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A Gray Area

D. M. Connolly

    The heat by sunrise was already stifling and its effect on the morning dew produced a mist that lingered over the forest floor, settling more densely in the lower lying areas and gullies that ran through the Mau Forest river basin northwest of Nairobi. By mid-morning the hazy shroud will have burned off, giving way under the relentless sun, and another day of oppressive heat and mind numbing boredom would be underway. But it was now that Peter Sullivan most needed to stay alert.
    Sullivan stretched his six foot frame and brushed back his sandy hair which he usually kept short, but out here in the bush was starting to grow long. Running his hand over his young but weathered face he thought he felt a new line creasing it. From his post in a tree stand at the southwest corner of the parcel of land he guarded he had an unobstructed view of the small valley where the mist was most dense and, because of the surrounding canopy, took the longest to burn off. This naturally occurring cover, combined with its accessibility to the local village by foot path, made this the favorite spot, basically the only spot, for those attempting to climb the twelve foot fence that lined the perimeter that Sullivan was charged with guarding. This was the time of day they tried most often. At night they can be spotted with infrared night goggles and later in the day they would be in plain view, but now, in the gray of the fog, they stood the best chance of not being seen.
    Sullivan kept his binoculars trained steadily on the space approximately three hundred yards away, staying vigilant, knowing he would let his attention wane a little later without much risk of consequence if he felt like it or needed to. This time of day, however, he stayed focused, although there hadn’t been any activity to speak of lately. Until now.
    At the tail end of the misty veil Sullivan could see movement. He watched, unblinking, for the tell tale signs that would give away whether the presence was human or not. He’d become adept at distinguishing the movements of man versus the other mammals that populated the area. It would be a little late in the morning for someone to attempt a climb, as the fog was beginning to burn off, but Sullivan could detect the vague outline of a man near the fence.
    Keeping the figure in sight through his binoculars, Sullivan reached for this rifle, brought it up slowly and smoothly swapped the binoculars for the rifle’s scope, not losing sight of the man who was now on the fence, but only about two feet off the ground. The man was holding something in his right hand that was rectangular in shape, but flopped around like a large doormat. It appeared to be tied to his wrist so he could still use his right hand to grab the fence. He seemed to be trying to figure out how he was going to do this with it tethered to him while a large urn-like container hung along his left side from a strap over his shoulder.
    Sullivan looked on with clinical curiosity as the man began to climb, taking his time like a mountain climber, one careful, thought-out move at a time. At the top of the fence were two strands of barbed wire angled to present a further challenge to any climbers. Getting around and over them required a feat of acrobatics worthy of the Ringling Brothers, but it wasn’t impossible. He’d seen it done. Rolls of razor wire would be far more effective, Sullivan thought, and in the long run would pay for the initial capital outlay. He considered suggesting this at one time but, in the name of job security, decided to keep this bit of advice to himself. Besides, the people who hired his kind of services weren’t poor and weren’t stupid so there must be a reason they kept things the way they were. Best to keep his mouth shut.
    The man was halfway up the fence now, his brown form growing slightly more visible in the fading mist. Sullivan guessed that the object tied to his arm was some sort of rubber mat he planned to drape over the barbed wire that would allow him to climb over it. He’d then scale down the inside of the fence or, if necessary, just drop the twelve feet to the ground and risk a sprained ankle, or worse.
    As Sullivan looked on, the man climbed to the top, just under the barbed wire. He hung there by his left hand with his left foot dug into the chain link fence and started trying to sling the mat up over the barbed wire. On the third attempt he was successful in getting the mat to lay over the strands, providing a protective cover that he could now lay over. Sullivan watched, admiring the ingenuity, but curious now as to how the man was going to actually get up, around and over the top.
    But it was easier than he thought, or at least the man made it look that way. In one motion he reached up onto the mat and pulled himself up while swinging his right leg over as if he was mounting a horse. Sullivan was impressed. He appreciated, despite appearances, what a feat of strength and agility it was. The man sat astride the fence now pausing perhaps to rest, gather his strength or assess his next move once he descended to the other side of the fence. At this height, and in the clearing mist, he was plainly visible. Sullivan put him in the crosshairs of the scope of his rifle and shot him off the fence.
    In the blink of an eye the bullet ripped through the man’s chest and he was dead before he began the twelve foot fall back to the ground on the side of the fence he came from. It was a good shot. A perfect shot. Sullivan hoped that when the man didn’t return his fellow villagers would come looking for him promptly and find him before the jackals did.
    In twenty minutes the mist had cleared and Sullivan could now see the prone, lifeless legs of the man where he had fallen. He was on his back with his legs apart, spread eagle fashion, his top half obscured by foliage. Sullivan wondered if when the man woke up that morning and left his home it ever occurred to him that it would be his last day. And he was looking at everything for the last time.
    And all he wanted was water.
    Sullivan was just doing his job. Like any good soldier, he followed orders and didn’t ask questions. No longer a member of any nation’s military, he was a soldier in the world at large. His current mission, as he saw it, was as an employee of ISB Global Security Services. It was ISB’s contract with Syndicated Beverages, parent company of K&K Kola, the world’s most popular soft drink, that brought Sullivan to his current post in the sweltering Mau Region of Kenya, along a property border of land leased by K&K Kola’s subsidiary bottling company.
    It was where the spring was—the source of fresh, clean, life giving and (most importantly) good tasting water. The water necessary for the manufacture of some of the best selling beverages on the continent. And if people wanted their cola, in all its varieties, then somebody had to protect the water source. Enter Peter Sullivan.
    Sullivan took the large bottle of water from his knapsack and chugged a third of it warm, screwed the cap back on and set it on the floor. The morning mist had entirely burned off now. He raised the field glasses and scanned around finding nothing new to watch. The man was still there. There didn’t seem to be any animal activity near the body yet, but buzzards were starting to show up in the neighboring trees. Sullivan preferred that someone would find the man soon—maybe when he didn’t come home for supper they’d come looking, but he left it at that. Beyond that, it wasn’t his concern.
    The small-time random poachers weren’t the real problem that he was hired to guard against. They were mostly collateral damage—just the poor guy with a jug trying to provide something for his family in the wrong place. Although, if you started letting them through before long you would have a stampede on your hands so you had to draw the line somewhere.
    Sullivan was given a zero-tolerance directive, so that’s where he drew the line. Nobody got over, under or through the fence, or through his area, “the gray area”, where the mist lingered on the jungle floor, on his watch.

