He could discover or innovate adapted forms of movement to replace outmoded or restricted ones. That was forward-thinking and resourceful.
But he could not beat the sulfurous ebony cloud that swaddled his emotions, because that was the area in which Barney was least prepared for combat. He had kissed the despair in Mexico — sideswiped it — then had head-butted the emotion while imprisoned, but it had never loomed as skin-crawlingly imminent as it did now, when he was supposedly free. He saw himself as a drained vessel of exhausted resources, no surplus tanks, running on the memory of fumes. His bodily energies had been sunk into tissue regeneration and the mass production of antibodies and white cells. His brain felt as if it had been dry-cleaned, sandblasted and re-shelved, empty.
Even as mundane an activity as going to the market — once he could locomote — seemed off-kilter to Barney, as though he had rematerialized in a parallel world and was faking his way through the most ordinary moves so the natives wouldn’t notice and lynch him for being an outsider. He developed a fondness for an energy drink called Primer Pop, but apart from that and the booze in his miniature fridge at the gun range, he had seemingly lost the ability to discern foodstuffs. He generally ate with his crew, or ate something they bagged along. He found himself standing in an overlit aisle, his ears assaulted by Beatles muzak, unable to determine exactly which flavor of Ape-Os cereal to buy. Orangutan flavor? Gorilla Granola? It was as though some essential program in his head had been deleted.
He had to fill himself back up with something, and all he had was a dormant vein of raw hatred.
They took Erica; they got her, man, grabbed her ass right out from under me, I haven’t got a pot to piss in... there’s nobody else I can trust in a shitstorm like this... will you help me?
It was an art, that kind of simulated feeling. Hysteria helped sell the mark. The best users always advantaged a ticking clock and ego — help is needed now; you are the only candidate, and a yes vote means they’ve just hooked their latest sucker. Your utility was the outer limit of friendship.
In Iraq, Carl had performed a long spiel about who might live and who might die and who might keep in touch, after. About the kind of friends you don’t see for years, then pick up right where you left off. That had sounded warm and inviting, all right, an ideal to wish for in the face of daily death. But — all cards down — it was about using people.
Carl was usable, so Felix Rainer had used him. Erica had probably played them both. Wasn’t that how the food chain worked? The big ones got eaten by the bigger ones, who got gobbled up by the biggest ones, and it didn’t matter how big or bad you were, there was always some carnivore bigger or badder. If they couldn’t make you chum, then they made you a chump. True predators could whiff this vulnerability with a surety that gilded their genes all the way back to caveman days. The ground rule of predation: eat instead of being eaten.
The theory of the mark was that you invited usury by being too eager, greedy, gullible, or all three. Barney’s ego image of himself as fixer for the halt and clueless had doomed him.
You had to not care about anything. Sacrifice anyone. Scoot with no baggage. And keep breathing — that was the end that justified any means.
One trick of psychology was to disempower your tormentors. That mate of yours who fucked you over? Think of them as decayed, diseased, repulsive. Stop tacitly forgiving them and go on the offensive. Barney realized with an acidic jolt that he was still cutting slack for Carl Ledbetter based on events of years past. Carl was not that guy now. He had to be a new guy, somebody Barney could despise enough to kill.
As for the repulsive part, well, Barney had worn that suit already. It wasn’t his, didn’t fit him, and wasn’t it time to pass it on to somebody who really deserved it?
He could be like the Old Assassin, immune to feeling, his emotions shut down and turned off, all human sympathy on mute. Or he could be like he was now, a victim, a mark, a schmuck. There had to be another option, a middle ground, and Barney found its boundaries when he allowed himself the luxury of pure hate, unadulterated by self-pity or misplaced notions of fairness.
It took ten months before he felt as whole again as he was going to be for the rest of his life. By that time he had reconnected with the art of the true gunman. He had re-learned everything, traveling back beyond novice to start as virgin. The grip, the stance, targeting accurately, knowing your loads, sensing how many rounds remained from the weight of the firearm in your hand, it was all an uphill climb on a mountain of shit, hoping that when you found the single rose at the summit, you hadn’t lost the sense of smell.
It was a rebirth.
Newly born, Barney found that only the hatred had endured, and now it was purer than ever.
Part Three
Gun Work
“Now, this here is a beauty for close-ups,” said Karlov. With a showman’s flourish he displayed a Smith & Wesson revolver with an eight-inch barrel. From the side it looked like a real hand cannon.
“Twenty-two caliber, ten-round cylinder, the trigger is a feather and it shoots like a horny teenager. No kick at all.”
Superior caliber did not always mean bigger, fatter bullets. With a .22, you could put all ten rounds into someone without killing them, and usually by round five they would tell you whatever you wanted to know. It was all in the application.
“Moving to slightly larger armament...” Karlov opened his jacket to reveal a complicated web holster of his own design. It held four pistols, two on each side, revolvers on top, semi-autos below. He enumerated the guns: “A .357 Magnum... Super .40... 9-mil... .45. The spine rack holds three mags each for the semi-autos. Speed loaders for the revolvers up here.”
“Damn,” said Armand, stroking his chin.
“Body armor,” said Sirius, laying out what looked like a floppy, lime-green wetsuit top on the gun range counter. “Standard Kevlar is comprised of thirty or forty layers of synthetic fabric. It’s bulky and restricts movement. This is some new shit they came up with for the Army.”
“The liquid armor?” said Armand.
“Yeah. This is a sandwich of Kevlar fabric encasing a polymer infused with nanobits of silica. Basically, polyethylene glycol and purified sand. It’s called ‘sheer thickening liquid’ and it stiffens instantaneously into a shield when hit by a bullet. It reverts to liquid state when the energy from the hit dissipates. Even a top of the line bulletproof vest can’t protect you from stabbing, say, or shrapnel. This can. It’s lighter, more flexible, allows maximum mobility.”
Barney just whistled silently. “It’s a science fiction suit,” he said. “No way this is legal.”
“You didn’t say anything about legal,” said Sirius with a knowing grin.
“Yeah, that’s right, I didn’t. Hmm.”
“Let’s see your hands,” said Karlov to Barney, who displayed them.
The thumbs flowed toward the (former) middle fingers with a natural web of skin. Except for the fact that each hand was one digit shy, they appeared normal. When Barney made a fist, you could pick out a white webwork of scar tracks. That Dr. Brandywine wasn’t an artist; he was a sorcerer.
Karlov handed him the customized .22. “Let me see your reach.”
Barney extended the gun in the general direction of a paper target about forty feet downrange.
“Okay, now hold that extension for five minutes.”
And the end of three hundred excruciating seconds — which Sirius had to count off individually — Karlov said, “Now do your trigger pulls.”