Ballistic Read online

  “Jeez, Jack, we coulda shot him!” Sayers calls out.

  But Jericho doesn’t cut the animal. Instead, he swiftly slices away the fence wire, then gently pulls it from the elk’s hide. He reaches into his pocket and brings out a handful of tiny red berries.

  “Yo, Jack!” Sayers sounds alarmed. “That ain’t Bambi.”

  “Mountain ash,” Jericho says. “For pain and healing.” He crushes the berries in his fist and lets the red syrup flow into the animal’s wound. The elk stiffens but doesn’t bolt, and Jericho gently strokes the tufted hide behind its ear.

  “You learn that Tarzan shit back in Stinkhole, West Virginny?” Sayers asks.

  “Sinkhole. Asshole.”

  The elk, which had been paralyzed with fear, seems to relax as Jericho strokes its back.

  “Hey Sayers,” Reynolds calls out. “You know what a West Virginian calls a deer caught in a fence?”

  “What, man?”

  “His first fuck.”

  The two airmen laugh.

  “He’s an elk,” Jericho says.

  Reynolds shrugs. “Elk, moose, Rotarian, whatever.”

  “Yo, Jack,” Sayers says. “How come you didn’t stay home and marry a coal miner’s daughter?”

  Jericho steps back, and the elk bounds away, heading for the woods.

  “Or your sister?” Reynolds chimes in.

  It happens with electric speed.

  Jericho whirls, and the knife flies from his hand toward Reynolds’ head. With a solid thwomp, it sticks in the fence post just inches above Reynolds’ crew cut.

  Speechless, Reynolds reaches up to feel his scalp as the knife, buried deep in the wood, vibrates like a tuning fork.

  “Shit man!” Sayers yells. “You’re crazier than the boys in the ‘hood.”

  Jericho walks to the fence post and pulls out the knife. “My sister’s the only family I’ve got left.”

  Then he walks away, watching the elk disappear into the woods, admiring its majesty, envying its freedom.

  Sayers and Reynolds exchange baffled looks. From their hours of endless banter, they know Jericho is a loner. Until now, he had never said a word about his family or his life before the Air Force. Then the same thought occurs to each of them. They really don’t know Jack Jericho at all.

  -6-

  Baptism of Beer

  A few miles from the ranch where Brother David’s warriors of God live and train is the town of Coyote Creek. A tavern, a general store, a gas station, a rod and gun shop, a few dozen weathered wooden houses. Little to do, other than the annual rodeo.

  Inside the Old Wrangler Tavern, an elk’s head is mounted on the knotty pine wall above a scarred mahogany bar, the antlers serving as a rack for cowboy hats, hunting caps, and even a jock strap. A bartender with a walrus mustache and an enormous stomach draws beer from a tap whose handle is the plastic form of a naked woman.

  Half a dozen ranch hands and loggers stand at the bar, hands wrapped around mugs of beer. They are a scruffy, bearded lot, in soiled jeans and red plaid shirts, a few of the younger guys with bandannas on their heads instead of cowboy hats.

  Above the bar, a TV is tuned to CNN where a blond female reporter stands in front of a gutted building breathlessly jabbering into a microphone. “The FBI reports no leads in the latest porn shop bombing. Tuesday’s explosion in New York killed five and injured thirteen. Like the earlier blasts, no group has claimed credit for the attacks.”

  The bartender wipes the bar with a wet towel and shakes his head. “Why blow up a jerk-off joint?”

  “A political statement,” says one of the bandanna guys. “A protest.”

  The bartender barks a laugh. “Protesting pussy? You want a political statement, blow up the I.R.S.”

  The others murmur their agreement. “The I.R.S. can listen to your phone calls,” says one of the grizzled men.

  “Not only that,” another says. “Every car manufactured after 1979 has a computer chip built in. A bureaucrat in Washington hits a switch, and your engine will stop dead.”

  “That why you still drive a ‘78 Chevy pickup, Will?” another guy says, laughing.

  “Yeah, and it’s why I keep my thirty-ought-six in the gun rack with five thousand rounds of ammo and provisions for six months under the barn. When the revolution comes, I’ll be ready.”