***

    It started with a girl. For him, it always did. This one was French, and two years older than him and as different from the girls he knew back home as Bleu d’Auvergne was from Cheese Whiz.
    He was born, raised and educated in the public schools of Allentown, Pennsylvania, a one-time industrial center that fell on hard times when the steel industry went overseas. It was trying to reinvent itself as a new hub of commerce, but it was still the kind of town where you could find bars in what used to be somebody’s living room and they served beer in juice glasses for a dollar.
    He grew up in a household that could only be described as working poor and graduated high school near the top of his class. But by the time he finished school he was tired of books and classrooms. He needed a break from the structure and confinement and rules, after which, he thought, he’d be ready to settle into college. Maybe by then he’d figure out what he wanted to do with his life. It would also give him time to decide what schools to apply to and to get the whole application process and financial aid sorted out. He wasn’t receiving any help at home on those fronts. His mom was oblivious and his dad didn’t want him to go to college—and there was no money for it anyway—but rather follow a course he had laid out for him using his contacts to get him an apprenticeship as a welder. A high paying, in-demand trade was better than a degree in something where nobody was hiring, the old man insisted.
    So Peter took a “gap year”.
    “I hope you don’t think you’re hanging around here, bummin’ around doing nothing for a year,’’ his dad said during supper one June night just after graduation. “You can go to school or you can get a job. Otherwise, you can’t stay here.”
    “Bob,” his mom said in a flat tone meant to indicate he was being a little unreasonable.
    “Don’t worry, I’m not staying,” Peter said.
    The phone rang and his mother answered it before his dad could stop her.
    “Why do they always call at suppertime?” his dad said.
    “Because that’s when they know you’re home.”
    His father gave him a hard glance that said he already knew that, he’s not that dumb, it was a rhetorical question you weren’t supposed to answer then said, “Just because a phone rings doesn’t mean a person has to answer it.”
    His mom held out the handset toward Peter. “It’s for you.”
    Peter got up and took the phone from her. “Hello...sorry, I’m still not interested.” He hung up the wall phone and went back to his seat with both his parents looking at him. “Army recruiter,” he said.
    “They call every other night,” his mother said.
    “That’s another option,” his father said and received his own hard stare from Peter’s mom.
    There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment while knives and forks clicked against plates and Peter hid sulkily behind the curtains of hair that shrouded his face.
    His father broke the silence with, “So are you going to enlighten us as to your plan for the coming year?”
    “France.”
    “Come again?”
    “I’m going to tour around France on a bicycle.”
    There was a stunned silence while his parents took this in, then, “Like hell you are. I’m-”
    “I read about it in a magazine. I’ve been reading books on it and I have it all planned out with maps and-”
    “I’m making a call and you’re taking that welder’s apprenticeship.”
    “No!” It came out as a shout, louder than Peter expected. He pushed away from the table as his mother looked between the two of them, not knowing who to side with.
    “You can’t make me,” Peter added. “I’m eighteen. I can do what I want.”
    “You can’t stay here then.”
    “Of course he’s not staying here if he’s in France, Bob,” his mother said.
    Two weeks later Peter took off for France with his mom thinking the whole thing was very romantic and his father grudgingly resolving himself to the notion that “the life experience will do him good”. Regardless, Peter left with the understanding that he couldn’t go home again.

