Bob settled behind the reticle, indexed on his approximation of the angle at which the bird had headed, and there it was, illuminated in the light of the speedway its occupants had just looted, the bird in blur, three-quarter profile, bisected in the milliradian-designated crosshairs, and it all came together in the kind of stroke only someone who’d done the deed under pressure a thousand or a million times on training fields and in bad places where they shot back could make happen—smooth and beyond attainment or speed or ambition.
He didn’t even feel the recoil in the nanosecond the bird crossed the crosshairs of the scope, though it may have been ferocious, even as he gave with it, rolled backward, and let the gun resettle for a second shot. He didn’t see the blinding muzzle flash as the huge missile with its tungsten core flew onward at well past the speed of sound, he didn’t feel the noise, which was immense, he didn’t sense the disturbance all those hot, roiling gases unleashed.
He looked again when the show was complete, but he couldn’t find the bird. Where had it gone, what was it—
He saw it sliding out of the sky. He watched through the magnification of the scope and caught the thing in its downward gyre. It wasn’t smoking or burning, but its internal rhythms were psychotic and the fuselage rotated wildly, whipping ever faster, until it was just barely flying, and at the last the pilot, whoever he was, got some control, and the thing hit with a smash against the empty seating of the speedway, its tail boom shearing off and going for a tumble, smoke rising now from a dozen different areas. Then Bob saw men spilling crazily out of it, even one, from this distance, in blue.
Then a glare spotlighted him.
He looked up to see another bird just a few feet up. He felt himself pinned, silhouetted in the harsh light. He raised his hands, holding Nick’s badge up for all to see.
The bird got even lower, and in its own light he now saw KFOXTV written on its boom.
He climbed up to the roof of the truck and the chopper came even lower. He got a foot on the runner, launched forward, and eager hands pulled him in.
He was aboard next to a guy with a fancy haircut and a guy with a camera, both so excited they looked about to pee. But he wedged past them, knowing all too well the interior of the Huey, and leaned into the cockpit.
The pilot handed him a set of earphones, which he slipped on, finding a throat mic at the ready.
“I’m with the FBI,” he said, gesturing with the badge.
“Yes sir.”
“Listen, can you run this baby south to 421, then follow 421 all the way over Iron Mountain out to Mountain City?”
“Sure can.”
“When we get there, I’ll talk you in the rest of the way. You drop me where I say, and then you make tracks.”
“Read you, Special Agent.”
“Then let’s rock and roll the fuck out of here.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
The boss waited. Radio reports were incoherent, inclusive, communicating only chaos and conflicting intelligence. Choppers down, but Caleb had to bring a chopper down. How many? One? Two, three? Hard to say. In the end, it was pointless to listen, and so the boss turned off the unit.
The boss checked the time. After midnight. Here, so far away, the night was calm, the sky full of radiance, the temperature at last bearable, and a sliver of gibbous moon let low gleam smear the southern hemisphere. When the hell would it be here? Why wouldn’t the hands on the watch move more quickly? Why was breath so hard, neck so stiff, mouth so dry?
Suddenly, there it was. The boss felt immense relief. It felt so good. They were here. It was done.
The black bird, running low over the mountain crest, finding this unlit field behind the prayer camp without a problem. He was such a good pilot and now he could be taken care of too.
The boss lit a flare, the only signal necessary.
It’s done. They said it couldn’t be done. But I did it. Now I’m free and clear and rich and untouchable. I’m a legend. They’ll wonder for a hundred years what became of me, what I did with all that money. They’ll tell of the boss who beat the game.
The helicopter set down, pitching up a whirl of wind and dust and leaves, blowing and bending the grass away from its roar. But Grumleys didn’t jump out. That old man in his blue suit didn’t leap out, dancing as was his way when gleeful, and there were no Grumleys shouting and pounding and strutting as was expected, everybody hungry for their share of the swag, neatly pre-cut into bales of cash, one for each boy, two for the old man, and the rest for the boss, as planned. Then the boss would jump aboard the chopper, and it would continue its run in the dark, low and unfollowable, another hundred miles to an obscure rural field where an SUV waited along with some phony passports. They’d be in Mexico in a day.
