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Wednesday, July 11
“JOHN-BOY. RIPLEY. WELCOME to your third tradecraft class.”
Mal was still a little peeved with us. “It’s obvious from last week’s SDRs that it wasn’t your first rodeo, and we’ve decided—so as not to waste your time or ours—we’ve decided to take inventory of your skills and focus on what you need.”
He handed each of us a sheet of paper. I pursed my lips, rubbed my nose, and kept my eyes down. I was not going to smirk.
“Fill this out, and we’ll go from there.”
Some of the lingo on the sheet was unfamiliar, but the nanomites supplied meaning and context for what I didn’t understand. I answered the ten questions and handed my sheet to McFly, who was hovering around our seats.
He and Mal looked over our questionnaires.
Mal cleared his throat. “Neither of you are proficient with a handgun?”
We both shook our heads.
“Well, then, looks like firearms are your weakest area, and we should focus there. You’ve never fired a gun?”
That question was directed at me. “No. Never.”
“But you have, John-Boy?”
“Yes. I’ve handled 9mm and .45cal semiautos. Can’t say I’m any good, but I’ve loaded and shot them.”
“Okay. We’ll cover the basics here then take you to an indoor range for practice.”
“An indoor range this time of night?”
“We have an understanding with an owner.”
With that, Baltar drilled firearms safety into our heads and had us handle blue guns—polyurethane hand gun replicas designed for training law enforcement and military.
“The first rule of gun safety is: All guns are always loaded. Doesn’t matter if you think a gun isn’t loaded. Doesn’t matter if you know a gun isn’t loaded. Doesn’t matter if the gun is a trainer. You always treat a gun as if it were loaded. Always. Got it?”
Zander and I nodded our understanding and stared at the “LE-blue” semiautos and magazines on the table in front of us.
“The second rule of gun safety is: Never cover anything you are not willing to destroy. That means you never point the muzzle of a gun at anything or anyone unless you are willing to kill it. When you are handling a firearm, always point the muzzle in a safe direction, usually down. Do not sweep the muzzle across someone’s body. Ever. Got it?”
“Yes.”
Logan stepped to our table, a blue gun in his hand. He stood sideways and held the gun at about a thirty-degree angle. It was still pointing toward the floor, but we could see it. He held his index finger outside the trigger guard, along the barrel.
“The third rule of firearms safety: Keep your finger off the trigger until your gun sights are on your target and you have made the decision to shoot.”
Logan moved to the side of the table next to Zander. “Now, stand up.”
Zander and I stood. Deckard stood behind Zander, and Dredd hovered behind me.
“You will lift your gun with your dominant hand and hold it at the angle I am holding mine. Your dominant hand goes on the grip first with your trigger finger in the ‘index point’ position as mine is. Bring your other hand to the grip and wrap its fingers over the fingers of your dominant hand, then align your thumbs side by side.”
I was scared spitless, but I picked up the gun in front of me and did as instructed.
Dredd murmured, “Snug your firing hand into the grip, Ripley. You want a firm hold, high on the grip, with the web of your palm pressed into the grip.”
I adjusted.
“Better.”
“Fourth rule: Be sure of your target and what is behind it. A round can penetrate doors and walls. You can easily kill someone you cannot see.”
The next hour was spent handling the guns. We loaded and unloaded training magazines with training rounds, inserted the magazines into the training guns, chambered a round, released the magazine, and expelled the chambered round. Again and again.
“A chambered round can kill. Always check that the gun is empty. Lock the slide back and slip a finger into the chamber to ensure that no round remains. Even then—”
“All guns are always loaded,” Zander and I recited together.
The guys grinned their approval, and we moved on to stripping, cleaning, and reassembling the guns.
“You are only as proficient with a firearm as you are familiar with all of its needs and functions. Handling a weapon over and over in a safe manner makes you less likely to negligently discharge it.”
The guys then demonstrated the isosceles stance, where the shooter squarely faces the target, feet set apart at shoulder width, upper body leaning forward at the waist, knees slightly bent, arms extended toward the target, forming an isosceles triangle.
“This stance is comfortable for most shooters and helps you to balance your weight side to side. It is a stable shooting position—but it is not always the right position. When you’ve become proficient with this stance, we’ll also teach you the Weaver and fighting stances.”
“Shooting a handgun is a perishable skill,” Mal said, “meaning that continual practice is necessary to earn and retain your skills—so let’s get some practice in.”
We got into Malware’s van and drove for half an hour. When we got out, we were parked in front of an indoor range that looked like it was made of preformed concrete walls. Mal had a key and was familiar with the location of the lobby lights.
“Ears and eyes,” McFly intoned. He handed us shooting earmuffs and safety glasses.
We donned muffs and glasses and entered the range itself through two sets of doors that kept most of the noise confined to the fifteen shooting lanes inside.
Dredd hung paper targets on clips in lanes five and ten and, with the push of a button, ran them out to three yards. Baltar pointed me to lane five and stood behind me while McFly stood behind Zander on lane ten.
“Three yards. Nine feet. This is close quarters for handguns. When you’ve demonstrated that you can put three consecutive rounds inside the target ring, we’ll move you out to seven yards.”
The guys then drilled us on about a hundred different things to remember while shooting: weight forward, elbows slightly bent; sight down the barrel—line up the two rear and single front sights; squeeze the trigger—don’t pull or jerk it; hold the gun steady; don’t allow the recoil to pop the muzzle up.
Zander and I loaded and shot three magazines each, then reloaded and shot again. Baltar’s commands over my shoulder started to sound a little like Gus-Gus counting off steps and demanding that I go faster.
