Made in the U.S.A.: The 10th Anniversary Edition

by Jack X. McCallum

  “Hey, kid,” Fay said as Will entered one of the concrete bunkers along this end of the firing range. “Have a seat, pops,” he said to Stern, indicating a folding chair against one wall.

  The bunkers had brick walls on either side, tin roofs, and were open in front and back. There was an intercom on one wall so the shooter could ask the guys in the pits at the far side of the range to raise or lower a particular target. In front of the bunker was a wooden railing and a bench used for practicing firing positions. On the bench were opened paper boxes of gleaming brass rounds and two handguns, a revolver and a big Army issue .45 automatic.

  Will had already used the .38 twice, along with a .22 rifle, and had proven to be a remarkably good shot for a beginner. Wiltse had told him that if Will was in the Army they’d classify him as a marksman. Will had thought that was pretty cool even though he wasn’t crazy about guns.

  Fay didn’t take it personally when the kid refused to shake his hand. Stern irritated him, though. As he was telling the kid that Wiltse was out sick and trying not to snicker when he recalled hearing Wiltse had been reassigned to a listening post in Montana on the Canadian border, he noticed Stern watching him like a hawk. The old man’s face had been twisted by yet another stroke but the tough old bird kept hanging on, letting the kid lead him around the Compound like an old dog. Stern was blind in one eye and his face was locked in a canted grimace of distaste as if he were perpetually offended by the world around him.

  As Fay asked Will to load the revolver and fire a few rounds so he could get a feel for where the kid was skill-wise, he took a thin pair of gloves from his pocket and slipped them on. He noticed Stern’s one good eye glaring at him and wondered if the old fucker knew he was about to die.

  “Okay kid, enough with the toy,” Fay said. He took the .38 from Will, holding back a smile when he saw the kid eyeball the gloves and then look up at him. “Don’t like getting cordite on my hands, kid. It stinks. Awright. Let’s try the big boy.” Fay pointed to the automatic lying on the bench. No way the kid hits anything with that, he thought. Fucking recoil will probably rip his scrawny arms out of their sockets.

  Will picked up the .45 and tightened his grip when he nearly dropped it. It was really heavy. Fay told him to release the clip and Will did it awkwardly, the dark metal rectangle popping free and dropping onto the ground with a hollow clank. Will squatted, a small boy in sneakers, khaki shorts and a yellow T-shirt. He picked up the clip and looked inside. “It’s empty,” he said.

  Fay told the kid to rack back the slide, that way he’d see where the bullets went in, and he’d see how different an automatic was from a revolver. Once the kid was occupied with that, he’d make his move.

  Will sat on the bench. He put down the clip, knocking over a box of bullets. They all spilled onto the dusty bare earth except one. Will picked it up, noticing that it was a lot bigger than the bullets for the revolver. Fay told him to stop dicking around. Will set the big bullet on the bench and started drawing back the slide on the automatic. He had to use all his strength.

  While the kid was otherwise occupied Fay took a step, grabbed the old Deutscher by the collar and pulled him away from the kid. Stern’s cane dropped with a muted clatter and Will looked up, the slide of the revolver slipping through his fingers and ratcheting shut. With one arm around the old German’s neck, Fay pressed the snub nose of the .38 against Stern’s head. He shuffled to one side, the old man shuffling with him. Using his elbow, Fay hit the send button on the intercom. Pretending panic, he said, “The kid’s got a gun on me and the old man! He’s gone nuts!” Then he hit the button again, cutting off his voice from the men in the pits a quarter of a mile away. He could imagine them scrambling.

  “Well, kid,” Fay said, “I understand you’re always asking this old bird questions, wanting to know what’s inside his head.” He laughed. “Here’s your chance to find out.”

  Still sitting on the bench, Will raised the automatic, gripping it in both hands. It was so big it looked like he was holding a movie prop.

