Dead Aim

by Thomas Perry

  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.

  Ron would not be the one to ambush Marcia, because that would be too extreme. He would be the witness. He was about six feet four and very muscular. She had thought, when she first saw him, that his being a martial arts instructor was incongruous: what opponent could he ever face that he couldn’t simply beat up without using all the throws and holds and secrets?

  She wished it would be Ron. He would be gentle, to keep from harming her. He would only need to put a hand on her to control her and make his point. That would not be what Debbie did. For the first time after a month of study, Marcia gave herself permission to admit that she hated Debbie. There was something sick about the way she treated the women. She always implied that they had gone through life using their sex out of laziness, to avoid effort, and out of cowardice, to avoid danger. But she was here to unmask them and force them to experience what they feared. Look at you, and look at her—the tiny waist, the round breasts under her sports top, the firm, rounded bottom—wasn’t she as much a woman as you?

  Marcia stepped off the path to her right and made her way through the grove of oaks that bordered the pine woods. She walked as quietly as she could, straining her ears to hear any sound from the direction of the path, and keeping her eyes in motion to watch for any sign of human beings ahead.

  She concentrated on staying about fifty feet to the right of the path. She desperately wanted to foil their plan, but she also wanted to keep from missing the set of low wooden buildings that made up the main part of the camp. The few times she had been inland from the ocean in California, she had learned that hiking wasn’t the way it had been in the East. If you took a shortcut or walked away from a road, you might have to walk a hundred miles before crossing another, and that wasn’t something you could do. The camp was inside an area called Los Padres National Forest, but when she had looked at a map it had seemed that beyond the forest was not a populated area, only even emptier wilderness. If she walked in the wrong direction, she had no idea whether she would ever be found.

  Her ear caught a faint rustling sound to her left, and she stopped. She could see along a narrow gully that formed a break in the low, thick trees. She had been right. Debbie Crane was crouching there waiting for her to come up the path. Ron Dolan walked up the gully toward her, zipping up his pants. He was walking through thick brush, and Marcia knew he had left the ambush to urinate in privacy. The noise of his return seemed to infuriate Debbie. She waved one hand at him, while her other held a finger to her lips.

  He stared up the path in the direction of the combat firing range to verify that Marcia was not nearby, then sat down with a bored expression to wait.

  Marcia remained still until he turned his head to look up the path again, then she hurried across the gully and off into the cover of the trees. She felt elated as she approached the compound. She had passed two tests today. She emerged from the trees far from where she had expected to. She realized that she must be near the road, because she heard the whispery sound of a car moving along on pavement. She followed the sound until she reached the high chain-link fence, and followed it to the gravel driveway that led to the main lodge.

  As she walked past the veranda in front of the lodge, Parish stepped out of the doorway, followed by a man and a woman she had never seen before. The man was maybe forty-five and tanned, like an outdoorsman. The woman was only a bit shorter and wide, not soft the way an overweight woman usually was, but big like a woman who did physical labor—or maybe a policewoman. Marcia wondered if they might not be new instructors. She stopped to drink from the water fountain near the door.

  Parish’s eyes widened slightly as he saw her, and she knew she had surprised him, but for the moment he ignored her presence and spoke to the man. “I was very sorry to hear it, of course. Any person you’ve spent time trying to know and trying to teach becomes a special friend.”

  The woman said, “Did she seem to be afraid when she arrived?”

  Parish said, “Afraid?” He paused and squinted into the distance, as though that were where the past could be found. “No. She didn’t.” He focused on the man. “You met her, Mr. Mallon. Did she strike you as a fearful person?”

  The man he had called Mr. Mallon said, “No. But I wonder if a young woman would spend that kind of time and money on self-defense unless there was a clear reason.”

  Parish looked at him thoughtfully. “There is a reason. As a rule, the students come here because they want to learn something new. They want to improve themselves. Virtually all of the older ones have already achieved a great deal in their lives, some in business or the professions, a few in the arts. It’s a certain kind of person who does that. He works terribly hard for all of his life to be better than his competitors, but even more, to be better than he was yesterday. After the initial goal is achieved—he’s a success—he doesn’t stop. The need isn’t imposed by circumstance, it’s internal. It doesn’t matter whether we meet them at Catherine’s age or seventy, it’s still the same kind of person.”

  The woman said, “It’s a lot of money to pay unless there’s a reason that’s a little more tangible, don’t you think?”

