Dead Zero

by Stephen Hunter

  Chambers was an exponent, outspoken and sometimes brutal and mocking, of the SASS, or semiautomatic sniper system. His weapon of choice for general issue to marine sniper teams was the Knight’s Armament SR-25, as derived from the original ArmaLite AR-10. In fact, both the SR-25 and the common infantryman’s M16/M4 rifles had common ancestry in the AR-10, which, designed in the late fifties by Eugene Stoner and some aerospace hotshots at Fairchild Aircraft, had seemed like some kind of plastic ray gun from outer space. But its profile—the straight-line design, the rakish pistol grip, the magazine well just forward of it, the need for high sights either optical or concealed in a carrying-handle assembly, plastic foregrip with ventilations, triangular front sight and flash hider at the muzzle—had become the basis of the Western combat small arm of the last half of the twentieth century. Chambers pushed hard for the adoption of the SR-25, once it had been proven in competition, courtesy of the Army Marksmanship Unit in the nineties, signifying that a semiauto or full-auto weapon was capable of the accuracy a bolt gun routinely produced.

  Chambers argued, generally within the pages of arcane publications like Precision Shooting, The Infantry Journal, or Defense Review, that the advantages of an SASS far outweighed the advantages of the bolt gun. It allowed the sniper to engage multiple targets in near simultaneous real time; it allowed for fast follow-up shots when windage or mirage caused a miss; it gave the squad another fire point in a fight, should one develop; and it also allowed the sniper, using battle sights appended to his scope in the form of a diagonally mounted micro red dot, to become essentially a BAR man, bringing heavy volume of fire if the hadjis got inside the wire, where the bolt gun was all but useless. Moreover, the Russians had proved the system in combat since 1963, when they first fielded their Dragunov SVD in Vietnam against American troops—the CIA had somehow obtained an early one—and later, very successfully, in wars in Africa, South America, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Chechnya.

  Against that he chalked up only minor disadvantages: one was that the ejecting brass case, sailing through the air, was a tell as to the sniper’s position, but Chambers could find no actual evidence that such an ejecting case had ever given away a sniper’s hide in combat, much less with any regularity. The second was the gun’s ungainliness: unlike the bolt gun, it was fairly deep and denser for its size. It had to be monitored constantly as, fired heavily, its zero was subject to disengagement. It would tempt commanders to deploy it as a kind of squad automatic weapon instead of allowing it its full tactical potential as a long-range—out to a thousand or so meters—precision instrument.

  Perhaps it was that Ray saw the future; clearly, he’d wanted to study and learn at the feet of the master, following the smaller, more aggressive SEALs committed to the SASS/SR-25. He’d taken sabbaticals to study with Chambers and to master the intricacies of the weapon, when on his first three tours he’d been strictly the bolt gun guy. Such an agnostic’s move would certainly be something to hide from the corps’ Jesuits.

  So that intellectual connection between the apostate Chambers and the pure sniper Cruz was extremely provocative to Swagger. The more he thought of it, the more it seemed to suggest possibilities. If Cruz was back, and serious about the mission he’d set up, he’d need to mount it from someplace. Initial FBI thought was that he’d draw on his connection to the marines or possibly to ex-marines, but no one had made the link to Chambers before.

  Swagger had seen that the “Steel Brigade Armory,” out of which Chambers ran his little sniper think tank and mail-order empire (high-end tactical goods, such as Badger Ordnance rings, Nightforce scopes, reinforced recoil lugs, sniper data books, and so forth), was in rural South Carolina, within forty miles of Jacksonville, just across the state line. He guessed it might be an informal marine sniper hangout where the guys could cluster off duty and tell war stories and theorize about possible futures (for example, the latest info was that Chambers was running an exhaustive R & D program on the new .416 Barrett to see how it matched up against the .308 of fifty years’ service duration, and the big .50 boomer now used for those very long engagements so common in Afghanistan). Before he knew it, he was in his car, roaring through the dark down these country roads, aiming for the Steel Brigade Armory complex.

