Game of Snipers

by Stephen Hunter

  “Boots,” he said. “Get my boots.”

  They pulled out a pair of splendid boots and set about putting them on their master’s feet.

  “Excellent,” he said. “Now I will depart.”

  “What should we do?” asked Rita.

  “Ah—tell no one a thing. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Here, this will help.”

  He cut her throat. The five-inch slicer, seriously curved to yield but a single, murderously sharp edge. It cut through flesh like butter, especially when guided by a sure, strong hand.

  She fell, bleeding, choking, dying.

  He turned to Rosa.

  “Why do you do this?” she asked.

  “Shh,” he said, and cut her throat too.

  54

  The ranch

  Nick got to the ranch house as soon as it became clear nobody was doing any shooting. Mostly, he found guys dressed like frogmen at a gun show poking around curiously. They had the aspect of children at a new amusement park. Maybe there was a method to it, but chiefly it was guys who thought they might have gotten into a gunfight coming down to the realization that the gunfight had been canceled.

  He went to the SWAT commander—Ward Taylor, of course—got a quick summary of the action.

  “Those are the bodies?” Nick could see them in the position of the recently extinguished—that is, helter-skelter, limbs awry, grotesque and utterly still, beyond care or menace, pretty much scattered all over the place.

  “We got six DOA in the big house. Three more outside. Maybe more as we check more closely. One you gotta see to believe.”

  Taylor led Nick into the famous Hanson Ranch’s big, beautiful main room and pointed out a sack of man flaccid on floor in an elegant gray suit, silk shirt, ascot, perfect white teeth, and no upper skull. This sector of the room had been redecorated in Early American headshot.

  “You sure this guy Juba isn’t secretly working for DEA?” asked Taylor. “I’m pretty sure this one is, or was, Menendez, the cartel big shot. That’s him. Look up and you’ll see his brains. Now, looking over here, we got a batch of high-speed operators, all with snails in their ears, good tac gear and high-end assault rifles, mainly M4s, with all kinds of flashy optics. The optics didn’t do ’em any good. All look single-tapped, center chest.”

  “That’s Juba,” said Nick. “He’s that good a shot. Any sign of—”

  “No, but we’re running another, more thorough search. Here’s the odd part. Two women, upstairs bedroom, lookers, naked, throats cut. Cowboy boot tracks in the blood. Not sure who that guy would be, but it definitely wasn’t our boy Juba who took out Menendez and the security people. The tracks led to a closet, the closet led to a secret alcove, which led to a spiral staircase which led to a tunnel. I’m betting this place is honeycombed with tunnels.”

  “That’s how Juba made it out too. Goddamn, he’s a slippery eel. Let’s get the dogs in here and see if we can find a track.”

  “They’re coming in with the next relay.”

  “Okay, everybody,” he said to the room. “Sorry, the night isn’t over yet. We have to get on Juba. Maybe the dogs will bring him down.”

  He turned to Chandler, off the walker, still hobbling, but game enough to tag along.

  “Where’s Swagger? He’s tracked before.”

  “Boss,” said Chandler, “you left him on the perimeter, remember?”

  “Yeah, I forgot. Okay, we need him.”

  He went to radio.

  “This is Command. All units clear and secure?”

  One by one, each Hammer element reported in, all objectives taken, no casualties. The street agents had begun to process the bewildered survivors, but that info wouldn’t be collated into a coherent picture for some time.

  No Swagger on the ’Net.

  “Swagger? Swagger, this is Command. Swagger, report please, give me your sitrep.”

  “God, I hope he hasn’t taken off again,” said Chandler.

  “I knew I should have left somebody with him. Where the hell could he have gone?”

  * * *

  • • •

  La Culebra slipped down the low corridor, hunched, tracking his way by flashlight, smelling dirt, feeling along the timber shoring, feeling the fragility of the underground passageway. It seemed as if it could collapse at any second. There were seven tunnels out of the house; this was not the best of them. It didn’t matter. What mattered was, getting out, somehow commanding a vehicle, and fleeing the area under the cover of dark. Like a vampire, he could travel only by night, for the mask made him too obvious. In rural Mexico, daylight travel was possible, but here in el Norte it was beyond question.

