“And what happens if they do?”
He glanced at Martin, then back at me. “Then we discuss our options. Maybe we just cut him loose. I hope he’s someone you do trust.”
He finished his coffee, got up from the table and left without saying anything further. Martin followed him out. I stayed at the table. When I set my cup down, my hands were shaking. I ran a hand through my hair and clenched my fists, trying to get them to calm down.
Martin came back in the room. He folded his arms and leaned against the countertop.
“Hope you’re proud of yourself.”
I turned and glared at him.
“I really think you hurt his feelings.”
“Think he’ll live?”
“Man, what is wrong with you?”
I gaped. Was he serious?
“You know, maybe this hasn’t crossed that little writer’s brain of yours, but Grant’s gone out on a limb for you. I mean, he’s really put himself on the line. And you return his trust with this?”
“Man, don’t even hand me that! You’re the one talking about taking a bullet and doing whatever you gotta do for the mission and all that heavy crap. And who was it who said Jerry might have drawn a one-way ticket? Huh? And what’s with dropping all this in my lap first thing in the morning, anyway?” It was a helluva way to start a day. I hadn’t even finished my first cup of coffee yet. Let alone breakfast. I could feel hunger gnawing at my stomach.
“First thing? It’s quarter after nine! I was beginning to think I’d have to drag you outta bed. Grant waited here for two hours so you could tell him you thought he was some kind of heartless bastard.”
“Grant is a heartless bastard, and I’m not taking the fall for this. I didn’t ask you to bring him here.”
“Like hell you didn’t! You told me to tell him last night that if Jerry goes you go. After you left, I figured you were overreacting and called him up—just before I went to get you. That’s why he was here this morning.”
“Wait a minute. Overreacted? You’re the one who told me Jerry could die. I don’t call it overreacting when I go to make sure my friend is all right. It’s the least I could do.”
He shook his head. “You still don’t get it, do you? You’re so worked up over this one-way ticket, thing. We’ve all drawn one way tickets, dummy!”
I stared at him. His eyes narrowed.
“You didn’t figure on that, didja?” he said.
I turned and scrutinized my coffee, studying the inky liquid.
“Hell’s bells, Petey. We’re talking about killing the leader of the free world. There’s no way we won’t get caught. You knew that, didn’t you? You had to have known that.”
“I haven’t thought about it like that.”
“Well, what do you think is going to happen? You gonna pull the trigger on the President, come back here and pick up your writing career where you left off?”
“You didn’t talk about them catching us. I mean, even at camp, you just talked about us doing our job and then being done.”
“That’s cause we got to keep you outta the militia groups. You know, keep it pure. And they might not catch us on day one, but we’re talking about the United States government here. They are very good at catching people. And they will catch us. It’s just a question of how you want to go down. Petey, this has been a suicide mission from day one.”
“Suicide.”
“It’s a Nathan Hale moment, buddy.”
“‘I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country,’” I quoted.
“That’s right. We’re just the first dominos to fall. The spark that lights the powder keg.”
Whatever thoughts I’d had earlier of breakfast had just been banished. In all my hopes for protecting Martin, for keeping him from getting himself killed, it never dawned on me that that was precisely what he was after.
“Do you want to die?” My voice sounded thick in my ears.
He sat down in his chair and put his hand on my shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze. “Everybody dies. The question is: are you willing to die for something? If the Marxists are willing to kill to destroy this country, I guess I’m willing to die to protect it. I’ll throw my body into the gears, if that’s what it takes to stop them from turning.”
I pressed my lips together, wondering if Jerry thought the same. There was only one way to find out, but I didn’t want to ask.
Twenty-One
I was midway through my shower before I realized Martin lied to me. I blinked in the drizzle, droplets stinging my eyes. The water came down from the tap in uneven streams, blocked in the showerhead by twenty plus years of hard water deposits. Lime and rust had built up over time, preventing a clear flow.
