The Third Bullet bls-8

by Stephen Hunter

  Too old for this shit.

  - - - -

  “Did you get him, Three?”

  “No, dammit, he went down just as I fired. I had a real good sight pic on him; goddamn, he is a lucky sonovabitch.”

  “Do you see him, Five?”

  The chopper, hovering four hundred feet over the hilltop, floated this way and that. “I have a visual, Blue Leader. He’s low-crawling among the boulders, maybe a hundred feet ahead of you. I don’t know where he’s going; there’s no place to go. If I were armed, I’d have the shot. But he’s stuck up here for sure.”

  “All right, any police activity?”

  “Negative. No reports, no dispatches. It’s all clear on that front, over.”

  “Good. I need you to retire to point one now. We don’t need you hanging overhead, attracting attention.”

  “Check and commencing.”

  The chopper veered off, headed for an orbit a mile away, out of range.

  “Blue Team, listen up, mates. You guys on the flanks, I want you to move laterally. Locate at each hard-ninety compass indicator and hold up. I want to come at him from four directions. I don’t want any chance of him evading us and making it off this hill alive, do you read?”

  Affirmatives came back at him.

  “You are cleared to fire if you get a clean shot. But I think this is shaping up like fire and movement and then an up-top rat hunt.”

  “Got it, Blue Leader.”

  The three high-speed operators scurried away to their holding spots. Blue Leader crouched, did an equipment check, then took out a smoke and lit up. Always time for a butt. He’d been doing hilltops for about twenty years, sometimes trying to hold them, sometimes trying to take them. It was all the same. Old hand, lots of war behind him, presumably lots of war ahead.

  He waited, enjoying the cigarette, an English Oval, a thick blunt fag unlike the scrawny filtered candy tubes the Yanks smoked. When he was done, years of military experience in rank and officers’ mess demanded that he carefully peel the paper, rub the remaining tobacco and ash away between his fingers, crumple the paper, and put it in his pocket.

  “Blue Leader, this is Blue Two, I am set at due east and ready to rock.”

  “Three?”

  “Due west, holding.”

  “Visuals?”

  “Got nothing but rock and brush. No movement. He’s hunkered down solid.”

  “Ditto that.”

  “Ditto again.”

  “Okay. Let me try a thing.” Blue Leader rose. “Swagger, mate,” he shouted. “Make this easy, go out with dignity. No point in squealing like a pig in the bush as we hunt you down, shot a dozen times, bleeding out in pain. You’re an old bastard, you’ve seen this game a thousand times, you knew your day would come. Dignity, chum. A cigarette, a laugh, a sip on the canteen, I’ve even got some damn fine Scotch aboard, and it’s over clean and painless.”

  No response. Of course not. Swagger wouldn’t give a location indicator. He’d play hard to get.

  “All right.” Blue Leader spoke to his team via the throat mike. “One and Three, move out. Two, with me on the cover fire, do it.”

  He rose, rocked a MK48 burst across his front, and watched the bullets blow lines of dust spasms and rock frags up where they hit. On the other side, Two put in his two cents’ worth.

  Then it was Blue Leader’s turn to move, and he went low and hard, hearing the cover fire against the hilltop from the two other points on the compass, got to a nest of boulders, and slid in. He looked and, in the jumbled landscape ahead of him, saw nothing. There wasn’t much area left unpenetrated. Swagger was running out of hilltop.

  “Okay, nice and easy, Blue Team, one at a time, you move in twenty or so feet, scan, and hold. He may have an ankle piece on him or a knife. Use your corner discipline, be aware of blind spots. I’d go to M-6, for better movement; he’s just a few feet ahead now.”

  Blue Leader let the heavier MK48 fall to sling support, pushed it around to his backside, and deployed the shorter M-6 carbine, stock locked in short, cocked and unlocked, Eotech on and turned to ten so a bright red circle displayed his aim point to either conscious or subconscious.

  “One in.”

  “Two in.”

  “Three in.”

  - - - -

  He scurried in, movements smooth, fast, practiced, the gun locked to shoulder, scanning for threat, finger riding the light trigger, ready to put a burst into anything ahead.

