Matt Archer: Blade's Edge (19 page)

“No,” Will said. “We can’t quit now. Please, sir!”

“We aren’t quitting,” I said, ignoring Uncle Mike’s scowl. “I still think I should leave school altogether.”

“We’d have to ask your mother,” Colonel Black said. “Since you’re a minor, we have to have her permission. I’m not sure she’ll give it.”

I crossed my arms and stared him down, thinking how angry Mom would be that they were underestimating her again. “You might be surprised.”

“Let’s hope.” The colonel nodded at Uncle Mike. “Major, I’m with Matt. I’d like him on active call in case we need him.”

Mike shook his head. “I don’t know…”

“Uncle Mike,” I said, “Jorge told me something last spring—something about how duty’s not a choice for good men. Will and I want to be good men. The knife kinda forced it on me, but we’re here now because it’s what we have to do.”

“Yeah,” Will murmured. “We want to be here.”

Mike tapped his pencil on the tabletop, thinking it over. “All right, all right. I can’t say anything to trump that. And I am proud of both of you, even if I’m worrying like an old lady. You’ve been doing a man’s work this past year.” He tossed the pencil on the desk, looking perturbed. “I’ll call Dani.”

I glanced at Will. “Cruessan might be a harder sell, but surely you can spin some story about a study-abroad program to convince his parents.”

Will nodded vigorously. “They won’t care. Hell, they’ll hardly notice I’m gone.”

The room went silent at that pronouncement, and everyone stared at the floor in discomfort until Colonel Black cleared his throat. “Cruessan, as big an asset as you’ve been, I can’t justify that. If we’re still here in the summer, we’ll bring you over, but I can’t risk both of you. Matt’s in a ‘have-to’ situation, but you aren’t, son. You’ll be going home tomorrow as planned.”

Will’s face fell; I could practically feel the disappointment oozing from his pores. Still, he managed a tight, “Yes, sir.”

I squeezed his shoulder. “Sorry, man.”

“No, I get it,” he mumbled. “I think I’ll go pack then grab some dinner. I have a long flight tomorrow; might as well stock up.”

He left the room in a hurry and I stared at the door. “Am I excused, Colonel?”

The colonel sighed. “Yes.”

I hurried out after Will. He’d made it halfway back to our room by then, and his shoulders were hunched as he strode down the hall. I tried to catch him before he went inside, but the door slammed in my face instead. I didn’t think he knew I was behind him, but it still felt like he was telling me he felt betrayed because I got to stay when he couldn’t.

Even though it was my room too, I knocked. “It’s me. Can I come in?”

“Whatever.”

I didn’t open the door, struck by how hollow he sounded. It hadn’t ever occurred to me how much these missions meant to him. I’d always wondered if he came along because it was an adventure, or to watch my back like he always did. But maybe there was more to it.

“You gonna come in or what?” Will called. “I’m just packing.”

I turned the knob and cracked the door open. He wasn’t packing, though. He was sitting on his bunk with his back to the door. A duffel bag half-filled with dirty clothes lay beside him.

“Do you want me to try to convince them to let you stay?” I asked, slipping into the room.

“How?” Will turned slightly and even though all I could see was his profile, there was no mistaking the frustrated, sad look in his eyes or the hoarseness to his voice. “You had to beg them to let
you
stay. Telling them you’ll go home if I can’t stay won’t get you anywhere this time.”

Will was right, and it sucked. Way uncomfortable, and knowing he’d die of embarrassment if he couldn’t keep from crying in front of me, I sank onto the foot of my bed. “I’ll make them bring you out if we’re still here in the summer.”

“Yeah, okay.”

I clenched my fists in my lap, resisting the urge to punch him simply to clear the air. “Look, I didn’t know that this stuff mattered so much to you.”

He stood and turned to face me, the frustration replaced with anger. “What, you think I was just in it for a little fun? The bored rich kid out doing stupid things for a thrill?”

