The Shirt and the Shooting House
I’d been sorting through Ron’s pack, looking to see what other useful items—and food—I might find that would help me through a restless night when I’d heard the gunfire.
Two shots, a pause, then three more in rapid succession.
I hadn’t heard anything since then. Had the mercenaries decided to dispense of the excess baggage? What if they’d discovered Ron wasn’t who he’d said he was? Five shots, five hostages. Or what if Ron had made a move on the kidnappers? What if he’d tried something and failed?
Dark images flashed in my head: explaining to the parents of the boys that their sons had been killed because of me, explaining to Hope how I was not able to follow through on my promise to protect Peng and the boys, explaining why I had not given myself up and been there for the boys like Dempsey had suggested.
I wanted to rush into the canyon to get the answers, but that would be a mistake. I needed to wait, let the scene play out, find out what really happened before taking any action. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to wait all night and that my worst fears would not be realized.
It wasn’t long before I heard voices. First came the big man, Tiny, roaring as he came out of the rocky passage and into the open. The rest followed a few minutes later. First Joey and Eric, followed by the woman, and then Peng and JR, followed by the leader. I breathed a sigh of relief. All of the boys were there, and although they hung their heads, they didn’t look injured.
And then I realized who was missing. Ron wasn’t with them. Ron, whom they’d sent a special team in to handle because he was so dangerous; Ron, who was a great leader to the boys and a great friend to me; Ron, who was not with the group. They wouldn’t leave him alone, and he wouldn’t have escaped without the boys. That could only mean one thing: Ron’s true identity had been discovered, and he was now dead.
I waited for the group to move past me, then followed them for a time. They traveled only about a thousand yards before coming to a flat, protected area near a stream. They stopped, took off their packs, and began to set up camp. It looked like they planned on staying the night. I moved as fast as I could back to the opening in the rock. The entrance to the canyon was narrow, and I quickly realized why they had chosen it as a place to hole up. One glance also told me why Tiny had been yelling—the bouncing webs and the huge spiders looked menacing among the rocks. Other insects kind of freaked me out, but for some reason, spiders didn’t bother me. Besides, I wasn’t concerned about the spiders. I was concerned about Ron.
As I burst through the passage into the open, I could see the remains of their earlier campsite. Near one of the edges of the site lay a body, the large Hawaiian shirt whipping in the wind. As I got closer, I could see that one of the pant legs was soaked, and blood had also seeped out from under the dirt near the torso where Ron’s arm was pinned beneath his body. I felt the awful despair rising in my throat, and then I looked at the scene again and thought about the whipping shirt. I thought about Ron’s need to change clothing as we watched the mercenaries through the binoculars. I thought about the way he’d looked even more buff in the baggy shirts than he had in his T-shirt. “Are you going to lie there in the dirt or let me patch up your wounds?” I said.
Ron groaned and turned over. He was holding his hand and wincing as he blinked the dust from his eyes. “Good,” he said. “You brought my pack. There’s a compression sleeve in there that I need for my leg. I think I blacked out from the loss of blood.” He winced again. “And I can tell you with absolute certainty that wounds to the hand hurt worse than in any other part of the body.”
I pulled off the pack and dug out the sleeve Ron was looking for, along with as many other first-aid supplies I could find. I helped him clean the wound on his hand and bind it up. The bullet had torn the webbing between his thumb and finger, but it didn’t look like it had penetrated the bone.
“Let’s go to the leg next,” he said.
“What about your chest?” I pointed to the three bullet holes peppering his shirt on the left side, directly under the breast.
“Hurts like crazy,” he said as he used a knife I’d given him to cut away his lower pant leg. “I think I might have broken some ribs.”
“I don’t see a vest.”
“It’s not supposed to be visible,” Ron mumbled as he held the knife in his mouth and pulled the compression sleeve over his leg. “It fits the contour of the body, and it’s flesh colored. But when I tried it with a T-shirt, I looked like Batman. With a baggy shirt, however, it’s almost undetectable.” Ron gestured to the Hawaiian shirt he was wearing. “A friend of mine in law enforcement asked me to test it for him to see if it could feasibly be worn during long periods of high physical exertion. It was developed for undercover officers.”
“Maybe they should have toned down the pecs and the six pack a bit,” I said. “How did you know to put it on yesterday?”
“I just had a feeling.” He grunted as I helped him wrap his leg wound and pull the sleeve up tight around it. “I’ve learned not to ignore those types of things.”
With the bleeding stopped and all visible wounds dressed and wrapped, Ron grabbed my shoulder and tried to stand. He turned pale and made his way gingerly back down to the ground. “I was afraid of that,” he said.
“What?”
“My leg’s broken. I’m going to need to splint it, and even with a splint, I’m not going to be much help to you catching those guys.”
“Who says I want to catch them? Maybe we should just worry about getting you out of here and calling in the authorities.”
“If that was your plan, you would already be out of here. But you stuck around.”
“I just had a feeling,” I said.
Ron grunted again and then began shaking uncontrollably.
“You mind if we restart the fire? My body’s starting to figure out that it’s been shot.”
“Sure thing,” I said, stirring the coals and adding some small bits of kindling to encourage the flames. “You should get something hot in you.”
“Just start the fire and leave me some grub. You don’t want to lose their trail.”
“I don’t think they are going anywhere tonight,” I said. “When I left them, they were setting up camp in a nice meadow with a rolling stream and protection against the wind.” I pulled out a compressed down coat and helped Ron pull it on, then added some additional layers to my own skin. The wind felt like it was blowing off a glacier. “Besides, they’re sending in a wet team tomorrow morning because they got me mixed up with you.”
