Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

DOLLAR STORE PARKING LOT ACROSS FROM TGIF

914 BRAVERMAN AVENUE

JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

2035 HOURS

It’s gotta be him,” said Crackers the Clown. “Check it out. Right age, thin, rangy, sniperlike, discipline, dignity, seems to have a limp, he’s looking at data, he’s on the wagon.”

The three of them sat in a nice black Ford Explorer. They looked at Bob through the window, each with a pair of high-end European binocs.

“Plus,” said Crackers, the unit intellectual, called “Crackers the Clown” because he had the demeanor of an Iowa mortician, “the time matches up. We caught him out of the main gate at 1950, he’d been there all day talking to folks, now he’s tired out, he’s reviewing his shit, he’s eating a little, and he’s going to go back to the hotel, send out e-mails, call the wife, and go to bed. Tomorrow, the same thing again.”

“On the other hand,” said Tony Z, the cynic, “he could be the guy trying to sell Lejeune on a new brand of trash masher for the enlisted dining areas. He’s here trying to make a fucking pitch. He works for Grinders-R-Us dot com, out of Gomerville, Indiana.”

There were no pictures of this Swagger, that was the problem. Everything was theoretical and judgmental and the theoretical and the judgmental were slightly beyond Bogier’s areas of competence.

“I hate this shit.” He stewed. “I’m an operator. I break things and kill people. Now I’m supposed to be some kind of James Bond super-agent bullshit performer. Man, I hate this shit.”

Crackers was pro IDing the john as Swagger; Tony Z, despite his cynicism, was leaning toward pro, but still a little unable to commit.

“It should be him, it has to be him, nothing else makes any sense, but when you make an assumption, it always bites you in the ass.”

“Is there any way you could test? Maybe call the restaurant, ask for a Mr. Swagger, see if he gets up?”

“I think this guy would see through it,” said Bogier. “I don’t even like eyeballing him from here; guys like him, they have radar, they can sometimes feel it when they’re being watched.”

The binoculars went down.

“So do you want to move, Mick?” said Crackers the Clown. “We may never get another chance like this.”

“But we’ve only got one card,” said Tony. “If we do get it planted and it’s planted on the wrong guy, then we’ve got to get it back and still find the right guy and plant it again.”

“Agh,” said Mick.

The card was the latest in high-tech bullshit James Bond spy craft. It was a red BankAmericard made out to Bob Lee Swagger. The idea was somehow to sneak it into Swagger’s wallet under the theory that few men examined their wallets carefully and would notice the addition of a new credit card. Except it wasn’t a credit card. It was actually a miniature transponder called an “active RFID” for radio frequency identification device. It gave off a return signal when it received a recognized interrogation signal. It used 16 nanometer technology, a unique dual-layered nano lithium-cadmium battery that was actually part of the card itself, along with the molded-in single strand of antenna wire. It responded to an inquiry signal sent from a classified Aegon satellite that had the highest sensitivity and best signal-to-noise ratio of anything placed in space. When the satellite sent the inquiry, huge umbrellalike antennas began to look for the specific frequency and tone of the encoded response, which, diminutive as it is, still can be counted on to register. Of all this, Bogier, Crackers, and Tony Z knew exactly nothing.

The second part of the deal was a BlackBerry with software that could find the appropriate Google map and then would receive the satellite information and track the card on the map. Mick and his pals could easily track the bearer of the card from any distance, even over the horizon. There’d be no hassle over staying close in traffic or through sudden turns or accelerations. They could always stay in contact, until the moment Swagger recognized an extra credit card in his wallet, which would probably be never.

“Okay,” said Mick, finally. “Let’s do it. If it ain’t him, we can get it back in a more direct way than we have to plant it.”

“Ooh, cool,” said Tony Z. “I like that part.”

915 BRAVERMAN AVENUE

JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

2115 HOURS

Swagger finished the meal, sat back, tried to relax a bit, yearned for booze, daughters, wife, a simple life, and an endless amount of time to sleep, and lied to himself harmlessly about a deep and rewarding platonic friendship with Susan Okada as well. Why not dream about having it all? But none of that was apparently in the offing. Worse, this late, his hip sometimes ached a bit. It seemed to have gotten better in the past few months, but if he put a lot of weight on it over a long day, it could become inflamed and begin to declare an unhappy memory. Now, it felt restive, as though in the pre-pain stage.

He signaled the girl, gave her a twenty, waited for change, left too big a tip, grabbed the receipt, dumped it into the briefcase, and stood, favoring the good leg. A wave of stiffness came but he shrugged it off, went out the front doors and looked for his car in the lot. Hmm, a rental, what was it again, oh yeah, a Ford Taurus on government contract from Hertz. He spotted it, and walked toward it down the half-full aisles, behind a screen of low bushes that marked the roadway, the whole thing red-gold in the neon of the big TGIF sign up on top. He reached his lane, and turned down it to the car.

When the guy hit him, he hit him hard, crushing him against the car rear, not hurting him so much as completely de-coordinating him.

“What the-!” Swagger felt himself blurt out as the muscular energy of his assailant nailed him hard against the trunk and he slid down. Flashbulbs, pinwheels, Roman candles ignited behind his eyes at the impact as his optic nerves shot off, but then he came back-an instant too late. A heavy knee went on his back, another on his neck, and between them they bore the weight of a big man.

“Keep your fucking mouth shut, mister, or I’ll crack you good.”

The guy had total leverage, pinning him by weight and power. Bob squirmed under the assault, but knew he was way outmatched. He turned his head sideways, felt as his robber ripped up Bob’s sports coat, pulled the wallet out, then grabbed the briefcase and began to pry it open.

“Hey, you!” came a shout from across the parking lot.

“Fuck,” his assailant said, rising.

He turned to run, and Bob watched as he sped out of the parking lot, leaped the low hedge, and started down the road. But an athletic-looking guy intercepted him from out of nowhere with a superb open field tackle right at curbside and the two of them went down in a tangle. The robber was a tough motherfucker and managed to get a driving right-handed blow into the Samaritan’s ribs, knocking him back, and enabling the thief to squirm to his freedom. He was upright and gone and last seen hoofing it down the street, disappearing behind a strip mall a little bit farther down.

Bob got there just as the good guy was picking himself up.

“You okay, mister?” he asked.

“Ah,” said the guy, “my mother hit harder than that.”

Bob saw a rangy guy, midthirties, completely athletic, like a ballplayer, who just picked up and put back on his Yankees cap then wiped sweat off his face.

“Hey,” said Bob, “no kidding, you were great, but you really shouldn’t have done that. Guy could have had a knife or a gun.”

“You know,” said the guy, smiling, “it happened so fast I didn’t even think about it. I just reacted. You want to call the cops or anything?”