Stephen Hunter - I, Sniper

He had to limit it. Limit it. How do you limit it? How do you find one thing to focus on, the right thing to focus on? What’s your principle of operation?

His head ached. He really wanted that drink. And who did he think he was? The feds in time would get to Jack and Mitzi, and they’d do their usual thorough, patient, professional examination, and if there was something to be found, they would find it. Maybe not this week or this year or…

What was different about Jack and Mitzi? Really, from a technical point of view, only one thing: Joan and Mitch had been killed in public. Their deaths became immediately the property of dozens of witnesses, then the law enforcement staffs, and then the maggots of the press. They were immediately public deaths.

But Jack and Mitzi had been slain in an alley and lay undisturbed for almost an hour. Well, there were easy explanations: they were, in fact, vulnerable and accessible in that moment when they were pulling out of their garage and the shooting team, in that van in the next block with only a bit of door opening, was itself well protected and generally impervious to discovery. Hmm, on the other hand, Hyde Park was notoriously well policed by a more than capable University of Chicago police force, and the lack of street traffic, the lack of public hubbub, could itself turn quickly enough into a deficit; there’d be no crowd cover for the escape route. It was, or rather it could be seen as a somewhat fragile operation, a chancy enough thing, the greatest dare of the operation. That put it out of the modus operandi to a significant degree. So it was… provocative.

What would be the meaning of that kind of kill? What did it permit? What advantages would it generate and to what ends, and why would those ends be worth what might easily become a risk?

He sat crunched in concentration. He didn’t notice that they’d called the Boise flight. He didn’t even hear his name being called by the gate attendant. He was a lanky man in jeans, a polo shirt, an outdoorsy coat, and a Razorbacks baseball hat, sitting there, his scuffed Nocona boots announcing to the world he was a cowboy of sorts, but his face taut and distant.

He missed the plane.

He felt he had something, almost.

He could feel it there, and even as he struggled to articulate it, it went away.

And then he had it.

Another problem: over the last years, he’d used the personnel department of the United States Marine Corps as his private intelligence agency. When he’d needed a contact or an expert, he’d called an old colleague and they’d dug up, quickly, a name for him that always fit a specific category. They got him in the game fast.

But that was changing. His generation was all but gone; new men came and took things over and they had no living memory of Bob the Nailer and were not by nature inclined to help him. So he had to do some thinking and some calling before he was finally able to set up the right linkage: a retired NCO in Personnel who was friendly with a current NCO in Personnel who would do the favor for the friend of the friend.

But finally, close to six, he got a name, a number, the sufficient in-between calls had been made, and he was talking to his man.

“First Sergeant Jackson.”

“First Sergeant, I’m Swagger, Gunnery Sergeant retired, I think Bill Martens may have-”

“Sure, sure, Gunny. After I got Bill’s e-mail, I ran you, and you were some marine, I’ll say. You were the best. Before my time, but the best.”

“Son, I was before everyone’s time.”

First Sergeant Jackson laughed.

“What can I do for you?”

“It’s this. I’m looking into Carl Hitchcock’s last week and death-”

“Gunny, this ain’t some crazy T. T. Constable did it thing like I’m seeing on the Internet, is it?”

“No, and I don’t think aliens took over Carl’s brain neither. No, I’m just trying to get a grip on it.”

“I’d love it if Carl turned out to be innocent. So would all of us. But I don’t see how.”

“I don’t see how either, but I told some folks I’d give it my best shot. Semper Fi, gung ho, ding how, and all that good shit. So here’s where I am: I’m thinking a lot of our people go into law enforcement after they retire. It’s a natural progression. So I’m guessing there’s a guy for real like the one I’ve imagined in my head. He would be ex-marine, now working Chicago police, maybe even homicide. He was part of the team that investigated the Strong-Reilly shooting. He was there, he was noticing, he had ideas, he heard what the other cops said. All that before the FBI took over as lead agency and concluded Carl was the boy. Once that happens, it’s all different, because they’re all looking at it only in the way it links to Carl. I want to hear what this guy might have to say about what he noticed before the news on Carl arrived. Can you help find me such a guy, if he exists?”

“I will make a big try. Can I reach you on this number?”

“Roger.”

“Okay, and I’m guessing time counts.”

“Yes sir.”

The call came at eleven, long after he’d checked into the motel in Alexandria, long after he’d had a chat with his wife, explaining that no, he wasn’t on his way home, he had a few things to check out first, that was all. Her silence expressed her mood. She believed he had a crusade pathology and was always looking for excuses to veer off on strange, violent adventures; she finally accepted it, but at the same time, her silence made it clear that she still hated it. But he repeated that this was nothing, this was just some low-level inquiries, and there was no danger whatsoever involved. Still, he told her, don’t tell anyone about this call. If anyone asks, I’m on my way home.

When the call came, he picked up the cell and said, “Swagger.”

“Gunnery Sergeant Swagger, retired, USMC sniper, all that, number two in Vietnam?”

“Yes, that’s me. Except it was number three.”

“Gunny, I got a call from my ex-battalion commander, who evidently got a bunch of calls, the long and the short of it being you wanted to talk to a Chicago detective who’d been on the Strong-Reilly crime scene.”

“I’m very glad you called.”

“My name’s Dennis Washington, I was an infantry officer, USMC, from ’88 through ’94, loved the Corps. Did the Gulf, got hurt a little, and had to give it up. Went to Illinois State Police, then came to Chicago. I’m a detective sergeant, Nineteenth Precinct, the Woodlawn area of Chicago. I do murder. It’s usually some gang boy popping another gang boy, sometimes a kid gets in the way, or it’s a Korean in a market, or a cabbie. It ain’t no CSI kind of thing. I’m not a master detective, if you think I am, Gunny, sorry to say. I’m a little reluctant here. I’ve never done nothing like this and I know I’m in violation of policy.”

“This ain’t official, Sergeant Washington. But I know you want to hear this, so I’ll say it. I ain’t asking for no violation of ethics on your part; I sure ain’t part of the press; I ain’t a Net crazy who thinks Tom killed Joan because she slept with Warren or any shit like that. I ain’t publishing, I ain’t talking, I ain’t telling. If you ask around about me, you’ll see that most folks think I’m a stand-up guy. What this is about is my hope for Carl’s innocence, and since I know a guy in the FBI, I got to go through the Bureau’s case.”

“It’s solid, I hear.”

Bob didn’t feel like explaining.

“Well, we’ll see about that. Maybe there’s a little thing or two off.”

“I hate to see it come down on an old marine, especially a guy who gave as much as Hitchcock.”

“Roger that.”

“So, I’ll try to help you. I don’t have a lot. The FBI took over within a few hours, and although they made a good attempt to keep us in the loop, once they got the call on lead agency it became totally their investigation. If you’ve seen their stuff, you may know more than I do.”