You’re not lost, Gunny had said, but Jeremy hadn’t recalled speaking aloud. You’ve been found. Don’t you get that?
Maybe Jeremy shook his head; he didn’t know.
Pull off where you can see the highway, Gunny repeated. The voice was soft, caring, almost fatherly. Then we’ll straighten some things out.
Jeremy sped past another exit.
Gunny said, Oh, my. Don’t you know yet that without me you’re nothing? So…if you want to be nothing again, you can stop at the next gas station and let me out.
Jeremy stared straight ahead. In another moment he realized he was alone, because he could no longer see Gunny from the corner of his eye. Yet he knew he’d always been alone; what he saw and heard as the image of his gunnery sergeant from training school wasn’t there and had never been. It was something from within, just like when a lonely person starts talking to the mirror. He remembered some line from a movie, maybe he’d seen it on the base in Iraq, where the guy says you’re not crazy if you talk to yourself in the mirror, but if you answer back you’ve gotta be fucking nuts.
He thought his image of Gunny, just as regulation spit-polished, side-walled and crisply buttoned-up as the man had been in real life, had to do with perfection. Maybe it was how he himself had wanted to be…had planned on being, until things messed up. He could’ve been an instructor at the school, no doubt about it. He could’ve served a long and useful life in the Corps. Semper Fi, that’s what it was all about. So he knew that Gunny wasn’t there, could never really be there, but he would accept any part of Gunny he could get because it took him back to when he was somebody, doing something important in this world.
It occurred to him as he was driving eastward, about midway between Sweetwater and Abilene, that his fingers on the steering-wheel seemed longer than he recalled. The knuckles were thicker, too. He wasn’t excusing himself for those poor shots—no way, he was a professional—but his long fingers might have fouled up his trigger pull. It was something he hadn’t noticed until now, and it hit him like a small shock that he did not recognize his own hands. When he moved the fingers, they rippled on the steering-wheel like the legs of a spider touched by a hot needle. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw with a strike of terror that one eye was the wrong color, and then he started talking himself down, muttering and gasping things that had meaning for him, like grape popsicle and their daughter Judy and my name is Gladiator, my name is Gladiator, my name is Gladiator. Until finally his spider-fingered hands pulled the pickup off at the next exit and Jeremy stopped at a gas station to get a cup of coffee.
He left the truck parked at the far corner of the lot, its bug-smeared grill aimed toward I-20.
It is nearly one o’clock by Jeremy’s watch. In this pretend playhouse, with the Rolling Stones’ ‘Brown Sugar’ now cranking from the speakers and the flamehaired girl taking her turn on the pole, the Hispanic dentist has had enough beers, even of the watered variety, to be swaying in his chair. Miss Ponytail is always a tit’s touch away from him, guarding her gold mine. Jeremy has been to three other joints like this tonight. The first and second had a security guard out front, patrolling the parking lot, the third had floodlights and video cameras up on the corners of the building, but this one out in an industrial area is a windowless cinderblock slab designated by a portable sign on wheels to be Club Salvaje, Where The Wild Angels Play. There are lights in the parking lot, but they’re angled so they throw huge pools of black shadow amid the cars, SUVs and trucks. Up on the building itself are two video cameras aimed down at the front door, which might have been a problem except for the fact that Jeremy thinks they’re fakes because no red Record lights are showing. He thinks this joint is too cheap, too temporary, to afford a real video security system. The batteries for the false lights have probably burned out.
He needs money. He’s used his credit card too much as it is, for gas, food and motel rooms; it was on the critical list when he left Temple, and pretty soon it’s going to be shut down. If he doesn’t have enough cash, the police will be called and that won’t help him any. He was out last night, hitting some other strip clubs, spending his money on the crappy beer because they won’t let him sit in these places if he doesn’t buy something. But no opportunities had come up. He hasn’t eaten today, saving his last few dollars for tonight. He watches the Hispanic dentist, and he wonders where in the lot is the man’s car parked.
