The shot sounded from above and away and far out, not an eardrum-snapping whack, but more a soft report as if muted by distance.
Anto flinched and turned, thinking to hell with the position, and was surprised to see Swagger standing, unhit. He saw then why the radio was decreed instead of the mobile: it distorted voice and made recognition impossible. He’d been talking to another fellow while Swagger lay in his ghillie still as death in this valley.
There was another damned sniper.
Goddamn him!
“My boy just tagged yours,” Swagger said.
A second shot followed, Anto flinching.
“And now he’s done the spotter.”
Raymond felt the slack giving, he was on the cusp of the shot, his finger’s steady press against trigger, the crossed lines of the reticle steady upon the ghillie-suited man who held the pistol and
Lightning lightning lightning.
A storm suddenly blowing in, the sky full of jagged illumination.
The green glow of the countryside.
Over a hundred kills.
The taste of Guinness.
And that was all.
Nine hundred and thirty-four yards away, Chuck McKenzie watched as his first shot splashed the shooter hard in a jet of crimson at the left quadrant of what, before destruction, had been skull, and the ruined fellow went limp in supertime, giving it all up as he became instant meat, the upper half of his body falling hard at gravity’s insistence, but then Chuck was so quick into his throw and correction he lost his first target, knowing he’d killed it, and came across to the second. Number two had dumped the binocs and was tugging the rifle from his dead pal’s hands, driven even now to finish the mission, even though his face wore splatter everywhere, as did his shirtsleeve and hand. Brave guy: it never occurred to him to chuck the rifle and go to hands up, which might have saved his life, as Chuck wouldn’t shoot a surrendering man. But number two was all warrior and actually had the rifle half in play and was setting up, albeit in panic time, for his shot, when Chuck snuffed him with another head shot, even as he heard a spray of gunshots and automatic weapon fire from down in the valley.
Anto’s speed surprised even Bob and the speed was more efficient for the decisiveness driving it, but even if Bob had the shot, he let it go, because even before Anto was yelling, “Kill him, Ginger,” Ginger was rising from the dead. Bob was surprised Ginger was so close, though he knew him to be about from the noise the fellow’d made just before dawn as he put himself into the earth.
Still, it was long for a pistol shot, and Bob went to a knee to take up the two-hand supported and put two fast ones into the rising man close to fifty yards away, and missed once, seeing a puff flick off the earth next to Ginger, who, though shuddering upon the strike of the second round, evidently a low lung shot, still got his M4 up. He fired at Bob but Bob was not there, having rolled like a crazy man to the right. Ginger’s nine-round burst tore up a smoky stitch of dust and grassy fragments and cactus shrapnel in the space where Bob had been.
Ginger, bleeding badly, tracked the gun right through the glowworm incandescence of the Eotech sight and brought the gun right to bear on what of Bob he could see or sense, even while rising to his feet. A normal man would have yielded to collapse by this time, but Ginger was all bristly, insane beast, a charging boar, a crazed wildebeest, a here-comes-death buffalo, and would not check out without vengeance, and he willed himself to fire again.
Bob had by this time gone further to prone for the calming influence of the ground in support of his arms, though he was so deep in the loam, he could only see Ginger’s upper third. A fleet of 5.56s rocketed overhead, inches from ending it forever, but he didn’t flinch as most will do but instead fired twice again, the front sight bold and sharp as death in the notch of the rear, and was sure the bullets had gone home. But Ginger didn’t show any ill health and fired another burst, which tore up the ground in ragged spurts as it vectored toward Bob, seeking him.
And then Ginger was down.
Clearly Chuck had finished what Bob couldn’t, putting a .308 home from his perch on the hill, not a head shot but the heartbreaker, and the big Irishman slid sideways, face slack as a misbegotten moon, and toppled, though as he fell his finger tightened on his trigger and he emptied the 5.56s into the turf just before him, setting off spasms of geysering dust. Then it was quiet.
Except for the sound of Anto’s departing ATV.
Bob came around, saw the nude man at full throttle, bent as low as he could get, more than two hundred yards out, and he fired from prone, aiming high, dumping what remained of his own mag, but the distance was too far for a handgun, Anto was too deft in zigzagging the little bike, and when he achieved slide lock-back, Bob knew he hadn’t hit him.
