Heart of Assassin

Chapter 10

I'd come to the conclusion that BCT was like the prom, an event that would come and go at a constant rate no matter how much you worried about it, and there were only two possible outcomes: you would live though it, or you wouldn't, so there was no reason to worry about the small stuff. I did live through the first milestone, the transition from Red Phase to White Phase. During this phase, we needed to qualify with the M16. Also, we were introduced to additional weapons, grenades, and the shoulder launched rocket. As in the first phase, regardless of whether women were allowed in combat, we went through the same training as the men, including combat situations.

Since joining, I started going to chapel services. At first it was a little scary, because the priest or minister was Evangelical, and I always thought they were pretty turn or burn judgmental, and they hated Catholics. However, the army required that the services be relatively non denominational, and therefore there was little chance I'd be dragged out of the building and stoned to death. There were some differences in mechanics, and in the Lord's Prayer we owed God money instead of squatting on His land, but the services were essentially the same. The one marked difference that I did notice was that unlike the lay minister I talked to at St. Luke's, this guy appeared to be sure of God's forgiveness for all of us. It seemed a bit presumptuous, but to be honest I wouldn't mind being sure, so I made a mental note that if I ever got the chance, I would ask about it.

The big deal during this phase of BCT was weapons qualification; it used to be a relatively straight forward affair of forty shots at pop up targets in three different positions. However, recently it was changed to a more "real world" scenario of complex simulations, and Hip Hop was getting pretty nervous, I had to keep reminding her of pop and lock. To be honest, she was actually getting very good, and we were constantly pushing ourselves to get better. She just suffered from test anxiety. We ended up having a rather high volume discussion about thinking like a machine.

"Machines don't get nervous," I told her.

"I'm not a machine," she said.

Up to this point, I'd been doing fairly well at controlling my innate unbalanced nature, however, not being a particularly social creature, I have a tendency to have strange things fall out of my mouth before I'd had a chance to really think them through. This was one of those times.

"How," I said,

"are you going to do this against people and not be a machine?"

There was a "twisting a knife in her heart" look on her face as she backed away.

"Wait, wait, I'm sorry!" I pleaded, not really sure where to go from there.

"I don't think I know you," she said.

I'm fairly certain that like baseball, there is no crying in the army, however, two minutes later I was in the far corner of the latrine breaking that regulation.

Mid day the next day, I was pulled out of formation by the DI and taken to headquarters. I was sure that after my little outburst, I was going to be found too psychotic to be in the army. I was brought to a room that looked way too much like an interrogation room, and placed in the chair without explanation. After a very long wait, a man in a dark suit came in an announced that he was from the FBI, showing his identification.

He sat in the chair opposite, opened a file folder, and asked, "You are Millicent Abigail Willard?"

"Yes, sir." "Your father was Mark Lenard Willard?"

"Yes, sir."

"What happened to your father?"

"He was murdered, sir."

"This says that he committed suicide."

"I believe he was murdered, sir."

"Why do you believe that, Private Willard?"

"Because men broke into the house and tried to kill me, looking for my father's computer."

"What was on that computer that was so important?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Come on, private, if you think there was something on his computer worth killing for, you must have some idea what it was."

"What I know is that someone came to the door, tried to shoot me, and took my father's work computer. That led me to believe there was something they wanted very badly on that computer."

"Your father worked for a government contractor?"

"He worked for Scitron."

"And what do they do?"

"My father told me they made scientific instrumentation."

"Your father told you, you don't know for sure?"

"Yes, well, no, I never had any reason to doubt him. Do you think he was doing government stuff and didn't tell me?"

He ignored the question,

"So there could have been anything on that computer, and you would never know?"

"What are you saying; my father was a spy stealing secrets?"

"If he were, you would never know, would you?"

"If he were, why didn't he just give them the right computer in the first place, or better yet, just give them the files? Instead he died trying to protect them."

He looked at me for a minute, not saying a word, then got up and left the room. Although he didn't really say much about what was going on, just the fact that he was here asking these kinds of questions meant it was big. Could my father have been working on things he didn't or couldn't tell me about? I could believe he was actually working on top secret stuff, I could understand him not telling me about it, but I just couldn't believe he was involved in stealing secrets. We didn't get much time to surf the internet, but next time I got a chance, I was going to look up Scitron.

I never heard any fallout from the FBI investigation, and eventually I did get a chance to use the internet in the base PX. What I found, however, was nothing at all, not just that Scitron was what my father said it was, or that they didn't say what they did, but when I did a search on Scitron, there were thousands of hits but absolutely nothing at all about the company my father worked for. I returned to the barracks in a daze, trying to figure it out.

Later that same day both Hip Hop and I qualified at the expert level. That day before lights out, I was surprised when Hip Hop came over.

"You look like you just lost your mom," she said.

"My dad, actually." I answered.

"What?"

"He actually died back in April, he was murdered, and the FBI is investigating, but I don't think I knew who he really was, the company he told me he worked for doesn't exist."

"Wow, what do you think it means, and why is the FBI investigating?"

"They think he was doing something illegal, I don't know what to think, he was obviously lying to me and I don't know why."

She changed the subject. "Listen, I'm sorry about the other day." she said, "It's just, you made me think about things I didn't want to face."

"It's okay; I should warn people I'm not really normal," I answered.

"We have a leave coming up between phases, and my grandfather is very old. He means a lot to me, I would like to be able to visit him..."

"If you need money for plane tickets, I can give it to you. After all, you're the one taught me how to kick Mr. Fallow's butt."

She smiled, "Thank you, but I'd like you to come with me."

I wanted to ask if she was sure that she wanted to bring someone like me home, but instead I said, "I would love to come with you."