The crosshairs rode up to Swagger, and stayed with the man as he galloped along, finding the same rhythm in the cadences, finding the same up-down plunge of the animal. The shooter's finger caressed the trigger, felt absorbed by its beckoning softness, but he did not fire. He knew the range perfectly: 742 meters.
Moving target, transversing laterally left to right, but also moving up and down through a vertical plane. By no means an impossible shot, and many a man in his circumstances would have taken it. But experience told the sniper to wait: a better shot would lie ahead, the best shot.
With a man like Swagger, that's the one you took.
Swagger joined his wife, and the two chatted, and what Swagger said made her smile. White teeth flashed. A little tiny human part in the sniper ached for the woman's beauty and ease, he'd had prostitutes the world over, some quite expensive and beautiful, but this little moment of intimacy was something that had evaded him completely.
That was all right. He had chosen to work in exile from humanity. Seven hundred thirty-one meters.
He cursed himself. That's how shots were blown, that little fragment of lost concentration which took you out of the operation. He briefly snapped his eyes shut, absorbed the darkness and cleared his mind, then opened them again to what lay before him.
Swagger and his wife had reached the edge: 722 meters.
Before them would run a valley, unfolding in the sunlight as the sun climbed even higher. But what this meant to the sniper is that at last his quarry had ceased to move. In the scope he saw a family portrait: man, woman and child, all at nearly the same level, because the child's horse was so big it put her up with her parents. They chatted, the girl laughed, pointed at a bird or something, seethed with motion. The mother stared into the distance.
The father, his eyes still seeming watchful, relaxed just the tiniest bit.
The crosshairs bisected the square chest.
He stroked the trigger and the gun jarred and as it came back in a fraction of a second, he saw the tall man's chest explode as the Remington 7mm Magnum tore through it.
It was a moment of serene perfection, until she heard a sound that reminded her somehow of meat dropping on a linoleum floor--it had a flat, moist, dense reverberation to it, somehow--and at that same instant felt herself sprayed with warm jelly. She turned to see Dade's gray face, his eyes lost and locked on nothingness as he fell backward off his horse. His chest had been somehow eviscerated, as with an ax, its organs exposed and spewing blood in torrents, his heart decompressing with a pulsing jet of deoxygenated, almost black liquid spurting in an arc over the precipice. He hit the ground, in a cloud of dust, landing with the solidity of a sack of potatoes falling off a truck as his horse panicked and bucked, hooves flailing in the air. As a nurse, from too many nights in a reservation ER, Julie was no stranger to blood or to what mysteries lay inside of bodies, but the transformation was so instantaneous that it shocked her, even as, from far off, the report of a rifle shot finally arrived.
The sound seemed to unlock her brain from the paralysis into which it had blundered. She knew in the next nanosecond that they were under fire, and in the nanosecond after that her daughter was in danger, and she found the will to turn and yell "Run!" as loud as possible, and yanked hard to the left on her reins, driving her horse into Nikki's to butt it about.
My daughter, she thought. Don't kill my daughter.
But like hers, Nikki's reflexes were fast and sure, and the girl had already reached the same conclusion, reeled her horse to the left, and in another second, both horses were free of the ruckus caused by Dade's plunging animal.
"Go!" shrieked Julie, kicking and lashing her horse with the reins. The animal churned ahead, its long legs bounding over the dirt toward the narrow enfilade of the pass. She was to the left of and a little behind Nikki, that is, between Nikki and the shooter, which is where she wanted to be.
The horses thundered along, careering madly for safety, and Julie was bent over the neck of hers like a jockey, but she could not keep up with Nikki's, which, a stronger animal with a much lighter load, began to gun away and ahead, exposing the child.
"Nikki!" she screamed.
