“When do we go?” I ask.
“Now,” says Brett. “Right now.”
We throw the weapons down from the top of the blockhouse, and they land with two overlapping thuds in the dirt and then we begin to climb down, hand over hand, Brett first again and me behind. And when he’s just touched down and I am two rungs from the bottom I lose my grip on the ladder and tumble down, landing squarely on Brett’s back and knocking him over, and he goes, “Hey,” while I roll off and land on one of the rifles and come up pointing it at his back.
“Don’t move,” I say. “Stop.”
“Oh, no, Henry,” says Brett. “Don’t do this.”
“I am sorry to have been duplicitous, I really am.” I am speaking quickly. “But I can’t allow you to proceed with a plan calculated to result in the death of servicemen and -women.”
He is kneeling in the mud, head slightly down and turned away from me, like a praying monk. “There is a higher law, Henry. A higher law.”
I knew he was going to say that—something like that.
“Murder is murder.”
“No,” he says, “it isn’t.”
“I am sorry, Officer Cavatone,” I say, my eyes watering, readjusting to the summer brightness. “I really am.”
“Don’t be,” he says. “Each man in his own heart takes the measure of his actions.”
The M140 is a bigger weapon than I’m used to handling, and I was unprepared for the weight of it. There are no iron sights on it, just the scope, long and thin like a flashlight bolted to the top of the gun. I’m trembling a little as I hold the thing steady, and I focus on controlling my hands. I will them to be still.
Brett is still on his knees, his back to me, his head slightly tilted upward, toward the sun.
“I understand,” I say, “that you disagree with the interdiction and internment policy being carried out by the Coast Guard.”
“No, Henry. You don’t understand,” he says softly. Mournfully, almost. “There is no such policy.”
“What?”
“I thought you understood, Henry. I thought that’s why God sent you.”
The idea of that, that God or some other force of the universe sent me here, renews my sense of unease and distress. I adjust my hold on the big weapon.
“It’s not interdiction. It’s slaughter. Those cutters open fire on the cargo ships, they sink them when they can. They shoot the survivors, too. They don’t want anyone to land.”
I blink in the sunlight, my rifle trembling in my hands.
“I don’t believe you.”
After a moment Brett speaks again, calm and ardent. “What do you think is easier for the Coast Guard—what remains of the Coast Guard? A massive and resource-intensive interdiction effort, or the simple and efficient operation that I’ve described? They could stand down, of course, stop their sorties entirely, but then the immigrants get through. Then they arrive in our towns, then they are so bold as to want to share resources, share space. Then they want to be given their own chance at survival in the aftermath. And we are determined, God forgive us, we are determined that not be allowed.”
He is crying. His head is bent toward the green of the fort, and his voice comes out choked with lamentation.
“I thought you understood that, Henry, I thought that’s why you came.”
My rifle is trembling now, and I force myself to steady it, trying to figure out what happens next, while Brett gathers his voice, keeps talking. “But perhaps God has given you eyes that cannot see that deeper kind of darkness. And that is a blessing in you. But I beg of you, Henry, to let me be to carry out my mission. I beg that of you today, Henry, because if I can save even one boatload of those people, even one child or one woman or one man, then I will have done God’s work today. We will have done God’s work.”
I think of those dots on the horizon, the tiny ships I saw from the slitted window of the caponier, steaming closer, even now.
“Brett—” I begin, and suddenly he ducks and rolls into the mud and comes up with the other rifle, all in one swift motion, ends up on his knee facing me, the gun angled up toward me, as mine is angled down toward him.
I didn’t fire. I couldn’t. How could I?
I shake my head, trying to shake the sunlight out of my eyes, shake the sweat off my forehead. Figure this out, Palace. Handle this. Then I just start, I start talking:
“Does anyone know where you are and what you’re doing?”
“Julia.”
“Julia thought that someone else knew. She thought someone would try to come and stop you.”
“That was an assumption on her part. She’s wrong. No one knows.”
“Where did you get all the—the blueprints and so on? Of the various bases?”
“From Officer Nils Ryan.”
“Who—”
“A former colleague of mine from Troop F. Also a former chief petty officer in the Coast Guard.”
“But he doesn’t know what you wanted them for?”
“No.”
I don’t need to ask why this man, this Officer Ryan, would turn over such documents: because he asked. Because he’s Brett.
“Okay,” I say. “So no one knows about this. No one knows where you are. Just me and you and Julia.”
“Yes.”
“So let’s—” I look away from his gun barrel, into his eyes. “Brett, let’s end this right now. I do not want to harm you.”
“Then don’t. Go.”
“I won’t. I can’t.”
And then we stand there, my gun pointed at him, his at me.
“Please, Officer.”
“These are human beings with no chance left but one.” Brett, with his soft rumble of a voice, slow train rolling. “Who have risked everything, traveled thousands of miles crammed and sweating in shipping containers and overstuffed holds, and maybe it’s a fool’s chance they’re taking, but that is their right, and they do not deserve to be murdered thirty yards from shore.”
“Yes, but…” But what, Officer Palace? But what? “We were sworn in once, you and I. Right? As officers of the law. We still have an obligation to do what’s lawful and what’s right.”
He shakes his head sadly. “Those two things you said there, friend. Those are two different things.”
I’m standing on a slight rise, looking down at him in his crouch, feeling very tall indeed. A bird flickers past overhead, and then another, and then there’s a wind, stronger than usual, a summer wind carrying up the scent of fish and a pinch of gunpowder from the churning breakers. We can just hear the rushing of the tide, barely reaching us way up here above the cliff face.
“On the count of three,” I say, “we will lower our weapons, both together.”
“Fine,” he says.
“And then we will figure out what to do next.”
“Good.”
“On the count of three.”
“One,” says Brett, and lowers his gun a little bit off his shoulder, and I lower mine an inch or two, my muscles crying out with relief.
“Two,” we say, together now, and now both rifles are at forty-five-degree angles, pointed at the ground.
“Three,” I say, and drop my rifle, and he drops his.
We remain frozen for about a quarter of a second, and both of us start to smile, just a little, two honorable men on a green field, and then Brett is starting to get up and he’s extending his hand and saying “My friend—” and then as I raise my arm there is a sharp bang, a crack in the sky, and my arm explodes in pain, hot and savage, a roaring pain, and I whirl behind me to find the shooter, and by the time I turn back around Brett is on the ground, flattened in the dirt with arms and legs windmilled out in the grass. I leap to him, screaming his name and clutching my arm. I land beside him and lie there panting for five seconds, ten seconds, waiting for more shots. I’m trying to summon up the protocol for victims of gunshot trauma in the field, trying to recall my training regarding rescue breaths and compressions and so on, but it doesn’t matter: The bullet caught Brett dead between the eyes and half the front of his face has been swallowed by a hole. It’s useless—there’s nothing to be done—he’s dead.