“We recovered a 1971 bank camera film of a robbery in Nyackett, Massachusetts. It clearly shows the young Thomas T. Constable shooting and killing two security guards from behind.”
“I—Uh—Are you joking?”
“Not at all. Then we recovered very solid information linking him to four Irish contractors—professional snipers—who murdered Joan Flanders, Jack Strong, Mitzi Reilly, Mitch Greene, and Carl Hitchcock, and I’m betting we can pin the murder of a Chicago cop named Dennis Washington on him too. Tomorrow when we serve warrants, we’ll have a lot more evidence. Now, Bill, here’s where we are. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem. My bet is that you’ll want to get ahead of this thing, because you know if you don’t, it’ll crush you. You’ll do very hard time in a very bad joint.”
“Nick, I knew nothing—”
“Save that for your own lawyer. I don’t have time. Mr. Fedders, either you come with me tonight and start making like a tweety-bird, or you are looking at a grim end to a very pleasant life. Somehow I don’t think Ms. Delph is going to make the long trip to Marion every Sunday to hear your sad stories of gang rape. And maybe Mrs. Fedders won’t either.”
Bill threw down his martini, signaled Vito for another one.
Then he turned to Nick and gave him a solemn, sincere look, rather fatherly, one of his most persuasive tools, and in his rich mahogany voice, he said, “Nick, you’re asking me to turn on a man who’s supported me my whole life. Because of Tom Constable’s belief in me, I wear fine shoes—Aldens, not Allen Edmonds—and suits, am married to a beautiful, understanding woman, have four extraordinary children, well educated and prospering in their careers, and as you can see, I do still get out on the town once in a while, old dog that I am. All because of Tom. I make over five million dollars a year, have a fine estate in Potomac, a beautiful house in Naples, and another on the Eastern Shore, right near Dick Cheney’s. I have horses, Perazzi shotguns; I have a two handicap and am noted as one of the best poker and bridge players in town. Everyone returns my calls. All that because of the generosity, the support, the belief, even the love of Tom Constable, whom you now accuse of horrific crimes. And you say to me, will you betray this man? Will you turn on this man? Will you do harm to this great American?”
“That’s the sixty-four-year-in-prison question.”
“Well, Nick, I can answer you very quickly, in words of one syllable: of course I will. In a second. In half a second. And have I got stuff to give you. Now let’s get out of here. I hope you’ve got stenographers and typists ready, because it’s going to be a very long night.”
53
Two hours later they sat in a diner across from Indian Rapids’s only motel, an Econo Lodge, showered and changed into clothes they’d bought in the town’s only store, a beat-up old joint featuring everything from guns to butter. The two men were eating nothing great but a lot of it.
“Didn’t know I was so hungry,” said Bob.
“I can tell you’re gassed. Best get some sleep now. I think you’ve got an advanced case of what I’d call combat stress syndrome.”
“Umph,” said Bob. “Maybe so. Felt better. Called my wife, told her I’d be home in a few days. She wasn’t real sure who I was, and when I finally got her to remember me, she told me my daughters are all grown up and married and have kids.”
“You need to chill for a long, calm year.”
“I wish. Maybe later. I have to go to DC one last time on Tuesday to get this thing straightened out. Then I want to stop in Chicago. I have a gun that belongs to a police officer that I’d like to give to his widow.”
“No rest for the weary,” said Chuck. Then he said, “Look, Bob, nobody’s going to say this, so you’re stuck with me and I’m not any kind of speech maker. Too bad for you. But you wouldn’t let ’em do that to Carl Hitchcock, and by extension to us, the snipers, the mankillers, the bastards way out there with a rifle that never make it into the history books even if they make it back to their own lines. So sniper to sniper, the only thing I can say is—hell, I don’t know—Gee, Roy Rogers, you made all the little buckeroos happy.”
Swagger smiled. That was good enough for him. Then he suddenly felt a wave of fatigue. Time to go.
“Brother Chuck, I’ve got to crash.”
“Got it.”
“You’ll wake me in the morning and we’ll figure out where to go and what to do next.”
“Good.”
“See you then.”
