Phoenix Island (33 page)

They’d been training on the beach for hours. Stark set up a target shaped like a human silhouette and taught Carl the best way to fight, given the circumstances. Parker was an experienced duelist and an expert shot. Few people could hit another person at this range, using a pistol under such stress, but Parker could and had. If Carl rushed it, he’d miss, and Parker would kill him. His only hope lay in simple tactics drilled to perfection: step to the side, forcing Parker to adjust, drop to one knee, aim carefully, and fire center mass. Over and over, Stark cited an old Special Forces adage:
Slow is smooth; smooth is fast; fast is deadly
.

Now Stark looked pretty deadly himself, his face red with frustration. “You stepped in the wrong direction. A fatal mistake. He’s left-handed.” He did a slow demonstration, drawing with his left hand. “That
means he’s going to come across the body like this. You have to step right, make him come back the other way. You step left, he’s got you.”

Carl nodded. The ringing in his ears matched the buzzing of his mind. He couldn’t believe all of this was true, couldn’t believe Ross was dead and Campbell was lost, couldn’t believe Octavia was locked in the box, suffering, her life in his hands.

Stark put a hand on his shoulder. “You have to focus, son.”

Carl nodded again. Stark was right. He had to focus, had to kill Parker. For Ross. For Campbell. For Medicaid. For what he’d done since the first day . . . and before that. But most of all, he had to kill Parker in order to save Octavia. Once she was safe, he could worry about sneaking onto the plane.

“These are killing shots,” Stark said, pointing to four holes in the paper target. “Aim center mass. That way, if you go high or low, left or right, you’ll still have a chance of hitting him.”

“I aimed center mass every time.”

“You have to do better. Twelve of your rounds missed the target altogether.” He pointed to two other holes in the target, one in the arm, one in the shoulder. “A shot like this would cripple him and give you an edge. But sooner or later, you’re going to have to put a hole through something important. His heart, his lungs, his guts.”

“Okay,” Carl said. His hands were ice-cold as Stark stapled a fresh target onto the board.

Carl swapped out clips and started back toward the line.

They would meet in the middle, turn their backs, and walk ten paces apiece, as Stark counted. Then they would turn and face each other—at something like fifty feet apart—and Stark would call for their draw; then everything would blow up, both of them blasting away until one of them went down and couldn’t get up again.

Carl found the mark and waited.

“Focus this time,” Stark said. “Any questions?”

“Just one,” Carl said.

When Stark had learned of the duel, he’d snapped, bellowing as he trashed the hangar, overturning the table and the bookshelf, smashing plates on the floor, and hurling the microwave across the room. When
Carl suggested he cancel the duel and pull Octavia out of the sweatbox, Stark gave him a resounding no. Dueling was an ancient tradition and a sacred piece of the global Phoenix Force warrior culture. Stark could not, would not, make an exception. Once a challenge was accepted, the duel was set in stone.

“I know you can’t stop this thing from happening, but what about postponing it? Could we put it off for a couple of weeks, just to give me training time?”

In reality, he just wanted time. The supply plane was coming in five days. If he could delay the duel, talk Stark into springing Octavia from the cage, and then sneak her onto the flight . . .

“No delays,” Stark said, ending it. “Dueling is an institution, Carl. If I bent the rules for you, I would dishonor the tradition, and our soldiers all over the world would lose faith.”

Carl wanted to argue but nodded instead. He had to stay on Stark’s good side.

“We are so close . . .” Stark said, and Carl sensed he was in that melancholy mood that meant more talking in grand philosophical terms. But the Old Man went on to say only, “Once the master chips are ready, no one will be able to stop us. No one will be out of reach. Not the heads of corporations, not even the president of the United States.”

