“Was he good at it?”
“What? Who? Sitting Bull, good at sitting? I suppose so.” Marcus was distracted, still deciding on what goes and what stays in the way of armament.
“Was your dad good with this thing?” she held the huge modern bow up.
Marcus took a moment to gaze at it completely. “The best.”
“You ever use it?”
“Not my style, no.”
“Archery is my passion,” she smugly said.
“Really? You know how to handle something this complicated?” He indicated the bow.
“Yeah, a custom made one for my size and weight.”
“Dad had a maybe a hundred twenty pounds on you.”
“”I can ratchet it down.”
“When all this is over, I’ll be happy to show you how to use it,” he promised and she flinched at the condescension in his voice.
“Marcus, I know about draw, that there’s a specific weight per pound of draw.”
“The bow’s fine for whitetails and other big game but—”
“My current arrows, fully rigged, weigh 391 grains, and my draw weight is 65 pounds, and there’s no reason I can’t recalibrate your dad’s bow to accommodate—"
“Your talking Greek to me.” He did not know the lingo. “OK, even so, it’d take time to recalibrate, time right now we don’t have. Besides, you’re getting on that boat and outta here.”
“I’ve used longbows, re-curves, long bows, wood arrows and steel, and modern bows like this beauty.” She held it up high. “I know all about momentum and kinetic energy. I’ve shot a Hoyt MT set at 70 lbs. and 28 inches. I can get this Cobra within those perimeters in maybe fifteen, twenty minutes tops.”
“That’s fine, if you're hunting white-tailed deer,” he repeated. “When’s a white-tail ever fired back at you?”
“Hey, I hunted Elk with Terry!”
“I don’t care if you’ve hunted Cape Buffalo, this is a cunning, evil adversary who will be hunting you as you are hunting him. I want you on the boat with the others, Kat. No arguments and no bow hunting.”
But Kat was thinking how heavy his father’s arrows were, the tips like razor blades for deep penetration, which meant he hunted large game with this bow. She was thinking about the momentum factor. She saw that with this bow and these arrows, she’d have no problem bringing down a man—even a man firing back at her.
She grasped the bow anew and held it up to her eyes, studying the beautiful black thermoplastic pistol grip, its finger groove and serrated back made for a firm hold.
She admired the sharp edge of a burr in the jaws of the bow. It had a caliper release—a Tru-Fire Hurricane Buckle. It appeared like new, sleek and shiny, and there was no wear on the loop or the bow itself.
“You look like Sheena of the Jungle or maybe Xena, Warrior Queen with that thing in your hands,” he joked.
“I’m a good shot with the right equipment, Marc. Don’t you believe me?”
Marcus frowned at her fascination with the bow as he tugged at the strangulation hold a set of night-vision goggles had on his throat. The goggles swayed from his neck as he began stashing flares and a flare gun in his baggy fatigue pockets. Finally, he snatched up the high-powered rifle. The Bushmaster was a fine high-powered weapon.
“Suppose you black out?” she challenged him. “Then what? He has you and us at his mercy. Look, I can fire a weapon.”
He looked from her to the bow. “You know how much weight is on that bow?”
“I can crank it down. Then I could cover you from another angle.”
He thought about the possibility of going into another blackout with Iden Cantu in his sights. It’d be a repeat of the disgraceful moment when he lost his best friend, Stan, except this time Stan’s children and Nora along with Kat would be left in the breach.
They shared a knowing look. She said, “You’ve no choice, Marcus. I’m coming with you.”
They argued all the way down the stairs and to the living room.
“You’re too precious to me, Kat. I won’t risk you.”
“And the alternative should he get the upper hand?” she argued, pacing like a lioness. “What then?”
“I couldn’t live with myself if I let those kids, Nora, and you fall into his hands.”
She fell silent, seething. She had carried the bow and arrow down the stairs with her, and now she flung them across the room.
