Game of Snipers

by Stephen Hunter

“No, he’s all right. I mean Jorge, the talker. He makes me jittery.”

  As he changed from Arabic to Spanish, Jorge acquired an ashen look. He swallowed, smiled awkwardly, licked his lips.

  “I understand,” said Menendez, and nodded to La Culebra.

  La Culebra cut Jorge’s throat in one second, and Jorge died in seven.

  39

  McConnell Air Force Base, outside Wichita, Kansas

  For the record, this is Special Agent Jean Chandler, FBI, about to commence interrogation of Jared Akim, suspect in re triple homicide in Detroit, Michigan, affidavits on file, other charges also listed in affidavit. Also present is Agent Gershon Gold, of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, a contract advisor on terrorist matters by formal arrangement, documents also on file. Mr. Akim is without legal representation as per his signed agreement with the Drug Enforcement Agency, on file, reference C445-002. The session is being witnessed and videotaped.”

  They were in a safe house DEA ran on the well-protected grounds of McConnell, four miles outside downtown Wichita. Now and then, F-18s howled into the air, and the place vibrated like a tuning fork. Bob and Nick and Neill watched the proceedings from behind a rather obvious one-way mirror into the squalid interrogation room. Outside, various DEA officials muttered and stewed, having lost sole custody of their prize, having lost the administrative war with the FBI, and having once again had their noses rubbed in their low status in the federal law enforcement pyramid.

  The boy sat in orange scrubs, his head still bandaged. But he did not look groggy. Quite the contrary, his eyes glittered with wit and intelligence, and he seemed relaxed, even happy. He got that they were playing head games with him by putting a beautiful young woman in front of him—in real life, she’d never date him!—and a portly, scholarly Jew. They were supposedly the bête noirs of his fevered jihadi imagination, but he merely thought it was kind of funny. He liked pretty girls, and, actually—don’t tell anybody—he liked Jews. So the idea that a Jew and a babe would shake him was patently absurd! What, they thought he was an idiot?

  “Mr. Akim, how do you feel today?” Chandler asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “The head?”

  “It hurts, even ten ibuprofens in, but if it hurts, that means I’m still breathing, which is good news.”

  “You’re out of concussion protocols?”

  “Yeah, but I still hear the sound of bad music.”

  They spent a few minutes running through the mundane facts of Jared’s existence: age, place of birth, education, disposition, parents, family, intellectual journey into radicalism, anger at white girls, so on and so forth.

  “For the record, please describe your current circumstances.”

  “Okay, you don’t want the Marcel Proust version, you want the action-movie version?”

  Chandler tilted her head, caught off guard by his wit. “That’s exactly what we want.”

  “I got involved in some dope stuff. Stupid, but I needed money. One thing turned to another, and I’d partnered up with this heavy dude named Ali La Pointe. I had no idea how heavy. I thought we were going to this drug house to see The Man and buy a large chunk of product, which we were going to move in Grosse Pointe, where I have lots of connex. It was a very win-win deal.”

  “It didn’t work out that way?”

  “This guy Ali goes nuts when one of the dope guys pulls a shotgun on him. We were unarmed! But he’d made a kind of spear thing and got him in the eye. God, I was not ready for that. Squosh—like, that was the sound. He grabs the shotgun and goes all SEAL on the other guys. Boom-boom-boom, and he’s put them down. Some crazy woman comes downstairs, and I don’t remember the next part. Anyway, by the time I sort of get straight, we’re in a Benz S, heading out of town, with a pile of dough and a shotgun in a stolen car.”

  “So you claim to be the victim of Ali La Pointe as much as the others?”

  “Ma’am, if you’d seen what a guy looks like with six inches of stick in his eye, you’d have been an obedient pup too. Really, no way I was going to do anything he didn’t want me to do. I knew what he was capable of.”

  “For the record, all the forensics indicate it was you who beat the woman.”

