The Unit (17 page)

They’re not crying behind me anymore. Going flying usually gets people’s attention. It can pull people out of themselves, the rush of it. The memories of other flights. They start whispering to each other but I don’t bother to eavesdrop. I look down and I see the changes a-coming. The boys have torches and they’re already making a beeline for the airfield. The bastard daddy is circling back around behind them to go after his slut daughter. He’s gotta be down there, but I can’t see him.

So now it’s my turn to try something. I bank over the town and turn back toward the airfield. Daddy’s gone and the boys are coming, and maybe I’m in control again. The bitch cocks my gun and sticks it in my ear, but I stay the course. She tells me to turn back toward Sacramento. No ma’am, I say. Go ahead, I say. The brat says he’ll cut my head off as soon as we’re stopped. I say “Okay then—I’ll fly us into the ground and take my chances—see if I’ll be the one who walks away.” They’re really pissed off, and I think it’s stupid because it shows they actually trusted me. People that stupid don’t deserve to live.

I think I have them over a barrel, but then the brat unbuckles and wiggles himself into the right front seat. Little shit looks at me and winks. He can see me just fine. Shit. His bitch mother still has my gun stuffed into my ear. The kid straps in. He puts his feet on the rudder pedals and takes the yoke. His mother pushes the muzzle of my gun right into my ear hole and tells me to get off the controls. The kid takes the aircraft away from me, and he seems to know what he’s doing. He adds power and turns back toward Sacramento. I remind them that it’s my airplane, but it doesn’t matter to them. Maybe they’re not as stupid as I thought they were.

So they hijacked my girl, the plane I sweated over for hundreds of hours. Believe that shit? I’m so pissed that I push forward on the yoke, but his mother swats me in the ear with my own pistol. Steel on ear cartilage puts tears in my eyes. The kid gets us leveled off. It’s dark and we’re slow and heavy with fuel and flying at about fifty feet. There’s some power lines coming up and the moon makes them shine like the lines of a spiderweb. We don’t have enough airspeed to climb, so damned if the fucking kid doesn’t fly right under ’em, slick as shit.

Too bad for me, the little bastard seems to know what he’s doing. Maybe he’s just lucky, but being lucky is the same thing as being good, isn’t it? He tells me to keep my fucking hands off the controls and I do and he’s got it then. He’s not as smooth at the controls as I am, but he’s not too bad, either. The bitch takes the gun out of my ear. I relax for a second, then she puts a knife to my neck. It has the scratchy-cold feeling of a very sharp knife, like it just can’t wait to take a bite of me. I look down at it without moving my neck. Try that sometime. But I manage to do it, and the knife looks like one of those Ka-Bar knives the Marines like to use. She leans into my field of vision and she’s looking right at the side of my face, my still presentable face, and her little turd of a son is driving.

“You sit quiet until we get to Sacramento or I’ll cut you into pieces and throw you out, one chunk at a time. I’m sure there are other scavengers here, besides you and your son, and they know just what to do with rotten meat.”

The kid laughs at his mother’s little tough talk and it really pisses me off. I put my hands back on the yoke.

“No ma’am,” I say. “You’ll do no such thing.”

“I think I’m going to enjoy this,” she says, and she gets set to put her shoulder into it. I crank my head around and she has a little smile on her bitch face, and then I know she’s got what it takes, so I lean back and relax. I’m bleeding from my ear from where she whacked me. I’m leaking from a shallow cut in my neck, too. I try to think of nothing except
fuck ’em
. I listen to the smooth-running engine,
my
engine, and I try to enjoy the feeling of flying at night, but all I feel is the old familiar feeling of falling out of the frying pan.

God knows I’ve always loved the sound of light aircraft. That friendly sound from long-gone summers. The plane sounds like a happy toy, but it’s carrying most of everything I will ever have, and ever be. The Cessna screws itself into the dark sky. Its navigational lights are off but I can see the small blue flame of its exhaust and the white of its wings against dark clouds. Thank You, thank You. Bless them and keep them. If I make it through this, I promise to take those flying lessons, Lord. I’ll remember this feeling always, and whenever I fly I’ll remember this fine
this
.