“Look, this Bushmaster will take him out and end this madness.” He found a safe position at the window. Staring out from time to time, using the night-vision, he searched for any sign of Cantu. The Bushmaster felt wonderful in his hands. He knew its power. He’d always loved this rifle.
Kat watched him with it; he held it as if it were a woman, she thought. At the same moment, Marcus caught her staring and looking like a jealous lover. He smiled across at her and said, “It’s a five .56mm or .223 Rem. Gas Operated Semi-Automatic with five rounds in the chamber.”
“Only five bullets in the chamber?”
“She’ll take M16 rounds,” he replied, shoving them in. “That’s fire-power.”
“But with only five shots—”
“It’s all I’ll need, and I can always reload.”
“I’d feel better if you had an automatic.”
“This baby only weighs eight pounds.”
“Only five bullets in the chamber?” she repeated.
“She’ll do just fine!”
Kat nodded. “I can see it—errr she is quite…cute. Don’t yell.”
“Best grade chrome-moly vanadium steel, and she’s got seven-fifty inches at the sight base to improve heat dissipation and decrease barrel whip.”
“I would’ve thought you’d like a little whip.”
He lit with a brief smile at the innuendo, pretended to ignore her, and added, “ “Barrel design is for optimum accuracy. Stabilizes bullets up to 75 grains.”
“You want a little privacy?”
“Chrome lined bore and chamber…reduces friction, increases velocity, and aids in chambering and ejection.”
“Ejection or ejaculation?” she continued to tease. “God, you sound like Terry whenever he’d clean his guns.”
“Hey, this baby is laser bore-sighted at the factory. Manganese phosphate finish.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Means it’s protected against corrosion and rust, and the manganese finish produces the gray-black military surface color.”
“Cool color,” she agreed.
“Bushmaster uses no paint whatsoever.”
“Good to know she’s not a painted woman.”
“All per the latest military design specifications,” he triumphantly finished as though he’d won an argument or a prize.
T W E N T Y F I V E
After some time passed, and as Marcus felt surer and surer that Cantu was planning some sort of frontal attack, he kept watchful vigilance, going from one side of the house to the other, one window to the other. As he did so, Kat followed him about, and the couple soon began to talk again as she had complimented his scoped Bushmaster Varmint Special as he called it. “Five in the chamber,” she said again, “but I see the size of the rounds’re huge, and you’re right, of course, she’s a real beauty.”
“Damn straight she is. Sure automatic assault rifles’ve become the weapon of choice on the streets these days,” Marcus informed her. “But I like the control of a semi-automatic.”
“Terry was always saying the bad guys’re going automatic.”
“Unfortunately, too true,” he replied, still going about the house from vantage point to vantage point with the high-powered weapon in hand, “Back in November of 2007, an Atlanta man went off his meds, stole a truck, and threatened its owner with an assault rifle. Led police and county deputies on a half-hour chase, firing at them the entire way.”
“Using a high-powered assault rifle—fully automatic, right?” she replied, trying to keep up with his dizzying movement. “Ye
ah, I read about it. They got the guy, right?”
“His weapon pierced body armor. Six cops were hospitalized, and one died of his wounds.”
“It was like that LA bank robbery shootout I saw on Seconds From Disaster. Cops were out-gunned, out-equipped, right? Terry bitched about that all the time.”
“Some six months later, a man hiding in a patch of woods in Pickneyville –a park actually in Norcross, Gwinnett, County, fired an assault rifle at a sheriff's cruiser, killing a deputy.”
She nodded successively. “Saw it on the news.”
“And earlier this month, a man stood outside a busy Peachstreet day care center waving an assault rifle and yelling threats to his girlfriend inside.”
Kat imagined the staff locking doors and huddling children in closets.
“High-powered rifles’ve become increasingly visible in the Atlanta area and the nation, thanks in large part to the expiration of a ten-year ban on their sale. Since then, law enforcement fears of the worst case scenario, unfortunately, has come about.”