But no, none of that happened.
No Grumleys got off.
Just one old man: Bob Lee Swagger.
“Howdy, Detective Thelma,” Bob said. “Nice to see you.”
“Swagger,” she said. “Goddamn you.”
“I do annoy people.”
She saw the badge.
“You were FBI undercover all the time?”
“No, ma’am. I am Nikki Swagger’s father, pure and simple. But I have a great friend in the Bureau and we linked up. Now I’m working for him. But I’m still working for Nikki.”
“It wasn’t personal.”
“It never is.”
The two faced each other in the flicker of the flare as the helicopter skipped away into a high orbit.
“No way that hayseed gun store gets hold of imported Norwegian Raufoss armor-piercing rounds without someone running a request on police stationery through Justice under the sheriff’s signature, the sort of thing someone running an anti–meth lab program might have, right, Thelma? But who runs the department? That matinee-idol sheriff? He’s so dumb he doesn’t know how many feet he’s got. They’ll figure that out down there soon enough. I already did.”
“Swagger, don’t make me do this. I see I have to run hard now, and I can’t waste time here with you.”
“There ain’t no rush, Detective Thelma. I don’t think you’re going nowhere. Hmm, let’s see, what else? Oh, yeah, sure, I’m betting the superlab is in the coal yard next to the sheriff’s office, under the stink of all that coal where nobody can sniff it out, most of all that sheriff. Boy, you made some monkey out of him. But that’s why you got to go, isn’t it, Thelma? OSHA’s closing down the yard and y’all are moving the department. You can’t run the lab if they’re closing down the whole zone. You’ve run meth in Johnson for three years now. You fed the sheriff the intel, let the sheriff take out the competition, and you manufactured the stuff by the bagful right under his nose, slipstreamed behind him, kept the cost of meth the same. That network of snitches you’re so proud of; those are your dealers. That poor boy Cubby Bartlett you shot was a dealer and he was so cranked he didn’t have any idea what was going on. You grabbed the gun because when you showed up at his place that afternoon and pumped him full of ice, you found his piece, unloaded it. So you had to grab it to justify your prints all over it. The upshot is, you used the profit to set up this operation, to turn an awkward million you shouldn’t have had into eight unmarked free and clear. Hell, the pieces were already in place for you; the helicopter, its pilot being your banged-up gone-to-hell brother. And I know you got him the job. The Barrett rifle already in the inventory, the inside dope on the cash movement, the inside dope on how tied in knots law enforcement was. All you had to do was get the sheriff to sign off on the Raufoss. Then off you go, laughing all the way. What you got on old Alton to leverage him like that? Something pretty, I imagine.”
“Damn you, Swagger, how’d you get so smart? He likes boys. He come chickenhawking up here, and I heard and set up a sting and got video on him. In his circles, that’s ruination. So he does this job, and we’re quits.”
“You are a bad girl, Thelma. But we ain’t quite at the end. You knew Grumley before. You got some strange connection to Gru
mley. Grumley don’t trust no outsiders. They’d just roll over you. What is it, Thelma. Who are you?”
“Born Grumley. Maybe Pap’s, maybe someone else’s. Grumley blood. They got rid of me. Too smart. Raised in an orphanage. But I backtracked and found ’em. Pap could never bring himself to shed Grumley blood. End of talk. Time to go. Swagger, you are way overmatched. You have seen me draw. You know how fast I am, and how I don’t never miss. I have to leave now. If you try to stop me I will kill you. Who do you think you are?”
“Who do I think I am? You never got it, did you? Y’all thought I was some old coot from out West, no match for Grumley killers and armed robbers and crooked-as-hell detectives. I am Bob Lee Swagger, Gunnery Sergeant, USMC, eighty-seven kills, third-ranking marine sniper in Vietnam. I have shot it out with Salvadorian hunter-killer units and Marisol Cubano hitmen and a Russian sniper sent halfway around the world. I even won a sword fight or two in my time. They all had one thing in common. They thought they were hunting me, and I was hunting them. Faced many, all are sucking grass from the bitter, root end. Here’re your choices: You can come easy or you can come dead.”
