“You know she wanders, Frank. She’s senile,” Henry argued. “Joe said let her go as long as she doesn’t ... watch out for Denny, one o’clock.” Henry swerved when the jeep did and, at the same time, Dean grunted loudly. “As long as she doesn’t wander into any perimeters, it’s fine. Hey are we going up to the training area?”
“Yeah. Am I headed in the right direction?”
“Surprisingly ... yes. Are you wanting to be on the road, Frank, because we’re not on the road.”
“Obviously, Henry, if we’re fuckin bouncing all over the place we aren’t on the road. How far am I from it?”
“It’s about uh ... ten yards east of ... bush at eleven o’clock ...” Another hard swerve to the right. “Oh, Frank, a little more and you’re on the road.” Henry smiled. “You’re doing good.”
Frank felt the bounce of the jeep. “Hey we’re on the road.” He felt another bounce. “We’re off the road. Shit.”
“You just missed it, Frank.” Henry tapped him on the shoulder. “Hold the wheel left. Keep going ... keep going ...” The jeep bounced on the road. “Now turn right.” As the jeep jolted, so did Henry. He flopped completely over, and his legs went up in the air. Afraid to look, he sat back up. “You’re good.” He leaned forward between the two seats. “Hey, Dean? Why are you covering your eyes? You can’t see anyhow.”
Dean lowered his hand slowly. “I’m going to kill both of you guys. Both of you. What are you doing to me?”
Henry grinned. “It’s a male bonding thing, Dean. Frank, watch out for your guard.”
“Where?”
“Never mind. He ran.” Henry shrugged. “This is fun.”
“OK.” Frank led the way to the top of the hill at the Security training field. “Part one of today.”
Dean shook his head as he was led by the hand of Henry. “Why are we up here, Frank? I’m not Security. There are other things you could work on with me.”
“No, Dean, there aren’t. Right now, what should be happening is your other five senses should take over. You’re not letting your other five senses take over and they should be your eyes.”
“Four senses, Frank,” Dean corrected.
“Five.”
“Four senses, Frank. Everybody has five senses. If I lost one, I have four left. Basic math. Oh yeah, I forgot. You don’t know that.”
“Ha, ha, ha. Asshole,” Frank snapped. “For your information, little-man, you have five remaining senses, taste, touch, smell, hearing, and instinct, gut instinct. And on that one, you need work. That’s why we’re up on the firing range.”
“Oh my God.” Dean stepped back, but was stopped by Henry. “Just tell me you don’t have your blindfold on.”
“No,” Frank said. “I’ll put it back on though. Don’t worry.” He walked behind Dean. “Excuse me, Henry. All right, Dean.” Frank laid his hands on his shoulder and turned him a few inches to the right. “Now, right now you are facing our ‘Henry range’. I call it that because Henry fixed this place for me. Fifty yards straight ahead and spanning fifty to your right and fifty to your left are our row of snipers. You can’t see them, not because you’re blind, but because they’re snipers. Get it?” Frank laughed. “OK. They work on a timer. There are ten of them. I’m going to set it up for only five to jump up randomly at three seconds apart. If you listen, and listen good, you’ll hear the click. You have about a half a second and then you’ll hear them pop up. Listen, I’ll show you.” Frank trotted over to the jeep and ran back. He held the remote in his hand. A few beeps and then there was a buzzing. “Dean, listen to it. It’s warming up.” The first click went off. “Hear that? First one.” Frank turned Dean to the sound. “Second one.” He turned him again. “Third.” Another turn. “Fourth.” A final spin. “Fifth. Understand.”
Dean nodded. “I think I do. You want me to see if I can locate them by sound?”
“Uh yeah, then shoot them,” Frank told him.
Dean had to laugh. “Shoot them? Right, Frank. Not even you could do that.”
“Bet me.”
“Bet you that you can’t shoot them?”
“Yeah,” Frank said.
“You have to shoot them all, all five.”
“No problem,” Frank stated with certainty.
“Deadly shots.”
