Charlie Huston - Sleepless

The hinges on that door had, until recently, squeaked badly. The squeak had been of little concern when Omaha was sleeping like any other baby, but as her sleep had become increasingly unsettled she had become more sensitive to small sounds. The squeak of those hinges could ruin any chance that she might find slumber. So Rose had given them a liberal squirt of WD-40. The door now swung open with no sound at all. One of the many sleep-related stories she’d told me. Her illness aside, she was in that regard quite like any new parent I’d ever met.

Hunkered in the dark corner where the hallway bent into the living room, I waited until the man with the perfect pistol form stubbed his toe on the stick of firewood I’d left in the middle of the floor. It didn’t trip him, merely made him pause before moving on, relaxing his finger from around the trigger, where he’d placed it when surprised by the small obstacle. Thanks to that moment of relaxation he did not fire a round when he spasmed as I fit the blade into his neck just below the point of his left jawbone, cut a wide crescent across his throat, and left the knife there.

That was poor technique. Leaving the blade would suppress the flow of blood from the wound. Not to mention essentially putting a weapon in the hands of an enemy. But it was a calculated risk. He had more than enough wound from which to bleed, and I doubted his ability to be any further threat to me, no matter how well armed.

I stepped into the living room, quite surprising the cover man who’d just watched his partner round the corner into the hall. He’d not had time to take his proper cover position, for which he could thank the haste of the man bleeding from his neck on the floor. So ill prepared, how could he be expected to be ready to fend off attack? He could not. And he was not.

I’d taken the Tomcat from my ankle holster when I set down the piece of wood. Now I shot the man twice, once in the neck, once in the groin, targets left exposed by his body armor.

The other man was making a fair amount of noise now. Dying from blood loss is a wet and gasping affair. There is a great deal of struggling against the inevitable. A man bleeding to death looks very much like a fish drowning on dry land. And he beats out the same messages of distress. Combined with the two gunshots, more than ample commotion.

I bent to pluck the rubber ducky from where Omaha had placed it in in my loafer while she’d played with both earlier, took cover behind a rocking chair, and oriented myself toward the kitchen, waiting for the boot-steps that would tell me the rear support was entering by the back door.

I’d have an excellent shot, made superior if the man was the least bit distracted when I threw the rubber ducky and it bounced squeaking across the floor. I was poised and ready. If only the rear support had not seen me in the backyard, followed me around the side of the house, watched me enter through the window, pursued, and come after me through the well-oiled door.

Granted, he revealed his second-rate nature by not warning his partners by radio that someone had compromised their flank; but, I was still entirely surprised and the shot fired behind me jerked me upright and spun me around.

Hearing gunfire in his home, near at hand to his family, Park had ignored what he had been told and left the bedroom. Opening the door, he’d emerged just as a man at the opposite end of the hall came out of his daughter’s room carrying a very short assault rifle with a trigger assembly mounted ahead of the clip. The man moved silently, the butt of his weapon pressed to his shoulder, tucked to his right earlobe, sighting down the stubby tube of an integral laser sight. Intent on what lay beyond the open doorway leading into the living room, the man was oblivious to Park.

Park’s family was just behind him, lying on the floor of the bedroom closet where he’d left them. The door and a single wall would scarcely reduce the velocity of a round fired from a weapon like the one the man was carrying. And Park could not be certain the man wouldn’t quickly turn and fire at the first sound. Once a bullet became a stray, it could find a home anywhere, in anyone. All the same, there was ample opportunity for Park to take some cover by pressing close to the wall, announce his presence as a law officer, and order the man to disarm.

But Park didn’t think about any of this. It never occurred to him to attempt to disarm and arrest the man. It never occurred to him what risks might be involved in that procedure. He never had a chance to think or consider any of this. Action proceeded without thought.

Because Parker Haas came out of his room, and he saw a man coming out of his daughter’s room, and that man was carrying a gun. So Parker Haas shot him. He fired a single round, the pad of his right index finger squeezing straight back, the man’s face seemingly balanced atop the red dot that marked the front blade sight of Park’s Warthog, framed perfectly by the rear sights. The gun went off, kicked, Park adjusted and re-aimed, but the man’s face was no longer where it had been. Lowering his sights, Park advanced down the hall, close to the wall, lowering the sights farther with every step, until he was over the man, pointing the gun almost straight down, and he pulled the trigger twice more.

I’d not yet picked up the TAR from the man I’d shot in the neck, but I still had the Tomcat in my hand. When Park appeared in the hall doorway, shooting the dead man, I did what came most naturally and took aim.

Park had never killed before. He’d inflicted considerable injury on suspects in the course of an arrest, but he had never discharged his weapon at anything other than a paper target.

I knew this for a certainty. I knew it because he stood over the dead man and looked up and found me turned to the side in a duelist’s pose, legs spread for stability, arm straight out from shoulder, small pistol aimed at his head, and he spoke.

“I never killed anyone.”

To the best of my knowledge, I’d never had my life saved before. Yes, the anonymous bureaucrat who had halted my torture several years earlier had kept me from being killed, but believe me, that is not the same as someone shooting the man about to shoot you. Yet I had been handed similar moments in life. Instances when the suddenness of violence so shocked an adversary that an opening was created through which I could pass and take decisive action. Part of the genius of my self-preservation obsession. The ability to remain calm as those around me lost their heads. Literally. As I’d aged, this advantage had grown. Fed by experience. At sixty, just as I could not remember the last lover I’d had within ten years of my own age, I could not remember the last fight I’d had with anyone in the same range. My profession, however defined, did not foster longevity. I was inevitably the oldest gun in any given firefight. Those years more than compensating for any loss of physical ability.

This great age of mine, it had been earned with ruthlessness. Yes, I had a morality, but it was quite uniquely my own. There was no one I could kill or maim who would cost me a night’s lost sleep. It was, in truth, less a morality than an aesthetic. Who, how, and when I killed were all elements in the composition of my life. Melody and harmonies. One great recurring theme being the seizing of the moment. Beauty all its own.

I was no longer concerned that Park might have passed the hard drive to the Afronzos. Their interrogation of me, and this assault, indicated that matters were different. The drive was nearby, I was certain. Finding it would not be difficult. That being the case, there was no reason not to kill the young man before he recovered from his shock and became an armed threat again.

Clarity in these things is without price.