Burning Bright

by Nick Petrie

The walk-in closet was not where the master sergeant kept his off-season clothes.

  One wall held a rack for long guns, mostly empty but still holding two of the Heckler & Koch assault rifles he’d seen the men with in the redwoods, the 416 with the short barrel. There was a very nice Browning sniper rig in a carry case, a few pump-action shotguns, and a pair of M4s that had seen better days. The long back wall held shelves with a half-dozen Glock 21s, excellent tactical-grade body armor, and night-vision goggles in their padded cases. A workbench held repair tools and a comprehensive gun cleaning kit.

  The cops might think he was just a gun nut with a few illegal firearms. But to Peter, the master sergeant was the unit’s armorer, maintaining the gear. No heavy equipment, no SAWs or RPGs, but enough for small clandestine operations.

  Like trying to kidnap a female journalist.

  Or kill her mother.

  “Nothing on that computer but the motorcycle business,” said June, walking into the garage. “There’s also a docking station, but the laptop’s gone.” She peered into the walk-in and saw the guns. “Holy shit,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Peter. But something else was nagging at him.

  Something he’d seen somewhere else in the house, but it hadn’t quite registered.

  Under the static, he felt a familiar prickling sensation.

  Like he was being watched.

  “Did you see . . . ?”

  He left the garage at a run, back to the kitchen.

  The teddy bear in the kitchen, sitting on an upper cabinet, facing the length of the room.

  “What are you doing?” June was right behind him.

  He should have told her to keep out of the room, or just go back to the car, but it was already too late. Peter reached up for the bear, knowing now that their hats and spray paint had done nothing, not for anyone who mattered.

  The bear was heavier than it should have been.

  Because it wasn’t just a teddy bear.

  He turned it over. On the back was a slender power cord running to a wall plug, a USB socket, and an identification tag from the manufacturer.

  Peter read it aloud. “‘Wi-Fi-Enabled Plush Bear Camera. Never worry about your child again. Live access from your computer or handheld device.’”

  June looked at him. “A nanny cam?”

  “There was one just like it in Ross’s apartment,” said Peter. “And I think in Martinez’s house, too.”

  Her face went white. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Yeah,” said Peter. He unplugged the bear and stuffed it into her hands. “Now. Go start the car, I’ll be right there.”

  June ran out the front door and Peter ducked back into the garage. The door to the weapons locker stood open. He took off his black topcoat, found a heavy armored vest that fit him over his suit jacket, tightened the straps and shrugged his topcoat back on. It seemed ridiculous to do this in his new black suit, but he didn’t have time to change. He worried briefly about getting gun oil on the suit pants, but that was the least of his problems right now.

  He grabbed a pair of Glocks and checked the magazines. They were the big magazines, thirteen rounds each, but only partially loaded to preserve the springs. The master sergeant certainly knew his shit. He shoved the pistols into one deep topcoat pocket and put a box of .45 ammunition into the other. He picked up one of the HK rifles, snapped in another partially loaded magazine, found a spare mag and a box of NATO rounds to fill them, and moved to the door.

  It was full dark outside, although the house security lights made the yard bright. The rain was back, a dense, steady drizzle that dampened sound and shortened the sight lines. He listened for a moment, but only heard the sound of the rain and the idling minivan. June had turned the car around in the big driveway so it pointed out the gate nose-first, but she’d left the headlights off. She was definitely a tactical thinker.

  Peter stood by her open window and handed her one Glock and its box of ammunition. He kept his voice quiet. “You know how to use this? There’s only a trigger safety, so be careful.”

  “Yeah, I grew up around guns.” She turned it in her hand, examined the trigger in its guard, then found the magazine release and dropped it into her hand to check the load. She opened the ammunition box and took a handful of rounds, then looked up at him. “I’ve never fired at a person before.”

  “And you’re not going to now,” he said. “But just in case, I want you prepared.”

  He began to thumb the fat rounds into the HK’s magazines, one after the other, while June did the same for the Glock in her lap. He’d lost the callus on his thumb from the war years, when he’d carried ten or fifteen mags at a time, sometimes more, filling them two or three times a day when things were really hot. The callus had been stained from the film of oil on every round.

  Funny, the things you thought about.

  He listened again for the sound of a big engine, coming closer.

  “They’re probably not anywhere near here yet,” he said, mostly to make her feel better. “I’m going through the trees to check the street. It’ll take me a little while. Give me fifteen minutes by the clock on the dash.” He took the Glock from her, checked the mag, put it into his jacket pocket, then handed her the second one. “Get this one loaded and ready, put it where you can reach it. If everything’s okay, I’ll wave to you and open the gate and we’ll drive away nice and calm, just another happy couple going out to dinner. I feel like Thai food tonight, how about you?”

  She looked at him. He could see the muscles flex in her jaw.

  “What if they’re out there?”

  “Then you’ll hear some noise. You’ll know it when you hear it. That will be me, protecting you. Doing my job. So you count to sixty and drive directly through the closed gate and turn left, fast and hard, and get the hell out of here. Use that gun if you have to. Now, repeat it back to me. What’s your part of the plan?”

