Dead Aim

CHAPTER 10

The Safe-Force School of Self-Defense was not easy to reach. Mallon followed the route with a road map while Lydia drove. They were over forty-five minutes north of Ojai on the winding highway into Los Padres National Forest before they spotted the turnoff on the right. They followed the smaller tributary road eastward into the rising, tree-covered hills as the pavement narrowed into something under two lanes. At several points, flat spaces beside the shoulders had been cleared to provide turnouts so a driver could pull over and let vehicles behind him pass.

The first sign of habitation on the road was a high chain-link fence that began before Mallon noticed it. Mallon had simply tired of looking to his right into some woods that ran up a slight rise and left no view. He stared ahead at the road for a time, looked to the right again, and saw that a fence had begun. He turned around in his seat and verified that it stretched back for some distance. It had not caught his attention at first because there was tall brush on the inner side that had grown through the wire, keeping the fence in shadow, muting the metallic gleam and keeping the eye from perceiving the straight boundary line. The coiled razor wire along the top was above eye level, and in some places climbing plants had grown into it as though it were a trellis.

After a time an open gate interrupted the fence. There was no sign, but an oversized rural mailbox at the first gatepost had the stenciled words SAFE-FORCE SCHOOL. Between the posts was the beginning of a long, straight gravel drive that led into the property, past some low wooden buildings and one in the distance that looked about the size and shape of a barn. A short way in there was a parking lot on one side of the drive that held about fifteen cars, and on the other, a sprawling one-story ranch house with a rough board exterior and a large roofed-over front porch above a row of benches and a drinking fountain.

Lydia drove into the parking lot and glided to a stop between two freshly painted white stripes. She turned off the engine and opened her door. In the sudden silence they both heard a distant report of a gun. As Lydia stood, she turned her head and listened. There was a rapid pop-pop-pop. She pointed up the long, gradual slope of the hillside beyond the driveway. “Sounds as though the rifle range is over there someplace.”

“Yeah,” said Mallon. “Only that sounded like a pistol, didn’t it? Maybe a forty-five, or a nine-millimeter?”

“Sounds about right to me,” she said.

They closed the car doors and walked across the driveway toward the low ranch house. As they approached it, a tall, lean man in a khaki shirt with button pockets and tinted aviator glasses stepped out of the building onto the porch to wait for them.

The gunshots had come from the other side of the long hill, where a young woman named Marcia Teller held her nine-millimeter Smith amp; Wesson pistol at her side, muzzle downward, as she walked carefully along the path at the bottom of the arroyo. The combat range was supposed to be a simulated battle, but the battle had rules. There could be no accidental discharges, no wild shots of the sort that indicated she was afraid of her weapon, and if a round misfired and jammed the gun, she would have to stop, flop to her belly, and clear it before she showed herself again.

As she took her next step, another target popped up to her right, a cardboard cutout in the shape of a man’s head and torso. She went to a two-handed grip and a bent-kneed crouch, fired three shots into the target’s chest, then pivoted to face forward again. The targets were spring-loaded on their own stands so they could be moved to different hiding places each day. The range master triggered them with a remote control.

She walked up the arroyo another hundred feet, watchful and tense. She knew she had gotten the first two with something close to perfection, and it made her feel more serious, more committed to the game.

The third one popped up ahead and to her left, so close it made her jump. She let a small involuntary cry escape as she dropped to one knee and fired twice through its chest. She stood and advanced again. The third target had been good for her. It had reminded her that all the speed necessary was in efficient, deliberate movement: it pops up, you aim, you fire. When she had come out here the first time, she had mistaken the course for a quick-draw contest, and she had failed humiliatingly. Now she was calm and unhurried, and she was splendid.

The next ambush was especially devious. The target came up behind her: how had she passed that bush without seeing it? She did as her instructors had drilled her to do, not shuffling to turn in place but stepping, bringing her foot around with her so that before she faced the target she had already moved a pace to the side. She fired too low this time, maybe not a fatal first shot, but she compensated by bringing the barrel up, and when she fired again she saw a spot of light open in the center of the faceless head.

