Game of Snipers

by Stephen Hunter

  He opened the door to find Señor Menendez, accompanied by Jorge, the translator, and by the fellow with the black sock over his head.

  “Yes.”

  “My friend, we must talk.”

  “Certainly.”

  He admitted them. He sat on the bed. Menendez took the chair, the socked one stood behind him, at his right shoulder, quickly assuming perfect stillness. More twitchily, Jorge positioned himself to the left of Menendez, but somewhat forward, where he could hear both men clearly.

  “I have heard that the shooting is going very well,” said Menendez, absent recently at the range.

  “I have addressed the system to the scope and the ballistics of the ammunition so that the precision I require is attainable. Other factors, of course, must come into play. These sorts of things are always delicate, and what happens if The Day arrives and it’s rainy or blustery? What happens if there’s a change in schedule, some sort of confusion or event near the target area? These are all factors I cannot control, yet I worry about them still. But not for much longer.”

  “Yes, yes, then your time with us is limited?”

  “Yes. There comes now the shipment of the rifle to certain people, who will place it where it must be, and my own progress toward that destination, which must be carefully handled. The effort is exhausting. If I were not so true a believer, I would have long ago faltered. But I am no fool. I know Señor Menendez is not here to chat about my fortunes and my mood.”

  “No.”

  “How may I assist?”

  He could see Jorge swallow, a sure indicator that something thorny was coming up. He felt the eyes of the man in the sock on him intently. Did they fear his reaction may cause Juba to attack? This was not promising.

  “Yes, well, I’m afraid there have to be some changes made to your schedule.”

  “The schedule is set,” said Juba. “I will adhere to it.”

  “If only it could be so, my friend, but it cannot.”

  Juba said nothing, wondering where this was going. Had the Jews found out and offered Menendez more money for Juba’s head than his sponsors had paid for their assistance?

  “You are aware that I control a considerable empire. I have built it from nothing, I have learned on my own and from my peers all the hard lessons, my discipline for security is intense, my arrangements have been brilliant, my mastery of many elements that people frequently take for granted has been exemplary. And so I have power.”

  “I have assumed as much.”

  “In all this time, I have never been seriously threatened. Neither by competitors nor by law enforcement.”

  “But now?”

  “It’s the turning of luck. You can plan for everything except bad luck. And now by a stroke of misfortune, it seems I am in jeopardy. I, me, myself. And if it comes to pass that I am arrested and put in jail, even for a few years, things become tenuous. It cannot be then ever again as it is now. The system I have built will erode without me, its caretakers—good men all—will make wrong decisions, competitors will see weakness, potential defectors will be emboldened, law enforcement efforts will double and redouble. You can see why I am concerned.”

  “I can,” said Juba. “But you must know that my mission is a mandate from God Himself. I cannot be deflected from it due to your concerns.”

  “Alas, it seems I need a man of your skills. Badly.”

  “What about this fellow right here, in the mask. He is said to be a technical of the highest degree.”

  The man in the sock made no acknowledgment.

  “He cannot do what you must do. And that is, kill a man, from afar.”

  37

  The Doll’s House, Route 16, Grapevine, Texas

  Whack Job was gone. The agents had no urge to sit in the squalid motel room, not when there was a squalid titty bar next door. So they ambled over to The Doll’s House, found it three-fourths deserted, and a blonde cogitating onstage in lights that showed off every blue vein and stretch mark, her inflated breasts a-tumble, her hips equally active, but her face a mask of lacquered ennui. She’d had better days.

  The men sat at a back table, ordered Lone Stars and Buds, with Bob doing his Diet Coke routine, asked the waitress to ask the boss to turn down the disco tunes a bit, as it wasn’t the ’70s anymore, plus they had serious talk ahead. They all looked so cop—short hair, beefy, badly fitting sport coats—that this wish was swiftly granted.

  “Okay,” said Nick. “Streibling, you’re up. Tell us about Menendez so we don’t look stupid tomorrow when we go through the files.”

  “Menendez. Big, smart, tough, tricky. More sophisticated. Not just feeding men to vultures and cutting women’s heads off. Oh, they’ll do that if they feel it advances their interests, but it’s not SOP.”

  “Who’s Menendez?”

  “Raúl Menendez. About fifty. One of the few, maybe the only, cartel hotshot with American citizenship, joint with Mexican. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his dad was getting his Ph.D. in economics. Dad went on to become the head of the Econ Department at the University of Mexico, until he died a few years ago, maybe out of grief over his son’s chosen path.”

  “So Raúl has brains from his dad’s side.”

  “His mom’s too. Well, maybe that’s where the refinement comes from. American citizen, grad student in art history, when she met and married Raúl’s dad. She’s dead too, maybe of the same grief.”

  “They should be proud he chose such a growth career,” said Nick.

  “Supersmart Raúl used tony family connections to apprentice under some of the bad dudes, then went independent ten years ago, having paid his dues, having learned the business from the ground up, having made peace with the older cartel generations so he himself didn’t end up staked out for the vultures. He seems to have been guided by a vision for what a cartel could be, not just a Nazi Murder Battalion that, incidentally, sold drugs to the bean people but an international entity, penetrating society at many different levels. They use money to buy allies in other realms of society.”

