Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

“Ragweed Zulu, this is Cowpony, I have a deviation, he’s shifted from 123 north to about 204 west and I’m getting a slightly higher speed read, I’m putting him at close to thirty mph.”

“Copy that, Cowpony.”

“Ragweed, I am requesting a map indexing, can you handle, over?”

“Cowpony 3-0-3, I copy that, over, be advised to give me a minute, please, over.”

Ragweed got busy with his maps while Jameson went back to the issue of feet. She always kept hers as pretty as possible. She was not one of those thin things with hardly an extra ounce anywhere, but if solidly constructed, she was still stunning, a blond, blue-eyed all-American girl, seventh in her class at the academy, the big gun on her shift, and, everybody said, every bit as good as the legendary Dombrowski.

“Cowpony 3-0-3, this is Ragweed Zulu, over.”

“Go ahead, Ragweed Zulu.”

“Cowpony, I have a village called Pesh el-Aware a couple of clicks ahead. We ran a 114L gig there two years ago, so it has been an active Taliban and Al-Q site but there was a collateral issue, I am advised. Do you want to shoot him now before he gets into it? We’d cut down on the collateral.”

“Ragweed Zulu, I’ll take that under advisement. But maybe these guys will send someone out to meet him, and we’ll get a twofer. That’s my play, Ragweed, over.”

“Cowpony, this is Ragweed, I support that call, you stay low and off, over.”

“Copy that, Ragweed.”

EASTERN PAKISTAN

0850 HOURS PAKISTANI TIME

The journey had been so long, and he was tired. He was scared too, and had a major melancholy going on, a case of buyer’s regret. He tried not to think of the things he’d never sample again or the moment of horror when he’d cut the woman’s throat. The weapon was X-ray proof, an intensely sharp plastic blade nestled in the lapel of his tweed sports jacket. He took no pleasure in using it. That’s not me. I had to do it. But the look when he slashed her, and the amount of blood, so unexpected, and the ease with which it transpired, all of it, so vivid, so awful, yet also somehow satisfying.

On either side: nothing, as if out of a Beckett play. A denuded rural landscape of high desert, rock scut, leathery vegetation without flower or color, mud, dirt, stones, and sky. In the distance, the Hindu Kush showed its snowy magnificence but it was a sight one grew used to quickly. He thought instead about the nothingness he saw now, and how out of that nothingness, inspired by the desert’s emptiness, a man had created a vision and it was, after all was said and done, the moral vision. He had committed to it. He was a moral man. He clutched his briefcase to his chest.

“Not much farther, I think,” said his bodyguard from the front seat, “the village just ahead, and we are there.”

Except of course there was no there there just as there was no here here.

“That is good,” he said.

“You must be a very great man,” said the guard, holding his rifle close. “They value you a great deal and honor you. Your comfort will be my duty. I cannot give you New York and bright lights, but I do bring you the clarity and the beauty and the serenity of the high desert.”

“That is all I want,” he said. “I have seen enough of those cities. I have tasted their wickedness to my content. It is now time to dedicate myself to further learning and meditation and to prepare myself to be of use in the next great development.”

“Oh look,” said the bodyguard. “They sent a delegation. Oh my goodness, look who it is! A very high commander! Oh, I am so impressed.”

The Land Rover closed the distance with them, and came to a halt. Five fighters tumbled from it, and then a distinguished man hung with bandoliers of magazines, a smile on his bearded face.

“My friend!” he called. “My brother!”

Hollister climbed from the Jeep, felt stiffness crank through his old legs but did not want to acknowledge it at this high spiritual moment, and opened his arms to embrace his new leader.

“My brother!” he said. “God is great.”

At that moment, a screaming came across the sky.

OPERATIONS CENTER

INDIAN SPRINGS, NEVADA

2152 HOURS

Nude Crushed Coral! It had to be! The other had too much orange in it and with the dress she planned to wear might be too matchy-matchy, because the dress had an orange tone to it that somehow, with the tan, made her teeth look very white. Randy liked that too.

“Cowpony 3-0-3, this is Ragweed, do you read?”

“Ragweed Zulu, this is Cowpony 3-0-3, I copy, over.”

“Cowpony, the big bird is picking up a heat-emission signature, possibly another vehicle, maybe the greet you figured on, over.”

“Ragweed, this is Cowpony, I will take a recon and advise, over.”

“Go ahead, Cowpony.”

She vectored 107 left, and went high, high, high, so the bird, though a Reaper was as big as a B-25 bomber on the ground, would be at twenty thousand feet nothing but a white speck, its roar lost in the tides and surges of the atmosphere. Look at me way up high, suddenly here am I, I’m flying! She loved this part. Breaking the surly bonds of earth. Too bad it wasn’t an F-15, but a Reaper was still a good ride and it did what had to be done.

From twenty, she put the white cruciform on the small blot of illumination that signified the RFID data-stream source, brought up the magnification on her primary screen, and again watched as the tiny objects leapt to recognizability. She saw the Jeep, a new Land Rover, and a crowd of men engaged in hugging and congratulating one another. Many had weapons.

“Ragweed, this is Cowpony, I read armed targets, request permission to engage.”

“Cowpony, this is Ragweed Zulu, I am acknowledging request, confirming weapons, waiting for any comment from the Six, getting none, assuming shot clearance in place, entering it in the logbook. Go to weapons, Cowpony, and engage when ready, over.”

“Ragweed, this is Cowpony, acknowledging permission.”

She snapped a button and a computer icon of her weapons choices came up on the screen; given the altitude and the high value of the targets, she designated Paveway II, with the thermobaric 500-pound warhead.

“Ragweed, I have designated left inboard Paveway Two, am now arming weapon, and switching screen to secondary feed.”

“Copy that, Cowpony, over.”

She lifted one wing while dropping the other, circled majestically, bird of prey, soaring eagle, riding the invisible superhighways of rushing wind, held the group of men and their two cars stable under the cruciform, seemed to take an involuntary breath.

“Ragweed Zulu, I am engaging.”

She pushed a button, then watched from the nose camera as the bomb took its long, last ride to earth, as internally the CPU sent minor corrections to the vehicle’s vanes, tweaking this way and that as it sought its destiny under the white cruciform imposed from on high, nothing radical, just turning a good trajectory into a perfect trajectory, and the earth and its bounty of men and vehicles and justice rushed ever so fast toward her until it resolved into a complete blur. She switched the secondary readout to the long shot from 20,000 and saw the screen blank out and then return to quasiclarity. The center ruptured in a spew of radiance, an outgoing circular wave of pure energy registering as an incandescence that overwhelmed the screen.

A cheer rose in the room, and somewhere close by, a couple of operators jumped up to slap out some high fives.

“Hoochie mama,” someone called.

“He didn’t like that,” came another.

“Welcome to hell, pilgrim.”