Tod Goldberg - The Reformed

“Wouldn’t that be lethal?”

“You’d have to be a sniper and you’d have to hit a defenseless person for it to have that effect,” Chris said. “And even then you’d have to be pretty close.”

“Wouldn’t that be the point?”

“And you’d have to want to kill him,” Chris said. He shrugged, and Sam remembered that this was a guy who used to really like killing people, until he started to notice the wider world outside his kill zone. “You’re not gonna kill someone shooting them in the foot. You aim at someone’s head, yeah, you could kill them. Most likely, you’d just put them down for a bit. Bruise their brain a bit. But if you’re coming at me to the point that I need to unload, then I’m happy to bruise your brain.”

Sam wasn’t really sure a person could bruise his brain, but he was certain that if he got hit in the head with just about anything traveling eight hundred feet per second, there was a good chance it would serve as a pretty good deterrent to whatever abhorrent behavior he was engaged in.

Chris loaded the gun and handed it back to Sam. “Shoot it,” Chris said.

There was a full human target made of ballistics gel about thirty yards away. Chris wasn’t screwing around out here. Sam took the gun and aimed it, thinking, Well, if it even breaks the skin, I’ll be surprised, and fired away. It didn’t have that same satisfying sound that a Glock might make, or an AK, but it did make a nice pop, and when the ball hit the target, there was a loud slapping sound. Sam had aimed for the midsection, hoping to hit the pubis bone, a spot that when punched tends to crumple an assailant.

Sam and Chris walked out to the target and examined the damage. There was a spatter of red paint where Sam had hit the body, and the flesh was torn open. Sam shoved his index finger inside the gap-it was about a third of an inch.

“Not a great place to get stitches,” Sam said.

Chris waved him off. “Cuts are nothing. Who cares about a flesh wound?” He went behind the dummy, and that’s when Sam saw that it was hooked up to a laptop. Chris tapped the keys a few times and up came a series of three-dimensional re-creations of the shot. “That poor bastard you just shot? You separated his pelvis.”

“Really?” Sam said.

“According to the computer model,” Chris said. “He’ll be in the hospital for a week. Probably will have a problem sitting for a long period of time for a while after that. No career in the truck-driving arts. I’ll tell you that.”

“And these are nonlethal weapons?”

“You didn’t kill the guy, did you?”

“No.”

“You put anything illegal into the gun?”

“No.”

“Then it’s nonlethal.”

Sam turned the gun over in his hand. “I conceal this,” Sam said. “Any problem with that?”

“If you conceal a water pistol, is there a problem with that?” Chris said.

Sam pondered this. “I need a dozen of these,” he said.

“I’ve got three,” Chris said.

“How much time would it take me to modify a regular marker to do this?”

“You got access to a torch?”

“Sure,” Sam said.

“About five minutes,” he said.

This was getting better and better. “Let’s say I needed some CS gas balls.”

“Let’s say.”

“You could get a person those?”

“Where’s the fight?” Chris seemed genuinely intrigued by all of this, which wasn’t a great thing. Sure, the guy could keep a secret, but the less anyone knew, the better, as ever.

“It’s a top-secret thing, Kick-Ass,” Sam said. He tossed in Chris’ old nickname just to let him know they were back on military ground. You know-Band of Brothers. All that.

“Bullshit,” Chris said. “If it was top-secret, you wouldn’t be out here buying paintball guns.”

“You remember my buddy Michael Westen?”

“Spy?”

“That’s the one.”

Chris put up a hand. “Say no more. Whatever you’re doing with him, I want no part of that. You know how many different agencies, foreign and domestic, have come to me, seeing if I’d be interested in relieving that asset?”

Sam wasn’t surprised, really. A guy like Chris Alessio would be who he’d call if he needed someone to kill a person and do it right.

“I appreciate your not taking any of those jobs,” Sam said.

“Well, I value my life,” Chris said, which was a surprise. Anytime an ex-SEAL can admit to being over-matched on anything was cause for a national holiday. “Whatever you guys are into, I’d just as soon put you in touch with someone who can get you some real guns.”

“Real guns I’ve got,” Sam said.

“Ah,” Chris said. “I see what you’ve got going on. Like Latvia? Break no laws while breaking someone’s back?”

“Right,” Sam said. He’d told Michael about the teeth flossing, but really couldn’t remember the meat of that story, though apparently it was a good one.

“Hold on,” Chris said, “I’ve got something for you.” Chris went into a storeroom and came out with a long, cylindrical box. “I got these when I was thinking about taking the park in more of a historical direction, but, you know, people just want to shoot each other. Nothing wrong with that, right?”

“Right,” Sam said.

Chris opened the box, and Sam saw what looked like, well, whips. “Whips?” Sam said.

“Florida stockwhips. Cowboys used them on cows back in the day. They’re considered farm implements. I got three boxes of them.”

Oh, Sam thought. Oh. He took one in his hand and walked over to the ballistics dummy and snapped the whip on its knee, opening up a gash at least five inches long. Oh.

“I’ll take them all,” Sam said. “What can I do in return?”

“Nothing,” Chris said, and gave Sam a wink. “Besides, I heard from our old friend Virgil that you do people some favors on occasion?”

“On occasion,” Sam said.

Chris looked around his warehouse. “Just to say, not all of this stuff was procured by means I like to talk about. Could be I might need some people I can trust one day.”

“I’m people you can trust,” Sam said.

“I’ve got five hundred paintballs filled with pepper spray,” Chris said. “Will that suit your needs?”

When you’re combating an insurgent force on foreign soil, like in Iraq or Afghanistan, it’s imperative that you work hand in hand with the nation that’s hosting you. In a perfect situation, you’d have trained that nation’s military force on your standard operating procedures, and there would be a great amount of mutual trust among the leaders, and the soldiers would consider each other valued assets in the fight for freedom, liberty and the greater good of whatever far-flung nation you happened to be dwelling and/or killing in. The truth, however, is that fighting on foreign land invariably means you can’t trust anyone.

“You know what I don’t understand, Mikey?” Sam said. It was just before ten thirty, and we were walking across the Honrado campus-Fiona had been instructed to arrive after Junior and his men, so she and Barry were watching us from her car across the street-en route to Father Eduardo’s office. “Why did it take so long for the bad guys to stop wearing matching uniforms? Life was a lot easier when the people who wanted to kill you all coordinated their dress.”

“All evolution is slow,” I said.

“You’d think George Washington would have looked across the river and realized it would be a lot easier to beat the British if they just changed their clothes into something less identifiably American. Like, you know, a red coat or something.”

“There were rules for war back then, Sam,” I said. “It was much more pleasant.”