I let the sweet feeling of hope shoot through me, but then I’m walking toward the other thing, and who knows how it will turn out? Maybe it only
seems
like suicide. Maybe we’ll come out of it okay. God make it so. God willing, or
Inshallah
, as the Muslims say. But that’s neither here nor there. This is my fate, so off I go. One man against a pack of armed sociopaths. May age and treachery win the day. I remember watching a History Channel show on TV about the Texas Rangers. They had a saying:
You can’t stop a good man who keeps a-coming
. And that’s just what I hope to be and do.

So goodbye, wife. I’ll be out late tonight. Hugs and kisses. Only time for a quick sendoff. Say goodbye to my turned back. Feel free to wait up for me, but I can’t make any promises.

But then the airplane circles around and heads back toward the airfield. I squat in the grass and watch. The plane dives and the wings are waggling like the plane is about to go out of control, and I don’t know whether to watch or turn away. The old man is trying something, but it’s a mistake. He thinks they’re weak because they’re not monsters. I watch and I don’t bother to pray. The little bird puts on more power and it rises and turns and putters away to the south. I stand and get moving again. I tell myself that the fight goes to the ones who most need to win.

I hike to the highway and walk straight down the middle, southbound in the northbound lane. Then I go off-road and begin to curve around to the east of town. There’s no moon in the overcast sky and the boys are coming in their trucks. They’re laughing and grab-assing around as if they’re about to have a night on the town. They’re making so much racket that I don’t worry about the sound of my bootfalls. A big bonfire is burning in town and their trucks are on the road, making their way to the airstrip. They pass behind me and then it’s just me and the ones left in town.

I’m carrying the silenced .22 rifle. The AR-15 is slung on my back. I have enough ammo to turn a herd of cattle into beef stew. I’m on the side of justice and decency and light against darkness, and the anger flows from the furnace of my being, arms to fingertips, legs to toes, and I have no intention of giving them a fair fight.

I circle upwind and take as much time as I can afford. I whisper a thank-you when I reach the outskirts of town. A group of boys is guarding the motel and the adjacent wrecking yard. I watch their fire-cast shadows bouncing against the dark earth and the looming buildings, then I work my way closer to what has to happen.

Close enough to crawl. Down on my belly. Oil-soaked ground. Damn it’s cold. Move, dammit. Okay, I’m moving now. No choice, for better or for worse. Am I the bad guy here? Doesn’t matter. The stalk seems to last forever, but I’m making good time.

Closer now. Not forgetting the possibility of spider holes and dogs and booby traps and bad luck. I find a trail. A human trail. It leads into the wrecking yard. I smell crap and I crawl past an outhouse. I’m quieter now that I’m out of the dried grass. I look down a row of wrecked pickup trucks. Melanie is close. I can feel it but I don’t see her. The little bastards are down there, too. They have a cooking fire going. I still count three of them. Is that all there is? Are others behind me, waiting for me to show? If it were me, I would’ve put a few guys back in the shadows to wait. I don’t know what kind of leader Bill Junior is. Don’t know. I care, but that won’t stop me. Must be patient, though. A force of nature. Stalking is hard work. Low crawling should be an Olympic event measured in time/distance/decibels/level of concealment. Too old for this shit, but that’s okay because either I get what I’ve come for or I leave this world of pain.

They’re saying something. One young kid and two older ones. The young one tests the water, and says it’s ready. He pours bubble bath into the water and splashes it into lather. The older ones say that they’re ready, too, and they grab their crotches and laugh with their froggy voices. I know what they’re laughing about, and then I’m not fighting the urge to be patient anymore.

Stalking closer still. No moon and I’m low and the world is one big shadow, so I don’t cast one. Snake in the grass. No. Better than that. I’m two-dimensional. The older ones go into the junkyard office shack and come out dragging someone. There she is. My baby girl and the woman that grew up around her. Hands taped to ankles. Hair clotted with muck, and clothes torn. They cut her free. She unfolds herself and rises. It takes her a while to get to her feet, and I’m cheering her on. You can do it, baby, I think. As if she’s doing something important. As if she’s showing the little monsters what she can take. I can’t see the expression on her face, but her shape against the fire is about the most determined thing I’ve ever seen.

The kids pull her along a row of Ford F-150s and I lose sight of them. On my feet and really moving now. Moving to the head of the aisle of wrecked Fords and setting up shop. I get an angle on them and drop to a steady kneeling position. Crosshairs on first one boy and then the other. Finger straight against the triggerguard until the time is right. I’ve always had good timing that way.

