Black Light

by Stephen Hunter

  “But as my fourth-place finish in last week’s California primary has made clear, that dream will not come true.”

  There were some audible groans from the audience, whom Russ gathered were campaign workers and true believers. Though what in Holly Etheridge was there to believe in truly, other than the practical craft of the professional politician?

  “That, coupled with a third in New York, a third in Massachusetts and a fourth in New Hampshire, has made it clear that the party will seek another for standard-bearer and that my continued presence distracts from the message of the two from between whom you will choose the candidate.”

  He paused amid the groans.

  “There goes my Pulitzer Prize,” somebody said, to laughter.

  “You were never going to win a Pulitzer Prize,” someone else said. “You don’t work for the Washington Post, the New York Times or the Miami Herald.”

  “True enough,” said the first. “I should have said, there goes my fantasy of a Pulitzer Prize.”

  His colleagues hooted. Someone threw a wadded-up ball of paper at him. Russ smiled. Journalists. Cynics, smartasses, calculating everything as a career move first and history second.

  “Shit,” said Sims to Russ. “Little Rock had its time in the sun. We thought Fort Smith’d get a goose out of old Holly. But no way: too square, too slow, too orthodox.”

  “He could put No Doz to sleep,” somebody else said, “unless he was chasing stewardesses.”

  “I heard his specialty was nurses,” somebody else said. “He liked the uniform thing and the white stockings.”

  “Look at his wife,” somebody else added. “I think she has a DoveBar up her ass.”

  The woman stood just behind the man with one of those painted-on smiles lighting up a face that was pure stone.

  “Dotty, God,” somebody said. “She makes Pat Nixon look like Mary Tyler Moore. She makes Pat look … perky.”

  “A DoveBar is the only thing she’s ever had up her ass.”

  “And so,” said Hollis Etheridge, “I hearby announce my withdrawal from the presidential campaign. I want to thank my wife, Dorothy, Paul Osteen, my campaign manager, and all you loyal workers. You people worked like heck and I do appreciate it; now it’s back to private life for this son of Arkansas. Thank you very much.”

  “Senator,” a question came, “what will you do with your delegates? And your war chest? You still lead in money raised.”

  “That’s to be determined at a later time in consultation with key members of my team,” said Etheridge.

  “He could still carry some weight,” somebody said.

  “He’s over, he’s finished,” came a counterverdict. “Color him the Jeopardy! answer without a question.”

  “God bless America, and God bless the state of Arkansas,” Etheridge said, then turned and walked stiffly away.

  “We won’t have Holly Etheridge to kick around anymore,” some wag said.

  “Hell, there wasn’t enough of him to kick around in the first place,” someone else added.

  31

  It had been a good day for the general. At eleven, he had finally closed a contract with Colonel Sanchez of the Honduran Army. Colonel Sanchez was el comandante of Battalion 316, the counterterror and -insurgency specialists, American-trained. Though the Hondurans had plenty of money to spend, the general could see no justification for pushing the No. 1 System, as it was called. The SR-25 with the Magnavox thermal sniperscope and the JFP MAW-7 suppressor was the most sophisticated system in the world but it was labor-intensive maintenance-wise and he doubted a third-world nation without a sophisticated technical culture would be able to maintain the units through heavy usage. And heavy usage was expected: the current guerrilla war showed no signs of abating and indeed was moving into the cities, where Battalion 316 and Military Intelligence rightly understood that a long-range precision night-vision sniping capability would prove invaluable.

  After much hassling and wrangling, the general had finally convinced Colonel Sanchez that a system built around rebuilt army AN/PVS-2 Starlights mounted on state-of-the-art McMillan M-86s with the JFP Technology M14SS-1 suppressors was exactly what the doctor ordered. Twenty of the units would be in .308 Winchester, ten in .300 Winchester Magnum and ten in .223 Remington, giving Battalion 316 a great deal of tactical flexibility.