“The wet team’s been called off,” Ron said as he settled himself in a wedge between two logs close to the fire. “I heard them on the radio. They think you abandoned the mountains and headed for the city. Apparently they’re holding something you want.”
“They’ve got Hope,” I said. “And Jin and Permelia and I think Zack. They want me to turn myself in and come quietly.”
“But instead you are taking out the mercenaries one at a time like Rambo.”
“Uh . . . that was an accident.”
“Which part? Shooting a man in the forehead or following us around like a sniper?”
“Both,” I said. “I was planning to get the drop on them, and then they decided to try to shoot me in the back. Remember, they thought I was you. I was aiming for his chest and missed. And as far as following you and the boys, I was halfway to the highway when Hope reminded me I had promised to bring the boys home safe and sound.”
“You talked to her?”
“Yeah, for a few seconds before they sent a virus and fried your sat phone. Sorry.”
“You know who’s taken her?”
“A guy called Dempsey. A professional mercenary. He says he’s working for a client who wants me and my family delivered intact.”
“John Dempsey, the senator’s son? The international criminal with the broken nose and the nasty reputation?”
“That’s the one.”
“I thought he only worked abroad.”
“Apparently he made an exception in this case.” I stirred the coals until the flames began to take. “I’m the one who broke his nose.”
Ron chuckled. “You’ve got all sorts of surprises in your past.”
“Me?” I said. “You’re the Delta Force phantom who had these guys almost wetting their pants. I’m just a college professor who apparently ticked somebody off bad enough to take it out on my family.”
Ron looked directly at me. “I know exactly who you are. You were part of an elite group of undercover agents specifically trained to infiltrate and expose terrorists working in the United States.”
“And how would you know that?”
“You don’t remember me, do you?” Ron said. He was either grimacing or smiling; I couldn’t tell.
I thought through my past. I was pretty sure the first time I’d met Ron was when we had purchased our house and he’d brought over some chocolate chip cookies to welcome us to the neighborhood. My mind started to wander to those cookies. They were really good.
I think Ron noticed me starting to lose my train of thought. “The shooting house,” he said. “We brought a group of you guys in for hostage training.”
“What’s a shooting house?” I wasn’t sure why I continued to play dumb, but maintaining a cover was second nature to me.
Rather than calling me on it, Ron said, “We spent months in the shooting house, eight hours a day, practicing killing terrorists and saving hostages. When it came time to graduate, they upped the ante. Rather than using fake targets, we got to take turns playing the hostage and the rescuer. Live people and live rounds. It was the most intense experience any of us had ever gone through, but it prepared us like nothing else for the feeling of a real operation. Mess up and either you or one of your brothers would be dead.”
“Sounds like fun,” I said. “What does this have to do with me?”
“One day we got a call saying they were going to bus in a bunch of trainees from a new antiterrorist program. At first we thought the trainees were going to be given firearms training, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise. These trainees were most likely to find themselves as hostages, not rescuers. They very likely could be part of a Delta Force rescue operation and needed to know how to act so as not to get themselves or other hostages killed. So they were brought in and given some instruction, and they got to play the hostage role in the shooting house while Delta rescued them.”
“Doesn’t sound difficult. Stand still, don’t move. You guys had the hard job.”
“There are no easy roles in the shooting house,” Ron said. “When the lead starts flying, sometimes the hardest thing in the world to do is stand still. But to their credit, most of the trainees—both men and women—stood their ground admirably and didn’t panic, although none of them came out as cocky as they’d gone in. None, that is, except one guy.”
Ron seemed to study me for a moment before moving on. “This guy came into camp, and everything he said seemed to be a joke, like a day at the shooting house was a continuing education class at a community college. Our guys were chomping at the bit to get him into the house and watch his expression change. We made sure the rounds placed next to this guy were extremely close and extremely hot. After the smoke cleared, he stood, walked over to me, pale and a little shaky, and placed a small paper bag in my hands.
“‘What’s this?’ I asked him.
“‘It was my body armor,’ he said. ‘I wanted you to have it.’”
“I opened the bag, and inside was a wrapped-up diaper. The guy stopped his shaking act, punched me in the shoulder, and thanked me for not shooting him. Then he walked out, slow and confident, whistling to himself like he was just coming out of a movie. So, yeah, I remember you pretty well. I never did open that diaper to find out what was inside.”
“Probably wise,” I said, deciding it was time to stop pretending. “I was a bit of a smart aleck back then. I think it was a Baby Ruth. But the truth is I don’t remember you because I was scared out of my mind and just happy to be alive. The whistling thing was a complete act.”
“I knew that, but it was a dang good one. Most Delta guys don’t come out of the shooting house looking that cool. With that kind of poise, you must have been good undercover. Are you still playing in that world?”
I laughed. “I gave up the undercover life the day I proposed to Hope. But apparently something from my past is catching up to me.”
“Do you know who’s behind this?”
“Not a clue.” I stirred the fire a bit and added more wood. Ron’s shivering was lessening, which was a good sign. “Tell me something,” I said. “Which was harder: being on the shooting end or the receiving end in the shooting house?”
“That’s easy,” he said. “Being responsible for someone else’s life is a hundred times harder than worrying about your own. I used to have nightmares about what would happen if I messed up and plugged someone by mistake.”
“Did anyone ever mess up?”
“Just once that I know of. An operator killed one of his comrades in a plane-breach scenario.”
“What happened to the shooter?”
“He got kicked out of the unit and became a mercenary. He’s got a reputation for putting on a smile right before he shoots you. His name is Jackson, and he’s holding our boys at gunpoint right now.”
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“Make a plan,” Ron said, adjusting his homemade down comforter up around his chin. “A really good plan.”
And then he passed out.