Peter smiled, and in that smile, he let down his guard. He also let down his pack, and so did Natasha. The hikers came to rest on the side of a low mountain.
Moments like these can be critical. They can define ultimate success or failure. Perhaps this is unfair, but it is undeniable. These moments represent that one small turn of the screw, or that one nail left undone, that can bring the whole structure down. They are the gaps in eternal vigilance, when people are in moments of peril, and when they ought to remain in a heightened state of awareness — but instead, there is a beat of relaxing just a little too much, or a tendency to make false assumptions about the situation, or to discount the proximity of danger. It is in such moments that mistakes are made. It happens in war and in peace, and it often costs lives.
And it is easy for others to judge, when they’ve not lived through the same circumstances in real life. Often, those who have lived through them, will later harshly judge themselves. How many times have we read a book or watched a movie and we’ve said, ‘I wouldn’t have done thus and such,’ as if perfection is something that is easily maintained when the entire world is plummeting into hell. Armchair quarterbacks always survive when they have the benefit of distance and, maybe temporary, safety.
Peter had already made a few mistakes, but he was not immune to making them again. Nobody is perfect; but imperfection, depending on the situation, can bring about a wide range of consequences — from the inconsiderable to the severe. Peter had only taken a moment, just a small little window, to relax and talk with his travel companions, utilizing Lang’s break for a break of his own, but that was all that was required.
Lang walked into a nearby thicket to do his business. He looked into the sky and watched a hawk swoop by, and he felt the relief ease from his bladder. Done, he was beginning to zip his hiking pants when he heard the shouts. It was a loud, unfriendly commotion.
Spinning around, Lang left his pack in the bushes and cocked his body forward slightly, pulling his head down between his shoulders as he edged back toward the group. He stayed low along the tip of the thicket to remain out of sight for as long as possible. From a distance, he could see that three men—obviously hostile—were confronting his friends, and one of them had what looked to Lang like an AK-47 rifle pointed at Peter. The other men held long knives in front of them, pointing them at the women in a threatening manner.
The three hostiles were dressed like accountants, or maybe like frozen accountants who’d been lost in the woods for a good while. That detail was shocking to see. Almost unbelievable. Except for a lack of ties (one of which was tied around an arm of one of the men holding a knife, as if it were a tourniquet), the men looked as though they might have been executives out to lunch at an Applebee’s who had together decided to hike into the forest and rob someone at gunpoint. They weren’t dressed for the elements at all, but they had weapons. The incongruity was alarming. They were using the weapons to threaten, waving them like spreadsheets in a boardroom melee.
Lang approached from behind the men, and Peter saw him, and Lang saw that he saw, but the older man gave him no sign that he could interpret as an instruction, so the young man crept just a little bit closer. Almost imperceptibly, Peter indicated with a slight motion of the hand that he wanted Lang to stop just as the man with the AK-47, shivering with cold and fear, began shouting that he wanted Peter and Natasha to throw over their backpacks.
Lang stood still, unsure whether Peter wanted him to just stand quietly, or move to cover. In such moments, you have to decide one way or another. So Lang decided on the latter, and, as he moved toward a nearby tree, his foot snapped a fallen branch that lay buried under the snow. The crack of the wood alerted the three bandits to his presence, and instantly bodies moved into motion and events seemed to slow down for everyone involved.
The man with the AK-47 wheeled around to see who was behind him, and Peter, reacting with shocking speed and agility, crashed into the man and they tumbled over into the snow. Peter snapped the weapon from the man’s hands with little trouble at all as Lang rushed to help. In that moment, the two knife-wielding bandits took advantage of the scuffle to snap up the two backpacks, and, before anyone could shout or protest, they had bounded awkwardly into the forest. They left without looking back for their colleague, sprinting into the woods, slipping and sliding on their flat leather dress shoes, winding in and out of the trees… and they made their escape.
Lang never even thought about giving chase. The man who had held the AK-47 jumped up to his feet. He looked at Peter with a murderous gleam in his eye and demanded that Peter give him his gun back. Demanded it. If it had happened more slowly, Peter would have stopped to laugh at him. Here was a thief that had, seconds before, been threatening to kill him over a couple of backpacks, and now he was brazenly demanding that the weapon used in his crime be returned to him, as if some cosmic injustice had occurred. The man’s sense of entitlement was both shocking and bizarre — but it represented the thinking of his type of people. In that instant, the man realized that life, indeed, could turn on a dime.
Peter didn’t have time to react with amazement. The man rushed at him, apparently in the expectation that Peter wouldn’t know how to work the gun. In this estimation, he was wrong. Peter gracefully stepped backward a half step as the man flailed toward him, causing the charging man to miss him. Peter pivoted, just a small twist on his rear leg, and swung his body around so that the direction the barrel pointed was not towards Lang, or Natasha, or Elsie, but instead the gun was pointed off in the direction the two other men had run. When the attacker recovered from his missed lunge, he spun back around and rushed at Peter, again. And, as simply and effortlessly as one might drop a dime, Peter shot him point-blank in the chest.
The bullet hit the man in the center of his mass. The sound of the blast ricocheted off the snow, climbed up into the mountain, and spun around in the cool, crisp air. The man fell backward, into the snow, and he died. His sense of entitlement died with him.
Peter didn’t spend any time at all frozen in place, or grieving over what he’d done. He simply checked to make sure that Elsie, Natasha, and Lang were alright. He looked up for a moment, as if deciding if he should chase the other two bandits into the woods to retrieve the backpacks, but he decided against it. At his age and in his condition, he probably would not catch them, and he’d definitely leave his three friends in danger. If the bandits were working with anyone else, it would not be wise to split his group. In any event, the time lost wouldn’t benefit anyone. The two packs were simply gone. He shook his head as if to apologize.
Peter quickly made a mental rundown of the situation. They’d gained a battle rifle, but at immense cost. He was not sure that he would have made that trade. He worried about the loss of medicines and food, but what was done was done. And they still had Lang’s pack.
Lang’s pack!
“Lang! Where is your backpack, son?”
“Oh! Uh… I left it in the trees when I heard the ruckus. I’ll run back and get it.”
“No. Wait, Lang,” Peter said, firmly. “We’ll go together.”
Walking over to retrieve the pack, Peter checked the weapon, pulled out the clip and felt the heft so he could determine its capacity and estimate how many rounds were likely in it. His mind continued cataloging, prioritizing, and planning. Killing the bandit in self-defense was something he’d had to do, and this was not the time to fret over things that could not be undone.
With the pack retrieved, they walked back to the body of the dead accountant, and Peter knelt and began frisking the corpse. In his pockets, he found a cell phone (dead), car keys (useless), a pen (useful), and a tube of Chapstick (useful). Actually, he thought, the phone and the keys were useful for other things, too, so stuck them into the side pockets of his pants. As he did so, he made a mental note that the man had all of these things with him that were, for someone like him, now useless, but he did not have a lighter or a knife. What kind of man doesn’t carry the simple things that he should have with him at all times? Peter shook his head. But what kind of man lets such a man sneak up on him in broad daylight?