Read Political Suicide for Free Online

Muskogee .…
    Slightly dazed, he drove ahead.
    “You’re not a tourist!” the Mantis guide waiting at the end of the obstacle shouted at them. “Move it. Move it!”
    Townsend stumbled over a tree root, and then, following another guide’s outstretched arm, sprinted toward the next challenge. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Morales coming up alongside him.
    “Let’s go, Fenton! Let’s go!” Townsend shouted.
    UPSIE DAISY.
    The two men easily ascended and descended a twenty-foot wall, and then sidestepped along G-STRING, a taut wire that crossed a dozen feet above a churning river with ice coating its banks.
    “If you slip, you swim!” the guide yelled after them.
    A hundred-yard sprint along a twisting, uneven forest path, and there was another guide.
    “Get set for some climbing, ladies!”
    As a boy, Townsend had been afraid of heights—too scared to ride the Ferris wheel at the county fair. But that was before Mantis. His acrophobia, once paralyzing, now was gone. He rapidly negotiated the largely trimmed branches of a massive, sixty-foot oak called SHISH-KA-BOB and then rappelled down.
    “Not bad for an Okie,” Morales said, panting to catch his breath after he landed.
    “We’re hot, baby,” Townsend said, exuberant. “Hot as a two-fifty revolver.”
    ORGAN GRINDER … TWIST AND SHOUT … ALL IN … GUT BLASTER … TWOFER. Cheering each other on and, when possible, working as a team, the two marines completed the rest of the obstacles with relative ease.
    “End of the Line!” a guide shouted, indicating the sign that announced the final obstacle.
    Twenty feet up a thick, braided rope, a hand-over-hand dangling traverse for thirty yards, and a rope slide back to the ground, and it appeared the Big Hurt had been beaten.
    Quickly, Townsend’s adrenaline rush dissipated. His arms grew heavy, and he felt a cramp working its way into his right calf.
    “Townsend … Morales.” Charles Coon strolled over to them and motioned that standing at attention was unnecessary.
    It was then Townsend noticed the portable gun rack standing just beyond the major. It held about twenty-five M4A1 assault rifles. The marine knew the gun well. The selective fire weapon used 5.56 mm rounds, and its four-position telescoping stock, slightly larger than the M4, had a distinctive curvature at the end.
    “Gentlemen, this is your final test,” Coon said. “There are twenty-five weapons for you to choose from. The target will be over there.” He motioned through a corridor in the woods to a crudely constructed wooden wall, twenty-five yards away
    Townsend had heard that the Rangers conducted a stress shoot as part of their training regimen, engaging targets after a grueling run. Maybe taking on the Big Hurt was designed to exhaust their bodies in a similar way.
    “Sir, what will we be firing at, sir?” he asked.
    “Did I give permission to address me, solider?” Coon barked.
    Townsend felt his heart stop, then slowly resume beating again. “Sir, no, sir!” he managed.
    The major smiled thinly, a crescent of white appearing between his lips. “Soldier, you are the target,” he said.
    “Sir, yes, sir!” Townsend bit back the urge once again to ask for clarification.
    Coon continued. “We have loaded five of the guns in this rack with a live round. You do not know which gun has that live round. I do not know which guns have no cartridge. Do you understand?”
    “Sir, yes, sir!” Townsend and Morales barked.
    “You will each pick a gun, and I will fire that weapon at you. I will aim for the outside edge of your left chest wall. If you pick the gun carrying a live round, you will be shot through that spot. I assure you, I am a hell of a marksman, especially with that weapon and those ACO gun sights. My shot will inflict minimal damage so long as you do not move, but there will be medics here to check you over. Understood?”
    “Sir, yes, sir!”
    “Morales, what is the percent probability that within the