The next ambush was especially devious. The target came up behind her: how had she passed that bush without seeing it? She did as her instructors had drilled her to do, not shuffling to turn in place but stepping, bringing her foot around with her so that before she faced the target she had already moved a pace to the side. She fired too low this time, maybe not a fatal first shot, but she compensated by bringing the barrel up, and when she fired again she saw a spot of light open in the center of the faceless head.
Marcia remembered to repeat the step-around to face forward in time to see the next target appear ahead of her, as though the two targets had been trying to get her in a crossfire. She placed two rounds into that one, and dropped to the ground to reload. She pressed the catch to release the magazine, removed it from the bottom of the grips, and put it into the pocket of her canvas jacket. Then she inserted a new clip and used the heel of her hand to push it home. She pulled the slide to cycle the gun and put a round into the chamber, then looked up, rose to her feet, and stepped forward.
There were ten targets-assailants, enemies-and she spotted all of them, one after another. Sometimes, as in the fourth and fifth, more than one came up in rapid succession, as real enemies did, ganging up, taking advantage of the very ability to focus and concentrate that she had so laboriously developed to become a competent pistol shot. Everyone had been told that a “pass” was to get all of them. Wasn’t that what would have been required in real life? The one you missed would kill you-a “fail.” There were no grades beyond those.
At the end of the arroyo she leaned her backside against a big sandstone rock, released the magazine, and cleared the round that was left in the chamber, then stood waiting for Parish to come up and congratulate her.
It was Spangler, the firearms instructor, instead. He was striding up the arroyo in his khaki shorts and hiking boots and red sleeveless T-shirt. “Good shooting, Marcia!” he called. “It’s a pass!”
She looked up from her weapon and smiled diffidently to hide her disappointment. “Thank you, Paul,” she said. Her eyes moved beyond him and flicked here and there to interpret distant shapes, searching for the tall, thin shape of Parish.
Spangler read the expression. “Michael had to run off ahead of us a minute ago. He got a call to tell him there were some visitors.”
“Did he see the shooting?”
“Oh, sure,” said Spangler. “Practically all of it. He said to tell you he would speak with you later.” He looked back up the long, twisting streambed, glanced at his watch, then turned to her. “Come on. Let’s go look at your targets.”
They walked to the last one, and he used his index finger to poke each of the holes she had put into the effigy. “Here’s your fatal shot, to the heart. This one down here would be very painful and incapacitating, but not a kill.” He took two gummed squares of paper from his pocket and stuck them over the bullet holes so the enemy was healed, then pushed the metal rod that held the target back into its trap so its catch held the target down. He placed a few cut boughs over it, stared at it critically, and moved to the target she had shot before that one.
At each stop, as he patched and reset the target, he gave an evaluation. “This one you got four times. That’s what I like to see. This hit to the head was your third or fourth round. If you hadn’t taken that shot, who knows? Your earlier shots are keeping him from killing you, and maybe he’ll bleed to death, but this is what we’re after.” They went on.
“Now this one is a bit thin, just two hits in the chest, but no sure fatals. I made the other one pop up across from him right away, so you had to turn around and get him too. In the street, what do you do? They’re both down. You come back to the first and put a hole in his head, and then the other.”
Marcia listened attentively and seldom spoke. Spangler was the firearms instructor, the one who had given the classroom instruction and taught the mixed group of men and women how to break down a weapon, clean it, clear jams, and recognize worn or damaged parts. Then he had taken them out to the range and taught them how to fire effectively. But somehow, she had expected that Parish would stay to see her test this morning, and that he would be the one to talk to her about it afterward. Spangler was a technician. He was an expert, but he was not the master. She had looked for the quiet, brooding presence of Parish this morning. She felt almost as though she had gotten less than her money’s worth because he had not watched all of her test.
When Spangler had reset the first target she had hit, he glanced at his watch again. “Where do you go next?”
“Hand-to-hand is in about a half hour.”
Spangler grinned. “Drink plenty of water before. It’s going to be hot today, and your stomach won’t hold what you’ll need if you take it in all at once.” He paused, then said, “And rest a bit. You earned it.”
Spangler patted her shoulder, and Marcia began the walk back to the main lodge. The dry brown hills were dotted with short, round California oaks with dusty leaves. Beyond them to her right was a wooded area, some parts of it tall pines, and the rest thick with a growth of bushes and deciduous trees. Here and there among the rocks on the high ridges above the ranch where trees would not grow were a few shin-high paddle-shaped cactus plants that had grown in to fill the gaps.
She came to the beginning of the path. This was the way she had always been led back from the firing range after group instruction, but today a new thought occurred to her. She would be testing soon in the hand-to-hand combat class too. What if they were planning to spring another test on her today? This would be the perfect moment, when she was feeling overconfident about her skills, and preoccupied thinking about the test she had just passed. It would be just like them to do something like that.
As soon as Marcia thought of it, she was sure of it. She would be walking along the familiar path, probably with her eyes on the ground ahead to be sure there were no snakes, and out of the bushes would come Debbie Crane, probably wearing olive-green cargo pants and top, but she would not neglect to tie on her black belt. She would throw Marcia to the ground just hard enough to hurt her, and then put some hold on her that was incapacitating and humiliating. That would be Marcia’s martial arts lesson for today: be alert at all times, especially when you were walking a familiar, predictable route. Hand-to-hand class was not a place, a gym with mats on the floors. It was a discipline for life.
Marcia stopped and listened. It would be both of them, Debbie Crane and Ron Dolan too. If there weren’t two of them, who would serve as the witness to her failure? But if it was both of them, maybe she would hear them whispering while they waited for her. No, she thought. They could hardly not have noticed when the shooting had stopped. The memory of the shooting made a horrible thought occur to her: what if it was Parish too? What if he had skipped seeing her triumph so he could be in position to watch her humiliation and then lecture her about it?
What could she do? Debbie was not somebody Marcia could defend herself against. When she was demonstrating something on the mats, she would allow herself to be thrown, or put down, or blocked, but always her movements were a parody of a big, dumb attacker. There would always be some movement-a startling roll and jump to recover, or even a flip-to remind the class that she had been playing. Sometimes when she was having them repeat some kick or blow over and over, she would begin to do kicks and punches or combinations of her own, at twice the speed, to keep time with them. It appeared to be the result of nervous energy, a kind of athleticism that was uncontrollable. But it was frightening. The kicks and punches were always hard and fast, and it took no imagination to judge where they would catch an opponent. Sometimes Marcia would feel a phantom pain in the spot Debbie was aiming at, like a warning.