Stephen Hunter - I, Sniper

“Nick, are you going to resign today? Save the Bureau the trouble of putting together charges against you, going through the whole charade, a hearing, that kind of thing?”

“Nick, have you talked to your lawyer yet?”

“Nick, is this like the classic Greek thing, where a mighty hero makes some errors in judgment out of a sense of entitlement and-”

Nick held up his hands, and near-silence briefly alighted on the mob.

“You guys, I can’t comment, I don’t know what the hell you’re even talking about. And no, I haven’t talked to my lawyer because I don’t have one.”

“You’re going to need one now,” it seemed a dozen people said at once, and somehow a copy of the morning’s Times was located, expressed hand-by-hand through the mob, and presented to Nick, who looked into his own face, kneeling, surrounded by two guys said to be FN reps, holding a rifle and looking at a group he’d just shot. It had a terrible familiarity to it but it touched nothing coherent enough to be called a memory.

photo shows fbi agent at gun company, said the headline.

There was-it was the Times , after all-a subhead: “Evidence disputes Memphis’ claim to ‘no prior involvement’ with Belgian firm.”

The byline, of course, was that of David Banjax. The story began,

The New York Times has obtained and authenticated by laboratory examination a photograph showing beleaguered FBI special agent Nicholas M. Memphis at a shooting range owned by a Belgian armsmaker after having tested a new rifle for consideration by the Bureau’s SWAT teams, in contravention of Bureau rules.

Charges have been raised that Memphis, whose stewardship of the famous ‘Peacenik Sniper’ investigation has been called into question, inappropriately attended gun firm functions as the federal investigative agency prepares to decide on a multimillion-dollar sniper rifle contract.

The photograph, which was obtained by the Times’s Washington Bureau, depicts Memphis kneeling with two executives of FN, an international arms company headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. Memphis is displaying a target he has just tested the rifle on, the new FN PSR model, which is to be included in upcoming FBI sniper rifle trials, the winner of which stands to gain not only the agency contract but commercial advantages throughout the world.

“Whoever wins that contract,” said Milton Fieldbrou of EyeOnGovernment.com, a think tank that keeps track of government procurement and its commercial implications beyond the actual monies, “will have a PR bonanza that could spell survival in the troubled firearms industry.”

FBI regulations specifically forbid employees to attend industry sales events, particularly at industry expense, and despite documents that seemed to suggest Mr. Memphis had traveled to the Columbia, S.C., headquarters of FN USA, he has denied any involvement with the company.

Oh Christ, he thought. This is what my good pal and drinking buddy Bill Fedders was warning me about. Not warning. Just telling me to hang on, I was about to get creamed.

He looked at the photo and half-believed he’d been in Columbia, South Carolina, for a second. Who wouldn’t believe it? And how do you prove a negative, in the face of visual evidence so compelling? And who were the two grinners on either side of him? And how the hell had he shot such a great group at three hundred yards?

“Nick, Nick, what do you say?”

“I have no comment at this time,” Nick said, and ducked indoors.

Oh Christ. He sat on the sofa, stared at the photo so long he began to believe it was real. He tried to straighten it out in his mind: did I forget?

But that was insane. Amnesia was for bad movies from the fifties.

It was phony. Yet the goddamn thing had a familiarity to it that haunted him, that rooted it in some sort of previous experience, though he could not place it. The two other men were utter strangers. Then there was the rifle: there was something peculiar about it too, but again his brain couldn’t find the file and yielded no information. He knew one thing: it was a suit day.

He poured himself a cup of coffee, went upstairs, and opened his closet to his festive collection of workplace garments. Hmm, which shade of gray? Okay, he decided, plucking a middle-toned, somewhere-between-destroyer-and-sweatshirt hue, a brilliantly colored white shirt and a tie that was more toward the R than the O of the Roy G. Biv spectrum, and oxfords that were shined up too gleamy to show off that nice shade of black suggesting death, taxes, and cervical cancer. He had the pants on and was buttoning the shirt when the phone rang.

“Memphis,” he said, having recognized the caller ID as the director’s office.

“Special Agent Memphis, hold for the director, please.”

“All right.”

He waited, and then the man himself wished him a brusque good morning.

“Good morning, sir,” he said.

“Nick, I suppose you’ve seen the Times.”

“Yes sir.”

“Are you lawyered up?”

“No sir, not yet. I’d hoped this would go away when the full forensics report on the documents came in and the suspension remained unofficial. Has that changed, sir?”

“Well, Nick, we have to discuss it, I’m afraid. Can you come in today for that discussion?”

“It’s not as if I had anything else to do,” Nick said.

“Okay, I have to restructure my whole morning, and I’ve got a lunch I can’t avoid, so let’s say three p.m.”

“Yes sir.”

“Nick, I’d like to send a car. You don’t sound upset, but I’d prefer not to take any chances.”

“That would be an excellent idea. I might lose control backing out and crush nineteen reporters to death.”

“That would probably make you America’s hero. Okay, Nick, I’ll have it there at two.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Nick continued dressing, and then, feeling rebellious, tore off the white shirt, dumped it in the hamper, and put on a nice blue one. Now that was sending a message! he thought as he tightened the tie.

They cut the flex-cuffs off after clamping on walking manacles that allowed him mobility and slightly more freedom of movement. He was allowed time in the bathroom. Food followed, served carefully-protein bars, a frozen meal thawed by microwave, a diet Coke. He ate it down, astounded at how hungry he was and how desperate for sleep. He began to feel slightly civilized again until a blindfold was plastered over his eyes.

Then Jimmy and Raymond marched him in the small-step shuffle of the bound man along a hallway, their bulks marshaled against his, turned him through a door, and sat him down on a folding chair. He sat for five minutes, hearing mechanical things being manipulated behind him, some small appliance of some sort, he guessed, wondering if the water phase was over and now came the telephone electrical generator for applications of voltage to delicate areas. But why coddle him first?

“All right, Sniper,” Anto said, having slipped silently into the room and sidled up close, “God help me, but I love you. I’ve fallen hopelessly into a man-crush. What a bucko you’d be. Lord, wish I was as much man.”

“Anto, have you joined the fairies now?” asked Ginger.

“Sounds like it, don’t it, boyos. No, I don’t want to fuck the fellow, I just want to pay him what he’s due, even as I struggle with the problem of putting him down. That won’t be a fun task, but it has to happen then, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” said Raymond.

“But look what he’s done. He’s made us sniper fellas look good, brave, tough, the best. He’s made us the chivalric heroes of the land, instead of the screwball creepy killer dogs we’ve been so many years. He’s stood up against the water over what was left of night, the whole morning, even into the afternoon. He is a dead-on lad, no man can deny it. Game, yes he is.”