After twenty minutes of nonstop load-and-shoot, we were done. Baltar supervised me stripping, cleaning, and oiling my weapon, then reassembling it. Even though we’d worn ear protection, my head was muzzy from the echoes of enclosed shooting.
Back in the van, I glanced at Zander. He was buoyant, pleased with our training activities.
Me, I was okay, but I was pretty sure Baltar’s voice would haunt my dreams tonight.
Zander leaned toward me. “Miles on the mountain, Ripley,” he whispered. “Miles on the mountain.”
***
Thursday
ZANDER DROVE ALONE to the weekly Celebrate Recovery meeting because Jayda had stayed late at work for a required class. He found the parking lot fuller than usual. Busier. He stepped from his car and spied a small crowd waiting at the door. Getting out his keys to the fellowship hall, he walked toward the door.
“Pastor Cruz!” Zander recognized the man and his wife from his second visit to the hospital where Kaylee was a patient.
“Hi. It’s Josh and Emily, right?”
“Yes. Pastor, thank you for praying for our son. We wanted to let you know that he’s responding to the treatments—so much better than the doctors told us he would.”
“I . . . I’m so glad.”
“You gave us your card and it had the Celebrate Recovery meeting times on it. We brought my brother and his wife, too.”
Another couple asked, “Do you remember us from the hospital, Pastor Cruz? You prayed for our boy, too, and he has gone into remission. We wanted to thank you in person . . . and we wanted to hear more about Jesus.”
“Welcome. I’m delighted you’ve come.”
Actually, I’m stunned, Zander thought.
Tom and Becky drove into the parking lot. Zander caught Tom ogling the crowd of newcomers.
It’s gonna be a great night, Zander realized.
“Come on in, everyone. We’ll be serving coffee and cookies in a few minutes.”
***
Saturday
WHEN HER PHONE CHIRPED an incoming call, the woman was in her car, speeding away from D.C. toward her home in Virginia. She raised the soundproof glass between herself and her driver and answered.
“Yes?” She had been expecting the call; the team she’d dispatched to New Mexico had better have the answers she sent them to unearth.
“As you requested, we have reinvestigated the incident in Albuquerque.”
“Get on with it.”
“We have three salient points to convey, ma’am. Point one, we have confirmed that the explosion was caused by a sophisticated but homemade device. This is consistent with the assertion that Cushing wore an explosive vest of her own construction into the house.
“Point two, the FBI forensic team that collected and inventoried body parts reported that only two individuals perished in the explosion: the twin sisters. We had extrapolated from other sources that Cushing’s remains—what little could be gathered—were identified via DNA samples and disposed of. Her name was inserted weeks later in the passenger manifest of the Air Force transport plane that went down in the Atlantic.”
“Yes, yes. I know this. What about the sisters?”
“We interviewed the FBI pathologists. Consistent with their report, they asserted that DNA tests positively identified remains belonging to Gemma Keyes and her sister, Genie Keyes. However, being identical twins, the sisters shared the same DNA profile, so it was not possible to separate body parts based on DNA. The team’s federal oversight told them that two women had been positively placed in the house at the time of the explosion. Consequently, they were instructed to separate body parts into two caskets for burial.”
“Cut to the bottom line.”
The man knew not to feed her irrelevant details. “Yes, ma’am. With adequate financial and personal inducements, one of the pathologists cracked. He admitted that of the body parts collected, none were actually duplicated. That is, he saw no physical evidence that two young women perished.”
“Ah.”
“Yes, ma’am. It now seems likely that only one of the twins died that day, that federal agents manipulated the incident reports to establish that both sisters perished.”
The woman was silent as she processed what she’d been told. The caller knew not to interrupt until spoken to.
When she broke her silence, she asked, “You had a third point, I believe?”
“Yes, ma’am. According to eye witness accounts, two federal agents coordinated the cleanup. One of them was local FBI, which was to be expected. The other, however, was a woman, one Janice Trujillo.”
“She acted as Cushing’s team lead.”
“She did. We reached out—circumspectly—to the other members of Cushing’s team. Turns out, Trujillo was the only member of the team to participate in the incident mop-up. The other members had been dispatched into the field.”
“For what purpose?”
“Cushing had been off the grid for days. Supposedly, the agents were sent out to follow up on leads in their search for Cushing.”
“Supposedly?”
“Two team members described their assignments as make-work, tasks designed to keep them occupied. They had the feeling Trujillo was shunting them away from Albuquerque. It was apparent from our questioning that they did not know Cushing had died anywhere but in the plane crash.”
“Very telling, indeed. Where is this agent Trujillo at present and what has she been up to the past six months?”
He had anticipated her follow-on questions. “She and her team remained in Albuquerque for a month awaiting orders. When the Air Force announced Cushing’s death, they returned to D.C. and disbanded. Since then, Trujillo has received three short assignments overseas.”
“Her handler?”
“Cushing’s operation was deep black, ma’am. Above my clearance.”
Yes, exactly. Danforth did well to limit this woman’s recent assignments, to watch her closely and test her loyalty—but the fool missed the crucial factor from the get-go.
“Your orders, ma’am?”
“Stay put until I’m certain I won’t need you further where you are.”
Satisfied that her agent was ignorant of the connection between Cushing and Harmon—and, therefore, Harmon’s connection with Danforth, the woman hung up.
Removing a throwaway phone from her handbag, she dialed Danforth’s cell.
“Pick up Janice Trujillo. Take her somewhere . . . remote and question her. I want the truth about Gemma Keyes.”
“And afterward?”
“We will keep her only until we’ve exhausted her usefulness.”
~~**~~
