The Making of Blackwater Jack
Page 26
“Adolph Hitler is not going to rise from the ashes to demand return of his treasure, but somebody more current just might.
“So, Blackwater, tell me all you know about this most interesting collection.”
Robinson himself was an impressive individual, and Galloway trusted him with his life. Good enough! Blackwater Jack willingly described all that he knew about the jewels, including his recovery of the box in Afghanistan and the Sheik’s demise.
Robinson absorbed the details without comment before he asked, “Have you learned anything more recently about your so-called Sheik? Learned his name or anything?”
“Nothing, Mister Robinson.” Jack was not yet one of the family or of the business. Where Shooter could address the boss as Bob, Blackwater Jack wisely stuck to the Mister. “I have no one to ask or any channels to discover anything far beyond Perry County, Pennsylvania.
“Of course I wonder, but it is just curiosity. I hope I am finished with everything overseas.”
“So, what will you do with yourself now that you are becoming a very rich man, Jack?”
Blackwater smiled and shrugged his muscular shoulders. “Shooter hints that I might like being part of your business, but to tell you the truth, I do not feel qualified for that kind of work. I do not like traveling, and it is a fact that I do not mix well with most people.
“So, my answer is: I don’t have any idea how I will spend the rest of my life—with money or without.”
Jack laughed at his explanation and added, “I will also admit that whatever I do, I will like it better having money backing me up than I would without.”
They left it at that. Shooter occasionally suggested that Jack might be content living far way and just forgetting about Frank Saltz.
Not a chance! Frank Saltz would get him if he could. Blackwater Jack believed he should return the attitude, and he continued practicing his great shot. Since he now believed he was ready, he waited with a sniper’s specially developed patience for the ex-colonel’s appearance.
Just once, Jack regularly thought to himself. Step out on that big and open piazza, just once. The winter had eaten itself away, but so far Saltz had not accommodated him.
Galloway parked facing the only road out. Cops always parked that way—so they could be fast to answer a call, Jack supposed.
Shooter sucked in crisp spring air and pronounced, “This is the best time of the year. I wish it was like this year round.”
He gazed across the mile plus of smaller wooded ridges leading to Saltz’s grandiose home. Then he picked up Jack’s binoculars from a handily placed outdoor table, focused and announced. “Somebody is there. I see cars and the American flag is flying from his flagpole.”
Jack was cynical. “Yeah, the pole is a recent addition. Since he is running for the senate, Saltz is becoming ever more the patriot.”
Shooter Galloway’s voice turned serious, and his body tensed behind the binoculars.
“Hey, I think somebody just came out onto the back deck.”
Jack was instantly moving indoors.
“Chances are it is one of the maintenance people. They are around most of the time,” but he was sliding open the glass doors and curtains on Saltz’s side.
Shooter was nearly as quick. Galloway hastily fine-focused Jack’s big telescope on Saltz’s back deck.
Jack tucked himself behind his always ready sand-bagged-in rifle and settled the stock firmly into his shoulder,
Galloway contained his excitement. “Holy hell, it’s him, Jack.”
“Yep, it is.” Galloway heard Jack’s safety ease off, and he was aware of anticipation flooding his systems. He hoped Jack was “cooler” than he was.
God, one instant they were jerking around, then this. Suddenly the big shot they had worked at for years was right smack in Jack’s crosshair. Galloway felt as if he needed time to think and talk it over or something equally inane.
Through his 36-power telescopic sight, Blackwater Jack could see Frank Saltz as clearly as if he were at the opposite end of a tennis court. The ex-colonel was dressed for the city, his tie was still tight, but he had removed his suit coat. Saltz’s highly polished dress shoes caught the bright sunlight, and a corner of Jack’s mind noted that Saltz was cleanly shaven. His starched and new-looking white shirt provided a perfect backdrop for Jack’s flat-black crosshair.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, there it was—all that he had hoped and practiced for. Saltz was walking away from his home and toward the edge of his large stone deck. He strolled, as always, arrogant in posture. Blackwater Jack doubted he would vote for the man. There was something about Saltz’s distant figure that reminded Jack of the often posed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini—an important personage, at least in his own mind, oozing power and confidence, safely relaxed within his personal security cocoon.
