Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I hope so.”

“And if you’re not talking about it because you think you have to ‘protect’ some people, let me tell you, that cat’s out of that bag. We know about Pentameter. We know about the top-secret, possibly illegal, fast-shoot leader-killing program that can be called up and executed in seconds and then ceases to exist. We know they used you to put a thermobaric Paveway into that hotel and that thirty-one souls went wherever they went, and no big bad leader died that day. But you didn’t kill them people. You lived up to your honor, your tradition, your family’s tradition”-Swagger knew Dombrowski’s father had been a lieutenant general in the Air Force and a Phantom jock in Vietnam, her grandfather a one-star general who’d done fifty (two tours) over Europe in the Sixth Air Force in World War Two, she’d graduated third in her class at the academy-“and you acted in a warrior’s good faith. You were used, but it happens, and you have to go on.”

“But,” she said, “in war, collateral happens. Wrong place, puff of wind, your finger slips, you misread a map, anything, and innocent people die. You live with it because that’s the process of war and it’s big and sloppy and cruel and you put it behind you. This was different. I was told to shoot, I rode the bomb down because Paveway isn’t a fire-and-forget system, so you have to actually fly it into the target. You’re in the nose. I saw that roof get bigger and bigger and bigger and then disappear in the flash. It happened because of me. And I checked the papers, I checked with everyone I knew: no, no leader went down, the intelligence was wrong, so let’s pretend it didn’t happen. You know, if the Israelis send a missile through the wrong window, they pay off and apologize. Here, we just pretend it hasn’t happened and we walk away from it. It’s not right.”

“And that’s why you left the service?”

“And broke my parents’ hearts and ended up selling books at Borders and working a rape hotline at night.”

“I’m betting you could get back in. They need people like you. You’re the best, and you make the service and the nation better for your participation.”

“Are you a recruiter?”

“No. I’m after whoever ordered a Pentameter hit that day. Someone high in government did it for reasons we haven’t figured out yet. Yes, he killed those thirty-one but he done some other killing too, for some policy goal that he’s the only one who’s aware of. He’s the bastard I’m hunting.”

“I’ll tell you everything,” she said.

COLUMBUS, OHIO

1650 HOURS

LATER THAT AFTERNOON

The state trooper’s light flashed red-blue, red-blue and he hit some kind of klaxon device, an unpleasant sound not unlike the Israeli antiriot psy-war technologies. Bilal guided the van to a halt on the shoulder.

“What is it, Bilal?” asked Professor Khalid.

“I don’t know,” said Bilal. “You two sit there and keep your foolish mouths shut. This man does not want to be engaged in your dialectics. He is beyond enlightenment. When he sees that I am Muslim, he will want to arrest me and impound the vehicle. He will find what is in the back and we will be put on trial and treated like amusing dogs for the infidels. Then you will spend the rest of your lives in a Western prison and you will have contributed absolutely nothing.”

“Oh, dear,” said Dr. Faisal. “That would be most unfortunate. I would not go to heaven. Although it is meaningless to the apostate, as he is not going to heaven under any circumstances, the circumcised dog, and I-”

“Faisal,” said Khalid, “your hostility is pointless when directed at me. Save it for-”

“Be quiet, the both of you. Worthless, yakky old men, all the time with the yakking, I almost hope he does arrest us so I can get some peace and quiet.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” said Faisal.

“Use the jug,” said Bilal.

“It’s not that one. It’s the other one. A jug is of no use.”

“Then just hold it. That’s all we need, shit all over everything for this big American hero to smell.”

He tried to gather himself. The Ruger.380 with a Velcro strip adhesived to its slide was held in place by another Velcro strip wrapped around his forearm. He could draw and shoot in a second. Yet what would that accomplish? Broad daylight, highway, the middle of America, top speed sixty-two mph. They certainly weren’t getting away with anything, much less getting away, period.

Finally, presumably after checking their Arizona plates with HQ, the trooper lumbered out of his vehicle, stopped to hitch up his belt, then ambled forward to the van window. Bilal watched him advance, placed his wallet out on the empty seat next to him so that the officer could watch him reach for it, then set his hands at ten and two on the wheel, and concentrated on holding still.

“Good afternoon, sir, may I see a driver’s license, please?”

“Yes, Officer.”

He reached over and picked up the wallet, held it deliberately out front so the cop could watch both hands-this was a trick he’d learned as a child when the Israeli Security Forces detained boys en masse-and plucked out the license, a very good fake linked to an actual license holder in Tempe, Arizona.

The officer took the license, took a brief look around the van, giving the two old men a once-over, then said, “I’ll be right back, sir.”

He went back to his vehicle, now to run the license against watch lists, APBs, wanted circulars, other security checklists.

“I have shit myself,” said Faisal.

“Praise be to Allah,” said Khalid. “When you need Him, He comes to your service.”

“Infidel. Apostate. Fiend. Demon.”

“Stop it, you two. I will find a place for you to purify, if we get out of this.”

“I am trying to be rational.”

“The text is all the ‘rational’ you need-”

“Please, I can take no more,” said Bilal. “Silence. He returns.”

The officer came to the van window again.

“All right, Mr. Muhammed,” he said, handing the license back. “The reason I stopped you, your right rear tire looked wobbly to me. I think you should pull in at the next highway rest area and have a mechanic look at it. Maybe the lug nuts are loose, or maybe you have a worse problem and it’ll need some looking after. You could also help whichever old fellow had an accident get cleaned up. Sorry to detain you and cause an unpleasantness, but your safety is our most important concern.”

“Thank you, Officer,” said Bilal. “I will have it taken care of.”

“Good luck on your trip now.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Bilal started the engine again, waited for a space to open up, and reentered the traffic.

DIRECTOR’S OFFICE

HOOVER BUILDING

WASHINGTON, DC

1000 HOURS

THE NEXT DAY

So let me get this straight,” said the director, “your job was to apprehend a man who’d made a threat against a high-profile diplomatic visitor to this country. You haven’t done that. You really haven’t even come close and he’s come closer to doing his job than you have to doing yours. But you say you have uncovered a secret CIA killer program that in at least one case has targeted American servicemen in Afghanistan. You’ve decided that case is more important than apprehending Ray Cruz. You now want latitude to widen the investigation, bring in the U.S. Attorneys’ Office, begin subpoenaing high-ranking Agency officers working in the most secret and sensitive of national security areas. Hmm, Mr. Swagger, it seems like every time we hire you as a consultant, we end up in a completely different pea patch than the one we thought we were going to end up in. Is that a fair assessment?”