  “Oh my goodness,” Fay said with a laugh. In a pantomime of panic he moved behind Stern’s body, peeking out from behind the old man’s head, only one eye visible to Will. He chuckled, “Hey kid, I’m fifteen feet away, I’m behind your precious old fart, you’ve never used that kind of gun before in your life, and last but not least, it isn’t load—”

  Fay’s one visible eye widened and Will smiled. The man had just realized the single bullet that had been on the bench was no longer there. Ever curious, Will had loaded the gun just to see where the bullet was supposed to go.

  Will’s ghosts whooped it up, and for once Will thought they were right. Blow his head off, Billy! He’s gonna hurt the old man! Shoot! Kill, Billy! Kill!

  Fay’s gun was now pointing at Will.

  Will squeezed the trigger of the big gun and screamed when he saw Fay’s weapon jump. Then Will’s gun exploded.

  Will waited for his ears to stop ringing. The big gun had fallen out of his hands. The slide was jammed open, and the barrel was a mess of twisted blackened metal. Will’s fingers were already swelling, the skin torn, burned and bleeding. His hands were nothing but useless claws shivering with pain.

  He looked up and wondered what had happened to Mr. Fay’s eye, then realized it was gone. Fay fell away from Stern and Will saw a red mess on the ground hadn’t been there a moment before.

  Stern lurched over to Will and sat heavily on the bench. He gave Will’s hands a cursory glance and said some of the fingers were broken, but the bones and burns would heal.

  “Seine bullet went into dein Pistole,” Stern said, his shaken nerves expressed by lapses into German. “But thankfully not before dein Kugel went into sein Kopf.” He shook his head in amazement. “It was a Glückstreffer. A lucky shot, William.”

  For a moment Will was filled with wonder. The two bullets had passed in midair. His hit Fay in the head. Fay’s bullet went right down the barrel of will’s gun. Wow.

  Then Will began to get scared. He wondered what would happen to him now. He wondered if he’d get in trouble and wondered if his hands would ever stop feeling like they were on fire. He also wondered why he didn’t feel worse than he did. He’d just killed a man, but it didn’t really bother him so much.

  Stern hugged him and called him kleines Teufelchen, his little devil, and told him everything would be all right.

  Will began feeling better with the old man’s knobby, arthritic hands stroking his hair and touching his face. Will looked at the drying fan of Fay’s brain matter on the ground. He was glad the guy was dead. Anybody messes with Doc, he thought, that’s what they’re gonna get.

  Will pawed at one pocket of his shorts and freed a pack of cigarettes and a box of safety matches, both of which he dropped. Stern retrieved them and lit the smoke, murmuring, “Nur drei Züge.” Will followed the old man’s advice and took three drags only. Then he let the cigarette fall and Stern crushed it with his cane.

  * * *

  When Zane learned the particulars of the events at the firing range he was disturbed. He was also relieved that he had covered his tracks with a false back story on Albert Fay. No one would know that he had orchestrated Fay’s thwarted assassination attempt.

  When word of Randall Kraft’s reaction to the incident reached Zane he very nearly blew his legendary cool.

  Kraft was so impressed with the kid’s response to the threat of a renegade operative on Compound grounds that he ordered the kid’s training stepped up and made arrangements for the kid to be guarded from now on. Kraft also managed to stumble across a memo from Mondani to Zane suggesting the boy might have untapped potential, which now made Kraft think Mondani was a sharp cookie.

  Zane would have to watch his step from now on. It was infuriating!

  8

  Right Cross

  As the four trackers got out of the Lincoln and approached the man and woman on the side of the road, Stella decided she didn’t like the look of things. He h
ad the target and had a gun to her head. They were supposed to bring her in alive. Well, they were supposed to try to bring her in alive. She didn’t think Oscar or Louis would really care either way. Laura probably wouldn’t care either.

  Stella cared, though. That was why she was carrying a shotgun loaded with flexible baton rounds that were in effect small beanbags full of lead pellets. They had a lot of stopping power and were usually nonlethal although they could crush a larynx or shatter ribs and cause a fatality. Stella had ordered the others to allow her the first shot because she wanted to avoid hurting the target at all costs. She wanted to carry out a fully documented debriefing with the target before they turned her over to the Compound, a detailed interrogation, something she could only accomplish without distractions. Just her and Jeannie Norman in a room together for an hour. Maybe two. To do that she needed the target unharmed. The handsome man with the pretty mouth she couldn’t give a fuck about.