  “Me too,” the bartender says. “I got two dozen kegs of Coors in the shed out back.”

  Which sets the others to laughing. Will turns toward a long-haired man standing alone at the end of the bar. The man is lean and muscular and wears a blue chambray shirt and khaki pants. “What about you, fellow? You think there’s going to be a second revolution?”

  “A Second Coming,” Brother David says. “The angel poured out his bowl on the sun, which scorched people with fire. They cursed the name of God and refused to repent.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Revelations, chapter sixteen, verse eight. It is the Word.”

  Will studies the man, decides there’s no use going down that road. His ex-wife was a Bible-thumper, used to drive him crazy. “Well, the Word’s making me thirsty.” He motions to the bartender for a refill.

  No one moves to join Brother David at the end of the bar. He sips a cup of coffee and resumes watching television. On the screen, an anchorman with gray hair and a somber tone begins to speak, and the screen goes to a videotape of the President shaking hands with several men in the Rose Garden. “At the White House,” the anchorman says, “the President welcomed the United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Commission, which today begins a tour of U.S. missile bases scheduled to be shut down under the START II Treaty.”

  The bartender tosses his towel in the direction of the sink. “What bullshit! Business ain’t bad enough, they gotta pull out the Air Force.”

  “See, I told you so!” Will puts down his freshly poured beer. “First the missiles, then our rifles. The U.N. and the Trilateral Commission are gonna confiscate our guns and give them to the Zulus and the Zionists.”

  Brother David walks to a nearby table and sits, joining a younger man who nurses a bottle of beer and a woman who holds a cup of coffee, gone cold. There is an air of peacefulness, of knowing calm, about Brother David, who smiles placidly. “Hello, Billy. Rachel. May the glory of God be with you.”

  “Thank you for coming, Brother David,” Billy says. Neatly dressed in jeans and an open-collar shirt, he is a baby-faced, twenty-four year-old with rimless glasses and pale blond hair. “I’ve looked to the Lord for answers, just like you said. But…” Tears form in his eyes. “There aren’t any answers. Not for me, anyway. Kathy said she’d wait for me, and now she’s going to marry my best friend, and…” His voice takes on a pathetic whine. “I’m stuck out here in the woods for another six months. What can I do?”

  Rachel leans across the table and gathers Billy’s hands in her own. In her late twenties, she wears no makeup and hides her figure under a shapeless granny dress. “Brother David understands, Billy. He loves you. He’ll take care of you. And so will I.”

  Brother David stares hard at Billy, then squeezes his eyes shut, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. When he speaks, his voice is a whisper, “I see a quiet house. In the Midwest, I believe. There is a child, just one, a little boy, but no man there. Still, the house has the feel of a man. In the closet, there is a uniform, as if he might come back.” He pauses a moment, takes several deep breaths, and continues, “There is the sense of loss. Was your father killed in the service?”

  Billy’s lower lip trembles. “No, but he was in the Army. He left my mother. And me. He never came back.”

  David’s gaze seems to trace an outline around Billy. “Your auric fields are weak. There is purple and gold, and that’s good, but the colors are muddy, not vibrant. You are unsure, misunderstood, still in the process of awakening, and are not appreciated for what you have to offer.”

  “Yes,” Billy says excitedly. “Yes, it’s all true, but can you help me?”
/>   Suddenly, Brother David grabs Billy’s beer bottle and slams it on the table. Foam erupts and streams down the long neck. David dips an index finger into the pool of suds that surrounds the bottle. He reaches across the table and draws the sign of the cross on Billy’s forehead, then touches the tip of his finger to Billy’s lips. “Drink of my blood.”

  Billy takes Brother David’s finger into his mouth as an infant would his mother’s nipple. He stares, wide-eyed at the man he considers the Savior. David rewards him with a beatific smile, then withdraws his finger. He grabs Billy’s head, cupping his hands around the base of his skull. “Do you seek everlasting life?”

  It isn’t a question so much as a demand. Billy can’t say a word, but he nods against the pressure of David’s hands.

  “Good, William, good. Because you, Lieutenant William Riordan of the United States Air Force. You hold the key. And only I can turn it.”

