Game of Snipers

by Stephen Hunter

  The world of twenty-five magnifications, centered by a red glowing dot, yielded amazing resolution, though still tiny. It was indeed a tiny world, everything small and perfect. Clear and stable, nevertheless it offered up a man exploring his new reality. Dressed in surgical scrubs, he pulled this way and that against a post. It did not budge. Juba watched as he yelled to off-scope witnesses and grew agitated when they clearly did not respond with anything except indifference. He had unruly hair and a prophet’s beard. He was agitated—and who would not be, going to sleep among garbage cans and in dog shit and awaking in Paradise chained to a stake, offered up for burning.

  Behold man: he tugged, he screamed, he addressed God. He was enraged one second, in tears the next, perhaps resigned at the end.

  Juba’s heart slowed, and between the beats his fingertip played God by moving the trigger straight back two millimeters. The rifle barked and leapt, a heavy and powerful beast, pushing mightily in its fraction of a second of energy release as its primer fired its powder, which obediently alchemized into an expanding pulse of energy and sent its missile down the launch tube. Its report was muted by the Thunder Beast suppressor screwed to the barrel, tricking its escaping gases to take the long way into the atmosphere and spreading the considerably diminished sound signature over a broad, untraceable area. The rifle rose an inch or two off the legs of its bipod, settled down, and, through this action cycle, Juba’s finger remained stoically against the trigger, pinning it. Little air came into or out of his lungs, his heart was still, his muscles tight, his cheek steady upon the stock.

  When the tiny world settled again, and the time in flight had expired, he made out a wisp of dust and the man, having turned at the sharp disturbance in the soil, trying to imagine what had caused such an occurrence.

  His phone rang.

  “A miss. I would say by a good twenty-five yards. The line to him seemed right.”

  “Yes,” said Juba.

  He was annoyed. This was the first test at distance, and why had the device not worked as it was supposed to?

  He broke his position on the rifle, put his fingers to the elevation knob, calculated quickly that he was at least a full arcminute off, and therefore clicked in the appropriate improvement. One arcminute: two clicks.

  He worked the bolt, gently ejecting the spent cartridge case, shoved the bolt forward and locked it down, thereby reloading and cocking. He assumed the same careful position, and when it was time, and he had settled into stilled perfection, his finger rewarded him with a shot.

  The same ceremony of recoil and recovery through time in flight. He waited for everything to settle and the phone to ring. He saw dust at the target, roiling and buzzing, eventually clearing to reveal the man, untouched.

  “Just a nick off. Hit near his feet. Maybe a whisper to the left.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Juba, confident that he had it now.

  He made adjustments: one click of elevation up, one click of windage to the left.

  Into position, rifle steady, on scope.

  And there he was, tiny, human, frail, doomed and knowing it, pulling hard against the stake, his face raised to God for mercy or maybe forgiveness. For this man, the time was now, the place was here, and the next world, whichever it may be, beckoned.

  The rifle fired, rose and fell.

  Time in flight: 5.1 seconds.

  Juba was back on by then and saw the point of impact. Somewhere in the lower chest, the body’s midline, right at the boundary between chest and entrails. The bullet emptied its total remaining power into him, a thousand pounds’ worth, and the shock drove him backwards into the post, hair flying, body in spasm, a trace of dust vibrating off his clothes from the hit. He was dead before he went limp against his chains.

  “Thank you, brother,” said Juba. “You have helped me. May God be merciful on your soul.”

  It was the only prayer the fellow got.

  35

  No Tell Motel, Route 26, Grapevine, Texas

  His name was Lawrence M. Wakowski. His nickname, in certain sectors of his life, was Whack Job. In other sectors of his life, it was Mr. Wakowski. To the FBI, the nomenclature was determined by who held the leverage. Sometimes they called him Whack Job and enjoyed making him squirm and whine, other times it was Mr. Wakowski and he was treated with deference, respect, and other trappings of fealty.

  “Thanks for coming, Mr. Wakowski,” said Jeff Neill.

