Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

“Pah,” said the great one, “it summarizes your life: nothingness.”

He tossed it into the wastebasket and turned and selected two watches.

One was a thick Fortis, with a leather band, the chronograph that according to advertising was the favorite of the Russian cosmonaut service. It cost about $2,700 and you could use it to hammer nails or plant bombs on submarine hulls in Sevastopol and it wouldn’t lose a second. Ticktock, it was the inevitable vanity of materialism and glamour, possibly, or the fact that the snow will never melt in the Himalayas or that the West will never fall: it was destiny, strength, and beautiful design.

The other was a Paul Gerber. Gerber made twelve watches a year with his own fingers. When they were finished, they looked even plainer than the Seiko, except that they displayed the phases of the moon, the date, the day, the time in Buenos Aires or Cairo or London, the arrival of the next solar and lunar eclipse, and all in precise accuracy for 128 years, assuming the watch was kept running over that time period. The waiting list to get one was fifteen years long, and the cost over $100,000.

One was glamorous, sexy, fast, sleek: the West. The other was subtle, incredibly complicated, a symphony of wheels and gears and pins and diamonds. It represented the furthest reaches of the mind of man as applied to less than one square inch, and yet was impenetrable to those who did not appreciate its exquisiteness. Its maker had applied, even if he didn’t know it, the harshness of sharia against his own mind, and through that discipline had created that which was absolute, unknowable, irrevocable, impenetrable, undeniable. To Zarzi, it was the East.

“Go ahead, choose one. Which appeals? Each is equally fine, but you must choose.”

The boy pointed to the big watch.

“Of course. That is what I feared,” said Zarzi. “You take what is beautiful over what endures. That is the problem. All right, go ahead, take it, it’s yours, but do not brag of it or the other servants will be jealous.”

The boy took it.

“There, now go and enjoy the new toy.”

The servant hustled out and Zarzi was alone with his watch and his fate.

The boy had made the final choice for him.

WILSON BOULEVARD

ROSSLYN, VIRGINIA

0130 HOURS

It finally rang. Swagger had been staring at the folder for what seemed like hours. He imagined the young sniper Cruz shot up, bleeding out in a roadside ditch, losing consciousness, to be discovered in a few weeks by a convict cleanup crew.

He flipped opened the phone.

“Where are you?”

“As if I’d tell you, goddamnit. Every time you show up, a crew of gunmen shows up. I’m lucky to be alive.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Nah. Cut, scraped, twisted, bruised, pissed, but they didn’t quite finish the job, or even start it.”

“Okay, good. Now here’s what-”

“Hold on, goddamnit. Who the fuck are you? Are you being tailed? Are you stupid, sloppy, careless, unlucky? Are you the world’s best liar and double agent? Can you look me hard in the eye and lie to me? How’d you last so long if you’re this much of an idiot?”

“The answer to all them questions is no. I ain’t a liar, a double, or nothing. I’m just a beat-up former sniper with holes everywhere, like a piece of cheese. I wasn’t followed. I check. I have the discipline. Nobody was on me, not in sight anyway, and nobody has ever been on me, goddamnit. They must be using satellites is all I can figure.”

“Oh, well then, it couldn’t possibly be the CIA, could it? It’s probably a Pepsico satellite or maybe McDonald’s now has orbital birds.”

“I never said the Agency wasn’t involved. Clearly they are involved big time. But now we know it and we can use the satellites against them. Maybe there’s a transponder in my car, that’s the only way they could do it. I’ll rent a new one tomorrow, just to make sure.”

That seemed to quiet Cruz.

“Listen, it’s time for you to come in. We took our suspicion and all our dope to the Big Man, and he got the Agency to acknowledge some things and pledge cooperation. It seems clear that there are some people over there who are overcommitted to this Zarzi. If laws have been broken-that is, if Agency people have targeted you or other marines-that will be dealt with. But it all turns on your coming in, giving your statements and your facts, working within a team structure, following the rules and so on and so forth. You can’t be rogue no more. The rogue shit makes these people scared as hell and when they feel fear, they respond with violence.”

“I come in and another mystery explosion craters a building.”

“Cruz, it won’t happen. I’m speaking for the Bureau. No, I ain’t their number one boy, but I have Nick Memphis on the team and the director was-”

“The director was bullshitting you. Don’t you recognize the signs? He was jiving you, man; get me in, and watch the promises disappear, along with me. And whatever the Zarzi people want to achieve, they do. Maybe it’s for the good, but nobody can guarantee it, because it’s a crap shoot. Maybe it’s not.”

“Think about it,” Bob said. It was important to him to get Cruz through this for some reason. He didn’t want to lose this guy. “Don’t do nothing. Move tomorrow to another location. Do you need money? I can get you money. I think I can work on them about the time and maybe you won’t have to do none. It doesn’t seem nobody’s linked you to the shoot-out in Baltimore because I never told them you were at that car wash and nobody else got hurt and it was clear self-defense, so I’m thinking you should be okay on that one. By the way, the sucker you busted was named Carl Crane, ex-Special Forces, ex-Graywolf. He hung with a crew led by another ex-forces guy, big, blond linebacker type-”

Cruz remembered: the big guy with the Barrett, ambling down the crest of the hill after they’d checked out the kill zone that held the two parts of Billy Skelton. He remembered thinking: I will hunt you cocksuckers down.

“-named Bogier, Mick Bogier, who all hung out at a joint called the Black Cat in Kabul. Gun-for-hire types.”

“There you go. CIA hires mercs for the dirty stuff and when the mercs can’t make it happen, they laser-paint the hotel for the smart bomb. When they learn they fail, the Agency people go to the same team, for obvious security reasons, using people already part of it. The contractors hunt me in America. The Agency keys on you, plants a bug so they can tail you by a bird in the sky, feeding info to the contractors. When you locate me, they move in for the kill. In Pikesville, they thought I was in the house so they raided hard and killed every dishwasher in the place. They followed you to me at the car wash. They’ll follow you to me if I turn myself in.”

“It won’t happen again. I got it busted now.”

“And you still don’t know why the fuck Zarzi is here.”

“Cruz, damnit, for the first time, I’m thinking we’re ahead of them. Tomorrow I go to a meeting. I will meet with the four guys who have the authority to deal a Paveway strike without raising no questions. I will eyeball them and see what I can see. I will report back to you tomorrow and we will see where we are. Think on coming over to us. Give it a fair shot. This rogue crap is just going to get you killed. Okay?”

Cruz said nothing.

“Get some sleep, Sergeant Cruz. I will bring you in, we will make this happen. I swear to you, sniper to sniper, it’ll work out.”

“I’ll take you at your word, because I’m a fool and a dreamer. But only one more time,” said Cruz, breaking the connection.