Then the world went. It twisted into fragments, the sky was somehow beneath her, dust rose like a gas, thick and blinding, and she felt herself floating, her heart gathering fear for the knowledge of what would come next. The horse screamed piteously and she slammed into the ground, her head filling with stars, her will scattering in confusion. But as she slid through the dust and the pain, feeling her skin rip and something in her body shatter, and the horse scampered away, she looked to see that Nikki had halted and was circling around toward her.
She rose, astounded that she could move through all the fire that was eating her skin, and had a moment when she noticed the blood pouring across her shirt. She staggered, went to one knee, but then rose again, and screamed at Nikki, "No! No! Run! Run!" waving her away desperately.
The girl pulled up, confused, the fear bright on her face.
"Run for Daddy!" Julie screamed, then turned herself and began to scramble for a ravine to the right, a copse of rough vegetation and tough little trees, hoping that the shooter would follow her and not the girl.
Nikki watched her mother run toward the edge of the shelf, then turned herself, lashed the horse, felt it churn into a gallop. The dust of the slashing hooves floated everywhere, clotting her breathing, and the tears on her face matted up with it, but she stayed low and whipped the horse and whipped it again, and though it neighed in pain, whipped it still a third time, gouging it with her English boots, and in seconds, the dark shadows of the enfilade covered her and she knew she was safe.
Then she heard a shot.
CHAPTER twenty-seven.
He fired and the sight picture at the moment of ignition--the stout, heroic chest quadrisected perfectly by the crosshairs zeroed exactly for a range of seven hundred meters--told him instantly that he had hit. As the scope came back, he saw red from the falling body, just a fraction of a second's worth, but square in the full chest, until it was lost in the dust.
Then he shifted to the woman but-He was astonished by the swiftness with which the woman responded. His whole shooting scenario was based on her utter paralysis when her husband's chest exploded.
She would be stupefied and the next shot would be easy.
The woman reeled her horse about almost instantaneously and he was astounded at how much dust floated into the air. You cannot anticipate everything, and he had not anticipated the dust. He had no shot for almost a second, and then, faster than he could have begun to imagine, she and the child were racing hellbent and crazed toward the pass and safety.
He had a momentary flash of panic--never before had such a thing happened!--and took his eye from the scope to get an unimpeded visual on the fleeing woman. She was much farther away than he had figured, the angle was oblique, dust floated in the air. Impossible shot! Only seconds remained as she and the girl raced toward the pass.
He fought his terror, and instead let the rifle sit, and picked up his secret advantage in all this, a set of Leica binoculars with a laser range finder, since unknown distance shooting is almost pointless, and he put the glasses on her to see the readout as it shot back to him, straight and true. She was now 765 meters, now 770, racing away.
His mind did the computations as he figured the lead, all while setting the binocs down and reacquiring the rifle, flipping through a bolt throw with the shell ejecting cleanly to the right. A lifetime's experience and a gift for numbers told him he had to shoot a good nine meters ahead of her--no, no, it would be nine if she were preceding at an exact ninety degrees, but she was on the oblique, more like forty-five or fifty degrees, so he compensated to seven meters. A mil-dot--that is, one of a series of dots etched into the crosshairs--in the scope, at this range, was about thirty inches, so when he went back to the rifle, he led her six mils and a mil high, that is, putting her just inside the edge of the solid part of
the horizontal cross hair
Impossible shot! Incredible shot! Close to eight hundred meters on a fast-mover at the oblique away from him in heavy dust.
The rifle jolted in recoil and came back to reveal a ruckus of disturbance. He could see nothing. The horse was down, then up, bucking and kicking in fury, dust floating in the air.
He cycled the bolt again.
Where was she? The child was forgotten but that was not important.
He searched the dust, then put the rifle down and seized the binoculars, which would give him a much bigger field of vision.
Where was she? Had he hit her? Was she about? Was she dead? Was it over? He waited for centuries, and without oxygen. But now, there she was, hit--he could see the blood on her blue shirt--and stiff with the pain of the fall.