  Was he going to sneak in? No, but he had to see it, make an initial recon, see who hung out there, what the milieu was. He had to figure out how to approach it: as an anonymous FBI investigator requesting answers, or as the Great Bob Lee Swagger, hero and celeb in this little-bitty world, expecting the royal treatment but also aware that if he wasn’t honest about his Bureau affiliation, he was somehow dishonoring the bond between long-range life takers.

  Thus, well after midnight, he pulled through a tiny rural burg called Danielstown, turned right down Sherman at Main, and just when it looked as though he would run out of town, came across a surprisingly unimpressive recent building, aluminum siding under a flat roof, with two or three garage doors at one end, minimal landscaping, unfenced, and with a gravel parking lot out in front. It might have housed an infirmary, a battery warehouse, a software firm, but instead wore the nondescript sign STEEL BRIGADE ARMORY.

  A light in one window was on.

  UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

  OUTSIDE DANIELSTOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

  0238 HOURS

  They pulled off the road out of town and, looking at the Google map of Danielstown, calculated where under the nest of trees and buildings, at the crossroads just ahead, Swagger must have stopped and now sat in his car, unaware that the tiny transponder in his wallet was broadcasting his position.

  “Okay,” Mick said, pointing to Crackers, “you cut through backyards and you get a night vision look-see on him. Tell me where he is, what he’s doing. You do not scare the neighbors, arouse the dogs, watch the widow lady jacking off nude in her shower or Jimmy Dick fucking Sally Pussy on the couch of the Pussy mansion. Remember, you are secret agent man.”

  Too bad Crackers had no sense of humor. He didn’t even fake a grin. He adjusted his see-in-the-dark apparatus—a head harness that supported a single battery-controlled optic called a dual-spectrum night vision goggle, new to the inventory, fresh out of a box—fiddled with it to bring the world into the greenish focus of intensified ambient light, then slipped out, silently. He was a pretty good operator, after all. Soon he was gone.

  In seven or eight minutes, the radio crackled, and both Mick and Tony Z stirred and picked up their handsets. Through a gravy of static, Crackers’s voice came in, sans radio protocol ID games, as it was a small net and only the three of them were on it.

  “This thing is really cool,” said Crackers, noted gearhead. “You can switch between intensified ambient and thermal, or you can combine ’em and get a real good picture show.”

  “Save it for your column in Soldier of Fortune,” said Mick. “What have you got on, you know, what’s it called? Oh yeah, our mission.”

  “Okay, I’m prone in the bushes of a house about two hundred yards out. He’s sort of waiting or something in the parking lot of some kind of low cottage-industry-type building, you know, like where an air-conditioning supply house would be—”

  Both men knew instantly the kind of building.

  “Can you ID it? Does it have a name or anything?”

  “Yeah, bright as day on the NV. It’s called Steel Brigade Armory. It doesn’t look like an armory though.”

  “Okay,” said Mick. “How’s your secure?”

  “Total. I was invisible and I low-crawled the last hundred yards through some lady’s garden. No bowwows, nothing.”

  “What’s Swagger doing?”

  “That’s the funny thing. Nothing. He’s pulled off the road but not quite into the parking lot. He’s just sitting there.”

  “Is he on a phone?”

  “Not from his profile. I think he’s just trying to figure out what to do next. There’s one light on in the building and there’s an SUV parked in the lot, so I’m guessing someone’s at home.�
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  “Okay, stay in position, give me any changes ASAP.”

  “Got it.”

  Even as he set down the unit, Tony Z handed over the Thuraya satellite phone. Bogier pushed the preset button and in a few seconds, a voice spluttered on.

  “What the fuck? Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  “This is a twenty-four/seven gig,” Mick said, glad, for once, to have a little leverage on the normally unflappable MacGyver.

  “Don’t lecture me, Bogier. I know a little about this business.”