***

    Her name was Celeste and he met her in a cafe in Provence where he stopped for lunch and she was waitressing. He was cycling the Route Napoleon, the one hundred and ninety mile route taken by Napoleon in 1815 on his return from Elba. She had signed a modeling contract and was about to leave for Paris, much to her parents’ dismay. They had that in common and made arrangements and promises to meet up in Paris at the end of the summer.
    That September he found her on facebook living with two other girls, one British and one French, sharing a flat in the Quartier Latin. Their apartment looked like a 24/7 sorority slumber party, which he later learned was typical in the 5th arrondissement—an area that was home to many students and young people. They invited him to crash there and, having gone through almost all his savings, he took them up on it. Why not? If his friends back home could see him now, living with three beautiful models in the City of Light they’d eat their hearts out.
    With summer over, his touring came to an end, at least for the time being. Peter could go back to the States now, but he didn’t want to. He’d seen the countryside of France and now he wanted to see Paris. Celeste and Lisette, the French roommate, a willowy nineteen year old with a pixie haircut, spent most of their free time that September taking him around to see the sights—the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and other typical tourist spots, as well as Jim Morrison’s grave and Shakespeare and Company, the bookstore that was one of Hemingway’s hangouts.
    By October he found work as an assistant to a photographer he met through Celeste. It didn’t pay much, but he was learning and he was happy with it. He chipped in at the apartment where the girls paid the bills, when they got around to it, and they came and went in a fluid lifestyle of modeling assignments, sleeping and, most of all, partying. There were endless nights in clubs followed by days spent sleeping, followed by absences for runway jobs in Italy and photo shoots elsewhere. There were the times he stumbled into finding Celeste and Lisette in bed together and the times he joined them. Every time he saw Celeste after she’d been away she looked thinner and he knew she was practically living on cocaine. He also suspected she was sleeping with some of the photographers, and others, on these assignments. There was the time Lisette went into convulsions and they rushed her to the hospital, her nose covered in powder.
    Peter was trying to keep up while holding down a steady job, but was finding that trying to lead a structured lifestyle against all the madness was a losing battle. The day came when his boss let him go—because he wasn’t reliable. Mr. Organized-Straight-A-Student wasn’t reliable anymore.
    Then came the day he discovered they were four months behind on the rent and facing eviction. All the money these girls made, plus what he gave them, and it went up their noses and everywhere else except to pay the bills. Peter came home one afternoon after a day spent looking for a job, any job, to find Celeste packing.
    “We’re moving out,” she said, stuffing clothes willy-nilly into a suitcase. He looked in her closet and wondered how she was going to fit it all in her suitcases. The girl never wore the same dress twice.
    “Why don’t we just work something out to get caught up on the rent? I’ll find work, I’ll-”
    “It’s more than that, Peter. Michel was arrested-”
    “Who’s that?”
    She looked at him as if he were dim and said, “Lisette’s supplier.”
    “Of what? Coke?”
    “Yes, and other things. And now the police are questioning Lisette. You should start packing.”
    “Where are we going?” Peter didn’t have much to pack.
    “I’m going to St. Tropez. With Andy. I don’t know where you’re going.”
    And just like that Peter was unceremoniously dumped.
    “What? Andy?” Andy was the British photographer Celeste was always going off on “assignments” with. Peter thought he was gay. Apparently not. Or maybe he was. Who knew, and what did it matter, Peter thought. “You’re leaving me,” he said.
    She looked at him through the impatient glare of a cocaine hangover. “Come on, Peter. It was fun, but it’s over.”
    Two days later Peter was out on the street looking for work and a place to stay. Celeste, Lisette and Barbara, the other roommate, weren’t answering his calls. His former employer wouldn’t take him back and his American accent and lack of French wasn’t helping him. He quickly learned where he could get free day-old egg rolls from a Chinese restaurant and started sleeping in parks and other discreet public places. Almost overnight he was a vagrant carrying all his worldly possessions in a backpack—homeless, broke, fucked-up and heartbroken. He had started to pan handle to raise the money for a plane ticket home—that career in welding was starting to look pretty good—until some quick math in his head told him he’d have to live rough like this for almost a year before he’d have enough.
    He saw then, with sudden clarity, how this was one way people turned to crime. It was an easy next step, but he wasn’t ready to go there. Not yet. Then a chance encounter with an expat bartender in a cafe where he inquired about a job clued him into the idea of joining “The Legion”. The French Foreign Legion. A branch of the French Army that accepts recruits from other countries. After three years of military service he could apply for, and would certainly receive, French citizenship.
    Joining would immediately solve his housing and employment problems. He thought back to that Army recruiter who hounded him in his last year of high school when he wasn’t registered for college, calling his house a few times a week. Maybe the service was the way to go after all. If he did it here and became a citizen he would have dual citizenship and wouldn’t be an expat anymore. He liked the idea, liked France and wanted to stay. In a moment that was one of those crossroads in a person’s life he stepped off the cliff and committed to a decision that would change the course of his life. He went back to the cafe and asked the bartender where he could enlist.
    Unlike many of the drifters and world transients who found their way into the Legion, Sullivan welcomed the discipline from the start. It was a refreshing change from the way he’d been living. The Legion became his home for three years and his fellow soldiers, men from different countries and cultures, became the brothers he never had. They were like a private military company in that the Foreign Legion was the only branch of the French Army that did not swear allegiance to France, but to the Legion itself. “The Legion is our homeland”, it’s motto says.
    After three years he was discharged clean and sober at the rank of Caporal, the equivalent of Corporal. He was a certified marksman, highly trained in the military arts and with an abiding passion for guns and weapons of all kinds. He’d also discovered in himself a callousness toward death, his own and others, he was previously unaware of. Whether this was an innate quality or one developed through his training and born of necessity under the circumstances, he never really knew. But there it was. Taking a life didn’t seem to bother him the way he thought it should, the way it did others, and he assumed that meant there was something missing in him—a piece most everybody else had that somehow got left out of his psyche. But that didn’t really bother him either.
    What did bother him was that he was drifting again. He was a changed man, older and harder, but the skill set he’d gained in the Legion didn’t transfer well into the mainstream job market where the jobs were few to begin with. The military was still his best option for work, but he wasn’t getting any younger and he’d never served in the US. He didn’t mind the discipline, but he couldn’t get too excited about the pay.
    One day, while job searching on the internet he answered an ad which led to some bodyguard work. A contact he made on that job led him to working briefly for the Gambino family in New York. A few quick jobs for them was enough to set him on his feet for a while and he got out before he became any further involved. He wasn’t Sicilian, so there was no future there and the fact was, there was no future in that life, anyway. Prison or the wrong end of somebody else’s gun—that was the future. It was a terrible life.
    Another contact in New York recommended him for a job in Florida, basically standing guard over the unloading and warehousing of cocaine shipments from South America, a lot of which arrived in the most inventive ways. This led him to a job guarding cattle on a finca, a ranch in Columbia, a situation and job description not unlike his current one. It was his favorite job up to that time and he especially liked that it took him out of the world of organized crime. It also introduced him to the beautiful and willing girls of Cali. But for Sullivan, distancing himself from the mafia and the cartels wasn’t a matter of morality. It was just that shooting poachers was easy, and a lot less dangerous. But that rancher’s finca was eventually seized by the Columbian government, which put an end to that gig.
    When he encountered an acquaintance in the American DEA drinking in one of the local bars and he told him what he’d been doing, the man recommended him to ISB, a private security firm with deep ties to the CIA and a background in covert operations. Not only governments, but major corporations used their services on an international basis for shadowy work done off the record. The kind of activities that the public needn’t know about and that didn’t make its way into corporate annual reports.
    The pay was good, but you didn’t get into this line of work for the paycheck. There was adventure, sure, you traveled and saw other parts of the world, not always the nice parts. In lawless lands a man with a gun and the willingness to use it could often take what he wanted. That was the real compensation. If you found yourself in the right place at the right time there were fortunes to be had.
    Now, after a few stints in Bosnia, Chechnya and the Congo he found himself on his current assignment. It was easy, if boring, work, paid well and he probably liked it even better than the job in Columbia. He liked Africa. He liked the beauty of the land, the local people and how life seemed simpler. Things were wide open here. There wasn’t so much in the way of government oversight and someone like him was freer to operate, to find opportunities in gold or whatever else.

***

    Sullivan watched the heat shimmering over the land just above the distant tree line. He set the binoculars down, deciding it was lunch time. He was alone, but could keep watch and eat at the same time. The small cooler he brought contained a sandwich and bottle of water which he took out now and set about consuming. Around mid-day there wasn’t a great likelihood of poachers at the fence line, but he kept one eye out anyway. His shift ended at four pm and he was looking forward to it today. He was trained to stand guard, silent, motionless, waiting and watching, patiently observing yet poised for action, but today he was antsy. It was Friday and he was thinking about going into town that night.
    The night watch guy might see a little more action than he’d been seeing, Sullivan thought. They use night vision goggles allowing them to spot the green figures, like phantoms, in the jungle. It made the work more like a video game than reality—not that Sullivan minded shooting people. He still believed he had the most active shift. The trespassers seemed to be figuring out they could be spotted in the dark so the prime time and high activity hours were still between sunrise and ten am when they could use the morning mist as cover. Still he kept an eye out for anyone bold enough, or foolish enough, to march through his area in the middle of the day.
    There had been efforts lately by local villagers to gain access to the spring through the local government. Unconfirmed rumors persisted that there was a movement afoot to seize the water rights for public use, a public taking by Kenya’s version of eminent domain. He’d asked his bosses about this, but never got a straight answer and figured the whole topic was above his pay grade anyway. Sullivan’s directive was to keep everyone off the land, not just poachers, but engineers, contractors, surveyors, politicians and anyone else. And that’s what he was going to do. He could shoot to miss, scare them away, but he didn’t have to.
    The thought of choosing who lived and who died gave him a god-like sense of power, though he knew it was preferable not to shoot a high profile trespasser, an engineer or a politician, for example, if he could help it. Killing one could bring an unwanted investigation. If in doubt, he would shoot over their heads first, to scare them off. If they didn’t back off then they were fair game. And after all, he was operating covertly with nothing traceable back to him or ISB. It was essential it be kept that way. Life in the bush provided excellent cover in this regard. After all, the countryside was filled with pirates, poachers, robbers and hunters: people who’d shoot you for the gold in your teeth. If someone catches a bullet being where they’re not supposed to be...oh well. Not too many questions get asked and nobody knows anything anyway.
    Finishing his lunch, Peter put the sandwich wrapper and empty water bottle back in the cooler and stood up, raising his binoculars. He scanned the border, seeing no activity, confident he hadn’t taken his eyes off it long enough for someone to get through. The man’s body was still there, baking now in the cruel heat, buzzards darting to it furtively then retreating to the trees.