  “I thought she was dead. She must have had a skull thick as the polar ice cap to survive that pounding. Yeah, well, as part of the deal, that’s sort of going to be dialed way, way down to second-degree assault, time served. So I’d rather not talk about it. I don’t think I have to, legally. Anyhow, this Ali La Pointe and I make a run for it. Again, he’s calling the shots, I’m the punk. Somehow he has a number for somebody big in the trade, and we arrange a pickup. We just make it out of a couple of bad situations by a hair, and we’re heading west. I had no idea we were even in Kansas.

  “So, early in the morning, we pull into this abandoned farm. Another vehicle is waiting for us. The head guy is some silver-haired fox out of the Ricardo Montalbán school. He was all charm and smoothness, and he smelled like rich Corinthian leather. He welcomes us, he’s the boss, and as he leads us to his SUV—it was the size of a PT boat—he puts his arm around me like I’m his son or something, but he has a gun in it and shoots me in the head.”

  “Why aren’t you dead?”

  “Good question. Perhaps I am the chosen of Allah.”

  “Perhaps you are a chronically immature delinquent from Grosse Pointe, high IQ, but still in so far over his head, he can’t see the surface,” said Chandler.

  “Hmm, I wonder which one? Anyway, as they explain to me, it was dark, and maybe I lowered my head to see where I was stepping, and maybe he held the pistol slightly upward. It’s all about the angles. At ninety degrees, the bullet excavates the Lincoln Tunnel through my brain. At thirty degrees, it blows out a chunk of scalp and hair, bleeds like hell, and whacks me into total unconsciousness. I wake up—surprise, surprise—in a hospital guarded by the State Troopers who found me in the bushes. It’s three days later. They’ve got me on the Detroit thing. Since it’s drugs, another state, they turn me over to DEA. DEA interrogates me, and when we come to the silver-fox guy, their eyes turn to saucers. They don’t care about Ali La Pointe, he’s a low-level guy, and the system will eat him alive sooner or later. They want this Menendez, even if they can’t figure out what the hell he was doing riding shotgun in the pickup of a low-level dealer. But that’s not my department. A little of this, a little of that, my dad hires me a hotshot Kansas City lawyer, and a deal is struck. I ID Menendez and testify against him, they forget everything they have on me, and after he’s in, I go Witness Protection. I become Jerry Smith of Bone Fossil, Idaho, or something. But I’m alive, I’ve put the fox away, I’m a hero, I have a life, and I get to see my folks once in a while.”

  “You’re a very lucky young man,” said the Jewish fellow.

  “I owe it all to clean living and a fast outfield,” Jared said.

  “If I may, one thing. This other man, Ali La Pointe. Interesting.”

  “He’s out of the picture,” said Jared. “I mean officially, as per my agreement.”

  “Yes. However, it is interesting that Ali La Pointe is the name of the charismatic and illiterate terrorist hero of Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers.”

  Was that a twitch engulfing the young man’s Adam’s apple? A swallow, a flick of dry tongue over dry lips?

  “Now, that could mean three things,” said the man. “It could mean this chap was really named Ali La Pointe, after the movie role. Possible, perhaps. Or it could mean that an intellectually promiscuous, rather smart-ass young man decided to put one over on the dumb American police and use a name that every highbred radical Arab teenager in the world would recognize but no DEA functionary would. Or—and I believe this one, actually—as an inexperienced junior terrorist undergoing his first interrogation, he chose the first name that came to his mind, which was from his subconscious memory of that movie—i
t’s superb, by the way—and named the mystery figure in the narrative, Ali La Pointe. Later, he possibly regretted it but was stuck with it. This last possibility, I must say, seems more like you.”

  “Who is this guy?” Jared asked Chandler.

  “He is assisting us,” she said.

  “Okay, who’s us?”

  “Us is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You would know that if you’d been paying close attention.”

  “Yeah, but my DEA deal still holds. I don’t know what you guys are here for, I really don’t. This is straight drug shit, I’m going to help them get Menendez; otherwise, I go into the general population at Kinross and last about six seconds before they kill me.”