But she had not gone into shock, was not surrendering and, like many who discover themselves in mortal circumstances for the first time, giving up to lie and wait for the final blow. Heroically she moved away from the horse and the dust to the edge.
Soft target. Giving herself up for the girl, who didn't matter.
She was at the edge.
He put the binoculars squarely on her and had just a glimpse of her face, only the fleetest impression of her beauty. A melancholy closed upon him, but his heart was strong and hard and he put it away. He pressed a button to fire a spurt of smart laser at her and it bounced back and he looked to the readout and got a range of 795 meters, and knew he'd have to hold dead center of the first low vertical mil-dot.
He set the binocs down, went back to the rifle and saw her at the edge, just standing there, daring him to concentrate on her while the daughter vanished into the shadows of the pass. The woman's foolish courage sickened him.
Her dead husband's insane courage sickened him.
Who were these people? What right did they have to such nobility of spirit? Why did they consider themselves so special? What gave them the right? He put the center of the first mil-dot below the horizontal cross hair on her.
The hatred flared as he pulled the trigger.
The rifle jolted. Time in flight was about a second, maybe a little less. As the 175 grains of 7mm Remington Magnum arched across the canyon, tracing an invisible parabola, unstoppable and tragic, he had the briefest second to study her. Composed, calm, on two feet, defiant even at the end, holding her wound. Then she disappeared as, presumably, the bullet struck her. She tumbled down and down, raising dust, until she vanished from sight.
He felt nothing.
He was done. It was over.
He sat back, amazed to discover the inside of his jacket soaked with sweat. He felt only emptiness, just like the last time he'd had this man in his scope--only the professional's sense of another job being over.
He put the scope back on the man. Clearly he had been eliminated. The gravity of the wound, its immensity, its savagery, was apparent even from this distance. But he paused. So resilient, so powerful, such an antagonist. Why take the chance?
It felt unclean, as if he were dishonoring someone who might be as great as himself. But he again yielded to practicality: this wasn't about honor among snipers but doing the job.
He threw the bolt, ejecting a shell, and put the crosshairs squarely on the underside of the chin, exposed to him by the man's supine, splayed position. This would drive a bullet upward through the brain at eighteen-hundred feet per second. A four-inch target at 722 meters.
Another great shot. He calmed himself, watched the crosshairs still, and felt the trigger break. The scope leaped, then leaped back, the body jerked and again there seemed to be a cloud, a vapor, of pinkish mist. He'd seen it before. The head shot, evacuating brains in a fog of droplets. The fog dissipated. There was nothing more to see or think.
He rose, threw the rifle over his shoulder. He gathered the equipment--the ten-pound sandbag was the heaviest--and re cased the binoculars. He looked about for traces of himself and found plenty: scuffs in the dust, the three ejected shells, which he scooped up. He grabbed a piece of vegetation from the earth and used it to sweep the dust of his shooting position, rubbing back and forth until he was convinced no sign of his having been there existed. He threw the brush down into the canyon before him, and then set out walking, trying to stay on hard ground so as to leave no tracks.
He climbed higher into the mountains, expertly and without fear. He knew it would be hours at the least before any kind of police reaction to his operation could be commenced. His problem now would be the remote possibility of running into random hunters or hikers, and he had no wish to kill witnesses, unless he had to, which he would do without qualm.
He walked and climbed for several hours, finally passing over the crests and descending to rough ground. He hit his rendezvous spot by three and got out the small transmitter and sent his confirmation.
The helicopter arrived within an hour, flying low from the west. The evac was swift and professional.
He was done.
CHAPTER twenty-eight.
Bob rode up through the trees and across the barren, high desert to the mountains. He loped easily along, trying to calm himself, wondering if he could make it before the sun rose fully. The black dogs seemed to have gone back to their kennel. They kept no schedule, nothing set them off, they were just there some days and not some others. Who knew? Who could tell, who could predict?