  “Our guests are the elite, people who are used to certain standards. The surroundings are intentionally kept rustic, but the amenities are expensive.”

  The woman persisted. “They must be, for over a thousand a day.”

  Parish seemed surprised at her attitude. “Our students receive a great deal of individual attention. This isn’t just a guest ranch with a theme. We’re dedicated to teaching a discipline that’s di
fficult to learn properly, and can be terribly dangerous unless it’s studied under the strictest supervision.” His eyes were on their way to the man when they stopped. “Excuse me,” said Parish, and held up a hand. He quickly glided to Marcia’s side, leaned close to her, and murmured, “This isn’t on the way from the range. Is something wrong out there?”

  Marcia smiled slyly and shook her head. “I decided to take a different way back, just this once.”

  Parish grinned and gripped her shoulder. “Good instinct. Exceptional. I’ll talk to you about this later.” He glanced at his watch. “You just have time to beat them to the gym.” He launched her up the gravel driveway with a gentle pat on the shoulder.

  As she strode off toward the gym, she heard Parish saying, “I apologize for not introducing you, but my policy is to protect my students’ privacy and anonymity to the extent that I can. What were we saying?”

  As soon as Marcia was around the bend in the drive, she broke into a run. Five minutes later, she was lying comfortably on the thick mat, staring at the bare beams of the barnlike roof, when she heard the door open. Ron Dolan walked to her feet and looked down at her. When she met his eyes, she saw him smile. As he walked away, Marcia sat up. Debbie had silently stepped in the door after him. She was standing to the side of the doorway, contemplating Marcia with her eyes narrowed and the full lips she was so proud of compressed into a thin, pale line.

  Marcia stared back at her for a few seconds, her eyes wide with false innocence and expectation. Finally, Debbie spoke. “Congratulations. You’re beginning to get the idea. Let’s do some stretches to warm up before the others arrive and we can get started.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The fire in the fireplace had been allowed to burn out when the rest of the guests had gone to their cabins for the night, but Marcia could see the reflection of a row of red embers in Parish’s eyes as he turned toward her and began to speak. “Before we go out into the field, it’s essential that you understand how the hunt works, what everyone does.” Parish sat in a hard, straight-backed chair just like Marcia’s, his knees almost close enough to touch hers. He leaned his tanned face forward as he spoke, his light hazel eyes never blinking or straying from hers. She had sometimes thought she detected a faint remnant of a foreign accent when he spoke, and this felt like a foreign mannerism. An American would have placed a desk between them that had no function except to be between them.

  “This is going to be your hunt, but with you will be a team to ensure that your hunt is successful and safe.” He paused, and she decided that during the second’s delay he was studying her to be sure that she had heard and understood the words precisely as he had meant them. That was another hint, just a small indication that he was not a native English speaker, did not have the native speaker’s certainty that his words had been the right ones, spoken perfectly. They had been.

  Parish turned to look away for the first time, and glanced at Emily Lyons. “Your tracker will be Emily. She will be doing precisely what it sounds like. She goes out ahead, and finds the target. When she has, she signals the party to come ahead. She stays on the scene, keeping him in sight.”

  Marcia looked at Emily Lyons, who nodded and gave a quick, businesslike smile. She was about thirty and small, with dark, curly hair and very white skin, and a compact body that looked as though she had done some gymnastics when she was young. Her face was pretty, and it made Marcia feel jealous and defensive, and that made her feel stupid. She had tried to break herself of the habit of looking at other women that way. Was she engaged in a competition with Emily Lyons over Michael Parish, for Christ’s sake? Hardly. She nodded at Emily Lyons and turned back toward Parish in time to see him point at the other woman in the room.

  “Mary will be your scout.”

  This one was, if anything, a bit scarier to Marcia, because Mary O’Connor was attractive in the same way that Marcia was. She was tall, thin, and athletic looking, with long red hair that had gone to strawberry in highlights from the sun. Marcia forced herself to stop thinking about her and listen to Parish.

  “But it all starts with the tracker. The tracker finds your target and immediately signals the main party. While the main group comes up, the tracker stays with the target. She’s prepared to move with him, to note exactly where he’s going. He remains her responsibility all the way through. If he smells trouble and bolts, she stays on his trail. If the client takes a shot but only wounds him and he keeps running, she stays after him and follows him to ground. She never loses sight of him, if she can avoid it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Marcia.

  “Good. Now, the main party comes up. Its purpose is to bring the hunter—that’s you—into close proximity to the target so you can get a clear, unimpeded shot that will result in a clean kill.”

