Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

They were watch winders, elegant boxes that opened to reveal velvet, er, whatchamacallits- things maybe?-protrusions, protuberances, armatures, whatever. If there was a word for it, Zarzi did not know it. In effect, they were artificial limbs, wrists actually. Then came the watches, removed from their travel cases. Rolexes, Patek Philippes, Blancpains, Raymond Weils, Vacheron Constantins, Bell & Rosses, Breguets, Chopards, Girard-Perregauxs, Piagets, Cartiers, Omegas, Fortises, and so on and so forth, more than eight dozen of them, all mechanical analogs, all clicking away in perfect time, all second hands indexed exactly to the second designations on the faces and not between, as happens on cheap quartz movements, all elegant, all expensive, all shiny. One by one, in a certain order, a servant slid the watch he bore onto the artificial wrist of the opened box until the room resembled the discreetly expensive private viewing arena of a high-end Parisian jewelry store. It then developed that each box also sported a discreet cord, which was now unrolled by servants and each plug inserted into a lengthy socket box, which was in turn plugged into the hotel’s electrical system.

“Sir?”

“Yes, proceed, Gul,” said the Great Man.

Gul pressed the main switch on the socket box and each of the velvet wrists began a slow, methodical revolution, describing a circle about four inches in circumference. Thus, the watches, all self-winders, the culmination of the watchmaker’s art, received their two hours of energy to keep them running perfectly. No longer was the space a jewelry showroom, but rather a kind of ghost hall full of apparitions rotating the watches to precise life, in soundless synchronicity, a symphony of gently moving disks of numbers. As it was dark, the radiated digits gleamed more brightly, but the many gold pieces had their own organic process by which they magnified what little ambient glow their surfaces caught and reflected.

It was like a slow-motion pyrotechnic show and behind each watch face, Zarzi knew, was a galaxy of gears and shafts and pins and jewels, set together with inexorable logic driven by extraordinary imagination and discipline, traceable back to the original verge escapement device created by who knows what forgotten genius in the European Middle Ages. It was, of course, the West: not computers or skyscrapers or women with bulging thighs and naked, painted toes; all that came later. But this was its core, its essence, and he loved it so and he hated it just as fervently, all the gear wheels, the tiny springs, the rotating winder weights, the hands sweeping inexorably around, measuring not time, as so many thought, but only the tension within their mainspring. That is what the watch calibrated; time was a metaphor against which it was applied. There was no time, not really, not that could be touched, weighed, licked, tasted, felt. The watches ticked against their own winding and the imagination that had designed the winding mechanism; it was magic, it was profound, it was touching, he loved it so much in all its glory and damnation.

WOODLAWN, BEYOND BELTWAY

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

1700 HOURS

THE NEXT DAY

Six meetings, and at each, Bob had given his little speech on Ray Cruz’s standing offhand capability. Twice to Agency people, to the Baltimore metropolitans, the Maryland State Police, and two Secret Service meetings and at each positions were marked, radio frequencies verified, aviation coordinates laid in, the parade of intricate planning and counterplanning gone over a third, a fourth, a fifth time.

Everybody was exhausted. But nobody was going home.

Bob sat with Nick and several others-ties loosened, jackets off, sleeves rolled up-in the special agent in charge’s corner office in the bland office building the Bureau had rented, and then decorated in the mind-numbing scheme known as Nineties Bureaucracy. One touch stood out: one of the office’s bosses had been female, and she’d supervised a witty Dick Tracy toy and comic strip exhibit in the foyer, behind glass. None of the men noticed it and none of the subsequent male SAICs bothered to take it down.

The occasion was a situation report, sitrep in the jazzy vernacular. A special agent had just summed up the day’s efforts in locating Ray Cruz, which included a sweep of all motels and hotels, rental apartments, trailer parks, homeless shelters; monitoring all local law enforcement reports, all speeding and misdemeanor charges (idiotic, Swagger thought; Ray Cruz wasn’t about to get in a bar fight); and so forth and so on, including employee canvasses of all retail and eating establishments, review of postal activity, delivery by private carrier, garbage pickup, road crew work, traffic light maintenance, meter maids, et cetera. All telephone tips had been checked out, all the unglamorous clerk’s work that is the essence of law enforcement.

