Stephen Hunter - The Third Bullet

“Thin, Swagger. So thin. It tells you nothing.”

“I ain’t done yet. His smartest trick was the code that wasn’t a code. It was what it was, in plain sight if you could see it. You don’t even get it, do you?”

“This is nonsense,” I said. “You’ve gone insane.”

“He hung a name on you that gave it up if you could see it clearly. The name began with I-X, Mr. Meachum. Cross-lingual pun. I-X, from English into Latin. I-X, Mr. Meachum, meaning nine. You are the son of the Red Nine. Your new name is Dimitri Ixovich Spazny. Niles really loaded the Nabokov mayonnaise on this sandwich. The old butterfly catcher would be so impressed.”

Niles! I thought. All these years later, tripping me up with his cleverness.

“When it came time for you to ‘die,’ you slipped into Russia and took up again as Dimitri Ixovich Spazny, of KGB, with all the contacts and the timing exactly right. You even own the gun company that manufactured the nine-millimeter I used in the fight in Moscow. As Yeltsin’s pal and money guy, you also own, what, electricity, newspaper, taxicabs, the Izmaylovskaya mob, radio, the air, most of the water, half of Belgium, three quarters of Hong Kong, and what else?”

“By the time you move on me, I’ll be someone else,” I said, though my heart was hammering in my chest. “You’re not fast enough. Brains are meaningless without speed.”

“Then how come I know you’re wearing tan cargo pants and a green shirt? How come I know you’re resting on a chaise longue, in sunglasses, with a yellow tablet in your hand? How come I know you’re drinking vodka? How come I know you’re on your back porch, looking down across a mile of grass framed on either side by pine forest? How come I know there’s a river a mile off?”

I swallowed – or should I say, I swallow. I had not seen that one coming. It hit me blindside. I suck for air, while in my stunned panic, I look for a spotter who is clearly, at this very second, eyeballing me through binoculars.

“You’re lying on the chaise at your dacha down Ulysse Nardin Boulevard behind a thirty-foot green steel wall, in an area patrolled by an MVD special battalion. You’re a mile from the Moscow River. The sun is setting there, Mr. Meachum, but the days are long, and it’s light enough for a sniper.”

Stronski! Stronski is out there somewhere.

“He’s on the trigger now. A KSVK twelve-seven.”

No understanding, no context, no empathy, no regret. Just the sniper’s bullet. It was the ultimate application of the New Criticism.

“See you in hell, then, Sergeant.”

“I’ll be along soon,” Swagger said, and hung up.

And so: yes, it’s come to this. So be it. I’ve had a good life, maybe a great one. I loved my wife and never cheated on her, I loved my sons and saw them grow into fine men and fathers. I love my country and tried to serve it well. I fought its wars–

Never mind. With seconds left, it’s time to face whatever’s next with a clean breast. Talk about an unreliable narrator! Talk about a murderer with a fancy prose style! I killed Jimmy Costello. I blew his action and cover to the RCMP, and I knew he couldn’t let himself be taken alive. I regret it and always will, but what if, in a few years, he – I just couldn’t help myself.

And I killed Lon. I knew by the last move that Swagger was strong and my team was weak, and I bullied and forced Lon to go on that last, absurd mission, and he finally relented and died.

I regret both. Failures of nerve and character. I am so sorry. I deserve whatever it is I’m about to get and I hope

Swagger threw the phone off into the trees somewhere.

Account closed, he thought.

He took a look around saw nothing but green. He tried to think of his next step but had some trouble concentrating. He looked at the wound in his battered hip. More blood than he’d expected. Maybe the bullet had ticked downward into the flesh instead of off into the air.

He didn’t have any first aid or clotting agent. He peeled off his jacket and wadded it against the blood flow, but it quickly absorbed its limit, went magenta and heavy-damp, and proved useless.

Better get to the goddamn road so they can find me, he thought.

But downhill with a bad wound bleeding hard was not easy, particularly as he could feel the leg numbing out on him, and in time it ceased to work in coordination with the other leg, and there came a moment when he lost it, toppled forward, put a bruise into his spine, ripped the hell out of his arms rolling through brambles, felt his shirt rip, and hit a rock solid with his head, which was already concussed from the clout he’d delivered on the 42 Commando major.

He got himself up and put his hand on the wound. It wasn’t gushing copiously, but he could feel the steady, warm liquefaction finding ways around his fingers. He got a little farther down and noticed that a sudden chill had come into the air, as well as a fog that eroded the edges of his vision.

He staggered over a hump and hit the road. He couldn’t remember which way was which and realized it didn’t matter. He’d never make it back to the house, and what was there except those two guys whose names he didn’t remember and he knew they weren’t worth a damn.

He began to shiver. Damn, so fucking cold.

He looked for a splash of sun to warm him up and saw an opening in the canopy a few yards ahead that admitted the light. He limped to it, falling once, then got to it and, of his own volition, decided to stop fighting gravity and let himself tumble into the dust.

It was warmer. In time, he saw someone approaching him. He tried to rise, but the man waved him back down as he rushed to him. Bob saw that it was his father, Earl.

“Dad!” he cried.

“Well, Bob Lee, damn, it’s good to see you, boy.”

Earl came to him and knelt down. Earl wore the uniform of the Arkansas state police, 1955, as he had on the last day of his life, and it was razor-sharp, in perfect duty condition, as it was always for Earl. He had the strong, kind, wise face of a hero, and he was everything a boy could love in a father.

“Dad, God, I’ve missed you, I missed you so much.”

“Now there’ll be plenty of time for a nice long visit, you’ll tell me all the things you’ve seen.”

“Dad, you–”

“Bob Lee, you just relax. I’m so proud of my son, you have made me so proud.”

“I tried so hard, Dad, I didn’t want to ever let you down and–”

“He’s coming back, he’s coming back.”

Swagger blinked, and it wasn’t his dad’s face but some crew-cut young man’s.

Bob coughed, realizing that the guy had just jacked a charge through him with an external defibrillator.

“Hit him again?” another medic asked.

“No, no, he’s good, the lactate is going in fine, the adrenaline is taking effect, he’s breathing again, his pulse is rising.”

Swagger breathed, feeling clean air come into his lungs.

“Jesus Christ, you scared us,” said Nick Memphis.

As Swagger’s eyes cleared and the fog thinned, he lifted his head a bit and saw an ambulance, a batch of state police cars, a lot of police activity along the road, and above him, in the hands of another young man, a bottle of intravenous fluids feeding life through a brown tube into his arm. He lay on a stretcher; his hip was strongly bandaged and bound, but some numbing agent quelled the pain.

“Okay, STAT, let’s move this man to the chopper and get him to Trauma. I’m staying on him to monitor vital signs.”

“I’m riding too,” said Nick, and he turned to Bob and said, “Baby, you were gone, you were in negative heartbeat, but we got you back, don’t ask me how.”

“I saw my dad, Nick,” said Bob.