If you have any doubt about what you’re doing, Gunny had said when Jeremy was back in the pickup with a styrofoam cup of coffee and a Milky Way bar, know that you’re making a new life for yourself. You’re coming out of retirement. How does that feel?
Jeremy hadn’t answered, because if he did he would be talking to himself. His fingers were okay now, his hands back to what they were. He checked his eye in the rearview mirror and found that it too had returned to normal.
You’ve missed being useful, said Gunny. Being needed for a task. A mission. Being the go-to guy. That was everything to you, wasn’t it?
Jeremy slid down a little in his seat and watched the passage of traffic going east and west on I-20.
Everything, Gunny repeated. Well, you’ve got a mission again. Maybe you’re not as good as you used to be, but hey…who is? This time Gunny didn’t pause for a response. You’re still very talented. Very able. And you still enjoy the hunt, don’t you?
“Yes,” Jeremy said, before he could think not to.
They trained you and fed you and built you and set you loose. They created you to be what you are. What did they expect you to do, after they didn’t need you anymore?
“I don’t know,” said Jeremy.
But they do still need you. They need men like you to step up and defend the honor of every veteran who put their boots in that dust over there. Who left their families, and who came back changed from when they went. Who died over there, or who came back as good as dead, like Chris. You think anybody in that band ever fought for their country? You think they ever would? So they get up on their stage, on their platform, and make their accusations and their pronouncements, and play their music—which is shitty music, really—and people like them screw everything up until the flag looks dirty and fighting for your country looks like the act of a criminal. Are you a criminal because you carried out your missons? Does following orders make you a criminal?
Jeremy shook his head. No, it does not. Definitely not.
He wasn’t sure if he’d spoken aloud or if he hadn’t, but Gunny could hear him.
This is not just about that shitty band, Gunny said after a stretch of silence. Not just about smearing garbage on the memory of men like Chris. This is about you. Are you listening?
From Jeremy: I am.
Gunny said, This is your new beginning. You do this right—you be smart and careful—and you can live the dream. Every once in a while they bring you out of that white stone villa on the beach in Mexico somewhere, give you a target and you go hunting. You spend three or four days in the field, you send the bullet, and they heap praise and money on your head. And you perform a service for them, something they can’t do on their own. Something they have to keep off the books. Dangerous? Sure. Could you get yourself killed, or strung up by the heels and cut up so bad you’d want to die? Absolutely. But where were you on Friday night, Jeremy? Cutting yourself up, weren’t you? Living in misery and dying in sadness. So what do you have to lose from this point onward? And weigh that very carefully against what there is to be gained, won’t you?
That Gunny had a silver tongue, Jeremy thought as he stared at the highway through the waves of shimmering heat. That Gunny made everything sound so possible. No…inevitable would be the right word.
To get where you want to go, Gunny continued, you have to earn your passage. It’s not enough that one of them is dead. Not nearly enough. Think of them as being target practice. But don’t fuck up again, Jeremy. Do you hear?
“I hear,” Jeremy answered. He had a question to ask, and now was the time: “
How many do I need to kill?”
I’ll tell you when to stop. Did you know that your candy is melting?
Jeremy looked down. The Milky Way, which he’d unpeeled from its wrapper, was oozing in dark sticky strands along his hand. When he looked to the right, he knew that Gunny would no longer be there; Gunny, after all, was a prowler and couldn’t stay still very long.
Gunny had come to him on Saturday morning, after the failed suicide of Friday night. It had been a slow insertion, much as a sniper might creep in yard after yard under a ghillie suit that resembled nothing more than a bed of dry grass and dead leaves. At first Gunny had been a faint image in the bathroom mirror, next a pallid shape against a sand-colored wall, then a quickly-glimpsed human figure standing in a corner, and finally a revelation of the death angel’s art, sitting in the chair where it had masqueraded as Chris the night before.