They throw Melanie to the ground and pull her shredded clothes away and one of them holds her down. The timing isn’t of my choosing, but it’s something a father can’t endure. I get a good cheek weld on the stock. One of the boys lowers himself between my daughter’s legs and I squeeze the trigger. The .22 slug barely makes a sound as it passes through the suppressor. Clack of the little bolt as it cycles, the tiny bullet sent to discover its purpose. The tiny snap from its barely supersonic flight sounds loud to my ears, but the bullet does its work before the kid gets a chance to figure out what’s happening. The round takes him through the back of the neck. The kid drops instantly. It’s the spine shot I was praying for and I thank God and put another of the bastards in the crosshairs.

The other boy isn’t used to being on the wrong side of an ambush. At the sound of the bullet’s impact he stands and spins around, trying to spot me instead of trying to take cover or holding Melanie as a shield. He gets off three loud rounds from his pistol before I put two quiet rounds into his head. He’s not a sociopath anymore. I look for the smaller kid, but he isn’t so stupid. He’s gotten the hell out of Dodge and Chevy and Ford, too. I hear him running though the gate and toward the airstrip, and then I’m alone with her.

I’m standing over her before I realize I’ve taken a step. I want to hold her, but I give her space. Space to sit up. I pull the last of the duct tape from her hands and then she’s up, barefoot on the cold ground. I pull the boots from the feet of the headshot boy and then we’re running. It’s killing cold and she’s dressed in nothing but torn-up underwear, and I’m running behind her as she runs up the aisle of pickup trucks and turns into the foreign car section and stops at an old Volvo. She pops the trunk and pulls out a pile of clothing, pants and shirts and coats. I want to help. I want to apologize and comfort and promise, but I watch her choose an outfit from the trunk of an old Volvo. Some of the clothes are riddled and bloody, but she finds a T-shirt and boxers and a boys’ pair of overalls that are stained with cow shit instead of blood, and she gets dressed.

Not much time left. Flickers of firelight in their empty camp, but it won’t be empty for long. The pistol shots were huge in the night, and the little kid has to be running away to tell his big buddies what happened. The sound of stiff denim being pulled over tender flesh. The sound of my breathing and the sound of hers. I lean the .22 against the Volvo. I rummage in the trunk and find a pair of cheap wool socks—socks intended for a short winter day of sledding, a snow day that wasn’t expected to last long, and so the socks won’t last long, but it’s what we have.

She puts them on and pulls on the boots I brought. She stands and looks at me, and I know we have to do this looking thing before we make our escape. She looks at me and I look at her. There’s nothing to say, but everything to mean. Her face is covered with slime. She looks as if she’s been behind enemy lines for weeks. She can focus on eternity, but she can’t quite focus on me. Not right away. But then she does focus on me, and her eyes are steady. I smile and take her into my arms. We’re out of time, so I back away and hold her at arm’s length. I let her go and my hands feel empty. I pick up the .22 and hold it out to her, and she doesn’t take it, and then I know she’s really okay.

I take her arm. We jog back to the domestic section and then we break into a run and we’re running through the last of the Detroit iron, headed for the gate. Razor wire lines the top of the fence, but the gate is wide open and we’re coming, dammit, because we’re leaving this place. Closer still and we run in the dried ruts of tow trucks and dragged death cars and we’re there, at the gate, and it’s open enough for us to run straight through without slowing down, and then we’re through. She’s running fast in front of me and we’re through and I’m broadcasting a prayer of thanks because we’re out running in the open night, but just when I want to cry tears of praise and start giggling, and the shrinking of my fear is getting me as high as I’ve ever been, something takes my head off.

Lights on, lights off, earthquake and calm. On my belly, on my back, trying to find enough traction and strength and balance to stand, but I can’t tell which way is up. The small kid comes into my field of vision. I’m in his field of fire, but he’s in mine, too. I raise the rifle and the kid pulls back on a wrist rocket slingshot and lets fly. And that’s all she wrote for this old man. I hear the impact. Rock or marble or ball bearing against something brittle, not me, but yes me. Thwack of projectile on skull but I don’t feel it; I hear another rock popping against siding or particle board or some damn thing, a kid shooting up the neighborhood with a slingshot and nobody around to stop him.