T.K. Kenyon's Blog, page 2

Chapter Four: Blood on the Sand, of Selling Handcuffs, An Angel Day Novel

Okay, folks. Here's "Chapter Four: Blood on the Sand" of the novel Selling Handcuffs, An Angel Day Novel. 


If you haven't read Chapter Three: The Secret Police State, it's here.

If you haven't read any of the preceding chapters, start with Chapter One: The Stash House.

I finished the first draft about an hour ago. Whew. That was a slog. There's still a lot that needs to be done. I know of one scene that I'm going to cut, and at least two scenes to add, but I wrote what will probably be the last sentence. Yea!

The fact that I finished the first draft means that I'll be posting these a lot more frequently. I was always worried that I was going to catch up to myself.

This chapter includes the First Pinch, which is where we see who the Antagonist is and begin to see what they can do. We see in what ways he opposes our Protagonist and some of his weapons. In this case, the Antagonist has a really big gun.

At the First Pinch, things start to get very serious for the Protagonist, our sniper chick Angel Day, and the casualties begin.

As I said, I'm done with the first draft, and there appear to be nine major chapters plus inter-scenes, like the Prologue: Swan Dive that I posted a while ago.

Thanks for reading!




Angel crawled down the warm desert mountain one inch at a time, one leg and then one arm, taking care not to rustle the thorny bushes all around and above her more than the wind already was. Pebbles grated under her knees. Her fingers were sore from pulling herself over sharp rocks.
Dawn broke over the desert hills on her right, throwing gaudy rose and orange light down into the desert valley. Cacti, bushes, and boulders cast long navy blue shadows.
She had been crawling for an hour.
When Angel was a child, she had liked dawn. Her grandfather had sung the greeting song to the sun every day, and she had joined him. She wished she remembered the song. She could sing it in her head now, to greet the beauty of the day, even though this day might end with death.
She hoped not. Tony had been clear: to save the SAU and her team, this siege or whatever it was had to end with guys walking out of that house, shaking hands with the negotiators, and stepping into cars to be driven out.
Yet, those guys in the compound down there weren’t just some gun nuts who liked big bangs. Garden-variety gun nuts were harmless. These suspects had already fired on Sheriff Hardigger and his deputies and killed a horse, just for riding up and looking official. Angel didn’t like people who killed animals, even if they were shooting at the humans. That was cruel, and piss-poor shooting, too.
Most importantly, these suspects had been transporting military-grade weapons. Chances were good that that truckful had not been the first. All sorts of weapons might be stockpiled in that cement house that squatted in the desert.
The odds were that those suspects were hunkered down in there for a reason. Reasons in the Arizona desert were usually bad reasons: drug smuggling or, worse, human trafficking.
When she had been in the FBI, Angel had once interrogated a man who trafficked women for the sex trade. He had said that it was much more lucrative to traffic people than drugs. Drugs, he could only sell once. Women, or the occasional young man, he could sell again and again, sometimes a dozen times a day. He had laughed about it.
Angel had made sure that asshole went to prison.
Those guys, down below her on the desert basin floor, the ones with military weapons, were probably up to something similar, and they had to bring them in peaceably.
The best way to smoke someone out is to set something on fire.
The dawn didn’t seem peaceful to her anymore. She needed to get into position to start sending intel back to the command post. The negotiators needed information, any information, to begin their work.
First, they needed to figure out how to make contact.
Thus, they needed eyes on that house. That was Angel’s job.
Angel crawled along the desert floor like a gliding patch of summer fog, flattened by her ghillie suit. The ghillie suit, a long burlap robe painted with ragged black and olive stripes and then woven with bush branches, had some new foliage on it this morning. Spring had blossomed in the desert, so yesterday after the meetings, she and her team had topped off their suits with some gray-green Turpentine bush, bladder sage, blue-eyed scorpion weed, and a few tiny daisy-like yellow brittle bush flowers. Looking like the only dead spot in the blooming desert would have given them away. While they were picking the wildflowers, Mace had driven by and laughed at them for such a girlish pursuit. Jack had turned redder until Angel reminded him that they, the sniper team, would be seeing action immediately, while the assault teams would be cooling their heels, waiting, like the wussies they were.
Jack had calmed down. He hadn’t really been mad. His adrenaline had just been looking for an outlet.
Angel knew that feeling.
After they had prepped their ghillie suits and weapons for their long hikes and crawls over the mountains ringing the house and its clearing, Angel had given her team a subdued pep talk.
“This is probably going to be a long haul, guys,” she had told them, as they gathered under the Arizona sunset that fractured and burned the sky. “Probably nothing will happen today, though the first few hours of any operation are precarious. We need to be alert and ready, but not ready to fight.  “We can’t give in to shakes or giddiness. This standoff is going to last for days or weeks. We won’t know what is really going on until we get eyes on the house, and even then, we won’t know much until the negotiators do their job and we get information from inside the house.”
Angel sighed, overcome with the beastly contradiction of it all.
“Then, if we get complacent, if we slack off on surveillance or readiness, that’s when they’ll hit us. They were trucking some serious shit into that house: a grenade launcher and fifty-caliber ammunition. That ammo could be for a machine gun, or it could be for a long-range sniper’s rifle. Keep your heads down. Stay low. Don’t poke your heads up over those ridges like a cantaloupe on a plinking ridge or they might counter-snipe you. The most important thing is to stay safe, and then to do surveillance. Let’s not kill anybody today, if we can help it.”
She told them to go out there, lie still, and wait patiently. To be passive and quiet. To feel the zen and let their chi flow. That adrenaline-killing pep talk would have made any football coach worth his salt have an aneurysm.
Afterward, Jack Jordan’s frown was distressing. He pretended to be a gung-ho cold-blooded murderer, but it was an act. If he didn’t have his act, Angel was only moderately sure that his training would allow him to do his job and shoot to stop.
Yet, this operation was best approached with a cool head.
The grim sniper teams headed out, two by two. They would each take a Sheriff’s car over the paved roads, then leave it and hike to their position.
Now, Angel and her men were crawling through the desert to find a protected vantage point above the compound to set up their weapons and spotting scopes. Because this was a large operation, each sniper team was composed of two people: a sniper and a spotter.
About ten feet behind her, Hunter Yarnall, her spotter, crawled through the desert brush and scrub under his own ghillie suit.
Hunter was the least capable sniper on her team, which made him the number eight sniper, and that was why he was with her. On any other munie sniper team, Hunter probably would have been one of the better shots. On her team, he was their fuck-up, the goon who thought he shot just fine because he had been born and bred in the hills of West Virginia, and everyone knows that West Virginia mountain boys are the best natural snipers around. Why, he drawled over and over, he could shoot the eye out of a squirrel at two hundred yards.
The problem was that they were about three-quarters of a mile from the squat, ranch-style house, around thirteen hundred yards, and there were no West Virginian squirrels in the Sonoran Desert. While the legend was that Southern mountain boys made the best snipers, Angel knew that the world’s best marksmen were technicians who have mastered trajectory formulae, timing, and physiological discipline.
Hunter was improving, though, so she had kept him on the team. He had lost most of his hillbilly moonshine-and-beer belly in recent months since Angel had been insisting on proper training, and she was pleased with his progress, even if he was her slow child.
She listened for him, and occasionally heard him kick a rock or jostle a bush, but he was doing pretty well. He was moderately good at stalking in the desert, though he’d grown up in the Back East coal country.
She reached a small bare spot shielded by some boulders and shimmied over to the side, next to an enormous prickly pear cactus and a shin dagger agave plant, waiting for Hunter to catch up. There was a nice outcropping of rock at the base of the clearing that they could use as a protective barrier. As long as they didn’t stand up and dance around, they would be protected by the rocks and have an unobstructed view of the house.
When a bushy patch of desert slithered into the clear spot beside her, she reached over, grabbing Hunter’s arm.
She heard the slightest intake of his breath and the bushy patch jumped a little, but certainly nothing to give them away. She set the edge of her ghillie suit on top of his, then tented the fabric between them so they could whisper under the cover. The ghillie suit fabric cast a heavy shadow on them both, and Hunter’s wet blue eyes glared out from between the green and black stripes painted on his face.
Angel raised her fist, signaling to stop.
Hunter nodded and slowly lifted the fabric in front of him, peering down on the house, far below. He whispered, very quietly, “Way down there, huh?”
She put her finger to her lips, signaling silence, and pointed feetward, toward their gun bags. They both reeled in their bags that they had dragged behind them, tethered to their ankles.
Angel had only brought her fifty-caliber long-range sniping rifle, because she sure as heck wasn’t going to drag two bags though the desert just in case she got close enough to use her .308. The fifty-caliber Barrett M82A1 rifle was considered an anti-materiel weapon because one round will punch a fist-sized hole through the engine block of any vehicle, but it’s an excellent sniping rifle, too. Unless those guys had a fully armored tank in there, Angel could shoot to stop anything that they could roll out.
She doubted they had a fully armored tank in there. She might be facing anything short of a tank, but probably not a tank.
The first thing that she pulled out of her drag bag was the spotting scope because she wanted to lay eyeballs on that house down there before she even set up her gun. From under the cover of her ghillie suit, she unfolded the bipod legs of her spotting scope, set them on the rocks in front of them, and gingerly pushed the scope’s turret out so that the fabric still rested on it, shading the lens from the sun that might flash on the glass.
The sun had risen over the mountains surrounding the small valley, and bright white sunlight poured over the hills and down. The shadows were still long as the sunlight rolled over the beige and dusty green valley floor.