Jeremy had stared at Gunny, at the handsome sharp features and slightly-twisted mouth ready to snap out a command, at the straight-backed posture and slim wiry musculature in the ever-pressed uniform. Jeremy was more fascinated than fearful, more awed than afraid. He stood his ground in the dim room, and he said calmly, “You’re not real.”
Gunny’s eyes had just fixed on him, the direct gaze of a man who is supremely confident of his own physical power. Seconds passed, yet the mouth did not speak.
“Not real,” Jeremy repeated.
And then Gunny had smiled in that way Jeremy remembered; it was almost startling, like seeing a block of ice suddenly crack. It didn’t hold very long, and Gunny’s face settled back into its blank rigidity. Pett, said Gunny in the exact same voice Jeremy knew, I’m as real as you need me to be. Now don’t you have some work to get done?
Gunny had lingered there for a short while, but in the space of a ragged breath or a slow eyeblink the figure was gone and Jeremy was left staring dumbly at an empty chair.
He knew what he wanted, and he knew what he needed to do. He wanted to live, and he needed to prove he was still worth something to someone…even if just to the shade of Gunny. The work to get done: packing some clothes in a bag, putting his rifle in its carrying case, taking the ammo and his automatic pistol and everything he needed out to the metal storage box in the back of his truck. Then going to the library, checking the Internet for The Five’s website and writing down their schedule. The Curtain Club in Dallas tonight. El Paso next Friday night.
What was life, without a purpose?
Sitting in the truck facing I-20 with the melted candy bar all over his hand, Jeremy thought of something Gunny had just said: And you still enjoy the hunt, don’t you?
For a sniper, the hunt was everything. It was what you had trained so hard for. What you lived, ate, and breathed for. What you dreamed about, when you slept. And when you had known what it was like to hunt a man, and had lived through it and been victorious as many times as Jeremy had, there was nothing better. Not even peace.
So, for sure…he still enjoyed the hunt.
He knew exactly why he was sitting with his truck facing I-20. He was watching for their van and their trailer. Wouldn’t be hard to spot. He expected they would be leaving Sweetwater today before eleven o’clock, which was the Lariat’s checkout time. They would be travelling east, back toward Austin, where their website said they were based. He would wait for them, and follow when they passed.
He did enjoy the hunt.
When he was in the swimming pool, there in the dark, the girl had crept up on him.
“Hi,” she’d said, and he’d known who it was from her voice. Instantly he’d stopped his slow stroke through the water and glided over to the far side, where he’d hooked his elbows up on the concrete and hung there, his face hidden from her.
But she came nearer still, and after a few more seconds she’d said, “Lots of stars up there.”
He hadn’t answered. Wouldn’t answer. He had nothing to speak to her that his rifle could not say better. But it was so close on his lips, so close, for him to say bitterly, You think you know the truth about Iraq, bitch? You have no fucking idea.
After a while, when he’d realized the girl had walked away, Jeremy had gotten out of the pool in his wet Fruit-Of-The-Looms and gone back to his room, where he’d expected—or hoped—to find Gunny waiting for him, but the room had been empty. So he’d channel-surfed across a TV-scape of movies and infomercials and reality shows until he’d gotten weary of looking, but he’d slept with the Made In China remote control in his hand and the TV soundlessly displaying a world in constant motion.
At the center of the pulse of purple light and throbbing noise that passes as music, Jeremy watches Miss Ponytail and the Hispanic dentist. A guy in a wife-beater T-shirt and chinos, a dark-colored ball cap on his head and chains around his neck, comes over to say something to Miss Ponytail, maybe wave a bill at her for a lapdance, but she gives him a tight catty look and says something back and he shrugs and moves away in apparent rejection, heading into the further darkness. The Hispanic dentist grins wider, glad to be her one-and-only. He peels off some more money for her, and again she grinds his front yard with an expert ass.