  He knew he had to escape the raiders. Who were they? Again, it didn’t matter. The Tijuana Cartel? Colombians? Russian gangsters out of Vegas with commando experience? Or any of a dozen other outfits who wanted to extinguish Señor Menendez from the earth and take his place as El Supremo. La Policía? Maybe state operators from a country that wanted the cartel business for itself. Rogue Green Berets? It didn’t matter.

  Only one thing mattered and that was escape.

  He came at last to the end, climbed up a ladder, pushed aside a flimsy door, and climbed into night air. He blinked, checking. He was alone, over the crest from the big house, oriented toward Route 193. He had to veer toward it, somehow get out of the zone of police activity and get himself a car. If he had to, he would kill everyone who stood a chance of preventing him from doing that.

  He waited a bit for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, feeling a night wind against him, though it was still warmish out. Above, low clouds, the air heavy with the threat of rain. A front was said to be coming in from the west. Good, it would cover his smell and melt his tracks. He looked back in the direction of the house, and though the crest obscured it, he could see the pulsating illumination of the red-blue staccato rhythm lighting the low clouds, confirming that the raiders were indeed police. He thanked God for the good luck that got him on the run before, rather than after, the attack. Juba may have killed Menendez, but his shot had saved La Culebra from the raiders. So it goes in the mad world. He was alive now, or at least free, with a good shot at escape because of it.

  He tried to reconstruct in his mind the lay of roads and fields on this side of the house and came to the conclusion that if he trended north, which he could determine by glimpses of the highway a mile or so away, he would intercept the entry road to the property, could follow that east off the property to 193.

  He knew he had to move fast. These raiders would soon be organized, and, once organized, they’d call in reinforcements. They’d organize search parties, forensics teams, interview the staff, and put together a picture of who was there and what they had done. Of course, they’d discover Rita and Rosita and understand that the Arab wasn’t responsible, he was too busy killing Menendez and the bodyguards to bother with putas. So the staff would know another player was responsible and they would soon give up information on the man in the mask, and the search for him would begin. The raiders would be provoked by a man who liked the knife so much. And, sooner or later, they would find the other bodies and realize that his hobby was essentially killing young women, and he would shortly become a high priority for them. How could they care so much about putas? They lived to serve and die. That was reality. To care was more gringo madness.

  And then—was this evidence that God had not forsaken His most wayward of children?—he saw it. A sedan, on the entry road, in the midst of the blackness. Its headlights were on. In the next second, he made out the languid shape of a man lounging against the bumper. Now, what was this strange hombre doing here? He didn’t appear to be a sentry and was on no kind of guard duty, not from the position he had assumed. He wasn’t dressed like a raider, instead basically wearing the clothes of an American at the mall, jeans and a li
ght jacket. And he had no machine gun or helmet. He wasn’t smoking, he wasn’t on the radio, he just seemed sort of disgruntled, according to his posture, a bad boy exiled from the main action by a stern authority.

  The Mexican reached under his shirt, selected his seven-inch, and withdrew it. Bone grip, tight, thin, and checkered by the bladesmith, a dagger meant to kill by thrusting deep into the organs, but sharpened on both edges so that a quick, strong slash would open the body, perhaps fatally, certainly enough to paralyze by shock so that he could get the point into the chest and puncture the heart. It was a good blade. He loved it. The Toledo steel whispered as it came from the leather. He began his slow approach, though he could see that the man was old, perhaps some kind of cranky derelict or local law enforcement senior citizen moved out of the action for everybody’s safety and disarmed. In any event, he would die quickly under the blade, and killing him would be, as it always was, a supreme pleasure. Another one! The two women, targets of opportunity, and now this lanky, stupid gringo. God was bountiful tonight.