“Gunny, one last thing. I won’t sleep. How in hell did you make that shot? You were what, six hundred yards out, with a mil-dot, and he had that supercomputer-driven thing. But you beat him and put him down before he even got a shot off. How? For God’s sake, that was the greatest shot I ever heard of.”
“Oh, that,” said Bob, as if that were something like picking up a sock. “He thought he was hunting me, but I was hunting him. I knew if it came to Lone Tree, the shooting would be fast and far and it’d be a one-round war. I spent a night in Lone Tree before you came in and even before I went in. I walked it, I studied it on the maps, I tried to learn it good. I figured out where he’d start in if he came on a beeline from the first valley, ’cause he knew where the games would be played. That was the whole point. From there, I tried to figure where he’d shoot from. I discovered that there was a spot he’d move through, either on foot or low crawl, where there wasn’t no wind. That’s because you can’t hardly see it, but about two hundred yards to the right, there’s a knoll, about twenty foot tall, a natural windbreak. So if Anto’s coming down that slope, when he gets to that dead spot, that’s where he’ll shoot. Any sniper would. Why fight the wind at the muzzle if you don’t have to? I lased the range from the spot back to the tree. It was five hundred thirty-seven yards. When I got your rifle, I zeroed it to point of aim, dead bang center, no holdover, right at five thirty-seven. Then I just watched, and when he felt the wind stop, he halted, just for an instant, to process it; then he went to shoot. But I was maybe a half second ahead of him, and I put it on the money, though a little to the right. I was five inches off my center chest hold. Blew his arm out at the root. Wasn’t pretty, but then little in this game is.
“Now, you know what? I’m going to drink some goddamned whiskey tonight, with Chuck McKenzie, Chuck-Chuck-Chuckity-Chuck, the great marine sniper, my friend, the fella who shot three Irish gooney birds off my ass and saved my worthless drunk’s life three times in three seconds. Can you stay up with the old guy, Chuckity-Chuck, you goddamned sniping mankiller, you?”
“Gunny, I will drink to your mankilling ways and my own, and to all the snipers, and we will have ourselves a toot!”
54
Nick’s apprehension plan was brilliant, and he cleared a major obstacle that Sunday morning, after a long night with his team listening to the confessions and accusations of Bob Fedders, by obtaining a federal warrant against Thomas T. Constable for murder by way of hired hitmen who crossed state lines to execute their crimes. That made it a legal federal pinch, and even if that charge ultimately proved hard to make in court—much of the information, in the form of e-mails in various laptops, had yet to be collected—it would stand until Massachusetts authorities were able to file murder charges against Constable for the 1971 killings, of which photographic evidence now existed.
Given that arrest warrant, Nick was also able to get his search warrants, which were eight in number: three for Constable offices in New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles; one for the ranch property in Wyoming (especially the security team headquarters); one for Constable himself, including any possessions with which he might be traveling; one for the hard drive on Jack Strong’s computer; one for all e-mails exchanged prior to the murders of Jack and Mitzi between Bill and Tom; and finally one for all properties belonging to the late Jack Strong and Mitzi Reilly.
All this had to be delicately coordinated, as all agreed that Constable had revealed himself a borderline sociopath given to violence and flight, and with his enormo
us resources he would have plenty of places to flee to, including homes in Costa Rica, the South of France, Switzerland, the moors of Scotland, and Bali. It was further thought that the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, China, Libya, and Indonesia would give him refuge if necessary. Therefore, all the searches were timed for 7 p.m., at which time Constable would be on the ground and ideally on the runway from his flight to Seattle to address the annual Amazon.com employees banquet. An FBI apprehension team was laid on, heavily armed, not because they expected trouble from Constable’s three Graywolf bodyguards, who were after all sworn to obey civil law as a condition for their firearms permits, but Constable himself; who knew, who could predict how he might act when confronted and cornered? He might prefer a gun battle as a way of suicide by cop. Nick wanted him in custody with no difficulty, quietly and carefully before he realized the totality of the charges against him. Nick sure didn’t want him shooting up the Amazon.com banquet; that would be a bad career move of epic proportions.