  -7-

  Blood of our Ancestors

  Two hundred fifty thousand years ago, the weather cooled, and the polar ice sheets spread southward. Mountainous ice caps flowed down over the plains, carving out canyons, depositing giant rocks in improbable geometric formations. Glaciers sliced semicircular bowls called cirques out of canyons and shaved opposite sides of ridges into narrow, jagged crests. Left behind were blue lakes, deep gorges and spectacular rock formations, at once inviting and otherworldly.

  The Air Force Jeep pulls to a stop alongside a craggy wall streaked with mineral deposits. Water trickles down the rocks like rivulets of tears. It is a spot of enduring beauty in the wilderness, a place marred only by the scar of the government fence topped with razor wire that lines the road.

  The three airmen – Sayers, Reynolds and Jericho – get out of the Jeep and walk toward a Native-American man in buckskin who is kneeling at the fence.

  “Hello, Kenosha,” Jericho says, going down onto his haunches, showing respect by neither towering over the man nor asking him to stand.

  Kenosha’s face is creased by the sun, his black hair pulled back into a ponytail. He could be fifty or seventy. Judging from his barrel chest and clear dark eyes, he is closer to fifty. He points to the smooth tears in the bottom strand of wire.

  “Hunters?” Jericho asks.

  “Hunters kill for food, not sport. Come.”

  Kenosha scrambles under the fence, and Jericho follows.

  “Yo, Jack!” Sayers calls after him. “We’re supposed to report the security breaks and keep moving. We’re already behind schedule, and Captain Pukowlski will have your ass if—”

  “Puke can wait.”

  “C’mon, Jack!” Now it’s Reynolds. “We got no time to pow-wow with the last of the friggin’ Mohicans.”

  Jack stops and turns. Silently, he draws the saw-toothed knife from its sheath and gestures toward Reynolds. Turning to Kenosha, he says, “Should I scalp him or do you want to?”

  Kenosha suppresses a smile and seems to weigh the question judiciously. Then he goes into his routine. “Red hair will bring plenty wampum. And I need ornament for rear-view mirror of pickup. Maybe his balls would do.”

  “No. Too small.”

  Reynolds turns to Sayers. Disgusted. “I told you Jericho had flipped out. What do we do now?”

  “We wait,” Sayers tells him.

  Jericho puts the knife away and follows Kenosha several yards along a path of fine, reddish-brown soil. Again, they squat on their haunches, and Kenosha points to footprints in the dirt. “Combat boots.”

  Jericho nods and picks up several spent cartridges. “Five-point-five-six millimeter. Military issue.”

  “I know. That is why I want you to see this.”

  They walk up a rocky slope. Neither man speaks for several minutes as Kenosha leads them higher up the incline, the rocks yielding to a grassy ridge. Below them in the hollow is a dry coulee and on the far ridge is a sandbagged bunker and an old cabin of blackened logs. They work their way down the ridge, walking through waist-high, pungent sagebrush. A rustling in the bushes, and a jackrabbit bounds away. As they slow on the flat ground of the hollow, Kenosha gestures toward the underbrush. Jericho pushes his way through tumbleweed and grama grass, and half-a-dozen vultures beat their wings and take off, cawing out angry cries. Deep in the brush is the carcass of a moose, its hide peppered with bullet holes.

  “Who would do this?” Kenosha asks.

  Jericho shakes his head. “I know how you must feel. Just as your ancestors did when white men slaughtered the buffalo.”

  “What are you talking about, Jack?”

  “When the white man shoots animals for sport, he kills your brother.”

  “My brother went to Utah State and sells tax-free bonds in Salt Lake City.”

  Undeterred, Jericho goes on, “I understand your oneness with nature. The sap that flows through the trees is the blood of your veins. The earth does not belong to man. Man belongs to the earth.”

  “Jack, my friend, are you drunk?”

  “Hell, no. I’m in touch with your spirituality.”

  “You sound like some bullshit special on PBS”

  “But I’ve read all about the Indian tribes of the West,” Jericho says, “your identification with nature, your pantheism.”

  “Sorry, Jack, but I’m a Lutheran.”

  “Oh.”

