Stephen Hunter - I, Sniper

Where did Tom end and Red begin? He got into character and he got out of character by simple act of will. It wasn’t some horror-movie freak show of him turning into Texas Red, and there being no Tom Constable to turn back into. Maybe he’d caught an acting bug-he’d caught several others!-from Joan, maybe the TV images had poured into his unresisting head in a torrent of unfiltered power when he was a defenseless seven, maybe it was his quest for the outlaw ideal that had moved millions of men, only he, in his T. T. Constable way, had let it go too far, as was his tendency. Whatever, like no one else in his life, from a father dead early to business associates to women to smooth operators to whomever, Texas Red made him happy. He would not let Texas Red down.

If he could just hold together on the multiple target scenarios, especially the last one Sunday night, just before he flew to Seattle for a speech as Tom “T. T.” Constable. But he worried about his hands.

He’d worked for a year to strengthen them, developing forearm muscles, relentlessly squeezing rubber balls, finger-cruncher gizmos, rolling up weights at the end of ropes, anything. The problem was he was cursed with fast-twitch muscles, and the strength simply would not adhere. Someone like Clell had large, strong fingers and abnormally shaped and defined forearm muscles and off-the-charts natural dexterity that would have made him a superb pianist, watchmaker, blackjack dealer, or surgeon; his fingers were living organisms, each with a seeming brain to keep it on mission. Goddamn it, Tom’s were not so gifted; his strength stayed level, his grip stayed at the same measure, and he simply was not dextrous enough to manipulate the gun, even with Colonel Colt’s great imagination for ergonomics, with efficiency. So Tom had substituted labor and repetitions for genius and had been practicing six hours a day for the last few weeks.

He could shoot fast. He could shoot accurately through three targets. And then that goddamned fourth target came up and he missed. Or he stopped, readjusted his grip, and fired again, this time hitting but hopelessly blowing his time. He’d even hired a numbers cruncher to examine the course from an arithmetical point of view and answer definitively the question of priority: speed or accuracy. Which was more important? After hours on a mainframe computer, the fellow came up with an answer: both.

Agggh. The problem was that the gun shifted with each report, as it took a long stretch of his short, weak thumb to reach the hammer spur, ratchet it back, then resettle thumb on frame, then fire again. Each time, the gun shifted incrementally, and by the time it had been fired three times, it had cranked around to such a degree that it no longer aligned with his wrist and held true; thus, misses.

What on earth can I do? He’d tried an orthotic brace, adjustments to the gun (such as lowering the hammer spur, which was technically illegal, but even a few unspottable hundredths of an inch might help), and ammunition selection (the last three rounds being a load that tended to shoot, compensatingly, to the right), and nothing worked consistently.

I am so afraid of that goddamned Mendoza, where I go against the five Mexican brothers I-

His cell rang, his very private cell. Only one person had the number.

“Yes, Bill.”

“Well, Tom, tomorrow’s the day. The Times has verified that photo. It runs, page one, with a dynamite piece by our friend Banjax, and I don’t see how the Bureau can do anything but make Memphis’s suspension official, make the Robot the new head of Task Force Sniper, and get the report out by the end of next week. Then it’ll go to the judge and everything’s sealed up forever. No ‘Did Tom kill Joan’ books or articles, not without any access to evidence.”

“Good, Bill. Boy, that’s good news. Bill Fedders comes through again. You know that town, I give it to you, pal.”

“Tom, for what you’re paying me, I’d better.”

“I think you’ll be pleased with a little bonus that comes your way when all this settles down.”

“Why, thank you, Tom.”

“The pleasure is mine, Bill.”

Yet the victory over the FBI didn’t delight Tom as much as it ought to. Such manipulations were a part of his way of doing business, and he hired expensive experts, such as Bill Fedders, to get them done-fixers, nudgers, influence peddlers. He never expected a different outcome. This one just took a little longer than-

The phone again. No, the other phone, the encrypted satellite phone, entrusted only to those who handled Tom’s special business. He checked the number, knew in a flash what it was, felt a spasm attack his heart.

“Yes.” He was breathing heavily.

“Mr. Constable, his self-same?”

“Of course. I hope this isn’t an emergency. I told you, only in cases of dire emergency.”

“I have that instruction learned, sir, that I do, and no, this ain’t no emergency. Still, I do believe you’d care to hear what’s been happening, if only to set your mind at ease.”

“Go on.”

“’Tis himself that came, that annoying fellow I’ve been telling you about. He presented himself to us as predicted. No miscues as in the unfortunate business in Chicago. The fellow all but surrendered himself.”

“No problems?”

“It’s him I’ve got for certain, sir. Presently we’ll learn what secrets he’s carrying and what’s he’s after and what his knowledge would be. We’ll know what authorities he’s told and how much. He won’t wish to tell us, but then that’s the nature of the game he and I chose to play many years ago. We’ll know all his secrets and see then where we stand. As for him, he’ll be gone forever and a long day, sir, if that’s still what it is you desire. I’m only checking so there’s no misunderstanding, this being strong stuff.”

“It is, Grogan. That’s why I chose strong men. You do this thing as you said you would, and it’s over and gone, and the little taste you’ve had of life at the topmost level is only a start. I’ll settle on each of you enough for an estate in the aulde sod.”

“That’s a right fair thing, sir, and me and all the boys be thanking you, though if you don’t mind, I think we’ll choose Spain instead. It don’t rain there so much and the taxes are lower.”

Anto had many interesting observations and thoughts to share. He commented on the events transpiring before him as if the man were a learned don at Trinity College, Dublin, a barroom poet known for his loquaciousness, an epiphany-rich critic of the art in the great days of the Irish belles lettres tradition, say around the 1920s, when revolution made for murder and brilliant prose.

“Now,” he explained to Bob, “there are to be found several kinds of torturers. First there’s the sex torturer. He is deeply miswired. In his fetid little atmosphere, he’s got pain and pleasure not only entwined but hopelessly confused. He’s not the one to take pleasure in the suck of nipple, the lap of cunt, the piquancy of the anus, the zoom of the first wet plunge; no, no, more likely he gets his member heavy with blood at the sight of the welt, at the tightness of the buckle, the way it imprints so deep, down to bone itself, in the flesh. He is all monster, and any sane society would cull him early, put the nine just behind the ear, and throw him by the pathway for the trashman. But no, that rigor has left the formerly Christian nations of the West; only the barbarians have the strength of will and the confidence to execute the perverse on sight, though it is said that they themselves lean toward perversity behind the casbah’s closed byways.”

Raymond and Jimmy wrapped heavy rope around Bob, binding him tightly from shoulder to wrist to the chair. Then, each taking a side, they carefully tilted the bound man backwards, not fully to the floor but to a crate nested where it was to give the chair support while putting Bob’s head at precisely the right downward angle, which all the boys knew from long experience.