  “The main party? How many?”

  “Usually it’s just a scout and a professional hunter. The scout on this hunt is Mary. She stays a bit apart to watch and handle any external factor on the scene that might interfere with the hunt. If the target seems to be in a good place for a shot—say, alone in the middle of a field—but then a group of picnickers comes along and gets in the way, she would have to handle that. The easiest way to think about it is that the tracker’s responsibility is the target, and the scout’s responsibility is the place: seeing and averting external problems. She’s a lookout.”

  “What about the professional hunter?”

  “This time that’s me,” said Parish. “My sole responsibility is the client, the amateur hunter. I stay with you at all times. I help you move into the best possible position. I provide you with the proper weapon, check all conditions with the tracker and the scout, get the all clear, and give you the go-ahead to fire.”

  “I get it,” Marcia assured him. “The tracker shows up first, spots the target, then calls in the rest of us. The scout comes up separately, checks out the area, and the two of us come ahead together.”

  “That’s right,” said Parish. “It takes a little patience. We give the tracker and the scout as long as it takes to find the target, assess the conditions, and signal us. Only when everything is right do we commit ourselves.”

  She looked at him closely. “You’re not really just there to say go, are you?”

  Parish returned her gaze for a moment. “No. The professional’s responsibility is the client, the person whose hunt this is. Sometimes the client will commit himself, then freeze. Sometimes the game doesn’t simply take the shot and die. Sometimes he runs, or even charges. The person any mammal will attack is the one he recognizes as a threat. It will not be the tracker or the scout, whom he’s already seen and discounted as innocuous. The client will not be used to that sort of thing, and may hesitate. At that point, the professional hunter must try to bring him down before he harms the client.” Parish smiled. “None of those things are what usually happens. But the system allows the hunting party the flexibility to handle all the likely problems—not the least, worrying about them—and it leaves the client free to concentrate all of her senses on the pure enjoyment of the experience.”

  “It sounds very … effective,” said Marcia. She didn’t know whether that was the right thing to say, but it was all she could think of. She wanted him to know that she was smart enough to have understood, and that she would not be one of the ones who collapsed, who stepped out of cover and did not have the guts to fire, or did not have a steady enough hand to hit anything.

  Parish went on. “That’s the basic hunting party. Under difficult conditions we might add people. Usually it would be extra scouts, but if there is a need for special equipment, we might lay on a bearer or two. The essentials are the same. The method has been widely used over a two-hundred-and-fifty-year period of big-game hunting in India and Africa, and has worked on a hundred species, with surprisingly minor variations. What that indicates, at least to me, is that it takes advantage of fundamental aspects of the nature of all consciousness that has been developed on this planet.
It works both on the vulnerability of the prey to an attack that comes from multiple hunters, and a peculiar ability in predators—lionesses, wolves, humans—to hunt cooperatively. The prey is confused and disoriented, but the hunters are each made bolder, quicker, and steadier.”

  Parish leaned back in his chair and the intensity left him. His body acquired the studied quiescence and ease that Marcia had noticed in the rest periods during the first month she had spent at the camp. At some periods of her life, she would have found his looks and his ways of moving and carrying himself intriguing. She knew that the relationship he had with the two women, Emily Lyons and Mary O’Connor, was, among other things, sexual. She did not have the patience to begin examining exactly why she knew that, and since she never intended to tell anyone, she did not bother to assemble proofs. She just knew it. At one time she would have vied to be the third. But not now. She had watched him all this time, thinking not that she wanted to be with him but that she wanted to be like him.

  A second later she realized that this was exactly how the other two women had gotten here. They carried themselves in imitation of him, but a special kind, as a dancer is a mirror imitation of her partner: he steps back, she steps forward; he turns, she turns. The two women looked not at all like each other, but in motion they looked like his sisters. She did not feel jealous, and she did not want him. She wanted only to be the hunter he was for a time.

  She gave in to an impulse. “When can we go? I’d like to do it as soon as possible.”

  “I know. That’s the kind of spirit we like.” He glanced at Emily and Mary. Both nodded at him and smiled knowingly, their eyes on him. They never looked at her. She suspected that they felt contempt for her, the sort of contempt that a woman feels for a potential rival, built of the competition rather than any real quality of hers. She did not care, and she did not detest them in return. She merely noted that they would do their jobs flawlessly, if they could. They would do anything rather than forfeit his confidence.