  “Smooth?”

  “Snoot Spanish and American all the way. No mestizo blood in him. That is why, alone among them, he’s also cultivated the outer world. He seems to be headquartered in L.A., where he owns some auto dealerships, shopping centers, fast-food joints, has been mentioned as a possible investor in various sporting franchises, dabbles in movies, sits on several charity boards, has a wife and three kids.”

  “Meanwhile—”

  “He’s got SoCal, NorCal, and the Pacific Coast. New Mexico, especially Albuquerque, which he owns. He moved into Texas a few years back and took out a bunch of people who objected. We found them in unhappy circumstances. Meanwhile, Raúl is flooding the barrio with the latest in designer shit, he’s big into meth and fentanyl, as well as pushing the old favorite, Mexican Mud. A late big move has a touch of genius to it: he owns an opioid pharmaceutical plant in Guadalajara and produces extremely good counterfeit merchandise, right down to the packaging. He sells cut-rate to a lot of hospitals, infirmaries, and pharmacists, and even if you go to Walgreens in Cambridge, you may be buying his stuff. He makes big dough off that. Anything that makes you go buzz seems to originate from him. DEA would do anything to bring him down, and if it happened, a lot of our beefs, particularly for the ditch floaters and alley bleeders found all over the southland when he first got here, might get cleared up. But he’s too tricky for that.”

  “Can we hit him?” asked Bob.

  “See, that’s just it. You can’t. He’s so lawyered up, you’d never get a warrant from the locals without him knowing about it. The local cops would find excuses to do nothing, even the emergency room docs might go on strike.”

  “At the federal level, we could get action.”

  “You’d think. But DEA has tried that route, and it’s never panned out. He knows if someone is
poking around, and next thing you know, smart guys from Harvard and the town’s biggest white-shoe law firm are visiting the federal judges, doing a real soft-soap approach, but making it clear that no matter what D.C. says, the locals don’t want any ruckus here. Because they know that when the mandarins go back to Peking, the blood will flow, and it won’t be—pardon the harsh truth—out of the veins of any mandarin.”

  “Okay, he’s tough and smart.”

  “As for the warrant, here’s another wrinkle: it only works if you can find him. He has no headquarters. His headquarters is his brain, which he takes with him everywhere he goes. And he goes a lot. He likes big, fancy houses, and he owns a batch of ’em—penthouses, places in Europe and the Far East. Under his name, under his wife’s name, under various corporate and dodge-company names. DEA doesn’t even know half of them. Sees family in L.A. about once every two months. So we don’t know where he is, even if we could get the warrant without loud sirens going off. So nobody’s ever made the big commitment of assets necessary to raid. It just hasn’t seemed worth it.”

  “Any penetration?” Nick asked.

  Streibling shook his head. “Very tough security, lots of checks and cross-checks built into the system. He travels with a crew of twelve ex–Mexican Special Forces guys, SEAL-quality gunfighters, and a spooky guy who always wears a sock on his head.”

  “What’s that about?” asked Bob.

  “Nobody knows.”

  Nick summarized his conclusions.

  “I can see that he would be perfect for Juba and Juba’s people. Solid, secure, able to provide Juba with logistics and privacy. Able to get him around the country. Everywhere he goes, he’ll have operators with him. They’re the guys who picked him up in Ohio and got him where he is now.”

  “And ambitious,” said Neill. “Saw a chance to link up with some sort of extranational or transnational entity and took it. Not just for the money, but for the experience of going international. He’s a globalist.”

  “What about cyber?” asked Nick.

  “Well,” said Neill, “we can at least go full-press war on him, now that we’ve got a target. Somewhere, sooner or later, there’s a crack.”

  “That’s what they say about us,” said Nick, with a humor-free laugh.

  “Yeah, but we can keep trying, and, sooner or later—”

  “Later ain’t no good,” said Swagger. “He’s on schedule right now, and we’re not sure how much time is left. These Mexican operators get him into position, he pulls off the shot, and they get him out of there. All the forensics points to poor Brian A. Waters, loner and gun nut. Depending on who he hits—and, I bet, we can all guess—some kind of major shit hits some kind of major fan, and suddenly, somehow, it’s a different world.”

  “Ah, Christ,” said Nick. “This one is tough. I don’t see how we can proact. We can monitor, get ourselves included in the loop of every agency that encounters Menendez, we can apply our analytical skills and our imaginations to various scenarios and pick the most likely one and go against them. But we’ll always be behind the curve, action-wise, never in front of it.”

  “Well,” said Streibling, “something could be happening.”

  All eyes went to him.

  “Enlighten us, Agent Streibling. I must say, you seem well informed.”

  “I am. I’m about sixth-generation Lone Star law enforcement with Texas Rangers, Dallas Metro Shotgun Squad, Border Patrol—all that good DNA in my veins.”

  “Go ahead, spill some beans.”

