Behind the wheel sat Colonel James C. Verhoven, self-appointed commanding officer of the Seventh West Virginia (True) Militia. Nestled in his lap, concealed beneath a camo-colored Snuggie given to him by his beloved wife, Lorene, was a Rock River Arms AR-15 with a collapsible stock, quad Pickatinny rail fore grip mounting a green laser, a 230 lumen flashlight, and an Aimpoint red-dot scope. On his hip he carried his pride and joy, a Les Baer 1911 with a hard chrome finish, Novak ramp sights, and mother of pearl grips, running 230 grain Hornady jacketed hollow-points. He also wore a backup gun on his ankle—the old standby, a compact titanium J-Frame Smith .38 with Crimson Trace laser grips, loaded with 129 grain + P Federal Hydra-Shoks. Plus, of course, a little CRKT neck knife hanging by a piece of paracord under his shirt.

Verhoven’s eyes narrowed as Mixon’s Impala turned into the motel. He waited until Mixon had parked before easing into the far end of the Word Up Lodge parking lot. Unit two—Lorene and the Upshaw brothers—pulled up beside him in a white Ford Econoline van with CRUZ PAINTING & DRYWALL painted on the side and a bunch of ladders piled on top.

Verhoven gave the signal, then hopped out and strode across the parking lot, hands on the AR-15, followed by the Upshaw brothers. As Mixon climbed out of his car, Verhoven pointed his trigger finger at the yellow stripe peeking out from under one of the Impala’s half-bald tires and said, “So I guess you never graduated from parking school, huh?”

The subject looked blankly at the yellow stripe, blinked once, then looked up at Verhoven and said, “Oh, shit.”

Four seconds later, there were flex cuffs on his wrists and a sock in his mouth as he was dragged into the van, his feet kicking wildly. Verhoven saw the fear in Mixon’s eyes as he slammed the door shut, and the ruckus was over.

Two black men stood on the balustrade drinking out of paper bags and looking down curiously into the parking lot.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Verhoven and his men were all wearing CamelBak load-bearing...

“Police business!” Verhoven shouted. “Get your black asses back inside your room.”

The men muttered angrily to each other but didn’t move.

Before Verhoven could say anything else, the driver erupted from the fake painting van. She was a very tall, fit-looking woman with bleached blond hair, wearing an AR on a single-point sling. She had a wide smile on her face as she poi boñ€†nted her AR at the young men on the balcony. “Please,” she shouted, “just give me an excuse to shoot.”

“I got it, Lorene,” Verhoven said softly to his wife. He had known her to go beyond what tactical necessity strictly dictated, sometimes leaving a bloody mess in her wake like a trail of chum.

His wife’s smile hardened as she continued to stare down the young men. She had one eye that was brown and another blue—a condition known as “heterochromia”—and it only added to the impression that she was a woman not playing with all her marbles. The two young men on the balcony saw the look in her eyes and quickly hustled back into their hotel room.

Lorene watched them go. The charge of the hunt left her twitchy and eager. She turned back to the van, her fingers itching, frustration giving way to anticipation of the violence she had planned for Ervin Mixon.

3

POCATELLO, IDAHO

Dale Wilmot heard a thump and a grunt of pain coming from the third floor. His heart began to race.

“Son of a bitch!” he muttered and sprinted up the flight of stairs to Evan’s room.

Without knocking, he burst into his son’s room, expecting the worst.

Looking through the bedroom, he saw the door to the bathroom was open. Evan lay on the tiled floor. He’d obviously been trying to maneuver himself into the shower and had fallen from his water-slick wheelchair. The shower continued to spray while water backed up on the floor. Wilmot hadn’t seen his son naked in a while, and the vision was horrifying. The network of scars covered much of what was left of his body. On top of that, he’d cut himself over the eye in the fall, and a steady stream of blood ran down the side of his face.