  Of course JFP sniper cadre would field-train designated marksmen in the usage of the weapons system and serve, for an interim time, as consultants and advisers vis-à-vis their deployment in the combat environment. The general had a talent pool of several ex-SWAT and Green Beret snipers who performed such tasks, and were damn well paid too, both in money and in the odd extra kill they could pick up.

  The general and the colonel then went to lunch, demolishing mighty amounts of rare roast beef at one of Oklahoma City’s finest establishments, and the general dropped the colonel off at his hotel, to prepare for the flight home. The general himself went to his club, where he played three quick games of squash with his lawyer and one of his board members. He took an hour in the steam room, showered and got back to the office at four. He expected to spend another two hours on paperwork and to begin work on a presentation set in a month’s time for the German GSG-9 antiterrorist group; if he could snatch them from the jaws of Heckler & Koch and its blasted, overrated PSG1, it would be a wonderful feather in his cap!

  He sat at his desk, and Judy, his secretary, came in with his messages.

  “Anything important?”

  “No sir. Your wife. She’s waiting for her payment.”

  “Dammit, I sent that check,” he said.

  “Two calls from Jeff Harris at the FBI.”

  “Yes, yes. They may go night-vision. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  “A Mr. Greenaway, the procurement officer for the Cleveland Municipal Police.”

  “Oh, I’ll get right on that one.”

  “Long-distance, Mr. Arrabenz from Salvador.”

  “That old pirate. Okay, I’ll get back to him. In fact, you may as well start trying to put the call through now. It’ll take hours.”

  “Yes sir. And Mr. Short.”

  The general thought he misunderstood.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Mr. Short. He said it was about Arkansas. He said he’d call back. Frenchy Short, the name was.”

  The general nodded, smiled, thanked her.

  She left the room.

  The general sat there, finding his breath hard to locate in his chest.

  It was coming back. Swagger, now this.

  Goddammit.

  He waited and waited. His technicians left at five, as usual, and Judy went home at six, but the general stayed in his office. Twice after Judy left, the phone rang; one was a wrong number and another a hang-up.

  You bastard, he thought, nursing a glass of Scotch neat. You bastard.

  Finally, at 8:27 the phone rang.

  He snatched it up.

  “Hello.”

  “Jack! Jack Preece, you old son of a gun, how the hell are you? It’s your old pal Frenchy Short.”

  The voice was southern and arrived in a laughing tone of fake heartiness.

  “Who are you?” Preece demanded. “You’re not Frenchy Short. Frenchy Short is dead. He died in Vienna in 1974. I saw the Agency report.”

  “Details, details,” came the voice. “How are you doing these days, Jack? That divorce still takes a pretty penny, I’ll bet. Your daughter likes Penn, does she? Business is booming, isn’t it? Battalion 316? Excellent, Jack. That’s quite a healthy little shop you’re running.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Frenchy Short.”

  “Goddammit, who are you?”

  The man on the other end let him sweat for a few moments.

  “Jack, you’re right. Frenchy’s dead. You might say I’m his heir apparent.”

  “What the hell is this all about?”

  “Jack, Frenchy Short was the best thing that ever happened to you. You’v
e lived a charmed life ever since you met him. You got the commands you wanted. You moved up through the ranks. You had clout, power, prestige. You ran that sniper school, the premier sniper command in the Western world. You’ve seen your night doctrines accepted by the army. You’ve got a chestful of ribbons and medals. You’ve become a wealthy man. Jack, you owe Frenchy Short a great deal.”

  “Stop bullshitting me. Get to the goddamned point.”

  “Here’s the point, Jack. In 1955 you did Frenchy a big favor. You hit a shot for us that no one else in the world could have hit. It bought us all kinds of things. And it bought you all kinds of things. Now, forty-odd years later, that case has been opened again. Somebody’s come hunting us. You have to take another shot. You have to put him in the ground. Night shot. Long-range. Your specialty.”

  “No,” said Jack. “That is the one thing I regret doing. That man was a law enforcement officer who did no one any harm. He was a hero. That is the only shame I feel. I don’t care what the consequences are.”