  He could feel them. They were so close. The shout from the leader, some Brit tough guy, Mick Jagger on steroids, followed by fusillades from all points on the compass that filled the universe with bad news and drove him down so he felt he could shrink into the earth, the cold blade of fear that maybe this time was the time. Then it passed; he had his war brain back and knew exactly how it would work. They’d close the circle, driving him back, and there’d be no place to go. Then it would be over.

  He slithered around a rock, forced himself (tasting dust, feeling pain to knees, elbows, and skin) through the low tangle of brush, found a path between more low rocks that seemed to reach center, and scurried ahead.

  He saw it.

  A red-orange hunting vest, crumpled but vivid, the only primary color in a landscape that ran from dull to duller brown, even with the sun above. He scrambled to the signal, dug behind it until he encountered a canvas strap, and pulled. Fifteen pounds of canvas gun case emerged from hiding. A quick unzip.

  It was the Thompson M1A1, thirty-round mag, like the gun with which his father had shot his way across the Pacific. Nick had gotten it here from Aptapton’s widow just in time.

  Thank you, Nick. Once again, you save the old man’s bacon. Thank you, Aptapton, for your love of guns, especially the old tommys.

  He slid the bolt back, locking it, admitting a .45 ACP to position to be swept up and fired as the first round in a burst. Six other loaded stick mags lay in pouches on a belt curled into the case, and he pulled the belt around him and cinched it tight.

  At that moment, a young man – perfect commando, from Oakley tactical boots to green-brown face paint – enough firepower on him to take out a platoon, crept into the space between two boulders not twenty-five feet ahead. They felt each other in the autistic Zen of predators, made a flash eye contact, and got down to business. Swagger beat him on the action curve by a tenth of a second, jacking a ten-round burst into his legs, knocking him down and askew, tearing up limbs and hips but not spending bullets against the armor vest. The guy went down hard, and in a second his twisted lower extremities were wet and red to the world.

  Swagger slipped back into the brush.

  - - - -

  “Fuck, fuck, he has a tommy gun, a goddamn tommy gun!” screamed Blue Two.

  “Are you hit?”

  “He blew my goddamn legs off, oh, shit, I can’t stop the bleeding.”

  “You hold, Two, don’t panic, use your clotting agent and tie it down to stop the blood flow, we will be with you soon. Hold on, mate.”

  “Ah, fuck,” said Two.

  Blue Leader had recognized the sound of the .45s instantly and knew it was of the Thompson declension because the rate of fire was well above grease-gun speed. He was not surprised, disappointed, stunned, or breathless. The surprise of it did not occur to him; nor would it ever. The fact that he was hunted as much as hunter did not matter. His hard practical mind simply went through steps.

  New situation.

  Armed target.

  Full auto, heavy bullets.

  Savvy, experienced operator.

  One man lost.

  Need to triangulate, lay heavy fire (back to MK48s), and close to engage. He will be tricky, he will–

  Another burst of Thompson fire roared through the atmosphere.

  “Blue Three?”

  “I’m good, I think he hit One, off to my left. Blue Leader, I am moving on the fire.”

  “Do not rush, Three – I will lay down cover on the sound of his gun, move under my cover.”<
br />
  “Roger.”

  He rose, readjusting weapons at speed as he came, got the MK48 up, and fired a hundred .30-caliber rounds into the rocks and brush where the Thompson fire had sounded, and saw and felt what he always saw and felt, the world being ripped to dust and supersonic grit, the blur of the ejection of the spent shells arching to the right, the urge of the muzzle to rise – after all these years, it was still so bloody cool! – while his sharp eyes scanned for movement or target indicators.

  - - - -

  The Brit’s gunfire whistled overhead, eating up the world that it struck, raising smeary clouds of fractured dust. Swagger knew the other operator would move under the fire, and he drew the Thompson hard to shoulder, waiting, waiting, as six inches above his head, fleets of supersonic FMJs flew by, seeking his destruction and–

  The gun quit as round one hundred passed through it. Swagger jerked up hard and saw to the right the advancing operator in the hunch, not fast enough to get into cover before his time ran out. Swagger acquired and fired in almost the same instant and put a burst into him, watching the bullets lift a straightaway of dust eruptions, then went down fast and crawled, again just under the line of fire of the team chief, who’d gotten a quick new belt into his gun and used it up in the search.