He jumped up madly, gesturing to Chuck, pointing with one wild arm while he screamed—probably the sound didn’t reach Chuck—“Kill him, kill him!”
Chuck took his time setting up the shot, but as far as he was from Bob, he was even further from Anto, who was almost to the crest and had the bold man’s luck with him, for he veered just as Chuck fired, and Bob saw the bullet punch up a gout of shredded vegetation just as Anto disappeared.
Fuck, he thought. That bastard made it out alive.
It’s not over. I didn’t get him.
He turned, shedding himself finally of the heavy ghillie, dropped the spent clip and thrust in a new one, released the slide to jab forward with a clack!, dropped the hammer, and replaced the Sig in its shoulder holster. Then he picked up his as-yet-unfired rifle and headed up the crest to meet up with Chuck, only to see that Chuck was roaring down to him on his own ATV.
They met in another two hundred yards.
“Great shooting, Sniper,” Bob said, clapping the other man on the arm. “Jesus, you got three of them and all I did was put bullets in the ground.”
“Sorry I couldn’t take that fourth guy. Do we go after him?”
“No, he’s picking up a rifle and some pants just now. Nothing he’d like more than to see us crossing a field. Take me to my own ATV.”
He jumped on behind Chuck and they headed back up the slope, followed a creek down the gap in the ridge, down into an arroyo, and finally to a little glade where Bob had left his vehicle.
Anto had been hit by one of Bob’s long pistol shots but not badly. It was a burning groove in his left arm above elbow, below biceps, and it oozed the red stuff and hurt like bloody hell. He looked at it without interest. He’d been hit enough times to know this was nothing.
Then he concentrated on the fact that he was alone. That fooking bastard had done them all, the great boys of Basra and SAS sniper element blue, with over three hundred kills among them, to say nothing of all the other jobs for king and country in places that still couldn’t be divulged.
Black Irish grief collapsed upon him, a nude man with serious sun poisoning in bright light in the middle of the savage, featureless high plains. He went to the bag and reached through the crap that filled it out until he found his amphetamines, and he gulped six of them. Get me concentration back, me energy, numb me out from the pain, that’s what I’ve got to do.
Then he climbed aboard the bike, oriented himself, and began a big curl around the eastern rim of the valley to a certain designated tree, where the boys had left him kit and rifle.
He knew exactly where Swagger was going next, and he’d play his own self’s little trick on the fellow and be the one getting there first this time.
Swagger reached into his cargo pocket.
“Here it is,” he said to Chuck. “I want you out of here fast, before Anto gets geared up. You go hard west for an hour; don’t stop for anything. Then you call your buddy with the chopper and bring him in to you. Have him fly you to the Indian Rapids airfield—there should be some kind of airline terminal there—go to the American Eagle desk, and tell whoever’s there you have something for Mr. Memphis. Either he will take the package, or he’ll get someone to take the package.”
“And then get a beer with your pilot. Wait for my call. If it doesn’t come, then get another beer and drink it for me, and remember me for a few years. Tell my wife I died snipered up all the way.”
“Come on, Gunny. Come with me. We’ll both give ’em the package, we’ll both get the beer, followed by a steak. Then we’ll start in on the hard stuff. How much bourbon can a town called Indian Rapids have, anyway? We’ll drink it all and wake up in three days. The feds can pick up that last Irishman. He’s not going anywhere for a while.”
“No, he is. And I know where. And I’m going too.”
“Then let me come along. This time I’ll be the bait and you can do the shooting.”
“No, Chuck, that film has to reach the FBI, and the sooner the better. Constable will hear about this shit somehow, and once that happens, he’ll bolt. With his dough, he’ll be long gone before the feds can pick him up. That’s why you’ve got to get the film to them. So I want Anto Grogan after me, not you. Long as I’m alive, he’ll come after me.”
