Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

“I’m not good for much,” he said. “That last one nearly killed me. I’m still tired from it. All I do is sleep or think of sleeping. Or dream of drinking. Can’t have a drop in the house, or I’ll suck it down. Been on the wagon thirty years and there ain’t a day I don’t miss it. Without all these damn women around, there’s no way I’d stay sober.”

“Don’t listen to him,” called Julie. “He’s just playing the martyr to the choices he made himself. It’s not attractive.”

“Let me lay this out,” Nick said. “Give it a listen, tell me if you don’t think you can contribute. Miss Okada’s agency got aboard when they heard what’s going on. She wouldn’t be here if this weren’t a situation.”

Swagger looked at Okada, who other than an opening hug had said nothing to him. All that seemed so long ago: the mad, twisted run through the Tokyo underworld, the deaths by blade, the oceans of blood, the loss of some good people so tragic and hurtful even all these years later, and his own survival, the terrible luck of it, when he fought a man with swords who was a hundred times better than he was and somehow survived it.

But there was this other thing. He had already lied: he said he dreamed of sleeping and drinking. But he also dreamed of Susan Okada. In ways that were too solid to be denied, he knew that she was The One. It just had to be, exactly as it never would be, their lives on different sets of railroad tracks heading in different directions, further separated by class, education, experience, levels of sophistication. So it could never, ever be and he’d never, ever act upon it, but at the same time, the unattainability, the taboo, the so-wrong-wrong- wrong of it made it delicious, a private, somehow comforting agony that he held close, telling no one. First thing he’d done, damn him, was to check her finger for a wedding ring and it was bare. That pleased him in ways he couldn’t have predicted and it also frightened him.

“Hey, how come you’re not getting any older?” he said to her. “I turned into the cranky old neighbor in the dark house by himself and you’re still, what, on the cover of Vogue three times a year?”

“Four, but down from five,” she said. “But you’re right, I am eternally twenty-eight, even if certain inaccurate documents insist I’m thirty-eight. And you still look like Hector on a break from a hard day’s night on the plains outside Troy.”

“Them damned Greeks,” he said. “You cut ’em all down, and the next day, they’re back, just as pissed as before!”

“Okay, guy,” said Nick. “I know you’re old, old friends. But let me get to the pitch. Here it is. And it’s why the Bureau and the Agency are working together, despite a long history of political animosity.”

Nick leaned forward.

“About six months ago, in Afghanistan, the Second Reconnaissance Battalion of the Second Marine Division, Twenty-second Expeditionary Force, operating in Zabul province, asked for and received permission to deal with-kill-a warlord local intel suggested was secretly allied with Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces. The marines were losing people in ambushes, IEDs, sniper attacks, and the like. It all led to this guy.”

“Do I need to know his name?”

“If you haven’t been watching television, his name won’t mean a thing to you, Bob,” Susan said.

“So,” resumed Nick, “a sniper team was sent. Led by a very able guy. Idea was to mingle with the locals, come in from the Pakistani- border side of town, hit the guy with a rifle shot, and beat it before the locals got organized. The rifle was a Dragunov, expendable, untraceable.”

“Got it.”

“A day out, the team got hit. We don’t know what happened, but they were jumped by another sniper team and the spotter was killed, the commo equipment was totaled, the sergeant, we think, was hit.”

“I’m guessing he didn’t turn back.”

“You got that right. Very impressive individual. Your type of guy. You, in a way, twenty years ago at the top of your game. Gunny Sergeant Ray Cruz, full name Reyes Fidencio Cruz, forty-two years old, father a retired lieutenant commander, U.S. Navy, of Portuguese ancestry named Tomas Cruz, mother a Philippine national, Urlinda Flores Marbella. He grew up essentially on the big naval station at Subic near Cebu City, where his dad became head of the golf club as a second career. The kid should have been a pro golfer. Instead he became a sniper.”

“Good for him.”

“Pretty outstanding guy. Everybody wanted him to go to Annapolis, but he went to UCLA instead. A shooter. NRA junior champion small bore, three years running. Went distinguished in high power in a single summer before he was twenty. Talent with the rifles. High IQ. Good grades. Just the best.”

“Not your country-boy sniper type. Why isn’t he running a software company somewhere?

“Because his parents were killed in an auto accident and it really upset him. He joined the marines in ninety-one, won a batch of marksmanship awards, served with distinction in the first Gulf thing. He was offered commissions up the wazoo but wanted to stay a sniper. He thought it was a growth industry, I suppose.”

“He was right.”

“Was he ever. This is his fifth deployment after two in Iraq, two previous in Afghanistan. Hit twice, fast recovery. Incredible record all the way through. Now this is a guy who could have quit at any time, gone to work for big dollars at some security multinational. He could have taken a commission, retired a colonel, gone to work for GE or somebody. He could have started his own tactical school, run SWAT people and wannabes through for a thousand bucks a head a day and lived in the big house. He could have joined the Bureau, Secret Service, the Agency, State Department security, any outfit with initials instead of a name. Fool for duty. Stays operational, stays in the suck. Seems to love the suck. Goes out on this mission and gets whacked and keeps on going, full-tilt boogie.”

“What happened?” Bob asked, loving the sniper already- where are we going to find more people like him? -and fearing the answer.

“Somehow, again, we’re not sure how, he survived the first hit, he worked some fancy clever game on his pursuers and evaded them, and he made it to the target, but they were on his tail.”

“How do you know all this?”

“He was carrying a GPS and transmitter and the satellite could track. At the battalion’s S-Two bunker they were getting a real-time feed from a recon drone the whole time. It was Monday Night Football. They have his signal at the shooting site at the time of the hit.”

“He made the hit?”

“There was no hit. There was a mysterious explosion. Thirty-one people died.”

“That was on TV too,” said Susan.

“Another night I must have missed,” said Bob.

“The hotel-he was on the roof-was cratered. Nobody knows how or why. Missile? Doubtful, as we had no Reapers in the area-”

“The drones are our program,” said Susan. “We had no missile activity at that time. I’ve gone over the records very carefully. Ugh, I went there, a princess like me, and talked to the on-the-ground people.”

“Maybe your outfit even has secrets from you.”

“This isn’t The Bourne Conspiracy, Swagger,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Never mind.”

“Gas-main explosion. IED,” continued Nick. “Ammo cache, bomb factory, nobody knows, and our forensics people weren’t invited in to go through the wreckage. The Dutch made an investigation, but I’ve seen it, it was poorly done, and they were clearly uncomfortable outside their protected compound. It’s wild and woolly out there. Maybe the blast was legit, we don’t know. Things explode in tribal Afghanistan all the time.”