Marcus went to the rear windows now, peering out, using his night vision. She kept pace, as he continued on his tear against what’d come about on the streets of his city. “As a result, the APD and other police agencies across America have enhanced their own firepower. They’ve begun to carrying assault rifles—semi-automatic.”
“Terry said it’d come to that one day.”
“One day is here. Atlanta patrol officers are kinda sorta equipped with Colt AR-15s, the same weapon U.S. troops carry in battle, only semi-automatic. Even so, bullets from these weapons travel up to 2,700 feet per second and are powerful enough to penetrate body armor.”
"’Lanta, she ain’t what she used be,” Kat said in a half-joking, lilting manner.
“Gotta fight farrr with farrr,” Marcus mimicked some of the locals.
She joined in, adding, “Our town, she ain’t so sleepy no more.”
“And neither is Syracuse, Phoenix, Tacoma, Birmingham, Mobile, Tampa-St. Pete and hundreds other smaller cities.”
"No alternative but to arm the police as heavily as possible,” she said, following him to yet another window. “The bad guys are smarter nowadays and better equipped, including the terrorists.”
“So far, first officers who completed the required sixteen hours of instruction in late January, more than 150—roughly a fifth of the total force have—to a man—ordered the Colts. Surprise!”
“A euphemism? Surprise?” she asked.
“For exceeding department expectations.”
“What did the department expect?”
“You don’t understand, these guns cost between twelve and fifteen hundred bucks, and a cop has to make his own purchase. In departmental terms: use of the Colt AR-15 is optional.”
“Optional, heh? In other words, use it at your own peril, because if you do, you may wind up behind bars. Still, Terry’d’ve been first in line for the gun, had he lived.”
He turned to her, considering her pain, but only said, “The rifles provide a layer of comfort, to be sure…even though not a one’s been fired.”
“Never? A hundred fifty cops carrying them and—”
“None fired beyond the firing range, not a single shot from a cop nationwide. Maybe if and when another LA shootout erupts, they’ll be forced to.”
They’d finally lighted in one spot and settled below the living room windows.
“World’s changed since 9-11, Columbine…Oklahoma bombing…terrorists both homegrown and exotic,” she mused.
“One of the selling points for the Colt was an April incident last year involving JT. A round from an SKS assault rifle grazed his head as he chased gunmen wanted in a series of drive-by shootings, one fatal.”
“My God, I didn’t know.”
“The bullet, fired from a speeding car, sailed through the windshield, grazed John, then pierced the Plexiglas prisoner barrier behind his head…blew out the rear window.”
“That’s close! What’d he do?”
“He rammed his car into theirs. Used it battering ram fashion.”
“Against an assault rifle?”
“On the street, you improvise.”
“God, imagine if a rookie cop had pulled the shooter’s car to the curb to talk about a broken tail light or a wrong turn.”
“The beat cop couldn’t get near these guns. That weapon has a range of 300 yards. Up till now, we ordinary cops’ve been using a weapon with an effective range of twenty-five yards.”
“So assault rifles even the field?”
“Considerably so."
“Atlanta brass finally figured it out, heh?” she asked, slurring her words a bit. She’d been sipping at her third glass of wine. “Too late for Terry.”
“They only approved use of the Colt AR-15 June 2007.”
“Figures. Had he had one when he faced Cantu—”
“Cantu came up on Terry and the others from behind with an automatic, a flanking maneuver none of us could’ve foreseen.” He explained in detail how Cantu had set them all up that day.
“I can just see the guidelines for guys like Terry,” she said. “A rifle may be used only when an officer is confronted with a high-risk situation.”
“Which is a matter of judgment.”
“Such as to overcome suspects with superior firepower.”
“As in an active shooter situation,” he replied. “I see you know the lingo.”
“Terry taught me well. And I read that your confronting Cantu that day was a barricaded subject situation, which meant you all could have used far more firepower than you went in with.”
“No one knew the situation until too late. It was labeled a BS situation after the fact for official reports and PR.”
“BS—barricaded situation after the fact? Bastards never told me that.”
