Dead Zero

by Stephen Hunter

  “Is that better, my lord?”

  “It is,” he said. “For this alone, the West should be spared. Though I’m sure, like the airplane, the oil rig, the missile, and differential calculus, the antiacidic is originally an Islamic invention.”

  The servant said nothing, the jest lost on him. Servants do not speak irony; they only speak obedience.

  “Young man,” he said, “how old are you?”

  “Twenty-three, my lord.”

  “Do you fear death?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Why are you so brave?”

  “I know that Allah has a plan and if he wills it, I will die for him. It is written.”

  “But suppose his plan is that you work in subservient positions until you are unattractive and all your teeth have rotted, and so your master sends you into the streets because you now disgust him. You become a bitter Kabul beggar and freeze to death in the mud and shit of an obscure roadway.”

  “I . . . I had not thought of that, sire. But if that is his plan, then that is the life I shall have.”

  “You young people, you assume glory lies at the end of every journey. But at the end of most journeys lie nothing but squalor and oblivion.”

  “If you say so, sire.”

  “Thus, given the chance, you would choose glory, no?”

  “Of course, sire.”

  “What if in the glory there was also death?”

  “It is nothing, sire.”

  “But you are nothing. I mean not to degrade you, after all, this is the West, one does not degrade another; but it is the truth, is it not? You, truly, are nothing. You live to bring me pills, flush the toilet when I have deposited, sweep up my toenail clippings, make sure my repellent underwear makes it to the laundry. That is not much of a life, so leaving it for glory would be an easy thing, would it not?”

  Pain fell across the boy’s handsome face. He wanted to satisfy but was clearly not sure where satisfaction lurked. And he didn’t want to make a mistake. He said nothing, but looked as if he had sinned.

  “Now I, on the other hand—exalted, gifted with beauty, wit, wealth, courage, the admiration of millions—which should I choose, glory but early death or banal but comfortable squalor unto forever? I have so much more to lose than you.”

  “I am sure you would chose glory, sire. You are a lord, a lion, a true believer. You would do the right thing.”

  The older man sighed. “The right thing.” It came so easily to the youth’s lips. At his simple age, “the right thing” was obvious and knowable. It was clear. But for the great man, as for all great men, too much wisdom and experience gave the meaning of “the right thing” a maze of filters and screens through which to negotiate. Thus, “the right thing” was not always so apparent.

  “Here,” he said, “come with me.”

  He led the boy to his bureau, upon which a hundred or so watches gently trundled to and fro.

  “Do you have a watch?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let me see it.”

  The boy peeled off a rather unimpressive low-end Seiko, built on a cheesy quartz movement from Switzerland manufactured in a huge, dreary plant full of Turkish emigrés for about a nickel, shipped to Japan, encased in clumsy stamped metal and low-grade plastic, then affixed to a thin leather strap by a Korean immigrant for twenty-four cents an hour, thirteen of which must be returned to her parents in Korea.

  “Pah,” said the great one, “it summarizes your life: nothingness.”

  He tossed it into the wastebasket and turned and selected two watches.

  One was a thick Fortis, with a leather band, the chronograph that according to advertising was the favorite of the Russian cosmonaut service. It cost about $2,700 and you could use it to hammer nails or plant bombs on submarine hulls in Sevastopol and it wouldn’t lose a second. Ticktock, it was the inevitable vanity of materialism and glamour, possibly, or the fact that the snow will never melt in the Himalayas or that the West will never fall: it was destiny, strength, and beautiful design.

  The other was a Paul Gerber. Gerber made twelve watches a year with his own fingers. When they were finished, they looked even plainer than the Seiko, except that they displayed the phases of the moon, the date, the day, the time in Buenos Aires or Cairo or London, the arrival of the next solar and lunar eclipse, and all in precise accuracy for 128 years, assuming the watch was kept running over that time period. The waiting list to get one was fifteen years long, and the cost over $100,000.