  “Okay, okay. I have Swagger at some place in a town called Danielstown, South Carolina, maybe twenty miles southwest of Henderson. He’s pulled up at a nondescript low-threshold industrial facility that seems to call itself Steel Brigade Armory. We need a quick read on it.”

  “I’ll call back,” said MacGyver.

  The two men sat in the quiet car, listening to the southern night wind around them. Bogier looked at his Suunto and saw that it was getting on to 0300. What the fuck was this guy doing out here at this hour?

  The radio crackled.

  “Okay,” said Crackers. “He’s going in. He went to the door and knocked.”

  STEEL BRIGADE ARMORY

  DANIELSTOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

  0305 HOURS

  Nothing. He knocked again, louder, heard some kind of stirring inside, the sound of someone on metal steps.

  “Get the hell out of here,” a voice said through the steel door.

  “Colonel Chambers?”

  “I said, get the hell out of here. Come back tomorrow. I’ll be here from eleven on, friend.”

  “I have to talk to you.”

  Even through the door, there was no mistaking the heavy clack of a shotgun slide racking.

  “Don’t push it, friend. You don’t want to come through that door. You’ll be a sorry pup. Come back tomorrow, goddamnit.”

  “Sir, I’m going to push my driver’s license through the mail slot. Then I will back off a few feet while you decide whether to see me.”

  “Goddamnit, I said—”

  But Bob peeled his license out of his wallet, slid it through, and backed off.

  No noise came from the building.

  Finally, a door opened, to reveal what you’d expect a marine infantry colonel (Ret.) to look like: burly, crew cut, lots of weight training under the plaid shirt, late forties/early fifties, shotgun in hand, glasses on square face.

  What you might not expect on that square face was love.

  A flashlight spot-lit Bob in the doorway.

  “Goddamn,” said Chambers. “You are him, aren’t you?”

  “I seem to be,” said Swagger.

  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  The colonel, now transformed into a fourteen-year-old girl at a Justin Timberlake concert, ran to him and almost hugged him. He was both utterly impressed and awestruck. He seemed to have some trouble finding words. Then a torrent of garbled Bob-love came out, and he grabbed and hugged the old sniper.

  “Colonel Chambers,” said Bob uneasily, “I’m very appreciative, sir, believe me, but I’m not here because of old times. I’m here for these here new times. I’m on a job for the government people.”

  “You’re with the FBI now?”

  “In a manner of speaking, sir.”

  “Okay, come on, come on up.”

  They went into the building, the colonel locking it tightly behind him, resetting a complicated alarm system. Then he led Bob up some metal stairs to a drywall hallway that displayed the flimsy, haphazard construction of the building. At the end of the hallway lay the colonel’s office, a nave dedicated to the religion of the sniper. A walk-in gun safe dominated one wall, and on the others, from racked rifles of a highly evolved nature, to bookshelves full of memoirs, military texts, and battle histories, to a computer station, to well-punctured targets, to photos of several of the great ones, including Carl Hitchcock and Chuck McKenzie, to say nothing of the picture of a twenty-six-year-old Staff Sergeant Bob Lee Swagger, of Blue Eye, Arkansas, on the occasion of his victory in the Wimbledon Cup 1,000-yard national match in 1972, the colonel’s obsession was well demonstrated.

  “Looks like a hall of fame or something,” Swagger said.

  “My hall of fame,” said the colonel. “Drink, Gunny? May I call you Gunny?”

  “Friends call me Bob,” said Swagger.

  “Then let’s be friends,” said the colonel, full of dumb love. “I would consider that a great honor. Drink? This calls for libations and salutations.”

  “No, sir. Actually, I wish it were social, but if it were, I’d be here at a decent hour. As I said, I’m here in a kind of semiofficial way. I hope we can be friends after the business is done.”

  “Well,” said the colonel, “let’s see if we can manage that.”

  “I’m on a temp contract with the FBI to advise and consult on the case of a marine sniper named Ray Cruz, thought to be killed in Afghanistan six months ago, but possibly here in this country with mischief on his mind, tragic mischief in my humble opinion. But I have just learned that you have an association with Cruz.”

