by Nick Keller
Mark’s face stiffened. He said, “He’s part of an investigation. That’s all I can say.”
“He’s not a suspect, is he?” Fred said, concern on his face.
Mark fished a contact card out of his inside pocket and held it to Fred between two fingers. “If you see him, call me immediately. I want to speak to him myself. Understand?”
Fred tried to shift his bags to take the card, but couldn’t get a free hand. Mark slipped the card inside Fred’s jacket pocket for him. Fred said, “Okay.”
“Thanks for your time.” Mark turned and left.
38
William Erter
William stared at the newspaper-clipped letter hypnotized by it, being pulled in deeper by its nuances. This was a glimpse into the mind of insanity. It was more than a glimpse. This letter held every finite truth behind the man and his mental state; it was a journal from his past, a road map to his future. William was mesmerized by all its minute parts.
The word eye was capitalized, five times. The Eye was special. It had great significance. It was a deity to the man. A God.
The scriber referenced The Eye as a Him. It was a being, something alive, something that sensed and probed. Not feminine, not nurturing. It was something that destroyed.
The Eye was hungry, too. It needed to feed.
And it watched. It was an omnipotent thing that could see all, even dictate those around it.
But The Eye was not a perfect machine. It could be cut off from its food supply. It could become desperate. It could look for alternatives.
“No more doggies”—a vague sentiment at best, but its meaning was clear.
This person referred to The Eye as the icon of his personal war. The Eye was the sniper’s greatest tool. Not even his rifle held the quintessence of The Eye. Without the Eye, there was no weapon. But the Eye was more. It was a force much greater than man. It watched mankind, day to day. It decided who lived and who died. The Eye was fate.
William sat back rubbing his eyes. There was something else that mystified him, something he could not fully read into. It was a blind spot.
See the blind spots. Know what’s there.
The scriber had signed off as A. Soldier.
It was another play with capital letters and periods. He was not referring to himself simply as a soldier. He referred to himself as A. Soldier. William tapped his chin, thinking. Was it some sort of code?
He cleared his throat, breaking away from his trancelike state, popping his fingers. This is where the research began, and that always started with what was known about the prey.
A. Soldier. That’s not a Marine. Marines never referred to themselves as soldiers. They called themselves Marines only. This man was in the Army. A roster of search criteria began developing in William’s mind.
Army Special Forces.
A combat sniper.
Trained in hardware.
A man who understood dry climate warfare.
He dove into the public office of Military archives and found a listing of U.S. combat operations in the nineties, narrowing it down to a scant handful. Desert Storm was the likeliest given its breadth.
He researched further, yielding from Desert Storm a listing of U.S. Army Special Forces units—the Fifth Special Forces, First Special Forces Delta, US Army ISA (Intelligence Support Activity Group), and so on.
He further broke this listing down into operations—Left Fist Recon, Village Sweep, Desert Hide. Then he found one referred to as Long Range Ghost. That made him grin. That was a sniper’s patrol. But he immediately frowned. He needed a list of names of the men who belonged to Long Range Ghost. He scratched his head digging in deeper. Every path led nowhere. The Office of Military Commissions. The US Army Registry. The Department of Foreign Affairs. And on and on.
William leaned back popping his back. It had been four hours of heavy-lifting, yet finding the men of Long Range Ghost was proving to be perfectly imposs…
He straightened in his chair wide-eyed, a thought screaming in his ears.
Forget the operation. Find the Special Forces unit itself.
He looked at his findings. The operation had been carried out by the Fifth Special Forces in February of 1991, just after Desert Storm began. He laughed out loud. Found it! But he still needed a name.
William searched out a listing of medals given out to members of the Fifth Special Forces. Bingo. He found Sergeant Maxwell Calvin. He entered Maxwell Calvin into the US Military Registry and up popped his full history, including his involvement in the Fifth Special Forces. Using Calvin as a cross reference, he found an entire listing of men’s names who served in the Fifth during February of 1991. There were two dozen names, twelve spotters, twelve shooters.
