Ghost Target

by Nicholas Irving

  Whether it was the foster homes and foster farms of Maryland or the U.S. Army Ranger School’s toughest tests, Harwood pushed through it all. As he sucked in the thick humidity and blew out his frustrations with every step of his run, he thought about the last three months with Jackie the Olympian. She had come to visit him in the hospital at both Walter Reed and Brooke. She had been there for his rehab, helping him every step of the way when she wasn’t out doing television commercials to capitalize on her fame.

  Now she met him at the different army posts where he was training special forces and airborne snipers. Jackie was good for him, he thought, as he came within one hundred meters of the police car with spinning blue lights. The police shined a spotlight in his direction. The golf course was to his left, so he avoided the entire roadblock and ran along the cart paths. As he jumped onto the asphalt path, the military police shouted something, but they couldn’t be talking to him.

  His thoughts shifted from Jackie the Olympian to Samuelson, his spotter. Survivor’s guilt was a yoke around his neck every day. He didn’t know what had happened to Samuelson and neither did the army. While the young corporal had been a newbie, he was a fellow Ranger and they lived by the creed of leaving no man behind. The fact that he couldn’t find him, go get him, save him, or all of the above, ate away at Harwood’s psyche.

  Plus, the rocks to the head caused his mind to have memory lapses, like a skipping record. He’d just jump to the next thought, leaving behind an entire train of logic. Jackie the Olympian. Samuelson the spotter. Now what? Did he have the opportunity to save Samuelson, did he try, was he able? He couldn’t remember. Sometimes all he knew was what was right in front of him.

  Like right now: the military police.

  The blue lights had gotten brighter and two military policemen shouted at him, “Freeze!”

  But he was already two hundred yards down the path. Instead of freezing or slowing down, he sped up. He had no part in whatever the police were doing, so he just kept running.

  The spotlight shined on him from a distance, its powerful beam weakening the farther away he ran. He sensed that his direction was off a bit, so he angled through the woods, found a minor trail, and powered past branches that slapped him in the face, as if he deserved punishment.

  Harwood just wanted to get back to his enlisted quarters on the base and see Jackie. Sweating, Harwood emerged on the far side of the golf course, spotted his building, and then saw Jackie in the parking lot. He sprinted up the hill and onto the pavement, catching some movement in a car parked away from one of the security lights. A bearded man with a baseball cap watched him. Probably just another guy waiting to get Jackie’s signature. As a sniper, he was accustomed to observing and absorbing his surroundings. He never wanted to be a long-rifle guy in a short-weapon fight, so his radar was constantly spinning. The sight of Jackie placing a black bag in the trunk of her car near the side entrance to the building consumed him quickly and the bearded man was forgotten.

  “Hey,” he said.

  She turned and smiled a frozen grin, almost fake, which he had never seen on her before.

  “Hey, yourself.” She quickly closed the trunk lid and stepped forward to give him a hug.

  “You’re sweating,” Harwood said, smiling.

  “Good workout. You’re sweating, too. Love it,” she said. Jackie was wearing workout clothes, also. She had some twigs and leaves stuck to her sports bra and spandex running pants.

  “Wished I’d known. Would’ve waited for you.”

  “I can’t keep up with you, Reaper. I’m just trying to stay in shape. You’re getting back into Ranger condition.” She led him by the arm to the back entrance of the enlisted quarters.

  “Back door?”

  “I don’t feel like signing autographs tonight,” she said. Ever since she won the Olympic gold and signed multiple endorsement deals with the National Rifle Association and weapons manufacturers, Jackie had become a rock star in the military community. “Plus, I think we can work up another sweat.” She gave him her best seductive smile, kissed him fully. Her lips were sweet with salt. Jackie usually welcomed the attention and always gave her full devotion to her fans. But tonight, she seemed intent on one thing.

  They snuck in the back way and vanished inside Harwood’s room. Something had Jackie jazzed and she was on top of him, her long blond hair tossing in the dim light like thousands of golden whips, brushing his face, caressing his chest, covering his ankles when she leaned back in an acrobatic move.

