Point of Impact

by Stephen Hunter

  “Okay, let’s go on,” said Hap.

  Impelled by the force of the bullet, the cleric now plunged forward and smashed into the president, and the two went down in a terrible heap.

  “Archbishop Roberto Lopez crashes into Flashlight, after spraying him with tissue and blood, but by this time the bullet has exited and smashed into the wood of the podium slat,” Hap continued to narrate, “where it will be recovered by our ballistic technicians, too damn mutilated for a ballistics signature reading. Still, one bullet, two men down, elapsed time four one-hundreths of a second. It’s a hell of a piece of shooting.”

  The drama continued to unfold, now in real time. In seconds, Secret Service men of Alpha Security Team, pulling Uzis from God knows where, are surrounding Flashlight so that no other bullet may reach him. Mere anarchy is loosed around the podium, but the Alpha guys stay very calm and completely purposeful.

  “Hey, these Alpha guys know how to operate,” said Hap.

  “Too bad they’re such pricks,” came a jokester’s voice.

  The drama then seemed to devolve into pulsating patterns of light and color. Evidently, a Secret Service Alpha guy pushed all the cameramen back and for just a moment the world went all to blur. When it came back, a small knot of men is gathered around Flashlight who is supine, but trying to struggle to his feet. Archbishop Roberto Lopez is almost in his lap, that head with its queerly deflated look, as if it were a balloon and not a skull. The Secret Service guys are dancing around; then a medic comes atop the podium, and they bend to let him in. A few seconds later the world dissolves; this time it’s under the torrents of air that the standby medical chopper radiates as it settles with lazy urgency out of the sky. The camera shifts to it as paramedics and stretcher teams race over to Flashlight and the Alpha team. Screams, shouts, confusion. It reminded Nick of a pickup game of basketball, all frenzy and nonsense.

  And then he had it, what was weird about the shooting.

  “Could we go back to the hit?” he asked.

  “What are you, a ghoul?”

  “Come on, Hap, let me see the hit.”

  There was some grumbling but Hap rewound the tape, then punched PLAY, and the drama reinvented itself up there on the screen, the lurch of the old man, the sudden, stunning, boltlike arrival of the bullet, the sleet of bone and tissue, and Nick was thinking about his own shooting.

  I overcompensated, he thought. I knew the bullet, traveling downward, would drop farther. That’s the effect of the angle. So I overcompensated, missed high, and hit Myra. Now this Swagger, he knows shooting like he knows his own two hands and the smell of his own sweat. He knows where the bullet will strike. That means the bullet drift is going to be vertical. He’ll hit high or low on a vertical range; if he’s shooting at the president’s armpit, if the bullet goes too high it hits the president in the neck or head; if it’s too low it goes into his ribs or hip.

  But this shooting error was lateral. It was on the same damn level as the president’s armpit, for the man was kneeling … but it was a lateral error, an aiming error, which had nothing to do with the shot’s most difficult aspect, the play of the downward angle over the long eight hundred yards to the target. Could a gust of wind have just nudged it off target?

  He remembered that March 1 had been an unusually calm day, with the wind under five miles per hour. It was possible but not probable.

  It suddenly occurred to Nick that the shooting error made no sense at all. He would shoot over the president, he would shoot below the president; he would not miss to the right. Not this boy.

  Nick swallowed. He’d arrived at a place he didn’t want to be: it could only be that Bob Lee Swagger was shooting for the archbishop all the way.

  And then he realized what bad news this was for everybody: currently the only theory available to unify the events was that that mean-ass, sullen, pissed-off Dixie whiteboy Swagger was shooting the president. It made sense. It held together—but only if Swagger were shooting for Flashlight.

  If Swagger wasn’t shooting for Flashlight … a dizzying realm of possibility opened up.

  Nick had a weird moment here, as his whole life traveled its fucked-up way before him and he suddenly saw that he was about to diverge from the path.

  Because he now knew Swagger was innocent, and that the reason he saw compassion in the sniper’s eyes as he stood above him with the big Smith was because the sniper was still, by his own lights, a moral man, an honorable man—a man who did not shoot the innocent and Nick, stupid and bumbling, had been of the innocent.