“The only kind.”
“You’re on,” Dean spoke cockily. “What’s the bet?”
Frank pulled out his revolver and clicked the chamber. “Name your win.”
“OK. If I win ...” Dean smiled as he raced through his mind what he could make Frank do. He smiled wider. “If I win, for one week, you have to come to the clinic and wash out all my specimen cups and clean my equipment. This gets done nightly.”
“You’re on. But if I win you don’t touch Ellen for a week.” He handed Henry the remote.
“What do you mean don’t touch her?” Dean asked.
“Nothing past the friendly stage. One week, if you welsh, I kill you. I’m allowed under cowboy law.”
“What the hell is cowboy law?” Dean snipped.
“You don’t know cowboy law? Henry tell him what ... oh you wouldn’t know either. You’re not from America.”
Henry gasped, “I am too, Frank, you asshole. I’m American.”
“Sorry, Henry, you just don’t strike me as the ‘Cowboy and Indian’ type of guy.” Frank took an explaining breath. “The cowboy law is you can shoot someone if they break their word. It’s an honor thing. That’s why two men were allowed to shoot each other back then. Law. We on?”
“Cowboy law.” Dean shook his head with a snicker. “Only you would say something stupid like that.”
“Dean!”
“Yes. We’re on. I won’t touch her for one week but only because I know you can’t do this.”
“Hold this, Henry.” Frank held out his revolver then placed on his blindfold. “I’ll take it back.” Frank gripped the revolver when it was returned to his hand. “Step back.”
Henry pulled Dean back with him and readied the remote. “Whenever you’re ready, Frank.”
Frank ran the back of his hand over his forehead and held up the revolver cupped between his two hands. “Now don’t talk ... Ready.” Frank listened to the machine reset itself and the warm up begin. It was like a metronome. The click of the contraption, the clank as the sniper popped up, and the bang of Frank’s weapon three times, steady as the speed it was set. Click ... clank ... bang-bang-bang, and Frank would turn and repeat it.
A quiet and smell of gunpowder filled the air as the buzzing of the machine stopped. Frank lowered his weapon. “How did I do?” He took off his blindfold.
“Shit,” Henry stated. “You hit them.” He ran up to the targets. “Oh my God, Frank, you hit them all!”
Dean’s shoulders dropped and the word ‘no’ rang through his head. “Deadly shots, Henry?”
Henry checked them out. “I’d say!” he yelled back.
Frank called out to him, “Any head shots?”
“No,” Henry answered, “all chest.”
“Fuck.” Frank reloaded his weapon. “But ... all deadly, Dean. No Ellen for one week. By that time she would have broken the Dean-little-man habit.”
“You’re really funny. You did this before, didn’t you? You shot with a blindfold on before.”
“Oh yeah.” Frank prepared to hand Dean the revolver. “But you didn’t ask that, Dean. I was a sharpshooter, champion shooter in the fuckin Army, asshole. You think there hasn’t been a challenge thrown my way?” Frank fluttered his lips. “I’ve been doing shooting shit since I was eighteen years old. I was the wrong person to make the bet with.” Frank grabbed Dean’s hand. “Your turn.”
“No.” Dean tried to hand back the gun. “Here, Frank. Frank?”
“I’m back here.” Frank was ten feet behind him. “Go on, Dean. You can do this. Move out of the way, Henry. A blind man has my gun.”
Henry, who was making his way to Frank, quickly changed his mind and ran to th
e jeep—on the other side—to wait out Dean’s turn.
Frank watched Dean just stand there so he ran up to him. “Here.” He grabbed Dean’s hands and put them on the gun then raised his arms. “Now you are at the perfect height. I can’t do any more for you. Feel the force. Feel it.”
Dean mumbled, listening to Frank step back. “He thinks this is Star Wars.”
“You ready?” Frank asked.
Mumbling, Dean answered, “Oh yeah. I should turn around and start shooting your way.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Go on,” Dean sounded so perturbed. He listened to the foreign sound of the machine warming up. He really listened to the clanking and the clicking, and he tried with everything he had to pull a Frank. The weapon seemed like it weighed fifty pounds when Dean finally lowered it with relief that the drill was over. “How did I do?”