Angel blinked at the brightness. Her eyes had become accustomed to the shadow of the ghillie suit, and the sunlight hurt her eyes. She squinted to cut the glare as she surveyed the high desert and the house.
The blue-painted house was still. Dark shades were drawn across the windows. It was possible that, after Sheriff Hardigger and the horse Giant Mark were shot last night, everyone in the house bugged out and gone to ground. Angel sure as heck wouldn’t have waited for the authorities to come back with reinforcements, if she were inclined to be on the other side of the law.
She didn’t think like that often. She understood basic criminal psychology, but she did not allow herself of fantasize about crossing over to the dark side, to use the old metaphor. Some of her relatives were on the wrong side in various capacities. It was one of the hazards of living near the Border: too many bad opportunities.
It was just after six o’clock in the morning, and the house was quiet. Few criminals were early risers, in Angel’s experience.
The air conditioner, a cube on the roof of the house, hummed. The air-conditioned house was probably sealed up, and the air conditioner itself would muffle any little noise from the outside. She leaned over to Hunter. “The AC is on. We can whisper.”
Above her, Angel’s ghillie suit began to heat in the sun. Even though it was loosely woven burlap, it trapped the desert heat like a wool blanket. Hunter and Angel had each packed in several canteens of water, but it was going to be a hot, thirsty day of laying prone in the desert.
She dragged up and assembled her sniper rifle, marrying the upper receiver to the lower one, just in case, but she stayed on the spotting scope for its larger field of view. She kept the long rifle beside her, under the ghillie suit. Its hard stock and barrel nudged her hip.
Beside her, Hunter set up his spotting scope and trained it down the mountain at the house.
She used the laser range-finder on the spotting scope to lase the house. They were thirteen hundred and five yards from the house’s corner. She turned the dial of her Barrett Optical Ranging System until the screen read 1305. The BORS was a tiny ballistics computer mounted on top of her rifle scope and coupled to the elevation knob. The BORS compensated for temperature, change in barometric pressure, and angled uphill or downhill. It even determined if the rifle was level or canted to the side. Once set, it accessed thousands of preprogrammed ballistics tables to correct her shot. Basically, it was a miracle that allowed her to shoot to stop faster than ever.
With the range dialed in, she was set to kill anything down there.
She activated her radio. “Day to Command Post. Side one bravo sniper team is in position,” she whispered. “Thirteen hundred and five yards off the one-two corner, about one-third of the way down the north slope of the south-side mountain. Break.”
An unfamiliar male voice said over the radio, “Received, side one bravo sniper team in position. Rules of engagement are at compromised authority. Snipers, acknowledge. Break.”
“Copy. Side one sniper team acknowledges rules of engagement are at compromised authority. Ready with intel on the house.”
“Copy. Go ahead.”
Angel wondered who the guy at the command post was. Probably someone from Mesa or one of the Southern Arizona deputies.
She focused her spotting scope on the first window. Dark iron bars were installed over the glass that reflected the glowing orange sunrise. Her crosshairs cut the window into four quadrants.
Angel whispered into the radio, “The house is a one-story, ranch-style house. Five openings on the ‘one’ side,” Angel said.
To label the sides of a house for intel or assaults, the sides of the house are numbered clockwise around the house. The side with the front door is designated as side one. Floors, if more than one, would be numbered vertically, but this ranch house was only one story. Windows and doors are numbered from the left side of the building to the right.
Angel began with the leftmost window on the front of the house. “Metal security bars cover all the windows on side one. Window one-one-one looks like a bedroom window, dark blinds closed, no lights or movement.” She adjusted the spotting scope to zoom in on the bars. “There appear to be hinges on the right side of the metal security bars. They’re probably the kind that can be unlatched from inside the house.
“Window one-one-two,” Angel continued, which meant side one, floor one, opening number two, “also appears to be a bedroom, dark blinds closed, no movement. Metal security bars with, again, hinges on the right-hand side. Window one-one-three is the same: bedroom, dark blinds closed, no movement, and metal security bars with hinges on the right side.
“Opening one-one-four is the front door. It’s a double door, so there are two doors, dark in color like painted wood or metal.” She zoomed the optics of the spotting scope to inspect the crack where the door met the wall. “Hinges are inside the door, so the front doors swing inward.”
She moved to look at the doorknob. The crosshairs settled on the keyhole. “The keyhole is on the left door, so that’s probably the primary door. One deadbolt lock, about eighteen inches above the doorknob on the left-side door, also suggest that the left-side door is the primary one.”
Beside her, Hunter leaned toward her and whispered, “Two deadbolts. One below the knob.”
Angel shifted the magnified circle of bright sunlight down and gave Hunter a thumbs-up for his call. “Another deadbolt, also on the left-side door, is about eighteen inches below the doorknob, for a total of two deadbolts. Again, two deadbolt locks, one above and one below the doorknob.
“Window one-one-five is larger, about four feet wide by three feet high, and appears to be a living room window. Again, dark blinds and no movement.” She zoomed and inspected every side of the window, but the metal security bars all ended in bolts anchored into the concrete, not hinges. “There are metal security bars on the one-one-five window, but there appear to be no hinges on these bars. The one-one-five metal security bars do not appear to open in any direction.
“Conclusion: no movement at this time. Side one bravo sniper team, break,” Angel said.
“Command post copies, side one sniper team,” the man said over the radio. “Happy hunting. Break.”
“Side one sniper team to command post, thanks. Break.”
The command post was an air-conditioned recreational vehicle set up almost two miles away on a paved road. The enormous batteries could run the RV for ten hours, but since it was so far away, they had probably broken out the generator, so it could run indefinitely.
They listened to the other three sniper teams report in and describe the compound. The sliding-glass arcadia door on side three, opposite their living room window, had a sliding, metal-barred security door installed over it.
Every opening to the house was barred, ready to be defended.
Four vehicles were parked on side four: two sedans and two pick-up trucks, doubtlessly driven down the dirt road despite the high fire danger.
Angel didn’t like this situation at all.
If the suspects had evacuated the house after they shot at Sheriff Hardigger last night, they would have taken the cars and probably turned off the air conditioning and generators.
The barricaded cement house, cleared of brush for a hundred yards all around, looked like it had been prepped for military siege.
This might end very, very badly. Ruby Ridge bad. Waco bad.
On the sides of the house, outbuildings appeared to house a generator and fuel storage tanks, as snipers reported their assumptions from the power lines leading to the house and fuel ports sticking through the walls. If the standoff went on for a while, they could cut the power lines into the house, which meant that the house would get very hot, very fast. It might reach a hundred and fifty degrees within a day, hot enough to dry beef jerky.
Cutting the power lines might provoke the suspects to fight for their lives.
If there was a firefight, they would have to angle the lines of fire to avoid the fuel tanks. There was thought to be a propane tank in one of the sheds. A bullet, ripping though it, would explode the tank with the force of a small nuclear bomb.
This was not a usual standoff, but it had one thing in common with all standoffs: time. Lots of time. Angel settled in for a long, hot day of scanning the windows with Hunter.
Hot sunlight settled on the ghillie suit on her back. The burlap was getting hot.
Heat didn’t impress Angel. Growing up in southern Arizona had toughened her up for heat, snakes, and scorpions.
“All right, Hunter,” she whispered. “You ready?”
“Yep,” he whispered back.
“Here we go. One-one-one, clear.”
“One-one-one, clear,” he repeated. His West Virginia drawl drew “clear” out to two syllables, like clee-uh.
They moved on to the one-one-two window, cleared it, and so on, and they cycled through the openings on their side of the building again and again, watching for any movement to radio back to the command post.
The temperature in their makeshift tent rose, and sweat trickled down Angel’s back. The dirt and sand under them, once night-time cool, warmed from their body heat and the hot air. It was early May, which meant that the daytime temperatures in Phoenix would be over a hundred degrees. Out in the southern deserts, they would be ten or fifteen degrees cooler, probably eighty-five to ninety. In August, the air out here would feel like sticking your head in a hot oven. Angel hoped the standoff didn’t last through the summer. They would have to cycle teams back to Phoenix, because Phoenix needed SWAT teams on standby.
That would reduce the number of teams out here, which meant that teams might need to stand twelve-hour shifts instead of eight-hour ones.
Could be worse. Angel had spent three days pinned down in an African siege one time, but she didn’t like to think about those times anymore. Tonight, she would sleep in a nice, cheap motel with clean sheets.
After scrolling through each of the openings on their side of the house in turn, constantly, for two hours and reporting and confirming the lack of any action among themselves and to the command post, Hunter mentioned to Angel, “The guys said that we-all are going hunting for rattlesnake eggs after work tonight.”
“One-one-three, clear,” Angel whispered. Her voice was throaty with heat and thirst. She wasn’t sure she had heard Hunter correctly. “Rattlesnake eggs?”
“One-one-three, clear,” Hunter said. “Yep. They said it’s a local delicacy, that they taste jus’ like chicken eggs, but they’ve got massive amounts of protein that will really bulk ya up.” Hunter was proud of his better physique, too.
“One-one-four, clear. Who told you this, Hunter?” Angel didn’t like practical jokes. Too often, they weren’t funny, just mean.
“One-one-four, clear. Jack and Udall. Why?”
“One-one-five, clear. Hunter, there’s no such thing as rattlesnake eggs. Rattlesnakes give birth live baby snakes.”
“One-one-five, clear. So it’s all a snipe hunt, then?”
“So to speak, yes, the snipers are sending you on a snipe hunt. Sorry about that. They can be jackasses. One-one-one, clear.”
“One-one-one, clear. I jus’ feel stupid for falling for it.”
“Don’t. Happens to everybody. One-one-two window is clear. When we get back, tell them that before you can go rattlesnake egg hunting, I need them to fill out an ID-ten-T form, pronto.” “One-one-two, clear. What’s that?”
“Spell it out. Window one-one-three, clear.”
