Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

ROUTE 40 WEST

CATONSVILLE, MARYLAND

0230 HOURS

Bogier hurt everywhere. His nipples hurt, his toes hurt, his watchband hurt, the elastic in his underpants hurt. His mind hurt. But his chest was the worst. It was lit like the Fourth of July if that holiday was celebrated in fireworks primarily of the blue-indigo-violet range. Each of Ray’s five shots had delivered about five hundred-foot pounds of energy to the Kevlar chest plate that prevented them from penetrating, but did nothing to halt the energy transaction that hammered his flesh like a drill bit driven by a sledge. A pink blood blister signified the actual point of the bullet strike and was itself the center of a radiant bloom of BIV swirls that unfurled like daisies in the summer sunshine. The wounds leaked interior blood as far as belly, biceps, and neck, so the flowers were as if displayed on a field of bluish velvet and wine stain. It hardly looked human.

“What happen, baby?” asked Kay. “You been in fight?”

Kay, wrapped in a flower-print strapless dress that showed what appeared to be cleavage to end all cleavage and a butt to end all butts, had a fifties sex-goddess vibration that was undeniable; she could have played bad girls in B pictures for a decade. Her doll’s face was symmetrical but not quite approaching beauty in its flatness, her eyes were not without empathy but helpfully unencumbered by curiosity. The question was strictly pro forma.

“You should see the other guy,” Mick said, the point of the joke being that it wasn’t funny at all, and its lack of humor perfectly matched his black mood.

“You lie there. Kay take care.”

“I can’t shower myself,” he said. “I tried, I hurt too much. You have to do it for me. Leave the backside alone, just do the front, under the arms. I stink of sweat. Go easy, stupid white guy is hurting bad.”

She laughed in a way learned from cartoons. “Ha,” followed by another “ha.” Then she said, “You funny, honey.”

“I’m a regular talk show host,” he said.

She took his towel off, and if she was impressed with the MCGA equipage down there she said nothing. In her job she’d seen more dicks than a urologist, so nothing would surprise her. He lay on the table in a pool of hot water and she sprayed him three or four times, then smeared soap all over him-that is, all over him-and used her strong but gentle hands to knead some pleasure into his body. She was very good, the hands knowing and not shy, her concentration highly professional, up, down, around, slip-slop, squish-whish, in, out, here and finally there.

“Ah,” he said, “that felt good.”

“You big,” she did say, finally.

“Big but dumb. That’s how it goes.”

“You come now.”

She wrapped the towel around him and led him, quietly padding barefoot through the surprisingly clean hallways, to the room where the episode had begun. The place was dim, almost religious, but smelled of locker room disinfectants. Other dramas played out behind curtains sealing off rooms like the bland one into which she led him with its $8-a-night motel room art and lava lamp. There, she pulled off his towel, patted him down, and was surprised to find he was all ready to go again.

“Wow,” she said, “what a strong fella.”

“Strong but dumb.”

He lay on his back. She turned the lights down, peeled out of her print dress to reveal that beneath the hypnotic cleavage lay two wondrous Playboy -quality breasts. She touched them for him because he could not touch them himself and discovering an avid audience for the exhibition, she continued with the touching theme in various private areas and in various unusual postures until he got very interested.

She rushed to him at that point, and with a mighty bolt, he emptied himself. Then she crawled up next to him and snuggled. He was not a snuggler, but tonight, her softness and warmth and uncritical if professional adoration were welcome.

“You sad, baby?”

“A good friend went away today,” he said. “That’s never fun, you know?”

“In same fight?”

“The very same. Can’t be helped, it’s the business we chose, but it’s sad.”

At that point something that couldn’t have been a phone started to make a noise that couldn’t be a ring, and he rolled from the massage table, went to his dumped clothes on the floor, and pulled out the big satellite communicator.

“Excuse me,” he said.

He punched the button.

“Nice of you to answer,” MacGyver said.

“I’m not in the mood to take any shit,” he said. “From you or anybody.”

“What happened? Three on one, he kills Crane, and you guys run like hell. Hardly up to Black Cat standards, much less Graywolf or Fifth Special Forces.”

“What happened was, he outfought us. He read a tell, knew who we were, and jumped us instead of us jumping him. His first five went point blank into my chest. Goddamn lucky I was wearing a vest. The prick is world class, I’ll give that to him. Any man who could take down Carl Crane is a hell of a man.”

“They made Crane fast off prints from DOD. The FBI has a circular out for his pals Mick Bogier and Tony Zemke.”

“You want us out of here? Are we too hot? You want your money back? I don’t feel like calling Tony’s mother like I had to call Carl’s wife. Carl left her and three kids, he was a great dad, and he did what he did to keep them comfortable and because you told us it was for the good of our uncle.”

“I wish I could afford to cut you loose. But it’s too late now, I can’t bring new people in. And since Cruz got out clean and nobody up there seems to have connected this with him, you still have to finish.”

“Will do,” said Mick.

“It’s worth it. We’re trying to find a way out and Zarzi’s our best route. If this works, there won’t be any more young kids dying in that shithole. Cruz, his spotter, the thirty-one salesmen, the Filipinos, whoever, they will have died for a noble cause, which is stopping the pointless slaughter of our people for no advantage whatsoever. You get that? Basically, we’re trying to end the war and put you out of business.”

“There’ll never be an end to war, Nietzsche,” said Mick.

“He was right, but maybe we can get ourselves a little downtime before the next one.”

“Friday night. Georgetown?”

“That would be so nice. I may be able to get you security dispositions. Evidently this Swagger has some weird gift for figuring out where another sniper will shoot from. You don’t have to be near Georgetown; with that Barrett you can be a mile away.”

“A mile with ranging shots. No ranging shots. One shot, one kill, cold bore, twelve hundred yards would be the max. Then, Belize, here I come.”

“Bogier, tough about your friend Crane. But don’t stay depressed. Get this thing done, cover yourself with glory and honor and the thanks of a grateful nation. Save the sum of things for pay. What better epitaph could a mercenary want or get? Plus, all that dough.”

“You get me the intel. More is better. And I will finally nail this little sucker, for Carl if for no other reason.”

He turned, put the phone down. Kay was sitting naked on the table. Her eyes demonstrated her utter innocence as to the talk she had overheard. Her flesh was luminous, piles and piles of it. For some strange reason, unlike so many Korean women, she had permed her hair so it was frothy with curls. Her face was a happy pie. Her eyes were happy and shallow. He discovered himself tumescent and could tell that pleased her as much as him.

FIFTH FLOOR MEETING ROOM

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

1100 HOURS

THE NEXT DAY

There were four of them, and various coffee- and briefcase-bearing assistants. They were serious men, pinkish, well dressed, in suits, though one outlier had a tweedy professional look to him in a sports coat and bow tie; he was the one without the assistant and he carried his own briefcase. Their faces, out of long discipline, expressed personality but little else, as if otherwise all nuances had been mastered and controlled. One looked fierce, two bureaucratic, the last one-the academic-kindly.