  Swagger thought he’d hit his guy, and when he had a chance, as the boulders grew oddly larger, he went to his feet and curled around, putting his target between him and the remaining shooter. In seconds he got around enough to see the downed man, rifle on the ground, wrapping a bandage tight around a bad thigh bleeder. Swagger screamed, “Hold!” But the man went for his weapon – stupid SEAL motherfucker, hard to the end! – and Swagger had to fire three into his only target other than the head, which was the root of the man’s arm where it disappeared into the hole on his vest. He opened a hideous wound, shattering arm and clavicle, rendering the gunman maimed for life. Even still, the man stayed in the fight, shaking off the destruction, looking up in rage and betrayal, his teeth white against the green-brown jungle of his face, and reached awkwardly with his off hand to acquire the 1911 holstered diagonally across the front of his armored vest. Unfortunately, it was tilted to favor the dead hand and tightly Velcroed in, and by the time he got it, Swagger was on him and hit him a butt stroke in the head. He went down soggily, maybe dead, maybe with a concussion to render him eternally stupid.

  Swagger noted that this one too had smokers on his web belt beneath the vest, and though the vest was a temptation, he knew he didn’t have enough time to get it off the SEAL and on himself, so he pulled off three smokers, pulled the pins, and tossed them in the direction from which Team Leader’s fire had come.

  - - - -

  Smoke! Who would have thought of that? From three points just ahead of him, red, green, blue, catching in the wind, blowing mistily across the scrap of flat if rough ground that comprised the hilltop. It was like a screen of myth, impenetrable, masking all movement. Brilliant improvisation. This old bastard was too good!

  Blue Leader dropped hard, feeling vulnerable. He knew he was alone, it was man on man. If he could get close enough to get to hand-to-hand, victory was his. He had about nine black belts and knew shit for which there wasn’t a name and no books had been written. He unlinked the heavier MK48, first disconnecting the belt box and tossing it far, then opening the breech latch so this bad boy couldn’t use it against him. He toyed with the idea of dumping the carbine and making it a pistol fight, which would give him much more maneuverability and let him get to full play on his superior toughness, speed, and stamina. But this old one was a trickster who knew a thing or two and might be circling around or might be, at the same time, two hundred yards downhill, racing like a demon, knowing that in distance lay survival.

  He stood, eased forward as the smoke ceased from the two rightmost grenades, and tried to see a target. Nothing. Swagger was somewhere ahead. But Blue Leader saw nothing. This was room-clearing, really, two men squatting as they worked their way through a maze, guns at the ready. Who would see whom first, who would fire first, who would win?

  He eased left, then right, feeling the whip of wind, feeling the warmth of the sun. He pushed off his watch cap, ripped off and tossed ears and throat mike for total concentration. He negotiated the avenues between the rocks and brush with care, in that commando crouch, and it happened that, as he edged around a boulder, something flashed in his peripheral and he was on it fast, to see a man withdrawing because he didn’t have a shooting angle, but Blue Leader did and fired, knowing that he’d hit.

  He waited.

  Nothing.

  “Swagger, give it up. I know I hit you. I saw the blood. It’s no good going out like a rat.”

  No answer. Was he dead?

  He squirmed ahead a few feet and was rewarded with a blood track.

  Got him!

  Got him!

  Got–

  - - - -

  Swagger hit him hard with the crown of his head, a smash that skulled both of them into incomprehensibility, but Swagger, expecting it, got in his follow-up and clocked him harder with the inverted barrel of the old weapon.

  Blue Leader went so still that he couldn’t have been faking, but in the next second, he tried to fight his way out of the grog and Swagger was on him. He pressed the muzzle hard into the throat, and with his other hand, he ripped the man’s fighting knife away, unlatched the Velcro on the Wilson and tossed it, pulled and threw the M-6 as hard as he could.

  He leaned over the Brit, pressing the blunt Thompson muzzle into the neck. “What’s your rank, troopie?”