Marcia remembered to repeat the step-around to face forward in time to see the next target appear ahead of her, as though the two targets had been trying to get her in a crossfire. She placed two rounds into that one, and dropped to the ground to reload. She pressed the catch to release the magazine, removed it from the bottom of the grips, and put it into the pocket of her canvas jacket. Then she inserted a new clip and used the heel of her hand to push it home. She pulled the slide to cycle the gun and put a round into the chamber, then looked up, rose to her feet, and stepped forward.

There were ten targets-assailants, enemies-and she spotted all of them, one after another. Sometimes, as in the fourth and fifth, more than one came up in rapid succession, as real enemies did, ganging up, taking advantage of the very ability to focus and concentrate that she had so laboriously developed to become a competent pistol shot. Everyone had been told that a “pass” was to get all of them. Wasn’t that what would have been required in real life? The one you missed would kill you-a “fail.” There were no grades beyond those.

At the end of the arroyo she leaned her backside against a big sandstone rock, released the magazine, and cleared the round that was left in the chamber, then stood waiting for Parish to come up and congratulate her.

It was Spangler, the firearms instructor, instead. He was striding up the arroyo in his khaki shorts and hiking boots and red sleeveless T-shirt. “Good shooting, Marcia!” he called. “It’s a pass!”

She looked up from her weapon and smiled diffidently to hide her disappointment. “Thank you, Paul,” she said. Her eyes moved beyond him and flicked here and there to interpret distant shapes, searching for the tall, thin shape of Parish.

Spangler read the expression. “Michael had to run off ahead of us a minute ago. He got a call to tell him there were some visitors.”

“Did he see the shooting?”

“Oh, sure,” said Spangler. “Practically all of it. He said to tell you he would speak with you later.” He looked back up the long, twisting streambed, glanced at his watch, then turned to her. “Come on. Let’s go look at your targets.”

They walked to the last one, and he used his index finger to poke each of the holes she had put into the effigy. “Here’s your fatal shot, to the heart. This one down here would be very painful and incapacitating, but not a kill.” He took two gummed squares of paper from his pocket and stuck them over the bullet holes so the enemy was healed, then pushed the metal rod that held the target back into its trap so its catch held the target down. He placed a few cut boughs over it, stared at it critically, and moved to the target she had shot before that one.

At each stop, as he patched and reset the target, he gave an evaluation. “This one you got four times. That’s what I like to see. This hit to the head was your third or fourth round. If you hadn’t taken that shot, who knows? Your earlier shots are keeping him from killing you, and maybe he’ll bleed to death, but this is what we’re after.” They went on.

“Now this one is a bit thin, just two hits in the chest, but no sure fatals. I made the other one pop up across from him right away, so you had to turn around and get him too. In the street, what do you do? They’re both down. You come back to the first and put a hole in his head, and then the other.”

Marcia listened attentively and seldom spoke. Spangler was the firearms instructor, the one who had given the classroom instruction and taught the mixed group of men and women how to break down a weapon, clean it, clear jams, and recognize worn or damaged parts. Then he had taken them out to the range and taught them how to fire effectively. But somehow, she had expected that Parish would stay to see her test this morning, and that he would be the one to talk to her about it afterward. Spangler was a technician. He was an expert, but he was not the master. She had looked for the quiet, brooding presence of Parish this morning. She felt almost as though she had gotten less than her money’s worth because he had not watched all of her test.

When Spangler had reset the first target she had hit, he glanced at his watch again. “Where do you go next?”

“Hand-to-hand is in about a half hour.”

Spangler grinned. “Drink plenty of water before. It’s going to be hot today, and your stomach won’t hold what you’ll need if you take it in all at once.” He paused, then said, “And rest a bit. You earned it.”

Spangler patted her shoulder, and Marcia began the walk back to the main lodge. The dry brown hills were dotted with short, round California oaks with dusty leaves. Beyond them to her right was a wooded area, some parts of it tall pines, and the rest thick with a growth of bushes and deciduous trees. Here and there among the rocks on the high ridges above the ranch where trees would not grow were a few shin-high paddle-shaped cactus plants that had grown in to fill the gaps.

