Whether my eventual assignment as a sniper was actually “better” than whatever would have happened to me, if it had been left up to chance, is not relevant anymore. I served out my time as a sniper in Operation Desert Freeze, and was wounded and given the usual handful of medals, and came home.
I was subsequently diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and have gone to the Iowa City VA Hospital off and on for medication and talk therapy.
(I don’t dispute the diagnosis, but would like to repeat my opinion here, that anyone who has had the experience of being a soldier, killing people, and being wounded, and does not suffer a “stress disorder” from the experience, would have to be ipso facto mentally ill.)
I think the record will confirm that PTSD has not greatly affected my behavior since I separated from the Army.
You surely have access to my military records, but I would be surprised if you found anything there of interest beyond the simple fact of my sniper training. I was moderately skilled as a marksman but had no enthusiasm for killing strangers.
It’s a mystery to me why anyone would select me for this cryptic and surely criminal enterprise. I was not that great a sniper—I did get the sniper cluster on my rifleman’s badge, but that really means that I managed to hit some of the enemy and didn’t shoot anyone on our own side. My politics lean toward the left, but I’m far from being anyone’s candidate for an instrument of violence against the government. I mainly want to be left alone.
Of course, politics didn’t really come up with whoever gave me that rifle. They threatened my lover’s life, and my own, if I didn’t kill a “bad man” for good pay. They haven’t yet said why he was so bad.
You were confident that Homeland Security, with the help of the FBI and police, can put a quick end to this matter. I would like to share your confidence, but Kit and I are both very scared, and have to act with exaggerated caution.
If you have any message for me and Kit, please leave it on my home phone recorder. We will be travelling.
I printed out a copy on the library’s printer and Kit proofread it. “Looks okay.”
“Good.” I folded the paper up and put it in my back pocket. “Go get the car. When I see you pull up in front, I’ll click on SEND and come get in the car, and we’re off for the highway.”
She breathed out heavily. “Whatever you say, boss.” She wasn’t 100 percent with me on this, but couldn’t come up with a better plan. I wanted Homeland Security to feel we were cooperating, but we couldn’t know whether the bad guys might intercept a message, or might even be hiding there, safe in some corner of the bureaucratic web.
Even if they, the menacing “they,” were hooked up with the government, they didn’t necessarily know that we’d gone to see Blackstone. But it would be prudent to assume that they did know, as soon as the agent filed a report. They might have known as soon as his secretary typed in my name—or maybe even as soon as we rolled into the parking lot. Where some scanner evidently noted that we had a gun in the trunk. That might ring a few alarm bells even if I were just a forgetful hunter.
Her bronze car rolled up and I pushed SEND. Anybody who really wanted to know could find out that I was in the public library in Litchfield, Illinois, at 12:39 on May eighteenth. Just passing through, though. Leaving behind some cybernetic spoor.
She had the radio playing loud. Taped on the dash over it, where we both could see it, our complex route to Baton Rouge, which we’d researched and printed out in the library. It was “blue highways” all the way, a slow crawl but one that ought to avoid stoplight cameras and toll booths. Getting off the grid by burrowing under it.
We were plainly in no hurry. No real destination. Baton Rouge was big enough to hide in, and dodgy enough that we wouldn’t have any trouble finding odd jobs that wouldn’t require ID.
But we weren’t really going there. It was a feint.
Without saying a word about it, we drove straight into St. Louis and left the car in a low-rent long-term parking lot outside the airport. Took the airport shuttle to the East Terminal and transferred to one of the hotel shuttles headed into downtown St. Louis. Ninety minutes after we ditched the car, we were in the Greyhound station with tickets south, bought from a machine with cash, no IDs.
We had about $9,000 in cash, split evenly. We were taking different busses—hers direct to New Orleans and mine via Joplin. We would meet in two days in the line waiting for breakfast at Brennan’s—and then go someplace more reasonable for a meal and planning session.
If they managed to follow us through that maze, it was hopeless. Maybe learn Chinese and go join their space program. No way Homeland Security, or the nameless “they,” could follow us to the moon.
Of course they might already be there, hiding behind some fucking crater.
I hoped the clue we left in the Litchfield library was subtle enough not to look planted. I’d noticed that the connection between the computer and printer was wireless, so any cloak-and-dagger types who’d followed us there could pick it up from the parking lot. We talked about going to California while Kit typed up unrelated directions to Baton Rouge.
Of course they would eventually find the car in the long-term parking lot outside of the airport, the gun still in the trunk. Whether they were the government or some more sinister “they,” we knew the car was bugged. We would probably be caught on camera outside the airport if they were the government, but even so, we might lose them between the airport and the bus station. When did a self-respecting spy or terrorist ever go Greyhound?
Before her bus left, she downloaded her e-mail and mine. Blackstone had sent a pro forma “thank you for cooperating with Homeland Security” message, and there was a note from my father asking why I wasn’t picking up the phone.
And Hollywood raised its ugly head. A note from Ronald Duquest’s office reminded me that the next chapter was due yesterday. Golly, slipped my mind.
I would normally e-mail the manuscript to myself, as I always do at the end of the writing day. Kit was taking the iPak with her, of course. I could write the next chapter out by hand and type it in later, but there was a Woolworth’s down the street. So I went in and bought a kids’ laptop for $99, bright red with big rubbery keys. An economy-sized twelve-pack of batteries, enough to get me to New Orleans.
The first thing I wrote on it was an e-mail to Dad, copied to Mother, explaining that I’d been accepted to a special writers’ retreat at a Trappist monastery. Total silence for a month, no street mail or e-mail, complete isolation from the modern world. By the time I’d written out a description of it, I wanted to sign up. Just write for a month, no guns or spies. Not sure about “plain food cooked by nuns.” Kit was confident I could find the one nun who was a gourmet cook, and maybe a closet nymphomaniac, besides.
Anybody who was really interested would be able to figure out that the message came from St. Louis, but in a couple of minutes I’d be headed south in anonymity. I clicked on SEND and kissed Kit and got on the bus. Waved to her as it pulled out, and then opened up the file with Duquest’s story line and my minim opus.