Dean Koontz - Breathless

Except for the shakes, Tom Bigger couldn’t move. He trembled so violently that his teeth chattered and each exhalation stuttered from him, but he could not uproot either of his feet.

He must have been in a brief fugue when he twisted the cap off the bottle, for he had no memory of cracking the seal. Suddenly the cap lay on the floor between his feet, and with the mouth of the bottle to his nose, he inhaled the fumes of death in life.

Another fugue-how long?-and somehow the familiar taste was in his mouth, and the fragrant toxin dripped from his chin. Held in both hands, the bottle revealed the weakness of his will, for the level of the tequila was an inch lower than before.

Inch by inch, he would lose the future, the world, the hope that he had so recently allowed himself, and he knew what he must do. He must slam the bottle against his face, slam it and slam it until it shattered, puncturing and slashing his face, perhaps this time bleeding so much, so fast, he would be done with life at last.

But he was a coward, gutless, not energized by self-hatred but paralyzed by it.

The motel-room door opened, and with the flood of daylight came screaming. Screaming and sobbing simultaneously, the most wretched and despairing cries that Tom had ever heard.

In the sunlight, on the threshold, stood the seventy-something man in the cardigan, the front-desk clerk who had told him to enjoy his stay. Beyond the man stood an old woman with a cell phone in her hand.

Neither of them was screaming or sobbing, and then Tom realized that he was the source of these terrible lamentations, a howling siren of anguish and grief and self-loathing.

Tom tried to warn off the desk clerk, for fear his rage would at last turn outward. In another fugue he might smash the bottle against that kindly face and slash the old man’s jugular with a shard of glass.

Indeed, another fugue took him. But the next thing he knew, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, no longer clutching the pint of tequila.

The old man held the bottle, twisting shut the cap. He set it on the dresser.

No screaming anymore. Just the sobbing.

The old man returned to Tom and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve never been in your place, son. But maybe if we talk about it, I can help you find a way back from where you are.”

Paul Jardine wanted two hours for the debriefing, but after five minutes, Grady said, “This is bogus. I’ll give you half an hour. Keep it tight, get it done. If half an hour isn’t enough, bring charges against me, and I’ll fight for full disclosure in an open court.”

When Jardine began reciting the statutes under which a citizen could be prosecuted for failure to cooperate in a national-security matter after being granted immunity, Grady closed his left eye and slightly squinted his right, as if sighting a target. He whispered, “CheyTac M200,” the name of the favored sniper rifle in the services.

Jardine understood. For a moment he considered Grady’s skills and reputation. The deputy director proceeded with less arrogance, in a more succinct style of interrogation.

When they were done, Grady took two bottles of beer from the refrigerator and joined Cammy-and a subdued Merlin-on the front porch. She sat in one of the rockers, watching four more scientists disembarking from yet another executive helicopter at the end of Cracker’s Drive.

“Thanks,” she said, taking a beer. “Done already?”

He sat in another rocker. “People think power makes them big, but it brings out their inner bratty child and makes them small.”

“You ever been to Michigan?” she asked.

“Yes. And that sure did interest him.”

“What do you think’s happening in Michigan?”

“Something. We knew this was bigger than Puzzle and Riddle.”

After a silence, she said, “You told me you were in the army. You’ve never said much more.”

“Joined up when I was eighteen, after my mom died of cancer. I thought there must be something better than these mountains.”

“Some reason you don’t want to talk about it?”

“No. Except it makes me bitter. I don’t like being bitter.”

“Can you really target someone at a thousand yards, like Jardine said?”

“Much farther. All the way out to twenty-five hundred yards. The rifle comes with various sighting aids. With the CheyTac, you use a.408-caliber, 419- or 305-grain round. One of those tends to do the job.”

“Where was this?”

“Mostly Afghanistan. Some Iraq. Terrorists, mass murderers. They don’t even know they’re spotted. Scope them out, take them down. As far as war goes, it’s about as humane as it gets. Snipers don’t cause collateral damage among civilians.”

“It’s a long way from that to making furniture,” she said.

“It’s a long way from that to anything.”

“Where’s the bitterness come in?”

“My best friend. Marcus Pipp. He was on my sniper team. The other side has snipers, too. They look for us looking for them. Marcus took one in the neck. It didn’t need to happen.”

“Then why did it?”

“This grandstanding senator back home holds up a photo of dead women and children in an Afghan village. Marcus-he’s in the picture with his rifle. Senator is so sure we kill for the thrill of it, he doesn’t even try to get his facts straight. He names Marcus for the press, demands a court-martial. The Taliban killed those people, and all we did was find the bodies.”

“Surely Marcus wasn’t court-martialed.”

“No. Army set the senator straight, though he never apologized. Marcus saw his photo on the Internet, newspaper stories with captions all but calling him a baby-killer. It upset him.”

“But it wasn’t true.”

“You had to know Marcus. Sounds funny-he was like my mom in some ways. It wasn’t he never lied-he couldn’t lie. And the army mattered to him. He believed in the use of righteous force. He knew what the world would be like without it. The lie wasn’t just about him, it was about the army, about this country and its people. The injustice ate at him, distracted him. You can’t be distracted on a sniper team. Your focus is your fate. I saw how he was. I thought he’d get over it. I should have done a lot more to get him centered again. I didn’t, he was careless, and he died two feet from me.”

“You can’t blame yourself.”

“If we aren’t here for one another, why are we here?”

Beyond the porch, the bureaucrats and the armed agents of the Department of High Anxiety bustled this way and that through their inflated settlement, saving the nation from the threat of wonder and joy.

Lying beside Grady’s chair, the wolfhound raised his noble head occasionally to watch one passing individual or another. None of them inspired him to wag his tail.

After a while, Cammy said, “What’re we going to do about Puzzle and Riddle?”

“Stay focused. Be ready to act when the opportunity arises.”

“What if the opportunity doesn’t arise?”

“It always does, if you stay focused.”

Having changed from shoes to slippers but still in cardigan and red bow tie, Josef Yurashalmi shuffled around the table, finishing the place settings with white linen napkins precisely folded to display the single, small embroidered bouquet of colorful flowers on each.

Hannah, Josef’s wife, was busy testing the tenderness of the vegetables in a soup pot on the stove. Tom had first seen her outside his motel room, holding a cell phone, on which she had been ready to call an ambulance or the police.

The couple owned the motel and lived in a tidy apartment that constituted the small second floor above the office. There was a dining room, but Josef said, “The older I get-and nobody’s getting older faster than me-the more I prefer cozy. The kitchen table is cozier.”