William had just narrowed an entire world full of possible shooters down to twenty-four names. He was getting somewhere.
A quick mortality search showed that nine of them were deceased—four in combat, five in the years since their discharge. Being in the Special Forces made it doubly difficult to assimilate back into civilian life, it seemed.
Fifteen names were left. He scrolled them up and down catching each name with his eyes, like a hawk searching for prey from a thousand feet in the sky:
1SG Toby Anson
SGT Mike Behls
CPL Zolago Denchman
CPL Eric Feinman
SPC Alejandro Gonzago
CPL Larry Lehrman
SGT Mike Martin
SGT Joss Oplewinger
CPL Matthew Price
SPC Timothy Pointly
1SG Steven Quigley
CPL Anthony Sola Jr.
CPL Martin Stigmann
CPL Lee Teagues
SGT Blane Yoles
One of these names was the shooter, it had to be. William was fully prepared to log research time into the history, background, and experiences of each man, but something stopped him cold. A piece of the puzzle connected itself filling in a blind spot.
It was magic.
William stared at the name:
Anthony Sola Jr.
He broke it down in his mind, analyzed it, scrutinized it, dissecting it down to its most basic parts.
Anthony Sola Jr.
A. Sola Jr.
A. Solajr.
A. Soljr.
A. Soldier.
He’d been using his own name all along. A pseudonym.
“I found you.”
39
Hunters
Hebert’s—pronounced A-bearz, and if you said it wrong, Britt the kitchen manager would wave his spatula at you through the service window and cuss in unrecognizably bad French—had the best French dip around. Remarkably, it was about the cheapest, too. Bernie crunched into the roast beef hoagie (don’t ever call it a hoagie with Britt around, either) feeling the warm fingers of grease ooze down his knuckles. Making it back to the precinct was more than he was willing to do after breaking just about every rule in the book. He’d done it before, but never like this. Now, it seemed, his fate lay in the hands of William and his little sidekick—Holy zeros and ones, Batman—whatever his name was.
Bernie preferred to stop off at Hebert’s and grab one to go, and sit at Hebert’s outdoor dining pad with its benches and settings. As he sat, he gave an ironic huff. This place was about the closest thing to a city park that anyone would be allowed to visit. And here he sat, big and ugly and eating a French dip for any sniper to see.
He lowered the hoagie and looked around chewing like a lion. There were people moving along the near sidewalks, one of them was rollerblading and bopping along to his earbuds. This place was so quaint and pretty, almost idyllic in a western fantasy delight kind of way. It made the hairs on Bernie’s neck stand up knowing what was out there and what was going to happen if he didn’t stop it.
Los Angeles was no city of angels. This was Los Demonios—the city of demons.
His phone vibrated in his pocket indicating an incoming email. Bernie flipped it open and found an inbox message from Will
iam. He started to thumb it open, but the phone rang. A call. He answered with a half-full mouth of food, “Yeah.”
“Bernie, this is William. I got the shooter’s address. I know who it is!”
“You what?” He lowered the French dip to his lap looking shocked.
“His name is Anthony Sola Jr. I just emailed you a profile on our shooter—it’s all my findings. You have all the evidence you need. Everything’s there. Where are you?”
“I’m at—what the hell are you talking about?”
“Never mind, I’m coming to you.”
Anthony Sola Jr’s. residence was an eight-unit apartment complex at Fifty-First and Main that called itself the Eckles Villas, Section Eight welcomed. The place had stucco siding on the bottom and wood paneling above. The paint was chipped and bubbled and each window had foil over the air conditioning unit. The rooftop was flat and overlooked a large empty lot to the west side of the intersection. The asphalt was busted into ancient craters with spots of weeds growing up through cracks.