  Kenosha motions him to follow, and they begin walking up the slope of the ridge beyond the old cabin, bracing themselves on rocks for the steep climb. With a wry smile, Kenosha says, “In case you’re suffering from any illusions, Jack, I’ve also got a satellite dish on the double wide, and I order imitation pearls from the Home Shopping Network. Every morning, I get the Chicago Tribune on the Internet, and I got a little money put away in an Individual Retirement Account, too.”

  “I see.”

  “None of us talk about that river and sky shit anymore Jack, except when someone sticks a microphone in our face. Maybe Tatanka Yotanka, who you would call Sitting Bull, talked that way. Maybe Chief Seattle really wrote that letter to the Great White Father in Washington, and maybe he didn’t. ‘What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires?’ If you ask me, Jack, a Hollywood screenwriter had a hand in that.”

  “You’re a cynic, Kenosha. You’re not one with the land.”

  At the top of the ridge, they pause. Kenosha turns to face Jericho. “Don’t get me wrong. I love nature. I get a calendar every year from the Sierra Club. Fine pictures of eagles and pumas.” He gestures down the slope toward the carcass of the elk. “I hate this as much as any decent man – red, white, brown or black – because I can’t stand to see needless death or needless waste. Animals are creatures of beauty, and I treasure them. But no more than you do, my friend.”

  “I’ll write a report and try to find out who did this,” Jericho says, “but I can’t believe that anyone in the 318th would have—”

  Kenosha silences him with a wave of an arm. He points into the next valley, a lush, irrigated landscape. Strands of trees, rocky cliffs, a tumbling stream, then open fields with grazing cattle…and finally, incongruously, a semi-circle of ten ugly concrete silo caps, blemishing the land like poisonous mushrooms. “The 318th did this, did they not?”

  No use denying the obvious. “Guilty as charged. What do you suppose the old chief’s screenwriter would have said about our so-called Peacekeepers?”

  “He would have said they rape our mother, the Earth.”

  “We’re taking them out, filling in the holes.”

  “I knew it would happen. Sooner or later, either you would do it, or the earth would do it for you. In the end, my friend, the earth will prevail.”

  “You didn’t learn that on the Home Shopping Network,” Jericho says.

  Kenosha locks Jericho with a level gaze. “No. Maybe a little of that tree sap still flows through my veins.”

  -8-

  The Brass Are Coming

  A battered
VW Beetle with a roof placard, “Old Wrangler Tavern,” grinds its gears and chugs up the incline of a road made of crushed rock. Inside, Jimmy Westoff, a pimply seventeen-year old in jeans, denim vest and cowboy boots, stomps the accelerator to the floor and talks to himself. “Fuck me, this thing’s gonna die. Next time, I’ll take a mule.”

  The car travels along a perimeter fence topped with razor wire. Jimmy laughs as he passes a rusted sign – “Rattlesnake Hills Sewage Plant – No Trespassing” – and drives through an open gate.

  “Sewage plant,” he says, and spits out the open window. “Air Force is full of shit, that’s no lie.”

  Another half mile up an incline, he pulls to a stop in front of a Quonset hut with a metal roof and no markings. At the sound of his squealing brakes, two Air Security policemen wearing berets and sidearms emerge from the hut.

  The first one out, an E-3 with the name tag, “Dempsey, R.” slips a flask of bourbon into his back pocket. “Jeez, Jimmy, what took you so long? Those burgers are gonna be colder than Captain Puke’s heart.”

  “Ain’t my fault Uncle Sam dropped you in West Jesus,” Jimmy says.

  “Duty, honor, country,” the second airman, Carson, says without conviction.

  “Yeah, well next time, you oughta ask for duty at a so-called sewage plant closer to town.”

  Dempsey counts out some bills and gives Jimmy the money. “Ain’t no more next times. When they close this baby down, we got nowhere to go but back to the world.”

  Jimmy hands Dempsey several bags of burgers and fries and starts to make change. “Keep it,” Dempsey says.

  “Wow. Thanks, general. Two bucks. I’m gonna head to Las Vegas for the weekend.” Jimmy gets back in the VW and coasts back down the hill before popping the clutch to fire up the puny engine.

  Carrying the burgers and fries, Dempsey hops into a Jeep just inside the perimeter fence. “Man the fort,” he tells Carson.