“Bob, I told you, son.”
“Bob, Big Racing won’t ever say a thing, but I came by to thank you just the same. If that thing had come off, it would be a stain. You stopped it. A cop told me you stopped it alone. So, no stain. No ugliness. No memories of bad things. In fact, in some perverted way, I think everybody who didn’t die or lose their business kind of enjoyed it. But the race is still the thing.”
“Thank you, Matt. Everybody seems to think I was an FBI agent and now even the FBI’s pretending to that one, so it looks like it’ll clear up okay for me and I can get back to my front porch.”
“I doubt anything’ll keep you on a front porch. But there’s one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“This guy, the driver?”
“Yep.”
“Think I know who he is.”
This got Bob’s full attention.
“All right. That puts you ahead of everyone else in this game.”
“He’s the man who murdered my father. On the track, twenty years ago. Ran him hard into an abutment, killed him, everybody knew it was murder, but there was no investigation because Big Racing didn’t want an investigation and a scandal. They just ran him out of the game and made sure he never got on another track again.”
“So he was a racer?”
“The best. Would have been a god. Trained by the hardest taskmaster, made hard and cruel by a hard and cruel mentor, trained to show no mercy, to intimidate, to win or die trying. A monster, or maybe a genius, or maybe the best racing mind and reflexes ever put in one body. Who knows what he might have been? I grew up hearing rumors about him—anytime there was some strange guy winning an unsanctioned event like a coast-to-coast or a mountain climb or some slick driving in a bank robbery getaway, I always thought it was Johnny.”
“You sound like you know him.”
“I do. I once loved him. I guess I still do, no matter what. He’s my brother.”
FORTY
“So let me get this straight, Dad,” Nikki said. “In my own newspaper it reports, ‘An FBI unit pursued the robbers to the top of the hill, killing two and bringing down the fleeing helicopter.’”
“That’s what it says, so it must be true,” he answered. “They don’t put it in the paper if it ain’t true, as I understand it.” He was pushing her in a wheelchair down the hallway from the release office at the Knoxville hospital. She wore blue jeans, a polo shirt, an FBI baseball cap that he had brought her, and a pair of flip-flops.
“But that FBI unit—that was one guy, and he wasn’t even in the FBI. That was you?”
“I have no comment for the press.”
“And this,” she added, reading more from the paper, “‘Other federal units converged on Piney Mountain Baptist Prayer Camp, where they encountered Johnson County Sheriff’s Department Detective Thelma Fielding with evidence that she planned the robbery, Tennessee’s most violent since the 1930s. Fielding resisted arrest and was shot dead.’ That was you too.”
“I don’t honestly remember.”
“Aren’t you a little old for all that cowboy stuff?”
He laughed. It was so good to have her back. His chest swelled. Who said snipers have not hearts or that mankillers are isolate and stark? Through her, he was connected to it all. She was all: civilization, democracy, honor, civility, loyalty, the radiance of sheer life itself. He felt so damned good!
She looked wonderful, her eyes bright with the furious Nikki-intelligence that had always marked her presence on earth. Her face had color in it, her blonde hair was pulled back in a pony tail, and she had that cut-to-the-chase directness he’d always loved so much. She was quite a kid and he thought anew how lucky he was to end up rich, most of all, in daughters.
“Once cowboy, always cowboy, I guess. Didn’t know I could move so fast, nor be so lucky still. I suppose I’m supposed to feel bad about putting those people down, in the modern fashion, but then I remember they targeted my daughter, so I can’t work up no tears.”
“Any tears.”
“Any tears.”
“What boy who loves me can ever compete with you?”
“Nah. You’ll meet him and forget clean about the old goat. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, and just getting you back into the world to meet him and have a great life and contribute wherever you go, that’s enough for me. Now let’s go, Mommy’s waiting in the van. We have to get you back to Bristol.”
He pushed her to the elevator, then the lobby. People waved at Nikki and she waved back, and then he took her outside, into sunlight and southern heat. The clouds had broken, the sun shone, and the trees flashed green as their leaves played in breeze.
“It’s so stupid,” she said. “I can walk perfectly fine.”
“These hospitals have rules. You don’t go home on your own two feet, honey.”
They waited, and then Julie pulled up in a rented red Ford passenger van. The door popped open, and Miko hopped out and threw herself at Nikki. The two daughters embraced.
“Your daddy,” said Nikki, “your daddy is still a tough old bird, sweetie. I fear for the boys you start bringing home in a few years.”
“I don’t like boys,” says Miko. “I like my daddy.”
“She’ll sing a different tune pretty damn soon,” said Bob.
Gingerly, Julie and Bob got Nikki, still a little fragile despite her protestations, into the backseat of the van. Julie got in next to her, got her seat belt on, and Miko got into the front seat. Bob climbed into the driver’s seat, engaged the engine, and pulled out for the long, last trek up I-81 from Knoxville to Bristol.
Brother Richard watched them, listening to his iPod.
Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Run to the sea, but the sea it’s aboilin’,
Run to the moon, but the moon it’s ableedin’,
Sinnerman, where you gonna to run to,
All on that day?
He was parked two blocks back in a recently stolen Dodge Charger, 6.7 liter Hemi V8, the car idling smoothly, giving no evidence of the 425-horsepower beast under its hood. He’d been on the Swaggers for three days now, knowing that sooner or later Nikki would leave the hospital. He knew they’d rent a van, and he ID’d the handsome woman who was the mother of the girl he had to kill.
Now he watched the little scene at the hospital doors, so sweet, the theme of family wholeness after an ordeal, the subthemes, the heroism of the father, the faith of the mother, the weird special talent of the daughter, the innocence of the younger child. But he wasn’t thinking about the family or themes; he was thinking tactically, of details involved in the action ahead. He knew that no matter how well the van was driven by this extremely competent man, it was too tall, too slow, too stiff, had too high a tipping point, to stand up to the assault of his Charger.
He knew so much. He knew which route they’d have to take to the I-81 ramp, and he knew exactly where he’d take them, right after Exit 66 and its outlet mall, where the traffic would be thinner, the road straight, the embankment low, and the precipice steep, and the jolt would force the van over and down it would go, bouncing, bouncing, snapping the spines of all inside.
I never meant to do a family, he thought, but I am the Sinnerman, and that girl has seen my new face and when she remembers, I am done. That’s what the Sinnerman does. He does what is necessary.
Bob drove through traffic idly, looking neither left nor right, paying no particular attention to anything. He turned a corner, then had a sudden inspiration.
“I could use a nice chocolate Softee,” he said.
“Daddy, you’ll get fat.”
“I’ll get a Diet Softee then,” he said, laughing.
He pulled into the immediate left, a convenience store parking lot.
Julie said, “Okay, everybody out.”
“Mommy, I—”
“No, no, just out, out, fast.”
There was something new and hard in her voice.
She shepherded the tw
o girls, but not into the store for the treat, but instead into another rental, a car, where she directed them to lie low.
“Mommy, I—”
“Do it, honey. Just do it now.”
She turned back into the cab of the van, where Bob had cinched his seatbelt tight.
She made eye contact with him, and spoke not with love but with the mission-centered earnestness of officer to sergeant.
“This time, get him!”
All of a sudden, they turned right, just as he was himself caught in an unexpected snarl of traffic. Agh! They’re getting away. Brother Richard felt a spurt of anger. He could control so much, but not traffic. But just as swiftly it cleared up, and he darted ahead, took the righthand turn and saw that they’d pulled into a convenience store, probably for a Coke or something, and were now pulling out, back on the road. He idled by the side of the road, let the van put some distance between them, then cut back into traffic and began his leisurely stalk.
He stayed far behind, occasionally even losing visual contact. But he reacquired the van as it pulled up the ramp to I-81 North. Again without haste, he let some distance build, took the ramp, and slipped into traffic. There it was, maybe half a mile ahead, the red van, completely unaware of his presence. He accelerated through the gears, the Charger growled, shivered at the chance to show off its muscularity and all 425 of its horses, and Brother Richard felt that octane-driven bounce as the car flew ahead, pressing him into the seat.
The miles sped by, the van always in the slow lane, holding steady at fifty-five, Richard a mile back, forcing himself to keep his power-burner at the same rate. He’d lose the target on hills or turns, but it was always just there, ahead of him, easily recoverable. The exits ticked by, until at last, almost an hour later, Exit 66, with its much-ballyhooed promise of consumer paradise at cut rate, took the majority of the northbound cars.
We are here, he told himself. We are where we have to be. We are Sinnerman.
He had them. The road was clear, no Smokies had been seen in some time, the odd trailer truck or SUV dawdled in the slow lane, now and then a fast-mover passed too aggressively in the left-hand, speeder’s alley, but not with any regularity.
He turned up the music on his iPod, that continual loop of the old spiritual, with its image of Armageddon, its sense of the endings of things, its image of the Sinnerman in all his glory, finally facing his ultimate fate, the one this Sinnerman was now about to make impossible by destroying the one living witness to his deeds and face.
He hit the pedal. The car jacked ahead. Clear sailing, only the red van stumping along across the ridge lines of the bland North Tennessee landscape with its anonymous farms and low hills. The car sang as it ate up the distance, alive under his touch as all cars always had been. He closed fast; they had no idea the Sinnerman was on them.
It was just like all the others: the blindside approach, the perfect angle, the perfect hit just beyond the left rear quarter panel, the satisfaction of the thump as metal hit metal at speed, possibly a flash of horror as the doomed driver looked back, even as, predictably, he overcorrected as he felt control vanish and the side of the road beckon, not realizing that the overcorrection was the killer. Then the weirdness visible in the rearview mirror as the car twisted and lost traction, always seemingly in slow motion, and began to float as it separated from the surface of the planet. Once it floated, it pirouetted, almost lovely for a thing so full of death. Then it hit, as gravity reasserted its command, and bounced, jerked, spun, disintegrated, throwing up heaps of dust. Possibly it disappeared, going off a precipice or down an incline, but it didn’t really matter, for the velocity-interruption of the strike of car to ground produced more torque than any human body could withstand, and spines, like toothpicks or straws, snapped instantly. If the car hit a tree, hit a rock, hit an abutment, burned, shattered, splintered, erupted, it didn’t matter. Its cargo was corpses by the time the ultimate worked itself out.
