We got to the camp to see that they’d been busy. Tables had been built around a real fire pit, and it looked like someone had shot a deer, which they were cooking over the fire.
I took the automatic rifle with me and two boxes of ammunition. I still had the pistol Bruce had given me, and I tucked it in the back of my pants.
The camp rushed toward the van.
Mary ran over to throw her arms around me, but I waved her off, and she saw the pained look on my face.
“Mike, what happened? Kat! Kat! Get over here with your kit.”
I sat on a log away from the group. I dropped the two flak jackets that I’d taken for Mary and me, and on top I set the pistol and then the rifle. Walter had given me a look when I took the jackets, but he didn’t say anything. I was going to make sure Mary and I were safe. They could argue with me later.
“Mike,” Mary said, kneeling next to me, “talk to me. What happened? You’re shot.”
My chin began to quiver. “Tommy . . . he’s dead.” And then I fell apart into tears.
Training would start in earnest now. We had a stockpile of ammo, and more than enough guns.
John approached me, and I stared up at him with wet cheeks.
“Mike, I’m sorry about Tommy, but you did the right thing by taking out the sheriff,” he said. “Your first kill is always the hardest. Remember, you saved the mission and protected Zero line. We’re one step closer to saving the world from Endgame.”
He started to walk away and then stopped, turning back around. “Let’s have a memorial for Tommy tonight.”<
br />
“We’ll be there,” Mary said.
Kat knelt down in the dirt and pulled back my blood-soaked sleeve. “That looks worse than it is, Mike. You’re going to be fine. Just fine.”
It was a lie. Total bullshit. I would never be fine again.
Excerpt from ENDGAME: THE CALLING
SEE HOW ENDGAME BEGINS:
MARCUS LOXIAS MEGALOS
Hafz Alipaa Sk, Aziz Mahmut Hüdayi Mh, Istanbul, Turkey
Marcus Loxias Megalos is bored. He cannot remember a time before the boredom. School is boring. Girls are boring. Football is boring. Especially when his team, his favorite team, Fenerbahçe, is losing, as they are now, to Manisaspor.
Marcus sneers at the TV in his small, undecorated room. He is slouched in a plush black leather chair that sticks to his skin whenever he sits up. It is night, but Marcus keeps the lights in his room off. The window is open. Heat passes through it like an oppressive ghost as the sounds of the Bosporus—the long, low calls of ships, the bells of buoys—groan and tinkle over Istanbul.
Marcus wears baggy black gym shorts and is shirtless. His 24 ribs show through his tanned skin. His arms are sinewy and hard. His breathing is easy. His stomach is taut and his hair is close-cropped and black and his eyes are green. A bead of sweat rolls down the tip of his nose. All of Istanbul simmers on this night, and Marcus is no different.
A book lies open in his lap, ancient and leather-bound. The words on its pages are Greek. Marcus has handwritten something in English on a scrap of paper that lies across the open page: From broad Crete I declare that I am come by lineage, the son of a wealthy man. He has read the old book over and over. It’s a tale of war, exploration, betrayal, love, and death. It always makes him smile.
What Marcus wouldn’t give to take a journey of his own, to escape the oppressive heat of this dull city. He imagines an endless sea spread out before him, the wind cool against his skin, adventures and enemies arrayed on the horizon.