No, he wasn’t sitting around waiting to die in a snowstorm. He rolled his eyes. So, the shooter out there had to be dealt with. Well that’s what he did. But then what?
“Is the SUV drivable?” Mac asked. “You’ve got a blown-out tire? Is that all? Is there a spare?”
“Probably yes, to all of that,” Norton said wearily. “But that shooter isn’t going to just sit out there and let us change a tire, Mac.”
“Shooter is my problem,” Mac responded. He considered the situation. The visibility was shit. The shooter knew where they were. He didn’t know where the shooter was. “So why don’t you think it’s a deputy reserve of yours?”
Norton shrugged and then winced as he learned you don’t want to shrug when you’ve been shot in the shoulder. “My men are loyal to me or I wouldn’t have brought them out here on this war games exercise,” he pointed out.
“And ordered them to kill,” Mac said. “And they did.”
Norton shrugged, and winced again. Mac wanted to laugh. But he knew how almost subconscious certain physical moves were. Part of him wanted to see how many times he could make Norton shrug before he trained himself not to do that.
“So, let’s talk about Sensei,” Mac said.
“Give me a break,” Norton muttered. “We’re out here freezing to death with a shooter. And you’re asking me about a mysterious online man?”
“Well, you came out here on his orders, didn’t you?” Mac asked. “Who else was there to stage this?”
Norton was silent. He sat huddled over, his eyes closed as if his head hurt. It probably did. Mac didn’t care.
“Yeah, I was going to come out with Craig,” Norton said finally. “Got an email suggesting instead that it was time to test each other and ourselves. And that I should take out a dozen or so deputies. And he gave some instructions about where to find the teams.”
“OK,” Mac said. “Did he tell you to shoot at us?”
Norton started to shrug his agreement, and stopped mid shrug. He sighed. “Yeah.”
“Did he tell you to kill?” Mac pursued.
Norton was silent. “Those weren’t in my instructions,” he said at last. “To wound, if opportunity presented itself. But... Craig tells me there are several people dead, and that he’s sure you didn’t do it, because you were with him.”
“Not me,” Mac agreed. He didn’t bother to get indignant that they could think such a thing, or any of that shit. He was perfectly capable of killing, and everyone here knew it.
“So, are there other deputy reserves who are part of Sensei’s inner circle who might have received different instructions?” Mac asked. “Or did a couple of your guys go rogue and kill because the kill-lust got to them when they started hunting humans?”
Norton was silent, then he said, “It’s that or there’s a third party out here. Because after all? Why have a party with two factions when you could add a third?”
Mac rocked back on his heels as he considered that idea. He had been wondering if this shooter was someone separate. He suspected it might be Sensei himself. Just as he thought that the coup d’ grace of the almost-escaped hunted man two weeks ago was done by Sensei. But he wasn’t sharing his theories. Not yet. Not here. And not with these men.
“So, what about the rest of your deputy reserves?” Mac asked, still trying to figure out who was out there and what he faced if he went after him.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re missing about six men,” Mac said. “Seven? You brought in 10 guys. You left with one, who is here. I brought out two, one is with Rand and one is here with me. Jesus, this is like those damn story problems in eighth grade math. If the train leaves at 10 a.m. going 60 mph and the car leaves from the other direction going 70 mph.... So, Norton? You sent seven men out chasing me after you thought you had Angie and I isolated. The reckoning is still due you for that by the way — me? Fine, but including Angie? That was not OK.”
“Sensei’s orders, last night,” Norton said. “Your camp is too far out for Internet, but my camp has phone service. He said to let everyone go but you and the girl. And then...,” he trailed off.
“And then it was a Sunday hunt like usual?” Mac asked. “How many of your missing men have been on your Sunday hunts before?”
“All of them,” he said.
“So, they also got instructions from Sensei,” Mac concluded. “Something different than what you were told. Taking the car to Ken? That was your idea?”
“Yeah, Ken argued that he had wounded who wouldn’t make it if he didn’t have a second vehicle.”
So, then the question became what did Sensei tell one of the missing men? Mac thought about it. If he were Sensei, what would he do?
Well, that depended upon Sensei’s goals and how much of a threat he thought Norton had become to his control over his followers.
“What did Sensei tell you was the point of the war games?” Mac asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What was the point? What made you the winner? Or Craig? Or me? Wars have goals, man. Not always the goals that the public is told, but they have goals. And good commanders know how a win is defined. If you don’t, you end up in Afghanistan for 20 years. So, what was the point?”
Norton considered this. “I don’t know what Sensei’s point was,” he said slowly. “I know my goal was to beat the crap out of you, preferably with my hands, and to still be sheriff come Monday. And coming along with Craig would have suited that goal much better than this fucked up mess.”
Mac