Frank clapped as he returned to Dean. “Good job.”
“Did I hit them?” A twinge of excitement came over him.
“I don’t think, but good job. Henry!” Frank looked out to Henry who checked the target. “Any hits?”
Henry checked out the fake snipers. “Frank! He hit one! In the leg but he hit one!”
“See, Dean.” Frank gave a firm pat to his back. “You did good. You fired ten shots and got one hit.”
“It sucks.”
“No it doesn’t. You’re blind and ... you’ve never done this before. One out of ten is good. Hell, I have men who their first time up here without blindfold didn’t do that.”
“Really?”
“No.” He snickered at Dean’s moan. “But ... you still did good. Ready to try again?”
“You know what?” Dean smiled and raised the gun. “Point me in the right direction again, Frank. I’m ready.”
<><><><>
If anger was lava spewing forth from a volcano, then Quantico would have been Pompeii with the amount that George was putting out. He stormed, not wanting to speak to anyone. Having just received, through Morse code, the word they had failed in yet another attempt at Robbie the day before. What had made matters worse for George is that he didn’t hear a word of it from John Matoose. It had been days since he had personally spoken to John Matoose and it fueled any fire already breeding in George. John knew George couldn’t contact him. It would give away George’s location if he did. George figured something had to be going on with John, something that prohibited him from making his daily call. Perhaps he was found out, but George knew if that was the case, he would somehow know about it. Tightened security around the Communications room would stop John, but it wouldn’t stop George because he was certain, without a doubt, that he could get his message through on the first of the month when the system regenerated itself for thirty minutes and received no signals. That was when George would contact John, three p.m. that day. Unlike his typical transmissions on the first of every month where George would send information to John, this time, if he hadn’t heard from John, he would send him something else.
Irritated and in no mood for any excuses, George went to where he knew he could always hear what he wanted to hear, his labs. George did hear what he wanted to hear, that in no time, part one of two could be launched with success. It was what George was building for, his final attempt at the elimination of Beginnings. Final because he was certain that this plan would work with maximum loss of lives to Beginnings, and minimum loss of lives to George. Even though Beginnings was a hangnail in size compared to the hand George had on the East. They were untouchable, protected by the walls of security around them, and the gold mine they had beneath of them, a gold mine that their ignorance hadn’t even tapped the surface of.
But he would break them eventually. He was positive of that. Then Beginnings could become one more stop of George’s in his ‘bring them in, train them, spread them out’ large world he was creating. Growing by the day in size, though large in numbers, George was still at a loss because he knew an army of a thousand strong—without hope and without fight inside of them—could not defeat an army of a hundred with spirit. Perhaps that was another reason, a big reason, George had so much difficulty defeating Beginnings.
<><><><>
They sat in a field two miles south of the Living Section and three miles north of the mobile lab. Frank and Dean, amongst the high grass, were finishing off the lunch that Frank had brought out there for them to eat before continuing on.
“Will Henry be back?” Dean asked, finishing off his sandwich.
“Nope.” Frank took a hit of his cigarette.
“We’re all the way out here, Frank.”
“We’ll walk back, it’s not that far.”
Dean listened to Frank as he blew out his smoke loudly. “You know, Frank, I can’t believe you of all people are smoking.”
“And you won’t say shit, Dean.”
“No, I won’t.” Dean brought his knees up to his chest, dusted off his hands, and wrapped his arms around his legs. “You do know, Frank, health-wise ...”
“Dean.”
“But as a doctor ...”
“Dean.”
“It’s just that you’re so fit and so healthy ...”
“Dean!” Frank snapped. “Please.”
“If I’m gonna keep this secret, can I at least know why you started smoking?”