“One-one-three, clear.”
Angel heard him mutter under his breath between the next couple of confirmations. “Oh, I get it. I-D-1-0-T. ‘Idiot.’ That’s funny.”
“They’ll lay off. Don’t let them get under your skin. One-one-one, clear.”
“One-one-one, clear,” he confirmed. “I guess I have to take it because I’m number eight.”
“One-one-two, clear. That better not be the reason. We don’t need that kind of junior-high-mean-girl shit on this team. I’ll talk to them.” Hunter was a decent sniper. A little good-natured hazing for new guys, she could handle. She sure as hell wasn’t going to put up with her team bullying the weak link.
“One-one-two, clear. Nah. Don’t. I’ll make sure they run around good, trying to find the ID-ten-T form.” He grinned. His striped greasepaint blended in with the deep shadow of their ghillie suit hide, and his crooked teeth shined white like the Cheshire Cat.
“That’s a boy. Tell them Sheriff Hardigger personally keeps the ID-10-T forms.” Her Uncle David had no patience for fools. Angel grinned at Hunter and felt a smear of green greasepaint on her teeth. She licked off the bitter paint and returned to peer through the telescopic sight installed on her gun. “One-one-three, clear.”
“One-one-three, clear,” he said.
“One-one-four, clear.”
“One-one-four, clear.”
“One-one-five, did you see that?” she asked. One-one-five was the picture window in the living room.
“Yep,” Hunter said. “The blinds moved to the side for a minute. I think somebody’s home.”
Angel keyed her radio mic. “Command Post, this is sniper team one. Window one-one-five, the blinds moved. Somebody’s home.”
It was eight-thirty in the morning.
“Command Post to sniper team one. You sure about that? Break.” The man she didn’t know was still in the command post.
“Sniper team one,” Angel confirmed. “Both team members confirm movement of blinds at window one-one-five.”
“Copy that, sniper team one.”
“Have the negotiators established contact yet?” Angel asked.
“No,” the man said. “Break.”
After another three hours of watching the house that did absolutely nothing, Angel made the call to the sniper teams to rotate observation. One person would watch the house for two hours while the other team member rested, then they switched. Constant surveillance was too tiring for even the best-trained snipers and led to eye strain. If anything happened, the sniper teams would return to the spotter-sniper combination.
“Okay, men,” she said, “go to rotation. Remember: readiness, not trigger-happiness.”
Angel took the first shift, while Hunter lay under his ghillie suit, restless. Adrenaline was getting the better of him, and Angel whispered to him to keep him from moving around too much. Though a breeze riffled the bushes around them, someone familiar with these mountains, as those suspects down there doubtlessly were, would notice motion that wasn’t quite right.
Two hours later, she tapped Hunter to wake him up. Hunter jumped a little when she touched him, but he didn’t pop up above their blind.
Angel waited while he assembled his sniping rifle and stabilized it on the rocky outcropping. He lay prone but for his back muscles holding up his torso like an angry cobra.
She napped for most of her two hours off, which was good for restoring concentration and resting one’s eyes. She slept lightly, curled around her gun, more dozing than dreaming. If anything had happened, anything at all, she could have lifted her head under the ghillie suit, trained her rifle on the right place, and fired with all the drama of swatting an alarm clock.
Instead, nothing happened.
That was the way of most standoffs: a whole lot of nothing and waiting, and then an unanticipated flash that meant death.
Hunter laid down to rest his eyes. “Nada,” he whispered.
Angel had settled in to watch. For an hour, she scanned each opening in turn through the circled cross on her gun’s scope, silently chanting to herself, One-one-one, clear; one-one-two, clear.
Window one-one-three was not clear.
The dark blind had been raised to the top of the window.
Behind the metal security bars, the metal frame slid to the right as glass opened. Diaphanous white fabric, a curtain, drifted in the breeze behind the glass.
She whispered into her radio, “Sniper team one to command post. Window one-one-three is opening.”
The same strange male voice said, “Command post to sniper team one. We copy. ”
She reached over and shook Hunter’s arm hard under their ghillie suit blanket.
Hunter sat straight up, becoming a tall tent pole under the bushy burlap.
The ghillie suit’s fabric withdrew around Angel like a receding wave, exposing two feet of the sniping rifle’s long barrel, from the middle all the way to the flattened muzzle brake at the end that reminded Angel of a rattlesnake’s bulbous, poisonous head.
Angel grabbed her gun’s stock, applied her finger to the trigger, and stayed on her scope, watching that curtain, even though Hunter had exposed most of her rifle and damn near blinded her in the sunlight. She blinked tears out of her sun-stung eyes.
Her trigger finger coiled, pulling the trigger to within a hair’s breadth of the break, where the gun would fire.
The curtain puffed toward them, and Angel saw a burnt starburst in the fabric.
“Gun,” she said both into the radio and to Hunter as the sound of the shot cracked through the air and echoed off the stony mountains around them. “Hunter, get down.”
The breath of a bullet’s passing feathered her face.
Hunter fell down, backward, the wrong way.
The ghillie suit fabric pulled back farther, exposing more of Angel’s gun.
Hunter twitched. He gurgled.
Damn it, he’d been hit.
Angel was as calm as a shark floating in deep water, even though Hunter might be dying behind her, as she prepared to return fire at the shooter below. She stilled her breath, quieted her mind, and curled her finger to release the bullet.
Through her scope, she watched the bullet’s vapor trail burrow through the air.
Her round passed through the burnt hole in the curtain, and the fabric fluttered backward. “Shots fired,” Angel whispered into her microphone. “Shots returned under compromised authority.”
“Were the shots fired at you?” the command post asked. “Are you sure?”
Behind Angel, Hunter gasped and flinched.
“Yes,” she said.
She watched window one-one-three, staring at its iron bars and glaring glass. “Hunter? Hunter!” she whispered.
The ghillie suit fabric all around her vibrated, and Angel feared the worst for Hunter.
The glass in window one-one-three slowly closed.
“Hunter? Are you okay?” she whispered.
No answer.
She scanned the other openings, then rotated through them again, checking, but there was no movement at any of the windows.
It was dangerous, and Angel knew it was stupidly dangerous and that she shouldn’t do it because she should stay on the gun to protect herself and Hunter from more gunshots, but she took her hands off her weapon and retreated under the ghillie suit fabric to check on Hunter.
She lifted the fabric at the back to let some sunlight in.
The bullet, a very large round, had penetrated the back of Hunter’s skull when he had sat up and had blown out his face. His head looked like someone had smashed him from behind with a bowling ball. Gore stained the back of the ghillie suit and the desert behind them.
Grief pierced her.
Angel keyed her radio. “Officer down,” she whispered. “Hunter’s been hit. I need medical assistance and extraction.” Damn it, she should have protected him. He was her number eight. Her chest hurt with grief and guilt.
“We’re coming,” the man’s voice on the radio said. “How the hell did they hit you?”
The only weapon that could explode a man’s head at thirteen hundred yards and uphill was a fifty-caliber sniper rifle, just like her own. “We were counter-sniped,” she whispered into the radio. “Hunter sat up, and they got him. Bravo team,” she said to her Phoenix team, all of whom were on the mountains around the house. “They have a fifty-caliber sniping rifle. Take cover.”
“Is he okay?” the unknown man in the command post asked.
“Fuck, no, he’s not okay.” Hunter bled out his neck and the ragged crescent that was the remnant of his head. Angel laid her hand on his back, wanting to comfort his spirit, if it was still there. She wanted to put his head back together, to make it stop. Damn it, she should have protected him better.  “Is he alive?” the man on the radio asked.
Angel didn’t want to say it. She wanted a miracle to put his head back together, but even if they had immediately been in a hospital, she knew that he couldn’t survive this. His body twitched terribly. 
“No,” she said. “He’s already gone.”
The gunman in the house might be aiming again. Angel was lying flat below the rocks they’d used as a blind, but a fifty-caliber could blow through those rocks with a few shots and take her out, too. She flipped around and surveyed the house through the black tunnel of her gun’s telescopic sight again.
The radio crackled again, and the man asked, “Can you get him over the ridge?”
“I’m sure as hell not leaving him here.” She cleared each window, all closed and motionless. The dark blinds had been lowered on one-one-three, obscuring the curtain and its burnt bullet hole. It looked as innocent as the other closed windows.
“This is Angel Day I’m talking to, right?” the man on the radio said.
“Yes.” She stared at the house in the scope’s bright circle, relentlessly checking each window and the double door for any movement.
“You save yourself if you need to, all right? If Hunter is gone, you get out alive.”
That was ridiculous. “I’m not leaving Hunter on this mountain. He has a family.”
“Officer Day, you need to come out,” the man said.
“Make sure you have a medical team and extraction on the other side of this ridge. I’ll be over the ridge soon. Bravo team,” she called out their Phoenix call sign.
She stopped and considered what to tell her team. She wanted to open fire on that evil, closed-up house, to use her fifty caliber to punch holes in the walls and destroy everyone in there. If she told Bravo team to avenge Hunter, and her gut desperately wanted to meet violence with greater violence, this standoff would turn into a firefight, and that very good sniper down there with a very big gun might kill someone else on her team. He had shot Hunter with a cold barrel on the first shot, cold zero, and darn near perfectly.
By killing Hunter, those suspects down there had condemned themselves. Angel was sure that Mace’s assault teams had just been given the go-ahead to plan a raid that was expected to end in a bloodbath. If anyone came out alive, it would be a miracle.
Angel was getting worked up. She took a breath to ice her nerves because, if she saw anything in one of those windows move—one-one-one, clear; one-one-two, clear—she had to be ready to return fire, calmly, coldly. At this distance, an adrenaline quiver would magnify and cause her to miss by a foot or more.
She inhaled again, and let it out.
Her gaze over the rock at the house became dead calm. She was a cloud of death hovering on the side of the mountain, ready to puff a poisonous breath on anyone she saw in the house.
“Bravo team,” she said. Her voice was normal, almost robotic in its precision. She told her team to get ready to cut down the bastards in that house, to cold-bloodedly murder them all. “Increase protective cover in your positions or move to more fortified positions. Big rocks are good. The shooter in the house has a large-caliber sniping weapon, probably a fifty-caliber. They might be prepared for World War Three, down there. The call to raise the rules of engagement to shot of opportunity should come soon, so be ready for it. Keep your crosshairs on those targets. Anyone in that house will be fair game. Sniper team one, break.”
