Free Gideon's War/Hard Target by Howard Gordon Page A

three-year-old son. He remembered how he felt in those first few minutes after Hakim was born. The sun was just about to rise, and the sky was glowing a deep ruby color. This is the color of happiness, he remembered thinking. Another drop of sweat trickled down Omar’s neck, and he wondered if he’d ever see his son again. Probably not, Omar thought miserably. Probably not.
    CHAPTER TEN
    GIDEON’S FATHER HAD KEPT his guns in a windowless room with two dead-bolt locks. Whenever his father went inside that windowless room, he’d secure both locks. And when he left, he’d lock the door again, first the top lock, then the bottom, in unvarying succession.
    No one was allowed inside, not even the few men his father counted as friends. But Gideon was always standing nearby, waiting for his father to enter or exit, in order to glimpse the mysterious interior for the brief moment when the door was open. Day after day, Gideon inhaled the sharp smell of Hoppe’s No. 9 bore solvent that wafted through the open door and peered inside until he’d memorized every inch of the room. Its walls were mahogany paneled, decorated with the mounted heads of deer and elk and even a brown bear. The guns were lined up in a long glass-fronted cabinet—shotguns first, then rifles, oldest to the left, newest to the right, starting with a twenty-bore Holland & Holland hammer gun, and ending with an AR-15 chambered in .223. A wooden rifle cleaning rest, worn with age, sat on the spotless workbench next to a reloading press.
    Other than the occasional addition of a new firearm, nothing ever changed in the room. Gideon’s father was a man of rigid habits and fixed ideas. A place for everything, and everything in its place. Any variation from routine drove him into an immediate and merciless fury. You didn’t knock on the door—or even make loud noises—when Father was in the gun room.
    Gideon was given his first firearm, a Marlin .22, when he was five years old. He learned early that one thing, and one thing only, could ensure his father’s affection. That one thing was good shooting. When you went to the range with Father, you didn’t mess around, you didn’t talk, you didn’t smile, you didn’t shuffle your feet. You simply loaded and fired. With precision and accuracy.
    From the moment he touched the Marlin .22, Gideon knew he had a gift. Trap, skeet, air pistol, bench rest, offhand, prone, practical handgun shooting—no matter. He had it—that magical trick of eye and brain and finger that allowed him to aim a gun and hit what he wanted to hit. Kill was the word that Father used.
    For the first three years, his father taught him. After that, all his father had to do was man the spotting scope and let the boy work. “Good kill, son,” he’d whisper. “Good kill.”
    Tillman, on the other hand, struggled to keep up on the range. Compared to any other kid, he was excellent and could drive tacks with a rifle or run clays set after set. But he did it through gritted teeth, flinching under his father’s perpetual scrutiny. Every near miss, every stray shot earned him an ear-ringing slap on the back of the head, a pinch on the inside of his upper arm, or—worst of all—a few cutting words. These ranged from “useless fool” to “you’re no son of mine, boy.” Always whispered softly. Even at his most violent, Father never raised his voice.
    But the violence was always there. When the dark rage came on him, he struck out at anyone within reach. Anyone except Gideon. While their mother sometimes absorbed his wrath, Tillman was always their father’s main target. It had taken a long time for Gideon to see it, but Tillman hadn’t absorbed the belittling and the beating and the abuse by accident. As the older of the two, Tillman had rou220±€tinely stood between their father and Gideon—deflecting his anger, absorbing his blows, protecting the younger boy. In fact, Tillman had been his protector throughout his childhood—whether it