Thelma drew.
She was way fast, she was so smooth, her hand flew in a blur to the Para-Ord in the speed holster, it came up like a sword stroke, invisible in its raw speed.
Bob hit her twice in the chest before she even got the safety off.
She spun, hurt so bad, and the heavy gun fell from her hand, the two CorBon .38 Supers enabling the ritual of drainage that would take her life from her as they opened up like sharp steel roses. She gasped for air, finding little, and turned to look at the old man with the pistol in his hand, just as the flare died.
“By the way,” he said, “I was also Area 7 USPSA champ five years running. Nobody ever called me slow.”
PART III
LAST LAP
THIRTY-NINE
It took some sorting out, and the politics were enormously complicated. But the final law enforcement debriefing on the incident of August 23, 2009, Bristol, Tennessee, managed to get through its business in less than six hours. All participants—the FBI, the Tricities Law Enforcement Task Force representing the municipalities of Sullivan County, the Tennessee Highway Patrol, and the appropriate federal, state, city, and county prosecutor’s offices—remained cordial and tempers were more or less controlled throughout.
It helped that though the Grumley mob had fired over 750 rounds of ammunition—this was the number of cartridge casings picked up by the FBI Evidence Recovery Team on site at the Bristol Speedway the day after the incident—no civilians were killed, though eleven were wounded, one critically. It helped that Bristol police officers caught the main perpetrators—actually had them signed, sealed, and delivered when the hijacked Johnson County Sheriff’s Department’s helicopter crashed conveniently into the speedway itself—without difficulty. It helped that law enforcement casualties were quite low too: a Bristol traffic officer was seriously wounded by 9mm fire as he approached the site of the takedown, a state police helicopter pilot was badly burned when his aircraft was shot down by Caleb Grumley early in the firefight, and his copilot broke an ankle pulling him out of the downed machine in the seconds before the fire erupted. The real tragedy was the three employees of Cash Transit Service of Tennessee killed outright. It seemed to bother no one that three perpetrators—Caleb, another Grumley gunman on the hilltop, and a corrupt Johnson County law enforcement officer—were killed by FBI agents. Two other Grumley gunmen were killed earlier in the evening by another FBI team.
If anyone could be said to have won the engagement and emerged in extremely positive light, it was the Bureau, with its intrepid penetration of the conspiracy, its rapid response and deployment, and its heroic SWAT actions during the incident itself. Task force director Nicholas Memphis, wounded in the first shooting relating to the events of that evening, was singled out for special praise and would almost certainly win another decoration. The undercover agent he supervised was never identified to law enforcement personnel—the Bureau is notoriously reluctant to share operational details, even with other agencies—though many believed the tall, anonymous older gentleman who accompanied the Bureau contingent to the meeting might have been that fellow himself.
Some oddities and disappointments became clear. Though in fact FBI initiative closed the attempt down, it was clear from even the most preliminary study that the real failure factor in the criminal enterprise was the odd route the driver of the hijacked Cash in Transit truck took to the helicopter pickup point. Had he not diverted to cause maximum damage to NASCAR Village, the felons would have made their escape easily. Running low and without lights by helicopter, they would have been impossible to locate. They could have split the $8 million cash take, and dispersed almost instantly. That’s how close the bad guys came to getting away with it. That led, in turn, to the one disappointment: the failure to apprehend that particular fellow, the mysterious driver who had somehow slithered away in all the craziness.
As for the Grumleys themselves, they were as they had always been: tough, silent men who did their crime and were willing to do their time, even if, as in the case of Alton Grumley, he would certainly perish in prison before that time was over. They named no names, snitched out no others. Besides Alton, three shooters were taken alive and would not name the other Grumleys who had helped in the vehicle takedown and then melted away, remaining unapprehended. The pilot, former major Thomas Fielding, United States Army, would have sold anybody out, but he knew nothing. He was a wounded combat veteran who had been shot down three times in two wars. His last tour of duty had been very rough, leading to a history of drinking and other personal problems. He quickly turned state’s evidence, though he had little to offer except to point out to any and all that he should never have listened to his little sister.