On that Sunday Jeremy sat in his pickup truck watching I-20, the van and the U-Haul never went past. He’d waited until almost sunset, and then he’d decided he should drive back to the Lariat. Their ride was gone. Where were they? I think I left my cellphone by the pool, Jeremy had told the woman at the front desk. I was talking to a girl out there last night, she said she was a musician with a band. Did she check out?
This mornin’, came the reply. No, nobody found a cellphone anywhere.
Jeremy had thanked her and walked back to the truck.
He didn’t have to ask for Gunny’s opinion. He already figured they’d gone on to El Paso. Forward, instead of backward. Their website had said they were playing on Friday night at a place called the Spinhouse. He was surprised, because he’d expected them to pack up and go home.
It’s not enough that one of them is dead, he’d thought as he’d started off westward again. Not nearly enough.
He’d found a cheap little motel on the eastern edge of El Paso, had spent most of Monday sleeping and watching TV and had called the Spinhouse that afternoon. His question had been: Is The Five still playing there on Friday?
Yeah, the guy had told him. The Soul Cages start up about eight-thirty, The Five ought to be up around ten. It’s ten bucks before Friday, twelve at the door. Gonna be a good time, come on by.
Jeremy had said he would look forward to it.
Now, something has changed in the little play he is observing. The Hispanic dentist is leaning in, watching Miss Ponytail write with a pen on the inside of what appears to be a book of matches. Giving him her phone number? Setting up something more than a lapdance? Then she gives him a quick kiss on the cheek, a see-you-later kind of thing, and he stands up and staggers his way between the tables to the door. As soon as he’s out, Miss Ponytail slides herself down beside a heavy-set gray-haired man in a UTEP T-shirt and puts her flirt on at full beam, but by then Jeremy is on his feet and heading across the room. He tries to make himself invisible, a slow-moving nobody in no hurry to go anywhere, but the truth is that he’s tense inside, his stomach is roiling, and he’s not just a little bit scared of what he has to do.
He steps outside, lets the door close but stands tight against it for a moment. If someone else comes out in the next couple of minutes, he’ll need to scrub this particular mission. In the parking lot are eleven cars, pickups and SUVs including his own truck. Jeremy’s target is walking among the vehicles, heading toward the right. Jeremy has no more time to think about it. He takes two quick strides forward, crouches down alongside a red Chevy Tahoe and spends a few seconds listening to the hammer of his heartbeat. Then he creeps after the man, and as he moves he takes from his pocket what he didn’t want the stripclub girl to feel: a cake of heavy soap knotted up in a gym sock.
He peers up across a windshield and sees the Hispanic dentist standing besid
e a red Lexus, fumbling with his keys. Sweat is on Jeremy’s face; after all the times he’s set up shots with his sniper rifle, after all his association with violence and sudden death, he’s never assaulted and robbed anyone before and never dreamed in his life that he ever would. But the time has come, and he has to move right now.
The man presses a button on his keychain and the lights blink as the doors unlock. Jeremy starts to stand up and rush forward, swinging his makeshift cudgel at the back of the man’s skull, but before he can do that another figure suddenly comes out alongside Jeremy’s own truck, which is parked just across from the Lexus, and a voice says, “Hey, man, got a light?”
The Hispanic dentist turns toward the sound and weaves a little on his feet.
Jeremy waits, the sock gripped in his fist.
“A light, man,” says the guy with the wife-beater T-shirt, the dark-colored ball cap and the chains around his neck. He is holding out a cigarette.
The Hispanic dentist of course does have a light. He brings forth the book of matches Miss Ponytail just gave him, and as he offers it to the guy in the ball cap the third man in this drama, who wears a dark green knit cap and has shoulder-length brown hair, comes up behind the Hispanic dentist from where he’s circled around and delivers a vicious blow to the back of his quarry’s head with what Jeremy figures must be a blackjack of some kind. Before the man can fall, the two jackals are on him, and Jeremy watches them drag the body through a broken section of chainlink fence and down into a culvert on this side of a darkened warehouse with big trucks parked at the loading docks.