Ben Blum - Ranger Games - A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

First published in the United States by Doubleday,

an imprint of Penguin Random House, in 2017

Copyright © Ben Blum, 2017

Ben Blum asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780007554584

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007554591

Version: 2017-07-24

FOR OMA

Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of the Rangers.

Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite Soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further, faster, and fight harder than any other Soldier.

Never shall I fail my comrades. I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong, and morally straight and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be, one hundred percent and then some.

Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well-trained Soldier. My courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress, and care of equipment shall set the example for others to follow.

Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country.

Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission though I be the lone survivor.

RANGERS LEAD THE WAY!

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

BOOK 1 THE GOLEM OF TACOMA

Chapter 1: Sort of a Happy/Sad Deal

Chapter 2: Basic

Chapter 3: Amurican Bank Robber

Chapter 4: One Fine Day at Battalion

Chapter 5: Yes, Specialist Sommer

Chapter 6: Those Who Are Versed in the Sciences

Chapter 7: Something You Would See Out of a Movie

Chapter 8: Federal Vacation

BOOK 2 THE PRODIGY OF PEACHLAND

Chapter 9: Soldier

Chapter 10: Interrogation

Chapter 11: Freedom Fighter

Chapter 12: The Fourth Man

BOOK 3 THE GOOD PERSON

Chapter 13: The B-Word

Chapter 14: Just an Inexplicable Event

Chapter 15: The Complexities

Chapter 16: The Phabulous Phils

Chapter 17: Getting Real

Chapter 18: Real Real

BOOK 4 THE DUNGEON MASTER

Chapter 19: When Bad People Do Good Things

Chapter 20: Space Station Sommer

Chapter 21: Total Data

Chapter 22: The Sommer Factor

Chapter 23: Force of Personality

Chapter 24: The Lady in the Striped Shirt

Chapter 25: The P-Word

Chapter 26: Probably Something I’ll Never Understand

BOOK 5 FREEDOM

Chapter 27: Matrix of Lies

Chapter 28: Birth of a Bank Robber

Chapter 29: The Rest of Us

Author’s Note

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

Most residents of Tacoma do not think of it as an army town. To visitors it presents as the scrappy kid sister city of Seattle, the coffee and arts mecca forty miles to the north with which it shares an airport. The notorious midcentury “Tacoma Aroma” from the paper mills has long since been filtered into submission. In its place are juice bars, outdoor supply stores, international film festivals. Every civic surface that hasn’t been given over to kayaks and totem poles bristles with the spiky, membranous studio glasswork of homegrown sculptor Dale Chihuly. The only sign of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, whose more than 50,000 personnel make it Pierce County’s largest employer by a factor of five, is the occasional Blackhawk helicopter beetling across the silhouette of Mount Rainier. In 2005, while Iraq spiraled into civil war and JBLM (then still divided into Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base) was dropping paratroopers over Afghanistan from its fleet of big-bellied C-17 Globemaster IIIs, Tacoma’s city council entertained a proposal for a 420-foot “Tower of Peace” to rival Seattle’s iconic Space Needle. No one dared mention the base. “We want this to be really inclusive,” the tower’s leading champion told Tacoma’s News Tribune . “Let a person form in their own mind what the concept of peace is.”

Five miles down I-5 toward the giant blank on the map where JBLM nestles into the strip malls of Lakewood, Parkland, and Spanaway, a different America fades in, one that would be instantly familiar to residents of cities with less complicated relations to their servicepeople. Yoga bows down to CrossFit. Puffy North Face jackets disappear under Carhartt work coats and military surplus camo. All those boardroom-ready Dale Chihuly pieces give way to the very different glasswork at Tacoma Pipe and Tobacco. The Patriots Landing retirement home advertises to military personnel: You served us. Now let us serve you!

Halfway down a block of auto dealerships and faded clapboard churches on South Tacoma Way stands a fieldstone-clad Bank of America that is popular with soldiers for its ease of access from I-5. The facade is glassy and generic. A bed of purplish cinders houses a row of shrubs as boxy as green Legos. In back is a parking lot accessible from the alley, feeding to a bright red drive-through ATM. It is just a dreary little branch like any other, a squat corporate cipher in an unremarkable neighborhood close to base.

At 5:16 on the afternoon of August 7, 2006, three men ran out of its front door screaming that it was being robbed.

Bank robberies come in two essential varieties. In a “nontakeover” robbery, the bandit—still the term used for bank robbers by the FBI, which publicizes monikers like “Snub-Nosed Bandit” and “Surfer Bandit” for as-yet-unidentified repeat offenders—slips a note to a teller explaining in brief that he intends the teller harm and desires cash. Nearby customers may not find out a robbery has occurred until after it is over.