Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

What you might not expect on that square face was love.

A flashlight spot-lit Bob in the doorway.

“Goddamn,” said Chambers. “You are him, aren’t you?”

“I seem to be,” said Swagger.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

The colonel, now transformed into a fourteen-year-old girl at a Justin Timberlake concert, ran to him and almost hugged him. He was both utterly impressed and awestruck. He seemed to have some trouble finding words. Then a torrent of garbled Bob-love came out, and he grabbed and hugged the old sniper.

“Colonel Chambers,” said Bob uneasily, “I’m very appreciative, sir, believe me, but I’m not here because of old times. I’m here for these here new times. I’m on a job for the government people.”

“You’re with the FBI now?”

“In a manner of speaking, sir.”

“Okay, come on, come on up.”

They went into the building, the colonel locking it tightly behind him, resetting a complicated alarm system. Then he led Bob up some metal stairs to a drywall hallway that displayed the flimsy, haphazard construction of the building. At the end of the hallway lay the colonel’s office, a nave dedicated to the religion of the sniper. A walk-in gun safe dominated one wall, and on the others, from racked rifles of a highly evolved nature, to bookshelves full of memoirs, military texts, and battle histories, to a computer station, to well-punctured targets, to photos of several of the great ones, including Carl Hitchcock and Chuck McKenzie, to say nothing of the picture of a twenty-six-year-old Staff Sergeant Bob Lee Swagger, of Blue Eye, Arkansas, on the occasion of his victory in the Wimbledon Cup 1,000-yard national match in 1972, the colonel’s obsession was well demonstrated.

“Looks like a hall of fame or something,” Swagger said.

“ My hall of fame,” said the colonel. “Drink, Gunny? May I call you Gunny?”

“Friends call me Bob,” said Swagger.

“Then let’s be friends,” said the colonel, full of dumb love. “I would consider that a great honor. Drink? This calls for libations and salutations.”

“No, sir. Actually, I wish it were social, but if it were, I’d be here at a decent hour. As I said, I’m here in a kind of semiofficial way. I hope we can be friends after the business is done.”

“Well,” said the colonel, “let’s see if we can manage that.”

“I’m on a temp contract with the FBI to advise and consult on the case of a marine sniper named Ray Cruz, thought to be killed in Afghanistan six months ago, but possibly here in this country with mischief on his mind, tragic mischief in my humble opinion. But I have just learned that you have an association with Cruz.”

“Ray,” said the colonel, his face jumping to life. “Alive! Jesus, would that be a trick! Now, I would drink to that, believe me. Hell of a guy. You’d like him, Bob. You and him, you’re brothers of the high grass and the long kill.”

“Sir, that may be so, and what I’ve learned of Sergeant Cruz suggests it is. But if he is alive, he has got himself on the government’s shit list by making certain threats, if it’s even him.”

Bob kept his focus on the colonel’s eyes, trying to read them for sparks of hidden knowledge. He’d already noted that the colonel had done a nice Ray-is-risen act, and it seemed spontaneous enough, so that was a plus. On the negative, the colonel hadn’t had a nanosecond of private grief when the death of Ray Cruz was mentioned, as you might imagine if the pain was still considerable. The colonel hadn’t even reacted. Then he did, as if catching up to his own character in the drama.

“When I heard he was dead, it broke my heart. So many good men gone in a war half the population doesn’t even know we’re fighting and the other half hates. So wrong. But don’t get me started.”

“What I’ve said about Ray going his own way. That’s the Ray you knew?”

“Ray had his own ideas, certainly. He was one for doing the right thing. But it was quiet, not loud. He wasn’t a yeller or a crusader. He was a doer. And he just didn’t stop coming.”

The colonel told a story about Ray working an early version of the then-unadopted Stoner SR-25. He’d worked it all night in the shop, taking it apart, piece by piece, putting it together, trying somehow to divine the religious essence of it. Wanted to know the zen of every last screw and spring. Just wouldn’t stop coming.

“Maybe it’s the Filipino in him,” Chambers added. “We had to invent the.45 ACP to stop the Filipinos, you know. They didn’t stop if they’d set their minds to do something until we invented a big, fat bullet for them, did you know that?”

“I think so, sir. Sir, I came across your connection to Ray Cruz about two hours ago. As far as I know, it’s completely new information, as no one else understood the significance. But tomorrow I am formally obligated by contract and duty to notify the people I work with. I ain’t got no choice on that. By noon, an FBI task force will be here, with forensic investigators, assistant attorney generals, subpoenas, and search warrants. They will take this place and you apart in their hunt for Ray. Your files, your phone records, your credit records, your accounting, your business dealings, it’ll all be gone through. So I’m here unofficially ahead of that tidal wave. Probably shouldn’t be, may get yelled at on account of it or some such. That ain’t important. I felt I owed you something for your service to us grass crawlers and long-shot takers. So I’m begging you: if you have any knowledge of Ray, of his plans, of his survival, you’d best give it to me now and go into the records as a cooperating witness. These federal people have a job to do and they mean to do it, and if you get in the way, it don’t matter to them, they’ll crush you.”

“I appreciate the warning, Gunnery Sergeant,” said the colonel, his voice going official marine. Then he said, “Do you mind if I pour myself a glass of bourbon?”

“Please do,” said Bob.

The colonel opened a drawer, pulled out a half-full fifth of Knob Creek, dispensed a shot into a small glass, and downed it in one swig.

“If Ray was back,” Bob said, “and he was in fact going to try to hit a certain fellow available in Washington starting next week, he’d have to mount a mission out of some logistical base. Our working theory was that he’d use old marine contacts, maybe at Two-Two Recon. I was down here to look at that. But he could just as easily do it out of your shop, using one of your custom builts, your ammo, scope, laser ranger, the works. It would be logical, and I bet you think so highly of Ray, you’d pull in with him without much rigorous thinking. If he’d have come to me, hell, I might have. You just have to know-well, if you’re involved-you’re playing with very hot fire that can burn down everything you’ve built in just a few days. It ain’t worth it, sir. And it would be a real hard tragedy, the saddest, in my book, if Ray thought he was doing something noble and right and he was just setting himself up for the rest of his life in some shit-hole pen. That would be such an injustice.”

“On the other hand,” someone said, “maybe Cruz is playing the only card he’s got the only way he’s got and he thinks he’s doing it for the corps, not in spite of it.”

Swagger turned to face Ray Cruz.

OUTSIDE STEEL BRIGADE ARMORY

DANIELSTOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

0305 HOURS

Mick was now an up-to-speed expert on Steel Brigade Armory and the life and times of its founder and presiding genius, Colonel Norman Chambers.

“So,” he explained to Tony Z, putting down the phone after his callback from MacGyver, “this guy’s some kind of sniper guru.”