Evan Wilmot had been blown up by an IED in Mosul and then badly burned when the troop carrier in which he was riding had burst into flame. The medic at the scene said he wouldn’t be able to survive his wounds and had decided to stop pushing transfusions. But the company commander threatened to court-martial the corpsman and said, “As long as this kid’s still fighting, you’re putting blood into his arm.” They’d called for volunteers and kept pumping blood, going straight from the veins of other soldiers into Evan’s arm, a hundred boys lined up around the shed where the corpsman was treating him. It had taken fifty units before Evan’s blood had started coagulating enough to stabilize him.

He’d been unconscious for a week, waking up finally at Ramstein Air Base.

Wilmot was tempted to shout at the boy for being so bullheaded and foolish as to try taking a shower unattended. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“It’s okay, son,” he said gently. “Here, let me help.”

Evan’s startling blue eyes rolled up toward his father. He didn’t answer, just grabbed hold of the wet seat of his wheelchair with his claw of a hand and attempted to pull himself up. Wilmot ran forward to grab him, splashing through the water on the floor.

Evan waved him away, but Wilmot couldn’t watch the boy do this to himself.

Wilmot had spared no expense on the bathroom. It cost over $120,000. Remote control on/off and temp controls for the huge wheelchair-accessible shower. A motorized harness hanging from tracks on the ceiling so he could be hoisted into the shower or onto the toilet. A wall-size forced-air blow-dryer so he didn’t have to wrestle with a towel. Wheelchair-accessible toilet with built-in bidet, wheelchair-accessible sink, special faucets custom made at the Kohler plant in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

And that wasn’t all. There was an attendant in the house fourteen hours a day. A nurse practitioner came every morning and stayed for the day. Then in the evenings John Collier came for a few hours, helping him wash and go to the toilet, reading to him or just hanging out.

But Evan had to do it the hard way, trying to drag himself to the shower using the wheelchair for support.

Wilmot lowered his voice. “Evan. I’m here. Let me help.”

Evan’s jaw clamped shut and his eyes flashed at Wilmot. But he didn’t say anything. The doctors said Evan hadn’t lost any of his cognitive abilities. But sometimes it was hard to tell. Wilmot grabbed him under the armpits.

By the time he got his son back in the chair, he was sopping wet, and Evan’s blood had spattered onto his pants. He reached over, grabbed the towel that had fallen into the bath and blocked the drain, and pulled it free. Then he found a fresh towel and dried Evan off.

“’S fine, Dad. ’S fine.” Most people wouldn’t have been able to make out the slurred sibilance of Evan’s words. But Wilmot had gotten used to his son’s speech by now.

“Let me get you something for that cut,” Wilmot said, dabbing at the wound with another towel. “You really don’t want another infection.”

“Can I just. . . .” A helpless rage twisted the melted features of the boy’s face. Moisture and blood streamed down his cheeks. He might have been crying—though it was hard for Wilmot to tell.

“I’m sorry, son,” Wilmot said. “I’m so sorry.”

Then the anger seemed to drain out of Evan’s body. His muscles softened and the contorted expression dissolved. He relaxed into the chair and looked away from his father in resignation.

Wilmot set his phone and his watch on the sink, then pushed his son back into the spray of the shower. There was something pleasurable about stepping into the stream of water fully clothed, a little transgression against normalcy. As Wilmot poured a dollop of antibacterial soap on the washrag and began running it across his son’s body—the folds of calloused skin around his amputations, the scarred mask of his face, even the crack of his ass—his mind drifted back to the first time he’d held his son. Wilmot’s wife, Claire, had been very sick during the pregnancy—a sickness they didn’t realize until later was the beginning of the progressive disease that eventually killed her—and Evan was born premature. But when Wilmot held the tiny red body of his only son, it had been as though the entire world had telescoped away. All that mattered to him was right there in his arms. At the time the helplessness of the boy had made ble�€†Wilmot feel more hopeful and serene than anything he’d ever experienced.