Dead Zero

by Stephen Hunter

  “Is there any way you could test? Maybe call the restaurant, ask for a Mr. Swagger, see if he gets up?”

  “I think this guy would see through it,” said Bogier. “I don’t even like eyeballing him from here; guys like him, they have radar, they can sometimes feel it when they’re being watched.”

  The binoculars went down.

  “So do you want to move, Mick?” said Crackers the Clown. “We may never get another chance like this.”

  “But we’ve only got one card,” said Tony. “If we do get it planted and it’s planted on the wrong guy, then we’ve got to get it back and still find the right guy and plant it again.”

  “Agh,” said Mick.

  The card was the latest in high-tech bullshit James Bond spy craft. It was a red BankAmericard made out to Bob Lee Swagger. The idea was somehow to sneak it into Swagger’s wallet under the theory that few men examined their wallets carefully and would notice the addition of a new credit card. Except it wasn’t a credit card. It was actually a miniature transponder called an “active RFID” for radio frequency identification device. It gave off a return signal when it received a recognized interrogation signal. It used 16 nanometer technology, a unique dual-layered nano lithium-cadmium battery that was actually part of the card itself, along with the molded-in single strand of antenna wire. It responded to an inquiry signal sent from a classified Aegon satellite that had the highest sensitivity and best signal-to-noise ratio of anything placed in space. When the satellite sent the inquiry, huge umbrellalike antennas began to look for the specific frequency and tone of the encoded response, which, diminutive as it is, still can be counted on to register. Of all this, Bogier, Crackers, and Tony Z knew exactly nothing.

  The second part of the deal was a BlackBerry with software that could find the appropriate Google map and then would receive the satellite information and track the card on the map. Mick and his pals could easily track the bearer of the card from any distance, even over the horizon. There’d be no hassle over staying close in traffic or through sudden turns or accelerations. They could always stay in contact, until the moment Swagger recognized an extra credit card in his wallet, which would probably be never.

  “Okay,” said Mick, finally. “Let’s do it. If it ain’t him, we can get it back in a more direct way than we have to plant it.”

  “Ooh, cool,” said Tony Z. “I like that part.”

  TGIF PARKING LOT

  915 BRAVERMAN AVENUE

  JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

  2115 HOURS

  Swagger finished the meal, sat back, tried to relax a bit, yearned for booze, daughters, wife, a simple life, and an endless amount of time to sleep, and lied to himself harmlessly about a deep and rewarding platonic friendship with Susan Okada as well. Why not dream about having it all? But none of that was apparently in the offing. Worse, this late, his hip sometimes ached a bit. It seemed to have gotten better in the past few months, but if he put a lot of weight on it over a long day, it could become inflamed and begin to declare an unhappy memory. Now, it felt restive, as though in the pre-pain stage.

  He signaled the girl, gave her a twenty, waited for change, left too big a tip, grabbed the receipt, dumped it into the briefcase, and stood, favoring the good leg. A wave of stiffness came but he shrugged it off, went out the front doors and looked for his car in the lot. Hmm, a rental, what was it again, oh yeah, a Ford Taurus on government contract from Hertz. He spotted it, and walked toward it down the half-full aisles, behind a screen of low bushes that marked the roadway, the whole thing red-gold in the neon of the big TGIF sign up on top. He reached his lane, and turned down it to the car.

  When the guy hit him, he hit him hard, crushing him against the car rear, not hurting him so much as completely de-coordinating him.

  “What the—!” Swagger felt himself blurt out as the muscular energy of his assailant nailed him hard against the trunk and he slid down. Flashbulbs, pinwheels, Roman candles ignited behind his eyes at the impact as his optic nerves shot off, but then he came back—an instant too late. A heavy knee went on his back, another on his neck, and between them they bore the weight of a big man.

  “Keep your fucking mouth shut, mister, or I’ll crack you good.”

  The guy had total leverage, pinning him by weight and power. Bob squirmed under the assault, but knew he was way outmatched. He turned his head sideways, felt as his robber ripped up Bob’s sports coat, pulled the wallet out, then grabbed the briefcase and began to pry it open.

  “Hey, you!” came a shout from across the parking lot.

  “Fuck,” his assailant said, rising.