  “Ray,” said the colonel, his face jumping to life. “Alive! Jesus, would that be a trick! Now, I would drink to that, believe me. Hell of a guy. You’d like him, Bob. You and him, you’re brothers of the high grass and the long kill.”

  “Sir, that may be so, and what I’ve learned of Sergeant Cruz suggests it is. But if he is alive, he has got himself on the government’s shit list by making certain threats, if it’s even him.”

  Bob kept his focus on the colonel’s eyes, trying to read them for sparks of hidden knowledge. He’d already noted that the colonel had done a nice Ray-is-risen act, and it seemed spontaneous enough, so that was a plus. On the negative, the colonel hadn’t had a nanosecond of private grief when the death of Ray Cruz was mentioned, as you might imagine if the pain was still considerable. The colonel hadn’t even reacted. Then he did, as if catching up to his own character in the drama.

  “When I heard he was dead, it broke my heart. So many good men gone in a war half the population doesn’t even know we’re fighting and the other half hates. So wrong. But don’t get me started.”

  “What I’ve said about Ray going his own way. That’s the Ray you knew?”

  “Ray had his own ideas, certainly. He was one for doing the right thing. But it was quiet, not loud. He wasn’t a yeller or a crusader. He was a doer. And he just didn’t stop coming.”

  The colonel told a story about Ray working an early version of the then-unadopted Stoner SR-25. He’d worked it all night in the shop, taking it apart, piece by piece, putting it together, trying somehow to divine the religious essence of it. Wanted to know the zen of every last screw and spring. Just wouldn’t stop coming.

  “Maybe it’s the Filipino in him,” Chambers added. “We had to invent the .45 ACP to stop the Filipinos, you know. They didn’t stop if they’d set their minds to do something until we invented a big, fat bullet for them, did you know that?”

  “I think so, sir. Sir, I came across your connection to Ray Cruz about two hours ago. As far as I know, it’s completely new information, as no one else understood the significance. But tomorrow I am formally obligated by contract and duty to notify the people I work with. I ain’t got no choice on that. By noon, an FBI task force will be here, with forensic investigators, assistant attorney generals, subpoenas, and search warrants. They will take this place and you apart in their hunt for Ray. Your files, your phone records, your credit records, your accounting, your business dealings, it’ll all be gone through. So I’m here unofficially ahead of that tidal wave. Probably shouldn’t be, may get yelled at on account of it or some such. That ain’t important. I felt I owed you something for your service to us grass crawlers and long-shot takers. So I’m begging you: if you have any knowledge of Ray, of his plans, of his survival, you’d best give it to me now and go into the records as a cooperating witness. These federal people have a job to do and the
y mean to do it, and if you get in the way, it don’t matter to them, they’ll crush you.”

  “I appreciate the warning, Gunnery Sergeant,” said the colonel, his voice going official marine. Then he said, “Do you mind if I pour myself a glass of bourbon?”

  “Please do,” said Bob.

  The colonel opened a drawer, pulled out a half-full fifth of Knob Creek, dispensed a shot into a small glass, and downed it in one swig.

  “If Ray was back,” Bob said, “and he was in fact going to try to hit a certain fellow available in Washington starting next week, he’d have to mount a mission out of some logistical base. Our working theory was that he’d use old marine contacts, maybe at Two-Two Recon. I was down here to look at that. But he could just as easily do it out of your shop, using one of your custom builts, your ammo, scope, laser ranger, the works. It would be logical, and I bet you think so highly of Ray, you’d pull in with him without much rigorous thinking. If he’d have come to me, hell, I might have. You just have to know—well, if you’re involved—you’re playing with very hot fire that can burn down everything you’ve built in just a few days. It ain’t worth it, sir. And it would be a real hard tragedy, the saddest, in my book, if Ray thought he was doing something noble and right and he was just setting himself up for the rest of his life in some shit-hole pen. That would be such an injustice.”