Bernie’s cruiser pulled up next to the chain-link fence and he and William got out, both of them scoping the vicinity. Cars moved up and down Fifty-First. Bernie took a breath and grunted. “Let’s go.” They moved across Main to the Eckles Villas complex and went in through an open steel-grate door that rattled behind them as it shut.
They were in a narrow hallway with a staircase. Bernie handled the .45 in its breast holster making it ready to pull, then went up the stairs. The steps groaned underneath him, and for a moment William wondered how safe their environment was, and how their element of surprise was seeping away with each footfall. He resigned himself to staying behind the big man.
They reached door number two at the top of the stairs and gave each other a look. Bernie knocked four hefty thumps and waited. There was no answer. He squinted an eye and looked in through the peephole in reverse fashion. It offered no real glimpse into the apartment, but if there was any movement inside, he’d see it. He looked back at William and shook his head.
“Okay,” William said.
Bernie unholstered his .45. William took notice, eyes shifting. “You know how to use one?” Bernie whispered.
William gave him a nervous grin and said, “State won’t let me.”
Bernie huffed and asked, “Yeah, but do you know how to use one?”
William nodded his head. “Yes—I understand firearms.”
Bernie thought for a moment and reached down drawing a snub nose .38 from an ankle holster. “Here. Don’t fucking shoot me.”
William took the pistol terrified at the thought of entering a stranger’s apartment, guns drawn. That only happened in Hollywood, right? He chuckled without humor and whispered, “L.A.”
Bernie pulled his billfold from his inside pocket, flapped it open and thumbed out a credit card. “Never leave home without it,” he mumbled and worked the card in under the brass lock inside the doorjamb jerking and pulling. Then it clicked. He pushed the door open just a tiny bit. William took a half step back adjusting his grip on the .38. Bernie poked his head in, scanned quickly and looked back. “No one home.”
“Now what?” William asked.
Bernie made a logical face and muttered, “We go in.” He pushed the door open on screaming hinges and waited, gun up. The place was lit by low midday light flooding in through the far window. There was a kitchenette to the right that spilled into a small living room. An old Frigidaire buzzed away. Bernie stepped in, “Don’t touch anything.” Then he bumped his hip into a fifty-gallon jug sitting to the left of the door. He winced, looking down. The container was bulging out with clothes, an entire drum full of old tee-shirts. Bernie grabbed a fistful of them and dropped them back down. “Nutjob…”
William moved in with the .38 pointed toward the floor, holding it firmly with both hands. He slid easily past the vat of clothing and into the living space observing a paisley-patterned, multi-colored sofa that was clearly from the seventies. It had worn spots in the fabric. Balding carpet lay throughout the apartment and a twenty-four-inch tube-style TV set with rabbit ears sat against the wall. The air conditioning unit rattled away. The place smelled stale—not bad, but not pleasant. William looked up and took a startled step backward forcing his finger away from the trigger. In the dim light, he hadn’t noticed the mural splashed crudely along the far wall staring back at him—an enormous eyeball painted in blacks and reds. It appeared to be watching the comings and goings of man through the judgment of a god, following William as he moved into the apartment. “Jesus…” he said.
“Shh,” Bernie said in reply as he opened the door to the bedroom and glanced in. When he looked back he had an impressed look on his face. “Hey, come look at this shit.”
William followed him into the bedroom where a desk sat against the far wall and a computer tower blinked in the dim light. William observed it closely—a Dell Precision Fixed Workstation. Two-thousand-dollar computer, lots of processing power, huge hard drive. It was not the kind of computer he had expected to find in a place like Eckles Villas, Door #2. On a side table was a multi-function printer, the type with a fax machine and scanner. Top-of-the-line. Very expensive. Sitting on the floor next to that was a three-drawer filing cabinet.
Bernie jabbed his gun back into its holster and pointed to a side table. It housed a collection of quarter-sized rubber discs with wooden washers, different sized PCV pipes, each with varying diameters, and a bundle of thin rods. Bernie picked a fistful of them up and said, “Know what these are?”
William shook his head, no.
