A Bob Lee Swagger eBook Boxed Set: I, Sniper, Night of Thunder, 47th Samurai

by Stephen Hunter

  All up and down the line, the Grumley boys were cowboying up. Most wore bulletproof vests, and the guns were a motley of junky but effective Third and Fourth World subguns from various organized crime arsenals around the South, plus some functional American junkers. The inventory included a couple of Swedish K’s; a couple of Egyptian Port Saids (clones of the K), some beat-up Mk-760s from small American manufacturers after the original S&W variant, which was itself a K clone; an Uzi; a kicked-to-shit West Hurley Thompson; a full-auto AK-47. With all the clicking and snapping as mags were locked in, guns were cocked, belts of spare mags were strapped on, body armor was tightened and ratcheted shut, it sounded like chickens eating walnuts on an aluminum floor. But in a few seconds or so, it was done.

  “We all set, Pap,” said Caleb, more or less the sergeant.

  “Good, you boys stay back there in the dark, the crowd’s coming out now. Lord God Almighty, there’s a vast sea of people.”

  And there was. The first of about one hundred fifty thousand people slithered out of the speedway gates, spread when they hit open air, and fanned across the available ground. It was an exodus from the church that was NASCAR, and now these good folks had nowhere to go except back into the dreary real world and no way to get there except to take the slow-motion parade in the opposite direction of the afternoon’s slow-motion parade. A few runners made it to their cars early, began to pick their way out of the densely packed lots. Meanwhile, seeming to materialize from nowhere, the police in their yellow-and-white safety vests with their red-lensed flashlights moved onto the roadway to govern or at least moderate the huge outflow of people and vehicles. Dust hung in the soft summer air, shouts mostly of joy, the clink of bottle on bottle, the pop of cans being sprung to spew brew, the friendly jostle of people of the same values, the hum of insects drawn by the lights, the acrid drift of cigarette and cigar smoke, the occasional boastfulness of the young and dumb, the wail of a too-tired baby, a whole human carnival of happy yet exhausted people.

  In just a few minutes gridlock had set in; so many cars, so many folks, so few roads. Honks filled the air, but mostly the crowd had made peace with the ordeal of the egress. In short order, the lanes immediately in front of the Piney Ridge refreshment station were jammed with cars full of citizens, bumper to bumper and door to door in either direction, frozen solid. The people in the cars unaware that a commando force, heavily armed and full of aggression and craziness, lurked just a few feet off in the shadows.

  Ain’t you folks gonna git a thrill in just a minute or so, thought Richard.

  He was behind the skirmish line, unarmed. No reason for him to be up front and get himself shot up in the early rush. He wouldn’t venture out until the truck was taken down, the guards either surrendered or murdered. He licked his lips, which were dry, and his tongue was also dry. He pulled a bottle of water out, now warm, popped the cap and slugged some down.

  “Go easy, Brother Richard. You don’t want to have to pull over for a piss in the middle of all this.”

  Everybody laughed.

  “Why, Cousin Cletus, if I do, you hold ’em off while I empty the snake, okay?”

  More laughter. That Richard. What a joker.

  The minutes dragged on, the boys sat patiently, a Marlboro or Lucky firing up in the darkness, the drift of the smoke through the tented space.

  “I see her,” said the old man from out front. “Yes sir, here she comes, trying to edge her way in.”

  Richard saw it. The vehicle, technically called a “Cash in Transit” truck, was a Ford F-750, probably from Alpine, the biggest of the up-armor specialty firms. It wore a bank emblem on its flat sides and doors, and was a boxy thing, ten feet high and twenty-two long, with the grace of a milk truck from the ’50s blown up to be a parade float. White, it gleamed in the cascade of lights, the rivets in their grid all over the damned thing cast tiny shadows, so unlike the smooth skin and bright primaries of the civilian vehicles, this big, sluggish baby had texture. Its grill was a meshwork of slots that looked like, but weren’t, gun slits, and if the thing was armored to the hilt at the highest upgrade it could withstand anything—except what the Grumleys had prepared for it that night. Squared fenders, a stout body, everything acute-angled off, vault-like, it was made to convey the impression of invincibility, of a moving fortress atop the upgraded shocks and suspension.