Finally, it was over, though adjudication remained, the inevitable process by which things get processed in the justice system. It would involve many of the cops, further investigation, much sworn testimony and court time, generally inconveniencing everybody and using up millions of dollars. But all that was in the future, and the heroic Nick Memphis, sure now to become an assistant director, left with his party, including the quiet older agent who said nothing but watched all.
The two of them walked to Nick’s car and they were a sight. Bob still limped and would always limp from the deep cut across his hip and down to his steel replacement joint. Nick was on crutches and hobbled along as best he could.
“If we had a drummer, we’d look like Yankee Doodle Dandy,” Bob joked at one point. They got across the parking lot of the Bristol Police Department, where the meeting had taken place. It was another sultry day in the South, with a low, gray sky and a threat of rain in the air. Nick turned to Bob.
“I have to say, partner, you are some kind of cowboy. We don’t have a guy who could come close to you, and we’ve got some damn good guys. What’s the secret, Bob? What explains you? No one knows you better than me, and I don’t know a thing.”
“My old man was the real hero. I’m just his kid, trying to live up to him, that’s all. That plus good old USMC training, some kind of natural skill, and what can only be called Gunfighter’s Luck. Wyatt had it, so did Frank Hammer, Mel Purvis, Jelly Bryce, D.A. Parker, all those old boys. I seem to have just a touch myself.”
“You have what they have for sure, and it isn’t luck. It’s something else. Arkansas boy like you ought to know the term for it. ‘True Grit’ ring a bell? If not, try Japanese: ‘Samurai.’ Sound familiar? You were there. Marine Corps. ‘The Old Breed.’ Bet you heard that one. Or go back to the ancient Greeks: ‘Spartan.’ Any of it mean a thing?”
“Don’t know, Nick. Maybe it’s just stupid luck. And maybe it’s just who I am, that’s all.”
“Okay, go home, rest, enjoy. You’ve earned it. Get fat. Have more kids. Die in bed in forty years.”
“I intend to. First though, I’m heading back to Knoxville, to pick up my wife
and daughters. Boy, am I sick of that damned drive down and back. After I git quit of this part of the country, ain’t never driving that I-81 spur again. Sorry you didn’t get your bad boy, that driver. That one must sting.”
“We’ll get him. If he was expecting a cut of the cash, he came up short, which means he’ll have to work again soon. We know what to listen for this time.”
“Bet you do get him, too.”
“If Nikki remembers—you know, anything, but a face would be best. You have my number. This time I’ll answer.”
“You don’t think—”
“He’s long gone. Believe me, this guy is not hanging around when there’s all this law enforcement buzz.”
The two said goodbye with a little hug—the sort masculine men not given to emotion but feeling it nonetheless are given to perform—and then Nick climbed awkwardly into the seat, and his driver took him away. Bob watched his closest—maybe his only—friend go, then turned, and headed to his own car, now much-loathed, the little green, rental Ford that had hauled him so many places. He had half a mind to buy a really nice Dodge Charger, blood red, the big V8 engine, spoilers, the works, to celebrate surviving another one of his things.
Feeling the omnipresent pain in his hip, he negotiated his way to the little vehicle to see, astonishingly, that someone had pulled up in a brand new Dodge Charger, his dream vehicle, though this one was death black and gleamy. The door opened, and a familiar figure stepped out. It was that young Matt MacReady, who’d taken USMC 44 to a fourth in Bristol.
“Howdy, Gunny. Heard about this meet, thought I might find you here.”
“Well, Matt, how are you? Congratulations on your run.”
“Sir, it wasn’t nothing compared to your run, what I’m hearing. I just drive in circles and nobody’s shooting.”
“Well, most of what I did was crawl in circles, hoping not to get shot.”
“Sergeant Swagger—”
A Bob Lee Swagger eBook Boxed Set: I, Sniper, Night of Thunder, 47th Samurai Page 61