Just like me and Martin.
I had history with him. Expectations. One of those was believing we could be truthful with each other. I assumed that Martin felt the same. I expected him to tell me the truth. I was as clogged from seeing his lies and manipulation as our indoor plumbing.
I stood under the water, letting the warmth trickle through my hair and down my back, feeling it run in narrow streams across my calves, and I thought about what Martin said to me the night before.
He hadn’t talked about some suicide mission then. He’d boldly walked into a corner and dared me to pin him there.
“You’re really gonna make me say it, aren’t you?”
Those were his words. Clearly, he meant to warn me about Grant, to mentally prepare me for whatever actions our de facto team leader might take.
And maybe Grant never intended to do anything anyway, and maybe Grant told him to retract what he’d said—perhaps intuiting how I’d respond.
The bottom line was still this: Martin had thought Grant would take Jerry out, which is how this whole fiasco got started.
So why did he lie about it?
I resumed scrubbing my hair, massaging the soap bubbles into my scalp, grateful to remove four days of Adirondack grime from my head.
Was he just following Grant’s orders? Was he afraid I’d blow the whistle and run to the cops, to Jerry, to someone? Or was this just another one of Martin’s tests—his petty manipulations to see if I could perform as expected?
I rinsed the last of the soap out of my hair and stepped onto the bathroom floor. We really should replace that nozzle. It’d feel good to have a real shower again. I dried myself and meandered back into my bedroom to dress.
Jerry had talked about taking a bullet—the whole suicide thing. What was that all about? That was the day before yesterday, while we were still in the mountains. Long before he freaked out at the traffic stop. Which meant that Martin was up to something. Or Grant was. Or something.
What any of this had to do with what we were planning was beyond me. I had enough trouble figuring out Martin on that account alone—besides whatever psychological games he thought he needed to play.
What if this whole thing was nothing more than some kind of game he and Grant were playing—seeing how far they could push us—how far we’d go—that sort of thing?
Or what if—
“Stop it!” I said aloud, not even caring if Martin heard me. This was getting nowhere. I couldn’t get straight talk from Martin or Grant, and I couldn’t even think straight.
That left Jerry.
Imagine going to him for advice. I swallowed back bile. Even though talking to him about this whole thing with Martin and Grant made me sick, I didn’t see how I’d get any clearer on the matter.
***
I left the house and drove to Knapp’s Gun Shop. The store was little more than a pole barn on a side street off Route 250, north of the railroad tracks in Webster. This part of town was still in the village itself, but it lacked the pleasantries that made Webster such a nice place to live, like sidewalks with large trees and buildings with fresh paint. Down here there was little more than a gas station, some cheap restaurants, and a couple of rental joints, along with sundry rows of crumbling brick
apartment buildings and hundred year old houses with chipped siding, mossy roofs and porches that sagged under the weight of accumulated junk. If there was a wrong side of the tracks in Webster, this was it.
I pulled into the gravel parking lot, not too surprised to see only one other car in the parking lot. Knapp’s didn’t exactly run what you called a brisk business, not since the big box sporting goods store in the plaza sucked most of the new customers away with promises of a wider selection and a more pleasing shopping experience. Not that their prices were better. Wal-Mart had everyone beat on that account. But Jerry’s dad had a loyal customer base, and they kept their niche of the market by performing repair services the other stores couldn’t offer, or had to farm out to them anyway. I walked through the door, hearing the bells above my head jangle, announcing my presence.
“Come on in, Petey,” Jerry yelled from the back.
The bells were vestigial. Ever since Jerry convinced his Dad to go high tech eight years ago and install video cameras and motion sensors around the parking lot, they’d known who was coming or going long before the bells proclaimed their arrival.