  “Jack, I forgot how brave you are. You won the Bronze Star, didn’t you? All right, Jack, go noble on your old pal Frenchy Short. You say you’ll face the consequences? You’ll give it all up, your good name, your firm, your family? You’ll endure the scandal? That’s not what it’ll cost you. No, no, if he comes for me, I’ll make certain no matter how it works out, he gets your name, Jack, then he’ll come for you. He’s the best. There ain’t no better.”

  “Swagger?”

  “And how, ten feet tall and really pissed off. Still the best. Still is. Dusted ten pros the other day, maybe you read about if?”

  Preece had, dammit.

  “Jack, I’ll give you to Swagger and he’ll take you apart. Or I’ll set him up for you. One shot, one kill.”

  The general was quiet. He looked around at his marksmanship trophies, his paneled office, his medals on the wall. If Swagger came for him it was over.

  “Then I’m out?”

  “For keeps. You go back to your life, I go back to mine.”

  “How?”

  “Tomorrow you move out with your gear. You go to a farm way out on a dirt road on County 70, off of 71, just north of Blue Eye, Arkansas. It’s way, way out, near a little place called Posey Hollow. Your contact will be a boy named Duane Peck. He’ll get you settled in. Meanwhile, I’m working to set Swagger up in the woods. He’s got to be drawn in slowly, carefully. It can’t be rushed, but I’m thinking a few days, maybe a week. When it happens you’ll have to move fast and quiet. I’ll get you your shot. You better not miss, General Jack, or he will bury you good and deep.”

  “I never miss,” said the general.

  32

  Beyond the bridge the land changed. It grew flat and plain and gave way, after a time, to perspectives over water, choked with reeds, huge vistas of almost colorless marshlands, broken here and there by clumps of trees. The water sparkled in the sun.

  “There isn’t this much water in the whole state of Oklahoma,” said Russ.

  They were on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, heading toward St. Michaels, which, a map suggested, was a small town situated on a promontory that jabbed out into the Chesapeake. It seemed like land only marginally reclaimed from the sea: the water winked at them from behind the trees or off beyond farm fields; or it lurked, black and still, in deep pools that lapped around the edges of dark trees that seemed to stretch off for infinity; or, finally, it was in the rivers and streams that lashed this way and that, like saber cuts.

  “Wet,” was all Bob could think to say.

  “Maybe she won’t see us,” said Russ.

  “Oh, I think she will.”

  “Do we tell her about Sam? It might upset her.”

  “Tell her the truth on all things. She was a damned smart lady, as I remember. Back in the days when nobody thought a woman was smart, they all said, Miss Connie is smart. That says a hell of a lot about her. I do believe all the men were half in love with her, my own father and Sam Vincent included.”

  “She’s ninety-five,” said Russ.

  “I’ll bet she’s still as sharp as a bee’s ass. You’ll see.”

  They passed through St. Michaels, a town so quaint it looked as if it belonged in an antique store window, and then, off Route 33 still farther toward the Chesapeake, they saw a discreet sign, expensive and muted, that said DOWNY MARSH and pointed the way, without explanation.

  Russ turned down the drive, came to a gate under overhanging elms. A guard stopped them.

  “Visitors,” Russ said, “to see Miss Longacre. Mrs. Longacre.”

  The guard, uniformed and black, nodded and let them pass.

  It had to have once been the estate of a robber baron or steel or railroad tycoon. An asphalt road curled across land which grew tenuous as they progressed through the high, fluttering reeds, and then at last yielded to a crescent of garden and lawn scalloped out of the marsh, dominated by a brick mansion. The building was gigantic, monstrous, capped with a mansard roof, green copper in the sun, and festooned with balconies themselves intricate with wrought ironwork on many levels and multipaned windows: unbearable ugliness that spoke of the violence and inevitability of capital. Russ thought it was a relic from a nineteenth century full of black smoke and grinding engines, an arrogant eyesore that faced five miles of serene marshlands and beyond the shifty sheet-glass calm of the bay. It had the look of a place where rich people came to die.

  Russ pulled into a parking space marked VISITORS, noting that his was the only visiting car. Out on the grounds he could see ancient people hunched in wheelchairs, being guided about by black nurses or aides, whatever.