  “Nick?”

  It was Howdy Duty.

  “Nick, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to see me sometime today. All right?”

  Oh, shit, thought Nick.

  The cow was not frightened of Colonel Shreck.

  Her eyes were placid and dull, though huge. There was something tenderly stupid in them.

  The cow chewed her cud, occasionally scuffed one hoof in the straw, or bent her great, gentle head down to seize another bunch of hay from her bale.

  “Shoot her,” said Colonel Shreck.

  Hatcher kneeled, squinted, then found what he was looking for. He raised a 9mm Beretta 92 and shot the cow in the chest, hitting her square in a painted spot.

  Dobbler winced at the report, even through the high-decibel soundproof earmuffs; and he thought he’d be sick, though he’d been feeling woozy since the event. He forced himself to look back at the animal. He’d never seen anything die, much less anything so huge and warm-blooded.

  But the cow didn’t seem interested in dying. She’d twitched just once when the bullet drove through her and a tiny track of blood opened up from the black pucker of the entrance wound. But her head came back up, she continued to chew and to gaze at her audience benevolently.

  “Of course she has one great advantage,” said Hatcher, rising. “She has no conceptual ability. She cannot understand what has just happened to her. Swagger, of course, saw the gun, and knew what happened. Thus his collapse and initial response to shock. But physiologically, that’s it. That’s the shot on Bob. Same range, same ammunition, same angle, through the center chest.”

  Dobbler studied the animal. The animal appeared to study him back until he bored her. Then she lowered her head for another thatch of hay. He thought he would puke. He struggled to keep his focus, but could feel the sweat running down his face.

  Dobbler watched as Shreck stared at the creature. The colonel seemed bent in some furious, one-pointed crusade to absorb all the life from the animal, his dark eyes gobbling up her destruction with no remorse whatsoever, only great curiosity. She paid him no attention.

  “She’s hit and the bullet has gone down through her thoracic cavity and exited the other side,” said Thatcher. “But it’s not stopping her. It’s not even irritating her. This happens all too frequently. You may recall the famous ‘Miami Shootout’ of May 1987, where a creep named Michael Platt was hit ten times, once through the lungs, mostly with Winchester 9mm hollowtips and kept firing long enough to kill two and wound five FBI agents.”

  “I thought the point of a hollowpoint bullet,” said Colonel Shreck, “was to open up and rip the shit out of the tissue and organs.”

  “It didn’t open,” said Hatcher. “If it had, he’d have never made it to the car, much less dumped that FBI agent. We know because Payne’s report says he saw blood on the back of the shirt. It had to go through without opening up.”

  “Why didn’t it open up?” Shreck asked.

  Finally, Hatcher answered. “In our research, we’ve found that most of the stopping problems with 9mm Silvertip came with first-generation ammunition. They first started manufacturing it in the mid-seventies. The real bad stopping problems took place then; subsequently they changed the circumference of the cavity and the composition of the copper sheathing the lead, and since then the results have been much better, up to about seventy-three percent one-shot kills. But Timmons had to draw his ammo from police sources. Otherwise, th
ere’d be reason to suspect some kind of frame-up. And we think the police issue was an older lot, purchased back in 1982. But we had to go with police issue, because if he used an unauthorized load it led to very dangerous ground. We simply trusted him—or Payne, who insisted on doing the actual shooting—to place a mortal round. If he’d hit the heart, it wouldn’t have mattered. If it had opened up and he missed the heart, it wouldn’t have mattered. Unfortunately he missed the heart and it didn’t open up.”

  “Shit,” said Shreck. “And why did Payne miss the heart?”

  “You’d have to ask Payne, Colonel Shreck.”

  “I did.”

  “Bear in mind, sir,” said Hatcher, “that in the expanse of the chest, the heart is a fairly difficult target; It’s much smaller and to the right of where people think it is. I talked with him about anatomy, but in the dark, and the crisis of the second, he …”

  Hatcher let the sentence end.

  “You’re a doctor, Dr. Dobbler. What’s the medical prognosis?”

  Dobbler cleared his throat. He’d researched this.

