J. Konrath: Fuzzy Navel

Chris Wolak is a hunter. He’ll have long guns.

“Herb! Check to see if there are any rifles in there.”

“Hold on.” The pause lasts forever. Then, “Found a gun locker. Need to break it open.”

Another shot.

A crime scene techie, crouching behind the entertainment stand, wails like a siren, clutching the remainder of his foot. The pain must be unimaginable.

“Keep your head down!” I order the techie.

His keening cry goes on and on, and he rocks back and forth with his knee pressed to his chest, his head peeking out over the coffee table.

“Keep your-!”

Another shot.

The techie slumps to the ground, bleeding from the shoulder. A bad wound, gushing fast. He won’t live until the SRT arrives. He needs medical help now.

I’m not the type who prays, but I beg the universe for Herb to find a rifle.

MUNCHEL PAUSES TO ADD another hash mark to the butt of his rifle, using a black permanent marker. That makes nine so far. The number pleases him, but he’s angry at himself for missing that fat cop, the one who came late to the party. Moves pretty fast for a porker. He arrived with that good-looking split-tail who parked in the middle of the street. That pisses Munchel off. Why should cops be able to park wherever the hell they want to? It’s bullshit.

Munchel checks his watch, figures he has a few more minutes before reinforcements arrive. Maybe he’ll have another chance at Fatty, and the double-parker.

His cell rings. Swanson again. Munchel picks up.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Swanson is yelling, his voice high pitched and girlish. Not a soldier’s tone at all.

“Hi, Greg. You at the rendezvous point, sucking down a cool one?”

“You asshole! You’re live on CNN!”

“Cool.”

Munchel pulls the bolt back, ejecting the empty cartridge, then jams it forward to force another round into the chamber of his TPG-1. He peers through the Leupold scope. All the cops in the street are hiding or have run off. Of course they have. An entire platoon is no match for a single skilled sniper. Munchel can shoot the petals off a daisy at three hundred yards. Killing cops at less than two hundred is child’s play.

“What if they catch you?” Swanson whines like a baby.

Munchel’s voice is pure Stallone. “If they take me, it won’t be alive.”

Munchel puts his face against the cheek pad. Aims. Fires. Another head shot. He rubs his shoulder – it’s getting sore, even with the built-in recoil damper – then he uses the marker to draw the tenth kill line on the stock.

“We’re going after perverts, not cops!”

Munchel looks down, sees he’s dropped the cell phone. Swanson is still bitching. He picks it up.

“You say something, Swanson?”

“You’re going to ruin it for us!”

“Relax,” Munchel purrs. “I’ll make sure I kill all the witnesses.”

“You dumb son of-”

Munchel hangs up. He doesn’t need Swanson, or anyone else, telling him what to do. James Michael Munchel knows what to do. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter who they are.

The memory comes, unbidden, and Munchel frowns.

“Military bastards,” he says to himself.

He doesn’t like to dwell on his rejection by the armed forces, but he dwells on it every day. All those stupid tests he had to fill out, being told by the recruiter that there were no wrong answers. A bald-faced lie. Obviously there were wrong answers, or else he’d be in a foxhole in Baghdad right now, killing insurgents.

Munchel chambers another round, imagines it’s Osama in the crosshairs, not some stupid pig.

That makes eleven, plus the original target. He doubts any marine sniper could do better. Another hash mark on the rifle. Pessolano will probably have a shit-fit when he sees how he marked up his precious gun. Maybe Munchel can buy the rifle from him. He respects Pessolano, because Pessolano actually toured, saw combat in Desert Storm. Pessolano always wears yellow shooting glasses, those high-contrast ones that block out blue light. Pessolano is hard-core, but he needs to lighten up. Him and Swanson both.

Munchel looks in the suitcase, finds the pair of yellow glasses he bought from that late-night infomercial. He slips them on, but they make everything too bright and give him an eyestrain headache. He takes them off again. Real snipers don’t need fancy sunglasses.

Another glance through the scope, and Munchel grins.

Fat Boy is back. And it looks like the cop found a rifle. Some dinky little model, but a rifle nonetheless.

This might be interesting.

Munchel works the bolt, takes aims, and squeezes the trigger.

MY PARTNER’S LEG crumples beneath him when the bullet hits. He cries out, pitching forward, the rifle slipping from his grasp and taking flight.

Herb tumbles to the floor. The gun remains airborne, spinning like a Frisbee, the barrel aiming my way.

I bunch up my shoulders and cover my face – not much protection against a dropped weapon, but a reflex action.

The rifle bounces onto the floor without going off. But it’s ten feet away from me, directly in the line of fire.

So is Herb.

I tug out my.38, aim where I’d seen the muzzle flash over a hundred yards away, and fire twice.

My bullets won’t hit the mark. A snub-nose revolver isn’t accurate beyond twenty feet. But Herb needs time to crawl back into hiding, assuming he can still move.

I press my back against the wall again, not wanting to leave my head exposed longer than necessary, and see Herb dashing across the carpet on all fours like a coked-up squirrel. Maybe those power bars have something to them after all. He makes it back through the doorway, leaving a spotty trail of blood.

“How bad?” I call to him.

“Calf! I’ll be okay! Did you get the rifle?”

I stare at the weapon. Ten feet away might as well be a hundred.

“I’m working on it!”

I survey the room. Other than the injured techie, who is rapidly bleeding out, only four people are still alive: two uniforms, two plainclothes. I’m ranking officer, but I’m not about to order any of them to go after the rifle. Especially since I’m the closest one to it.

I imagine the sniper. Probably crouching in a bush, as the other had. Peering through a scope, his sites locked onto the fallen rifle, waiting for someone to try for it.

I’ve used scopes before. At distances longer than fifty yards, the slightest movement by the shooter throws them off target. If I distract him, then move quickly, I’ll have two or three seconds before he finds me again.

Theoretically at least.

Or I can sit tight and wait for the cavalry to arrive. But I don’t know if the injured cop can last that long. And I’ve had enough of people dying on my watch.

I look to my left, see a small end table. Metal, solid, manageable. I kick off my heels and holster my gun. Then I lift the table above my head, aim at the window where the last bullet went through, and heave it hard as I can.

Before it hits the glass I’m in motion… bending down for the rifle… hearing the window shatter… grabbing the barrel and hugging it to my chest… digging my bare heels into the carpet to change direction in case the sniper was tracking me… skidding…

Falling onto my ass.

The pain travels from my coccyx straight up to my neck like a lightning bolt, prompting instant tears and an immediate surge of panic.

I’m sitting directly in the sniper’s sights. And he has an even clearer view of me now, because the window sports a large hole where the table broke though.