Apparently, Carl let his mask slip a little, because Stark said, “Oh, don’t look so surprised, son. You didn’t think my life’s ambition was running a mercenary unit, did you? Killing terrorists is no different than beating up bullies. Both actions treat symptoms, not the underlying illness. Bullies are a symptom of a sick school system, just as terrorists are a symptom of a sick world. You could spend your whole life treating symptoms, but until you cure the illness causing them, there will always be more symptoms, more bullies and terrorists, more people using Prometheus’s fire to punish all of us.”

Carl struggled to control himself. He couldn’t slip, couldn’t show his disgust.

“The world is sick,” Stark said. His eyes burned like twin furnaces, and in their fiery depths, Carl saw many things: rage and madness, but also self-righteousness and, more than anything else, a horrible purpose . . .
everything part of everything else, a molten, hissing lava of destruction. “Someday soon, a great fire will burn it all to the ground. We’re going to see to that. Then we will sift the devastation and coax a new phoenix from its ashes.”

Carl swallowed and forced himself to nod.

“Retrogression,” Stark said, smiling now, “moving forward by moving backward, back through time to a younger world, when life was simple and good. Once we’ve taken from mankind the punishing gift of fire and driven humans back into their caves, they will be content in their rightful place, overjoyed to worship the gods of a new age: us.”

Stark put a hand on Carl’s shoulder. Carl managed not to flinch away. “That is our destiny, son, to end the suffering of mankind and establish ourselves as the lords of a new Pantheon. But first”—he gave Carl’s shoulder a squeeze—“you must survive.” Clapping his hands together, he said, suddenly optimistic, “We’ll break from training and meditate. Get control of your emotions. Focus on what’s real.”

“Okay,” Carl said.

“Sit. Don’t get sand in the barrel. We’ll start with deep breathing, okay?”

“Sure,” Carl said. “Thanks. But . . . there is one more thing.”

Anger flashed across Stark’s features again.

“It’s not about the duel. I know I was being stupid. I get it.”

Stark’s features relaxed . . . a little. He waited.

Carl tried to keep his voice relaxed. “It’s about Octavia. If I die, could you make her your apprentice? She’s really smart and tough and—”

Stark shook his head, and Carl got a crushing feeling in his chest.

“Forget the girl,” Stark said. “Like dueling, the hunt is an important tradition here. Hunting, killing, is a rite of passage. The hunt culls the weak and baptizes the strong. Once a child has killed, his childhood dies, and he is reborn as a soldier, one more phoenix arisen.”

“But she’s strong. And she’s already killed someone—her stepfather—so she’s passed the test, right? You could use her.”

Stark shook his head again. “Let go of her, Carl. She represents your only weakness: an irrational dedication to others. It’s what brought you
here, all those fights against bullies. And it’s what caused you to fight those boys and Parker. This need to defend the weak. In a sense, it’s noble—but it’s a boy’s idea, not a man’s. Let it go. Let her go. This is your opportunity to transcend your only limitation and become a great man. This is your chance to rise from the ashes of your past.”

“Okay,” Carl said, reeling with desperation but trying not to show it. “Let’s forget the meditation, then. Teach me. Show me how to kill Parker. I’ll put everything else out of my mind, and I’ll kill him, and then, when Octavia’s free, you’ll see how great she is, what a great apprentice she’d make.”

“Carl, Carl, Carl,” Stark said, shaking his head. “It’s too late for her. Whether you win or lose, she’s already condemned. The hunt will go on. You can’t change that. You can’t save her. You can only save yourself.”

“But Parker said—”

“Drill Sergeant Parker lied. He set a trap, and you fell into it. He killed your friend to throw you into a rage, then put the girl out there, like a carrot on a stick, knowing that once you issued a challenge, there would be no turning back, just as he knew that once he’d given the girl to the hunt, there would be no saving her.

“All you can do now is make him pay. Nothing else will change. Tomorrow morning at oh-eight-hundred hours, everyone—the orphans, the cadre, and Phoenix Force—will be here, cheering.”