Radios clicked in response like quiet applause in her earpiece.
Within her sniper team, empty clicking meant something different than among the rest of the police force. In her team, the clicking was the acknowledgement of a sniper in position, coiled around his long weapon, silently staring at their target.
They had no signal that meant you had been abandoned by your fellow officers. They didn’t need one.
Angel tucked her radio earpiece firmly into her ear. If other sniper teams saw anything happening with the house, like windows opening and gun barrels sticking out, she wanted to hear them report it.
Angel considered weight.
She left Hunter’s gun, spotting scope, and gear in the clearing, tucked up against the rocks. Her own gun and scope, she had to take, so she disassembled the gun in less than one minute and packed it into her drag bag. She wouldn’t be coming back to this clearing, so she needed them. She teased the firing pin out of Hunter’s rifle and pocketed it, just in case the bastards from the house decided to scavenge some weapons.
In her ear, the man in the command post said, “Angel, Mason Young is on his way to the ridge. He says he going to climb down to extract you.”
God damn it. Mace had kids, lots of kids. She was going to have enough trouble dragging Hunter over the ridge without having to make the decision whether to drag out Hunter’s dead body or Mace’s still-twitching one.
“Negative,” she replied. “This is a sniper operation. Tell Mace to keep his ass on the other side of the peak. The suspects have a fifty-caliber sniping rifle, and they’re good. They will kill him. Tell him he sucks at infiltration.”
That would piss him off, but it might talk some sense into his thick head. Mace had learned to snipe and stalk in his Delta Force days, but those days were long ago.
Angel shimmied around under the ghillie suits and discarded everything that wasn’t her rifle and spotting scope. Canteens, ammunition, a couple MREs, protein bars, even Hunter’s boots, all these she piled against the rocks at the base of their hide.
She kept stopping to scan the house again, but the windows stayed shut.
Finally, she gently turned Hunter’s body to face downhill.
Hunter had been an average-sized man, four inches shorter than Angel, and weighed around a hundred and eighty pounds. She strapped her gun bag to her ankle to drag it behind her, then turned for one last survey of the house through her spotting scope.
The one-one-one window was shut and the blinds were down. Clear. She scanned through the other openings. All were closed and motionless.
She had to move soon, before the windows opened again.
The sun was getting warmer, and Hunter had lain still for several minutes. God, she missed him already. He was a good man, and he had been steadily improving. He was just too jumpy, sitting up like that.
She laid down beside Hunter with her head near his feet and rocked him onto her back, beneath the cloak of her ghillie suit.
His weight on her back was heavy, but she was heavily muscled and determined to get him out of there. His feet, in socks, rested on her shoulders. She tied his webbed belt strap around his ankles and then tied that to her own belt in front so it wouldn’t choke her.
It was less than a fifty yards to the ridge of the mountain line, and then she would be over and out of the sniper’s field of fire.
She whispered, “Command post, this sniper team one. I am beginning exfiltration.”
The man who she didn’t know was still on the radio. “Mason Young insisted on going to your location. He and his team are currently on the back of the mountain and, when they get to the ridge line, will position themselves to lay down cover fire, if needed.”
So Mace was on his way. She already felt safer, knowing he was coming for her.
She said, “Tell them not to come over. And tell them to keep their heads down. That’s how the suspects sniped Hunter. He stuck his head up, and they got him.”
“I will relay that,” the man said.
“I’m coming out now.”
“Waiting for Mason Young’s team to establish their positions would be a better alternative.”
The house’s windows were closed. Mace wasn’t in danger yet. She said, “I’m exfiltrating now.”
“Our prayers are with you, Angel. May God be with you.”
“Thanks.” She kind of liked the idea that there might be a circle of men on bended knees asking for divine intervention for her, but she wished that, instead, there was a line of men on the ridge to protect her with firepower, though she didn’t want Mace to be in danger.
She sighed. Damn it all.
Angel began to crawl.
~~~~~

Random Name Generators

I've mentioned a couple of times on Twitter lately that, if you know you're going to have to mass murder a bunch of characters, start with a lot of characters so you have some to choose from and some left over afterward.

But how do you name lots of characters?

Random name generators!

Some reasons to use random name generators:

Easier on your brain. Kinda fun. Easy to deliberately populate your book with a good mix of ethnicities and backgrounds. Hides your "naming tics," like some authors without knowing it name their characters only sweeping, romantic names, or names that only begin with the letters A-G, etc. 
Some of my favorites: 



Let's face it, you don't have to carefully craft the names of minor characters, especially when they're just going to all die horribly in Chapter 7.

TK Kenyon

Carl Sagan on Reading and the Freedom of the Mind

“Frederick Douglas taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.”―Carl Sagan

Quick Writing Tip: If You Have A Day When You Can't Write

Writing tip: If you don't have time to write for a day, at least read the last 1-2 scenes and do a light edit. Keeps your head in the game.

Today, The Kid was home from school for his first day of summer break. He didn't want to go to camp on his first day off. He wanted to stay home. Okay, I get that.

So we went to the library and a local bookstore. We got him The Adventures of Tintin at the library, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid #5 at the bookstore. He reads the Diary and Big Nate books over and over, so they're worth the buy.

Then we came home, ate lunch, played chess, I exercised, then more chess, other stuff, supper, getting ready for bed, and he went to bed at about 9:30pm, which is late as all dickens for him.

During that time, I got some semi-private time, like while I was sitting next to him while he played his 17 minutes of Wii time. I'm not a total wuss about my writing environment, but sitting next to a Kid who is fighting his enemies with a virtual lightsabre is not conducive to writing first draft prose.

So, I edited. It kept my head in the game. I'm still inside the novel. This novel. 

You do what you can.

TK

Quick editing tips to tighten your fiction

That -- About 80% of the times that you use this word, you can delete it, and the sentence will still mean the same thing.

Up and down -- Ditto. Just cut them unless the sentence needs them.

Dialogue attributions, e.g., he said and she said -- If two people are talking, you only need 1 tag about every 5 lines of dialogue, or less. Try to make the words used by each character distinctive.

Do not cut one word of emotion or characterization unless it is redundant.

She saw/heard/thought/surmised/considered/theorized -- Remove this part and just let the observation stand on its own, unless you have not recently centered the narrative in the character. If you've been describing other stuff for a while, use this to re-center the narrative within the character. If you've been inside the character a lot, remove this to open up the narrative to the setting and world.

She thought that [T]he contradiction was obvious: if they had all planned to be gone and to set off the sarin remotely, why did they have a sealed safe room inside? (Remove the "she thought" and the "that.") Angel heard the rain on the tin roof above her, the roar of the tanks' big diesel engines, and her own heartbeat. (Don't remove. Centers the narrative in the character.)  
Good luck and happy writing,
TK Kenyon

Writing Tip: Character Population

#Writingtip: if you know that you're going to mass murder some characters, start with a lot of characters so you have some to choose from.

I'm going back and salting in characters, all of whom are DOOMED.

New chapter soon. With new DOOMED characters.

TK

Chapter 1: A Stash House NEW VERSION

Now that I'm about 42,000 words into the rough draft, I changed my mind about the opening scene. You can read the original version here.

The original version was an Ice Monster! scene, but to give the reader a taste of danger and excitement before the novel backs off and goes into foreshadowing mode. (More on that at the original post, link above.)

However, the original scene was a bank robbery, which had little to do with the plot. Here, I've changed the location of the crime to a stash house in the affluent community of North Scottsdale. A stash house is a house or other location where human traffickers kidnap the very people they led over the Mexican-US Border and then demand ransom from their families back in Mexico or points south. This relates more closely to the Border themes in the novel.

Hope you like it. I'll take comments off of moderation soon. In the meantime, if you'd like to talk about it, feel free to Tweet me. My twitter handle is @TKKenyon, and there's a button over in the right hand column to follow me.




Angel Day trained the optics of her telescopic gunsight on the man holding the shotgun. In the magnified circle, under the crosshairs, the suspect’s shining black hair hung loose and past his shoulders. His hair obscured the small sweet-spot where his skull met the rolls of fat on his neck.
Angel pressed the stock of her sniper rifle, raising the crosshairs to meet the suspect’s neck. She was coiled and ready for the shot, but perfectly still and calm.
A bullet to the brainstem, where the spinal cord connects to the brain, will drop a man without a twitch or a whimper, which was imperative, because that blubbery walrus of a suspect had duct-taped his hand around the stock and trigger of a shotgun, and then duct-taped the barrel of the gun to the back of a small woman’s neck.
Angel could hear the hostage crying and begging, the slow beat of her own heart, and the grating growl of the police vehicles in the street around the target, waiting for the suspect’s next move.
The suspect yanked his shotgun and wheeled his hostage around in front of him like a spaniel on a choke chain. The woman’s hands were duct-taped behind her, so she couldn’t catch herself when she fell to the sidewalk. Her knees bled through her ripped, pink pants.
Angel inhaled smoothly, then held her breath, and then exhaled smoothly, and held it again, always ready to calmly take the shot. Her finger was taut on the trigger, but not jittery. She had trained her body to not squirt hot adrenaline into her blood.
This standoff was at a stash house, a domicile where human traffickers change the rules of the game. Most illegal immigrants cross into the US with the help of traffickers, or coyotes, who know the better routes across the Arizona-Mexico border. A few, like this woman, end up in the hands of evil men, who kidnap them and hold them for ransom, often sending small body parts to their families in Mexico to hurry up payment or raping the girls while their parents listen on the phone.
