Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

Cops were thundering toward Nick and Swagger as well, drawn by the sound of the pistol. Nick held up his hands, waving them off, and went to the radio.

“This is King Four, Memphis, goddamnit,” he said. “My guy fired because he saw sniper activity, 700 block Charles, sited on the garbage truck that’s halfway out of the alley, get people there fast, be very careful, suspect is extremely dangerous, I say again, armed, extremely dangerous.”

“Principal is okay, there was no shot, we have no evidence of bullet damage, no sound of report.”

“Get people on the truck, get people on the truck.”

Bob relaxed, handed Nick the gun.

“They have no bullet damage,” Nick said, incredulously. “And no sonic. He didn’t get the shot off, because you grabbed my gun and started the parade.”

“Fuck,” said Bob, feeling a sudden terrible weariness flood his limbs, coupled with a need to sit down before his knees melted and pitched him onto the sidewalk. He staggered to the car, and set himself against the bumper. I am way too old for this shit, he thought.

“You saw it? You saw it? It must be two hundred yards away, for Christ’s sake.”

“I saw the truck move out, caught my eye. I saw the window come down, or I think I saw the window come-”

“All units, all units, we have principal in Charlie One, we are out of here, we are out of here, secure area.”

But by the time they got there, they found no sniper. They found a city sanitary crew flex-cuffed in its own garbage scoop and cab, they found an unconscious policeman judo-chopped by a lithe Asian martial arts expert but otherwise undamaged, except that his car was stolen. That vehicle was found one hour later, in East Baltimore, a neighborhood named Canton. But no one saw how it got there, there were no prints, and there was no sign of the sniper.

MOUNT VERNON DISTRICT

DOWNTOWN BALTIMORE

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

1830 HOURS

Bogier pressed it hard, but finally saw that nothing was gained by remaining on the scene.

He used the satellite phone to run his decision by Mr. MacGyver.

“We’re not doing any good here and we’re running totally on fumes. Swagger will be tied up for hours; he’s not going anywhere. We’re going to check into a motel, crash, and pick up Swagger tomorrow at the FBI HQ.”

“Are you sure, Bogier? Swagger has ways of-”

“It’s just CSI bullshit, without the chicks. Measuring, interviewing, collecting, all that cop stuff. The area’s a complete mess with downtown shut down. We’ll be in traffic for an hour even getting out of here.”

“What’s the latest?”

“I have nothing inside. I’m just listening to the news. Someone-Ray, we know-pointed a gun at Zarzi, but Swagger-I’m guessing it was Swagger-picked up on him and fired pistol shots at him, and the shots set off a Chinese fire drill. Ray never pulled down, Swagger missed, the cops went into crazy-town mode, sirens, ambulances, SWAT team, choppers, the whole nine yards. Somehow Ray got away in the confusion. He conked a cop and slipped out.”

“Shit.”

“So near, so far. He was just a few fucking blocks away from us. But who knew; we had to park where we could find parking.”

“I’d stay with Swagger.”

“Goddamnit, my people are about to collapse. Nothing will happen here for at least twelve more hours. Tomorrow will be press conference bullshit. You can watch it on Fox. I’ve got to get these guys some shut-eye. It’s my call, that’s how I’m calling it.”

“All right, all right, rack ’em out. Come back tomorrow with renewed zeal and exuberance, that renowned Bogier touch you’re so famous for.”

“You have to let us know if they cancel the Washington events. If they do, if there’s no Zarzi to bring Ray out, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“I’ll keep you informed,” said MacGyver, and with his normal arrogant rudeness hung up.

“What a prick,” Mick said. “Okay, let’s head to the ’burbs and sack out. We’ll be back on station 0630 tomorrow.”

“I’m so tired I wouldn’t know what to do if some bitch started sucking on my cock,” said Crackers the Clown, not as humor but as an earnest statement of fact.

“Well, you don’t have to worry because it ain’t about to happen. And we ain’t about to cap Ray Cruz either; he is one slippery little yellow bastard, I’ll say that.”

“I wonder why he didn’t,” said Tony Z. “First time I ever heard of him not shooting.”

WOODLAWN

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

2200 HOURS

He didn’t shoot because you scrambled the zone on him. He lost his sight picture because six Secret Service guys jumped on Zarzi. That’s why he didn’t shoot.”

“You’re not getting it,” said Swagger. “He’s much faster than that. I saw the window go down. I whacked you-”

“A little enthusiastically, I might add.”

The other agents in the meeting laughed through their own fatigue. They’d been on-site for hours after the incident, this after the raid in the morning. Everybody was ground down, the coffee was cold, the rats had already carted off the doughnuts, and the Snickers bars had ossified. They’d been going over it for eight hours, and yet no one had said anything intelligent.

“I grabbed the gun,” continued Bob, “I raised it, I fired. That whole thing goes at least three seconds. I’m old, I’m not fast anymore, I didn’t get a clean grip on the pistol, I had to fumble with the release button, I got it out, I got it up, then I fired. All that takes time. Three seconds. Minimum. Maybe more. What’s he doing in that time?”

“Waiting for the target to clear. There’s agents all over the place. He’s shooting into a crowd, he has to get a good sight pic on Zarzi. Zarzi never cleared, then the shit happens, he has the discipline, knows he doesn’t have a shot, realizes this one’s a bust, and beats it.”

“When we get videotape, I’m betting you’ll see that Zarzi was clear. He held when he could have wasted the guy. I know it.”

“There’s no evidence,” someone said. “It’s fine to just say, but there’s no evidence, so why even bring it up?”

Bob ignored the comment. “I don’t see no theory by which he don’t shoot. He’s fast, that’s what’s different. On target in a split second, perfect trigger control, it’s over in less than a second. Yet he had three, and never pulled. Very hard to figure.”

“You raise provocative points,” Nick said. “But maybe you have a natural empathy for the sniper. You want him to be running some game on us, as opposed to simply trying to kill his target out of some twisted sense of vengeance for Whiskey Two-Two, which he thinks was betrayed and targeted. I have to play your insights off against what the evidence says.”

Bob shook his head. He was blurred too, his thinking fuzzy, his reflexes gummy, his tongue tied up in his mouth.

“Okay,” Nick said, “I’m calling it. Get some sleep, everybody. Let the investigators continue to gather info, and the cops to look for Ray, fat chance. I want everybody on duty by 0630 tomorrow, we’ll go over this stuff and get it into a presentational order, I’m under great pressure from DC to hold a presser, so that’s scheduled at ten. Maybe something will break. Maybe Ray will turn himself in.”

The laughter was desultory.

“Nick, we’ve got solid IDs from the garbage crew guys. Are we going to go wide with the Cruz photo tomorrow?”

“I haven’t decided yet. If we do, then we have a thousand reporters digging into Ray Cruz and all that info just floods everything, it’s more bullshit between us and what we have to do. We don’t talk to anybody who hasn’t already been on 60 Minutes. We make him the most famous man in America and what do we get out of it? I don’t think it helps us find him, because he’s too clever. And it dumps a huge screen of smoke on everything. Let me run it by the Agency, see what their cool, giant, Martian intellects think of it. We may want to keep it quiet, hope we can make it go away without much more disclosure.”