Monkey in the Middle by Stephen Solomita Page A

Janie was too young to care for him when their mother died. So the state, in its wisdom, shipped him off to the Abernathys’ farm. Foster parents, that’s what the social worker called David and Lucille. But the Abernathys were managers, not parents. Middle-aged, their lives were guided solely by profit and loss. This was as true of Carter as it was of the corn in their fields, or the pigs or the chickens. The Abernathys received a check each month from the Indiana Department of Human Services for $212. 65. Every expense was weighed against that sum, the food on his plate, his shoes and socks, the laundry detergent to clean his clothes, the oil burned to heat his room. Lest he rip his clothes in play, or even soil them, Carter was confined to the home after school. Lest he wear out his shoes, he was required to go barefoot indoors. And when the social worker paid a visit every month or so, he was compelled to express gratitude for the Abernathys’ largesse.
    Eventually, four years later, when she turned eighteen, Janie came for her brother. Too late, of course, way too late, but she did come.
    Carter looks up to find his sister asleep. Just as well, for he has things to do. He stands, approaches her chair, bends over to bestow a kiss on her forehead. She did come, he tells himself. She might have abandoned me, but she came.
    â€˜Bye, honey. See ya tomorrow.’

Nine
    C arter drives back to Astoria and parks the van on Thirty-First Street beneath the el. As plain as Carter on the outside, the van’s interior has been impressively tricked out. There’s no bling, of course. A metal floor running from the front seat to the back doors, a pair of sliding windows toward the rear, empty boxes stacked one atop the other. The van is designed not to push buttons, especially those of cops. Your paperwork’s in order, here’s your ticket, so long.
    Carter slips off a panel on the driver’s side of the van to reveal a number of weapons, among them a sniper rifle he first used in Iraq, an XM25. Little more than a customized version of the M14, standard issue before Vietnam, the XM25 is a semi-automatic weapon and not prized by sharpshooters. Bolt-action is all the rage now, one shot, then reload. But Carter’s willing to sacrifice a little accuracy for the fifty-round magazine he jams into the gun’s underbelly. Sniping is all about stealth, the basic idea to shoot without being seen, a goal Carter embraces wholeheartedly. But ideas are not realities and goals are only goals, so Carter is prepared to exercise plan B if the shit hits the fan. He’s prepared to shoot his way out.
    Carter arranges the boxes in two stacks, separated by a single box just high enough to support the rifle’s biped. His line of sight, through an open rear window, is of the far side of the street to a distance of approximately 300 meters.
    Carter is wearing a navy-blue jacket over a black turtle-neck sweater and thin black gloves. He completes this outfit by donning a nylon ski mask, also black. Finally, he peers through the rifle’s Unerti 10X scope. The front door of Sweet’s Bar and Grill jumps into view, disappears as an oncoming truck goes by, appears again just as suddenly.
    Traffic, a hazard for which Carter, who’s conducted several practice runs, is prepared. He can see oncoming vehicles, at least until he sights down on a target, but not vehicles coming from behind him. These he has to hear.
    Carter likes a challenge, likes overcoming obstacles, and he’s reached the point when he can differentiate between busses and large trucks, SUVs and sedans by the hum of their tires on the asphalt and the pitch of their engines. More importantly, he’s learned to gauge the speed of these vehicles well enough to estimate the number of seconds before they intersect his line of sight. Except, of course, when a train passes overhead.
    While he waits for a target to appear, Carter tracks the vehicles