  “Swagger could die of blood loss or infection. But it’s possible that the bullet just rushed through doing minor tissue damage and left him largely intact. If he was smart enough to stanch the bleeding right away—and clearly he was, having been wounded before—he’ll heal up and if he doesn’t get infected, he’ll be good as new in two weeks.”

  Shreck looked as if he were going to laugh.

  “Now,” said Hatcher, “let me just show you, by contrast, a later 9mm.”

  “Of course,” said Shreck.

  “This is a Federal 147-grain Hydra-Shok, with a post in the center of the cavity, to help expansion. I think you should see some dramatic results.”

  Suddenly, Dobbler was nauseous. He didn’t want to watch the man shoot the animal and then talk about the weight of the bullet and the angle of the wound and the size of the temporary stretch cavity. It seemed obscene to him: it was killing, after all, not to any ends, not to purpose or point, but just to satisfy some arcane curiosity.

  Dobbler looked away. Outside, through the barn door, he could see the rolling Virginia hills.

  “Just a second,” said Shreck. “Dr. Dobbler, would you mind paying attention?”

  Dobbler smiled and turned his face to watch. The bullet was fired. She kicked, an amazing burst of energy from so stolid an animal. Then her heavy head twitched once. Subtly, her lines changed as she shuddered, and her knees went as the bullet, a ragged nova of hot metal, ruptured her heart, and she surrendered. The great head slid forward and lay atilt, eyes blankly open. She was still in a dark and spreading pool of blood.

  Dobbler smiled weakly, afraid he’d lose face in front of Shreck, but thought for just a second he was all right. Then he vomited all over his clothes.

  But Shreck did not even notice. Instead he watched the animal die, then turned to Hatcher and said, “Now at least I know what to tell them.”

  “Ahhh,” said Howdy Duty, regretfully. He looked up at Nick over half-specs, his face haggard with fatigue. He’d been working like the rest of them, eighteen on and six off, and was beginning to wear a bit thin. But he would be polite, Nick knew.

  “Come on, sit down, Nick.”

  Nick sat down. The gray light of the office turned Howdy Duty’s skin the color of old parchment; his eyes were lost behind the crescent specs. He had a slightly distracted air.

  “Oh, Nick, what are we going to do with you?”

  Nick didn’t know what to say. He’d always suspected that he didn’t prosper in the Bureau because he’d never been much at coming up with charming answers to rhetorical questions agents in charge tended to ask at awkward moments. So, as usual, Nick said nothing; he just parked his considerable bulk into the chair, breathing hard.

  “Nick, tell me about the Charlie thing to begin with. The Secret Service is making all kinds of trouble. You know what an asshole that Mueller can be.”

  “Well,” said Nick, swallowing as he began, “maybe I did screw up. But Jesus, Howard, there were over sixty names on the Charlie list, and they were way down in importance. The Secret Service guys themselves said that; they won’t admit it, but they made it seem like it was strictly business as usual. But I worked it real hard, Howard. What’s his name, Sloane, he told me himself I’d done a good job. I located most of them or accounted for them; I recommended three be moved up to Beta classification, and they didn’t like that one bit, because it meant they had to do more work.”

  “But you did miss Bob Lee Swagger?”

  “Not really. I picked him out, and made inquiries. I called Sheriff Tell in Polk County to find out if he’d had any recent troubles. He’d been sitting pretty, off by himself. They say the pattern with these guys is they begin to destabilize in the days before they make a hit. There was no sign of that. He didn’t fit any pattern and his sheriff vouched for him. Also, the only reason he was on the list was for that letter and the only reason the letter got him there was because it had four exclamation points. Four exclamation points! It seemed like a safe call to me. I can’t say I’d make it any different way now.”

  “All right, Nick. I suppose you performed adequately. We can’t expect distinction twenty-four hours, seven days a week. Nick, I think I can save you from Secret Service, because they want some Bureau blood to let them off the hook. It was really their operation, and they got beaten.”

  “They sure did.”