  Richard could make out the two doomed drivers, blandly sitting behind the three-inch-thick windshield glass, unaware that hell was about to arrive in spades. The two men slouched, like the others having made peace with the ordeal ahead, and the big thing edged its way down the road from speedway headquarters to the merge with Volunteer. As it advanced, waiting in a line to get in another line, it edged ahead ever so damned slowly. People poured around it, sloshed around it, some even clambering on its bumpers as they progressed, the whole thing eerie in the brownish lights of the vapor-mercuries up above. It demanded respect. Twice, vehicles with better position moved aside to permit it entrance, because it was in some sense magical.

  But everything was rapidly collapsing into a phenomenon of lights with no one feature predominant, because there were so many sources of illumination, those merc-vapors up top, the lights from the cars in the various lines in the various lanes, the bobbing strobes of the cop monitors, the overhead fast movers that were affixed to various news helicopters and a police ship or two. Beams cut the air this way and that—was it a lightsaber battle from Star Wars VII: Attack of the Baptist Killer Redneck Hell-Raising Natural Born Killers?—and zones of illumination played on the surface of the clouds of dust or smoke that roiled heavily, the whole thing punctuated by sounds of the America of 2008: cars, kids, squeals, shouts, taunts, laughter. In the scene the humans were insubstantial, almost flickering ghosts and shadows.

  “Damn,” said Richard to nobody in particular, “is this a great country or what?”

  “Hell boys,” said Caleb, “time to git some.”

  “Here he comes. Caleb, you ready?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Remember, you move with purpose like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. Remember, not through the windows, we need that bulletproof glass on the way up the hill.”

  “Yes sir, Pap.”

  “I loves you, son. I loves all you boys, you goddamned brave Grumley boys.”

  “We love you, Daddy.”

  “Brother Richard, I even love you.”

  “Reverend, will you take a shower with me after this is over?”

  Grumley laughter.

  “Such a Sinnerman,” said the old man.

  Now it was Caleb’s move. He stepped onto the roadway with the heavy, lengthy weapon—thirty pounds, fifty-eight inches long—and boldly walked across the lanes, dipping in and out, once waiting patiently as an SUV full of kids pulled by, two in the backseat bugeyed at the unbelievable image of a blond hulk in a heavy metal T-shirt, a Razorbacks baseball hat, plugs in his ears, body armor clinging to his upper torso and six feet of the gunliest gun ever made in his hands. But no one could really put it together. He seemed calm because he was calm. He got right up close to the sluggishly moving F-750, at almost-point-blank range, the muzzle three feet from the steel door, the guards looking lazily not around but up the road at the jammed-up lanes of cars and their blinking, on-again, off-again brake lights that yawned before them, and then Caleb fired.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Vern removed the girl from the bedroom with an insincere smile to her cowed family and took her into the bathroom. He sat down on the toilet, his arm draped across her shoulders. The door was closed.

  “Now, sweetie.”

  “I don’t like this,” she said, her eyes looking nervously around.

  “Now, sweetie, you just calm down. Does Vern look like a man who could hurt a cute little thing like Hannah Ng?”

  “Please don’t hurt me.”

  “Sweetie, I would never hurt you. In fact, to relax, I want you to think about ice cream. What’s your favorite fl
avor?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think.”

  “Strawberry. Mine too. Now what do you do with a nice big pink strawberry ice cream.”

  The girl had shut her eyes. He held her by the arm.

  “You lick it. Isn’t that what you do?”

  He forced her to her knees.

  “You lick it, nice and hard. Ummm, good. Now, Hannah, let’s pretend we got us a nice ice cream right here right now—”

  “Let’s go,” called Ernie from the living room.

