Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

“It does. Just so you know, you and Carl, you guys are the best I ever worked with. Too bad about him, but I’ll be on your six o’clock any time you need it, bro.”

“Same here, Adonis.”

“Now let’s do this sucker.”

They slid back to the rear of the SUV. The spotting scope and the.338 Lapua Magnum, a Sako TRG-42 with a big-ass chunk of Nightforce glass up top, were already in place. They squirmed into position, and Tony Z worked himself to the scope, fiddled with it, while Mick set to rifle business.

“Wait,” said Bogier. “Run a check on the BlackBerry on Swagger. See where he is. That might come in handy.”

“You got it,” said Tony. He rolled to his back, pulled the BlackBerry out of the pocket of his tactical vest, then squirmed back over and turned it on. Magically, a grid of the streets where they were operating opened up, and in a few seconds, the small, beeping light that always announced the satellite’s astronomical opinion on the presence of Planet Swagger came to life.

“Yeah, he’s on-site. He’s at the library. That must be their command HQ.”

“Good,” said Bogier. “If they were on to anything, he’d be down here in this area. We got it locked. I am filled with confidence. The mission is a big go.”

“Okay, Swagger’s moving, not much, but there’s motion.” Tony looked at his watch. “Good, that means the speech is over, now Swagger knows it’s the moment of maximum danger, and he’s moving close to Zarzi.”

“Go to scope, bro.”

Tony put his eye back to the spotter. He saw the stone wall, an upslope of grass to it, the perpendicular wrought-iron fence, a sidewalk into the campus, another outpost of fence, then the driveway that presumably led to parking lots. Two cops stood together, talking casually, about thirty yards down 37th, their backs to the driveway and gate. It was six hundred yards out, and by now, it had darkened considerably. The range was too far for night vision, but the optics gave excellent resolution and there was enough ambient light from the campus lights and the buildings across 37th Street to illuminate the scene for him.

“I’ve got a good visual.”

“Me too,” said Bogier.

The rifle was a phantasmagoria of modern accuracy tricks, with a free-floating barrel, its action bedded and sunk into a green plastic stock that had accuracy enhancements 1 through 233, including a rigid pistol grip, a bolt grip the size of a golf ball, and infinitely adjustable potential, whole pieces and sides and hemispheres that could be adjusted inward and outward just so. It looked like a piece of plastic plumbing put together by a drunken committee of clowns, but it fit like a glove, and riding its bipod, Mick brought it readily to hand, eye, supporting elbow. The muzzle of the suppressor projected just slightly from the rear opening and the windows of the vehicle were so blackened that you’d suspect a sniper only if you were looking for a sniper.

Through the scope, which was set at a modest 6 power, Mick could see exactly what Tony saw, only smaller. But there was no jiggle, no wobble, no irritating tremble matched to his breathing, which is the great advantage of the lower magnification.

“I am so locked on,” said Mick. “I can feel my heartbeats, I can feel my atoms shifting. Man, I am in a zen wave you would not believe.”

“Me too, brother. Yes.”

“Any second now,” Mick said, and both understood the time for chatter was over.

They waited. It sucked. They waited. It sucked. They waited. It sucked.

“Uh!” said Tony, a little peep to his voice. “I have him. Jesus Christ, he just leaned out from around the iron fence at the entrance to the parking lot. You read it so right, Mick! He’s twenty feet from his shooting position.”

“Cops, do you see cops?”

“They’re looking the wrong way, assholes. He’s trying to decide whether to conk them, then go to the wall gap, or just go anyway, hoping they don’t turn.”

“I got him, damnit, he keeps pulling out and back in, I don’t have enough of him long enough to shoot.”

“You cool?”

“Like the hand of death, man. Just let him move, stay stable, and bingo, we got him.”

Then the sniper emerged. He dipped across the entryway to the driveway, huddled at the foot of the separation between it and the walkway.

“He’s going along the fence. Then he’ll curve back into the gap. I’ll take him when he’s in place. I don’t want to shoot through the fence.”

“You cool?”

“I’m coolly cool, boy. High times ahead.”

They could both see the sniper ease forward, but the problem was the wrought iron. From this extreme angle, the gaps between the metal would be tiny, and to risk a shot through them foolish. Let him slide along, get into position, and then whack him.

“He’s almost-”

The lights cut into the scene like a madman’s stab. The beams leapt from nothingness from the near building roof, three, four of them, crucifying the crawling sniper next to the wrought-iron fence. From nowhere it seemed, men rose from bush and from ground and closed the distance in split seconds. They had shotguns leveled and someone was screaming, if indistinctly, from this far out.

“Goddamnit! It was a fucking trap! Swagger must have set it up! Goddamnit!” screamed the angry Tony. “Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fu-”

“Stay on the scope. Maybe when they move him, I’ll get the shot. Be cool, goddamnit, be cool.”

“They’ve got him now. Six of them. They’re on him. Shit.”

One of the cops broke away from the struggle and was talking on a hand unit. In seconds, a squad car, its lights beaming red-white pulses into the night, pulled around a corner a block down, and raced to the scene. It halted, and two cops got out.

“Okay, he goes in the car. Stay on him,” said Mick. “I’m orienting on the car. Talk to me, talk to me.”

“They’ve got him, man, he’s fighting hard, oops, they knocked him down, he’s cuffed, oh yeah, now they’re dragging his ass to the car, I can’t even see him there are so many cops on him, okay, they’ve got him there, pushing his head down, opening door, in he goes-”

“Dead zero,” said Mick.

He had him. Cruz’s head was silhouetted perfectly in the rear car window, the scene well lit by the pulse of the police lights. Mick more or less oozed through a slight correction, placing the exact and motionless intersection of the crosshairs onto the center of the head, knowing the.338 would not deviate an inch as it plowed through the glass so much more powerfully than a.308, and when it hit it would splatter whatever organic lay at the end of its long journey and in that moment of perfect truth and clarity, his finger independently squeezed gently into the trigger and he fired.

LAUINGER LIBRARY

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

WASHINGTON, DC

2115 HOURS

He had them. Of course. They were eager to be had. They believed so urgently, so earnestly, so passionately.

“Finally,” Ibrahim Zarzi said, “finally, I speak of honor. It is not much spoken of these days. It is an old-fashioned virtue that belongs, it is said, in books about Camelot or Baghdad during the great years of the caliphate. It is the bond between men of good faith, goodwill, and lion hearts that supercedes creeds, religions, sects, units, parties, any artificial human grouping you can name. It is not between groups, it is between men.

“Thus, standing up here in the blaze of lights, I do not see a group called ‘American diplomats’ and ‘policy intellectuals.’ I do not see uniforms, clothes, hair styles, skin colors. I do not see sexes. I see other men, and you will forgive an old fellow for not, briefly, indulging in the politically correct gender blur. The women in this room are men also, in that they are fierce warriors committed in the end to a world at peace, where the letters IED do not stand for improvised explosive device but for ice educational development, and those employing it work hard to improve the world’s figure skating until even we Muslims can do a triple axel!”