  “I– What, what are you–”

  “Your rank and outfit, goddammit.”

  “Major, Royal Marines, 42 Commando.”

  “Major, get that bird in here fast. Pop your evac smoke and get these men out of here. One’s dead for sure, maybe another, maybe not. Get them to goddamn emergency in Hartford fast, and save them. That’s your last job as commanding officer.”

  “I shot you,” said the major.

  “In the fucking hip. I been shot there so many times I didn’t even notice. It bounced off. Now get these guys out of here, save some lives.”

  “Why?” said the major. “I don’t get it.”

  “I only want one more head on my wall. And it ain’t yours.”

  - - - -

  I heard the fight. It was brief, violent, and as such things always are, ugly. Gunfire, shouts, bits of panicked radio-speak, screams, something that sounded like a physical tussle, and then the radio went dead. That silence that follows a disconnect. The airwaves located and destroyed, communication lost.

  I shook my head.

  He did it, I realized. He’d beaten them somehow.

  I hated Swagger even as I loved him. God, was he an operator. Could he have prevailed again, against those odds? The man wouldn’t die. Was he Achilles, dipped in the potion of immortality but for a heel that no archer had found?

  A hit of vodka calmed me, and I had to appraise my situation realistically. He could know nothing else. He would be stopped by the firewall of the person I’d become. He’d have to set about finding me. Good luck on that, because Niles Gardner, long dead, had built a perfect identity, and it would withstand any attempt at penetration.

  I lay back, watching the sun yield its hold on the day slowly. It stayed light so long now, which had the odd effect of elongating life. I felt like these extra hours were a gift to me; they stood for the fact that I would go on and on and on, that in the end, if through longevity as much as genius, I would prevail.

  My phone rang.

  What? I reached for it, noting that it was not my cell but my satellite. Richard! Maybe Richard had a report.

  I pressed the talk button. “Richard?”

  “No, he ain’t here. He’s hiding in the basement.”

  “Swagger!” I could tell by his laconic voice, its dryness, its ur-text of Southern cadence, its lack of need to dominate, its irony, its detachment.

  “Yes sir. We
meet at last,” he said. “By the way, if you want to talk to your commando team, they ain’t here neither. The survivors are in the emergency ward.”

  “Dammit, you are a resourceful man,” I said. “Woe unto him who tries to outthink Bob Lee Swagger.”

  “I ain’t no genius, Mr. Meachum. I just show up and pay attention.”

  “How? I have to know. Tell me my mistake, goddammit.”

  “It was that forgery in the Abercrombie files. Had me snookered completely. Then I realized, if Abercrombie sent your cousin a rifle in a new caliber and asked for a story, Lon would have written the story. He had to keep the bargain. Part of his noblesse oblige, or whatever you fancy donkeys call it. But he didn’t write no piece on reloading the .264, and I ought to know, as I read every word he ever wrote.”

  Lon! It was Lon’s decency reaching out of the grave to bring me down! I almost had to laugh. That is what I loved about Lon, and that is what betrayed me.

  I was speechless. Finally, I realized I had only one question to ask. It was the only one that mattered.

  “Why? Why does it matter to you, Swagger? Tell me. Did you love JFK, the myth? Do you wish you’d been a trusted knight of Camelot? Did you have a crush on Jackie? Did the brave little boy and girl at the funeral break your heart? Why, Swagger, why?”

  “A young man in service to our country was murdered on November 22, 1963. He was handsome and beloved. Everyone who saw him admired him and trusted his judgment. In all eyes, he was a hero. He was slaughtered in the street without a chance. A bullet blew up his brain. He left a hole in society, children who weep today, everyone who knew him. Possibly you have heard of him.”

  “His name was John F. Kennedy.”

  “No, it wasn’t. He was not the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, about whom I give not a shit. The man I speak of was a Dallas police officer named J. D. Tippit, and like my father, he was doing his duty until someone killed him for it. So that is who I am. I am not a national avenger, I am not Captain America, I don’t give a crap about Camelot. I am the dead policeman’s son, and I did what I did to find out who really shot Officer Tippit. I am the dead policeman’s boy.”