  “Wait fifteen minutes. You’ll come back. If I hear some noise, count to sixty and drive through the gate, turn left and punch it.”

  “Good,” he said. “It’s going to be fine. But don’t trust my phone until you see me again. If it falls out of my pocket, they could text you.”

  If I’m dead is more like it, but he didn’t say that.

  “If we get separated, don’t go back to your apartment. Find a cheap hotel, pay cash. I’ll meet you back at that coffee shop. Nine a.m. tomorrow.”

  He smiled at her, a genuine smile. He could taste the adrenaline now, copper in his mouth, felt the joy of it rising in him. He wanted them to be out there somewhere. Anywhere. War’s dirty little secret, how alive it made you feel. There was nothing like it.

  By the tightness around her eyes, he knew she could see it in him.

  He wondered if it made her afraid of him.

  But he didn’t think he could turn it off. Not now. Maybe he didn’t even want to.

  He bent to the window. “Kiss me,” he said.

  She grabbed his head and nearly pulled it off his neck getting his face to hers. The kiss was soft, their lips barely touching, only a slight compression. The tickle of her stitches. But the electricity of it, Jesus Christ.

  “You fucking come back,” she murmured without backing off at all. “You understand me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Most definitely.” He gently disengaged from her hands and stood to his full height. He thumped his fist to his chest, his eyes on her the whole time. Then turned away to the left and into the trees.

  • • •

  HE’D BEEN WORRIED about being backlit by the house’s security lights, but the perimeter growth was at least twenty feet deep and so thick that he couldn’t see two feet in front of his face. Which meant, he told himself, that nobody else could see him, either.

  It was good to tell yourself these things.

  His
night vision was shit from the house lights, and he wished he’d grabbed the night-vision goggles from the armory inside. But that decision was already made. His eyes were adjusting, and he’d be under the streetlights again soon enough.

  The night was wet, but somehow it was even wetter inside the screen of brush and trees. Water ran off everything he touched, down the back of his neck, soaking the pants of his black suit. The medical boot felt like a wet towel wrapped around his lower leg. His hands were bare and cold on the HK. Peter wasn’t sure how the weapon would react to this wet environment, but he wasn’t worried about it. This was no AK or M16, or even the moderately better M4. This was a whole different level of gear. The rifle felt utterly natural in his hands, even with the suppressor. An extension of his mind.

  Alive, alive, he was alive.

  He found the barbed wire by walking into it. An improvised fence made of individual wires strung from tree to tree, stapled to the trunks at varying heights. Easy to install and hard to see. Peter thought he’d have liked the master sergeant, if the man hadn’t tried to kill Peter on two different occasions.

  He crept along the fence line, still heading left toward the corner, crouched and working his way through the dense black vegetation, his predatory backbrain looking for shapes and shadows that shouldn’t be there while his conscious mind thought ahead. Where he might find them, if they were there to find.

  These guys weren’t official, he was sure now.

  Their shit was too nice. The teddy bears were too cute.

  He was willing to consider that they might be some off-the-books group. He’d met enough spooks overseas to have a working knowledge of the subterranean depths of paranoia and ambition passed off as patriotism. Somewhere in Virginia, he was sure, hidden basement departments led to secret subbasement operations that led to rough-hewn downward-sloping passages to bat-filled caverns of lunatic bullshit that went so deep the maps had never been made to chart their existence.

  Peter had never liked the spooks.

  He still thought these guys were opportunists, soldiers for hire. But not on their own, or they’d be robbing banks or something. Not trying to commandeer some fucking algorithm.

  Someone was running them. They were under orders.

  He made his way slowly forward. Shapes and shadows. No expectations. There might be a fire team coming through the backyard. But he didn’t see anyone in his area. It would take some discipline to get out of the car on a dirty night like this.

  He found a wider gap between the wires and snaked through, now headed toward the street, cracked ribs singing softly. He wanted to come out near the corner of the lot, but not too near.

  He got down on the ground and did a slow belly-crawl toward the open space, his ribs complaining louder now, the HK cradled in front of him, held out of the wet leaf rot.

  The street was lit by a single lamp at the intersection. He found a low-hanging big-leafed bush, yet another rhododendron, and went underneath its canopy to peer out at the street.

  A shining black Ford Explorer stood on the far shoulder, directly in front of him, parked the wrong way. Headlights off.

  He thought he could see two people in the front seat. Maybe. It was hard to tell. Shadows and raindrops and line of sight.

  Exhaust puffed from the tailpipe, so they had heat and defrost. They were just waiting for him and June to drive back out. So why bother getting cold and stiff, limiting their visibility? But he never saw the wipers go. So they had some discipline. If it even was an assault team. If it wasn’t just a pair of teenagers making out, or some guy trying to finish his phone call before going inside to see his kids.

  He’d told June fifteen minutes. He could text her, but he didn’t want to take out his phone, risk the light or the movement. And he’d told her to ignore his phone anyway.

  He figured his time was almost up. Time to decide.

  He leaned a little farther out. Looked right, down the road. And there it was, about twenty yards past the master sergeant’s gate.

