Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

Three dead for sure. No links, no tracks, no evidence, no forensics because the.50s are moving so hard that after passing through metal, flesh, and more metal they fly out into the countryside. Best of all, there’s no sense of high-tech professionals at work. It could be any gun guy with a Barrett, and in this neck of the woods, there were probably dozens of them. It was big-bore territory.

The sum of the parts: if it’s Ray Cruz, end of problem. If it’s not, it’s somebody else’s problem.

“Bogier, you are clinically insane. I had no idea how insane you were. Really, you should be studied by Harvard. Someone there would surely win a Nobel Prize in medicine.”

“Okay,” said Mick, “it’s a little loud . It could be called messy . But consider: we may never get a shot like this again. Ever. If we let it slide, we will look back on this minute and hate ourselves into eternity. I say, fuck it, it’s here, let’s do it.”

“Note to self,” said MacGyver, “do not invite Bogier and his insane crew of mongoloid sociopaths to daughter’s wedding. Okay, do it, Mick. And hope that God favors the incredibly brutal.”

“He must,” said Mick. “Look at how much fun he has with earthquakes.”

DANIELSTOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

0305 HOURS

Cruz, my name is Swagger.”

“I know who you are, Gunny,” said Cruz, thin, intense, almost feral under a thatch of black crew cut. His eyes were, as promised, exotic, even Asiatic, but his face was white in its prominence of cheekbone, thinness of nose and lip. He wore jeans and a hoodie and a pair of New Balance running shoes and a purple baseball cap with a crow on it. He had a Beretta in his hand, but wasn’t pointing it at Swagger.

“Is that pistol for me?” Swagger asked.

“No,” said Cruz. “It’s for me. There’s a lot of people who want me dead. I’ll have a piece close at hand at all times, thank you very much. Nothing’s faster than a gun in the hand.”

“Cruz, you sound a little paranoid.”

“Bullets cutting your spotter in half will do that to a man.”

“I know about losing spotters, Cruz. I also know how it can fuck up your mind. I’ve been there.”

“Nobody’s been where I am now. And nobody can get me out but me.”

What was it? Who was he? The information was rushing in on Swagger so hard he had trouble staying with it. He was talking to a ghost. Bill Go, all those years dead in that anonymous little ’ville? Maybe. Maybe not. It wasn’t an aura, a vibration, a tingle in the blood, but something was leaving tracks in the snow and Swagger knew he wasn’t smart enough to read them. What? What?

“Cruz, I don’t know what game you’re up to, but you have a whole lot of important people upset. They’ll stop you to the point of killing you. That would be so fucking wrong, Sergeant. We can end this tonight and get you back on duty next week if that’s what you want.”

“You were the best. You were a god to all of us. But you don’t get it, Gunny,” said Cruz. “If I go in and we all kiss and make up, in a day or maybe a week, I’m dead. They won’t stop now. And whatever it is they’re up to, it goes on and it finally happens.”

“Cruz, you-”

“I saw a very good kid named Billy Skelton torn in two by some motherfucker on a Barrett. A hadji? Uh-uh, that would have been war. No, I hunkered down for a look and the guy with the big gun and his buddies were white. Contractors. I’ve seen enough of ’em in the zones to know. These guys were sent to hit Two-Two. It wasn’t war, it was murder.”

“Maybe Russian mercs. Maybe Iranian advisers. Maybe Chechen volunteers. It’s only skin.”

“These were American party animals. I could tell.”

“I’m not convincing you, I see. But I am on contract to the FBI. You say the word and I go to my cell phone here and in two hours, maybe less, you are under protective custody. Whatever you charge, it will get a fair hearing. I’m working for a very good guy who’s an assistant director, and I’ve known him a long, long time. I can guarantee you safety, that fair hearing, and a follow-up on your charges. It’s the best way and this is the best offer you’ll ever get.”

“Everyone says you’re the best, Gunny. Love to trust you, but I only trust the colonel because he’s completely outside the system. You may not even know who’s pulling your wires. So I will-”

In the hundredth or so of a second before he lost consciousness, Swagger was aware of the wall exploding inward in a great demonstration of the physics of high velocity and, insanely, the big steel desk behind which sat the silent colonel leaped off the deck as if it weighed an ounce and its leading edge hurled at Swagger, striking him so hard it knocked him into instant oblivion.

SUV

OUTSIDE STEEL BRIGADE ARMORY

DANIELSTOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

0305 HOURS

Oh, this is going to be so fucking cool,” said Crackers.

Z drove, turned the corner, headed down the two-lane; the building, low and unprepossessing, was a few hundred feet ahead.

Mick, curled on the backseat, was on the big gun, which was supported on the window ledge with a combat jacket scrunched under it for padding. The weapon was an oar, a wheelbarrow, a ton of fun-close to twenty pounds of semiauto rifle, unwieldy in any but the strongest of hands and arms, looking like some kind of steroid-engorged M16. He crushed its butt plate into his meaty shoulder and with his strong right hand tense on the grip and his strong left hand tense on the comb, guided the thing deftly, as if it were a child’s.22. He was magic on the rifle. He squirmed to locate the right eye relief to the $4,000-worth of U.S. Optics scope on top of it, then cranked down to 4 power for the short-distance shots to come. He hard-tapped the magazine to make sure it was well seated. That thing alone weighed about six pounds, stuffed with the missilelike 750-grain cartridges, immensely heavy for their size.

“Hey,” yelled Tony Z, because everybody was wearing earmuffs, “you’re shooting without the bipod, just like the guru said. He’ll be so pleased.”

“We like to leave ’em happy,” said Mick.

The car slowed, then halted. The black wall of the building was less than thirty yards away, one window blazing but, because of the upward angle from the vehicle, showing only ceiling.

Crackers the Clown squirmed into position from the seat well behind Z, next to the heavy forearm, ventilated for cooling. He put the NV monocular to his eye. He was already in thermal.

“Much better,” said Crackers, “big as life. Okay, I got one guy separated from the two other guys by about five feet. All are seated. I’m guessing the guy out of the group is the guru guy, behind some sort of desk, because I’m not getting a full-body signature on him. The other two guys are directly facing each other.”

“Index me off the left line of the window,” said Mick.

“I’m estimating five feet; I think you should hold a little low on center of mass because you’re shooting upward. You do the first guy, rotate maybe six inches farther right, and do the second guy. Then come back and do the colonel.”

“I’m two feet low of the window left line,” said Mick, rotating the heavy rifle to the right a bit as he held a solid cheek weld and a solid eye relief to the scope lens, “and I’m coming right, damnit, Tony, give me another foot or so.”

Tony took the foot off the brake, and, easily, the vehicle slid forward.

“Good, good, good, okay, I’m going to shoot, tighten up, three, two, and-” He felt the trigger break and then it was as if a comet had smashed into Earth, a flaming ball of destruction to suck up the oxygen and flatten the vegetation and scorch the earth in the exact moment that something hydraulic unleashed full force against his heavily muscled shoulder.