Game of Snipers

by Stephen Hunter

  “I’ve got that.”

  “It’s so much easier the Mossad way,” sighed Mr. Gold. “We just do it and sleep well at night.”

  “You have an advantage,” said Neill. “You’re at war. We’re playing a party game called Don’t Make Anybody Mad.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The paperwork was expedited, the FISA ruling achieved, and at that point the Director of the Cyber Division ruled that Gershon Gold, of Mossad, was not cleared to assist in the search, being a representative of a foreign intelligence service, even though a friendly one.

  Bob immediately resigned.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Nick said.

  “Who’s being ridiculous? He’s the best cyberguy in the world. A legend. That’s why he’s here. And now you’re telling me he can’t take an elevator down a story and sit at a monitor just like the one he has in Tel Aviv.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. It’s federal law, and, in their way, the Cyber Division is right. If anything goes wrong and it is later revealed that we illegally let an Israeli national highly educated in cyberwar into our nerve center, that could be used against us by the usual sources. Different agendas here: you are trying to catch Juba, the Cyber Division is trying to ensure the Bureau’s integrity and invulnerability to partisan or press attacks.”

  “Maybe Gold is the only guy in the world who can break this thing. Would you want them partisan jerks to know that he was sitting upstairs drinking bad coffee while we were fucking up downstairs, thirty feet, as the crow flies, from his instrument of war?”

  “Cyber Division is playing the odds. It’s the smart move, bureaucratically. Our smart move has to be to figure out how to get around it. Nothing personal against either man, it’s just another obstacle we have to get over.”

  “Can we bring Ward Taylor in on this one?”

  “Sure, but he’ll tell you the same thing. He has to. He has no choice.”

  It was Gold who ended the contretemps.

  “Sergeant Swagger, this battle is fought each day in every intelligence or law enforcement entity in the world. I have seen it at play in Mossad as well. We even have a nickname for it. We call it the Gray Foolishness. It can’t be defeated, it can only be outsmarted. I would counsel you to waste no energy on this, and we will work out a way to get around it. The important thing, for both of us, is not what makes sense in this building but to catch or kill Juba before he brings yet more chaos and death to the world.”

  “That’s what a grown-up sounds like,” said Nick.

  “So it’s on me,” said Swagger, “and I don’t even know where to start.”

  So Gold gave Bob and Chandler a rough tutorial in the investigation they would have to run by themselves.

  “You also must be skilled in pattern recognition, knowing that the little bit you learn here may seem meaningless, but it must not be discarded, as it might fit into some larger scheme and its importance become paramount.”

  “In other words,” said Swagger, “I have to become a lot smarter than I am, and really fast.”

  * * *

  • • •

  That afternoon, Swagger passed into a top secret computer center, and then into a special room, where he and Chandler—she did the keyboard stuff, being younger and faster—went hunting in cyberspace.

  Their targets were the mail-order customer lists of EuroOptic Limited in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, Mile High Shooting Accessories in Erie, Colorado, and Sinclair International in Montezuma, Iowa, all purveyors of high-quality and high-cost equipment for the sport of long-range shooting, the first two the only FFL dealers of Accuracy International rifles in the United States.

  “There are other marks,” said Chandler. “Surgeon Rifles, JP Rifles, Cadex, Sako, MHSA. Savage is in the game, so too is Ruger, at a much lower price point. How do you know he didn’t do one of those?”

  “Well, I don’t,” said Swagger. “But my thinking is, AI was the first and the most famous. It’s also hard combat tested, the others not so much. It was, most importantly, the weapon system used by the British Corporal of Horse Craig Harrison in his mile-and-a-half shot in Afghanistan in 2009. Juba would know that, he would have heard of that, and, in the way his mind works, he wants to duplicate that. Thus, he’s going to put together a kit identical, or nearly identical, to Harrison’s ’09 hit. That’s part of the intellectual appeal.”

  “What did Gold say?”

  “He thinks it fits the personality—that is, the bastard’s methodical way of thinking and doing. He ain’t no experimenter. He will very slowly and precisely follow exactly what happened before, to get the same result, with the when/where at his choosing.”

  “How about Mrs. McDowell? She’s the world Juba expert.”

  “You know, I didn’t think to ask her,” said Swagger. “She was so worried that she hadn’t done well in her little undercover thing that I couldn’t get it into the conversation. Want me to call her?”

  “No, let’s save her for when we’re in a real jam.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Gold is enough, I guess,” said Chandler. “But one of the things we might look at is a history of sales, or specials, or something, from these outlets. The reason I say that is, maybe Juba didn’t himself place the order but had some minion of whoever is working with him do it. And his agenda might be different. Maybe one of these places had a real good buy on Steiner Optics, and the guy decided to save five hundred bucks by going Steiner instead of Schmidt and Bender.”

  “Good point, Chandler. Damn, you’re smart. Ever make a mistake?”

  “Only once. I married a guy who thought I actually cared about sex.”

  “We fall for that one every damned time, don’t we?”

  “It was nothing a divorce couldn’t solve.”

  A few minutes later, out of nothing but his cogitations, it happened: a palpable thought.