  A matching black Explorer.

  Headlights out.

  The faint haze of exhaust.

  He was pretty sure they weren’t both necking teenagers.

  What were they waiting for?

  He was worried about June. But he didn’t want to light up a pair of cars in a residential neighborhood, either. Collateral damage, he’d seen it happen too many times. He checked the lines of fire. There wasn’t a house directly behind either Explorer, the lots were big and the houses spaced apart. But surely there was a house on the next block, or the block after that.

  June, watching the clock. He had to move.

  He really didn’t want to light up the whole block. He didn’t want to kill an innocent. A child.

  Just go. Make it work, he told himself. You’ve got a vest.

  He took a deep breath, the copper taste strong in his mouth. He felt the wild glee of adrenaline mainlined into his system. Would anything ever replace this feeling? There was nothing else like it.

  He crawled out from under the rhododendron, low and slow and steady, counting on the night and the rain-spattered windows to hide him. Hoping they were watching the gate, knowing his movement would draw their eye regardless. They were predators, too.

  Then he was in the weedy ditch, freezing his knees and balls in four inches of rainwater, the sodden medical boot like an ankle weight. Then up the other side and on his feet, taking five quick steps with the rifle up to his shoulder and firing at close range through the windshield. Three-shot bursts, chest and head, hard to miss. Takatak, takatak, takatak. From that angle, the rounds would die inside the car, or at least slow significantly, not spray the neighborhood with high-velocity rounds.

  The men would be wearing vests. He pulled open the side door and saw two big men in street clothes reaching, reacting, guns in their hands, dark flecks on their faces and necks where the windshield glass had turned to shrapnel. But they were still moving, so he brought the rifle back up and put a single shot into each of their heads, painting the inside of the car midnight with their blood.

  Now he heard the roar of a big engine as the second Explorer surged toward him from eighty yards away, its headlights popping on as Peter raised the HK and aimed, slow and steady. Takatak, takatak, the windshield turning into a widening field of spiderwebbed holes. The car came faster and faster, his targets getting closer, his accuracy improving. Then he was out and the car kept coming as he fumbled the release, digging for the fresh mag in his coat pocket. He stepped behind the dead men’s car, missing his combat rig and the old M4 that he could reload in his fucking sleep, but he got the mag unsnagged and snapped into place as the Explorer came up, screeching to a stop, the passenger window down and a blood-blackened fist held a handgun spouting fire.

  Peter felt two hard punches in his chest. It hurt like hell and twisted him sideways, which probably kept him from taking more hits. He already had the rifle up and now he pulled the trigger hard into full auto and stepped forward, emptying the mag into the Explorer through the open side window. The two men inside were turned into dark wet pulp.

  His breath came hard. His ears were ringing but he heard something crunch and another engine revving high as a car came up fast and it was June, having done exactly what he’d told her to do, driven through the gate and turned left at speed.

  He ran around the front of the Explorer into the road with his hand up and the rifle down. She stood on the brakes and he opened the door and got in, the HK stock down in the footwell. Her eyes got wide and he realized she was staring at the pair of blackened holes in the front of his raincoat.

  “I’m okay, the vest caught it.”

  But she’d already stepped on the gas as soon as his second foot cleared the opening. The acceleration closed his door with a thump as she drove smoothly away.

  39

  June didn’t say a word until Pet
er’s hands began to shake from the adrenaline comedown.

  “Hey.” She reached out and put her warm hand on his cold one and he knew they were okay.

  The surface streets were clear, at least the routes June knew, fast runs on two-lane neighborhood feeders, which she would abandon as soon as they became four-lane thoroughfares. Her route was indirect but inevitably southward. The smell of spent powder lingered in the car.

  Peter stared out the window while the defroster ran on high, trying and failing to get rid of the humidity from his cold, wet clothes. His chest ached where the vest had done its job. When he undressed, he’d find a painful pair of big purple bruises.

  Better than the alternative.

  Far better than the other guys.

  You just killed four men.

  Somehow it was different when you fired first.

  At a stoplight she got on the phone and dialed from memory, talking softly. A few minutes later she pulled over in front of a short row of small storefronts. She opened her door. “I’ll be right back.”

  He looked at the sign and it said THAI SIAM.

  Just another young couple out on a date.

  She returned almost immediately carrying a big paper bag and began to stack cardboard containers on the dashboard, laid out forks and chopsticks. The smell of Thai food filled the van.

  “I got the basics,” she said. “Not too spicy, only two stars. You want me to get you dry clothes now or after we eat?”

  He was shivering, soaked to the bone. “I’ll get them.” He stowed the rifle in the second row and stood on the street under the open rear hatch and stripped off the medical boot, then the black suit.

  Rain came down hard, splashing up to his bare ankles on the cold wet asphalt. He figured his new clothes were ruined, but they were so fucking expensive that he folded the jacket, pants, and black topcoat neatly anyway.

  Maybe the suit could be salvaged. He was more attached to that suit than any other item of clothing he could remember.

  It was the way June had looked at him when he’d put it on.