“Christ, Gunny. You’re going to set yourself up for this motherfucker, aren’t you? You’re going to gull him into taking the shot and pray that he misses, and then you’ll shoot back. With that scope on top, he isn’t going to miss. You think you can get a killing shot off from seven hundred yards with 168 grains of lead in your chest, while you’re bleeding out? It doesn’t have to happen. You don’t have to be the last man to die in a long-ago lost war. You call me up and invite me on this little war party and now I have to leave before the end and I don’t get to cover the hero but have to just let him sit out there on his lonesome? That ain’t no bargain, Gunny.”
“For me it’s the best bargain. I lost my spotter, Chuck. I couldn’t bring him back from the war. So you have to get out of here now, and fast. Only two things count. Getting the film to the FBI and getting Chuck home in time for his daughter’s graduation. Go, Chuck. DEROS, Chuck. Now.”
“You goddamned Marine Corps bad-ass gunnery sergeant retired. Jesus, you are all old-fashioned man, that’s all I can say. I thought you guys had all died off, but dammit, you’re too salty to die.”
“Go on, get out of here, Lance Corporal.”
Chuck clapped Swagger on the shoulder and gunned up his ATV and headed west.
50
Texas Red celebrated his success with a very fine buffalo steak—low in fats, low in sodium, low in calories—and a 2001 Château Sociando-Mallet, served in his motor home by Chin, his chef. It was still midafternoon: he hadn’t breakfasted because he hated to shoot on a full stomach, and so his first order of business after finishing his four events—four more tomorrow and four on Sunday—was to eat. His second order of business was business: calls to stockbrokers, vice presidents, PR folks, and so forth, pleased to note he was recovering from the meltdown well enough. He noted with pleasure no incoming from either Bill Fedders in DC or by satellite from the Irishmen at his main ranch.
That done, he summoned the ever-plain Ms. Jantz and had her take dictation for an hour, then got his daily blow job, surprisingly intense for a non-Viagrafied event. The shooting had gotten juices all astir in a way that was unusual. Then he dismissed her, with the admonition, “Get me Clell.”
Clell appeared shortly thereafter, all rangy gun pro, with the big hands, the smoothness of encoded neural pathways, the data bank beyond measure.
“So,” he said, “no bullshit. Critique. Forget I’m paying you three times what you charge. Give me the truth, as if I’m a little punk trying to hang out with the great Clell Rush.”
“Yes sir.”
“Yes, Tom.”
“Yes, Tom. First thing is, congrats. You shot well today. Dynamite. I think you’ve beaten the grip slippage that seems to screw you up sometimes. You were hard and tight and the gun stayed set. Even on the exchange, when you holstered the righthand piece and cross-drew from the left holster, even that was tight. It was a good chance to screw up, and happily, you evaded it.”
“I’m liking what I’m hearing. Sure you’re not just trying to pick up a bonus?”
“It ain’t just suck-up, Tom. Look at the standings. You’re number four. You’ve never been that high in the standings at this point before. Last year, as I recall, you’s about number fifteen. There’s no way of coming back from fifteen. You’re still in the hunt.”
“How about rifle and shotgun?”
“You plan to save handgun mistakes on rifle and shotgun, and that’s fine, but I thought you ran too hard on the rifle. That’s a sophisticated motion, throwing the lever but not so hard you pull the muzzle out of control, keeping that left hand in good command, closing up and touching off, then throwing even while you’re moving to the next target. You done well, I’m not saying that, but I thought you’s a little overexcited. It was the first event, you had adrenaline, so you brought it off. Don’t know how tomorrow will be, or the next day, if you don’t drop back into second gear, particularly on the last few rounds.”
“Good advice,” said Tom.
“As for the shotgun, maybe the same thing, but since there’s only four reloads, it’s not likely you’ll turn to fumblethumbs that quickly. Though by the time you get to shotgun, your hands are tired from all the shooting you’ve just completed. But your fingers are so happy when they’re on the shotguns, even a trumpet gun like the ninety-seven, I don’t think that’s going to be your problem.”
“Hmm, I’ve got a problem? I thought you were telling me how damn good I was.”
“Well, it’s a problem most men have. Called pride. It goeth before a tumble, or so the book says.”
“I’m listening.”