  “Actually, your deal is now off the table,” said Chandler. “It was conditional on your willingness to tell the truth. In all things. You rather artfully constructed a narrative that gave DEA what it wanted and yet you hid your real mission, which was to help Juba the Sniper. So your deal is undone, and off you go to Detroit and then Kinross. If you want, I can help you pick out panty hose for your new life as a bitch.”

  40

  The ranch

  The new rifle was fine, the new translator a great improvement. He too was elderly, calm, seemingly amused by this situation, so clearly he did not know what had happened to the man he had replaced. His name was Alberto, and he was one of those awkward figures caught between opposing cultures, the Mexican part of him not happy with the Arab part, or maybe it was the other way around. He was skinny and thin of hair, but he had about him a teacher’s air. He also had watchful eyes, a trait Juba admired.

  As for the rifle, it was indeed Remington’s 700, the police model, with an oversize bolt knob and a shorter barrel for easy maneuvering, in some kind of spongy camouflaged stock from Hogue, the whole thing in a sort of coyote gray or dun desert camouflage, not so much for practicality but so that American shooters could get a sniper buzz off of it. The scope, a Leupold 4–12×, was also new and had been mounted in the gun store, wherever that was, by an armorer using Leupold rings and mounting hardware. The kit included a new Leupold range finder with proprietary ballistics software.

  The armorer was a sound craftsman, and Juba found everything tight, the scope properly indexed to dead zero, and was pleased. Additionally, it was prethreaded for a suppressor with the standard dimensions of eight by twenty-four, and from somewhere in Menendez’s store of armaments, among the gold-plated AKs and the ruby-crusted Glocks, a Gemtech suppressor had been found that fit those dimensions, and it screwed right on. The range finder was preprogrammed and indexed to common commercial loads, and Juba’s 140-grain Hornady Match was one of them.

  He zeroed in with several shots at a hundred yards and discovered that it delivered sub-one-inch groups at that distance, through the suppressor. The next day, he moved the target to two hundred yards, and then to three hundred, zeroing carefully each step of the way. This new cartridge, the 6.5 Creedmoor, was living up to its hype. It kicked less than a .308 and yet was more accurate. The cartridges fit perfectly into the magazine well, being essentially a .308 round necked down to accept a .264 bullet. It would have made a great sniper round, he thought. Working with the Leupold ballistics software program proved without issue. He dialed in the weather and the velocity—as tested, not listed by the manufacturer—and came exactly to the right windage and elevation clicks at three hundred yards. As a midrange shooting system, the outfit was up to his standards.

  On the fourth day, Menendez brought him explicit diagrams.

  “This is no good. I must see it myself.”

  “You will. I bring you this for familiarity only. You will see how professional my people are. They know many things.”

  The sniper said nothing, eyes betraying nothing, body betraying nothing. He simply addressed the document.

  He saw a street grid, one block marked 4th Street, on which stood an immense building, as described by a rectangle, some kind of official structure, judging from its size. A diagonal line had been drawn across the map, passing over two blocks, tracing the trajectory of a shot. Its source was a circular structure, part of some kind of connected complex. Sounding out the letters, he could tell that the name of that street was Market.

  “You have no issues using an infidel religious site for your work?” asked Menendez.

  “It is nothing to me. If it offers the position, I will use it.”

  “You will be in the dome of a Catholic church called the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. It’s perfect for our purposes. One of its six windows faces the target zone exactly, clean, unobstructed shooting. It’s easy to access, at that time of day likely to be largely empty, and its priests will yield quickly and without drama to our functionaries. A glazier will accompany you to the selected window—it’s an ancient building, everything is at least a hundred years old—and he will remove the glass from your shooting position.”

  “I will have to examine it myself and make certain that all is as you say it is.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “You would not lie. But you might see what you want to see, not what is there. I also will need a tripod on which to place the rifle. You can acquire one at any camera or large sporting goods store.”

  “Of course. Your target will be the stairway into the Fourth Street entrance of the federal courthouse. At two-thirty that afternoon, a carload of U.S. Marshals will deliver this witness to the courthouse. In the brief seconds that he is ascending the steps, he will be accessible to you.”