  But now the pretty boy had a gun to Ms. Norman’s head, and the way her eyes were taking in nothing and her mouth was hanging open it was safe to say the target was in shock. Stella knew they would have to be careful.

  Louis and Oscar shared a look. Slap on a little lipstick and stick out your tits and a girl can drive any guy bananas. She was the one causing all the distraction? They could see the woman was lovely for her age but there wasn’t anything really special about her. Of course both of them were aware that they had been hand-picked for this assignment exactly because they would see or sense nothing special in Jeannie. Yet Stella had been chosen as well and they knew she was gay. Wouldn’t that make her a bad choice for this job?

  The Compound was one of the few government agencies that actually saw gay men as an asset in some situations despite being an organization that valued stereotypically male strengths and mindsets in its men and women, so Louis and Oscar had no need to stay in the closet. But both of them were thinking the same thing. They’d keep an eye on Stella.

  Stella and Laura and Louis and Oscar spread out in a line and stopped a few yards from Jeannie and Will.

  Will watched the four spread out, noting that the gorgeous babe who looked like a Sicilian hit-woman was keeping furthest away. He saw she was carrying a modified shotgun with a bright orange stock. He’d seen something like that before. The LAPD had shotguns that fired bean bag rounds. He also saw the look in her eye. She was in charge, no doubt, and she was more of a danger than the other three trackers combined.

  “I don’t like the way she’s looking at me,” Jeannie said.

  “Me either,” Will replied. He saw only the mortal threat in the dark-haired woman’s eyes. He entirely missed the gaze making Jeannie uneasy.

  Jeannie had seen that look before, but usually only in the eyes of men. It was giving her the creeps.

  Will spoke up. “Well, if this isn’t just a gun-o-rama. Last time I saw a scene like this was at an NRA meeting when everybody cornered the poor slob who had grabbed the last donut.”

  The trackers moved closer.

  “Come on, gang,” Will said. “Look at this woman. Do you really think she could be a threat to the Compound? She’s a waitress for Christ’s sake.”

  The four trackers paused and traded glances, wondering how this man knew about the Compound.

  “You’re a threat removal team, but where’s the threat? I bet this pretty lady has been living a quiet little life, minding her own business, then along comes the Compound. For what? What had she done to deserve this?”

  “She exists,” Louis said.

  “And she’s committed murder.” Oscar nodded when he saw Will’s reaction. “That’s right. The LAPD would love to get their hands on this one. She bashed in the skull of a fifty-five year old man and ran away.”

  “Really?” Will whispered to Jeannie.

  “Uh-huh,” Jeannie replied. “But he ... he did terrible things to me, and I’d had enough.”

  Will wondered if she was talking about Eicher, whom he’d last seen from the ground as the German had nearly kicked him to death many years ago.

  Stella gave Will a long look before speaking to him. “Everyone here is calm. That’s good. I’m sure you know the drill, pretty boy. Back away from the woman. Set down the gun. Step away, and lie face down, arms out from your sides.“

  Will indicated Jeannie with a nod of his head. “You going to shoot through her if I don’t?”

  “We will if we have to,” Louis said.

  Oscar nodded. “This is not a negotiation. We are bringing her in, dead or alive. Whatever is easier.”

  Stella remained calm, her face stoic, but Will saw the tendons in her hands tighten on her gun.

  Laura spoke up, and her tone was reassuring. “Just put down the gun and back away. Let’s resolve this peacefully and you won’t be hurt, I promise.”

  Will laughed in response.

  Stella decided to act. She knew the longer the tension drew out, the greater the chance someone would get shot and she didn’t want to see the target hurt, at least not permanently. So she raised the shotgun and shot Jeannie in the head.

  Jeannie had no time to react. She felt a blow to one side of her head, and as she fell into darkness she heard a bang and wondered if it was a gunshot.