  Damn!

  Vern leaned down and gave the little Asian girl a kiss on the cheek.

  “I’ll be back for you. We got some fun ahead.”

  He raced through the apartment, out the open sliding doors, crossed the lawn, and caught up with his cousin just as Ernie hit the parking lot. They slipped between cars, and Vern saw ahead of him two men coming down the building steps on the other side of the parking lot, lit in the glow of the stairwell. Who the hell was the other guy? Too bad for him, he’s dead too. He indexed his finger above the trigger guard of his Glock for fast application, and he and Ernie described a straight line on the interception of the two targets who, heading on the oblique, were obviously going to a car somewhere farther down in the lot.

  Didn’t matter. Was easy. Them boys didn’t know a thing, didn’t have a prayer or a hope. Bang bang, it’d be over. He watched them, as everything seemed to accelerate in time, noting one was the lanky, gray-headed older guy, a Mr. Swagger Pap said, who had been their quarry so many times before and who Pap said killed Carmody and B.J. The other, a beefier guy, police beef in a suit with a thatch of hair, who was talking into a phone.

  The Grumleys had their guns out, but the rule was, get close as you can, then get closer, get close enough to touch, get close enough so missing isn’t on the table, shoot ’em fast in the guts, shoot ’em down, then lean over ’em for the head shot, blow their brains out, shoot your gun empty, then get the hell out of town.

  It was happening now, it was happening fast, his gun came up, his finger flew to trigger, it was so easy, they picked up their speed on the unsuspecting marks, almost running now.

  “Look out,” came a cry from behind, “they’re killers, look out!”

  It was a young girl’s voice.

  As they raced down the stairwell, Nick held a slight lead and Bob could hear him talking urgently into his cell.

  “Officer, this is Special Agent Nick Memphis, FBI, Fed ID 12-054. Lancer, you’ve got to patch me through to the speedway command center, whoever’s in charge. We believe there’s going to be a robbery assault at your location. No, no, I’ve got SWAT operators inbound from Knoxville, but it’ll be a time before they’re on scene. This is a heavy ten-fifty-two by an armed team, maybe with automatic weapons, all units should be alert and ready to move on the sound of the gunfire, somewhere in the speedway vicinity. Please patch me through to your command center, and I will need airborne transportation to the site and need a rendezvous point and—”

  They cleared the building, slid through the darkness to Nick’s car, though Bob didn’t know which one it was, and seemed almost to be on the run when Bob heard a voice from across the way screaming, “Look out, they’re killers, look out.” In that same second he saw two hunched men rushing at him, guns out, guns upfront. A gun flashed, there was no noise, but the brightness of the muzzle flash displayed the urgent mug of a handsome-ugly guy and Bob knew Nick was hit. Stricken, he muttered an animal noise, lost a step and all rhythm, and was struggling for his own gun.

  It happened fast, faster by far than the speed of coherent thought, faster almost than the pulse rate that was in any event suspended by blood chemicals, and each of the four at close range in the dark devolved into creatures of instinct and training, and the victory would go to the one with the best instinct and the most training. The determining factor was distance; up close, skill counted for nothing, but at ten feet out in the dark, it wasn’t just who shot fast, but who shot best, who had the knack to hit movers in bad light on the fly.

  Bob’s hand flew at a speed which could never be known or measured, so fast that he himself had no sense of it happening, he just knew that the Kimber .38 Super was locked in his fist, his elbow locked against his side, his wrist stiff, the weird, maybe autistic brainfreak in his head solving the complexities of target identification, acquisition, alignment that had been the gift of the Swagger generations since the beginning, his muscles tight, all except the trigger finger, which—you get this about ten thousand repetitions into your shooting program—flew torqueless and true as it jacked back, slipped forward to reset then jacked back again, four times, all without disturbing the set of the gun in his hand. Brass bubbles flew through the air, as spent shells pitched by the Mach 2 speed of the flying slide as it cycled, all four within an inch or three of the others, and Bob put four .38 Super CorBons into the center-mass of the fellow closest to him, who immediately changed his mind about killing.