“It’s just that ... it’s ... things are stressful, Dean. You know that. You have this virus to contend with. Me, I have this place to protect. There are so many outside forces I deal with on a day-to-day basis that a lot of people don’t know about. I deal with it, it’s my job, but ... I’m allowed to worry. Smoking kind of calms me. Three things calm me, sex, which I’m not getting, smoking, which I’m doing, and drinking, which I’d prefer not to do.”
“So you’ve quit drinking?” Dean waited for an answer. He only received silence. “OK.” He paused again. “Answer me this. Did you start smoking to stop the drinking?”
“No ... well, sort of. I guess.”
“It’s not working, is it?”
“Dean, I’d rather not talk about this with you.”
“OK, OK, It’s just ... it’s very typical in the old world standards. People who quit drinking, or who have a drinking problem ...”
“I don’t have a problem.”
Dean raised his hand. “I’m not saying you do. I’m saying that it’s a typical switch, one for the other. Sometimes it helps but it doesn’t work. Get it?”
“Yep.” Frank took another hit of his cigarette.
“People say that you have to want to quit drinking in order to quit. Medically, I don’t buy it.”
“Dean. Where are you going with this?”
“Nowhere,” Dean stated. “But know, it’s OK to smoke if you’re using it to give up drinking. It’s OK to go that route. It’s proven medically that smoking will help. Just remember, if you can’t ... if you find yourself unable to quit the drinking all together, there are other ways we can go, aside from just your willpower. Because some people, no matter how strong they are, may need a little more help.”
“That’s not me,” Frank spoke defensively. “I like having a drink. I can quit altogether. I just don’t want to.”
“Good. But if you would ever find yourself in that position, and I know that’s not you, but if you do ... let me know. Medically speaking, there are ways I can help and no one has to know.”
“If I would find myself in that position, which I won’t, I appreciate the thought.”
“Yes well, just like I’m not saying anything about the smoking, you can’t say anything about that offer I just made. People could talk.”
Frank smiled. “People will talk. Shit, we were throwing darts last night.”
Dean began laughing. “Last night we hit Josephine with the darts and today we nearly hit her with the car.”
“Yeah but she’s senile. Who’s gonna believe her?”
“Frank?” Dean softened his words and became serious, “Can I ask you something? I need you to
answer me honestly. Why are you helping me? Why are you putting so much time into helping me? You are really putting a lot of time into it.”
“I’m not done.”
“Why?” Dean asked with passion. “We are always at each other’s throats. Even with good times between us, we’ll revert back to that. You hate me. You’ve always hated me.”
Frank was quiet as he tossed out his cigarette. “There’s a fine line ... and this goes no further than this field or I’ll fuckin kill you. There’s a fine line, Dean. Just know, I don’t hate you. This, you being blind, it killed me. It’s wrong and like everything else, I want to make it right. As far as always hating you goes, I think it was the fact that you have always threatened me. Not your size, mind you, because you’re like two feet tall.” Frank reached into his pocket and pulled out another cigarette. “But you were everything I wasn’t. You had Ellen right away, and I always wanted her. You’re smart, really smart. You save lives. And people, they like you.”
“Well know, Frank, you’ve always been a threat to me too. You’re everything I wanted to be too. And I am talking about your size. You’re big, strong, and you just go in and do it. Without thought and with your heart, you do things. I may save lives, but so do you. Let me tell you, the way you save lives deserves a lot more credit than you get.”
There was awkwardness between the two of them at that moment, one never there before. A sense of respect that Dean had for Frank, and Frank had for Dean, was known for the first time ever in all the years they had known each other. Both of them, at that second, didn’t want to admit ... they wanted out of that moment.
Frank stood up, brushed himself off, and grabbed the small sack. “Enough mush. Put it behind us and never bring it up again. Deal?”
“Deal.” Dean felt Frank’s hand on his arm and with its guidance, he stood up. “Now what? Are we walking home?”
“Yep.” Frank tossed the sack over his shoulder. “Now.” Frank walked behind Dean and turned him. “You are facing town. Do you hear the noise coming from there?”
Blink of an Eye: Beginnings Series Book 8 Page 19