  Afterward, they lay on the bed panting, her Nordic white skin against his ebony frame.

  “Needed that,” she said. “Gets better every time.”

  “Agree,” he muttered, breathless. Jackie nuzzled up to him, their sweat and fluids all mixing together to create a pungent aroma. She traced his eight-pack with her fingers.

  “You’re one fine physical specimen, Reaper,” she said.

  He ran his hand down her back, looped his finger around her bull’s-eye tattoo just above the crack in her ass. Coolest tramp stamp he’d ever seen.

  “Feels nice,” Jackie whispered into Harwood’s chest.

  “Yeah. Feels good. You make me feel almost normal,” he said.

  “That’s the plan,” she said. “Want you healthy and whole.”

  Harwood pulled her closer and said, “I appreciate everything you’ve done.”

  “You mean like put my life on hold for this guy I met four months ago in Afghanistan?”

  “Yeah, basically that.”

  “Well, you’re worth it.”

  Harwood nodded, felt his chest flutter at that pronouncement, and then pulled her closer.

  “Once I get through this rehab, I’d like to talk long-term strategy with you,” he said.

  “You mean like planning a war campaign?” she teased him.

  “No, you know … it’s just how I talk. What I know,” he replied.

  “I know. It’s one of the many, many things I adore about my guy, the Reaper. I want us to make some sharpshooting little athletes.”

  Harwood’s chest fluttered again.

  “You mean get pregnant?”

  “Yes, as in knocked up. I’m ready,” she said.

  “I’d like to talk to your father first. Ask him. Do it right. Give you your wedding day. Our wedding day. I don’t have a ring yet. Haven’t really approached the subject yet, to be truthful.” He felt like a Ranger about to go on a combat mission without having planned or developed a packing list.

  “I know, Vick. We’ll work it out. I’m just telling you that I love you. And that I’m ready, whenever you are. You’re an amazing man. I’m proud of you. Proud of us. I think we’ve got something here.”

  Harwood was speechless. He settled into the bed, pulled her with him, and said, “Yes, we do. Only thing I disagree with is that you’re the amazing one, not me.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The next morning, Harwood rolled over to find an empty warm spot next to him. Like most nights, his dreams had haunted him. Samuelson danced in his mind like a leering jack-o’-lantern, saying, “Leave no soldier behind? Yeah right, Ranger buddy. You’re a buddy, all right, a buddy fucker. Just call you Bravo Foxtrot.”

  But it was his own voice talking to him. While he didn’t know Samuelson very well when the mortars had rained down on them, it was illogical for Samuelson to blame him for his current DUSTWUN status. Harwood had been unconscious. One minute they were lying within five feet of one another about to take the shot on the Chechen and the next minute they were hearing the whistles of incoming bombs. With only a fraction of a second to prepare, neither had the opportunity to seek more cover. They just sucked it up and endured the fusillade.

  But that wasn’t how survivor’s guilt worked. For whatever reason, Harwood was the one who had come out okay, or at least alive. Scarred, tattered, psychologically damaged, but still breathing. Still pulling in oxygen and blowing out carbon dioxide. Heart still pumping. But the brain, maybe not back all the way.
Definitely not back all the way.

  Somehow, though, he sometimes managed to sleep through the nightmares, perhaps held down by the weight of his emotions, lost in the haze of his brain injury. Like a dazed motorist wandering through a foggy night after a single car crash on a winding country road, Harwood stumbled through each day. He mustered the courage to instruct snipers that the military was counting upon to kill his nation’s enemies. The assignment was part sympathy from the army and part tapping into his vast knowledge and experience as the army’s deadliest sniper.

  The Reaper.

  What did Harwood feel about those thirty-three enemy commanders he had killed? Nothing but satisfaction. He was glad they were dead and that he had killed them. One less bad guy to do the country harm, to Harwood, equaled five soldiers in a Humvee that didn’t get their legs blown off. That was Harwood’s math. The end justified the means.