“So any heavy artillery we did have—”
“—was in your trunks.” She held back tears.
“That’s about it, yeah. Unless it’s a stakeout, a perimeter operation, a felony-vehicle stop—”
“And it’s still true only now the heavy artillery in the trunk is heavier.”
Marcus frowned and nodded. “’Fraid so. Kept in a hard case in the trunk.
“Unless and until—”
“—one of these situations arise. The rifles can’t even be yanked out for show, ahhh…intimidation purposes.”
“Terry talked about how they could be modified to allow automatic fire, but that it was against the law.”
“Still is, even for cops, so officers who own ’em, they have to bring ‘em in for annual inspection by the departmental armorer. Usually do it same time they qualify in the shooting range each year.”
“The rifle's .223 caliber bullets are like a .22-caliber on steroids," said Marcus in his training officer voice. “They’re called soft point rounds—and”
“Meaning they expand quickly on impact.”
He stared at her, impressed. "It'll stop after penetrating eleven inches."
“Terry said that’s one reason some officials don’t want the good guys using assault rifles.”
“Right, these bullets travel at such a velocity that they pose a threat to bystanders. They can easily sail right through an intended target to strike anything or anyone back of him.”
“Same rifle and munitions used by the DC sniper, I know.”
He took hold of her hand. “You know, I really am sorry you lost Terry.”
Outside in the darkness, the sound of a wounded animal rose, fell, rose again and again. “What’s that?”
They quieted. In the distance, they heard the sound of barking. Paco.
Marcus listened at the receiver he’d Jerry-rigged. The sound of breaking twigs, crackling fire, and the human screams filtered through in a mechanical tone.
“What is that?” she repeated as Nora and the children joined them, asking the same question.
“Sounds a lot like the cries we heard last night during the storm, only amp
lified, thanks to the bug.”
“Carl? You think it’s Carl?” shouted Nora.
Marcus worried about responding to this in front of the children, but Nora remained insistent. Finally, he said, “I have no doubt.”
The horrid cries welling up from the surrounding black forest could be heard coming from outside and now inside, thanks to the receiver. “Turn it off!” cried Nora and Marcus did so. Still the wailing continued outside.
“My God, it’s him,” continued Nora, wringing her hands. “It’s my Carl!” Nora tore through the room, going for the door, prepared to race out into the night after the sound of the obviously hurt, wounded man. Marcus caught her as she ripped open the door and an arrow struck the door panel inches from her eye. Marcus instantly recognized the modern steel-tipped aluminum arrow as the sort that Tim Grimes liked to hunt with; Grimes would’ve been carrying his high-powered bow, state-of-the-art, in the trunk of his cruiser. He was the kind of hunter who switched from scoped rifles to scoped bows.
The accuracy of Tim’s bow was so fine that Marcus knew in an instant that had Cantu meant to put the arrow through Nora’s right eye instead of the door, he most certainly could have. No, it was just another scare tactic; just another way to watch the mice in his maze scatter—just another belly laugh for Iden Cantu.
Marcus slammed the door shut just as a second and a third arrow rattled the wood frame. He and Nora fell to the floor together with her kids and Katrina rushing to join them. All five now huddled below the door, which took another jolting thud from yet another arrow.
*
“It’s time you guys got out and down to the boat,” Marcus said in as calm a manner as he can muster. “I’ll keep him occupied here, now. So get everyone into camouflage and out through the cellar, and Kat, bring me my equipment laid out on the bed.
Outside Carl began begging for help from the house in a near unintelligible voice. “Pull-lee-ease…Rydell, Norrr-ah, helllp me…help me…help.”
From the very tone of the plea, Marcus imagined a number of Carl’s bones had already been broken, and he imagined the pain the other man had already endured. If Tim’s body was any measure of what Cantu was capable of, Marcus knew that the monster had no intention of allowing any sort of rescue of Carl, and in fact, he feared that Carl might this moment be hanging from a tree, Cantu preparing to light the match that would ignite a fire below his victim.
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