“I feel you pushing too hard. It almost means too much to you. I’m worried that late, tired, your hands all beat to hell, you’ll face a challenge where you need your best. And you won’t be able to find it, Texas Red. Because you are a man of accomplishment, you cannot conceive of failure. Yet even the Kid hisself failed; he went out unarmed, and along come Pat Garrett and put a jujube of lead into his gut. The Kid was proud; in his pride he got away from his greatness, and his greatness was doing all them little things right, like always sitting with his back to the wall and forswearing that fourth drink, because it was the fourth one that slowed him, and always carrying a gun. That night in Fort Sumner, he’s feeling so Kid, so invulnerable, he gets cocky, he gets sloppy, and he can’t conceive of a man coming into his own space and facing him. He’s unarmed, except for a butcher knife. He steps into his bedroom, quien está? he asks, who’s there, he knows someone’s there, he’s holding that knife, and it’s still in him to make it through the night, all he has to do is be the Kid and lunge, and he lives till two and twenty. But his mind freezes, and old Pat, slower, grumpier, used up, old Pat gets big iron whipped out fast and puts a forty-four into him. And down goes the Kid.”
“You see that in me?”
“You ain’t no Kid, Mr. Constable, not by a long shot. But I’m worried there’ll come a time when you think you is. And as the Kid found out, thinking you’re the Kid can get a man killed.”
51
There wasn’t much point in stealth, not at this point. No reason to wear the ghillie. He even poured some water from his bottle and washed the paint off, so that he’d get through this last on his own face, not the jungle’s.
He steered a wide circle on his ATV and came into Lone Tree Valley from the west, wondering if Anto was already there. Anto, driven by anger and fear and vengeance, had to take a more direct route, which was in length about four miles; this more circuitous journey was almost seven. Coming over the crest, he saw the lone tree itself, surprisingly dense for fall, its leaves vibrating in the low wind and, as they did, seeming to shimmer as first the dull and then the bright side showed itself to the sun.
He rumbled down the slope, acknowledging the featurelessness of the place. It was all epic space in a shallow bowl of undulating grass, capped by the frosty marble of the western clouds against the bluest blue
of all. No animal life was visible, and the push of wind filled the air with the sound of air and the stalks of grass leaning against each other.
He drove to the tree but left the ATV well short of it. He got off, feeling the Sig bang under his left arm, holding the 7-mil Ultra Mag in his right. It was Chuck’s, a hunting rifle for knocking down big animals at long ranges with a cartridge case the size of a cigar, something new cooked up more by the marketing department than the true ballisticians. The industry needed new products. This one was a lulu: kicked like a mule, but it shot fast and flat as anything on the planet, and when it arrived, it had excess power. Chuck said he’d hit an antelope at over five hundred yards, and the poor thing had cartwheeled, it was slapped with such energy.
He squatted, going into a sniper’s stillness, flat out in the open, though in shade, maybe a little to the east of the tree. He presented his back to Anto. He pulled his khaki hat down over his sunglassed eyes.
What would happen next would all come down to character: Anto’s. A true sniper would creep close, take and make the shot. That was duty, that was mission, that was job, even to a merc. He thought of that merc poem: “followed their mercenary calling, took their wages, and are dead.” Which war? Oh, yeah, the first big one. The boys who stopped the Germans for pay. And for professionalism: no vanity, no wasted motion, no ceremony, no self-celebration, no self-pity.
But Anto? Anto had that manic streak in him, that desperate need for approval and attention. His personality might be too big for standard military and then even for a genius outfit like 22 SAS. Maybe it was a death wish. Take the fall from grace in Basra: he’d had to have seen it coming, read the signs, and had plenty of time to back down or readjust—that’s the way the military worked, after all—but he insisted on his way with the aggressive interrogations and the ever-climbing kill count. So the Brits ultimately destroyed him, and you could blame them for their unwillingness to sustain the man who was, ever so distastefully, winning the war, but that was the way of the modern world, and of general staffs and politicians with the guts of puppies. Still, you had to blame Anto too, since a more modest professional, committed to his cause, would have found a way to keep operating, only under a lower profile. Not Anto. He wanted somehow to burn at the stake and give interviews from the flames.
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