  “As I say, cop people. Cops, cops, cops. They talk to cops who talk to cops. Agents, supervisors, techs—whatever—everybody talks, and some of us listen. And who do I listen to, especially with two martinis in him on a Saturday night? My wife’s sister is married to a guy very high up in DEA here in Dallas.”

  “More beans, please,” said Nick.

  “This is so hot, it hasn’t even hit the gossip circuit yet. You’ve got to know that Menendez drives DEA nuts. They want him so bad, it makes them crazy. They don’t care about anything but Menendez. Major effort, so much work and man-hours and lab time, and, so far, nothing. Until—”

  He paused for the theater of it. Then he gestured to the waitress that he’d like another brew. Nothing like milking the big moment. Meanwhile, a new girl came onstage. Asian, somewhere between twenty-two and seventy-two, left arm tattooed with dragons fighting tigers and empresses telling off warlords. La fille jaune had eyes like headlights edged with coal tar, a good, slim bod, the upstairs rack with the required silicone filled to the brim. Her hips seemed rocket-fueled; the music was really bad. Bob tore his eyes away and returned to the moment, in which Streibling was finishing his first swallow.

  “Menendez, as I say, is supersmart and supercareful. But I hear, from my brother-in-law, that he’s made one slipup. He’s committed a major crime of violence, one that could put him away for a long time.”

  “How do they know that?”

  “They have a witness who will testify to it and whose testimony will stand up to any cross, no matter how tough. That’s because Menendez shot him in the head. Somehow he survived. His name is Jared Akim.”

  38

  The ranch

  You see, my friend,” said Menendez, “this isn’t a request, it is what must be. You are the tool of my deliverance, and my god, or yours, has put you in my hands at exactly the right moment, while at the same time it in no way jeopardizes the bigger operation for which you were sent. It is a sideshow, a little extra fuss, perhaps best regarded as a training exercise. I want your friendship, I value your skill, I admire your courage, but I must have your cooperation.”

  Juba considered, while Jorge caught up with the translation. Really, what choice did he have? With these monsters, one never knew what could happen. They had no morality, no commitment, no belief in anything as perfect as the caliphate, no belief in God.

  “And if I don’t?”

  “It would be so regrettable.”

  “You realize that if you go back on your deal, the people who believe in me will declare war upon you.”

  “What a waste that would be. Many would die, and for what? We should be brothers. We have common enemies, and slaying them is so much more important than petty squabbles.”

  Juba sighed. He had no choice, not here, not now, not so close. But it was a breach of etiquette he would not forget.

  “With that superrifle of yours,” said Menendez, “it seems to be no problem at all. You can kill a gnat at a mile. Here, you would kill a gnat at a quarter mile.”

  “I cannot use that rifle. I must use a different rifle, and I must have maximum security, minimum time in the vulnerable shooting site, and a clear and efficient escape.”

  “Is there something wrong with the rifle?”

  “There is nothing wrong with the rifle. But I have spent months working with it—the scope and the ballistics software and the ammunition—to achieve a state of perfection. I cannot now take it on another operation, where I have to change all the settings, where it’s liable to be banged about, treated roughly, perhaps dropped. Then I’d have to readjust, retest, and sometimes you can never quite find what you once had. Second, if I use that rifle—a .338 Lapua Magnum—the Americans will understand exactly why I am here. They may or may not know already. I’m not sure what the Israelis learned from their raid and what they shared with the Americans. For all the Americans know, I’m merely suspected of the nebulous crime of terrorism, which could be anything from blowing up a shopping center to poisoning the water supply to filing a suit against a Hollywood movie.”

  “I see. I can work with that. I am quite reasonable. Let us know what is required. It shall be done.”

  “I prefer to plan my own operation. I will see things that your people could never understand. To use my gift, you must let it express itself. Without my own plan, my confidence will be considerabl
y lessened. This is not an easy task. I will need to acquire, zero, and test a new rifle. I will need to study the site, consider time of day, distance, weather—all those factors. Like so many, you think this can easily be done.”

  “Rifle?”

  “The caliber will be called 6.5 Creedmoor. Made by Remington. Heavy barrel, perhaps the police model, easily acquired. The Model 700: they used them against us to great effect in Baghdad. They used them in Kuwait. They used them in Vietnam. It’s a wonderful rifle, and shooting it will be a pleasure. You must also acquire a Leupold scope, at least 10×. I need ten boxes of ammunition, Match-grade, preferably Hornady, as the caliber is their creation, so they would understand it best. Preferably, this weapon is bought used, the scope mounted and zeroed by the previous owner. If it must be purchased new, have the store mount the scope and zero it. That saves considerable time, and time is something we need. And I need a few days here to work with it. I need also plans of the site, location of the target, distances, mean weather conditions, time of day of shot.”

  “My people are all Special Forces. They have experience. They will scout and assemble a preliminary plan. Yours will be the last say.”

  “All right,” said Juba. “That seems all right.”

  “It shall be done,” said Menendez.

  “Oh,” Juba nodded toward one of the men, “and keep that one away from me. He makes me nervous.”

  “You mean La Culebra?”