  He turned to run, and Bob watched as he sped out of the parking lot, leaped the low hedge, and started down the road. But an athletic-looking guy intercepted him from out of nowhere with a superb open field tackle right at curbside and the two of them went down in a tangle. The robber was a tough motherfucker and managed to get a driving right-handed blow into the Samaritan’s ribs, knocking him back, and enabling the thief to squirm to his freedom. He was upright and gone and last seen hoofing it down the street, disappearing behind a strip mall a little bit farther down.

  Bob got there just as the good guy was picking himself up.

  “You okay, mister?” he asked.

  “Ah,” said the guy, “my mother hit harder than that.”

  Bob saw a rangy guy, midthirties, completely athletic, like a ballplayer, who just picked up and put back on his Yankees cap then wiped sweat off his face.

  “Hey,” said Bob, “no kidding, you were great, but you really shouldn’t have done that. Guy could have had a knife or a gun.”

  “You know,” said the guy, smiling, “it happened so fast I didn’t even think about it. I just reacted. You want to call the cops or anything?”

  “Well,” said Bob, foreseeing an hour giving a report that would yield absolutely nothing, “not really. I’m not hurt. Oh, my wallet. Shit, he got—”

  But the guy said, “Wait, I saw something drop off him as he ran. Let’s check.”

  They walked a few steps ahead and there was the wallet, splayed out on the sidewalk.

  The guy picked it up, opened it, peeked in, and said, “Are you Mr. Swagger?”

  “That’s me,” said Bob, taking the wallet.

  “I doubt he had time to take anything,” said the hero.

  Bob did a quick check. His stack of ATM twenties was still intact, and paging through the plastic card display, he saw nothing missing.

  “Looks okay,” he said.

  “You sure you’re okay?” said the guy. “Physically, I mean.”

  “I have a few scrapes, and maybe a bruise or two. But nothing particularly traumatic.”

  “I could call an ambulance.”

  “Nah,” said Swagger. “Who’s got time for that?”

  “Okay,” said the guy. “I guess I’ll go on in and get myself some food. You sure, now? No assistance necessary?”

  “No, and thanks again. You must have played football.”

  “Years ago,” said the guy with a laugh. “Baby, I thought my tackling days were over.”

  They had a good laugh, Bob offered his hand, and they shook. Then Bob went back to his car, thinking, Strangest goddamn thing.

  UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

  HILTON HOTEL PARKING LOT

  JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

  2300 HOURS

  You’re sure?”

  “I guarantee it,” said Crackers. “It said ‘Bob Lee Swagger,’ plain as day, on the Idaho license.”

  “And you got the card in,” Mick asked Tony Z.

  “I did. Between two cards in the card thing, you know, the plastic thing. Meanwhile, the Clown is punching me in the fucking guts.”

  “Hey, you whacked me pretty hard too, goddamnit,” said Crackers.

  “Damn right. After you fucking laid me out like Ray Lewis.”

  “You didn’t know I was all city?”

  “A pussy like you—”

&n
bsp; “Easy, little girls. I’m going to call MacGyver. This is good news, we did this part, I don’t want any screwups. Let’s go over it again.”

  They sat in the SUV across from the Jacksonville Hilton at the edge of the city, near the freeway, seven miles from the main gate to Lejeune. It was in a zone of fluorescence, chain restaurants, car dealerships, fast food joints, all gleaming plastic and chrome. Each guy went over the event again, slowly, step by step.

  Finally Mick accepted the reports. He picked up the satellite phone, pushed the magic button, and in a few seconds the control came on.

  “Okay,” Mick said, “good stuff to report. We got the RFID planted, he didn’t suspect a thing. We followed him a mile off, no visual contact, all the hardware is working A-OK, and he’s gone to bed for the night. No matter what, from now on we’ll know where he is.”

  “Like actual professionals,” said MacGyver dryly.

  “We’ll just stay with him, far back, we won’t push anything. If he can find Cruz, we’ll be there and we’ll take them down.”

  “You boys and your toys. You love the toys. It’s your favorite part. What did they get you? I don’t even know.”

  “M4s, an MP5, plenty of mags. SIGs and Berettas. A .338 Sako. Best of all, another Barrett. This one’s much better than the last. I wouldn’t mind an RPG. We couldn’t miss with that.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We can’t have you blowing shit up in Hometown, USA.”

  “Anyhow, I can do him with the .50 from a mile out or the .338 from half.”

  “You missed the last time, Tex.”