  “Agent Neill, we meet again. And Agent Streibling, Dallas Field Office, Cyber Division rep, an old friend indeed.”

  Streibling, the local agent who’d set this meet-up, nodded but, knowing his place in the pecking order, said nothing.

  “These other two fellows, I don’t know,” said Mr. Wakowski. “Kosher, though, I assume?”

  “Totally kosher. Names not necessary,” said Neill. “One is high-ranking, experienced, in from Washington. The other is his associate, expert in certain arcane areas, known to be an extraordinary detective. He uncovered the string that led us to you and this meeting.”

  “Gentlemen . . .” said Mr. Wakowski, nodding his head.

  “The accommodations—suitable?” asked Neill.

  “Sure. Out of the way, unavailable to chance encounters. Way off my beaten track, and yours.”

  It was a cheesy suite motel near the airport, off the interstate. Left-hand neighbor: strip bar; right-hand neighbor: Best Tacos in Texas, which was true except for the other places in Texas that sold tacos.

  “I checked,” said Mr. Wakowski. “I wasn’t followed.”

  “Actually, you were,” said Neill. “By us. We’re very good at it. The point, however, was to make sure you weren’t followed by anybody else. You weren’t.”

  “I feel secure in the bosom of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “A good start. Now I’ll turn the meeting over to my superior officer.”

  “I’m Nick,” said Nick.

  “Nick,” said Wakowski, “I’m Mr. Wakowski. How may I help you—that is, except by going to prison or getting myself killed?”

  “Perhaps four months ago, certain parties almost certainly approached you with a job. They had a newly acquired iPhone 8. It had to be cracked. It takes even the best labs weeks to crack them. You are reputed to be one of three men in country who can do it in days. Am I right so far?”

  “I could lie,” said Mr. Wakowski. “In fact, the best course for me would be to lie.”

  “Not a good idea. We would have to stop calling you Mr. Wakowski then. We would have to call you Whack Job, and there’s an issue outstanding about someone who built software to evade the cybersecurity at the First National of Midlands job a few weeks ago. We know who did it, a fellow named Roy Heinz, because Roy himself told us. It was decided that Whack Job would be left alone, as he might prove more useful to us in the future. That judgment can be rescinded. And if Whack Job goes to Huntsville, being soft and weak and white, what do you suppose happens to him?”

  “I’m so disappointed in Roy,” said Mr. Wakowski. “He was recommended to me as a stand-up guy.”

  “Everybody talks, in the end. Which is why we’re here.”

  “May I ask—”

  “No,” said Neill. “But be advised that Nick and his friend wouldn’t be here if this weren’t of highest priority, of national security declination. Let’s be polite, as we’re all wearing ties, which signify politeness. But we do need your help, and we do expect your help.”

  Mr. Wakowski took a deep breath. He was mid-forties, with a face lacking singularity or charisma but notable in its ovality. He could have played the title role in the new Egg and I remake. Black frames, thick lenses, receding sandy hair, charcoal suit, black shoes, a face rather like butterscotch pudding. You wouldn’t pick him out in a crowd of one. Except at Huntsville.

  “Very dangerous people,” he said. “That is why I hesita
te. Betray them, see my kids tossed into acid vats. My wife handled by twenty-five grinning caballeros with eagles tattooed on their necks. All this before they stake me out naked for the vultures, with great big gobs of greasy, grimy cow guts smeared on my genitals.”

  “Those guys,” said Nick.

  “Yep, those guys.” He shivered. “Why, oh why, did the Good Lord give me so much talent,” he said. “Without it, I wouldn’t end up with the vultures going sushi on my dick.”

  “But you’d be living in a tract home, and both wife and kids would hate you for being a failure,” Streibling said.

  “True enough,” said Mr. Wakowski.

  He swallowed.

  “You will protect my future and my children’s future?”

  “For now. It could change.”