This stash house was in North Scottsdale, where the evacuated neighbors had been shocked to discover such a travesty in their area. Sure, this type of atrocity occurred in the Alhambra district, but North Scottsdale was a nice area.
Angel hadn’t been surprised at all. The best neighborhoods bred the worst crime. There was more money to be made, and the police had to be more circumspect about the busts.
The suspect yelled something to the police negotiators, who were taking cover behind their cars, trying to negotiate though bullhorns.
Angel had wedged herself into an improvised sniper hide under a jacked-up truck. Strong, thick muscles cushioned her bones from the hot, pebbled driveway. She felt like a hunting snake down there, perfectly still and ready to stab and kill the suspect.
Her field of fire was across three large suburban lawns and a neighborhood street, over two hundred yards. She was lying prone, behind a monster-truck tire, aiming around the rubber. Her body—her arms, her chest, her shoulder—interlocked around the rifle. The desert sun beat all around her, reflecting off the cement to bake even the undersides of her arms that held the gun. Her helmet was getting hot. At least there was shade under the truck.
If this were a long shot, like a mile or more, the sun warming the ammunition might make a difference in how fast the propellant in the rounds burned, and she would have to adjust her point of aim accordingly.
Angel waited, patiently, as she had waited for the last four hours of this stand-off. She had been aiming at the affluent house for most of that time, until eight minutes ago, when this suspect had exited the McMansion with his hostage. She was always ready to squeeze the trigger and was always relaxed as she didn’t.
Even though the suspect was two hundred and nine yards away, through her scope, Angel saw the target as close as if the end of her rifle was resting on his fat neck.
The gunman roared something to the encircling police cars and crouching officers. His whole body bowed back like he was belting out a high note. The woman cowered, bending forward as far as the shotgun would let her.
Above Angel, flags snapped on another house’s flagpole. The wind had freshened, so she turned the calibration wheel on the turret of her sniper scope. At two hundred yards, a ten mile per hour wind will cause a bullet to drift six and a half inches.
The sniper rifle’s stock was hot against her cheek. “Day to command post,” Angel muttered into her microphone. “I have a bead on the suspect. I can take the shot, cold zero.”
“Hold your fire. Repeat, hold your fire.” Tony’s voice was calm on the radio in her ear. Tony was her cousin and the Phoenix Police Chief. “The rules of engagement are still at compromised authority. The risk is too great for the hostage outside and the hostages still in the house. Let the negotiators do their job.”
Compromised authority rules mean that, if an authority team member is compromised, which means injured, grabbed, or shot at, then everyone—the snipers, the entry team, and the inner perimeter officers—has the authority to take any immediately necessary action to protect the team member, including sniping the bastard.
Angel had to wait until the gunman down there killed the hostage and shot at a police officer. The hostage negotiators had been doing their job for four hours. When the suspect was still inside the house, he had been allowed to talk to his girlfriend on the negotiators’ phone, and he had told her that he was going to kill a hostage, out front, where the television cameras would record every splatter. A conservative radio station had interviewed him via another hostage’s cell phone because authorities cannot use cell phone jammers in any situation. The hostage-taker had told the radio station that he was going to kill a hostage in plain sight and to keep the cameras rolling, evidently not understanding that he was on the radio.
Since then, the television cameras had arrived and, despite the police’s best efforts, had set up their cameras at the end of the block where their telephoto lenses could capture every shot. Now, the gunman was going to do it.
Angel’s calloused finger tightened on the trigger to two pounds of pull. At four pounds, the sniper rifle would fire. Angel had fired a thousand rounds a week through her rifle for six years, over three hundred thousand rounds. She knew the feel of this rifle better than most people know the feel of their car’s accelerator.
She whispered into her mic, “I can make this shot.”
Tony said, “Hold your fire. Rules of engagement are not, repeat not, at shot of opportunity.”
Shot of opportunity rules of engagement are a license to kill the suspect at the first chance.
“I can make this shot with a handgun,” she said.
“Hold your fire,” Tony said.
The hot wind blew the target’s voice to Angel’s rooftop. His voice was tinny and too high. Through her scope, Angel watched the target roar, “Ten!”
Over the radio in her ear, Angel heard police near the scene confirm that the suspect was counting, beginning at ten.
Jesus, he was counting down. At one, the gunman would fire that shotgun and tear that terrified woman’s head off her neck. He was not negotiating his way out of a bad situation; he was a psychopath performing terror theater.
Angel said, “This is not a hostage situation. This suspect is an active shooter. He will kill her.”
Tony said over the radio, “Keep your position. Rules of engagement remain at compromised authority. Hold your fire.”
Angel settled herself and watched the target through her scope.
She breathed in, held it, and out, and held it. Her finger was tensed and strong on the trigger, ready to move it a fraction of an inch more and release the shot.
The gunman grinned, enjoying the spectacle he was making. All those cops were scampering around at his nutcase bidding.
Angel was disgusted at his evil act and her own inability to stop it. They should shoot him now and end this crime. She could do it. She wanted to.
The target threw back his head and hollered, “Nine!”
From her other radio channel, Jack Jordan’s deep bass voice whispered, “Bravo three has an unobstructed shot with a stucco wall behind the target. Do we have authorization to take the shot?” Jordan was her side two sniper, meaning he was the third-ranking sniper on her team. As the primary sniper, Angel covered the front of the building. Her side-three sniper, Luke Johnson, covered the back.
“Negative,” Angel whispered to Jordan over the radio. “We do not have authorization. Rules of engagement remain at compromised authority. Maintain position.” Jack Jordan was a good sniper who probably wanted to tag this asshole gunman as much as Angel did. To Tony on her other channel, Angel said, “Bravo three has an unobstructed shot with a stucco wall backstop. If I shoot and have a through-and-through wound, the round will strike the house’s front wall. Other hostages are not in danger. We can take a sync’d shot that will stop him.”
Snipers don’t shoot to kill. Snipers shoot to stop, an important distinction. Police snipers aren’t murderers, just very effective at stopping a crime in progress.
“Negative,” Tony said. “No authorization. Remain at compromised authority.”
Down at street level, the police negotiators squatted behind their cars and held their bullhorns, talking, demanding, and pleading for the target to respond in English and Spanish. The long cable of a throw-phone snaked from their van to where the suspect had kicked it away from him.
“Eight!” the target yelled. He jerked the shotgun, and the hostage stumbled aside.
This was the kind of situation Angel had trained for: to save an innocent life by taking another. Her cold appraisal had earned her the nickname Angel of Death, but she thought of herself as a guardian angel for hostages. She coiled tighter around her rifle, ready to strike. “Bravo one to command post. Let us take him out. Jordan and I will drop him flat.”
“We can’t risk it,” Tony said.
“Request to elevate the level of engagement to shot of opportunity.” Her sight was dialed in so close that she was practically sitting on the gunman’s shoulder, ready to fire the bullet into the back of his head.
“Negative,” Tony said.
Across the clean, green yards, the gunman yelled, “Seven!”
Through her scope, Angel could see the target sweating greasy streaks in the heat. His meaty hands were probably slippery, but the duct-taped one couldn’t slip off the shotgun. No chance of him dropping it, dammit.
“Six!”
“Let me put him down, Cuz,” she said.
Tony whispered through their radio, “There are more people behind him, watching from inside the house. The round might ricochet and hit one of them.”
Angel knew that. She knew it better than her cousin Tony because she was far better trained, but she didn’t wave that red flag in his face. She also knew she could kill this target and save that woman.
Through her earpiece, another of her snipers, Hunter, said, “This is Bravo Eight, I have an unobstructed line of fire. I can take the shot.”
“Negative,” Angel said. “We are at compromised authority.”
“Goddamn,” Hunter said, and Angel wanted to agree with him but held her aim.
In the heat of battle, her body didn’t respond with hyped-up adrenaline. She watched the suspect, ready, but calm. She might have been meditating, but for her steady stare down the telescopic sight on the rifle.
“Five!” the gunman screamed.
She whispered into the microphone, “Bravo Three has a bead with a brick wall behind the target. I can make a brainstem shot from here. He won’t twitch. Give us the reins.”
Tony said, “Let the negotiators do their jobs. If you shoot him and that shotgun goes off and she dies, we’re liable.”
“The negotiators aren’t doing shit.”
“Four!”
They had been at the siege for over four hours. Angel’s head ached from the sun glaring on the cement and asphalt around her, and her eyes throbbed from peering through the scope. “When are we going to shoot him?”
“We’re not,” Tony said. “Unless he fires at authority personnel, we can’t shoot.”
“Three!”
The bedlam of the negotiators’ voices hollering at the criminal from all sides escalated. Angel kept the crosshairs on the gunman’s neck and steady pressure on the trigger because, after he shot that poor woman, he would doubtlessly open fire on the police officers and then, finally, she could shoot him.
“Two!”
Light glinted off the sidewalk from the overhead sun.
The woman hostage wrenched her head to the side.
The duct tape around her neck tore.
The shotgun blasted, spraying lead shot at the police cars, shattering glass and slamming on steel. Angel squeezed her trigger slightly, sending the .308 bullet through the rifle and into the gunman’s brainstem.
He dropped straight down as if through a trapdoor, and lay in a glutinous heap on the sidewalk in front of the Desert Victorian house.
The woman hostage screamed as she ran away. Her hair was a mess of blood, but Angel could see that the shotgun blast had only lightly scalped her. She would be fine.
Other captives, at least fifty, ran out of the house and grabbed the woman, crying over her. A small boy clung to her neck and sobbed.
Angel worked the action on the rifle to chamber another round and kept her sights on the gunman, in case the mound of blood and blubber moved.
Angel murmured into her radio, “That counted as ‘firing at authorities,’ right?”
~~~~~