“Dispersant rods.” He laid them back down. “Fucker’s making a weapon suppression system. A silencer for his rifle. He thinks he’s going to post up somewhere and take people out and stay under the radar, does he? Heh—”
Bernie went to the file cabinet and jerked on one of the drawers. It was locked. He grabbed the whole cabinet by the top and tilted it over several degrees. “Damn thing’s heavy,” he muttered. “He’s got something stored away in there.”
William opened a drawer in the desk and found a single object, one brass key on a ring. “Psst, try this.”
He tossed Bernie the key and he tried it on the file cabinet. It worked. Bernie slid open the drawer to find it stuffed with files, all of them divided into categories, color-coded, labeled, and alphabetized by section. Everything was in perfect order. “Yep—nutjob,” Bernie murmured. He gave a whistle fingering through the files and said, “These files go back to nineteen seventy-one.” He slid a piece of paper out of the manila folder and looked back. “Birth certificate. You were right about his age.” He slid it back and went fingering through the files again. “Look at this. There’s school records, doctor’s history, college, purchase receipts going all the way back to when he was a kid. His whole life is in this file. Who keeps this shit?”
“Military records?” William asked.
Bernie shut the door, opened the next one. “All kinds of military stuff here.”
William said, “Wait!” He reached into the file drawer and slipped out a file entitled LRG.
“What’s that?” Bernie grunted.
“Long Range Ghost. It was a patrol he was on. Ninety-one. Desert Storm.” William retreated to the bed, which was neatly made. The file was a tie-closed accordion file stuffed with mission documents, Sola’s sniper’s logbook, a personal journal, etc. William gave a satisfied sigh. If this apartment was the living space of a madman, this journal was his origin.
Bernie slid the file drawer shut and moved to the computer gawking at it. Chewing on the inside of his lip he tapped a key on the computer and the screen came up. It was password protected. Bernie grunted. “Figures.” He typed in several variations of Anthony Sola Jr’s. initials combined with his birth date, military information, etc. It didn’t work. Apparently, Anthony Sola Jr. was better at securing his own files than the L.A.P.D. “Crap,” he said.
Without looking up from the journal, William said, “Try a soldier—capital A, capital
S.”
Bernie did so, “Bingo.” He was in.
The journal in William’s hands was a gold mine. It covered every conceivable detail about a sniper op from a boot-level view of the military sniper on patrol. And the prose was laid out with absorbing grace. William felt like he was pap testing the inside walls of a genius’ brain.
The journal listed coordinate locations, terrain qualities, night vs. day maneuvers, mission objectives, mission obstacles, everything—even target names. Some of them weren’t identified directly, only given top-secret C.I.A. code names like Jack of Spades, or Deuce of Diamonds. William flipped through the journal catching locale designations like Sala Ad Din Province, Tawuq and Sammarrah—all in Iraq. These were places he’d been ordered to go, missions that had taken him deep into the heart of the Iraqi War. Sola’s very identity was trapped inside the pages of this journal.
William thumbed his phone to the Scanner App and began scanning pages of the journal into his phone, collecting pdfs and emailing them to himself. He’d study them later.
Next, he shimmied two-dozen color-photos out of their five-by-eight KODAK photo sleeve. They were old pictures taken in Iraq of fatigue-wearing soldiers, all of them positioned around a Humvee or lounging in hand-dug trenches. They were young and healthy, each man showing those unique and rare qualities of a warrior—something more sensed than noticed. It was impossible to know which man was Anthony Sola Jr.
William flipped through the photos and came to several of them that displayed only the landscapes of Iraq. They showed a hard, rocky world of canyons and mountains, not the smooth and endless deserts so famously associated with Iraq. These photos were taken on special operations into high-profile areas of the Middle East. They were scouting pics, all of them taken at altitude, looking down into crevices and canyons, seeing the earth’s floor way below their feet. Snipers only operated from an eagle’s eye view of the world—always with the advantage of elevation.