  “Okay. Yes, it was an 8. Hard to beat, those motherfuckers at Apple go to sleep every night grinning about how hard it is. But Whack Job knows the way. Wasn’t easy to figure, and it helps to have an IQ of 450, but he can, with much intensive labor, get it done in four days. I’ll spare you the details. If you ain’t a 450, they’d be meaningless anyhow. So they come to me, the money is, shall we say, quite convincing, as is their reputation. In my world, better to be friends with them than enemies. Enemies get the vulture thing.”

  “So you got in.”

  “Yes. The guy who set it up had to be some kind of supershooter or something. Most of the data space was eaten up by some program called FirstShot. I gather it helps you put little pieces of metal in certain places from a long ways out. It figures all the little bitty factors and influences, but it’s basically a spreadsheet. It solves the problem at muzzle distance and extrapolates out to infinity from there.”

  “Okay, that’s our guy,” said Nick.

  “Anyhow, that was important to them. They did need access to it, they made that clear. Excuse me for my lack of curiosity, but I didn’t ask the fellow what this was necessary for. I figured I’d read it in the papers.”

  “And you will, right before the vultures come for a visit, if you don’t get on with your story.”

  “So I unlocked it for them and got them access to the ballistics data. But they had another requirement: they wanted it hardwired for fast access to the Dark Web.”

  “For boys and girls who don’t read Computer Monthly, explain ‘Dark Web,’” said Neill.

  “What you see when you click on, that’s about two percent of the web. There’s a whole other region. Its access is guarded, and it is superprotected by three Russians and a Chinaman who are even smarter than me. Only four of ’em, I guarantee you. Getting on it is part of the trick. Navigating it is the other trick. Using it is the final trick. All twisty, complex, under multiple two-factor codes and sliding algorithms. Grad students and psychos only. But it’s where you can find a hit man, snuff porn, actual explosive manufacturing supplies and RPG missiles in bulk at a good rate, that sort of thing. It’s the superego of the ’Net. As I say, hard to get on.”

  “And you made it easy to get on?”

  “I set up a site for them, but the key ingredient was that it had to be findable, traceable. I had to build factors into it so someone like Agent Neill or one of the Israeli wonderkids could deconstruct it and trace it back to its origin, which would be the i 8 that I had in my hand, presumably linkable to someone else. It sounded like a key to an elaborate plot.”

  “You did all this?”

  “I did all that.”

  “What was the website called?”

  “I don’t know. I showed them how to set it up, but they didn’t want me to see what it was. So I just know it’s there, and all that will be revealed when the time comes.”

  “Can we find it, Neill?” asked Nick.

  “Without a name or a web address, not likely. There’s more—they probably haven’t posted it yet. It’s all set up to go, but they don’t want anyone discovering it prematurely. So it’s ready, and they dump when it’s appropriate to their plans—that is, when they want us to find it.”

  “Not helpful,” said Nick.

  “Yeah, but you still learn stuff,” said Mr. Wakowski. “I’ll play Agatha Christie here, if you don’t mind. Their plan is to use the ballistics program to snipe somebody. The shot will be taken from Pluto. They will leave the iPhone so it will be found. Agent Neill will hire a lab to crack it, and they will see something that leads to the website, deconstruct it, and track it back to whoever the Mexican vulture keeper stole the iPhone from. Ergo: he’s blamed, no one even knows they were in play. Maybe he’s dead. That’s what I’d do if I were (a) running this thing and (b) totally insane.”

  “I think we figured that out on our own already,” Nick said. “But since you’re a genius, let me ask a more general question. Does this seem like the sort of thinking you’d affiliate with the kind of criminal organization we’re talking about?”

  “Excellent question,” said Mr. Wakowski. “The answer is no. Our boys—the happy tots who reached out to me—are more forceful and direct by far.”

  “What is this thing typical of?”

  “It’s got high-IQ intelligence agency written all over it. CIA, Mossad, MI5, Chinese Ministry of State Security, Russian MV—real big boys in the game. Someone used to playing deflection shots, in love with the false-flag paradigm, fully aware of media tendencies and how it’s all going to play out on a stage when the cable morons get on it and distill it to mouth-breather level. In my experience, they love to do that sort of thing.”

  “Middle East?”

  “A stretch. But I see smarter guys.”