I strolled through the rows of hunting gear, stacked boxes of ammo, targets, gun oil, cleaning kits, and the serried barrels of rifles and shotguns pointed heavenward from polished wooden stocks. Jerry came out of the back. He was fondling the barrel of a Luger, holding it in a white cloth. The 9 mm had been a present from his grandfather some years ago. It didn’t quite work—the springs were bad, among other things—but Jerry tinkered with it now and then, hoping to coax it back to life.
“Hey Jerry,” I said. “Still working on that thing?”
He set it on the counter and braced himself above it, grinning sheepishly. “Yeah. Guess it don’t say much about a gunsmith that he can’t fix his own gun. I ain’t touched it in years, though.”
I picked up the Luger, sighting in on the far wall. The weapon felt comfortable in my hands, like it was made to fit my size palm. “Nice.”
“Grandpa pulled that off a dead Nazi in France,” he murmured.
“Yeah.” He’d told me the story before. I gave it back to him.
“So what’s up?”
“I wanted to talk to you.” I took a breath. “Remember how the other night you came to me and asked if Martin or Grant had said anything to me? Like about how maybe this was a suicide mission, or something like that?” He waved me off, but I shook my head and persisted. “I just had breakfast with them this morning.”
Jerry stopped shaking his head and met my eyes. There was something furtive in his. “What did they say?”
“Martin says he tried to tell me that this was a suicide mission from the beginning, because once the government started investigating, there was no way we’d get away with it.”
He blinked, and I had my answer.
“That’s not what he told you, though. Is it?”
“Not exactly.”
“What did he tell you?”
He grimaced and started fiddling with the Luger again, putting it back together. “He said only one team was really needed, and since you were the better shot, that it’d be you and Grant. I said, ‘So what are we supposed to do? Sit on our thumbs?’ He grabbed my shoulder and said our job was to run point. You know? Make certain that if anybody caught wind of what we were doing, that they’d come after us and not you. Make sure you got the shot.”
He put the gun down and rubbed his hands on the rag. “That’s when he said we might have to take a bullet, if that’s what it took to keep their attention off of you.”
“Really.”
“That’s the long and short of it.”
I nodded slowly. Inside, I was debating whether to lower the boom or not. Jerry was already pretty rattled as it was. No doubt that’s why he freaked out so bad at the check point. This new information might just blow the whole thing wide open. Then again, maybe that’s what needed to happen.
“There’s more,” I said.
He pulled his hat off and ran a hand through his hair before seating it back on his head, then braced himself on the counter, rocking back and forth a bit, like he was teetering on the edge of some precipice.
“Yeah?” he said. “Like what?”
Just then, the doorbells jangled. Our heads turned as Martin and Grant strode into the store.
My heart sank.
Twenty-Two
We said nothing as they sauntered up to the counter.
“Hey Jerry, Peter,” said Grant. “What’s going on?”
Jerry shook his head, and I took that as my cue to say nothing. Martin clapped me on the shoulder and propped himself on the counter. He flashed me a smile devoid of warmth. He repeated Grant’s question.
“What’s going on, Petey?”
“Nothing. Just having a conversation with Jerry, here.”
“Well, bring us up to speed, buddy. We ain’t got no secrets here.”
I raised my eyebrow. “Is that a fact?”
His eyes flickered briefly in Grant’s direction, and he slipped a stick of gum in his mouth, chewing vociferously. “You saying different, bro?”
I snorted. “You tell me. You’re the ones holding back. Why don’t you tell Jerry what you told me the other night?”
He smiled at my challenge, but I couldn’t believe he was happy. Grant chuckled. “Go ahead. Tell him about our misunderstanding.”
Jerry glanced from Grant to me. I opened my mouth, but Grant spoke for me. “Petey here thinks I want to kill you.”
Jerry half-laughed, but looked confused. “What?”
“Go on, Peter. Tell him.” He slapped my shoulder and kept talking. “See, he figured I’d want to do something ‘cause of the way you reacted to the cops last night.”
I kept my eyes assiduously on Jerry.