“Nothing.”

“You’re the expert,” someone said to Swagger. “Where’s a marine sniper go to ground?”

“Right now,” said Bob, “he’d be in a hole covered with leaves and branches. His face would be dark green and black; he’d be ready to shit in the hole, piss in the hole, eat in the hole, and die in the hole. He crawled a long way to get to that hole and he ain’t about to give it up.”

There was a little laughter, mostly of a tired sort.

Nick asked a special agent Travis, “Anything new from Washington?”

“More stuff on the Cruz background investigation.”

“Sergeant Swagger, take a look at it, see if it’s anything, when you get a moment.”

“Sure,” said Bob.

“Hey,” said the Baltimore SWAT supervisor, “Sergeant Swagger, I remember you said yesterday ‘good Catholic boy.’ I’m wondering if Cruz could get hold of a priest’s garment and get into that steeple in the square that way.”

“Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate, ” someone else said.

“We’ve canvassed the church, but it’s a very good suggestion,” said Nick. “And Cruz seems to have the self-effacing low profile of a priest, so he’d fit right in. I’ll detail some extra men there tomorrow.”

Bob said, “Camouflage.”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant?”

“Camouflage.”

“You’re thinking he’ll disguise himself as a bush? Or maybe he’s already there, disguised as a bush?”

There was some laughter and even Bob had a grin from the agent’s wisecrack.

“No,” said Bob, “I don’t mean in that way. Despite what I just said, he ain’t going to paint his face green and glue twigs to his head or wear no suit that looks like a swamp. But camouflage is at the center of the mind-set. That’s what the mission was about in Afghanistan. Camouflage. Blending in. Okay, not with the ground but with the local population. So… what would he camouflage himself as?”

There was silence.

“Put it another way; where would he locate so he wouldn’t be noticed? What is his first quality? What is the first thing about him?”

“He’s a marine.”

“He’s a sniper.”

“He’s a hero.”

“He’s gone crazy.”

“All that’s no help at all,” said Nick. “Bob, what are you thinking?”

“First of all, he’s Filipino. He was raised in the Philippines. He speaks Tagalog without an accent. With other Filipinos, his features blend in; he ain’t what we’re calling ‘exotic.’ He becomes more Filipino in a group of Filipinos. They probably accept him on faith. He knows you guys ain’t penetrated them because there’s so few of them, a stranger would stick out, and you probably don’t have too many Filipino special agents.”

“Where is this going?” said Nick.

“I’m trying to think how he’d think. Here’s what I come up with: maybe somewhere there’s a Filipino who’s already passed our once-over lightly. He’s got a kitchen job, something in food service, maybe delivery, in the shoot zone. He’s a recent immigrant, don’t speak the language too good. It’s a low-level job, but he’s been on it a batch of months, so it’s okay. So I’m thinking Ray, in that calm, methodical, focused way of his, has found him. He’s befriended him, he’s offered him some money, he’s earned his trust as a Filipino, speaking the language. This guy don’t know nothing, but the money’s for the people back home, how could he turn it down? So Ray takes over that identity tomorrow. He gets in under that name and the people he fools don’t even look close at him. He’s one of the little folks who carry out the shit and scrub the toilets and wipe up the puke and wash the piss off the sidewalks each morning. Ray goes in as that guy, his ID and his name on the list gets him through our security. Nobody’s looking close at faces in photos and faces on people. And he’s Asian, they all look alike to any busy cop at a checkpoint. And remember, he don’t need an escape route. He’s not trying to get out, and that makes his penetration much easier. So tomorrow he steps out of the kitchen across the street or down the block, and he’s got a way-cut-down 700 with scope, maybe just a good red dot. The package is maybe sixteen inches long, enough to get a good shoulder brace and cheek weld, you could do it with a hacksaw. He can see the hubbub, and when the agents come out, out comes the rifle, there’s Zarzi, he goes to target and ticks off the shot offhand standing in one second and you’ve got brains all over the sidewalk. Whiskey Two-Two, mission accomplished, over and out. That’s what he’s got to work with, that’s what he’d do.”