  “No, I hit. I just hit the wrong guy because I didn’t know which one was the right guy. The guy I missed was already on the move when I zeroed him. Tough shot. Nobody could make it.”

  “Cruz could. Swagger could. Make sure you’re never in their kill zone, Bogier. They won’t miss, I guarantee you. And don’t you miss again.”

  “I won’t, goddamnit. Now we’re going to settle down here for the night, and follow him. I’m guessing he’s going back to the base tomorrow for more meetings. Nothing’s going to happen tonight.”

  “Oh shit,” said Crackers the Clown, on the BlackBerry in the front seat. “He’s moving.”

  MCDONALD’S

  SUBURBAN OKLAHOMA CITY

  1322 HOURS

  A clown stared at the three rather scruffy men. He had big eyes, a huge red nose, puffs of crazed red hair, and lips the size of cucumbers. He was 100 percent polyurethane. Blond children made up like cats and dogs ran around his legs. A crusader father tried to keep order. Two of the kids, a boy and a girl, got in a fight over a milk shake and the girl seemed to be getting the better of it, until the dad adjudicated on behalf of the shorter, weaker boy.

  “You are an infidel,” said Dr. Faisal.

  “Alas,” said Professor Khalid, “it is true.”

  “You must be destroyed.”

  “Surely, I will be,” said the professor.

  “You will not go to heaven.”

  “My belief insists there is no heaven.”

  Dr. Faisal turned to Bilal and demanded, “Did you know? He is a traitor, he is a monster, he is a heathen.”

  “Yes, I knew,” said Bilal. “I read his important essay in the Islamabad Islamic Courier. But he is not a Christian, if that’s what you think. If I understand it, he is an atheist.”

  “I would say a realist,” said Khalid.

  “Realist, atheist, what’s the difference? He is not of the true faith.”

  “It is not a matter of faith,” said Khalid. “It is a matter of political will.”

  “Again,” said Bilal, taking a gulp of his chocolate shake, “if I understand him, his political will is strong, possibly as strong as your faith. So you both go on this enterprise, you both risk all, you are both martyrs. What private nuances transpire between each set of ears, it is of no matter.”

  “I am shocked,” said Dr. Faisal.

  “By realist,” said Khalid, “I mean tribalist. I am of the tribe that is culturally Islamic. The god at the center is meaningless, a delusion. Moreover, I happen to have been educated in the West—”

  “I was educated in the West too, do not forget. It did not affect my faith. It made it stronger.”

  “Hear him out,” said Bilal. “I have fought many times with men of indifferent faith. They were just as good as fighters as the devout. Some drank alcohol, ate pork, some were actually of the homosexual perversion, some lacked hygiene and spat at God, but under fire were as willing to die as any.”

  “Why then,” asked Dr. Faisal, “would you face death, believing that beyond is nothing but oblivion? Could I have another milk shake?”

  “No,” said Bilal, “no more milk shakes. We must go, we are behind schedule, I have many more miles to drive and we do not have immense quantities of money.”

  “If you would let me explain,” said Khalid. He let his face compose itself, he sought the dignity of the earnest student encumbered with the truth and the need to spread it, and he leaned forward in piety and humility, even as the red-nosed plastic clown examined him like an interlocutor. “Although these people around us seem very nice, they are actually devils. Not in their daily demeanor, which as you can see is moderate and full of love of family and fun, but in the economic implications of the resources they require to live in such invisible comfort. They have no idea what crimes are committed in the name of this monstrous pillow of comfort, and if you tried to show them logically, they would not be able to process it. It would seem a delusion, a bad dream. If they looked at the cesspool of the camps and the degradation and depravity visited upon those children, they would say, ‘Oh, it’s so sad,’ and perhaps even give a dollar or two to some charity and feel good about themselves for a day. And yet they are as responsible, in their addiction to the great comfort—the cocoon of pleasantness, not sensual pleasure as you can see, but the pleasantness of driving down the street and buying their child a milk shake exactly like the one you so greedily desire, Dr. Faisal—they are responsible for the war against our people, for our suffering, for our pain. They are as responsible as Israeli paratroopers or helicopter assassins or Hindu missile designers—”

  “This is very troubling,” said Dr. Faisal. “Please, Bilal, I am begging you, another milk shake.”

  HIGHWAY 541

  OUTSIDE JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

  0117 HOURS

  Swagger drove through darkness, having long since left any trace of the suburbs. He was in some rural zone, off main highways, on ribbons of blacktop, coming now and then to stop signs but rarely to streetlights.