  He drew close and closer, amazed at how uninterested the man was in everything around him.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was not Swagger’s best moment. He stood there, fulminating in the dark, occasionally going on the ’Net to learn that there had been no gunfight, and they were trying to get things sorted out.

  What am I supposed to do? he wondered.

  He went off ’Net again. Somehow, he hadn’t been figured on this possibility, much less figured it out. He didn’t want to go in on foot alone. The boys were still nervous, not quite sure what they had uncovered. Yet at the same time, Nick had said he’d send an all-clear and he hadn’t. He didn’t want to interrupt the radio transmissions with his own questions, because they had too much to do and didn’t need interruption. He could drive in, but some hotshot might empty a mag into a strange vehicle appearing from nowhere. His best bet, obviously, was to wait it out just a few more minutes. The secondary convoy, with forensics people and other crime scene processors, medical personnel and equipment for the anticipated casualties, as well as dogs to track escapees, was said to be on the way. He would latch onto that. It couldn’t be more than five minutes or so away.

  And just to fuck things up even more, a cold rain began to fall. If the skies really opened up, the rain could turn things to mud and destroy any tracks or scents left behind, assuming that, as it now appeared, the sniper had in fact again evaded them. The guy had more lives than a cat.

  These things filled his mind. That meant he’d totally given up on tactical awareness. That meant he’d made the old man’s most likely mistake: not paying attention. So his reflexes were shut down, and if there was a footstep, a snap of a twig, the brush of legs sprinting through bush—anything at all—he missed it, and the man hit him hard, filling his brain with chaotic flash and infinite regret, and he lost another second, wondering, Huh? What the fuck? and he was down and pinned.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was too easy. The strike of the keen predator against the unaware prey. La Culebra drove his left forearm hard into the old man’s head, knocking his baseball cap awry, scrambling his mind, while his full body weight, propelled at near maximum burst speed, sent the old arms akimbo and broke him fast to the earth. La Culebra knew the tricks, and, with killing speed, he laced his left arm through the old man’s, pinned it, achieving maximum leverage, and put his full strength against the enemy. The old man flattened, gulping, perhaps grunting, even as he understood he hadn’t the strength of his own to defy the attacker. In another second, the old man was helpless.

  “You should pay attention, old one,” La Culebra said in English, for he recognized him as a gringo, noting that he looked like an old-time cowboy, a marshal or town sheriff, all crags and wrinkles.

  “Now it is time for you to go,” he said, rather enjoying the moment and the intimacy between killer and victim.

  He put the dagger point into the man’s neck, below the ear, and the glare from the headlights showed the blue blur that signified the carotid just a quarter inch under the white skin, which even now picked up the gossamer reflection of the rain drops beginning to crash against it.

  “But you should see he who slays you and know at whose dispatch your fate has arrived,” he said, and, with the tip of his dagger, plucked off his mask so that his full face was bright in the beam of light.

  * * *

  • • •

  Swagger was gone and knew it. Though thin, his assailant was extremely strong, far stronger than he was, and, more important, clearly schooled in the darkest of all the martial arts. The man had him pinned and stilled. He was the pig hanging on the hook as the slaughter boss leaned in close, with a smile on his face and no fear in his heart, and with the throat cutter in his hand.

  The man seemed so happy. He seemed joyous. Swagger tried to think of something to do, but there was nothing. Of all his very bad moments, this was the worst, as death toyed with him, the knife danced quicksilver in the light. The force against him was so strong that his arms went to sleep, and his hands, even though useless, lost their grip. Now, at last, after so much. A wet field in the rain in Wyoming, some orangutan-strong screwball with a knife and a ski mask.

  “But you should see he who slays you and know at whose dispatch your fate has arrived,” said the man, and it struck Bob, through it all, as rather ridiculously overstated.

  The mask came off and there it was, in the light: the Snake.