  Nick fired. Bob’s opponent fired finally, but into the ground. The man on Nick fired twice more from a smallish silver handgun, though crazily, and Bob vectored in on him and fired three more times in that superfast zone that seems to defy all rational laws of physics. The night was rent by flash. From afar it must have looked like a photo opportunity as a beautiful star entered a nightclub, the air filling with incandescence, the smell of something burned, and the noise lost in the hugeness of all outdoors. But it was just the world’s true oldest profession, which is killers killing.

  It was over in less than two seconds.

  Bob dumped his not-quite-empty mag, slammed a new fresh one in and blinked to clear his eyes of strobe, then looked for targets. The guy he hit second was down flat, arms and legs akimbo, his silver revolver three or four feet away, weirdly gleaming in the dark from a random beam of light. The other fellow, hit first, was not down but he had dropped his gun. He walked aimlessly about, holding his stomach and screaming, “Daddy, I am so sorry!”

  Bob watched as he went to a big car and settled next to it, his face resting on the bumper. The lack of rigidity in the body posture told the story.

  Bob knelt to Nick.

  “Hit bad, partner?”

  “Ah, Christ,” said Nick, “can you believe this?”

  “No, but it sure happened. I’m looking, I don’t see no blood on your chest.”

  “He hit me in the leg, stupid fucker. Oh Christ, what a mess.”

  By this time, people had come to their balconies and looked down upon the fallen men.

  “Call an ambulance, please. This officer is hit. We are police!” yelled Bob.

  But in seconds another man had arrived, a smallish Indian with a medical bag.

  “I am Dr. Gupta,” he said, “the ambulance has been called. Can I help?”

  “He’s hit in the leg. I don’t think it’s life threatening. Not a spurting artery.”

  The doctor bent over, quickly ripped the seam of Nick’s suit pants with scissors, and revealed a single wound about an inch inboard on his right thigh, maybe off-center enough to have missed bone. The wound did not bleed profusely, but persistently. It was an ugly, mangled hole, muscles puckered and torn, bad news for weeks or months but maybe not years.

  “Tie,” said the doctor.

  Bob quickly unlooped Nick’s tie and handed it to the doctor, who wrapped it into a tourniquet above the wound, knotted it off, then pulled out and cracked open a box, removed a TraumaDEX squeeze applicator and squirted a dusting of the clotting agent on the wound to stop the blood flow.

  “Don’t know when the ambulance will arrive in all this traffic. Can you give him something for pain?”

  “No, no,” said Nick, “I am all right. Where’s that damned phone. Oh, shit, we can’t get a chopper in here. Oh, Christ, I need to—”

  “You ain’t going nowhere,” said Bob, “except the ER.”

  “Oh, Christ,” said Nick. “I hope they got my message.” But even as he said it, he knew it was hopeless, as
did Bob. The shooters would bring their weapons to bear, the cops were strung out, the situation was a mess, nobody would know a thing, it was—

  “I’ll get there,” said Bob.

  “How, you can’t—”

  “My daughter’s bike. It’s over there. I can ramrod through the traffic. I’ve got some firepower. I know where they’re going. I can intercept them at the hill, put some lead on them, maybe stop them from that chopper pick-up.”

  “Swagger, you can’t—” but then he stopped.

  “Okay,” said Bob. “Who, then? You see anybody else around? You want these lowlife fucks to get away with this thing, and the contempt it shows for all law enforcement, for civilians, for anything that gets in the way? You see anyone else here?”

  But there wasn’t anybody else around. Funny, there never was.

  “Here,” Nick finally said, “maybe this’ll stop the cops from shooting you.” He reached into his shirt and pulled out a badge on a chain around his neck. “This makes you officially FBI and there goes my career. Good luck. Oh, Jesus, you don’t have to do this.”