Stephen Hunter - Black Light

“It’s good to be alive,” said Red.

Ahead, his trapper scampered into the trap station and Red stood back as his friend took the next cage. Rising teal, far out, a tough one, a single, a following pair and a simo pair. As he set up to shoot, Red absently closed his gun, took out his choke wrench and changed his Improved Cylinder and Skeet I and screwed in Modified and Modified Improved for the longer shot.

His friend was shooting an expensive Perazzi and was an excellent shot, but not up to Red’s standards today. He fired, took the single, but only one of the following pair.

“Just relax,” called Red.

“I’m too relaxed,” he called back.

“Pull,” he called, and the two birds climbed out of the tree line against the blue sky; he followed and tracked them and fired, but only one vaporized.

“Damn!” he said.

“You have too much on your mind,” Red said. “You have to be empty, Zenned out. You have to trust your instincts.”

His friend laughed.

“Whenever I trust my instincts,” he said, “I get into trouble.”

Red went into the shooting cage, a little wooden gazebo that oriented him down a long yellow draw to a clump of bushes between two golden hills, slid a Remington into the lower barrel and set himself.

“Pull!” he commanded, and the bird announced its own launch with the whang of the trap arm, and soon rocketed into vision. With leisurely aplomb, Red followed it and dusted it.

Felt so good!

He ejected the shell, dropped two more into the chambers, reset himself. He gave himself a second to think out the sequence: see it, move, mount, shoot, follow through. He took a breath, looked for little indications of panic or doubt and found none.

“Pull,” he shouted.

Whang the bird rose and he waited until it came to a dead rest, that wondrous moment where gravity and acceleration were in total equipoise and blew it away. He dropped the barrel a bit to pick up the rise of the following bird and there it was, there it was, he rose up and through it and squeezed and the bird was vapor.

Ah, he thought, a warm surge of pleasure. He’d never shot a 50. He’d had seven 49s, dozens of 48s, and hundreds of 47s and 46s, but never a 50. And he’d never been this close. And this teal simo was the last really tough shot. He had to get this shot and then it was downhill.

He broke the gun, watched the small mushroom of gun smoke rise from the chambers as each shell popped out, and threaded two more in.

He set himself, but didn’t want to take too much time, because it’s more than possible to think yourself out of a good shooting sequence. He liked where he was: loosey-goosey, ready, hot, fluid, quick and in the zone.

“Pull!” he called.

Nothing happened.

No whang , no birds, nothing.

Damn. He hated it when that happened. That’s how you lose concentration. He made a mental note to chew out the trapper when the round was finished.

“Are you ready?” he yelled.

There was no answer.

He took the silence as assent, set himself again, wiped his mind and once again called, “Pull!”

Again: no birds.

“Mike,” he called the trapper’s name. “What the hell is going on?”

There was no reply.

He looked back to his friend and—

The vibrator on his pager buzzed against his hip.

Damn! That meant Peck was calling him. What the hell was this about? He thought about ignoring it, just shooting the round out, but how do you ignore it?

Call him, get it dealt with, then get back in the round.

He leaned the shotgun against the gun cage, stepped out.

“Have to make a call,” he told his companion.

He dialed the message line, waited for it to connect, heard that he had one new message and then got the message.

“Call for the birds again,” it said.

Fine, he thought, stepping back into the cage, picking up the shotgun.

Then his mind computed the significance.

A tremendous sense of unfairness came over him. He picked up the shotgun, gripping it tightly, but he could see nothing.

He set the gun down, looked back at his unconcerned partner and seized the folder off his own belt. He dialed Peck’s number. He heard the phone ring in his ear … and twenty feet away.

He grabbed the gun and ran out of the cage, off to the left, and saw Peck’s phone hanging from the limb of a tree, ringing.

“Peck didn’t make it,” said somebody.

He turned and saw his nightmare: the sniper, in full camouflage regalia, an ancient god of vengeance, his face not even human but a warrior’s face lost in the swirling colors of the woods, his hair wrapped tight in a camouflaged bandanna, his eyes narrow and dark. He had simply stepped from invisibility into Red’s life. He lifted a .45 automatic and pointed it straight at Red’s face.

“Set the shotgun down, Bama, or I will kill you and you know I will.”

Red set the shotgun down.

“Guards,” he screamed. “Guards!”

“They’re tied up two stations back,” said the man. “It wasn’t their day.”

Red turned.

“Swagger,” he said, because it was all he could think to say.

“In person,” said Bob, then pivoted to point the gun at Red’s friend.

“This has nothing to do with me,” said the man. “I don’t see a thing. I’m not involved in this at all.”

“Then drop that gun or I will drop you, sir. I am not here to fuck around.”

The Perazzi fell to the ground.

“You may think I’m frightened of you, Swagger,” said Red, his face narrowing in fury. “But I’m not. Guys have come at me before. And if this is the day I check out, fuck you, because my family is taken care of and my children love me. So fuck you, Swagger, you do what you have to.”

“You got some balls, Red, that I’ll say,” said Swagger.

“Talk to him!” screamed the companion. “Negotiate with him. Make him an offer. This doesn’t have to happen.”

“You shut up,” said Bob to the man. “I have a boy a hundred yards out there with a .308 right on your chest. You shut up and sit still until I talk to you.”

The man went silent as if struck. The idea of the rifle on him chilled him out and he sat as if to move one inch in one direction would earn him a bullet.

“Now, Red,” said Bob, “I do want you to talk to me. Why’d your father kill my father back in 1955?”

“Fuck you and the horse you came in on, Swagger. I have allies. I have people who know I was gunning for you. If you kill me, they’ll hunt you down and take you out.”

“Well, maybe that’s a fact. But it won’t mean no never mind to you, Red, that I guarantee you. Now, you going to answer me or do I have to shoot a kneecap off?”

“Who’s kidding whom?” said Red furiously. “You don’t have it in you to shoot my kneecap off. You’re a soldier, not a goddamn torturer.”

“Talk to him!” screamed the terrified companion. “Tell him what he wants to know. Make him a deal. A cash deal.”

“Fuck cash,” said Red. “He’s not a cash boy.” He looked at Swagger, his eyes burning with furious contempt and rage.

Finally, he said, “All right. I’ll tell it once. Then it’s over. Then you do what you have to do.”

“Talk,” said Swagger.

“Your father was looking to buy some land. He had been examining plots in the Polk County Deeds and Claims Office and he’d learned that something called the Southland Group had bought up most of the land in Polk County. Because he was curious, he’d investigated and found out what nobody was supposed to know: that Southland was a dummy corporation owned by my father and a man named Harry Etheridge, a U.S. congressman. They’d funneled thousands into it, with the idea that Etheridge would push through a parkway or highway and open up that part of the country for development. It would be worth millions. Your father bumbled into the information. He was the only one who knew of the secret, powerful, very profitable link between the Etheridge and the Bama men. It was the linchpin of my father’s power and position. Your father had to be stopped. So the congressman and my father put together a plan that turned on some contacts we had in prison and they recruited a kid named Jimmy Pye, just due out. They told him if he did it, they’d set him up in Hollywood. He wanted to be the next Jimmy Dean. But we were worried he wasn’t good enough, so Harry Etheridge, who was on the Intelligence Oversight Committee, called in a CIA chit and got a case officer named Frenchy Short to ramrod a secondary plan through. The backup shooter nailed your dad and nobody was the wiser. End of story. Sorry, but business is business.”