Chapter 24:
Remedial

The midsummer sun was brutal. Jack Hernandez lay on his stomach, looking down the sights of a matte-black assault rifle while sweat ran off him in rivulets. He was wet from head to toe, the sweat making his weapon slippery as a fish. Fifty meters beyond the tip of his barrel sat a target in the shape of a man. A man who was mocking him. He might have imagined that last part.

Everybody else had qualified on their first day at the range, including Leonid Nikitin who hit every target with ease. He claimed he could blind a suicidal king at three hundred meters, and it was probably true. Shooting was second nature to that man, but Jack wasn’t so lucky. He was now on his third straight day of shooting, and the brass had assigned him a personal tutor as a last resort.

“Go ahead and take your time,” his little brother Charlie said. “There’s no rush today. Line it up so the post is right in the middle of the notch, then put it on your target.”

Jack thought it was lined up, but he wasn’t sure. After all, he’d thought it was lined up every other time he pulled the trigger, but that blasted target was still in one piece.

“Is it lined up, Jack?”

“I think so.”

“I need you to know it is, bro.”

“Fine. It’s lined up.”

Charlie sat down in the dirt next to him. “Relax. I know you’re frustrated, but I’m trying to help. Just put the post on the target, alright?”

“Okay,” Jack said. He shifted the rifle left and right, watching the space on either side of the post shrink, then he centered it again. The top of it was level with the top of the notch, and it was sitting dead in the middle of his target. “It’s lined up.”

“It helps to focus on the post, so the target is blurry behind it. Got it?”

“Done.”

“Now take three slow breaths. At the end of your third exhale, go ahead and squeeze the trigger.”

Jack filled his lungs and let the air slowly escape, then again, and one more time. At the bottom of the last exhalation, he pulled the trigger and the weapon barked. The butt-stock bit into his shoulder.

Charlie raised a pair of binoculars to his face and sighed.

“I didn’t hit it, did I?”

“Nope,” Charlie said. “Tell me what you did wrong.”

“I don’t fucking know, Charlie. I did everything you said. Maybe the sights are off.”

Charlie shook his head. “Weapon was adjusted before it left the armory, and I test fired it myself. It’s fine. Now tell me what you did wrong.”

“Why don’t you tell me,” Jack growled through gritted teeth.

“Alright. Two things. First, you closed your eyes right before you fired. Don’t do that. You can’t hit what you can’t see. Second, you pulled the trigger. I told you to squeeze it.”

“And what’s the difference?

Charlie chuckled, and Jack didn’t know what was so damned funny. “When you’re dancing with a pretty girl and you’ve got her hand, you pull her to you. Once you’ve got her close, you give her a squeeze.”

Jack closed his eyes for a second and Jess was there at the end of his arm. She was laughing and smiling, and he pulled her to him, but before she was in his arms, he opened his eyes and was back in eastern Israel under the hot summer sun.

Charlie dropped down on his belly next to him and put his arms out like he was holding a rifle of his own. With his right hand, he extended his index finger and curled it several times. “You’re pulling the trigger, and it yanks the weapon around and blows your aim all to hell. Don’t pull it.” Then he opened his hand up and tightened the whole thing, like he was testing fruit. “Squeeze it. Gently. Now try it again.”

Jack reseated the rifle against his shoulder and lined up the sights. He took three easy breaths and at the bottom of the last one, he squeezed the trigger. The weapon barked, and the butt-stock again bit into his shoulder.

Charlie was watching the target this time, and he said, “Better. Not perfect, but you’re getting there.”

“I hit it?”

“Real close, bro.”

“Damn.”

Charlie rolled onto his back and locked his hands behind his head. “Tell me about your weapon.”

Jack licked the sweat off his upper lip, and his mouth was filled with salt. “It’s an AN-23. Russian designed, gas-operated, rotating bolt, 5.45 millimeter assault rifle. Fire modes include semi-automatic, fully automatic, and two-round burst. The burst mode utilizes a… uhhh, blowback shifted pulse technology, ejecting both rounds before the recoil kicks in, and allowing you to hit the same spot twice with a single trigger pull. Or trigger squeeze.”

“Okay,” Charlie said. “You read the manual. But tell me about your weapon.”

“What?”

“Tell me how it feels. How it smells. How it looks.”

“It’s a damn gun, Charlie. It’s an automatic death machine. What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me about this specific gun, not how you feel about guns in general. What was the first thing they taught you when you were issued your weapon?”

“They showed us how to take it apart, clean it, and put it back together.”

“And why do you think that was?”

“So we know how to maintain them in the field?”

“That’s part of it, Jack. But they also wanted you to start forming a relationship with it. Start caring about it.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not. You have to depend on it. Not like you depend on a friend, either. You have to trust it to do its job the way you trust your hand or your knee. It has to be part of you. But you won’t let that happen. You’re too busy hating it, and you can’t expect something you hate to save your life. Doesn’t work like that, Jack.”

Jack grunted and wiped the sweat from his forehead. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why he was a deluge while Charlie was dry as a bone. That fact was really starting to piss him off.

“Let me tell you something,” Charlie said. “It’s not the weapon that kills people. The weapon is just an extension of someone’s will. It’s a tool, no more good or evil than a shovel or a pen. Go right ahead and hate people who do evil things. They’ve earned it. But you have to learn to accept that weapon in your hands or you’ll never learn to use it.”

“Fine,” Jack said. “Are you done preaching yet, Reverend?”

“Just about. Do me a favor and take a good look at your rifle, and really get to know it. I know you’ve seen a lot of people killed by guns, but you have to let those ghosts go. Let them rest for a little while, and actually look at the tool right there in front of you.”

Jack cleared his head and did as he was told. He shook the rifle softly in his hands, and it was silent as a cloud. There was nothing moving or out of place. There was nothing to spare. He felt the roughened texture under his fingers which, contrary to his earlier thought, wasn’t slippery at all. Not even soaked with sweat. He moved his head a little closer, took a whiff and picked up scents of raw metal, hot oil and the acrid tang of spent guncotton.

“It’s three or four kilos. Center of gravity’s around the base of the barrel, and the plastic parts feel gritty, like the tape we used to put on our skateboards when we were kids. It smells… well, it smells like a freshly fired gun.”

“That’s good. Now line up your shot and fire.”

Jack put the post on the center of his target and gently squeezed the trigger. In response, the weapon barked and there was a fast, nearly invisible flash at the tip of the barrel. It bucked into his shoulder but he was ready for it. Fifty yards away, a puff of smoke was wafting up from the center of the target. He tried not to let Charlie see him smile.

“Real good, Jack. Now do it again.”

And he continued to fire throughout the rest of the day.