  He’d gotten to his room, unsatisfied. What a wasted day. Nothing but banalities regarding the strange case of Ray Cruz and his threat to take out the new hope of the Afghan political scene, Ibrahim Zarzi, once known as “the Beheader.” Opening his laptop, he’d sent an e-mail more or less summing up the day to Memphis at FBI HQ. Then a late e-mail registered, stating only that no sightings of Ray Cruz had yet been confirmed, that the NIS canvassing of marine bases or other spots where he might be tempted to go to ground had yielded no new information, but that some new stuff had come in from various parts of the background investigation of Cruz, and photocopies had been FedExed to Swagger. He called the desk, the package was located, and he went down to pick it up.

  Not much. His eyes ran over the reports from various agents who’d been interviewing Cruz associates at marine bases the nation over, all of it confirming exactly what the men of 2-2 Recon had been telling him today. It seemed to add up to nothing. But . . . there was a curiosity. It seemed that someone had dug out a letter Cruz had sent to the Energy Department upon returning from his second tour in Iraq in 2004. The Energy Department was known to deploy extremely sophisticated SWAT teams at nuclear facilities the country over, and Cruz, evidently a little worn down from a year’s hard combat in and around Baghdad, dodging IEDs and seeing the effects on those who did not manage to dodge the IEDs, had succumbed to the generalized de
spair of the presurge environment. Who could blame him? Everybody had. So Ray, in a moment of weakness, had thoughts of leaving the corps before his twenty and taking up as a firearms and tactics instructor with Energy. The pay was said to be high, he’d come in at a high GS grade, and he’d be in one place for a long time doing what he loved to do, without anybody attempting to blow him up with a bomb disguised as a pile of dog shit.

  The Energy people, anxious to get someone as well qualified as Ray on their team, had written back enthusiastically and invited him to contact this officer at this number for further discussion of employment opportunities. Evidently Ray never had, had resigned himself to another few years, and then Bush’s surge kicked in and morale soared as the killings went down. Final score: Us 1, them other guys 0. He’d gone on to another tour in Baghdad before the tour in Afghanistan, which had been terminated under such unusual circumstances.

  But included in the xeroxography of the correspondence was a curriculum vitae in which Ray listed his accomplishments and his credentials. It was clearly meant for civilian eyes only. It indicated that he was investigating something, on his own dime, that was heretical at that moment to marine doctrine.

  Ray listed courses he’d taken under the heading “Civilian Schools Attended,” and they included such learning adventures as Advanced Sniper Techniques and Team Entry Techniques and Team Communication Techniques at several companies, including Graywolf, which had a training division in Moyock, North Carolina, and others such as the confusingly titled Gunsite and Frontsite training facilities in Arizona and Thunder Ranch in Oregon under an ex-marine of excellent reputation named Clint Smith. But the one that leaped out at Bob was a week-long course in Urban Sniper Operations, offered by Steel Brigade Armory, of Danielstown, South Carolina, under the tutelage of a Colonel Norman S. Chambers, USMC (Ret.).

  That name was familiar, and so Swagger did a quick Google on Chambers. What he learned provoked him: Apostate! Heretic! Defier! Enemy of the Jesuitical code of the Marine Corps Sniper Program! Chambers actually had not come out of the program at all. Instead he’d been straight infantry with time at the Command and Staff School at Leavenworth; he was a combat leader, not a sniper acolyte, which meant he wasn’t bent double under its doctrine. He was the critical outlier, the Billy Mitchell of sniping, who felt free to scorn the doctrinaires, at the same time risking the reputation of bitter wannabe, failure, whatever. Among his apostasies: he hated the M14 and thought the idea of welding up the old battle horse of the early sixties into a sniper rifle for the war on terror was a waste of time. He had been right on that one, and the corps, though it dug a great many of the old beauties out of mothballs for accurizing and scope fitting at the dawn of the war, soon learned the hard way that the zero on such a jerry-built assemblage would go wrong, and would never consistently deliver the accuracy at long range that would justify the careful and expensive training a sniper would get. Chambers also saw the M40 system—an iteration of the Army’s M24 system, which was a highly accurized Model 700 Remington with a Kreiger barrel and Schmidt & Bender or U.S. Optics on top—as stopgap at best.