Jonathon King - Eye of Vengeance

Michael Redman tried again to close his eyes and sleep. He lay flat on his back, arms folded across his chest, fingers interlaced. His body was on the exact middle axis of the too-soft mattress, his legs stretched out to their full length and heels left hanging just beyond the foot of the bed. His head was square on the flat pillow, facing the swirled plaster of the old-time ceiling. If he could have seen himself from above, he would have recognized a soldier stiffened at something resembling parade rest, or a corpse readied for lowering into the earth.

Redman was determined to sleep this night, like all the other nights that he had been so determined. He'd been staring at the ceiling until he could see with frustrating clarity the patterns of cracks and fissures that were never meant to be seen. Like so many other nights, his peripheral vision had picked up the motion of the moon by the changes in the intensity of its glow against the hardwood floor and the low corner of one wall. He closed his eyes but again that empty, dark, nourishing nothingness would not come. Sleep. He'd lost that ability in Iraq, the ability to see nothing, to think nothing, to succumb to darkness. His ability to stay alert, trained into him for years as a law enforcement sniper, had become his enemy over the months and months of his deployment. He had so envied the young ones, the eighteen-, nineteen- and twenty- year-olds who could fall into their cots, pull the thin blankets over their heads and snore their way into oblivion for hours. As a cop, he'd trained himself to do that only after danger and the need for his service was past, after the crime-scene breakdown, after the target had been neutralized. But in Falluja and Mosul and Tikrit, the danger never really passed.

Iraq put the bug in his veins. He thought it would pass when he got back home, was back in his own bed, thought the resumption of routine in the real world would convince his mind that he could relax. But it never did. Instead it crept through his blood and into the tiny capillaries behind his eyelids and in the dark he would see the robes and hijabs and draped blankets float across his line of vision like the vestments of ghosts. And he could never see their faces. The scope only allowed a fragment of a hooded profile, the hook of a nose or jut of a chin.

"Take the shot"

Redman's fingers twitched and he opened his eyes and cut them to the side where the moon glow had painted the far corner of the room. He tightened the muscles in his stomach and swung his legs off the bed and sat up. He had again sweated through the T-shirt he wore. He should have reacclimated to the South Florida humidity by now. He looked over at the window beyond his door-panel desk and saw that it was opened.

In his last few months in Iraq, the night air had been cold like he hadn't experienced since his years growing up in New England. He remembered thinking then that they were right about Florida thinning your blood. He recalled the tent barracks in Ramadi where he'd bunked in for a few nights with a National Guard unit from Florida. He'd recognized some of the cities they came from when the men were introduced. But by then he was used to being vague about his own background. As soon as the others saw the black, hard-sided case that protected his H amp;K sniper rifle, the whispering started.

"Hey, yo. The grim reaper, man."

"How many notches you think are on that stock?"

"I heard like fifty, man. Guy's the Marines' special weapon."

"Fuckin' like to see him take out that goddamn mortar nest on the north quadrant. Maybe that's why he's here."

"No, that ain't why. I know why he's here," said a red-haired corporal who cut his eyes at Redman and then stuck a cigar in his mouth and walked out.

Redman had pretended not to hear. He remembered envying them and their loose camaraderie, but he stayed to himself. And they noticeably stayed clear of him. He'd watched their Texas hold 'em games from a distance, laughed inside when they told stories from the streets about Iraqi kids who thought the Americans wore air-conditioning inside their uniforms, and kept his head down when they shuffled in after a night patrol, exhausted from the six-hour flow of adrenaline and anxiety. After a few days awaiting his next assignment, he'd purposely worked the mess line and cut the redhead out of a group and sat down next to him. The guy started to get up, but Redman put a hand on his forearm and the grip made the corporal tighten his lips into a line.

"Tell me something," Redman said in a nonconfrontational voice. "How come that cot across from me is always empty?"

Every other spot in the canvas Quonset was filled but one, an unmade bed where photos of a bright, white-sand beach and a Sports Illustrated glamour cover of the Miami Heat were pinned to the wall. Just above was a homemade banner that read: ONE WEEKEND A MONTH MY ASS!

The banner's comment was a shot at the recruiting slogan to join the National Guard. Most of these guys, like Redman himself, had been weekend warriors with regular day jobs when they were called up for active duty. Now they'd been in Iraq for more than three hundred days. Redman remembered waiting for the corporal's answer.

"Randy Williams," he'd said, not moving his eyes off Redman's. "Best damn soldier in the unit. Kind of man who'd do anything for you. Share anything with you. Watch your back and keep everybody loose but, you know, alert."

Redman had run two or three faces of guys he knew at home who were just like that, guys on his SWAT detail or duty shift that people naturally clung to, admired, depended on.

"Nobody wants to move his stuff," the corporal had said. "They shipped his personal gear back to Fort Lauderdale with his body, but nobody wants him to be gone."

"How did he die?" Redman had asked in a soft tone.

"Sniper," the corporal had said, looking up, challenging-like. "We were on a daily patrol, broad daylight, looking for IEDs. Everybody was suited up with body armor and headgear. Williams was in the rear, covering our asses like always.

"There was one shot and everybody heard it. But the sound was from so far off, some of us didn't even turn on it. Then Murray started yelling and we looked back and Randy was down. One fucking shot, man. He was still twitching on the ground. Murray got his hand over the hole, but the blood kept running out and nobody saw the exit wound till we turned him. Round went right through his neck, ripped out his carotid. Fucking sniper knew exactly where to hit him. Above the armor, below the helmet. Wasn't nothing any of us could do."

Redman could still recall his own reaction to the story. Ground-level shot, he'd thought, immediately working the angles. Probably taken from a wall or a window as the squad moved by. You had to lead the target, gauge his foot speed, fire and let him walk into it. It was beyond lucky and obviously everyone in the redhead's unit knew it. The corporal's eyes had shifted to the table and Redman waited out the silence.

"They got 'em too," the redhead finally said.

"I'm sorry?" Redman said, not understanding.

"They got snipers too," the corporal had repeated. "We ain't the only ones in the world who can shoot straight."

Redman sat on the edge of the bed, sweating in the late-night Florida heat, remembering the words, watching the moon glow creep across the room, remembering that night in Iraq when he'd tried to rationalize his talent yet again. You take out the ones that might easily do the same to guys like Williams. That's why you do it. But Redman's targets in Tikrit weren't in uniform. And the sniper who killed Williams wasn't just taking out anything that moved like Redman had been asked to do. Redman knew he should rationalize it. In war innocent people get killed for the greater good. But he was sick of not knowing. Yeah, he was a trained killer, but the difference was that back at home, working for SWAT, you acted on intelligence. You knew who you were killing: Bad Guys. When he got back home, he would always know. When he got back, there wouldn't be any questions. Those who deserved to die were the ones who were going to die.