He had them he had them he had them. He was in the blind spot, he found the angle, he veered for the fatal smash—
Where you gonna run to, all on that day?
A curiosity. Unprecedentedly, before he struck, the van disappeared. No, it didn’t disappear, it braked hard but well, instantly jettisoning its speed, and in a nanosecond was out of the kill zone as he oversped. But as it disappeared, it also revealed. That revelation was another vehicle, just ahead, so close to the first that it had been hidden by the height of the van. In another nanosecond Brother Richard discovered that it was a Dodge Charger like his own, only glistening black, the V8 6.7 liter Hemi, 425 horses raring to go.
In that second, too, he recognized the profile of its driver. It was his brother, Matt, the NASCAR hero, whom he’d always adored but whom he also hated, for Matt had the life that he, Johnny, so wanted.
Matt nodded.
The Sinnerman knew what would happen next.
Matt slid inside him, came left hard, hit him just beyond the rear quarter panel, and he felt the traction going as the car floated left. Before he could stop himself, he overcorrected, and the car launched at 140 miles per.
Where you gonna run to, all on that day?
You’re not going to run anywhere. There was no place to run.
He was floating, his tires lost contact with the surface of the earth, the moon was bleeding, the sea was boiling, the car was rolling, all on this day.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This one began the second I saw the Speedway at night, loaded with fans, frenzy, and happiness. I thought: What they need is a good gunfight! I recommend a trip to Bristol whether it’s a racing weekend or not, for that view of the hugeness of the structure in the greenness of the valley is shocking and somehow awesome. It stands for man’s monumental imagination and his ability to impose his will on nature. On the other hand, if those aren’t your values, you’d better stay away. Anyhow, I was down there visiting my daughter, Amy, who, like Nikki, is a reporter for the Bristol Herald Courier, and she’s just as gallant and intrepid as Nikki, even if I’m a far cry from Bob Lee Swagger. Without giving it a thought, I had bumbled into the most fantastic American spectacle I’d ever seen and knew I had to do something with it.
The confluence of daughter and setting suggested a plot, though it took a while to get it all straightened out. In the early going, the story was going to revolve around an attempt to fix a race and would have required penetrating NASCAR culture to a far greater extent. Ten minutes into a race convinced me that “fixing” was impossible, so I diverted to something more gun-centric and fireworks-intensive. Had a hell of a good time doing it, too.
Thanks to the usual suspects and some newcomers as well. Thanks to Amy for inspiring it, thanks to NASCAR for being so much fun to write about, thanks to the millions who attend NASCAR events, for their good humor, enthusiasm, charisma, and consumption of beer in epic quantities. Thanks to Gary Goldberg, who became a sort of majordomo of the book, and figured out, among so many things, how much $8 million in small bills would weigh. Thanks to John Bainbridge for proofreading, to Lenne Miller, Jay Carr, Frank Starr, Mike Hill, and Jeff Weber for good counsel and morale. Thanks to Jean, as usual, for going along on my mad flights with a good spirit. Thanks to Folk Village, and XM-15 for playing “Sinnerman” at the precise moment I was trying to get a handle on the driver. Thanks to Ylan Q. Mui at The Washington Post for her help with Bob’s Vietnamese. Thanks to the professionals: my agent, Esther Newberg, my publisher, David Rosenthal, and my editor, Colin Fox.
Thanks to Kimber, DPMS, and Black Hills for inspiring all the hardware. Thanks to Dodge for the Charger, a piece of work and a half. Most of all, thanks to you for entertaining my efforts.
I, SNIPER
ALSO BY STEPHEN HUNTER
Night of Thunder
The 47th Samurai
American Gunfight (with John Bainbridge, Jr.)
Now Playing at the Valencia: Pulitzer Prize Essays on the Movies
Havana
Pale Horse Coming
Hot Springs
Time to Hunt
Black Light
Dirty White Boys
Point of Impact
Violent Screen: A Critic’s 13 Years on the Front Lines of Movie Mayhem
Target
The Day Before Midnight
The Spanish Gambit (Tapestry of Spain)
The Second Saladin
The Master Sniper
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hunter, Stephen.
I, sniper : a Bob Lee Swagger novel / Stephen Hunter.
p. cm.
1. Swagger, Bob Lee (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Vietnam War,
1961–1975—Veterans—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.
4. Marines—Fiction. 5. Snipers—Fiction. I. Title.
A Bob Lee Swagger eBook Boxed Set: I, Sniper, Night of Thunder, 47th Samurai Page 62