Comments restricted and on moderation

Dear Friends,

Sorry that I've had to restrict comments to members of this blog, and even those are moderated. It seems that Passive Voice Guy's blog has now been attacked for posting Kris's article.

These publisher-lackey hackers are giving real hackers a bad name. Real hackers are anti-establishment and moderately anarchic. These publisher lackeys are hacking to help multinational corporations. What kind of slacker hackers are they? Yuck.

I've run my anti-virus, and I seem to be clean. I'm going to make sure my Carbonite is up to date.

TK

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Updates on Royalty Statements Post: Something Rotten in New York City

This blog post was posted on Kristine Kathryn Rusch's blog a few days ago, and soon afterward, hackers took down her site. 
And then she posted it on another site, and they took that one down, too. 
Kris gave me permission to repost on my blog to spread this news. Other blogs are doubtlessly reposting, too. 
If you're an aspiring writer, you need to read this. If you're a publishing writer, you MUST read this, and then read your own royalty statements, very carefully. 

Kris Rusch: Updates on Royalty Statements Post: Something Rotten in New York City By Kristine Kathryn Rusch   Welcome to one of my other websites. This one is for my mystery persona Paladin, from my Spade/Paladin short stories. She has a website in the stories, and I thought it would be cool to have the website online. It’s currently the least active of my sites, so I figured it was perfect for what I needed today.
Someone hacked my website. Ye Olde Website Guru and I are repairing the damage but it will take some time. The hacker timed the hack to coincide with the posting of my Business Rusch column. Since the hack happened 12 hours after I originally posted the column, I’m assuming that the hacker doesn’t like what I wrote, and is trying to shut me down. Aaaaah. Poor hacker. Can’t argue on logic, merits, or with words, so must use brute force to make his/her/its point. Poor thing.
Since someone didn’t want you to see this post, I figure I’d better get it up ASAP. Obviously there’s something here someone objects to–which makes it a bit more valuable than usual.
Here’s the post, which I am reloading from my word file, so that I don’t embed any malicious code here. I’m even leaving off the atrocious artwork (which we’re redesigning) just to make sure nothing got corrupted from there.
The post directs you to a few links from my website. Obviously, those are inactive at the moment. Sorry about that. I hope you get something out of this post.
I’m also shutting off comments here, just to prevent another short-term hack. Also, I don’t want to transfer them over. If you have comments, send them via e-mail and when the site comes back up, I’ll post them. Mark them “comment” in the header of the e-mail. Thanks!
The Business Rusch: Royalty Statement Update 2012
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the fact that my e-book royalties from a couple of my traditional publishers looked wrong. Significantly wrong. After I posted that blog, dozens of writers contacted me with similar information. More disturbingly, some of these writers had evidence that their paper book royalties were also significantly wrong.
Writers contacted their writers’ organizations. Agents got the news. Everyone in the industry, it seemed, read those blogs, and many of the writers/agents/organizations vowed to do something. And some of them did.
I hoped to do an update within a few weeks after the initial post. I thought my update would come no later than summer of 2011.
I had no idea the update would take a year, and what I can tell you is—
Bupkis. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch.
That doesn’t mean that nothing happened. I personally spoke to the heads of two different writers’ organizations who promised to look into this. I spoke to half a dozen attorneys active in the publishing field who were, as I mentioned in those posts, unsurprised. I spoke to a lot of agents, via e-mail and in person, and I spoke to even more writers.
The writers have kept me informed. It seems, from the information I’m still getting, that nothing has changed. The publishers that last year used a formula to calculate e-book royalties (rather than report actual sales) still use the formula to calculate e-book royalties this year.
I just got one such royalty statement in April from one of those companies and my e-book sales from them for six months were a laughable ten per novel. My worst selling e-books, with awful covers, have sold more than that. Significantly more.
To this day, writers continue to notify their writers’ organizations, and if those organizations are doing anything, no one has bothered to tell me. Not that they have to. I’m only a member of one writers’ organizations, and I know for fact that one is doing nothing.
But the heads of the organizations I spoke to haven’t kept me apprised. I see nothing in the industry news about writers’ organizations approaching/auditing/dealing with the problems with royalty statements. Sometimes these things take place behind the scenes, and I understand that. So, if your organization is taking action, please do let me know so that I can update the folks here.
The attorneys I spoke to are handling cases, but most of those cases are individual cases. An attorney represents a single writer with a complaint about royalties. Several of those cases got settled out of court. Others are still pending or are “in review.” I keep hearing noises about class actions, but so far, I haven’t seen any of them, nor has anyone notified me.
The agents disappointed me the most. Dean personally called an agent friend of ours whose agency handles two of the biggest stars in the writing firmament. That agent (having previously read my blog) promised the agency was aware of the problem and was “handling it.”
Two weeks later, I got an e-mail from a writer with that agency asking me if I knew about the new e-book addendum to all of her contracts that the agency had sent out. The agency had sent the addendum with a “sign immediately” letter. I hadn’t heard any of this. I asked to see the letter and the addendum.
This writer was disturbed that the addendum was generic. It had arrived on her desk—get this—without her name or the name of the book typed in. She was supposed to fill out the contract number, the book’s title, her name, and all that pertinent information.
I had her send me her original contracts, which she did. The addendum destroyed her excellent e-book rights in that contract, substituting better terms for the publisher. Said publisher handled both of that agency’s bright writing stars.
So I contacted other friends with that agency. They had all received the addendum. Most had just signed the addendum without comparing it to the original contract, trusting their agent who was (after all) supposed to protect them.
Wrong-o. The agency, it turned out, had made a deal with the publisher. The publisher would correct the royalties for the big names if agency sent out the addendum to every contract it had negotiated with that contract. The publisher and the agency both knew that not all writers would sign the addendum, but the publisher (and probably the agency) also knew that a good percentage of the writers would sign without reading it.
In other words, the publisher took the money it was originally paying to small fish and paid it to the big fish—with the small fish’s permission.
Yes, I’m furious about this, but not at the publisher. I’m mad at the authors who signed, but mostly, I’m mad at the agency that made this deal. This agency had a chance to make a good decision for all of its clients. Instead, it opted to make a good deal for only its big names.
Do I know for a fact that this is what happened? Yeah, I do. Can I prove it? No. Which is why I won’t tell you the name of the agency, nor the name of the bestsellers involved. (Who, I’m sure, have no idea what was done in their names.)
On a business level what the agency did makes sense. The agency pocketed millions in future commissions without costing itself a dime on the other side, since most of the writers who signed the addendum probably hadn’t earned out their advances, and probably never would.
On an ethical level it pisses me off. You’ll note that my language about agents has gotten harsher over the past year, and this single incident had something to do with it. Other incidents later added fuel to the fire, but they’re not relevant here. I’ll deal with them in a future post.
Yes, there are good agents in the world. Some work for unethical agencies. Some work for themselves. I still work with an agent who is also a lawyer, and is probably more ethical than I am.
But there are yahoos in the agenting business who make the slimy used car salesmen from 1970s films look like action heroes. But, as I said, that’s a future post.
I have a lot of information from writers, most of which is in private correspondence, none of which I can share, that leads me to believe that this particular agency isn’t the only one that used my blog on royalty statements to benefit their bestsellers and hurt their midlist writers. But again, I can’t prove it.
So I’m sad to report that nothing has changed from last year on the royalty statement front.
Except…
The reason I was so excited about the Department of Justice lawsuit against the five publishers wasn’t because of the anti-trust issues (which do exist on a variety of levels in publishing, in my opinion), but because the DOJ accountants will dig, and dig, and dig into the records of these traditional publishers, particularly one company named in the suit that’s got truly egregious business practices.
Those practices will change, if only because the DOJ’s forensic accountants will request information that the current accounting systems in most publishing houses do not track. The accounting system in all five of these houses will get overhauled, and brought into the 21st century, and that will benefit writers. It will be an accidental benefit, but it will occur.
The audits alone will unearth a lot of problems. I know that some writers were skeptical that the auditors would look for problems in the royalty statements, but all that shows is a lack of understanding of how forensic accounting works. In the weeks since the DOJ suit, I’ve contacted several accountants, including two forensic accountants, and they all agree that every pebble, every grain of sand, will be inspected because the best way to hide funds in an accounting audit is to move them to a part of the accounting system not being audited.
So when an organization like the DOJ audits, they get a blanket warrant to look at all of the accounting, not just the files in question. Yes, that’s a massive task. Yes, it will take years. But the change is gonna come.
From the outside.
Those of you in Europe might be seeing some of that change as well, since similar lawsuits are going on in Europe.
I do know that several writers from European countries, New Zealand, and Australia have written to me about similar problems in their royalty statements. The unifying factor in those statements is the companies involved. Again, you’d recognize the names because they’ve been in the news lately…dealing with lawsuits.