From the deck edge, a few steps led to gardens not yet budding. Shooting then would be excellent, but Jack wanted to shoot before the ex-colonel got that far.
On the deck, Jack’s supersonic round would barely slow as it passed through Saltz’s light jacket and be lost forever among lesser ridges stretching for miles beyond. The bullet that killed Saltz could never be found.
Jack sought a sniper’s practiced isolation, the relaxed but alert focus that ignored all but the sight on the target. He felt it slip in, smooth, studied, and peacefully filling. Then he waited.
At such extreme range, a moving target was immensely less certain. He needed a motionless shot. If Saltz paused for even an instant, Jack would send a heavy and super-sharp bullet smack through him.
Galloway’s voice touched him. “Shoot, Jack, it is him all right.”
Through the concentration of the moment, Blackwater felt his nerves settling ever deeper, and his confidence soared.
Holding his crosshair exactly where he wanted it, he asked, “What about plausible deniability?”
Galloway was vehement. “Screw deniability. Kill the bastard, Jack, kill him.”
Blackwater Jack entered his bubble. The world itself disappeared, and he knew only his cross hair held tight to Saltz’s side, high, where heart and lungs labored.
Saltz strolled casually, but as he approached the first step down to his winter-barren garden, he paused to grasp an iron handrail and to again study the land falling away from his ridge-top aerie.
Blackwater Jack’s customized trigger had no slack and certainly no detectable movement following its final touch. Jack’s finger pressure increased as his focus tightened even closer.
The rifle fired, the report muffled by the long suppressor. Recoil was solid, and familiar. The weapon’s weight plus the burden of the silencer at the muzzle allowed Jack to retain most of his hold.
The shot had felt right. His eye behind the scope stayed clear and focused, and following a seemingly interminable, but familiar extended delay, Jack’s bullet struck.
Blackwater Jack did not wait. His field of view showed no one else in sight, and his thumb and finger operated his bolt handle, chambering a second round.
Smooth from the practice of hundreds of repetitions, only Jack’s thumb moved significantly, and his concentration stayed on what was happening two thousand yards down range.
Jack heard Galloway’s pleased exclamation, and he saw Saltz stagger and spin as if a giant had used him for a top.
It is recognized that bullets do not actually move human bodies. Their strike is too swift and too short to transfer momentum to a man’s body, but Saltz spun so that he faced toward the house he had just left. He sagged and clutched the handrail. His knees began a slow collapse, and an immense bloom of blood had appeared on the low stonewall beyond his crumpling body.
Galloway cursed feelingly. He had seen it too. Saltz was hard hit, but how hard was undetermined. Saltz had not dropped as if all his strings had been slashed. Blackwater Jack’s shot had not struck where aimed.
Had an undetected breeze interfered or had Jack simply missed hitting a dead-on bull’s eye? There co
uld be a dozen infinitesimally undetectable variations that could have moved the bullet just a little as it flew on its deadly course.
Galloway again cursed. Blackwater Jack began his second trigger squeeze. Instinct told him to hold his usual aiming point. He had held right for the day’s conditions. He had fired this shot too many times to suspect a failure on his part. Later, they could ponder a bad bullet or a grain or two of broken powder. Not now, however.
The Colonel was down on one knee, his head had fallen forward, and Jack expected that he would be dead within moments, but perhaps not.
Blackwater Jack applied his usual, perfect trigger pressure, and his N. A. Rock rifle spat a second round down range.
This time, Jack and the cosmos had it right. Galloway’s enthusiastic “Yes!” accompanied Jack’s certainty that ex-Colonel Frank Saltz had become history.
The .408 bullet sledged Saltz directly on the sternum. Velocity holding, the impact on solid bone was ignored. The bullet penetrated Saltz’s body and shattered his spinal column on its way to permanent woodland burial.