He tried to think coherently about his future. Clearly he could not stay here much longer, because the weight of living off his in-laws was more than he could bear. It turned all things sour and made him hate himself. But he doubted he could get started in his profession, which was running a lay-up barn for horses, not until he sold his spread in Arizona and had the money to invest in an upgraded barn and other facilities. Plus, it would mean getting to meet the local vets, getting them to give him referrals. Maybe the place was already crowded with lay-up barns.
He could sell his "story." Too bad old Sam Vincent wasn't around to advise him, but Sam had come to a sorry end in that Arkansas matter which even now Bob had his doubts about starting up. It got a lot of people killed, for not much but the settling of forgotten scores. He had some shame left in him for that thing. Maybe scores weren't worth it.
But if Sam wasn't around, who could he trust? The answer was, nobody. He had an FBI agent friend in New Orleans and a young writer still struggling with a book, but not yet having had any success. Who could he approach?
The jackals of the press? No, thank you, ma'am.
They turned him off beaucoup.
No, the "story" thing wasn't any solution to his problems, not without the advice of somebody he trusted. That left shooting. He knew his name was worth something in that world--some fools considered him a hero, even, like his father, a blasphemy he couldn't begin to even express--and the idea of making that pay somehow sickened him. But if he could pick up work at a shooting school, where they taught self-defense skills to cops and military personnel, maybe that could bring in some money and some contacts. He thought he knew some people to call. Maybe that would work. At least he'd be among men who'd been in the real world and knew what it meant to both put out and receive fire. He tried to imagine such a life.
The sound was clear and distinct, though far off. No man knew it better than he.
Rifle shot. Through the pass. High-velocity round, lots of echo, a big-bore son of a bitch.
He tensed, feeling the alarm blast through him, and had a moment of panic as he worked out that it was possible the shot had come from exactly where Julie and Nikki ought to be. In the next split second he realized he didn't have a rifle himself and he felt broken and useless.
Then he heard a second shot.
He kicked Junior and the horse bolted ahead. He raced across the high desert toward the approaching mountains, his mind filling with fear. Hunters, who happened to get a good shot at a ram or an antelope in the vicinity of his women? Random shooters, plinkers? But not up this high. Maybe there was some trick of the atmosphere, which mad
e the sound of the shots travel from miles away, up through the canyons, and it only now reached him and was meaningless. He didn't like the second shot. A stupid hunter could shoot at something wrong, but then he wouldn't shoot again. If he shot again, he was trying to kill what he was shooting at.
There was a third shot.
He kicked the horse, bucking a little extra speed out of it.
Then he heard the fourth shot.
Christ!
Now he was really panicked. He reached the darkness of the pass but had a moment's clarity and realized the last thing he should do would be to race out there, in case someone was shooting.
As he slowed the animal down to a walk, he saw Nikki's horse, its saddle empty, come limping toward him.
A stab of pain and panic shot through his heart. My baby? What has happened to my baby? Oh, Christ, what has happened to my baby?
A prayer, not one of which had passed his lips in Vietnam, came to him, and he said it briefly but passionately.
Let my daughter be all right.
Let my wife be all right.
"Daddy?"
There she was, huddled in the shadows, crying.
He ran to her, snatched her up, feeling her warmth and the strength of her young body. He kissed her feverishly.
"Oh, God, baby, oh, thank God, you're all right, oh, sweetie, what happened, where's Mommy?"
He knew his wild-eyed fear and near loss of control were not helping the girl at all, and she sobbed and shuddered.
"Oh, baby," he said, "oh, my sweet, sweet baby," soothing her, trying to get both himself and her calmed down, back in some kind of operational zone.
"Honey? Honey, you have to tell me. Where's Mommy? What happened?"
"I don't know where Mommy is. She was behind me and then she wasn't."
"What happened?"
"We were looking at the sunrise across the valley. Mr.
Dade was there. Suddenly he blew up. Mommy screamed, the horses bucked, and we turned and rode for safety.
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