Geneva called 911. All dispatch calls went through the sheriff’s office first, so my father pulled up the same time as the ambulance.
The rest of the images from that day were blurry. One memory is crystal clear; the ghostly paleness of my father’s face as they loaded me in the back of the ambulance.
Spontaneous abortion at age eighteen isn’t uncommon. But nearly hemorrhaging to death and having a hysterectomy at age eighteen is.
I hadn’t even known I was pregnant. Once the pregnancy ended it was pointless to talk about it. To Dad. To Sophie. To Geneva. Especially to Jake.
Within a month, my body hadn’t shown signs of menopause. Within two months, I left the ranch, my childhood, and the memories of Jake and me far behind.
Or so I’d thought.
A floorboard creaked in the kitchen. Jake lifted his head and saw me by the china cabinet. Our eyes met. No reason for me to hide the murderous rage in mine. I felt triumphant at the fear in his.
He leaned down to whisper in Hope’s ear, then slipped out the front door.
Coward.
I dug deep until I found the tranquil mind-set that helped me to survive combat situations. I inserted myself into the warm spot Jake had vacated and fussed over my sister, tucking the afghan under her elfin chin.
Her face resembled one of those wax carvings at the tourist traps in Keystone outside of Mount Rushmore. When her bloodless lips moved, I nearly leaped to the ceiling.
“You heard, didn’t you?” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
More tears fell. “Do you hate me now?”
“I couldn’t ever hate you, Hope.”
“Really?”
“Really. I know we haven’t always been close… I don’t know if it was because I was gone, or because of stuff from when we were kids, but I am here for you now. I’ll always be here for you.”
“Thanks.” Her throat muscles worked, but her voice was still scarcely a whisper. “For the first time I really feel like you mean that, Mercy.”
“I do.” I changed the subject lest I start crying again. “Sure you don’t want me to have Doc Canady give you something to help you sleep?”
“I won’t take anything, so stop badgering me about it.” She wiped beneath her eyes. “And stop asking me if I can keep quiet about how he”-her breath hitched in an effort to finish-“how Levi died. I’m good at holding a secret.”
Boy, was she ever. “All right.” Needing something to do with my hands, I fiddled with the fat gold yarn tassels on the afghan.
“Where’s Shoonga?”
“On the porch. You want me to get him?”
She nodded.
I cut through the kitchen and opened the screen door. The dog looked up from his usual spot by the stairs. “Shoonga. Come.”
Shoonga cocked his head like it was a trick. We never let animals in the house. He’d been on the receiving end of Sophie’s broom a time or two, so I didn’t blame him.
I patted my thigh. “It’s okay, Shoonga, you can come in.”
The dog stood and slunk past me, tail tucked between his short legs. He waited in the kitchen, whining, until I led him to Hope’s side. Shoonga licked her hand and dropped on the carpet next to the couch.
“You need anything else?”
“Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”
“You don’t even have to ask.” I sat beside her and rubbed my knuckles over the baby-fine hair on her forearm, like my mother used to do when I was sick as a child. Hope had known so little of our mother; I wanted to give her something that’d always calmed me. The repetitive motion helped her relax until her breathing slowed. When I was certain she was out, I briefly snuck upstairs, then came back down and grabbed a bottle of Wild Turkey and a glass on my way outside.
The night air retained the day’s dry heat. I poured three fingers of whiskey and knocked it back. Don’t know why I bothered with a glass. According to my best guess, I’d drained half a bottle throughout this nightmare day. I wasn’t drunk; I was absolutely numb.
As much as I didn’t want answers about Hope and Jake, I knew I’d have to ask questions. Since waking Hope wasn’t an option, that left me one other choice.
I drained the bottle, loaded my Sig.357, and melted into the shadows.
NINE
The tiny foreman’s cabin was far enough away from our house that I had time to consider how many times I’d done this in my life as a sniper, slithering through the darkness in silence as elusive as smoke.
I owed a good part of my skill to the shooting basics my father had instilled in me from the time I’d been old enough to curl my small fingers around a trigger. Shooting was what I’d loved best and where I’d excelled. In basic training I’d finished at the top of my class in marksmanship.
The army noticed and optioned me to join their elite team, The U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU). But I didn’t want to be a competitive shooter; I wanted to be a soldier. Actually, my dream was to be an Army Ranger. When I’d told my sergeant, he’d laughed in my face. A woman an Army Ranger? Never happen.
A month later his female CO, Major Martinson, yanked me out of the duty roster. She offered me an opportunity of a lifetime. For several years she’d petitioned for a chance to prove women could excel in stealth combat. With cases all over the country decrying the military’s sexual discrimination policies, General John Ehrlich relented and gave Major Martinson the go-ahead. She selected an elite group of six women, all army, all with specialized skills, all with a medical anomaly that wouldn’t differentiate us from the boys, so “female issues” when in the field wouldn’t be an issue.
The army grudgingly, stealthily trained the six of us, figuring we’d ring out.
We didn’t.
No one in our group received the official Army Ranger designation, but we completed every required training course, and that’d been enough for us.
Our troop was officially attached to the 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, specifically, the 525th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade. Unofficially? We were in the murky designation of the Division of Special Troops, part of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, Tactical Exploration.
The bottom line was our covert group didn’t exist on paper anywhere. We still were promoted, we still bitched about the stupidity of the brass, we still spent time in the crappy barracks in the armpits of the world. We were afforded all the privileges of regular enlisted army grunts, save one tiny thing: we weren’t allowed to tell anyone-including our families-our military objective.
When military personnel of any branch, past or present, enlisted or officer, are asked about women participating in “black-ops” programs, they laugh. Or argue the ridiculousness of the suggestion, which is fine by us. Who’d believe American women soldiers were running around in the Mideast dressed like the oppressed local chattel, picking off terrorists with specialized weapons designed to stay hidden beneath niqabs and burkas? Because of religious and social traditions frowning on physical contact between men and women, we easily slipped past checkpoints.
The global conflicts-the Gulf War, Bosnia, Croatia, Afghanistan, and Iraq-kept us busy and behind enemy lines. Most of our assignments involved close-range work with smaller-caliber firearms than the standard large-caliber, long-range, heavy sniper rifles.
We were a tight-knit group, though we mostly worked in pairs. The major told us there was less competition between us than in male squads similar to ours. Extensively defined leadership roles weren’t as important to us as teamwork and finishing the job. Men had egos. That’s why there were wars.
There is a common misconception about snipers, that we are cold-blooded killers in love with the act of snuffing lives. That’s not true for me. Wasn’t true with any of the other snipers I’ve worked with. The reason we’re so good at our jobs is because we can separate ourselves emotionally from the situation.