She came to the beginning of the path. This was the way she had always been led back from the firing range after group instruction, but today a new thought occurred to her. She would be testing soon in the hand-to-hand combat class too. What if they were planning to spring another test on her today? This would be the perfect moment, when she was feeling overconfident about her skills, and preoccupied thinking about the test she had just passed. It would be just like them to do something like that.

As soon as Marcia thought of it, she was sure of it. She would be walking along the familiar path, probably with her eyes on the ground ahead to be sure there were no snakes, and out of the bushes would come Debbie Crane, probably wearing olive-green cargo pants and top, but she would not neglect to tie on her black belt. She would throw Marcia to the ground just hard enough to hurt her, and then put some hold on her that was incapacitating and humiliating. That would be Marcia’s martial arts lesson for today: be alert at all times, especially when you were walking a familiar, predictable route. Hand-to-hand class was not a place, a gym with mats on the floors. It was a discipline for life.

Marcia stopped and listened. It would be both of them, Debbie Crane and Ron Dolan too. If there weren’t two of them, who would serve as the witness to her failure? But if it was both of them, maybe she would hear them whispering while they waited for her. No, she thought. They could hardly not have noticed when the shooting had stopped. The memory of the shooting made a horrible thought occur to her: what if it was Parish too? What if he had skipped seeing her triumph so he could be in position to watch her humiliation and then lecture her about it?

What could she do? Debbie was not somebody Marcia could defend herself against. When she was demonstrating something on the mats, she would allow herself to be thrown, or put down, or blocked, but always her movements were a parody of a big, dumb attacker. There would always be some movement-a startling roll and jump to recover, or even a flip-to remind the class that she had been playing. Sometimes when she was having them repeat some kick or blow over and over, she would begin to do kicks and punches or combinations of her own, at twice the speed, to keep time with them. It appeared to be the result of nervous energy, a kind of athleticism that was uncontrollable. But it was frightening. The kicks and punches were always hard and fast, and it took no imagination to judge where they would catch an opponent. Sometimes Marcia would feel a phantom pain in the spot Debbie was aiming at, like a warning.

Ron would not be the one to ambush Marcia, because that would be too extreme. He would be the witness. He was about six feet four and very muscular. She had thought, when she first saw him, that his being a martial arts instructor was incongruous: what opponent could he ever face that he couldn’t simply beat up without using all the throws and holds and secrets?

She wished it would be Ron. He would be gentle, to keep from harming her. He would only need to put a hand on her to control her and make his point. That would not be what Debbie did. For the first time after a month of study, Marcia gave herself permission to admit that she hated Debbie. There was something sick about the way she treated the women. She always implied that they had gone through life using their sex out of laziness, to avoid effort, and out of cowardice, to avoid danger. But she was here to unmask them and force them to experience what they feared. Look at you, and look at her-the tiny waist, the round breasts under her sports top, the firm, rounded bottom-wasn’t she as much a woman as you?

Marcia stepped off the path to her right and made her way through the grove of oaks that bordered the pine woods. She walked as quietly as she could, straining her ears to hear any sound from the direction of the path, and keeping her eyes in motion to watch for any sign of human beings ahead.

She concentrated on staying about fifty feet to the right of the path. She desperately wanted to foil their plan, but she also wanted to keep from missing the set of low wooden buildings that made up the main part of the camp. The few times she had been inland from the ocean in California, she had learned that hiking wasn’t the way it had been in the East. If you took a shortcut or walked away from a road, you might have to walk a hundred miles before crossing another, and that wasn’t something you could do. The camp was inside an area called Los Padres National Forest, but when she had looked at a map it had seemed that beyond the forest was not a populated area, only even emptier wilderness. If she walked in the wrong direction, she had no idea whether she would ever be found.

Her ear caught a faint rustling sound to her left, and she stopped. She could see along a narrow gully that formed a break in the low, thick trees. She had been right. Debbie Crane was crouching there waiting for her to come up the path. Ron Dolan walked up the gully toward her, zipping up his pants. He was walking through thick brush, and Marcia knew he had left the ambush to urinate in privacy. The noise of his return seemed to infuriate Debbie. She waved one hand at him, while her other held a finger to her lips.