“No…I…” What
did
I think, though? His reasons hadn’t really crossed my mind before now. “No, I think you care about helping people too much for that.”

“Damn right,” he snapped. Will stood up tall, casting a shadow over his bed. “Did you see how they looked at me when I said my parents wouldn’t notice I’m gone? They pitied me…and then told me no. All I want to do is help, to make some kind of difference and I can’t and it bites and I’m sick of it!”

It hit me like sack of concrete then, how I’d never considered Will’s life. He had everything: money, a great car, football glory, girls hanging all over him. By rights, he should be a bastard of epic proportion. Instead, the one thing he wanted more than anything—to help fight to keep powerless people safe—he couldn’t have. And I couldn’t fix it, not this time.

I stood on shaky legs and went to face him. Gripping his shoulder, I said, “We will find a way to keep you active. It might not be today, but I swear to you that I won’t let them ice you out. I swear, man.”

It was poor comfort right now, I knew that, but Will nodded. “I know.”

Moment over, he wadded up a t-shirt and threw it into his bag. I bent to pick up a sock that had fallen onto the floor. “
Dude!
These socks smell like the back corner of the locker room. Ever heard of foot powder?”

“Shut up, jackass,” Will said, but a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “But do carry the friggin’ flashlight with you when you go out into the field, okay? I don’t want to have to kill you because you died out here somewhere.”

It wasn’t much of an olive branch, but it was enough. “I promise.”

Chapter Twenty

M
om reluctantly agreed to let
me stay in Afghanistan, but insisted that I be assigned an online tutor to keep up with my classes until I got back. Whenever that would be. To make her happy—and to avoid giving her any reason to demand that I come home—I studied while the officers reviewed intel. Parker had gone back into the field to keep up the search, but Uncle Mike and Colonel Black felt my team needed a more structured approach. That was code for “let’s not allow Matt to wander in the wilderness without an ironclad plan if we can help it.” I disagreed, but I didn’t get to call the shots, so I cooled my heels at Bagram while they figured things out.

Finally, after six days of sitting around, Uncle Mike stopped by my room to tell me we were leaving in the morning. “We’ll have a briefing this evening, but in the meantime, Schmitz is going to put you through some training. We’re headed into the mountains, so we thought a quick course in rock-climbing would be a good idea.” He paused, picking at a flake of loose paint on the doorjamb. “He’s also going to take you to the target range for pistol training.”

“Oh?” I’d never been asked to shoot before. “Something wrong?”

“We just think it’s a good idea,” Mike said, but the way his eyes darted off to the side led me to believe there was more to it than that. I wasn’t about to argue, though. Learning to shoot would be way more fun that finishing my geometry homework.

After giving me a crash course in rock climbing (and it was literally a “crash course”—I had the bruises to prove it), Schmitz took me to the shooting range. The range was inside a low, square building—really just one long room with cinderblock walls. Booths lined one side, each with targets set up on sliding rails hanging from the ceiling. The place was empty except for the Range Officer who cleared us to enter.

“Why shooting lessons?” I asked. “I’ve never been asked to handle guns before.”

“You’ll hear more at the briefing, but bullets have proven effective against….” He stopped. “Archer, we’re going to ask you to do some things you might find hard. Just remember, they aren’t real anymore.”

My eyebrows shot up. “What’s ‘not real?’”

“Better you find out in the briefing,” he said. “Now, we’re going to work on short distance shooting today because that’s more helpful when we’re talking about close-quarter combat, like in caves.”

He handed me a pair of squishy earplugs, then walked me through the basics of loading a pistol, chambering a round, and ejecting everything safely. I kept fumbling the magazine. Didn’t bother me, though; I had the knife. If I was forced to resort to a gun, we had bigger problems than my slow loading speed.

“Ready!” Schmitz called after I’d loaded up for the third time. He checked the empty stations around us. When the Range Officer gave him the all-clear, he pointed his pistol down range.