  He flipped his legs over the bed, stretched tightened muscles, ripped some more scar tissue, grimaced, and then stood. His small quarters at Fort Bragg had a sliding glass door and a balcony about two feet wide. He was in his boxers as he stepped into the morning humidity. He could hear the distant call of cadence coming from paratrooper units conducting physical training.

  “C-130 rolling down the strip, airborne daddy gonna take a little trip…”

  How many times had Harwood sung that cadence? Too many to count. Memories flashed like lightning in his mind. Formation runs. Buddies on his left and right. Joking in the ranks. Sergeants yelling at them to shut up. Then he was a sergeant, leading the physical training.

  Stepping back into the room, he spotted a note from Jackie on the desk.

  Vick, had to run to do some promo. Ugh. Can’t wait to see you in Savannah! Love, J

  While he was disappointed that Jackie had left quietly in the night, he couldn’t complain. This was the first time that she had done so and he counted his blessings every time he looked at her. A gorgeous blonde who loved him, her country, and her guns. What could be better?

  He flipped on the television, scanned a few channels, and landed on the local news, which had a young brunette reporter standing outside of General’s Row at Fort Bragg. The small mansions were in the background as she spoke. He punched up the volume.

  “… and we’re learning that General Sampson was a target of Islamic extremists. As the special forces training commander, he sent many soldiers overseas to fight and kill members of ISIS and Al Qaeda. The latest edition of the Al Qaeda magazine, Inspire, contained an article calling for a ‘fatwa’ on the heads of certain commanders of military units and chief executive officers of private companies such as Microsoft and Apple. That means there is a monetary reward for killing the military and business leaders.”

  An anchor in a studio appeared on the screen. His face was set with the appropriate amount of grim melancholy as he asked the reporter, “Do the police have any leads, Monica?”

  “Yes, in fact, Bill, the military police and Fayetteville police are working jointly. Already they say they have discovered the spent casing that once housed the bullet that killed General Sampson. Likewise, my sources tell me that the actual bullet has been recovered and may hold some clues as well. The police are scouring the area for anyone who might have been in this vicinity at approximately seven P.M. last night.”

  The reporter poked toward the ground as she spoke. The camera followed her as she turned. In the background was a small copse of trees next to the workout station with the climbing ropes, pull-up bars, and dip bars.

  “Let’s hope it does and that we find this killer soon. Monica Johnson from Fort Bragg, thank you.”

  Harwood stared at the television and punched the remote vigorously until the picture went away. A lightning bolt struck in his mind, illuminating something from last night, a brief image. The trees. The physical-training station.

  His rucksack. General Sampson.

  Sitting down on the bed, Harwood rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, grinding away, trying to stitch together one continuous memory or thought process, but unable to do so. What had he seen or heard?

  Or done?

  As was his practice, Harwood quickly transitioned from self-doubt to action. Never one to suffer the sorrows of others, he certainly wasn’t going to wallow in his own angst. He just wanted to be normal, whatever that meant. He looked at the note from Jackie again and remembered that he needed to get on the road to Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, home of the First Ranger Battalion, where he had served his first tour as a private. While he had served primarily in the Third Battalion, in Fort Benning, Georgia, he still had many friends in First Battalion.

  He jammed what little dirty laundry he had in a plastic bag, gathered bottles of the sports drink Jackie had given him, zipped his duffel tight, and hefted his rucksack onto his back. He walked out the back door of the enlisted guest quarters, loaded his extended-cab pickup truck, and pulled out of the parking lot.

  The flashing blue lights of the military police cars blinked in his rearview mirror as three sedans shot to the front door of the large rectangular enlisted-quarters building. Pulling onto the All American Freeway in Fayetteville and then onto I-95 south, Harwood gunned his truck toward Savannah.

  CHAPTER 6

  Deke Bronson smacked his lips as he studied the grainy video footage of a man running past the golf course with a rucksack on his back.

  “Strong candidate right there,” Bronson said. He was speaking to his “go team” of agents in a nondescript office building near the Newport News, Virginia, airport. Bronson and his team of four had been assigned the task of monitoring extremist activity within the United States, including everything from white-supremacist militias predicting the overthrow of the government to the Black Lives Matter movement.

