Station Zed by Tom Sleigh

Author:Tom Sleigh
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-55597-900-3
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2014-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

I PROVED MYSELF TO BE INEPT at putting on my bulletproof vest, attaching this to that in all the wrong places, before figuring out how to velcro the waist panels tightly around my stomach so that they were under the vest, not over it, and adjusting and readjusting the shoulder straps to make sure they were tight. I didn’t look very military: in fact, I looked like I was wearing a bib, a sort of Rambo, Jr.

Now that I was strapped into my vest, it felt fairly light weight, around eight pounds—thick enough, according to the specs, to give reasonable protection against handguns. But when you consider that a bullet fired from a military-style weapon is the equivalent of a five-pound sledgehammer smashing into you at forty-five miles per hour, serious bruising and broken ribs are pretty much guaranteed. I put on my helmet and snapped the chin-snap fast, but I had to keep pushing it back from sliding down over my eyes. Rather than protected, I looked—and felt—like an overgrown infant.

In front of our armored vehicle—a Chevy Suburban SUV reinforced with steel plating—a beefy, but terminally polite security contractor dressed in khakis, a brown knit shirt, a gray windbreaker, lightweight hikers, and sporting a buzz-cut, gave us a briefing: “Once you’re inside the vehicle, please stay away from the doors. We’ll let you in and out. If we take fire, or if I give you the signal to get down, I’d appreciate it if you could get on the bottom of the vehicle. I’ll climb in back with you and cover you. Once we get to our destination, you can leave your armor and helmets in the vehicle. Then we’ll open the doors, and we’ll proceed single file to our destination. Everything clear?”

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