This time Saltz’s collapse held the finality of death. The body dropped as if it were a cartoon character and began a boneless slide down the few steps into a grotesque, face-buried sprawl on the heavily mulched garden path.
Galloway again had the words. “Take that you miserable son of a bitch!”
Still staring through his telescopic sight, Blackwater Jack concurred.
Finally straightening from his shooting position, Jack discovered that he had chambered a third round. He snapped on his safety. The shooting was finished, but Shooter Galloway kept looking through the powerful telescope.
Jack rose, and leaving only space enough for Shooter to see, he began closing the drapes. He felt no special release or all-comforting satisfaction for a job completed or specially well done, but suddenly, Frank Saltz and anything that he represented felt far removed and unimportant. Jack liked the sensation.
The big telescope was positioned nearly ten feet back into the living room. It could not be detected from outside. It was basic sniper technique. Without awareness both men recognized its importance.
Galloway leaned away from the telescope’s eyepiece. He said, “No one is coming.” He shook his head in awe. “Just like you described when you shot the Sheik. Nobody noticed for far too long. How do you manage that Blackwater?”
Jack’s response was a tension-relieving snort.
“It’s Old School, Shooter.” He stopped what he was doing and studied Galloway who had returned to his glassing.
He wondered a little. What kind of men were he and Galloway, who could execute a human and, beyond a sense of satisfaction, feel virtually nothing?
Jack put off such quizzical evaluating for another time. He turned to Galloway.
“Pack it in, pardner. You should already be long gone from here. I’ve got my routine. I know exactly what to do, and you can’t help me.
“In fact, if you don’t depart now, you will probably divert my attention from something I should be doing. Hit the saddle, Galloway. I’ll see you somewhere in a couple of days.”
“Too late, Jack. Nobody moves in this county without someone seeing him. Half the people I pass would recognize my car and at least half of those would know where I was coming from. All of them would remember the time.
“I’ll stay, and if anyone comes asking, I’ll be your witness that nothing happened here.”
Jack located his empty cartridge cases and placed them in a bucket of used bolts and screws. He hoisted the heavy rifle and departed with it for his loading room. Galloway followed.
Shooter was enthusiastic, “Jack, those were two of the greatest shots I have ever seen. You began a group that could have been less than a quarter-minute of angle.
“Jack, that’s about a quarter of an inch apart at one hundred yards. At two thousand yards? That is perfect shooting, pardner.”
Jack emptied cartridges from both chamber and magazine. He removed his rifle’s stock and tightened its barrel between two curved lead slabs in his bench vise. He gently unscrewed the rifle’s suppressor. He opened a tall plastic bottle partially filled with liquid and dropped the suppressor inside. The liquid rose to completely immerse the silencer.
Galloway looked uncertain, so Jack explained. “That suppressor is filled with the residue from my special cartridge powder. The mix in the bottle will begin to break the leavings into chemicals that won’t be particular to that brand of gunpowder. I’ll clean it properly after it soaks for a while.”
Blackwater began swabbing the entire stock and the barreled action with what Galloway took to be the same mix. Careful man, Jack.
Shooter asked, “What can I do?”
“Nothing. I’ve got everything figured. After I am done, if you see something that I missed, speak up. Until then, seeing you are here when you are supposed to be far away, just entertain me.”
Galloway said, “I’ll work on building our cover.”
“Cover? Don’t you mean alibi?”
“Whatever. I am going to call Michael Maloney. I will make sure that he checks the time.
“Hey, no one would be shooting the breeze with a pal just as he was involved with dropping an evil bastard. I’ll use your landline so that the call will be a matter of record and, if need be, it can be traced back to here.”
Shooter hesitated for a moment Then he added, “You should speak to him, too, Jack. That would help demonstrate how innocent we are.”
Jack liked it. “Good thinking. Start dialing.”