  Stella knew how to use her weapon. When the target’s head turned slightly she sighted on the side of the woman’s head. The beanbag delivered a glancing blow, knocking the target out cold. The target would be back on her feet in a moment with a headache and a nasty bruise, but Stella was sure that would be all. She was confident she hadn’t even broken the woman’s skin. Even as the target was slumping in the pretty boy’s arms, Stella reached out and put a hand on Laura’s handgun.

  Will was aware of his error even as he began to act. When Jeannie jerked and slumped in his arms he should have let her fall. Instead, he took his eyes off the trackers for a moment as he looked down and got a better grip on Jeannie to break her fall. When he realized he had to let her drop and raise his gun it was too late.

  As Jeannie slumped onto her side one of the two men shot at Will, the bullet shredding his T-shirt and searing along his ribcage. Will and the second man fired their guns at the same time, Will getting off three shots to Oscar’s one. He felt a bullet pass through the meat of his left thigh with ease. He also felt a small amount of pleasure when the head of the man he shot at did a Vesuvius number and erupted in a red font.

  Stella saw Oscar dropping to his knees with half his head missing. She saw Louis take aim with a wildly shaking hand and brought the shotgun to bear as he was about to deliver a killing shot to the pretty boy, possibly shooting the target as well. She fired her weapon. One of her beanbags hit Louis in the right shoulder with enough force to knock him off his feet. He whirled and fell with his mouth and eyes gaping in surprise.

  The pretty boy’s gun arm was moving again and Stella knew she wouldn’t be able to act in time, knew she was fucked and was pretty pissed about it, and then Laura was in front of her with a nimble little step, firing off one stray shot before the pretty boy’s gun fired, jolting Laura’s slender body. Stella got off two quick shots as Laura sank out of her sight line. One hit the pretty boy in the diaphragm making him bend forward like he was violently blowing his groceries, the automatic slipping out of his hand. The second beanbag struck the side of his head like a right cross. He staggered backwards and collapsed in the dust.

  Louis was struggling to his feet, cursing Stella and screaming Oscar’s name.

  Stella knelt over Laura, giving the already dead, cooling lips a kiss as she pried her weapon out of Laura’s limp hand. Removing Laura’s ID, Stella let her hand brush one small lifeless breast a final time and then ran to the target.

  Ms. Norman was on all fours, shaking her head. Stella grabbed the woman by the wrist and hauled her to her feet, pausing, wondering if she should just finish off the pretty boy. Mistaking his grazed ribs and a lot of blood for a fatal gut shot, she dismissed him and dragged the target to the car. She shoved the woman
into the backseat, thinking that she had to move quickly and had to avoid making mistakes even as a distant part of her mind was comparing the wonderfully generous breasts, hips, and buttocks with Laura’s svelte, athletic frame.

  Stella then went to Louis, who was cradling Oscar’s ruptured head in his lap and keening like one of her haggard aunts had at a family funeral when she was young. She cuffed Louis with the back of one hand and he looked up at her startled, red-eyed, and snot-nosed. She dropped the car keys into one of his hands, for one horrified moment thinking she had misjudged and had dropped the keys into the red crater of Oscar’s skull. Shoving Louis toward the car, Stella retrieved Oscar’s gun and ID and got into the back seat as a sniveling Louis started the car.

  “Is he dead?” Louis asked, indicating the pretty boy. “Is that fucker dead?”

  Figuring that if he wasn’t dead now he would be soon Stella said, “Yes. Drive.” The last thing she wanted was Louis wasting time, marching back to the killing ground and pumping every round he carried into the pretty boy.

  As Stella took out her cell phone and called for a clean-up crew, the Lincoln pulled onto the road and was gone. Dust raised by the tires hung in the air and then settled on Will.

  A Page from the Past

  Dell City, West Texas and Hometown, New Mexico,

  September 4th, 1973

  Will was sitting on the curb of Main Street and looking up at the first stars appearing in a sky the color of mulberry jam when a man in a long coat and hat stopped and spoke to him.