  It was two in the afternoon. The sun was bright, the sky Windex blue. A vee of geese flew far overhead; an egret stood on one leg off to the side of the house, by a little pool.

  “Let me do the talking,” said Bob. “I think she’ll remember me.”

  They walked in, both in suits, and felt their shoes crack on the linoleum in the hushed silence. There was no sense of the medicinal in here, but more the devotional; it felt to Russ like a religious space.

  They came to a counter, where two well-dressed women suspiciously watched them approach.

  “Hello,” said Bob. “I’m wondering if it’s possible to see one of your patients—”

  “Residents,” he was frostily corrected.

  “—residents—named Mrs. Connie Longacre. I’m the son of an old friend.”

  “What is your name, sir?”

  “Swagger. Bob Lee Swagger. Tell her I’m the son of Earl Swagger. She’ll remember.”

  They sat and waited for the longest time, and finally a woman came.

  “She is frail. But she’s alert, coherent and tough. I can give you no more than half an hour. Try not to excite her.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Bob.

  She led them through double doors, back through vast rooms that were largely empty, and out on a veranda that faced the bay but from such elevation that one could see the lacework of islands and marsh and miles of blue water. The far shore was not visible, though in the distance green islands poked out of the waves.

  The old lady sat facing the view in a wheelchair. She was swaddled in blankets. She wore dark sunglasses and most of the flesh had fallen from her face, revealing taut, powdery skin well fissured with wrinkles. But two bright dabs of rouge brightened her gaunt cheekbones and her hair, snow white, sat on her head like a pillbox hat.

  “Miss Connie?” said Bob.

  “Lord, I’d know that voice anywhere,” she said brightly, turning. “I haven’t heard it in forty long years but I hear it every night before I go to bed. He was a wonderful man, your father. Do you know that, Bob Lee? Most men are not wonderful, it has been my experience to learn, but your father truly was.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I wish I remembered him better.”

  “Did you ever marry, Bob Lee? And have children?”

  “Yes, ma’am, finally. I met a fine woman, a nurse on an Indian reservation in Arizona
. I look after horses now. We have a daughter named Nicole, Nicki. She’s four. We love her a great deal.”

  “I’m happy. Earl deserved a grandchild. I wish he could have known.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Bob. “Ma’am, I’m here with an associate, a young writer. His name is Russ Pewtie.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Longacre,” said Russ.

  “Here, take my hand, young man. I want to steal some warmth from you.”

  Russ put his hand out and she seized it fiercely, her fingers cold but still tight with strength.

  “There. Now, Russ, you describe for me what is before me, please. I insist. I want to borrow your eyes. I’m told it is beautiful, but I have no way of knowing.”

  Russ bumbled through a description of the scene, feeling less than articulate.

  But she was kind.

  “You speak well,” she said.

  “He’s a writer,” Bob said.

  “What is he writing? Is he writing your life story, Bob Lee? That would be an exciting book.”

  “No, ma’am. He is writing a book about my father and how he died.”

  “A terrible tragedy,” said Miss Connie. “A terrible day. Worse than any day in the war. Worse in some ways than the day my son and his wife died. My son was a drunk. If you drink and drive in fast little cars, you must face certain consequences. So be it. But your father was doing a job important to the community and setting a moral example. He deserved so much better than a guttersnipe like Jimmy Pye.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Bob. “We came to talk about that. About what happened that day. What was said, the timing of it, what you remember. Is that all right, Miss Connie?”

  “May I ask why?”

  “I just want to know how my father died,” Bob said.

  “Any son’s right. Go ahead. Ask away.”

  “You saw him?”

  “Yes, I did. He arrived at the cottage at about two. He made an awful deputy who was hanging around go away. Most men did what Earl told them; he had that way. But Earl was upset. He didn’t show it, because your father was a man in control. He didn’t say much, he did a lot. He was a still man, a watcher. When he spoke he had such a deep and raspy voice, just like yours. But he was bothered by Jimmy. He could not understand it. He believed in Jimmy.”