  “But, I’ve talked to the director and we feel our position is strong. They could complain that we didn’t do a good job on the Charlies and we could complain that they were so poorly managed they couldn’t deal with the Charlies themselves. Mexican standoff, and I think they’ll back down. Now, Nick, I have to say, that arrest; it was badly bungled.”

  “I know, Howard. I screwed up.”

  “It looked so bad in the newspapers. And it looks bad inside the Bureau, too. We’re supposed to be able to handle situations like that.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Howard. It was a desperate situation. Maybe I—I just don’t know, Howard.”

  “Nick, you were in a desperate situation in 1986 in Tulsa and you mismanaged that, too.”

  Nick was silent. Then, finally, he said, “Howard, I just want to be an FBI agent. That’s all I ever wanted.”

  “Well, Nick … the director has left this call to me.”

  Nick hated the fact that he was begging. But he tried to imagine a life without the one thing that mattered as much as his wife, which was the Bureau. He had to live a life without Myra now; but he couldn’t imagine one without the Bureau.

  “Please don’t fire me, Howard. I know I haven’t been sharp lately. But I just lost my wife a few months ago … it just hasn’t been an easy time.”

  “Nick, we need bodies on this thing. I’m going to suspend you without pay for a week, but it won’t go into effect for three months. Then I’m afraid it’ll have to.”

  Nick nodded. It meant that within a month afterwards he’d be rotated back to the sticks and he’d never get out. It had taken him years to get to New Orleans. But it also meant, however provisionally, he’d be able to stay.

  “I suppose I’ll be transferred then.”

  “Nick, you know how it works. And I’m going to have to put a letter in your file. Like the other one.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nick, I don’t want to.”

  “Okay, Howard.”

  “I’m trying to cut you as much slack as I can.”

  “Sure, I appreciate it,” Nick said.

  Sure, I appreciate it! You prick, if you’d have kept your fucking trap shut six years ago, I’d have nailed that fuck right between the eyes and I’d be where you’re sitting and you’d be on your way back to Tulsa.

  “You’re still in the Bureau, Nick.”

  “I appreciate that, Howard.”

  “But, Nick, no more mistakes. Do you understand. There can’t be another slipup.”

  “There won’t be,
Howard. I promise.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  When Bob crawled from the water just before dawn on the day after the shooting, his head seethed with rage and flashing pictures and hallucinations. His body was numb as the log under which it had floated and slightly swollen and soft from the long immersion; he smelled of diesel oil from the barge scum that coated the surface of the river below New Orleans. He reckoned he’d drifted fifty or so miles; around him were scrub pines, an infinity of them, and boggy marshes, a maze of them, and dense, interlocking cypress trees. Small things scurried and then went silent; far off, a bird made a strange and mournful sound, a screech of pain; then it went silent too.

  You’re going to die, he thought.

  There was nothing here but the sameness of jungle, its merciless face. And there’d be men in it too, soon enough, hunting him.

  You’re back where you started, only you’re older and weaker.

  He stumbled a few feet, went to his knees. When was the last time he’d eaten? Must have been yesterday, breakfast. He’d been shot twice, used his last drop of adrenaline in getting out of there, and floated in the sullen river for eighteen horrible hours, slung upside down under the goddamn log, only his nostrils flaring above the water.

  So there it was: eat or die.

  Didn’t matter if the wound was infected or not; if he didn’t eat he’d wear down fast, and the jungle would feed off him in a matter of hours.

  Been in tougher fixes, yes I have, I do believe.

  But he hadn’t. There was no chopper waiting to airevac him if he could just make the LZ. There was nothing but this jungle and outside it a whole world set to do him in.

  It must have been a bit after dawn. The air was very crisp and clean and smelled fresh as baby breath. The sun was still weak. It was feeding time, he knew it soon enough.

  Then Bob happened to feel something hard against his leg, and realized the hardness had been there all night. He slid the pistol from his jeans pocket. It was a big stainless Smith & Wesson .45 automatic, their new Model 4506. No. No, by God, it wasn’t, it was that fancy new 10mm the FBI had started using. He wondered about the round. He’d trust his life to a .45, having fired a hundred thousand .45 cartridges in his time through a variety of Colts. But this new thing, a 10-mil? He didn’t know.