“Oh wait,” said Grant. “Is that what you were telling him, Peter? I didn’t spoil it for you, did I?”
Jerry looked at me. “Really?”
Grant laughed. “Ain’t that something?”
I didn’t respond.
Martin flipped around and clapped me on the shoulder. “You know what he did?” he said to Jerry. “He spent last night parked outside your house, just waiting for Grant to come by and try something. Didn’t you, Pete?”
“What a hero,” said Grant.
Jerry’s eyes flitted between the three of us. Then he broke into a broad grin. “What the hell are you guys trying to pull anyway?” He picked up the Luger and began polishing it again. “I heard about this,” he said, still grinning. “There was that whole movie with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise—you know, the Navy one?”
“A Few Good Men?” I offered.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Demi Moore was in it. God, she’s hot. Liked her in Ghost. She kept talking about it. Said it was a ‘Code Red,’ right? Hazing. That’s all this is.” He turned around and disappeared into the back shop, putting his gun away. “I heard they still try that kinda stuff on the down low,” he called.
I dropped my gaze, knowing that both Martin and Grant were glaring at me right then. Jerry kept talking from the back, but his words were muffled. He came out a moment later, saying, “So is that what this is all about? I get it. Don’t panic.”
At that moment, the doorbells jangled. We turned to see a uniformed police officer stride into the room. “Morning,” he said loudly, then his face broke into a curious grin. “Well, if it ain’t my Adirondack campers.”
We stared at him. This couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, could it? The same cop who stopped us on the road the night before? I wanted to grab Jerry by the collar and scream in his face, ‘What the hell did you do?’ but I was too afraid to move.
“Fancy that,” said Grant quietly.
The officer nodded slowly, then said to Jerry, “You know, I thought I recognized you. I must’ve seen you when I brought my SIG Sauer in. You’re Donny’s boy, right? Jerry?”
“Yessir.” Jerry’s voice was hoarse.
“How’s yer
stomach?”
“Better. Must’ve been something I ate.”
After a moment, the officer nodded. “Uh huh.”
“Y-you said you brought in a SIG Sauer?”
“Yep. Your dad said it’d be ready.”
“Lemme check.”
He turned around and vanished into the back shop, but not before I saw the butt of a revolver sticking up behind his belt in back, barely covered by his shirt. I wondered if he always carried it, or if he’d grabbed it when he’d gone back earlier.
The cop came forward and leaned on the counter. He raised an eyebrow to Grant. “So did he yack in your car?”
Grant said, “Nope. But I didn’t want to take any chances.”
“I’ll bet.”
A moment later, Jerry returned carrying a slender case. “Looks like they sold it to you with the old slide in place. ‘Fore ’96 they made ‘em outta three pieces of carbon steel, but it weren’t strong enough for the .40 Smith and Wesson cartridges you were using.” He set the case on the counter and opened it, pulling out the SIG and handing it to the cop. “We got a new slide in from CNC the other day and popped it on for ya. It’s solid stainless. You shouldn’t get anymore jamming.”
The cop pulled back the slide and checked the barrel, then snapped it forward again with a click of the trigger. He nodded appreciatively. “Well all right then. What do I owe ya for it?”
Jerry took him over to the cash register and settled up with him. Marty ran his hands over his head, muttering a blasphemy and walking away to look at a magazine. Presently, the police officer turned to leave with his pistol. He looked us over one last time and said, “Take care now, y’hear?” then left.
Jerry walked back over to us, shaking his head and grinning. “How d’you like that?”
Grant’s eyes flickered to me. I blinked, turning away.
“Jerry,” he drawled, “you care to explain that?”
He held up his hands. “I know how this looks.”
Martin slammed the magazine on the floor. “It’s the same frickin’ cop, Jerry!”
“I know. It’s a helluva coincidence.”
“Coincidence,” Grant dead-panned.
“Ain’t nothin’ more than that, I swear to God.”