“Which circle is different?” the doctor asked. Spencer was moments from glory, already thinking about what he was going to drink that night to celebrate. He looked into the contraption. It was old, he thought. Funny, how ancient the crap they use here is.
But okay, focus.
“Um, let me see,” he said. He saw twelve rows of black circles, all exactly the same. That was strange—or else that was the point! It was a trick to see how you responded to some kind of cognitive challenge. “They’re all the same, sir.” A beat passed.
“Well, pick the one you think is different.” The doctor had no levity in his voice. Now Spencer wasn’t sure what to do. He could swear they were all exactly the same shape, but the doctor insisted he pick one that looked different. So he guessed. “Number three is different, sir.”
LATER, AFTER ALL THE TESTING, he went up to the air force liaison office to check out, and the staff sergeant handed him a list of jobs he’d qualified for. He scanned it, couldn’t believe it, scanned it again.
“Sir, sorry, but the job I wanted isn’t on here. I don’t see pararescue.” The staff sergeant took the paper back and looked at it again.
“Looks like you didn’t qualify.” He handed it back.
That can’t be. “Sorry, sir, excuse me.” Spencer sensed people in line behind him swaying with impatience. “But what do you mean by didn’t qualify? I passed every fitness test and completed all the examinations. None of the doctors told me anything was wrong …”
“It looks like you didn’t pass depth perception.”
“Sorry?”
“You don’t have depth perception.”
“Depth perception?”
“You lack depth perception. Can’t be a PJ without it. Choose another job from the list. And I’d pick quickly if I were you, or you might not get anything. Pick before you leave. We’re open for another thirty minutes.”
“PJs is the only thing I’m here for.”
“If you leave today without picking a job, you might not get anything. Twenty-nine minutes left now. Pick fast.”
And that was it. Just like that, it was over.
Later, when playing it back in his mind, he thought, Lack depth perception? What a load of crap. Then how could I pick up a cup? How did I play basketball? But it didn’t matter; there was no way of appealing the decision. Spencer was unfit for service. He would not be an air force pararescueman, not ever. A year of punishing himself, for nothing. He’d never felt so deflated in his life. He went home, closed the door behind him, and he wept. When he was done, he felt empty, all his motivation completely depleted. He was zapped. He felt foolish for having worked so hard when such a small stupid thing was waiting all along to derail him.
Depth perception?
It was a mistake, it had to be. He was sure of it. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it. It was as frustrating as it was demoralizing, that someone in some position of authority had decided that some useless old device could determine whether or not you got what you’d worked so hard for. An old piece of metal. He would have been a good pararescueman, he would have been happy, and he would have saved lives, and whoever it was up there making decisions was preventing that.
So what was the point? Why had he worked so hard? He hadn’t accomplished anything in his life, but at least before he could always say it was because he hadn’t really tried. Now he couldn’t say that. It was almost worse.
He called Dean, who had cleared the initial medical testing to get into pararescue training but had now been forced to drop out twice after injuries, and was waiting to get in for a third try. Dean offered some encouragement. It helped for a few minutes, and then his encouragement ran out like a pill wearing off, and there was nothing Spencer could do. He’d failed. His eyes had failed.
Spencer’s eyes are no longer working so he’s running blind. He’s entered into a gauntlet and his senses have left him. The whole world narrows to a single unprotected corridor, and everyone else is hiding. He is running straight for a man with a weapon he knows is there but can’t see, because he can’t see anything; tiny fibers in his eyes have tensed and pulled the lenses flat so everything next to him disappears, and he is running down a dark tunnel with a speck of light at the end. Then that’s gone too, and he is simply running, waiting for bullets to tear through him. His last coherent thought is, Maybe I will delay him enough for others, and then he launches himself.
A blast of light and pain across his face, his mouth exploding with the taste of pepper and metal—gunpowder. Has the bullet gone through his mouth? His forehead roars with heat, he knows now he’s been hurt badly but not exactly how, or if a bullet struck him, or what exactly just happened, but he is on the ground and he can move, so he begins to fight. He struggles to pin the man as he starts to lose vision again, blood curtaining his eye, which is swelling shut anyway. The man is skinny, but his power is astounding, superhuman. He must be on a drug that gives him abnormal strength. They fight in the aisle, Spencer can see almost nothing, light and shapes, he tries to control the gun but can’t get it in his grip, every time he feels his fingers glance off metal it slips away again, pulling from his hand, he cannot see well enough to know he dislodged it when he hit the man, and is now trying to pull from the man’s grip a weapon the man is no longer holding.
They scramble to their feet, Spencer tries to hit him but they’re too close, so he grapples at the man, pulls him into a clench, holds him close to his own body, and now they’re standing. Spencer works himself behind the man, remembering the staple of jujitsu, the rear naked choke, just trying to protect himself, swaying with the terrorist, so when the terrorist jerks right Spencer jerks right with him, this part is like a dance, trying to stay even so he doesn’t lose balance, because if he loses his position he’s exposed to whatever weapon the terrorist has ready next. He hooks his elbow under the man’s neck so that their bodies are flat against one another, and then Spencer summons all his strength and launches himself backward. Flying in tandem across the seats, his own body padding the terrorist’s fall, his own skull slamming against the train window so hard that sparks of light fill his vision and a head-shaped inkblot of blood smears the window behind him. The man rotates powerfully in Spencer’s grasp, and Spencer tries to pull his forearm tighter under the man’s neck, desperately trying to choke off blood flow to the man’s brain. But the man will not stop struggling, does not even seem to weaken, and a wave of terror goes flitting through Spencer’s thoughts. This man should have been out in seconds. Alek is yelling something, thank God Alek is here, and Anthony is right there next to him, if only to see what is happening, and then the gunman’s fists are curling backward. 180-degree uppercuts into Spencer’s face and he can feel that they’re working, sapping his strength, glancing off his eye that’s already swollen and bleeding, his face feeling like a raw piece of meat being beaten with a rock, the top half of his vision is blurred, like something’s hanging over it. How much time has passed? What if he loses control—what if he dies and can’t stop this man? Spencer is bleeding into his swollen eye and fighting half blind. The terrorist has an astounding store of strength and still does not seem to be tiring at all. Spencer is pinned against the window, doesn’t know how many weapons this man has, doesn’t know what happens if he loses this fight and the man takes the gun back, if the man slips from his grip he’ll have all the odds in his favor and he’ll find that machine gun again and then he’ll really get to work—and just now Spencer hears, from some distant corner of his consciousness, a familiar voice.
“Stop, fucker!”
It’s Alek, holding the machine gun up to the