***

    Jim Taylor arrived at three forty five to relieve him, taking the four to midnight shift. He dropped an overloaded knapsack on the floor of the stand, looked at Sullivan and chuckled like Santa Claus. If Santa was a biker.
    “You moving in here?” Sullivan asked, looking at the bundle.
    “Gotta keep myself occupied, Bro. Not much happens on the night shift.”
    Sullivan wondered if the sack was filled with snacks. Taylor had to go close to three hundred and he wasn’t getting any smaller. He had a belly the size of a beach ball covered halfway by a gray beard that looked like it hadn’t been trimmed in years while his head was meticulously shaved. Tattoos, including prison tats, covered much of his body. He was a genuine American hillbilly and a former Hells Angel.
    Sullivan said, “Keep eating like that and you won’t be able to climb up here anymore.”
    Taylor ignored that and said, “Any action today?”
    “One. He’s still out there.”
    Taylor took the binoculars and looked for himself, scanning slowly then making a tsk, tsk sound. “They just don’t learn.”
    Leaving the binoculars, but shouldering his rifle, Sullivan said, “Well, I’m going to head back.”
    “Okay, man. I’m just gonna settle in for another night of The Most Dangerous Game.”
    Sullivan paused a moment at this, confused. Was that what was in his pack? He was sitting out here playing some game?
    Taylor looked at his face and laughed. “Hunting man, Bro. It’s the most dangerous game. Get it? I think it was a book or a movie or something.”
    “Right,” Sullivan said and descended the ladder. He could have argued that. They weren’t so much hunting as guarding, and the men they shot were not exactly dangerous. But besides being a man of few words, he was tired and didn’t feel like staying to have that conversation just then. So he left Taylor to his game and, with his rifle slung over his shoulder, started on the mile-long walk back to camp.
    Camp consisted of a large trailer shared by the two of them and a third man, Stan, a tall awkward Russian who looked like he should be wearing a bow tie and teaching economics at a college somewhere instead of being out there doing what they do. You never can tell, Sullivan often thought.
    He didn’t mind the walk home. It felt good to move after staying put for eight hours, putting his muscles to work, even in the mildest of ways. Passing the warthog holes in the dirt path he followed he was reminded of the necessity of staying alert. He couldn’t turn his brain off just yet. There were big cats and other predators just out of sight, but he was comforted by the big Barrett MRAD that hung on his back and the knowledge that it possessed enough stopping power to take down a lion.
    Thinking about big game got him thinking about what Taylor had said. The crazy redneck actually looked at what they did as a sport. Sullivan couldn’t, and wouldn’t, make any claim to having a conscience, or that the job they did bothered him, but nor would he say it was a form of entertainment.
    But did it bother him? A light wind rippled the tall grass to his left and he swung the Barrett around half expecting the streaming grass of a lion’s charge. But there was nothing there. He put the gun back around and, heart still racing, continued on his way down alongside the swale and into the denser foliage. Did it bother him? The problem with this assignment, he thought, was that it left too much time for introspection. In most of his past jobs there was hardly time to think, but now the absence of danger and lack of activity was allowing him the leisure for self-examination and he was beginning to consider what he was doing and if it was right or wrong, and whether, or not, he cared.
    The sun was setting in a fireball over the tree line as he crossed an open plain. He was coming to a stretch of land where he’d seen zebras recently. He could have killed any number of animals in his walks to and from his post, but he had no desire to. There was no point, nobody was paying him to do it.
    How could it not be wrong? he asked himself. He was shooting unarmed citizens with a sniper rifle. They were trespassing, with intent to steal. But his life was not being threatened. You can kill people in war and it’s not only acceptable, it’s rewarded. This is the same thing. It’s war. Corporate war. War is everywhere. Everything is a war, a combat, an endless struggle to survive and man was no better than, or different from, the animals lurking in the wild around him.
    It went back and forth in his head to the point where he sometimes thought he was unraveling. He wondered if his training had warped his mind, made him unable to see any difference. Was there a difference? Nations kill over land, politics and religion. Corporations, some of them, kill for money, profits and increased stock values.
    Sullivan crested a small ridge and the trailer, his home for now, came into view sitting in a clearing on bottling company land. He was reminded of a settler’s log cabin on the American plains of the old west. That’s what Africa was to him—the wild west.
    A light was on inside, faintly discernible through the windows in the gathering dusk. It told him that Stan was there. Anyway, he thought as he approached the trailer, the poachers were stealing and they certainly knew the risks. He settled the matter for now by reminding himself that if the roles were reversed they would surely have no compunction about pulling the trigger on him.
    He let himself in quietly, thinking Stan might be asleep, but he was awake and sitting in the living room area in his boxer shorts and a drab green wife-beater rolling a joint.
    “What’s up?” Stan said without looking up.
    “What’s up yourself?” Sullivan put his rifle in its place. Stan would be covering the midnight to eight am shift and Sullivan was surprised to see him up.
    “Going to smoke this doobie and get some shut eye. That’s about it.” Stan lit the joint and sucked hard on it.
    Sullivan was surprised to hear himself say, “Got one today. Trying to get over the barbed wire using a doormat or car mats or something.”
    Stan, holding his breath, acknowledged this with a nod.
    “Anyway,” Sullivan said, flopping into a seat across from where Stan was sitting, “I was thinking of going into town tonight. Get a bite to eat and all. Mind if I take the jeep?”
    The three of them shared one jeep between them. The “and all” part could mean a lot of things, including a certain brothel the three of them had been known to frequent.
    Stan exhaled hugely, said, “No problem,’ and held out the joint to Sullivan.
    “No thanks, man.”
    “Suit yourself.” Stan pushed his thick framed glasses up the bridge of his nose with one finger. Sullivan smiled to himself. Stan was Poindexter, if Poindexter was a cold-blooded hard case. He was suddenly struck by the absurdity of their lives.
    “What?” Stan said and took another hit.
    “Nothing. I’m going to take a shower and head out. I’ll see you later.”
    “Cool,” Stan said in the suppressed voice of someone holding their breath as Sullivan turned toward their tiny bathroom.

