Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’m real close on you and you’re thinking sex. That’s your primal fear. But I won’t do anything dick-wise, okay? I may kill you, sweetie, but I won’t rape you, so you can relax. Now open my beer.”

He handed the can to her with his other hand. She struggled with it, her fingers shaking, shivering with hysterical sobbing, but somehow got it open and handed it back.

He took a deep swallow, and lord, was it not the finest slug of beer he’d ever had in his life?

“Boy,” he said, “did I have a tough day at the office!”

Again he laughed at his own bad joke. Then they sat for a few minutes, listening as various forces and entities got things organized outside.

In time, the beer-cooler door opened.

“Bogier?”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

“Bogier, I’m Memphis, FBI. You don’t need to do this. Let that woman go. It’s not like you to put someone untargeted at risk. You’re a pro.”

“She’ll get a book contract out of it and do the talk shows for a year. She’ll become a star on that fat-black-chick TV show. She’s in better shape by far than you or me, Memphis.”

The woman shivered. Mick had finished his beer. He pointed at the one he’d given her, which had rolled a few inches away from her leg. She grabbed it obediently, opened it, and handed it back.

“Thanks, sweetie,” he said. “Now just close your eyes and think of the happiest day of your life. When you got married. The birth of little Nicholas von Featherstone the Third. When you got that big divorce settlement. When you hit the putt on the eighteenth at Burning Tree to edge out Jennifer Tilden for the club bitch championship. Whatever, just think of it and it’ll be over in a few minutes.”

He took another swig.

“Bogier, you’re not walking. You know that. No immunity, not after Baltimore and the Filipinos plus all the dead cops out there. But I’ll get you off the needle, get you a good joint, maybe conjugals, no butt sex from the Blackstone Rangers. Give her up, give it up, walk out, testify against the assholes who put you here, everybody’s happy.”

“Sounds pretty crappy to me. I want a window, goddamnit. A guaranteed window and a cell next to Dr. Lecter.”

He laughed again.

“Now I’ll tell you the name of the game we’re playing. It’s called, ‘Will Mick blow Lady Astor’s brains out?’ I think she’s the wife of somebody important. This would be a very dark mark on your record, Memphis.” He laughed again, at his own twisted, drug-cranked humor. Everything was pretty goddamned funny.

“Okay, here’s the game. I want Cruz. Get his ass over here, send him through the door. Then Mrs. van Jackson gets to go home to her husband, the third assistant secretary of agriculture and mineral rights. I get Cruz, you get Lady Plushbottom. Oh, and do it fast. Like, say, in three minutes. Or I blow her fucking head off, and come out shooting, and in case you haven’t noticed, I shoot very well and I will take a lot of SWAT bozos with me to hell. Nothing but head shots. Any trace of tear gas or immobilization chemistry and Lady Winthrop decorates a convenience store beer cooler with her cerebellum tissue and I know whose career goes into the dipsy Dumpster. Get me Cruz!”

EN ROUTE

INCIDENT COMMAND TO HERE-4-FOOD

LOWER GEORGETOWN

2046 HOURS

The driver pressed it. He careened the wrong way down one-way streets, roared through power turns riding the brakes against the laws of gravity and physics, went to sidewalk blowing out shrubbery and small trees where emergency medical vehicles blocked the streets.

Outside, Washington gone to war sped past the windows: medics working on the wounded, gurneys, plasma units everywhere, men in battle gear with tense faces, lots of throat mikes in play, the roar of low-flying choppers, more guns than at the NRA annual meeting, all of it a kind of eternal D-Day in the half dark.

“I see where this is going,” Bob said in the backseat. “He still wants his kill. Cruz, you do not have to do this. You don’t have to do any heroic thing, do you hear me? Enough is enough.”

Cruz said nothing. He was hunched in the front seat, breathing imperceptibly, his dark face tense and sweaty, his eyes gimlet slits. He gave no indication of having heard Swagger.

It seemed to take an eternity, but they reached the convenience store on Wisconsin, its windows shot out, fire trucks and ambulances standing by, a fleet of first-responder vehicles everywhere except the route out of which they’d been hastily pulled to admit the SUV. The lighting was intensified, the shards of glass everywhere seemed to pick up and reflect that already intense wave of illumination. Again, Kevlar-clad, helmeted commandos everywhere, crouching, weapons loose and ready, on balls of feet, with that go-to-war vibe so heavy in the air you could feel it.

As Swagger and Cruz bailed out, agents flew at them like butlers to push them into Kevlar vests and helmets, and they slid through the shattered doors, over glass and a thick gunk of soda, beer, cereal, canned peaches, gobs of yogurt, melting ice-cream lumps, burritos, cigarette cartons, squished doughnuts, a whole food fight on the floor, debris from the fusillade Mick had fired when he entered. A SWAT team, the Bureau’s very best guys, all stacked up and ready for Armageddon, crouched against one wall. Nick and a fleet of commo assistants with radios up the ass were just off the entrance to the cooler, whose door was jammed open.

Swagger could see more evidence that Bogier knew what he was doing. The beer cooler: genius touch. No sniper could go for the head, nobody could flank, and a pro like Bogier wouldn’t be fazed in the least by flash-bangs or any other distractors. There was only one way in.

Nick frantically gestured them over.

“Okay,” he said, whispering hoarsely into Cruz’s ear, “here’s what it is. He has a hostage, some poor woman who happened to be in here. He says if you don’t go in, he’ll shoot her in the head and come out blazing. It’s your call, Cruz. No man would say a thing if you say no. I have to tell you, your survivability in there is slim to nothing.”

“I hear you.”

“Memphis, you can’t send him in there, goddamnit,” Swagger yelled. “Bogier just wants his kill and he’ll check out happy.”

“It’s his choice,” said Nick. “Say the word, Cruz, and I’ll send SWAT in behind a wall of flash-bangs. Maybe he’s bluffing, maybe he’s out of ammo, maybe in the end he can’t drop the hammer on some innocent woman, and he goes down like Jimmy Cagney and it’s a happy ending.”

“You can’t blow the vault?” said Swagger. “Come in from the outside?”

“Old building, thick walls. Enough explosive to get through the walls would kill them.”

“Where’s my little friend?” screamed Bogier from inside. “I want to see my little friend. We served together in Afghanistan, did you know? We’re war buddies!” and his shout ended in a dry, harsh laugh, the laugh of a man who had the pedal on the metal and knew that his long-dreamed-of movie ending was just a second away.

“It’s bitch-whacking time if little Ray doesn’t come through that door,” he yelled again. “Ka-pow, it’s the end of Chatsworth Osborne’s mother. I know Cruz is here. I heard the car arrive.”

Ray stood, peeled off his body armor, tossed the stupid fucking Kevlar helmet away.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m going in.” He turned to Swagger. “Sorry, old guy. A world where she dies so I can survive isn’t a world I choose to live in.”

He turned.

“Bogier, hold fire. This is Cruz. I’m coming in.”

Bob reached out to touch his son, thinking, irrationally but helplessly, No, it’s not right, I just found him, and feeling a surge of pain and fear from a well so deep he never suspected it was there, but then Ray dipped in and was gone.