  One was glamorous, sexy, fast, sleek: the West. The other was subtle, incredibly complicated, a symphony of wheels and gears and pins and diamonds. It represented the furthest reaches of the mind of man as applied to less than one square inch, and yet was impenetrable to those who did not appreciate its exquisiteness. Its maker had applied, even if he didn’t know it, the harshness of sharia against his own mind, and through that discipline had created that which was absolute, unknowable, irrevocable, impenetrable, undeniable. To Zarzi, it was the East.

  “Go ahead, choose one. Which appeals? Each is equally fine, but you must choose.”

  The boy pointed to the big watch.

  “Of course. That is what I feared,” said Zarzi. “You take what is beautiful over what endures. That is the problem. All right, go ahead, take it, it’s yours, but do not brag of it or the other servants will be jealous.”

  The boy took it.

  “There, now go and enjoy the new toy.”

  The servant hustled out and Zarzi was alone with his watch and his fate.

  The boy had made the final choice for him.

  MARRIOTT RESIDENCE HOTEL

  WILSON BOULEVARD

  ROSSLYN, VIRGINIA

  0130 HOURS

  It finally rang. Swagger had been staring at the folder for what seemed like hours. He imagined the young sniper Cruz shot up, bleeding out in a roadside ditch, losing consciousness, to be discovered in a few weeks by a convict cleanup crew.

  He flipped opened the phone.

  “Where are you?”

  “As if I’d tell you, goddamnit. Every time you show up, a crew of gunmen shows up. I’m lucky to be alive.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Nah. Cut, scraped, twisted, bruised, pissed, but they didn’t quite finish the job, or even start it.”

  “Okay, good. Now here’s what—”

  “Hold on, goddamnit. Who the fuck are you? Are you being tailed? Are you stupid, sloppy, careless, unlucky? Are you the world’s best liar and double agent? Can you look me hard in the eye and lie to me? How’d you last so long if you’re this much of an idiot?”

  “The answer to all them questions is no. I ain’t a liar, a double, or nothing. I’m just a beat-up former sniper with holes everywhere, like a piece of cheese. I wasn’t followed. I check. I have the discipline. Nobody was on me, not in sight anyway, and nobody has ever been on me, goddamnit. They must be using satellites is all I can figure.”

  “Oh, well then, it couldn’t possibly be the CIA, could it? It’s probably a Pepsico satellite or maybe McDonald’s now has orbital birds.”

  “I never said the Agency wasn’t involved. Clearly they are involved big time. But now we know it and we can use the satellites against them. Maybe there’s a transponder in my car, that’s the only way they could do it. I’ll rent a new one tomorrow, just to make sure.”

  That seemed to quiet Cruz.

  “Listen, it’s time for you to come in. We took our suspicion and all our dope to the Big Man, and he got the Agency to acknowledge some things and pledge cooperation. It seems clear that there are some people over there who are overcommitted to this Zarzi. If laws have been broken—that is, if Agency people have targeted you or other marines—that will be dealt with. But it all turns on your coming in, giving your statements and your facts, working within a team structure, following the rules and so on and so forth. You can’t be rogue no more. The rogue shit makes these people scared as hell and when they feel fear, they respond wit
h violence.”

  “I come in and another mystery explosion craters a building.”

  “Cruz, it won’t happen. I’m speaking for the Bureau. No, I ain’t their number one boy, but I have Nick Memphis on the team and the director was—”

  “The director was bullshitting you. Don’t you recognize the signs? He was jiving you, man; get me in, and watch the promises disappear, along with me. And whatever the Zarzi people want to achieve, they do. Maybe it’s for the good, but nobody can guarantee it, because it’s a crap shoot. Maybe it’s not.”

  “Think about it,” Bob said. It was important to him to get Cruz through this for some reason. He didn’t want to lose this guy. “Don’t do nothing. Move tomorrow to another location. Do you need money? I can get you money. I think I can work on them about the time and maybe you won’t have to do none. It doesn’t seem nobody’s linked you to the shoot-out in Baltimore because I never told them you were at that car wash and nobody else got hurt and it was clear self-defense, so I’m thinking you should be okay on that one. By the way, the sucker you busted was named Carl Crane, ex-Special Forces, ex-Graywolf. He hung with a crew led by another ex-forces guy, big, blond linebacker type—”

  Cruz remembered: the big guy with the Barrett, ambling down the crest of the hill after they’d checked out the kill zone that held the two parts of Billy Skelton. He remembered thinking: I will hunt you cocksuckers down.

