It wasn’t like I had the clearest set of instructions. And I could see how it could all go real wrong if I’d read the room incorrectly. I told myself this as I followed after Volman, who was moving fast now, tramping through the underbrush and stumbling over ruined corpses all while breathing heavily. Talking a mile a minute about what we were going to do next. What we were going to accomplish now that things were going his way finally. We were going to go off with a stranger on nothing more than the hope they were a friend, so Volman could “take control of the situation,” as he saw it. He had big plans about an embassy. He was already babbling on and on about it.
He was mad, of course. He was delusional.
He’d snapped. That much was also clear.
And that made him dangerous to us. To the mission. To our survival. More dangerous than he’d been when the sergeant major had first told me to retire him. It was one thing to try and mingle among the Rangers and foment dissent. He had some points. Everyone’s re-enlistment was up. Technically, by about ten thousand years. Given enough time he would have found the troublemakers and made things difficult for everyone. Especially considering it looked like hanging together was the only way we were going to get through this alive.
Whatever this was.
As we walked back toward the hill, Volman was telling me I was no longer in the Army and that I was being deputized as an official State Department employee and that I was now to report to him and him only. I was a GS-4 now. He gave me a promotion and told me I owed him. Big- time. He sounded half mad. If not full mad.
He pushed past the brush and into the trees, never minding the ruined corpses of the orcs, trolls, giants, and other misshapen beasts I’d yet to encounter. It was like walking through a morgue that decided to turn into a funhouse run by cheap carnies with a very sick sense of humor.
It was a whole new kind of morning after.
He was about fifteen feet in front of me. I’d slung my rifle, quietly
drawn the sergeant major’s pistol, and was screwing in the silencer when he suddenly turned around, wild-eyed, and flopped down on a ruined log that had mostly splintered. It had taken a direct hit from a mortar round sometime the night before. We’d come to a small clearing that had been shelled when things were looking desperate.
Things were still desperate.
There was a severed arm lying in the sand, but he didn’t seem to notice it. It wasn’t human. Huge, brawny, green. Spiked leather gauntlet that looked pristine apart from the blood and gore.
And I’m standing there with a silenced pistol, staring at Volman. My intentions were obvious.
Or at least I mean… they would be to me if I suddenly turned around, paranoid and stressed out, and saw a guy with a silenced sidearm following me. I would have realized I was about to get hit. Assassinated. Killed. Retired. Cleaned. Pretty obvious. But of course… that’s the kind of hit man I am. I make sure to play all my cards before pulling the trigger. Like standing there right in front of your target with a loaded silenced weapon and pretty clear intentions about what’s going to happen next. Like the pros don’t.
So there I am, red-handed.
And he chooses not to see the reality of his situation.
He just sat down on the log and had his iPhone out in an instant. Lost in its world of endless screens. He was typing into it furiously, both index fingers working as he stabbed angrily at the keys.
We were about a quarter mile away from everyone. From the team down near the river. From everyone on the hill. The flies were thick and swarming and the new heat in this day, a thing that hadn’t been there since we’d arrived, was hot and getting hotter. Volman wiped sweat from his brow while making, if his muttering was any indication, a checklist for diplomatic relations with Autumn’s people.
“Did she say what her name was?” he asked sharply, not waiting for the answer before he asked another question, still not looking up from his screen. “Did she say what her people were called? We need to start co- opting them to our agenda if we’re going to get embedded here. That’s a big priority!”
I shot him.
He’d seen me with the pistol, so when he looked up at me again, I expected that his mind would put two and two together. As in, Hey, that guy with the silenced pistol just shot me. I didn’t think he’d do that. But, well, he did.
But that wasn’t the look.
The look was pure surprise. This hadn’t been part of any plan his fevered mind had conceived. This wasn’t an option as far as he was concerned.
Well, it was.
I hadn’t shot him in the head. Didn’t want to take the chance of missing even at close range. My hand, the one holding the sergeant major’s sidearm, had been shaking the whole time. I didn’t trust me. And if I sound calm now in this warts-and-all account, a cool assassin, I wasn’t at the time. Trust me. My mouth was dry and I felt halfway between passing out and throwing up… just before I shot him.
If there was any coolness, chalk it up to fatigue. I was just empty enough to do this right now.
So I pointed the weapon at his chest, center mass, and fired as he planned to conquer the world at everyone else’s expense.
At first I thought I missed, because the round didn’t knock him over or back, like in the movies. Or like the pop-ups at the range. He just sat there. And then I could see blood spreading across his L.L.Bean adventure shirt and I watched as he looked up at me, mouth working like he wanted to scream, and didn’t. Couldn’t.
The iPhone dropped onto the sand.
And I knew this was the right thing. To do. I decided right there that I wasn’t going to do any of this I-feel-bad-about-the-bad-things-I’ve-done bull.
I filed this under necessary right now maybe not feel bad ever.
And I reminded myself how close things had gotten last night. And that I could be one of the dead. And that a bunch of Rangers had fought together and were alive this morning and playing body toss with their enemies and that had to count for something in the big scheme of things.
Volman was on his knees, mouth still opening and closing silently, when I fired twice more. My hand was steadier now. First shot was left-of- center upper chest. Where the heart and the major arteries are.
John had called that the Pump and Pipes. It was always the best choice.
I think Volman was dead when I fired the next shot a few seconds later. He was on the ground. Face thankfully pushed into the sand. I put the last shot in the back of his skull and called it done.
Then I turned and went back to the river’s edge where the sergeant major and the captain were waiting. Where Autumn was.
But that wasn’t her name. I’d just started calling her that in my head.
And that had caused her to react in a…
Last of Autumn.
That was what she’d said she was called by her people. Like they were… I don’t know… like they were Indians who’d once roamed the American plains. Noble and savage at the same time.
Stands with a Buffalo and Raging Bull. Like they were something special, and nomads, all at once. People we should have tried to better understand. And maybe they should have done the same with us. That would have gone a long way with both sides.
I didn’t look back at Volman. But I knew. He was the opposite of her.
And what I’d done was necessary.