Watching Schmitz fire a full magazine from his M9 Beretta in less than twenty seconds, hitting a target fifty feet away every time, I had to admit he was a crack shot. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

He dropped the empty magazine, reloaded, stepped to the next booth and fired twelve more shots at the hundred-foot target before answering. “Mostly, it’s good aim and patience. I killed at darts in college. Took every poser frat boy’s money in a three-campus radius.” He laid his pistol down on the counter. “But if you really want to see some shooting, ask your Aunt Julie to take you to the range sometime. She makes me look like an untrained noob.”

“Mike said she was a good shot,” I said, trying to figure out how to line up the pistol’s sights with the target.

“Good shot?” Schmitz laughed. “
I’m
a good shot
.
Captain Tannen is something else entirely. Did you know she made alternate on the Olympic pistol shooting team six years ago?”

I shook my head, although it wasn’t hard to believe. Between my aunt’s crazy-scary spy skills and Uncle Mike’s willingness to jump in the middle of
anything
, I had a feeling my new cousin would be a daredevil of the first order. Either that, or a bookworm like Mamie just to spite them. The thought made me smile.

Schmitz motioned for me to take my firing stations and practice aiming. He corrected my grip, going as far as to give my foot a little kick to make me widen my stance.

“The key to this is muscle-memory,” he said. “Draw, aim, and fire the same way every time. Eventually it’ll become second nature and you’ll be able to adjust to moving targets because your eyes and hands will know how to compensate.”

Finally, Schmitz said I was ready to shoot.

“First things first,” he said, “to paraphrase the Army Marksmanship training manual—shooting accuracy depends solely on proper alignment of your sights on the target and not pulling or disturbing the gun when you squeeze the trigger. Operative word—
squeeze
the trigger. You pull on it, you’ll knock your sights out of alignment and miss.”

He made an exaggerated show of reloading his pistol, assuming his firing stance, gun arm straight, supporting hand around his trigger hand, shoulders square. Schmitz held the pistol completely steady as he shot. The only thing that moved prior to recoil was his trigger finger and the trigger itself. Bullseye.

Schmitz set his pistol down. “The first time you fire, don’t worry if you miss the target. Instead, we’ll gauge where the shot went, then decide if we need to adjust how you’re holding your head to sight the target or fix your stance.”

I stared at the target, dubious about my chances of keeping the bullet inside the building, let alone getting near the target. The only thing I’d ever been able sink into a target with any accuracy was my knife, and I knew that was more due to the knife’s spirit-based guidance system than my superior aim. I took a slow breath, concentrated on the circles in the middle of the target sheet. The knife buzzed quietly in my mind, steadying my hand. I lined up the sight of the pistol.

Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull.

The recoil rolled up my arm, and even with the ear protection, I heard the pop as the shot fired. Gunpowder tanged the air.

“Good shot.” Schmitz pointed downrange—I’d hit the target just off-center to the right.

Huh. I got set up again and adjusted my aim to compensate and fired two more rounds. Both hit inside the center circle.

Schmitz smiled. “You’re a natural.”

“Ironic,” I said, “considering I won’t be shooting much.”

“You never know.”

Secretly, I thought the knife might be giving me an assist, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Schmitz and I had a little swagger going on as we headed to the admin building for our briefing. Trusting me with a pistol meant the team didn’t see me as a boy anymore. They saw me as an equal—finally. That rocked.

Until I found out why they wanted me armed.

“Shooting…people?” I said, squeaking out the last word. “Women and children, too?”

“They aren’t people anymore, Archer.” Colonel Black pinched the bridge of his nose. His hair was more gray than dark now, and he had reading glasses perched on his head. He seemed to be aging way too fast. Wasn’t that what happened to Presidents? The office stressed them out so much that the before and after photos showed them going from middle-aged to old in four years? Whatever it was, the job had taken its toll on the colonel. “Their souls are gone—or as the people in Afghanistan put it, they’ve been Taken.”