Like all brilliant plans, it began brilliantly, and like all brilliant plans, it failed brilliantly. Someone in the New York office got mixed up on time and thought the 7 p.m. jump-off was western time; to compound this error, it turned out that the New York AIC misunderstood the concept of time zones and thought that 7 p.m. in Seattle was 3 p.m. in New York.
“Oh, Christ,” said Nick when he got the news. Heads would have to roll on this one, but that was for later. Now a real problem: would Constable hear? If he heard, he could bolt. If he got to his jet, he could head to Costa Rica or wherever, and what would the Bureau do then?
“Hmm,” said Ron Fields, with his usual subtlety and political acumen, “I think I’d launch some F-18s, intercept over water, go to air-to-air, and do the shoot-down where it’ll do the least damage.”
“Thanks, Ron. Helpful as usual,” Nick said grumpily, even though everyone else had laughed. “Okay, we go. We go now, we make the arrest wherever he is, before he gets word. Where is he?”
That’s when it occurred to brilliant Nick that he’d made a brilliant mistake himself. He had purposely turned down the option of locating Constable and tailing him, because such a move, to a paranoid like Constable, might spook him into early flight. And the Seattle date was so solid that of all options, the Seattle airport takedown, well staffed, well planned by top tactical people, seemed absolutely the best.
“Where is he?” he asked again.
“We could do an NRO satellite interception of his cell phone notifications,” said the ever-bright Starling.
“We need his number.”
“Fedders would have it.”
But Fedders was in a safe house in Roanoke, Virginia, and Bureau policy was never to call, because you never knew who was listening in, and if Constable somehow got away, Fedders’s life would be at risk, to say the least. His security was not only mandated by regulation but paramount to Task Force Sniper’s enterprise.
“Oh, shit,” said Nick, sitting back.
“Nick, we can get FAA, we can find out the flight plan of his Gulfstream, and we can move an apprehension team there ASAP.”
“Good. Get going on it, Starling. I’ll call the director and get his authorization to assemble apprehension teams at all field offices so that when we find out, we can move them fast.”
Nick looked at his watch. It was now well after three. He felt like he was going to have a heart attack. All the shit they’d gone through and now it was beginning to topple—
“Wait a second,” he said.
He took out his cell and called a number.
The phone on the other end rang and rang and rang.
“Swagger.”
“Hey. How do you feel?”
“Better. Did some drinking last night, nothing much, I’m happy to say. Had a good time with a good pal. Is something up?”
“I’m afraid so. The good news is I’ve got a fed indictment on Constable, I’ve got search teams ready to—well, I told you all that.”
“Yep.”
“Okay, short version. We fucked up somewhere along the line and one of the search teams jumped early. It’s possible—it would depend on who, if anybody, was staffing that New York office—the upshot is that it’s possible someone could notify Constable that he was the subject of a federal operation. You know the guy has access to a jet. He could bolt overseas, we might never get him. He’d just end up more famous and admired by the world’s assholes than he is now.”
“Yeah,” said Bob.
“So we need to bust him now, not in four hours when I had it set. But we’ve lost contact. We don’t know where he is. I’ve got people tracking his plane; I may violate a regulation by calling someone I shouldn’t to get his cell phone number so we can satellite-locate on him. I’m thinking … I don’t know, just a shot: you were on his property, whatever, maybe you overheard something that would give us a tip.”
“Well,” said Bob, “I can give you a general location.”
“Great! Oh, great!” said Nick.
“Yeah,” said Bob. “He’s in Colorado—”
“Alert Denver!” Nick shouted to his people.
“And he’s, um, he’s somewhere between, I would say, now this is just a guess, a rough one, one-sixty, one-sixty-five feet from me right now.”
“What?”
“Yep. And here’s the funny thing. He’s dressed like a cowboy. And here’s another funny thing. So am I.”
55
Last stage, the Mendozas. The hard one. Oh, he was so close. He now sat in second, because Marshall Tilghman had screwed up his reload in the Buffalo Gulch thing, and Two-Gun Jack had had a couple of misfires—his own handloads!—on the last stage, Ambush on the Overland.
