Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

“But we are stuck on this sucker until we make it go away,” said Crackers.

“I think he has a morale crisis,” said Z. “I’d make an appointment with him for the chaplain.”

“My morale improves with pussy. Any suggestions?”

“We kill this guy, and go someplace with a lot of pussy.”

“You have muscles, so you get chicks who give it out easy,” said Crackers.

“Plus, you’re a psychopath, a great advantage in fucking chicks. Me, I’m a rather nice guy and I always empathize with them. They like me. They don’t want to suck my cock, they want to tell me about their mothers. I have to go someplace special.”

“By ‘special’ he means ‘whorehouse.’”

“Can I help it if I’m not sexually competitive?” said Crackers. “I thought going forces would get me laid more, but so far it hasn’t panned out that way.”

“I thought that’s why you got married.”

“Funny, that hasn’t panned out sex-wise either.”

They laughed.

“Okay,” said Tony Z, his eyes drawn to the BlackBerry in his hands, “got movement.”

Crackers made a doodley sound along the lines of the 7th Cavalry’s famous “charge” bugle call. All three men tried to shake off the dreariness that had turned them to putty over the last few hours.

Mick, behind the wheel, started the SUV and nudged it out into the road. He did not turn on the lights.

Up ahead, advanced by its own blazing headlights, a sedan exited the FBI parking lot and turned right, then left, toward the close-by beltway entrance.

“He’s in that car,” said Tony. “I have him clear.”

“Have they sent him out to get doughnuts, I wonder,” said Crackers.

“Not likely,” said Mick.

They had worked the following technique out well, having learned to keep Swagger in any car within a mile and a half, but not within a mile. Maybe a little closer during daylight, but now, late at night, Mick knew to keep his distance. Only when he verified that Swagger’s car had hit the beltway did he go to his own headlights and approach the giant roadway superstructure at a modest pace. He went up the ramp, merged into a very thin traffic stream, and progressed at just under fifty as the faster vehicles buzzed by on his left.

“One exit,” said Z. “Well, two if you count 795 West, but one actual city exit. Reisterstown Road.”

Mick followed the directions, not really seeing the ratty neighborhood into which the ramp to Reisterstown Road deposited him but rather locked hard into the hunt.

“He’s turning right, third street past Old Court.”

They counted too. Mick doused his lights before the turn so that a psychic voodoo sniper mojo motherfucker like Swagger wouldn’t pick up on the sudden disappearance of light behind him, found Crenshaw, and turned. He followed the roadway through big, softly quiet houses, and eased to the curb two blocks behind the car in which Bob and whoever had parked.

“Now what the fuck is this?” Crackers asked.

“Maybe it’s your whorehouse. Maybe the great Bob Lee Swagger has a bone on, and he’s come down here to Chinatown to get it off. Clarifies the thinking.”

“I’ll take sloppy seconds, no problem,” said Crackers. He didn’t mean it as a joke.

“Okay,” said Mick, “Crackers, on the night vision, you stay low, you move ahead, you find solid cover, I’m guessing between cars, you set up and you keep them in surveillance.”

“Yo,” said Crackers, “action.”

He slipped out.

Mick watched the man, one of those scrawny, thin types with a lot of surprising strength in his narrow arms, slip down the road, low, under the cover of parked cars. A few minutes passed.

“Okay,” came the call over the radio, “I got him in the car, they’re just eyeballing this big corner house.”

“Can you get me an address?”

“Ah, let’s see, let’s see, yeah, 1216, 1216 Crenshaw.”

“What is it?”

“Big dark house, that’s all.”

“Great. Otherwise…?”

“They’re eyeballing, they’re talking, that’s all.”

“Okay, hold tight.”

Mick picked up the satellite phone, sent the call out.

“This better be good, Bogier,” said a groggily irritated MacGyver.

“Don’t know why, but Swagger and an FBI guy are now parked outside a house in a town called, ah, Pikesville. Address is 1216 Crenshaw. But there’s no team here, it’s not a raid or even a real recon. They’re just, you know, studying on it.”

“Crenshaw, 1216. Okay, hang tight.”

“This has just developed, I don’t know how long they’ll be here.”

“I will get back as fast as the system allows,” said MacGyver, somewhat annoyed.

Mick sat back, thinking.

Has he found Cruz? Is Cruz in the house? Why would they be here? But if he’s here, why don’t they have a raid team? Why aren’t they pouring in?

“Whoa, now they’re pulling out. Starting up, heading out.”

“What do we do?” Tony asked.

“Fuck if I know,” said Mick. His head ached. He hadn’t been to the gym in a week. Z and Crackers were driving him nuts. He could feel his body melting along with his mind. He wanted it over. This was the worst shit. He didn’t sign up for this cop shit. He was Special Forces, cross-trained in sniper and demolitions, plus he knew a good bit about radio. He had worked all over the world and here he was sitting in-

“Miiiiccccckkkk,” said Tony, slowly.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t jerk, don’t move fast, but I got a guy across the street, walking toward the house. Or maybe to another house. But he’s an Asian guy, I think, thin, strong, looks sniper to me.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Mick, understanding in a flash why the feds hadn’t raided.

They didn’t know if he was in there either. And if he wasn’t but might be, and they raided now, they’d blow that deal. So they’d hit the place at dawn, figuring the stragglers might come into the house all night, whatever it was. The image of drunken college kids, from any of the six or so schools he’d been kicked out of, came to his mind. From there the connection was easy to Alabama, the big one. Number one recruit, best high school linebacker in history. Great six games, then Auburn, a legendary game, nine solo tackles. Got drunk. Mary Christian DeLaux, the only girl he’d ever loved. The yellow Corvette from Mr. Bevington, the Chevy dealer. Bevy’s Chevys, biggest outlet in town. How ’bout a ’Vette, Rhett? The crash. He tried to push it away. He thought it was gone. But it wasn’t. The word “dormitory” flashed to him from some file deep in his cerebellum.

He turned his head just a quarter of a degree, and a man, thirty-five feet away, directly across the street, walking forward briskly, came into view. In profile he was Asian with a thick bush of stiff hair, very muscular, maybe a little tall, in jeans and a sweatshirt. He gave no sign of noting two men sitting in an SUV across the street; he was intent on his progress, just churning ahead.

But, goddamn, Mick hadn’t gotten a good look at the face.

He picked up the radio unit.

“Guy coming, your five o’clock, on sidewalk, I need you to get a good visual on his face with night vision, but don’t give your position up. Move real slow.”

“Got it,” said Crackers.

They watched. The walker passed the end of the row of cars in the street, diverted across the lawn, opened the unlocked door of 1216, and disappeared. No light came on, he didn’t go to the kitchen for a beer, or kibbitz with his frat brothers in the TV room. There was no TV room, no frat brothers, just darkness.

Crackers appeared in his car window.

“You get him?”

“Yeah. Asian, thirties, muscular, tall, thick hair.”