  “Okay,” said Nick, “I guess we’ll have to keep calling him Mr. Wakowski. Oh, wait, am I forgetting anything? Gee, I wonder what it could be?”

  Wakowski hesitated, then said, “I was hoping you’d forget.”

  “Too bad for you, pal, I just remembered it. All that is nothing without a name to put with it. Cartel, yeah. Bad people, yeah. Sworn enemies of all that’s good and holy, for sure. But I need a name, and it better be a right one or . . . vulture chow.”

  “You didn’t hear this from me. You don’t even know me. I don’t exist. But the name is Menendez.”

  36

  The range

  He thought it might be the climate. So target number two paid with his life for that experiment. Clearly, the weather data from the service was too generic. It would have been downloaded from the nearest regional U.S. weather station, and that could be miles away. Good enough for TV, good enough for government work, but not good enough for man killing at a mile’s distance.

  So instead of doing it that way, as FirstShot allowed, he laboriously filled in the blanks of data from his own Kestrel there at the range. Tedious, but tedium was a material snipers trafficked in. Wind speed, direction, altitude, temperature, humidity, and other subtleties of weather reality that only meteorologists knew, stuff so arcane, no TV guy even bothered with it.

  He took his shot.

  Better, but not good enough. The first one hit about fifteen yards shy. And although he dispatched target number two on the second shot, on The Day he would not be allowed a ranging shot. It didn’t work that way in the real world. He had to know he was on with the first press of the trigger.

  There was really only one thing to do: check the precision of the scope clicks and do the math. So the next day, instead of shooting at a mile, he shot at a hundred yards, at benchrest targets.

  The exercise: five targets vertically arrayed a hundred yards out, stapled to blank cardboard and mounted in a frame. But the hundred yards itself was not simply lased for distance, it was hand-measured—again, not from the muzzle of the rifle but from the elevation knob of the Schmidt & Bender—for the most accurate possible hundred yards. He started at the bottom, fired a three-shot group. He moved the elevation knob up one click and fired three more at the second target. Then the third, the fourth, and the
fifth, in the same one-click increments. Of course, for every click, the three-shot cluster moved up a bit. But how much? Was it the one minute-of-angle Schmidt & Bender’s brilliant minds said or was it more? Or less? Working the target sheet with calipers, he determined that each click produced a rise in strike of not 0.552 inch, as per specs, but 0.489. It was so tiny an increment, it would have meant almost nothing out to three hundred yards, but with each leap in distance, it grew larger and larger. Thus, he was able to reconfigure FirstShot algorithms so that the click measure was 0.489.

  Target number three: first shot, via FirstShot, was an ankle hit. The man—large, black, and dissolute—slid down, screaming, his lower leg shattered. Not good enough. Juba corrected a click, fired again, and eternally stilled him.

  Target number four: close—closest yet—but low stomach. Probably not survivable, but given the speed of arrival of emergency personnel and the sophistication of trauma medicine, survival could not be ruled out. He had to hit the chest, destroy the heart and both lungs, sever all arteries and veins converging at the nexus of the heart. That hit, with a thousand pounds of energy and a sharpened missile more than a third of an inch wide, was the only guarantee.

  Target number five.

  Target number six.

  Target number seven: a tough one, a fighter, he wouldn’t stop moving, he yanked, pulled, twisted the cuffs that restrained him and was still squirming heroically at the arrival of the bullet.

  But all succumbed to the first shot of the finally correct program.

  * * *

  • • •

  He was done with prayers. His food had been delivered and eaten. He had worked out, sweated hard, spent forty minutes on Systema Spetsnaz, sparring with a bag, and finally showered. Now he settled down for a good reread of Jack O’Connor’s The Complete Book of Shooting, a favorite text. He could read what might be called shooter’s English, having taught himself first rudiments, then technical terms. At first, it was very slow, but with dedication, energy, and time, he’d mastered enough to read texts that dealt with his subject, and his mind could stay with the math, which most could not. He was absorbed in “Revolution Theory II: The Wind Factor” when the knock came.