  Inked bright green for slithering through the Garden of Eden, nose surgically reduced to a button, scales surgically etched into the leathery skin, nostrils buttonholes in the slope of facial plates, jawbone reduced to a flange.

  No eyebrows, no ears, eyes vivid with the reptile’s vertical yellow pupil against the green upholstery of the physiognomy, much of the cheek flesh drawn off so that the shape of the face was purified toward the primal trapezoid, the mug of he who strikes, he who preys, he who oozes, which excites in all mammals, whether bi- or quadruped, a deep shudder of revulsion and fear of dark places and things without arms or legs but which still are fast as greased death.

  The Snake smiled, showing the red tattoo ink that turned his lips and gums the color of blood, all the better to show off the two gleaming reptile fangs that hooked downward from above. And, of course, the tongue. Out it came, red as the candy cane’s stripe—and when he flicked it out, Swagger saw that it too had been altered by a surgeon and was split and spread, a tip going north, a tip going south.

  “El Serpiente, amigo!” said the man, on the crest of the best laugh of his life. He leaned, and the tongue flicked out to lick Bob’s forehead, almost caress it. Bob felt the dagger point sink deeper into his flesh.

  The face rearranged itself around the .355-inch crater that appeared without ceremony beneath the left eye, a pucker like a chancre that brought with it vibrations of terminal penetration. Black brain blood drooled from the new orifice, spreading randomly as it cascaded downward and outward in accordance with the laws of gravity. Another bullet, less acute in angle, hit and tore out the bridge of the nose, ripping a gaping wound that destroyed any semblance of the monster and replaced it with an image that conveyed merely the banal data of what damage flesh could sustain, including eye burst, temple eruption, facial deconstruction, and a cloud of gray matter thick as July bats in the night heat. Swagger didn’t even hear the second shot, much less the first.

  The man toppled, hitting earth so hard, he seemed to dig his own grave.

  Swagger lay flat, hungering for air. Rain pelted his face.

  Then he heard his savior ask, “Is it dead?” and turned to confront someone lowering a Glock from a two-handed grip seven feet away. The rain fell like a shroud, billowing in the wind, turning reality all gray and smeared, but Swagger saw nevertheless that it was Mrs. McDowell.

  55

  Route 80, bey
ond Casper

  They crested a hill but saw no relief.

  A train of taillights choked the highway as it entered a valley, crossed it, and climbed the slope on the other side. There was nothing to do in the pouring rain except show patience, forbearance, and fortitude.

  “Agh,” said Alberto.

  “Easy, easy,” said Juba. At the end of their tunnel, they had found a small shed enclosing a Honda Civic, with all necessary documents, twenty-seven hundred dollars in cash, and a full tank of gas. Menendez had plotted well, knowing that if flight became necessary, a car and money were equally necessary.

  Now they were on I-80, in traffic, in the rain, headed east. He was on the tail of an 18-wheeler whose trailer dwarfed him, while behind, pressing in, another 18-wheeler threatened to devour him. There was no passing, as the lane to the left was as jammed as his was. There was no exit. There was nothing to do but wait, as they crept along. Top speed: eight miles an hour.

  “It must be an accident ahead,” said Alberto.

  Juba said nothing. The situation was self-evident. The rain crushed downward, smearing the lights into fragments, while the old windshield wipers tried gamely to scrape it away, though to not much avail. The only reality was rain distorted, turned kaleidoscopic and fractured by diffusion. Whacka-whacka-whacka, went the blades. The old Honda coughed alarmingly now and then.

  “Suppose . . .” said Alberto, almost as if he were frightened of an answer. “Suppose it’s a roadblock. Suppose they have your description. Suppose they know of me. Suppose they are looking for two Arabs heading as far away from Rock Springs as possible.”

  “Suppose we spend the rest of our lives in an American prison. Suppose the FBI sends us to the Jews. Suppose we are killed. Suppose we do not go to Heaven. Suppose Allah is without understanding of our failure. And without empathy.”