Ironically for me, those two blog posts benefitted me greatly. I had been struggling to get my rights back from one publisher (who is the biggest problem publisher), and the week I posted the blog, I got contacted by my former editor there, who told me that my rights would come back to me ASAP. Because, the former editor told me (as a friend), things had changed since Thursday (the day I post my blog), and I would get everything I needed.
In other words, let’s get the troublemaker out of the house now. Fine with me.
Later, I discovered some problems with a former agency. I pointed out the problems in a letter, and those problems got solved immediately. I have several friends who’ve been dealing with similar things from that agency, and they can’t even get a return e-mail. I know that the quick response I got is because of this blog.
I also know that many writers used the blog posts from last year to negotiate more accountability from their publishers for future royalties. That’s a real plus. Whether or not it happens is another matter because I noted something else in this round of royalty statements.
Actually, that’s not fair. My agent caught it first. I need to give credit where credit is due, and since so many folks believe I bash agents, let me say again that my current agent is quite good, quite sharp, and quite ethical.
My agent noticed that the royalty statements from one of my publishers were basket accounted on the statement itself. Which is odd, considering there is no clause in any of the contracts I have with that company that allows for basket accounting.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with basket accounting, this is what it means:
A writer signs a contract with Publisher A for three books. The contract is a three-book contract. One contract, three books. Got that?
Okay, a contract with a basket-accounting clause allows the publisher to put all three books in the same accounting “basket” as if the books are one entity. So let’s say that book one does poorly, book two does better, and book three blows out of the water.
If book three earns royalties, those royalties go toward paying off the advances on books one and two.
Like this:
Advance for book one: $10,000
Advance for book two: $10,000
Advance for book three: $10,000
Book one only earned back $5,000 toward its advance. Book two only earned $6,000 toward its advance.
Book three earned $12,000—paying off its advance, with a $2,000 profit.
In a standard contract without basket accounting, the writer would have received the $2,000 as a royalty payment.
But with basket accounting, the writer receives nothing. That accounting looks like this:
Advance on contract 1: $30,000
Earnings on contract 1: $23,000
Amount still owed before the advance earns out: $7,000
Instead of getting $2,000, the writer looks at the contract and realizes she still has $7,000 before earning out.
Without basket accounting, she would have to earn $5,000 to earn out Book 1, and $4,000 to earn out Book 2, but Book 3 would be paying her cold hard cash.
Got the difference?
Now, let’s go back to my royalty statement. It covered three books. All three books had three different one-book contracts, signed years apart. You can’t have basket accounting without a basket (or more than one book), but I checked to see if sneaky lawyers had inserted a clause that I missed which allowed the publisher to basket account any books with that publisher that the publisher chose.
Nope.
I got a royalty statement with all of my advances basket accounted because…well, because. The royalty statement doesn’t follow the contract(s) at all.
Accounting error? No. These books had be added separately. Accounting program error (meaning once my name was added, did the program automatically basket account)? Maybe.
But I’ve suspected for nearly three years now that this company (not one of the big traditional publishers, but a smaller [still large] company) has been having serious financial problems. The company has played all kinds of games with my checks, with payments, with fulfilling promises that cost money.
This is just another one of those problems.
My agent caught it because he reads royalty statements. He mentioned it when he forwarded the statements. I would have caught it as well because I read royalty statements. Every single one. And I compare them to the previous statement. And often, I compare them to the contract.
Is this “error” a function of the modern publishing environment? No, not like e-book royalties, which we’ll get back to in a moment. I’m sure publishers have played this kind of trick since time immemorial. Royalty statements are fascinating for what they don’t say rather than for what they say.
For example, on this particular (messed up) royalty statement, e-books are listed as one item, without any identification. The e-books should be listed separately (according to ISBN) because Amazon has its own edition, as does Apple, as does B&N. Just like publishers must track the hardcover, trade paper, and mass market editions under different ISBNs, they should track e-books the same way.
The publisher that made the “error” with my books had no identifying number, and only one line for e-books. Does that mean that this figure included all e-books, from the Amazon edition to the B&N edition to the Apple edition? Or is this publisher, which has trouble getting its books on various sites (go figure), is only tracking Amazon? From the numbers, it would seem so. Because the numbers are somewhat lower than books in the same series that I have on Amazon, but nowhere near the numbers of the books in the same series if you add in Apple and B&N.
I can’t track this because the royalty statement has given me no way to track it. I would have to run an audit on the company. I’m not sure I want to do that because it would take my time, and I’m moving forward.
That’s the dilemma for writers. Do we take on our publishers individually? Because—for the most part—our agents aren’t doing it. The big agencies, the ones who actually have the clout and the numbers to defend their clients, are doing what they can for their big clients and leaving the rest in the dust.
Writers’ organizations seem to be silent on this. And honestly, it’s tough for an organization to take on a massive audit. It’s tough financially and it’s tough politically. I know one writer who headed a writer’s organization a few decades ago. She spearheaded an audit of major publishers, and it cost her her writing career. Not many heads of organizations have the stomach for that.
As for intellectual property attorneys (or any attorney for that matter), very few handle class actions. Most handle cases individually for individual clients. I know of several writers who’ve gone to attorneys and have gotten settlements from publishers. The problem here is that these settlements only benefit one writer, who often must sign a confidentiality agreement so he can’t even talk about what benefit he got from that agreement.
One company that I know of has revamped its royalty statements. They appear to be clearer. The original novel that I have with that company isn’t selling real well as an e-book, and that makes complete sense since the e-book costs damn near $20. (Ridiculous.) The other books that I have with that company, collaborations and tie-ins, seem to be accurately reported, although I have no way to know. I do appreciate that this company has now separated out every single e-book venue into its own category (B&N, Amazon, Apple) via ISBN, and I can actually see the sales breakdown.
So that’s a positive (I think). Some of the smaller companies have accurate statements as well—or at least, statements that match or improve upon the sales figures I’m seeing on indie projects.
This is all a long answer to a very simple question: What’s happened on the royalty statement front in the past year?
A lot less than I had hoped.
So here’s what you traditionally published writers can do. Track your royalty statements. Compare them to your contracts. Make sure the companies are reporting what they should be reporting.
If you’re combining indie and traditional, like I am, make sure the numbers are in the same ballpark. Make sure your traditional Amazon numbers are around the same numbers you get for your indie titles. If they aren’t, look at one thing first: Price. I expect sales to be much lower on that ridiculous $20 e-book. If your e-books through your traditional publisher are $15 or more, then sales will be down. If the e-books from your traditional publisher are priced around $10 or less, then they should be somewhat close in sales to your indie titles. (Or, if traditional publishers are doing the promotion they claim to do, the sales should be better.)
What to do if they’re not close at all? I have no idea. I still think there’s a benefit to contacting your writers’ organizations. Maybe if the organization keeps getting reports of badly done royalty statements, someone will take action.
If you want to hire an attorney or an auditor, remember doing that will cost both time and money. If you’re a bestseller, you might want to consider it. If you’re a midlist writer, it’s probably not worth the time and effort you’ll put in.
But do yourself a favor. Read those royalty statements. If you think they’re bad, then don’t sign a new contract with that publisher. Go somewhere else with your next book.
I wish I could give you better advice. I wish the big agencies actually tried to use their clout for good instead of their own personal profits. I wish the writers’ organizations had done something.
As usual, it’s up to individual writers.
Don’t let anyone screw you. You might not be able to fight the bad accounting on past books, but make sure you don’t allow it to happen on future books.
That means that you negotiate good contracts, you make sure your royalty statements match those contracts, and you don’t sign with a company that puts out royalty statements that don’t reflect your book deal.
I’m quite happy that I walked away from the publisher I mentioned above years ago. I did so because I didn’t like the treatment I got from the financial and production side. The editor was—as editors often are—great. Everything else at the company sucked.
The royalty statement was just confirmation of a good decision for me.
I hope you make good decisions going forward.
Remember: read your royalty statements.
Good luck.
I need to thank everyone who commented, e-mailed, donated, and called because of last week’s post. When I wrote it, all I meant to do was discuss how we all go through tough times and how we, as writers, need to recognize when we’ve hit a wall. It seems I hit a nerve. I forget sometimes that most writers work in a complete vacuum, with no writer friends, no one except family, who much as they care, don’t always understand.
So if you haven’t read last week’s post, take a peek [link]. More importantly, look at the comments for great advice and some wonderful sharing. I appreciate them—and how much they expanded, added, and improved what I had to say. Thanks for that, everyone.
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“The Business Rusch: “Royalty Statement Update 2012,” copyright © 2012 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Selling Handcuffs Chapter 1: Hostages at a Bank Robbery