***

    Sullivan left the jeep parked on a side street and hoped the tires would still be on it when he returned. Already children were starting to play around it, a foreign object in their midst. He walked out to the main road and saw her right away. She was crossing the street in the direction of the cafe he last saw her in, where he drank and she tended bar. She was new there at the time, uncertain of what she was doing, but there was no mistaking the quiet intelligence behind her dark eyes.
    Now he was heading for the same cafe hoping that she’d be working there tonight, but as he came through the door he saw her standing on the outside of the bar talking to the bartender on duty. They both turned to look at him and he smiled back while he took a seat. The two women exchanged words conspiratorially that he couldn’t make out then she demurely took a seat at the bar near him. Her name was Sika, he remembered that much, and it was enough to start a conversation with.
    “Hi...Sika, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Peter,” he said with a slight bow of introduction. I don’t know if you remember me but-”
    “I remember.”
    “So you’re not working tonight?” he said stupidly and immediately regretted it. Think of something better to say, you idiot, he thought.
    She smiled in a jolly way, her high cheekbones rising as she did, and said, “No, I just came to pick up my paycheck,” in a lilting accent.
    He wanted to ask her what she was doing here. Nairobi wasn’t that far away and surely there was more opportunity there. But he said, “Would you join me for a glass of wine?” instead.
    Her eyes darted to her co-worker then she looked down shyly and said, “Yes.”

***

    “Are you comfortable here?” he asked, noticing a few glances from other tables. They’d been seeing each other for five weeks now and, while the locals were getting used to seeing them here and there, there were still those who took issue with inter-racial relationships. “We can go somewhere else if you like.”
    “I’m fine.” She reached across the table and squeezed his hands. “Tell me more about Paris.”
    He told her, giving her a sanitized version of his time there. They had been learning about each other, up to a point. She thought he worked at the bottling company which, technically, wasn’t a lie. He yearned for intimacy with her beyond just the physical, but he knew he couldn’t tell her what he really did for a living. It would make him the devil, in her eyes. He wished he could talk to her about the doubts that were creeping into his consciousness, but knew it was impossible. There was really nobody he could talk to about that. He’d broached the subject once with his co-workers, but to no avail. Stan just looked at him uncomprehendingly, probably stoned at the time, gleefully looking forward to his next kill. Surprisingly, the one who got it was Taylor, but he just laughed and, with great jocularity, said, “Man, we got the best job in the world. We get paid to shoot motherfuckers and we got no expenses out here, except the whorehouse, and our paychecks just keep pilin’ up!”
    Anyway, Sullivan thought, keep it light. Talk about fun things, like going to Paris together someday, and don’t get all heavy on her. Their food was brought to the table by a polite waiter who promptly made himself scarce. The steaming dishes were fogging the air in the well-lit dining room. It was a fairly casual place that passed for fine dining in these parts. Sullivan poured more wine for each of them.
    “Thank you,” she said and they started in on their food. She had ordered for both of them, a sort of stew. He didn’t know what it was.
    “So who are your friends at work?” she asked.
    “Friends?” He was reluctant to admit he didn’t really have any.
    “Mm hmm. At the plant. You must have some friends at work. What are the people like there?”
    He wondered why she wanted to know this, or if he was being tested. He decided to be honest about it, to a point. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really have any friends there. There’s a couple of guys I work with (and live with, he thought) who I’m friendly with, but I wouldn’t exactly call them friends.”
    She gave him a slightly sad smile of understanding as she raised a fork to her mouth.
    He shrugged as if to say, “No big deal.”
    She said, “It’s more or less the same with me.”
    He had already sensed that. He had intuited from the start that they were two of a kind—smart, but not formally educated beyond high school, left in the middle, not fitting in with the rabble but without the pedigree to gain them acceptance in more elite circles, either. They smiled at each other with unspoken understanding and he admired the angular lines of her face, her full lips, and heard himself offering an additional explanation, “I really never had many male friends. I guess you could say my best friend was whoever my girlfriend was at any given time, and now I guess that’s you.”
    She sputtered out a brief laugh and put her hand over her face in a cute mannerism of hers, “So I’m your best friend now, too, Peter!”
    They’d been lovers for two weeks. And that’s where they were going afterwards, to make love in the back bedroom of her friends apartment over the butcher shop. The use of her friend’s place felt a little awkward to him, but she didn’t seem to think anything of it and, for now at least, it was all they had. Hotels weren’t an option, they couldn’t exactly go back to where she lived with her family and, God knows, he couldn’t bring her back to his place where she’d surely find out what he actually did.
    “Aren’t you?” he said, feigning hurt feelings.
    “I am,” she agreed with a shrug of her shoulders. “And you’re mine.”

***

    It was two weeks later when she showed up at one of their spots wearing sunglasses he’d never seen her wear before, not taking them off as they were seated. On a hunch he reached across the table and removed them, revealing the swollen purple ring of a black eye. Now that he was looking, her lip was swollen, too.
    “What the-”
    “Don’t worry, Peter,” she said quickly, putting her glasses back on.
    “Who did this? I’ll kill him.”
    She had no idea how literally he meant it. “Forget it, Peter. It doesn’t matter.”
    “What do you mean it doesn’t matter. Of course it matters. Who?”
    She shook her head.
    “Who?” he almost shouted, heads turning in their direction.
    “My father. Okay?”
    Sullivan, coiled with anger, crouching just above his chair, sat back down. He looked at her, unsure what to say.
    “So let’s just forget it, okay?” She raised the menu and made a show of perusing it.
    Sullivan picked up his menu and while looking at it said, “It’s time you left home then.”
    “Hmm,” she said, giving him a doubtful glance.
    “It’s time we started making plans,” he said somewhat halfheartedly. He had been contemplating proposing to her. He didn’t think she’d live with him without being married and that was fine. What was holding him back was that he’d have to change jobs. Hell, he’d have to change professions. She’d never approve of his line of work if she knew all it entailed, and it was the only thing he knew. And he didn’t want to keep secrets from her. The fact was, she didn’t know the real him and it made him sad.
    She looked at him over her menu, “Don’t look so morose. Let’s have a drink.”
    Sullivan summoned the waiter and ordered the pinot noir they both liked. He looked at her earnestly and said, “Let’s run away together.”
    This made her laugh out loud. “Are we running, Peter?”
    He shrugged.
    “Or maybe we’re dreaming.” she said.
    “So let’s dream,” he said, sounding a little pitiful to himself as he said it. He knew he was letting himself off the hook, if only for now.
    She smiled sweetly and said, “Where would we go? You have your job and I have my family.”
    “And...?” he said, but knowing as he asked, that was precisely the problem.
    “And everything in it’s time,” she said, punting the discussion into the future.