He stared up the path in the direction of the combat firing range to verify that Marcia was not nearby, then sat down with a bored expression to wait.

Marcia remained still until he turned his head to look up the path again, then she hurried across the gully and off into the cover of the trees. She felt elated as she approached the compound. She had passed two tests today. She emerged from the trees far from where she had expected to. She realized that she must be near the road, because she heard the whispery sound of a car moving along on pavement. She followed the sound until she reached the high chain-link fence, and followed it to the gravel driveway that led to the main lodge.

As she walked past the veranda in front of the lodge, Parish stepped out of the doorway, followed by a man and a woman she had never seen before. The man was maybe forty-five and tanned, like an outdoorsman. The woman was only a bit shorter and wide, not soft the way an overweight woman usually was, but big like a woman who did physical labor-or maybe a policewoman. Marcia wondered if they might not be new instructors. She stopped to drink from the water fountain near the door.

Parish’s eyes widened slightly as he saw her, and she knew she had surprised him, but for the moment he ignored her presence and spoke to the man. “I was very sorry to hear it, of course. Any person you’ve spent time trying to know and trying to teach becomes a special friend.”

The woman said, “Did she seem to be afraid when she arrived?”

Parish said, “Afraid?” He paused and squinted into the distance, as though that were where the past could be found. “No. She didn’t.” He focused on the man. “You met her, Mr. Mallon. Did she strike you as a fearful person?”

The man he had called Mr. Mallon said, “No. But I wonder if a young woman would spend that kind of time and money on self-defense unless there was a clear reason.”

Parish looked at him thoughtfully. “There is a reason. As a rule, the students come here because they want to learn something new. They want to improve themselves. Virtually all of the older ones have already achieved a great deal in their lives, some in business or the professions, a few in the arts. It’s a certain kind of person who does that. He works terribly hard for all of his life to be better than his competitors, but even more, to be better than he was yesterday. After the initial goal is achieved-he’s a success-he doesn’t stop. The need isn’t imposed by circumstance, it’s internal. It doesn’t matter whether we meet them at Catherine’s age or seventy, it’s still the same kind of person.”

The woman said, “It’s a lot of money to pay unless there’s a reason that’s a little more tangible, don’t you think?”

“Our guests are the elite, people who are used to certain standards. The surroundings are intentionally kept rustic, but the amenities are expensive.”

The woman persisted. “They must be, for over a thousand a day.”

Parish seemed surprised at her attitude. “Our students receive a great deal of individual attention. This isn’t just a guest ranch with a theme. We’re dedicated to teaching a discipline that’s difficult to learn properly, and can be terribly dangerous unless it’s studied under the strictest supervision.” His eyes were on their way to the man when they stopped. “Excuse me,” said Parish, and held up a hand. He quickly glided to Marcia’s side, leaned close to her, and murmured, “This isn’t on the way from the range. Is something wrong out there?”

Marcia smiled slyly and shook her head. “I decided to take a different way back, just this once.”

Parish grinned and gripped her shoulder. “Good instinct. Exceptional. I’ll talk to you about this later.” He glanced at his watch. “You just have time to beat them to the gym.” He launched her up the gravel driveway with a gentle pat on the shoulder.

As she strode off toward the gym, she heard Parish saying, “I apologize for not introducing you, but my policy is to protect my students’ privacy and anonymity to the extent that I can. What were we saying?”

As soon as Marcia was around the bend in the drive, she broke into a run. Five minutes later, she was lying comfortably on the thick mat, staring at the bare beams of the barnlike roof, when she heard the door open. Ron Dolan walked to her feet and looked down at her. When she met his eyes, she saw him smile. As he walked away, Marcia sat up. Debbie had silently stepped in the door after him. She was standing to the side of the doorway, contemplating Marcia with her eyes narrowed and the full lips she was so proud of compressed into a thin, pale line.

Marcia stared back at her for a few seconds, her eyes wide with false innocence and expectation. Finally, Debbie spoke. “Congratulations. You’re beginning to get the idea. Let’s do some stretches to warm up before the others arrive and we can get started.”