  An African American himself, Special Agent Bronson was pro–law enforcement and a believer in all things American. Every morning he ran five to ten miles, depending on his mood, did a circuit of upper-body and abdominal exercises, showered, checked his ten to twenty Match.com profile hits, shaved his head, manscaped, and then dressed in a two-thousand-dollar Zegna suit, usually navy blue. A confirmed bachelor, Bronson enjoyed looking good and feeling good. He used online dating as a time-saving tool to broaden his reach in finding the perfect partner. He had served as a marine in Fallujah, used the GI Bill to finish his undergraduate degree at Howard University, and then obtained his law degree from Georgetown. After ten years with the FBI, he had been rewarded with command of his own task force in charge of hunting domestic terrorists. Pushing thirty-five years old, Bronson felt good about his station in life. Things were black-and-white for him. You were either a good guy or a bad guy. There was no in-between. Purgatory didn’t exist.

  “Angel, can we review the entire video and capture a still frame that gives us the best image of his face?”

  Angel Rojas smiled and brushed her hair out of her eyes.

  “Roger that, boss man,” Angel said.

  “Thanks, you’re the best,” Bronson said.

  He turned from the fifty-five-inch high-definition television screen and looked at Max Corent, the ballistics expert for the team. Ever since the shootings of multiple policemen in several cities, Bronson had asked for and received his own ballistics expert, which gave him direct connectivity to the lab in Quantico. More rapid processing times led to better, more efficient decision making. Instead of spinning his wheels in one direction, he could now wait a few hours and make a better, more informed decision based upon the evidence. Sure, Bronson had gut instincts, and good ones at that, but he was hardwired to trust the facts, leaving as little as possible to doubt and using his judgment to fill in the rest. Their headquarters sat on a twenty-terabyte secure information hub that provided lightning-fast relays of high-density files such as fingerprints and ballistics matches.

  Corent was looking at him with anticipation. His light brown hair reached down his neck to the blue Death Cab for Cutie T-shirt. He wore shorts and fli
p-flops and usually had earbuds planted inside his ear canals. Younger than Bronson, Corent was a techie who could perform a broad range of functions, from cybertracking criminals to conducting rifling tests on spent ammunition and hammer-impression tests on expelled cartridges. With one arm completely covered in a tat sleeve, Corent had mentioned to Bronson that he was waiting for the right inspiration to design the other arm. Bronson had shrugged. He had just one tat on his left arm: “Semper Fidelis.”

  Always faithful.

  “Yes, young Mr. Corent,” Bronson said. “What do you have for me today? A treat?”

  Corent smiled and said, “You know it sounds weird calling you ‘boss’ when you’re only a few years older than me. But we’re not buddies or friends, so I can’t call you ‘pal’ or anything like that. So, you know, I guess I’ll just leave off the salutation.”

  “Whatever you do next time,” Bronson said, “make it shorter than what you just did.”

  Corent smiled again. “Gotcha. So anyway, this is weird. You know how we use the Integrated Ballistics Identification System to match weapons and ammo to actual criminal activity?”

  “Yes, Max, I’m very familiar with the process. What’s your point? You have a match already?”

  Corent paused and then said, “Well, yes.”

  “What?” Bronson asked. He looked at his watch. It wasn’t even ten o’clock the morning after the shooting of General Sampson.

  “Yes, I do. But it’s not possible,” Corent said.

  “What’s not possible? That you have a match? Or that the match doesn’t make sense?”

  “That one,” Corent said. He stood from his chair in his bullpen cube and pointed at the fifty-five-inch screen where he had transferred the image of the cartridge the military police had found at the suspected shooter’s location. “Here is the picture of where the firing pin struck the casing. It’s as distinctive as a fingerprint.”

  He switched images by leaning over and pressing a button on his MacBook. “Here is the seven-point-six-two-millimeter piece of lead fired from the preceding cartridge. It penetrated the rear of General Sampson’s skull, bored through his brain, exited through the front of his skull, and, having lost velocity, bounced off the windshield and tumbled onto the dashboard where the police found it. These rifling marks are also as distinctive as fingerprints.”