***

    “Think about it,” Taylor said. “Don’t it make sense? There’s three of us and only one vehicle. At any given time one of us is workin’ a shift and the other two are off. It there were two vehicles then we’d both be mobile. Use yer head, Petey.”
    Sullivan said, “I don’t know. It seems to me we’re getting along just fine as it is. Where is there to go anyway?”
    “Where is there to go? You’re the one who’s in town more than me and Stan put together. The least you can do is put in your third. It’s dirt cheap, anyway.”
    Sullivan grunted noncommittally.
    They were in the jeep, bouncing along on potholed and rutted roads on their way to buy another jeep, heading into a residential section of Nakuru, an area Sullivan had never been to. So far, it looked okay, but he didn’t like going around unarmed and wished he’d brought a gun.
    Taylor had conceived the idea that they needed a second vehicle and took the initiative of locating one and negotiating the price. Now he was presenting it to Sullivan as a fait accompli and taking him to see it while Stan held down the four to midnight shift. Sullivan knew he’d go along, it wasn’t a big deal, but he liked putting up a little resistance since he hadn’t been consulted beforehand.
    “Seems a shame to buy one, though,” Taylor said. “I mean when we could just boost one.”
    “Best if we don’t steal anything around here. We don’t need to draw attention to ourselves.”
    “Hell, Petey. What is it you always say Napoleon said?”
    “Napoleon said a lot of things.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “’A soldier never steals anything, he only finds it.’”
    Taylor laughed out loud. “That’s it! I like that.”
    They drove on, quiet now, each taking in the dusty village they found themselves in. Children, chickens and a few goats shared the road, giving way only in the last possible second to vehicles coming through. Taylor rolled slowly down the street while Sullivan slumped lethargically in the passenger seat. Then he saw her.
    It was from behind, but there was no mistaking her walk and her undulating derriere under her apparel. Her image stood out against the backdrop of the street, he’d know it anywhere. It was Sika. He must be in her neighborhood. She wore her braided hair down instead of up and it swung along the length of her back. As he watched this like a hypnotist’s pendulum, slightly mesmerized, he was about to tell Taylor to pull up to her when he realized for the first time there was someone with her. It was a man. With unblinking eyes he waited for him to turn his head and when he did and Sullivan saw by his profile he was a young man, not her father, he felt his heart begin to sink.
    “Maybe it’s her brother,” Peter said to himself.
    “Huh?” Taylor said next to him.
    And in that moment she took the man’s arm and put her head on his shoulder in a way a woman doesn’t do with her brother and Sullivan felt sick. “Nothing,” he said to Taylor. “Hurry through here,” he added, waving his hand impatiently.
    Taylor sped up slightly and Sullivan turned toward him, turning his back as they passed the two of them. He checked the mirror once they were past. It was her and she was talking animatedly to the brutish looking man next to her.
    Sullivan turned back to see Taylor watching him with a bemused grin.
    “I know her from somewhere,” Sullivan said. “I, I didn’t know she was married, or with someone, or...whatever...”
    “Okay,” Taylor said, not realizing the gravity, to Sullivan, of what they’d just seen. He chuckled to himself while Sullivan looked straight ahead and they bumped along in their jeep.

***

    If I had told you, that would have been the end of it. Not the end, because there never would have been a beginning,” she said.
    “You don’t know that,” Sullivan said.
    “Oh, Peter,” Sika said with a resigned, dismissive gesture and stared defiantly into her wine glass. She was in the wrong and she knew it, but she had her reasons and was taking a stance.
    Sullivan didn’t like this. He was expecting contrition and pleading for understanding and forgiveness. They were at one of their favorite restaurants now, the one where they always got the table in the far back corner, shielded from view by a privacy panel and potted palm.
    He said, “So it’s him who hits you,” changing the subject for the moment, “not your father?”
    “Once Peter. He hit me once.”
    Sullivan didn’t buy this. He’d known lots of men who beat their women and they never did it just once. He didn’t like that she was covering for him. He said, “Are you happy married to him?”
    She looked at him with big doe eyes, “What do you think?”
    “Then leave him. Come with me.”
    “Oh, Peter. It’s not that simple. There’s cultural...” she hesitated, searching for a word, “social considerations.”
    “Then what?” he asked. “Where does that leave us?”
    “Can we just give it time?”
    Now he thought about how she wasn’t prepared to “run away” with him before. The “everything in it’s time” answer again.”
    “I guess,” he heard himself say. “For the time being.”
    “For the time being,” she agreed.
    There was a time not long ago when he would have been perfectly content with this arrangement and he wondered why he wasn’t now. Was he getting soft? Or was he just lonely, or growing up?”
    They finished the meal in relative silence.
    That night on the drive back to camp, alone in the newly acquired jeep, he replayed the evening in his head. He thought about her initial response and her surprising attitude and it bothered him. Inevitably, a thought crept in and he knew he had to examine it. The whole set of circumstances could be fundamentally changed in his favor with one well placed bullet. One pull of a distant trigger could send her into his arms forever. And he wouldn’t necessarily have to do it himself. Best for him to be somewhere else, maybe even with her, and have an alibi. Stan or Taylor would be more than happy to take care of it for him. Neither one of them would think twice about doing it, or ask any questions. Something to think about, he told himself as he looked through the windshield into the night.

***

    What a difference a day made, Sullivan thought the next morning as he started off to work in the new jeep, not having to walk anymore. It was a crystalline morning and all felt in order in nature’s kingdom that surrounded him. He dismissed his dark thoughts of the night before as him being over-tired. Sika’s plea to give things time and let them work themselves out seemed sensible now and he could still imagine a future with the two of them together.
    He relieved Stan, who’d taken to shooting vultures out of boredom. “I think I’m losing my mind out here, Peter,” he said.
    “Losing? Try ‘lost’. You know what’ll happen if they find out we’re shooting game?” Sullivan said.
    “It was only buzzards. Still, you are right. I won’t do it again.”
    Sullivan had his doubts, but he left it at that. He spent a quiet day minding the property line and having no reason to fire his rifle. He could see how the heat, the boredom and the isolation could get to a person, start making him a little crazy. He wondered if it had happened to himself, maybe just a little, without him realizing it. He was seeing Sika the following evening and he was looking forward to it. He was grateful for the connection it gave him to another person, a sane and sensible person, and to a little piece of the outside world. In a way, it was a lifeline to sanity.
    He decided when he saw her tomorrow he would tell her that he agrees that they should let things play out. He’ll go along with the status quo, for now, with the understanding that things would come together for them in due course. The decision gave him a sense of peace as he watched the sun burning lower in the western sky, his day drawing to a close.