So only Tequila Dawn stood between Texas Red and the seniors championship. Tequila had been at this a long time, had won championships in other divisions, had even quit for a while and licensed his name for use on holsters, an Uberti Colt clone, boots, run a cowboy action shooting camp, but had finally come back to the game. He was good, but like Red, he was old, and he made the old-guy mistakes that Red had heretofore avoided, like dropping a cartridge in reloading or missing a target and having to come back to it, breaking his rhythm. That’s why Red, so much slower, was still close. But now they were at Tequila’s best event—straight pure pistolero artistry—and Red’s worst one: the Mendozas.
Five into five Mendozas, shift guns, five into five more; then move through the saloon doors, reloading one, then the other gun as you went, and in fifty feet or so, you were in a corral where ten more Mendozas waited. Sure were a lot of Mendoza boys; well, maybe some weren’t brothers but cousins or in-laws or something. And of course by the rules of political correctness, they were no longer identified as Mendozas, as that might be considered disrespectful to Latino Americans, more and more of whom were coming to the cowboy action world. They were just bad guys, but since the stage was a classic and had been around a long time, most people still called it by its original and now memory-holed name.
He was in the standby circle, alone, gathering. His hands felt good, and he’d only raised one cut—the front sight of his left gun had nicked and drawn a little blood—but no bandages were allowed in cowboy action, as there hadn’t been bandages in Deadwood in 1883. But the cut wasn’t deep and only hurt a bit when a drop of salty sweat fell into it. He wiggled his fingers, occasionally bent forward to stretch out his calves and thighs, or reached overhead with one hand to touch the other shoulder, stretching bi-and triceps. He tried not to pay any attention to Tequila. It was best if he didn’t know. He didn’t want to watch and psych himself out of his best per—
Tequila’s first gun rang a quick staccato, and each shot banged home with a clang as the plate fell. Then came the switch of guns; it was fast, and again the five shots were fast but—he missed one! The agonizing seconds ticked by as Tequila reloaded one round, spun the cylinder, and fired, taking down the last target. Then he was on the run, reloading each gun as he went. He got to the corral, and Re
d heard the shots, lickety-split, each completed by the Gong Show sound of the plate struck at six hundred feet per second by a large lump of lead and—God, he missed another. Quickly the old gunslinger finished the string and decided to reload and fire rather than accept a ten-second penalty for a missed target, and he probably got the reload in and the shot off (clang!) in seven seconds.
Oh God, thought Red, I have a chance. I just can’t miss a target. Slow, calm, collected, the gun reset just right. It’s there. It’s for me. I can do it.
He took a deep breath, trying to keep himself calm as he stepped into the loading area. He showed guns empty to the range officer running the stage, then, one at a time, slipped the cartridges in—one, skip one, four more—then cocked and gently lowered the hammer, keeping the muzzle downrange. Did it twice.
Turned to face the reset plates.
“Do you understand the course, shooter?”
“I do.”
“Are you ready, shooter?”
“Yes.”
“All right then—”
“Mr. Constable! Mr. Constable!”
Aghhhh! There went his concentration. It was Susan Jantz, his secretary. What could she want? Aghh, he could get disqualified.
He turned and saw the range officer trying to push her gently back to the cordoned crowd area. But Susan was persistent, slipped by him, and raced to her boss with his cell phone.
“What on earth—”
“You have to take this call.”
“Shooter,” said the range officer, “I’m going to have to call a ‘spirit of game’ infraction if you don’t—”
Red put the phone to his ear.
“Constable.”
“Mr. Constable, you don’t know me. My name is Randall Jeffords. I’m an accountant in your New York office.”
“Why the hell are y—”
“Sir, I came in to catch up and the place was being torn apart by federal agents. I asked, and they wouldn’t say, but there were some cops with them, and one of them said—I know you won’t believe this—felony murder one. I just can’t believe it. Against you, sir. I’ve been trying for hours to get your number. I thought you ought to know.”
A Bob Lee Swagger eBook Boxed Set: I, Sniper, Night of Thunder, 47th Samurai Page 102