  “—named Bogier, Mick Bogier, who all hung out at a joint called the Black Cat in Kabul. Gun-for-hire types.”

  “There you go. CIA hires mercs for the dirty stuff and when the mercs can’t make it happen, they laser-paint the hotel for the smart bomb. When they learn they fail, the Agency people go to the same team, for obvious security reasons, using people already part of it. The contractors hunt me in America. The Agency keys on you, plants a bug so they can tail you by a bird in the sky, feeding info to the contractors. When you locate me, they move in for the kill. In Pikesville, they thought I was in the house so they raided hard and killed every dishwasher in the place. They followed you to me at the car wash. They’ll follow you to me if I turn myself in.”

  “It won’t happen again. I got it busted now.”

  “And you still don’t know why the fuck Zarzi is here.”

  “Cruz, damnit, for the first time, I’m thinking we’re ahead of them. Tomorrow I go to a meeting. I will meet with the four guys who have the authority to deal a Paveway strike without raising no questions. I will eyeball them and see what I can see. I will report back to you tomorrow and we will see where we are. Think on coming over to us. Give it a fair shot. This rogue crap is just going to get you killed. Okay?”

  Cruz said nothing.

  “Get some sleep, Sergeant Cruz. I will bring you in, we will make this happen. I swear to you, sniper to sniper, it’ll work out.”

  “I’ll take you at your word, because I’m a fool and a dreamer. But only one more time,” said Cruz, breaking the connection.

  A & A THERAPY

  ROUTE 40 WEST

  CATONSVILLE, MARYLAND

  0230 HOURS

  Bogier hurt everywhere. His nipples hurt, his toes hurt, his watchband hurt, the elastic in his underpants hurt. His mind hurt. But his chest was the worst. It was lit like the Fourth of July if that holiday was celebrated in fireworks primarily of the blue-indigo-violet range. Each of Ray’s five shots had delivered about five hundred-foot pounds of energy to the Kevlar chest plate that prevented them from penetrating, but did nothing to halt the energy transaction that hammered his flesh like a drill bit driven by a sledge. A pink blood blister signified the actual point of the bullet strike and was itself the center of a radiant bloom of BIV swirls that unfurled like daisies in the summer sunshine. The wounds leaked interior blood as far as belly, biceps, and neck, so the flowers were as if displayed on a field of bluish velvet and wine stain. It hardly looked human.

  “What happen, baby?” asked Kay. “You been in fight?”

  Kay, wrapped in a flower-print strapless dress that showed what appeared to be cleavage to end all cleavage and a butt to end all butts, had a fifties sex-goddess vibration that was undeniable; she could have played bad girls in B pictures for a decade. Her doll’s face was symmetrical but not quite approaching beauty in its flatness, her eyes were not without empathy but helpfully unencumbered by curiosity. The question was strictly pro forma.

  “You should see the other guy,” Mick said, the point of the joke being that it wasn’t funny at all, and its lack of humor perfectly matched his black mood.

  “You lie there. Kay take care.”

  “I can’t shower myself,” he said. “I tried, I hurt too much. You have to do it for me. Leave the backside alone, just do the front, under the arms. I stink of sweat. Go easy, stupid white guy is hurting bad.”

  She laughed in a way learned from cartoons. “Ha,” followed by another “ha.” Then she said, “You funny, honey.”

  “I’m a regular talk show host,” he said.

  She took his towel off, and if she was impressed with the MCGA equipage down there she said nothing. In her job she’d seen more dicks than a urologist, so nothing would surprise her. He lay on the table in a pool of hot water and she sprayed him three or four times, then smeared soap all over him—that is, all over him—and used her strong but gentle hands to knead some pleasure into his body. She was very good, the hands knowing and not shy, her concentration highly professional, up, down, around, slip-slop, squish-whish, in, out, here and finally there.