He glanced at his watch. “In fewer than fourteen hours, either you or Parker will be dead in the sand.”

T
HE ROOM WAS AS DARK
as a grave.

Carl lay awake, his thoughts raging like a storm-tossed sea.

There was no way out, no hope . . .

Then, somewhere beneath his panic, the calm voice of his old trainer, Arthur James, cooed softly as a night bird, reminding him,
When the going gets tough, the tough get cool
. Arthur telling him,
Control your breathing, control yourself. See a picture in your mind. Visualize what you have to do. . . .

Carl pictured the morning to come. He pictured the beach, the crowd, Parker, Stark, pictured the whole thing, felt the weight of the pistol in its holster and heard the chanting of the crowd and Stark’s deep voice telling the duelists to approach the center mark, heard him count, heard him reach ten, felt himself moving at “draw!” and then . . .

Nothing.

He couldn’t picture the rest of it.

He’d never had trouble with visualization before. Sure, this was different—a fight to the death—but he needed to make a film in his mind.

He couldn’t. He tried again and again, the whole scene real to him, but when Stark’s imaginary voice gave the command to draw, the picture went blank.

Why?

Maybe,
the ghost of Arthur said,
you’re trying to picture the wrong fight
.

But he was picturing the only fight possible. Stark had made that clear. There was no way out. No way to help Ross or Campbell or Octavia now. Only the duel. Oh-eight-hundred, on the beach, to the death, period.

In Stark’s world, people got hurt along the way. Got killed along the way. To Stark, the duel represented a glorious opportunity, Carl’s chance to stop attaching himself to weak people and end what Stark called his pattern of self-destruction.

Carl couldn’t deny the pattern: all those fights, from the brawl in the barracks all the way back to Devil’s Pocket, to Liam.

But the pattern’s roots went even deeper, stretching all the way back to the promise he’d made on a snowy day long ago, after his father had scared off those punks and gotten Cobbie a hot meal at the diner.

This is what I do, Carl. And someday when you grow up, it will be up to you to protect them, all the people who can’t fend for themselves. A good man won’t give in to fear when there’s work to be done and someone needs him. Will you do it?

And Carl’s reply:
Yes. I promise . . .

And all these years, that’s what Carl thought he’d been doing: keeping his promise to his father. Standing up for the weak.

But he’d been fooling himself.

Carl’s historical pattern of self-destruction did point toward a deep personal weakness—all those fights, all those placements, all the trouble he’d gotten himself into here . . . always a bully, always a victim, always Carl stepping into the middle.

But Carl’s weakness wasn’t his need to help the victims. His weakness was his need to destroy the bullies.

The difference hit him now square in the forehead like a .40-caliber round . . .

He’d been fighting not out of love but hatred.

He remembered the fight with Decker, just before they went at it, Decker standing over Medicaid and grinning at Carl, saying,
What do you care, anyway? You don’t like him, either. I can see it in your eyes
.

And he’d been right.

Carl hadn’t liked Medicaid.

When he fought Decker, it wasn’t because he wanted to help Medicaid; it was because he hated Decker. Just like the big fight that had gotten him sent here in the first place, his defense of that kid Eli. He didn’t know Eli. Never saw him again. Never cared. Never even wondered how the kid was doing afterward. He hadn’t thumped the football team because he liked Eli; he had thumped them because they were bullies and he hated their kind.

For him, all bullies were echoes of Liam.

And on some level, Liam was the echo of Wilson W. Wilson, the man who’d shot his father.

Stark saw this moment in time as Carl’s opportunity to break this lifelong pattern, to escape his weakness, and Carl was in total agreement. This was it. His chance to break the pattern and become the person he wanted to be. But to Stark, this meant forgetting Octavia, killing Parker, and moving on to a life where Carl would focus only on himself. That’s where he was wrong.

This was Carl’s big opportunity, all right. But it wasn’t time to
stop
fighting for the weak; it was time to
start
fighting for them.