Damn straight, does he know! Gunny was all over his ass when he missed that first shot at the gas station. Jeremy could say it was a cold bore shot, he had no spotter to verify the range and the wind drift and maybe he had been unnerved when the trooper pulled in. He could say that he’d first taken aim at the lead singer, but the guy was walking back and forth from deep shadow into eye-zapping sunlight and that had thrown him off, and his second target—the guy pumping gas—had been obscured by the trooper’s raised hood, and then also there was the traffic on I-20 to consider and it wasn’t so easy to shoot between cars and trucks flashing past on a highway, but Gunny accepts no excuses. Then…oh Jesus, then…when Jeremy had heard someone walking past his door and looked out through the blinds thinking it was the old woman bringing his complimentary breakfast, but it was her, the drummer girl, all decked out in her jogging duds, and Jeremy had given some thought to the situation and decided he might could finish her off if the place and time were right, so he’d checked out, gotten into the pickup truck and actually passed her on the road looking for a shelter to set up his rifle and bipod. Maybe she would come this far, maybe not, but if she did he was locked and loaded.
It was another cold bore shot. The sun was in his eyes this time, too. That bullet couldn’t have missed her by half-an-inch. It must’ve burned the tip of her nose on the way past.
But oh, Jesus, did Gunny give it to him when he drove out of there and swung east on I-20. I thought you were supposed to be an expert, Gunny had said, quietly at first but with a nasty bite of rising rage. Supposed to be such hot shit at this. Killed how many ragheads over there?
“Thirty-eight confirmed,” Jeremy had answered, because he knew the count.
Great for you, Pett, but tell me this then…how many of ’em weren’t kids?
Jeremy’s foot had stomped down on the brake pedal and the pickup travelling at nearly sixty-five miles per hour had shivered and shrieked as if all the bolts were coming loose at once, and suddenly the truck was turning sideways and sliding, leaving smoking black streaks on the asphalt. He was aware of Gunny, the sarcastic shotgun rider, fading out to a gray presence. Jeremy thought for a second that he should go ahead and die, he should have died in the bathtub and this was just marking time, but then the survivor’s will—the Marine spirit, the gladiator’s fight, call it any of these—kicked in. He took hold of the wheel and fought to keep the truck from going over, a struggle that seemed epic but only lasted for a husky inhalation of burnt-rubber air. Then with a shudder and moan the truck gave its life back to him to control and it was slowing down, slowing down, its tires going into the weeds on the right-side shoulder…and WHAM came the burst of air and the indignant wail of a semi’s horn as the beast whipped past, followed by a white BMW whose driver shook his head in disbelief at Jeremy’s skill of four-wheel Mexican hat dancing.
Jeremy looked into the sideview mirror. No troopers yet, but they might be coming if they saw the dark pall of smoke rising off the treadmarks.
Drive, said Gunny, who was himself again. When Jeremy hesitated, Gunny said, Get your mind back where it needs to be. Drive.
He started off. The engine gave a rattle like a bagful of broken plates, but then everything must have fitted itself together again, God bless the American auto industry, and the pickup truck rolled on more lamb than lion.
The girl with the silver captain’s bars through her nipples emerges from the gaudy glare, bringing his beer. She has the tattoos of thorny vines and roses on both arms and a small sad teddybear on her belly beneath the navel ring. He pays her from his wallet of dwindling money and then she leans her head toward him again, the better to be heard over the thundering music—a rap song, somebody Jeremy doesn’t recognize singing about getting pussy twenty-fo’ seven—and as she asks if he wants a lap dance she reaches down to place a hand on his right thigh. But instantly Jeremy has intercepted the hand and turned it away, earning from her a puzzled look in the sparkling dark. “Maybe later, okay?” she prompts. Her accent is strange; she appears to be a mixture of Hispanic, black, and Asian. They all do, except for the one with the flame-red hair and the thin blonde with the ponytail.
He says maybe later without meaning it, and she goes away again. He drinks his beer-flavored water and checks his wristwatch to see that Wednesday night has turned into Thursday morning. He does not want the girl touching him because she might feel the lump in his pants, hidden by the folds of his extra-large black T-shirt. The crowd—was there ever a crowd in here?—is thinning out, but the pole dancer is still energetic and the music is loud enough to churn a brain into oatmeal. He is watching Miss Ponytail give a lap dance to a Hispanic man in a dark suit who was in here when Jeremy arrived about an hour ago. The man is maybe forty, forty-five or so, with a bald brown pate and gray hair on the sides. There is a little gray tuft up top that Miss Ponytail plays with as she gyrates her ass on his crotch. The man is sleepy-eyed and grins too much. His teeth are very white, and Jeremy wonders if he’s a dentist out on the town or visiting El Paso for a convention or something. Whatever he is, he likes to show Miss Ponytail his heavy wad of cash and she likes to lighten it for him, and Jeremy has been entertained by watching her set her lower jaw like a bulldog and scare off the other chiquitas who wander over behind their implants and try to score some of what he’s throwing down.
Pull off where you can see the highway, Gunny had said. It was not a request, it was a command.
Jeremy had bristled up. Had clenched his fists on the wheel and given the engine more gas. Yesterday he had killed one of the members of that band, he had shot at another one today and he wasn’t too happy with his record of one hit out of three bullets. The fact was, he wasn’t nearly as good as he used to be. Couldn’t even hit a slow-moving target at about two-hundred yards. Pitiful. But more than that…he couldn’t remember exactly why he had followed that van and U-Haul trailer from the club in Dallas, had parked overnight in some suburban neighborhood to keep watch, and when they’d left Dallas he’d gotten on the highway behind them, knowing they were playing next in El Paso from the schedule on their website. He couldn’t remember exactly why he needed to kill them, except for the fact that on that cable show they’d made some pretty vile comments and accusations about the soldiers in Iraq—which they hadn’t repeated during their show at the Curtain Club—and that maybe he was going to embark on a new career as a hitman for the federales in Mexico. Call it training, then. But still…what had they ever done to him, really? It wasn’t like lying in wait, hour after hour, for the enemy in Iraq. You knew then what your purpose was. You knew then that every bullet you sent would save the life of a brother, or maybe many lives. But this…he felt lost in his own mind.
You’re not lost, Gunny had said, but Jeremy hadn’t recalled speaking aloud. You’ve been found. Don’t you get that?