***

    Sullivan could see her from a block away, standing in the usual place where she waited for him to pick her up. This time she was holding something he couldn’t make out. When he pulled up in front of her and she climbed into the jeep he saw it was a large basket. She kissed his cheek, looked at him with those big eyes and said, “Today I’m treating you.” She was dressed casually, wearing her long, braided and beaded hair down.
    “Okay,” he said. “So where do you want to go?” He always let her choose the place.
    She pointed straight ahead and said, “Drive.”
    Following her directions, they drove out into the country, to an area of wilderness he hadn’t been before, until she directed him to park in a clearing.
    “From here we walk,” she said. “We’re going on a picnic!”
    “Okay,” he said, going along with the little adventure.
    They followed a path into the bush, Sullivan keeping a wary eye out, wishing he had his rifle with him. The rifle she didn’t know about.
    Sensing his tension, Sika said, “This is a nature preserve. There’s no danger. I like to come here sometimes to walk and think.”
    She directed them to a large Fountain Tree where they could sit in the shade. They found a comfortable spot between the roots and she spread out a colorful blanket for them to sit on.
    Sullivan eased himself to the ground next to her and took in the scenery. “It’s beautiful here.”
    “Mm hmm. It’s my favorite place. And now it’s our place.” She began unpacking the basket. “We have Ugali, Kachumbari and some Mandazi.” She put each item in place, setting a table on the ground for them.
    A light breeze rustled the tree they were under and bristled the tall grass in the distance, sending a split second alarm through Sullivan which she noticed with a glance at him. The breeze had sent a film of dust into the dry air.
    “It’s so dry,” she said. “There hasn’t been enough rain this season and it’s worse than ever now. Water is a constant problem.”
    “Uh huh. You mean lack of.”
    “Yes,” she said, making conversation as she served their early supper. “Ever since K&K Kola took over that land and the bottling company moved here it’s been a problem. That was a big part of the town’s water supply that was cut off.”
    “Is that what happened?”
    “Some people,” she went on, “try to sneak over there to see-”
    “Don’t ever go over there,” he snapped, surprising himself with his own reaction.
    She looked at him, startled. “My, Peter.”
    “I mean it,” he said, a little calmer now. “It’s dangerous. They guard their borders. People get hurt, even killed. Don’t let anyone you know try to trespass on that land.”
    “All right, all right.” She laughed off his almost violent reaction and handed him a plate of Ugali and a small bottle of sparkling water. “Here,” she smiled.
    “Thank you,” he said, starting to relax again, but hoping he got his message across
    “Anyway,” she said, “there are changes coming. There’s an insufficient municipal water supply and the government will have to obtain water rights by condemnation, or something like that. But until then, what are people to do for water?”
    Sullivan didn’t have an answer for that. It wasn’t his problem. His solution was to take her away from all this. Maybe it was time for a change for both of them, anyway. He’d find another line of work.
    “My husband,” she said the word carefully, watching him. “He is involved in the local politics and...”
    Sullivan watched her, waiting for her to go on.
    “...and there may be an answer in a public taking.”
    “Eminent Domain,” Sullivan said.
    “If that’s what you call it.”
    “That’s probably best,” he said.

***

    Time has a way of passing quickly, Sullivan thought, when every day is the same. The status quo with Sika and himself had remained the same. Everything was the same. A little bourbon in his coffee gave him something to brighten up his mornings, he found. A little tip he picked up from Taylor. He poured another cup from his thermos and raised the binoculars to his eyes. He stood up, paying stricter attention now. He sharpened the focus and could make out two people, not wildlife. They were small, though. Kids. They were moving in that jerky way kids do. He watched as they played around at the foot of the fence, looking up at it. They were tempted, maybe, intrigued even, but they weren’t making any serious effort to climb it. Just kids. Sullivan set down the glasses, raised his rifle and fired a shot well over their heads, a warning shot, and it sent them scampering away.
    The view from the stand had become part of his DNA. He could see it in his sleep and he knew it like the back of his hand. He scanned it now looking for wildlife. It was one of the ways he found to relieve boredom. He’d seen giraffes, wildebeests, buffalo and zebras on various occasions. He was becoming something of a birdwatcher, too, able to distinguish the calls of several and regularly sighting Golden Pipit, Pygmy Falcon and Great Blue Turaco.
    It was getting close to noon when Sullivan spotted another trespasser. Two in one day was unusual and both in broad daylight. It was a man this time, not a boy, and a big man at that. He was wearing a backpack and he approached the fence boldly. He picked his way through the foliage stepping over and around the growth. He moved as if he owned the land, like an industrialist walking into one of his factories looking for an errant employee. He was either an arrogant son of a bitch or a damn fool, Sullivan thought. Or maybe both, but he seemed angry. Sullivan could sense it in his movements. He carried nothing with him.
    With little hesitation the man stepped to the fence and put both hands on it, fingers clasping through as if he was about to climb. Sullivan, feeling generous and sensing this was no ordinary poacher, quickly raised his rifle and fired a warning shot through the trees safely above his head, but close enough that he’d hear the bullet ripping through the leaves and know it was directed toward him.
    The big, hulking man remained as he was, but looked in Sullivans direction. He didn’t move. Then he began to climb, defiantly it seemed. Whether he was fearless, stupid or crazy, Sullivan didn’t know, but he had a job to do. He fired another shot over his head, this one closer, but the man kept climbing. Perhaps he thought Sullivan was just a bad shot and he’d make it over the fence and to where he was going. Sullivan watched through the scope as he neared the top and, with surprising agility began to negotiate the angled rows of barbed wire. In a moment, he was triumphantly straddling it, preparing to descend to the other side. Sullivan shot him off the fence at an angle that sent him hurling backward to where he came from and sprawling on the ground where they usually fell. It was an area he jokingly referred to as “the drop zone”, a term from his parachuting days in the Legion.
    With mixed emotions, Sullivan left the tree stand and started the hike out to where the man lay, something he almost never did. Something about this one was bothering him. Walking through the open space in the mean sun, he adjusted his hat, pulling it down over his eyes. The rifle slapped rhythmically on his back with each step. He passed an island of trees at the bend of a swale and marched through the high grass toward the denser foliage, glad he was wearing knee high boots. All the while his mind was in a suspended state of anticipation.
    When he came upon the body he stood for a long time looking at the face. It was a dead man’s face, slack and revealing nothing. Why?, Sullivan wanted to ask him, but he was dead as dead can be. Moments before he was a man with agency and intentions then, in an instant, he was converted to an inanimate object. His life force, spirit, flown. Sullivan used the toe of his boot gently against the dead man’s jaw to turn his head toward him. Looking at his face straight on now he knew. There was no doubt it was him. Sika’s husband.
    There was nothing to do but leave the body where it was and hope, once again, that someone found it before the vultures and other wildlife did. He left the area and trouped back to the stand, questions swirling in his head.