  “Your intelligence is very good.”

  “And expensive. Now, if—”

  “There is more. I want a demolition, radio-controlled, placed nearby. Its point isn’t to destroy but to stun. When it detonates, the party will halt, look around—all of them—for the threat. It’s basic animal behavior. It must be detonated as they reach the top step. He will be frozen for perhaps a second, and I will take him. Time in flight from that range is less than a second, and he will still be at least that before everybody realizes what is happening and pushes him forward. It’ll be too late by then.”

  “I appreciate your confidence.”

  “I do not miss. Now, tell me how we shall escape.” He parsed the diagram closely.

  “No elevator down,” he said. “It will take some time. Upon detonation, a car should pull up outside. Probably best to leave the rifle, as its awkwardness makes it difficult to maneuver.”

  “Fine. It was bought under untraceable arrangements.”

  “We leave, transfer cars quickly, and—”

  “To the airport. Where my jet awaits.”

  “All the men with me, they will be armed. Just in case.”

  “Heavily. Well-trained, ready to fight and die, if necessary, to make your escape good.”

  “It shouldn’t come to that.”

  “The locals, even the Marshals,” said Menendez, “are earnest but not the kind of highly trained, highly experienced operators on our team. They can’t possibly react quickly unless they have someone of extraordinary talent on-site. And that is highly unlikely.”

  41

  McConnell Air Force Base

  Jared, you have to deal with this.”

  “Ah. What was the name again? He called himself Ali La Pointe, that’s all I know.”

  “You’re in direct contradiction with Imam el-Tariq of Dearborn. In fact, it’s his testimony that he chose you specially to act as Juba’s facilitator, as he got acclimated to the United States. According to him, you spent more time with Juba than anybody. And if anybody knows Juba’s secrets, it would be you.”

  “You know, I think I need a lawyer.”

  “I would agree with that, but, unfortunately, you signed that right away. You’re here all by your lonesome. Your choices are somewhat limited.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Silence is not a
n option.”

  “What are my options?”

  “We can remainder you to Detroit, and the general prison population at the state penitentiary at Kinross. My goodness, I hope that doesn’t happen. The results would not be pretty.”

  “Or?” said Jared.

  “A case could be made that, in assisting Juba, you became an accessory before the fact to all his crimes. Since one took place in Israel, the Israelis, who are very interested in Juba, could demand extradition, for interrogation by their intelligence services.”

  “Ouch. Okay, so what’s your deal?”

  “Same as the one you’ve got. You go this afternoon to the courthouse and testify before the grand jury. That gives DEA license to pick up Raúl Menendez. You testify against him in a court of law. He goes away. You go into Witness Protection. All that stays the same. However, upon your testimony this afternoon, you are flown to a heavily guarded FBI safe house, also on military property, and you give us everything you have on Juba. I mean everything. No playing cute, as you did with DEA. We will go over it time and time again. We will medicate you, as your permission to do so will be part of the deal. We’ll go deep hypnosis. You will also work at length with the finest police sketch artist in the world, and you will give us a good portrait of the sniper. And if we feel you’re holding back in any other way, the interrogation will become sterner. And if we fail to stop him and he commits whatever mission he was sent here to commit, that will go very hard on you. When it’s all done, we’ll loan you out to the Israelis, and any other country—Malaysia, for example, or the Philippines—that has suffered at Juba’s hands. Then back to Kinross. If there is a ‘then.’”

  Jared sighed, signaling epic self-pity at the horribleness of what was happening to him. It was so wrong. He didn’t realize that it was just the world routinely, mercilessly, rotating on the fulcrum of the innocent and the idealistic.

  “See,” he finally said, “Menendez is shit. He doesn’t matter. He tried to kill me. I was nothing to him, so turning on him, that’s cool. It’s kind of fun. Juba is different. He’s part of the cause. I don’t care about Islam, really, but I do care about the shit that my people suffer. I don’t believe in Allah or Yahweh or Jesus H. Christ, any of it. But those people are so fucked by everybody, and nobody talks for them except the Jubas.”