  “Oh, and this,” said Bob. “The rifle Juba’s using, I’m betting, was stolen from somebody here in the U.S. It was probably a high-ranking competitive shooter. Now, that guy would also want the Harrison rig duplicated for exactly the same reason. Yeah, the other stuff might work, but Juba’d know the AI rig works. And so would the theoretical original guy. He’s probably got some sniper buzz going on using the right stuff too, though he’d never admit it. So we have to look for a listing of stolen guns.”

  “Got it,” she said.

  The first stop, then, was the National Firearm Registry, a listing of all stolen guns. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone had made off with the weapon of choice and that could lead right to the heart of the matter? But no such luck. A Barrett .50 caliber was the closest thing, but a quick call to the jurisdiction revealed that it had been recovered.

  That possibility exhausted, they moved on to the sales records of the three companies.

  First pass of all three sales records over the past five months—an arbitrary period, to be sure, but they’d go back further only as a desperation measure—yielded nothing of much interest. Filtering, courtesy of one of Neill’s programs, for “Accuracy International .338 Lapua Magnum,” they indeed encountered a cult based upon the worship of that rifle and that caliber. But all the purchases seemed to be more along the line of adding geegaws to the system—like dedicated cleaning kits, AI optical mounts, transit cases, wrench sets, a mirage band to stretch down the barrel and thus kill any reflection from its metallic surface, headspace gauges, bolt-cap-removal tools—all the little bitty Tinkertoys that so many in the culture told themselves they absolutely had to have.

  “They’re like little girls collecting Pretty Ponies,” Chandler said.

  None of the purchases was particularly big-ticket, none of them was absolutely mandatory to the shot, except for the scope, but Bob assumed that most of the shooters already had scopes, and, furthermore, granted the assumption tha
t somehow Juba’s rifle was initially stolen in America, it would have been scoped as well. None suggested someone trying to get into the AI .338 Lapua Magnum in a big way all at once. It was all about adding a little of this, a little of that.

  “Any feeling or buzz?” asked Swagger.

  “You’re the rustic genius. I’m just the little grind who went to State U and got straight A’s. I’m as creative as a block of wood.”

  “Let’s filter for ‘L.E. Wilson dies, .338 Lapua Magnum.’”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “If you want to reload for superaccuracy, it all turns on the accuracy of machining in the dies. Everyone in the game knows that Wilsons are the best. These guys will get every angle perfect to a hundredth of an inch. They’re that good. Plus, Wilsons, not being screwed into a big, sloppy press, can be loaded at the rifle range on an arbor press—that’s a hand-portable device—which makes it easier. It’s not for high volume, but it’s the one most of the benchrest guys use. It’s very accurate, no wobble or slop in the construction, the parts fit like a Mercedes engine. More, I saw one in Juba’s shop—bright yellow box, very compact—in the second before the guy lit it, and himself, off.”

  She typed it in, pushed Return, and in a few seconds the computer scanned, filtered, sorted, and presented nine purchases in the past five months of Wilson die sets—neck size and bullet seater—in the .338 Lapua Magnum size, plus specific neck-sizer bushings for the first die, three at .366, two at .367, and one more at .368. From this they got nine names, which they ran against several data fields already in place, being the membership in the North American Long Range Shooting Association, which was the governing body of most of the matches, as well as entry in long-range shooting schools all across the west, part of the training craze in all the esoteric gun skills of Special Forces operators that currently gripped the shooting world. Of the nine customers, eight were in one or the other, the ninth being a wealthy South Carolina gun collector who was on the Board of Trustees of the NRA.

  “Too bad it ain’t him,” said Bob, a little sourly. “The newspapers would go crazy.”

  “He’s not the type?”

  “I met him once. Rich guy, big in the NRA. He owns a batch of auto dealerships, and Subaru millionaires don’t turn into jihadi terrorists.”

  “Good point,” she said.

  Eighteen hours in, and they had nothing.

  “How much time left?”

  “Six hours.”

  “We’re not getting anywhere.”

  “Maybe we’ve proved there’s nowhere to get. Maybe we’ve excluded a possible avenue of investigation. That’s worth something.”

  “I suppose,” he said, yawning, checking his watch. “Let’s take a break.”

  “Sure.”

  They exited security and went back to their own floor. As it was night and rather late, the Counterterrorism Division was pretty much empty except for the operations sector, which always burned lights day or night. But they passed it, went to the lounge, meaning only to sit on sofas and mosey off into a private anywhere that had no Accuracy International mail orders in it.

  “Mr. Gold!” said Bob, seeing the portly Israeli at the table, going through paperwork.

  “Yes, hello.”

  “You’re still here?”

  “I thought I might be of some assistance.”

  “I wish you could be.”

  “You have had no luck?”

  Chandler narrated their adventures, rearranging it efficiently so it seemed less random.

  “Seems to be very thorough,” said Gold.

  “I thought we might have something on the neck-sizer bushings. But, no. All of them checked out. And that would be the one thing anyone running a .338 Lapua Mag program would definitely need to have.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Gold.

  “Any suggestions?” said Chandler. “We’ve got some time left before the FISA mandate runs out.”