With the rifle barrel held firmly in his vise, Jack chose a short board that had been waiting for this use. He removed the bolt, slid the board through the rifle’s action, and leaned into turning it upward. The action turned, and Blackwater continued its rotation, separating the barrel from the rifle’s action.
Jack could hear Galloway talking and chuckling with Michael Maloney. The call would be good cover and support their innocence argument—if anyone actually ever came investigating.
He drew his second barrel, the one that had never fired one of the special bullets and turned it into the rifle’s action threads. He turned it by hand before final tightening with the board to align a small chisel cut at the barrel’s base with a similar mark at the bottom of the action. That setting insured that the rifle’s headspace was exactly right and that the rifle would shoot safely and as accurately as it ever had. Only an experienced gunsmith would know to look for such a detail, but the execution of Saltz, a candidate for the Senate, could arouse such interest. Jack would take no chances. He reinstalled the rifle stock and returned the big gun to its rests on the table.
Galloway signaled, and Jack went to speak with his newer friend.
“Hey, Michael. I was out sunning my sallow complexion until Galloway arrived and ruined everything.”
Jack laughed, then said, “Yeah, he’s famous for that. I think we will close up here, and I’ll take him to town and let him buy me a late lunch. What time is it getting to be anyway?”
Galloway rolled his eyes.
“Wow, it’s later than I thought. Take care, Michael.”
Jack handed the phone back to Shooter and returned to what was really important.
First he slid rough sandpaper onto a long dowel with a cut made for the purpose. He chucked an electric drill onto the dowel. He clamped the dangerous barrel in the vise, and completely destroyed the rifling by repeatedly running the drill and its gritty paper through the barrel from end to end.
Jack used his band saw to slice the barrel into four pieces. He held each length in blacksmith pliers and beat the barrel pieces with a five-pound sledge. Finished, he dropped the almost unrecognizable iron into his bolt bucket.
Jack stepped to the loading bench and removed a row of the special cartridges and added them to the junk bucket. The last of the shooting evidence was about to be removed for all eternity.
Galloway finally returned from the phone. Jack motioned to the bucket, and
Shooter put it and himself in Blackwater’s wake as he led to an overgrown wellhead distant from the house. Jack unscrewed the well cap and began dumping his bucket of cartridges, bolts, nuts, screws, ends of rebar and rifle barrel pieces down the four-inch well.
From beneath an overturned wheelbarrow, he recovered a plastic wrapped bag of ready mix concrete. Shooter helped place the used plastic around the base of the well pipe. Blackwater wanted no recently spilled concrete to draw attention to the abandoned water well.
“I’ll pour, Shooter, you make sure none overflows. No traces, please.”
“It’s going in dry, Jack?”
“Yep, nature will add moisture, and before long it will be rock-hard concrete.”
Galloway asked, “What is the story on this well, Jack? Might someone check it out?”
“Harry Sorenson had the well dug when he first started up here. He went down 175 feet but all the water he got was muddy and useless. He capped the well and dug the one now in use on the other side of the place. I can’t imagine anyone attempting to work through the mess we dumped in, even if someone was willing to foot such a bill.
The last task was to fill the wheelbarrow with bank run earth that Jack stored for repair to his road. A barrow full was carefully fed into the well pipe’s small opening, and Jack called it quits. He turned the well cap tight and with powerful blows from a large ball peen hammer he sealed the well against all but determined efforts to reopen it.
They returned to Jack’s house. The shooting table was rotated so that when in place the big rifle pointed out Jack’s rear door and down the four hundred yard shooting lane. Galloway adjusted the telescope to match the rifle and they were done for the moment.
The day had grown even warmer, and they chose to again sit in the sun. Jack lit a small stick fire in his barbeque and tossed his cleaning rags and even his cleaning dowel into the blaze.
There would undoubtedly be other things to destroy or remove, but he thought he had eliminated any obvious stuff.
Jack queried, “Think of anything I have forgotten, Shooter?”
“Yep, I think we should wash off our boots, and everything we are wearing should hit the laundry. Then, I would worry about powder residue on your drapes, walls, and ceilings.”