Hello friends,

Here is Chapter 1 of my novel-in-progress, Selling Handcuffs. I previously posted the prologue, which had some insight into the main character, Angel Day, but isn't necessary to understand what's going on here.

For writers: This is an "Ice Monster!" scene. For more on story structure and the concept of the "Ice Monster!" scene, watch Dan Wells's very good lecture series on YouTube here. Basically, an "Ice Monster!" scene is an interesting hook for the beginning of the novel and relates to some of the main problems in the novel, though not the main conflict, and it basically starts the novel off with a big bang (literally, in this case) rather than a bunch of talking or back story. You tell the reader, "Look! Ice Monster!"

Caveat: This is a rough draft. It's really rough.

I haven't added how much force it takes to pull the trigger of the .308 sniper rifle yet.

You'll notice that I also haven't even decided on the side three sniper's name yet. It's denoted as "BBB" in the draft. If you have a bright idea for a name, leave it in the comments or email it to me, because I'm stumped.

Chapter 1: Hostages at a Bank Robbery 


Angel Day trained the optics of her telescopic gunsight on the man holding the shotgun.
In the magnified circle, under the crosshairs, the suspect’s shining black hair hung loose and far past his obese shoulders. His hair obscured the small sweet-spot where his skull met the rolls of fat on his neck.
Angel pressed the stock of her sniper rifle, raising the crosshairs to meet the suspect’s neck. She was coiled and ready for the shot, but perfectly still and calm.
A bullet to the brainstem, where the spinal cord connects to the brain, will drop a man without a twitch or a whimper, which was imperative, because that blubbery walrus of a suspect had duct-taped his hand around the stock and trigger of a shotgun, and then duct-taped the barrel of the gun to the back of a small woman’s neck.
Angel could hear the hostage crying and begging, the slow beat of her own heart, and the grating growl of the police vehicles around the target, waiting for the suspect’s next move.
The suspect yanked his shotgun and wheeled his hostage around in front of him like a spaniel on a choke chain. The woman’s hands were duct-taped behind her, so she couldn’t catch herself when she fell. Her knees bled through her ripped, pink pants.
Angel inhaled smoothly, then held her breath, and then exhaled smoothly, and held it again, always ready to calmly take the shot. Her finger was taut on the trigger, but not jittery. She had trained her body to not squirt hot adrenaline into her blood.
The suspect yelled something to the police negotiators, who were hiding behind their cars, trying to negotiate though bullhorns.
Angel had wedged herself into an improvised sniper hide three stories above the bank. Strong, thick muscles cushioned her bones from the hot, pebbled rooftop. She felt like a hunting snake up there, perfectly still and ready to stab and kill the suspect.
Her field of fire was across the parking lot and a street and from the side of the bank’s entrance, over two hundred yards. She was lying prone, aiming though decorative holes in the slump block wall that encircled the building’s roof. Her body—her arms, her chest, her shoulder—interlocked around the rifle. The desert sun beat all around her, reflecting off the silver-white roof paint to bake even the undersides of her arms that held the gun. Her helmet was getting hot.
If this were a long shot, like a mile or more, the sun warming the ammunition might make a difference in how fast the propellant in the rounds burned, and she would have to adjust her point of aim accordingly.
Angel waited, patiently, as she had waited for the last four hours of this stand-off. She was always ready to squeeze the trigger and was always relaxed as she didn't.
Even though the suspect was two hundred and nine yards away, through her scope, Angel saw the target as close as if the end of her rifle was touching his fat neck.
The gunman roared something to the encircling police cars and crouching officers. His whole body bowed back like he was belting out a high note. The woman cowered, bending forward as far as the shotgun would let her.
Above Angel, flags snapped on the flagpole. The wind had freshened, so she turned the calibration wheel on the turret of her sniper scope. At two hundred yards, a ten mile per hour wind will cause a bullet to drift six and a half inches.
The sniper rifle’s stock was hot against her cheek. “Day to command post,” Angel muttered into her microphone. “I have a bead on the suspect. I can take the shot, cold zero.”
“Hold your fire. Repeat, hold your fire.” Tony’s voice was calm on the radio in her ear. “The rules of engagement are still at compromised authority. The risk is too great for the hostage and bystanders. Let the negotiators do their job.”
Compromised authority rules mean that, if an authority team member is compromised, which means injured, grabbed, or shot at, in any way, then everyone—the snipers, the entry team, and the inner perimeter officers—has the authority to take any immediately necessary action to protect the team member, including sniping the bastard.
Angel had to wait until the gunman down there killed the hostage and shot at a police officer.
The hostage negotiators had been doing their job for four hours. When the suspect was still inside the bank, he had been allowed to talk to his girlfriend on the negotiators’ phone, and he had told her that he was going to kill a hostage, out front, where the television cameras would record every splatter. A conservative radio station had interviewed him via another hostage’s cell phone because authorities cannot use cell phone jammers in any situation. The hostage-taker had told the radio station that he was going to kill a hostage in plain sight and to keep the cameras rolling, evidently not understanding that he was on the radio.
Since then, the television cameras had arrived and, despite the police’s best efforts, had set up their cameras where their telephoto lenses could capture every shot.
Now, the gunman was going to do it.
Angel’s calloused finger tightened on the trigger to Y pounds of pull. At Z pounds, the sniper rifle would fire. Angel had fired a thousand rounds a week through her rifle for six years, over three hundred thousand rounds. She knew the feel of this rifle better than most people know the feel of their car’s accelerator. She whispered into her mic, “I can make this shot.”
Tony said, “Hold your fire. Rules of engagement are not, repeat not, at shot of opportunity.”
Shot of opportunity rules of engagement are a license to kill the suspect at the first opportunity. “I can make this shot with a handgun,” she said.
“Hold your fire,” Tony said.
The hot wind blew the target’s voice to Angel’s rooftop. His voice was tinny and too high. Through her scope, Angel watched the target roar, “Ten!”
Over the radio in her ear, Angel heard police near the scene confirm that the suspect was counting, beginning at ten.
Jesus, he was counting down. At one, the gunman would fire that shotgun and tear that terrified woman’s head off her neck. He was not negotiating his way out of a bad situation; he was a psychopath performing terror theater.
Angel said, “This is not a hostage situation. This suspect is an active shooter. He will kill her.”
Tony said over the radio, “Keep your position. Rules of engagement remain at compromised authority. Hold your fire.”
Angel settled herself and watched the target through her scope.
She breathed in, held it, and out, and held it. Her finger was tensed and strong on the trigger, ready to move it a fraction of an inch more and release the shot.
The gunman grinned, enjoying the spectacle he was making. All those cops were scampering around at his nutcase bidding.
Angel was disgusted at his evil act and her own inability to stop it. They should shoot him now and end this crime. She could do it. She wanted to.
The target threw back his head and hollered, “Nine!”
From her other radio channel, Jack Jordan’s deep bass voice whispered, “Bravo three has an unobstructed shot with a brick wall behind the target. Do we have authorization to take the shot?” Jordan was her side two sniper, meaning he was the third-ranking sniper on her team. As the primary sniper, Angel covered the front of the building. Her side-three sniper, BBB, covered the back.
“Negative,” Angel whispered to Jordan over the radio. “We do not have authorization. Rules of engagement remain at compromised authority. Maintain position.” Jack Jordan was a good sniper who probably wanted to tag this asshole gunman as much as Angel did. To Tony on her other channel, Angel said, “Bravo three has an unobstructed shot with a brick wall backstop. If I shoot and have a through-and-through wound, the round will strike the sidewalk. Bystanders are not in danger. We can take a sync’d shot that will stop him.”
Snipers don’t shoot to kill, after all. Snipers shoot to stop, an important distinction. Police snipers aren’t murderers, just very effective at stopping a crime in progress.
“Negative,” Tony said. “No authorization. Remain at compromised authority.”
Down at street level, the police negotiators squatted behind their cars and held their bullhorns, talking, demanding, and pleading for the target to respond. The long cable of a throw-phone snaked from their van to where the suspect had kicked it away from him.
“Eight!” the target yelled. He jerked the shotgun, and the hostage stumbled aside.
This was the kind of situation Angel had trained for: to save an innocent life by taking another. Her cold appraisal had earned her the nickname Angel of Death, but she thought of herself as a guardian angel for hostages. She coiled tighter around her rifle, ready to strike. “Day to command post. Let me take him out. Jordan and I will drop him flat.”
“We can’t risk it,” Tony said.
“Request to elevate the level of engagement to shot of opportunity.” Her sight was dialed in so close that she was practically sitting on the gunman’s shoulder, ready to fire the bullet into the back of his head.
“Negative,” Tony said.
Down below her rooftop, the gunman yelled, “Seven!”
Through her scope, Angel could see the target sweating greasy streaks in the heat. His meaty hands were probably slippery, but that duct-taped one couldn’t slip off the shotgun. No chance of him dropping it, dammit.
“Six!”
“Let me put him down, Cuz,” she said.
Tony whispered through their radio, “There are people behind him, watching from inside the bank. The round might ricochet and hit one of them.”
Angel knew that. She knew it better than her cousin Tony because she was far better trained, but she didn’t wave that red flag in his face. She also knew she could kill this target and save that woman.
Through her earpiece, another of her snipers, Hunter, said, “Bravo Eight, I have an unobstructed line of fire. I can take the shot.”
“Negative,” Angel said. “We are at compromised authority.”
“Goddamn,” Hunter said, and Angel wanted to agree with him but held her aim.
In the heat of battle, her body didn’t respond with hyped-up adrenaline. She watched the suspect, ready, but calm. She might have been meditating, but for her steady stare down the telescopic sight on the rifle.
“Five!” the gunman screamed.
“Bravo Three has a bead with a brick wall behind the target. I can make a brainstem shot from here. He won’t twitch. Give us the reins.”
“Let the negotiators do their jobs. If you shoot him and that shotgun goes off and she dies, we’re liable.”
“The negotiators aren’t doing shit.”
“Four!”
They had been at the siege for over four hours. Angel’s head ached from the sun pounding on her black urban ghillie suit, and her eyes throbbed from peering through the scope. “When are we going to shoot him?”
“We’re not,” Tony said. “Unless he fires at authority personnel, we can’t shoot.”
“Three!”
The bedlam of the negotiators’ voices hollering at the criminal from all sides escalated. Angel kept the crosshairs on the gunman’s neck and steady pressure on the trigger because, after he shot that poor woman, he would doubtlessly open fire on the police officers and then, finally, she could shoot him.
“Two!”
Light glinted off the sidewalk from the overhead sun.
The woman hostage wrenched her head to the side.
The duct tape around her neck tore.
The shotgun blasted, spraying lead shot at the police cars, shattering glass and slamming on steel.
Angel squeezed her trigger slightly, sending the .308 bullet through the rifle and into the gunman’s brainstem.
He dropped straight down as if through a trapdoor, and lay in a glutinous heap on the sidewalk in front of the bank.
The woman hostage screamed as she ran away. Her hair was a mess of blood, but Angel could see that the shotgun blast had only lightly scalped her. She would be fine.
Angel worked the action on the rifle to chamber another round and kept her sights on the gunman, in case the mound of blood and blubber moved.
Angel murmured into her radio, “That counted as ‘firing at authorities,’ right?”
~~~~~
If you liked this excerpt from Selling Handcuffs, consider going to Amazon or BN or Apple - iTunes or Smashwords (all readers, apps, and computers) to read some more of my fiction. Several of the short stories are free.