  “Nothing of a practical measure. However, there remains a possibility.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your subconscious has figured it out. It is trying to get you to pay attention. But your brain is clotted with meaningless things.”

  “Sounds like you’re suggesting a drink. Only problem is, if I have one, I end up three weeks later in Calgary during the rodeo season, married to a calf roper with four kids.”

  It was a familiar line of his. Usually, somebody laughed. Not this time.

  Chandler leaned back against the cushion of her seat and closed her eyes, as if to relax.

  “All I see is my sisters’ husbands trying to cop feels over a long, long holiday weekend.”

  “Any of ’em jihadi snipers?” Swagger asked.

  “No, just doctors, lawyers, and one would-be poet who sells real estate. He’s the worst. The poets always are.”

  So she got the laugh.

  “All right,” she finally said. “I am getting something on numbers. Three of them: 8-7-1.”

  “Are you of numeric imagination?” asked Gold.

  “I’m of no imagination. I’m just good at math.”

  “What that means is that in the presence of numbers you are relaxed. Thus, there is less to oppose the flow between conscious and subconscious.”

  “Maybe. But I just see 8, 7, and 1, from somewhere, sometime—recently, I think. Don’t know why, can’t connect it with anything. Where would there be an 8-7-1? Swagger, do you recall that in our hunt?”

  “Lots of numbers. Phone number, zip codes, catalogue numbers, calibers, trigger-pull weights.”

  She pulled out her iPhone, went to Safari, ran the number 8-7-1.

  “It’s not an area code,” she said.

  “Try a zip code. The first three numbers of a zip code.”

  She did.

  “Okay, it’s Albuquerque, New Mexico—87102 through 87123—twenty of ’em.”

  They let that lie for a second. Then Gold said, “Contiguous zones. So that would mean that no matter if the town or suburb were different, the physical sites could be quite close to each other.”

  “Yes, and what are the odds of so many different .338 guys living so close to one another? Probably, in the west, lower than elsewhere, but still pretty remote.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go back into Cyber Division and see what our 8-7-1 gets us.”

  28

  The wheat

  By midmorning, they reached the wheat.

  It rolled for miles and miles to the horizon, golden, turning almost liquid by the wind rippling its surface, broken here and there by a farmhouse, a silo, maybe a stand of trees. Now and then, a huge red or green machine—thresher, combine, packer—moved like a heavy tank across the surface of the earth. The sky was blue and vast, the clouds hazy, the weather crisp and precise. He’d never seen wheat like this and was glad he now had.

  These people may be infidels, he thought, but they are excellent wheat farmers, maybe even better than the Russians.

  He said nothing. What would these Mexicans know about wheat? The answer was, nothing. It was an alliance of convenience—financial, for the one, and practical necessity.

  Across from him sat the grandee Menendez, who spent all his time jabbering in Spanish on the phone, perhaps dispatching orders to the far ends of his empire. Juba didn’t know the details—no need to—but he knew the sort of man Menendez had to be and had no illusions about him. The matter of the boy, Jared, had made illusions impossible.

  He didn’t care for that. There had been no need. The boy had proved himself. He didn’t deserve sudden death in a farmyard in someplace he’d never been in his life. But, at the same time, Juba was under mission discipline. He worked not for his intelligence masters or for the mysterious source of all the funding but for Allah. Allah required his self-control. And that is what he gave Allah, not Menendez
.

  Now Juba’s life and mission were in the hands of this Menendez, for how many millions of dollars, one didn’t know, and there was nothing to be done at this point except to go passive, offer no resistance, merely the softness of the sniper in him. He would observe, calculate, and record, and that would be enough—for now.

  Beside Menendez was the one called Jorge, the translator, his face an odd mix of the Arab and the Mexican. What godforsaken, blasphemed union had produced such an offspring? He had the mealy look of a grub worm, obsequious and frantically obedient. He was disposable, a fact known to everyone except himself. He probably thought he was quite important, not realizing that the mere luck of his dual upbringing made him valuable to Menendez, but Menendez would squash him if the need arose. His face wore a perpetual expression of guarded optimism. He thought he was in with the big boys. Juba despised him on principle.

  Meanwhile, he of course had no idea where he was—Kansas, from the little he knew, seemed about right—because he couldn’t read the frequent highway signs, nobody spoke to him except for offers of food or drink, and he himself refused to betray his curiosity. In any case, it all changed when at a certain point they diverged from the highway into a small city, coursed through its outskirts, and arrived at a minor airfield.

  “Now, my friend,” said Menendez through Jorge, “it’s time to move more quickly. I didn’t feel it safe to divert to air immediately in the area of your escape, as airports would have been put under close observation. Where we are now, nobody notices anything.”

  Juba nodded.

  They passed through gates, around empty parking lots, and arrived at a hangar. Nearby, a number of parked planes sat angled in the sun, all with their tails low to the ground, with props thrust skyward, all with glinting, bright steel, acrylic canopies of one configuration or another, riding plump tires and looking speedy though sitting still. But they continued on, and, instead, the driver took them to the end of the runway, where, already fueled up and its engines roaring, a sleek white twin-engined jet awaited.