Stephen Hunter - Black Light

“Sheriff’s Department,” came the voice over the phone.

The old man stiffened, reached back for his wound and turned, his face black and lost, his eyes pools of emptiness. Duane smashed him again, this time where the neck met the shoulder, a powerful downward diagonal blow that made the head twitch spastically. The phone fell free and banged on the floor and the old man took a stricken step backwards, face gray, old tongue working pitifully in an old mouth, then toppled to the earth as his eyes rolled upward.

“Sheriff’s Department? Anybody there?” Duane recognized the voice as Debbie Till’s, the night-duty dispatcher.

He hung it up.

He was breathing hard. His knees felt weak. The old man lay still, but was still breathing.

Duane tried to figure what to do next. He could just leave, and they’d find him here and ascribe it to a prowler. But then there’d be an investigation. Suppose someone had seen his car parked outside?

Then he had it.

He wiped the phone off with his handkerchief, in case he’d left prints. Then he quickly turned off the lights, pausing to rub the switches with the handkerchief. He stuffed the tablet with the engraved words into his shirt. Then he hoisted Sam under his arms, feeling the old man’s lightness and brittleness. The old man stirred weakly, then went limp. Duane hefted him, because he knew if he dragged him, he’d leave a trail in the dust, and got him to the head of the stairs. He paused for just a second.

This is what Mr. Bama wants , he told himself.

He took a deep breath, gathered his strength and then launched the old man into the air. Sam hit on the fourth step, shattering his teeth, and rolled, legs and arms flopping, down the stairwell, gathering speed and violence as he went, until he smashed to a halt on the downstairs door-jamb.

Duane breathed heavily.

He went back to the office, pulled the door shut and heard it click. He wiped his prints off the knob.

Then he went down the stairs, stepping over the body.

A fter the fight, Bob bypassed Blue Eye and caught the Boss Harry Etheridge Parkway and took a straight shot north up to Fort Smith. He wanted to put as much distance as he could between himself and the shooting site.

“From now on, we operate as if we can be jumped at any time. Do you understand? They are hunting us. We only got out because the boss man didn’t trust his troops and had to control the thing from the air and I saw the plane. Without that jump, I wouldn’t have had time to make a plan and we’d be dead.”

Russ nodded gravely, as if he understood, as if he were functioning normally. But he was not. He was still half in shock: so much carnage, so fast, so much noise, so much smoke.

“It was so … confusing,” was all he could think to say. Then it poured out.

“I mean, my God, it just happened, the shooting was so loud, Jesus, the explosions, we were so lucky , the whole thing just went berserk, I never knew the universe could go so psychopathic, so twisted. Jesus, you were unbelievably calm. You were like ice . I could hardly breathe.”

Bob wasn’t listening; he was thinking aloud.

“And I want to stow this truck as soon as possible. It’ll take the police two days’ worth of forensic examination before they realize there was another vehicle involved and another weapon. Then they’ll find our tread type and match the paint we left on that boy when we cropped him, and come looking for us.”

“I don’t think there’s enough left of that car to get a sample of its own paint much less any of ours,” Russ said.

“You can’t be too sure. I’ll long-term it at the airport and we’ll rent a car. Next, I got to find that Frenchy Short.”

It was six before they were checked into a Ramada Inn on 271 south of town, the truck hidden, and Bob set about finding Frenchy Short. First, he called a friend he knew at the Retired Marine Officers’ Association in Los Angeles, a retired gunnery sergeant who ran the clerical section of the association, and quickly came up with the number of a former captain named Paul Chardy, whom Bob placed in memory as having worked with Frenchy at SOG. He dialed the number, in some town called Winnetka, Illinois, and got no answer until, after several subsequent tries, he connected around 8:30 P.M.

A woman answered the phone.

“Hello.”

“Ma’am, I’m trying to reach Captain Paul Chardy, USMC, retired.”

“May I ask what this is in reference to?”

“Yes, ma’am, he and I served together in 1969 in the Central Highlands. I’m trying to locate a third man both of us knew.”

“One second, please.” He heard her yell, “Paul, Paul, honey. It’s some marine thing.”

The voice came on.

“Hello?”

“Captain Chardy?”

“Well, no one’s called me that in quite a while. I’m a high school basketball coach now.”

“Sir, I don’t know if you’ll remember me. I NCOed up at Base Camp Alice near Cambo and briefed you when you came in country in August ’68. I served with you for six months before I DEROSed home. My name is Gunnery Sergeant Bob Lee Swagger and—”

“Bob the Nailer! My God, yes, I remember you. You were the best recon team leader SOG ever had and when you went back for your third tour—well, Gunny, it’s an honor to talk to Bob the Nailer. Hell yes, I remember.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Thank you , Gunny. You had a hell of a war. You showed the rest of us how to do it.”

“Sir, reason I’m calling, I’m trying to find another man in country with us. He was civilian, spook type. You were closer to him than I was. You and him ran a number of missions together as I recall.”

“Frenchy.”

“Yes sir.”

“Oh, Christ, I haven’t thought about Frenchy in years. Poor old Frenchy.” Bob thought he heard something in the man’s voice, some odd tone: regret, buried pain, the stirring of memories best left untouched in the darkness.

“Sir?”

“Well, Gunny, the Frenchman didn’t make it. His adventures caught up with him.”

Bob cursed silently.

“Frenchy was pure spook, that I’ll tell you. He crammed several hundred lifetimes into one.”

“Yes sir.”

“Yes, well, he recruited me. I spent, well, it’s not worth going into, a long story, not a very pretty one. After the war, I spent four years on an Agency contract and Frenchy was my case officer. I went back for a hitch TDY in ’82. But Frenchy, well—”

He paused. Bob could sense the pain.

“I shouldn’t tell you this. It’s all off the record, you never talked to me. Frenchy was captured and killed by a Soviet GRU colonel in Vienna in 1974. Tortured to death. Not a pretty story.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Bob said, and then had to ask the next question: “What happened to the colonel?”

“Somebody blew him out of his socks,” said Chardy in a voice that said he didn’t want any more questions asked.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead, Gunny.”

“What was Frenchy Short capable of? Under orders, or not under orders, what would he do?”

Chardy thought a bit.

Finally, he said, “Anything. He was capable of anything. The truth is, even though they had his name on a plaque on the wall at Langley, Frenchy sold me to the Russians in 1974, when I was in Kurdistan. There were unpleasant consequences. He had no conscience. He was a great man who was capable of great evil, not that uncommon a combination. Whatever you think he did, he probably did. And worse.”

“Did he ever say anything about a job in Arkansas in the fifties? An Agency scam, something very black involving infrared stuff.”

“Gunny, he never talked about the past. And if you’d seen him operate, you wouldn’t want to know about the past.”