  “Ah,” he said, “that felt good.”

  “You big,” she did say, finally.

  “Big but dumb. That’s how it goes.”

  “You come now.”

  She wrapped the towel around him and led him, quietly padding barefoot through the surprisingly clean hallways, to the room where the episode had begun. The place was dim, almost religious, but smelled of locker room disinfectants. Other dramas played out behind curtains sealing off rooms like the bland one into which she led him with its $8-a-night motel room art and lava lamp. There, she pulled off his towel, patted him down, and was surprised to find he was all ready to go again.

  “Wow,” she said, “what a strong fella.”

  “Strong but dumb.”

  He lay on his back. She turned the lights down, peeled out of her print dress to reveal that beneath the hypnotic cleavage lay two wondrous Playboy-quality breasts. She touched them for him because he could not touch them himself and discovering an avid audience for the exhibition, she continued with the touching theme in various private areas and in various unusual postures until he got very interested.

  She rushed to him at that point, and with a mighty bolt, he emptied himself. Then she crawled up next to him and snuggled. He was not a snuggler, but tonight, her softness and warmth and uncritical if professional adoration were welcome.

  “You sad, baby?”

  “A good friend went away today,” he said. “That’s never fun, you know?”

  “In same fight?”

  “The very same. Can’t be helped, it’s the business we chose, but it’s sad.”

  At that point something that couldn’t have been a phone started to make a noise that couldn’t be a ring, and he rolled from the massage table, went to his dumped clothes on the floor, and pulled out the big satellite communicator.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  He punched the button.

  “Nice of you to answer,” MacGyver said.

  “I’m not in the mood to take any shit,” he said. “From you or anybody.”

  “What happened? Three on one, he kills Crane, and you guys run like hell. Hardly up to Black Cat standards, much less Graywolf or Fifth Special Forces.”

  “What happened was, he outfought us. He read a tell, knew who we were, and jumped us instead of us jumping him. His first five went point blank into my chest. Goddamn lucky I was wearing a vest. The prick is world class, I’ll give that to him. Any man who could take down Carl Crane is a h
ell of a man.”

  “They made Crane fast off prints from DOD. The FBI has a circular out for his pals Mick Bogier and Tony Zemke.”

  “You want us out of here? Are we too hot? You want your money back? I don’t feel like calling Tony’s mother like I had to call Carl’s wife. Carl left her and three kids, he was a great dad, and he did what he did to keep them comfortable and because you told us it was for the good of our uncle.”

  “I wish I could afford to cut you loose. But it’s too late now, I can’t bring new people in. And since Cruz got out clean and nobody up there seems to have connected this with him, you still have to finish.”

  “Will do,” said Mick.

  “It’s worth it. We’re trying to find a way out and Zarzi’s our best route. If this works, there won’t be any more young kids dying in that shithole. Cruz, his spotter, the thirty-one salesmen, the Filipinos, whoever, they will have died for a noble cause, which is stopping the pointless slaughter of our people for no advantage whatsoever. You get that? Basically, we’re trying to end the war and put you out of business.”

  “There’ll never be an end to war, Nietzsche,” said Mick.

  “He was right, but maybe we can get ourselves a little downtime before the next one.”

  “Friday night. Georgetown?”

  “That would be so nice. I may be able to get you security dispositions. Evidently this Swagger has some weird gift for figuring out where another sniper will shoot from. You don’t have to be near Georgetown; with that Barrett you can be a mile away.”

  “A mile with ranging shots. No ranging shots. One shot, one kill, cold bore, twelve hundred yards would be the max. Then, Belize, here I come.”

  “Bogier, tough about your friend Crane. But don’t stay depressed. Get this thing done, cover yourself with glory and honor and the thanks of a grateful nation. Save the sum of things for pay. What better epitaph could a mercenary want or get? Plus, all that dough.”