***

    Fat drops of rain splattered the dirty streets outside, making mud run off to the sides where anyone caught in the sudden deluge had to negotiate the puddles while seeking the most immediate shelter. Sullivan watched drearily from inside thinking anyone could see the rain was coming. Why didn’t they plan ahead?
    Sika sat across from him at their table by the window, watching him watch the rain. She was dressed all in black, a stark contrast from her usual colorful attire. She looked good in black, but he knew better than to say so at the moment. It would be a simple complement, but she’d read a deeper meaning into it.
    “I know what you’re thinking,” she said finally, searching him with her eyes. “I appreciate you’re not saying it.”
    “What?”
    “‘I told you so.’ You told me not to let anyone I know try to enter onto that land.”
    Sullivan agreed with a nod, but didn’t say anything more.
    “He does what he wants, Peter. I couldn’t stop him.”
    Sullivan nodded again, deliberately not saying much for fear of saying something revealing. After a moments silence he tried, “Why-”
    “I don’t know, Peter. I told you he was involved in some of the politics. I wonder. There was going to be an action to claim water rights. Maybe he had business there.”
    Not that way, Sullivan thought. People with official business don’t have to climb fences to get in. He looked around the cafe, filling up now with people getting out of the rain, adding a little vibrancy to their mournful afternoon, when a realization began to dawn on him. It came slowly from afar at first, then settled uneasily in his stomach. Good Christ, he thought, have I been used? But looking at the face of this newly widowed young woman he saw the same earnestness that peered out at the world that he had always seen in her and couldn’t believe it could be true.
    “So what now?” he asked, hoping to move on to a more cheerful discussion of the future, but drawing big sad eyes that were slightly reproachful, instead.
    “I have to mourn, Peter. There is a period of mourning.”
    “Of course.” For how long? he wanted to ask, but held his tongue. This wasn’t at all how Sullivan thought it might be when he’d pondered what he’d done, what happened out on that borderline. He thought after the initial shock (was there shock?) she’d be happy about it. Her husband’s death solved their problem, removing the barrier to their being together. The fact that she wasn’t happy bothered him and was slowly starting to anger him. What, if anything, did he, Sullivan, mean to her? That trespasser on the fence wasn’t just a trespasser, he was a vandal that left his mark, a mark of doubt. “I understand.”
    “How would it look,” she asked, “if my husband’s not even cold in his grave and I’m taking up with another man?”
    “I understand,” Sullivan said again.
    “Well, he’s in a better place now.”
    Sullivan let that go by. There was no percentage in having that discussion.
    “And the water source must be protected,” she said bitterly, leveling an unsettling gaze at him.
    “I hope something can be worked out through the courts,” Sullivan said noncommittally.

***

    Sullivan stared hard through the binoculars into the jungle, still wet with rain from the night before. He thought he discerned movement in the mist that hung like steam, not dissipating. He held his gaze for another thirty seconds without seeing any further movement and broke his stare to pour himself more coffee from his thermos. The ratio of coffee to bourbon had been gradually reversing itself over the past few weeks so that now it was probably sixty/forty in favor of bourbon. He told himself he deserved to treat himself, especially now with having to deal with Sika and her ever darkening moods. It had been two months since she’d become a widow and she was showing no sign of emotional healing. Her mental attitude also remained bitter and, while he was trying to be understanding, he couldn’t help but ask himself again, just what he was to her, now or ever. Their future together could be bright now, but she didn’t seem to want to move on and it left him in the doldrums.
    There was an elephant path at the far end of the plain, visible from where he stood. Sullivan occasionally saw trackers moving along it following the elephant dung. As he scanned over that area now he could see two men on foot, but they weren’t his concern. He looked back, scoping along the borderline and caught a flash of something, a bird perhaps. Still watching, a few minutes later he saw it again, more substantial this time. The figure ducked under and climbed over obstacles in the brush, which in spots was so dense a person could hardly move. There was no question now that it was a person, a teenager perhaps, or a slightly built, heavily clothed man wearing a gray hoodie.
    Sullivan had never shot a child, never had to and didn’t want to. A teenager was borderline—not a child, but not really an adult. The bottom line, though, was if the person climbed the fence they were fair game and he had a job to do. He fired a warning shot through the trees and listened to the report echo across the plain. In the forested area the person froze momentarily then continued toward the fence, moving in a familiar manner. The manner of the locals, he thought.
    The person seemed to be searching for an opening in the fence. Was there one? Sullivan wondered now with a rush of concern. Had he missed something? Could trespassers be getting through without him knowing it? He’d go over there later to check. He lowered the rifle to take another sip from his cup. When he looked back nothing had changed.
    Something made him fire another warning shot, this one lower in the air, but safely above the head. At that, the subject in the hoodie clasped the fence and hurriedly began to climb. With a vague sense of disgust at the stupidity, Sullivan held the climber in the cross hairs, deciding that if he wasn’t going to be able to surmount the barbed wire section he’d let him safely drop back to the ground. But as he watched, the climber was making it over the barbed wire through sheer abandon, no doubt tearing arms and legs in the process.
    Sullivan took careful aim and fired. The person reeled backward, arms flailing before the fall and in that instant Sullivan saw something that made him sick.
    It couldn’t be. He had to be seeing things, he thought, as he descended the ladder to the ground, rifle in hand. He ran most of the way there, slowing to a walk at times to catch his breath. The bourbon had gone to his head more than he’d realized.
    He arrived at the sight winded, nauseous and more frightened than he could remember ever being to find the body of his latest kill lying on it’s side facing away from him. Dropping to his knees he grabbed the shoulder and rolled the body toward him. The hood of the sweatshirt remained stuck in the mud and the hair spilled out as her face turned to him.
    Sika’s face looked at peace, framed by the small baby ferns on the ground. Somewhere echoed a primal, anguished scream that seemed to span the continent and the centuries at once. He only recognized it as his own as he heaved the morning’s coffee and liquor onto the ground and reached for his rifle.

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