Stephen Hunter - Point Of Impact

No matter. What would you see?

Nick walked with the passengers through the terminal. Then another question hit him.

Why wouldn’t you call me from here? Why wait until you get to that motel?

As he thought about it, an answer formed. Because Lanzman thought he was safe. He hadn’t been made. He was all right. He read the crowd and he read the signs, and he thought everything was fine, it was a straight shot, it was no problem.

Nick let his imaginary trip through the head of Eduardo Lanzman carry him across the main concourse and out to the taxi stand by the street. It was not particularly busy.

You want to get this over with. You’ll just take a cab straight into the Federal Building, right? You’ll ask to see me. If you have to wait, you’ll have to wait, that’s all .

Nick hailed a cab.

“Yeah?”

“Uh, you know where the Federal Building is? Seven-oh-one Loyola Street, downtown.”

“Sure, man. Hop in.”

Nick climbed in, the cab sped away.

“New to the Big Easy?” the guy asked.

“No,” said Nick, trying to concentrate.

He watched as they left the airport, sped along the access road toward I-10, the big strip of federal highway that transects the shelf of land between the big river and Lake Pontchartrain upon which the city is built. Along the road there was nothing. It was featureless, nondescript, a little parcel of anonymous America.

As they took the ramp and began to sweep toward a merge on the rush of I-10, Nick could see the gaudy parade of motels over on the right, down Veterans Memorial Boulevard.

“Stop!” he hollered.

“Huh?”

“Stop, dammit! I said pull over.”

“What the – ” The cabby, a bald black guy with a gold tooth, fumed, but he obeyed. His name, Nick could tell from the hack license pinned to the right sunshade, was JERRY NILES.

“Now what?”

“Just shut up for a second.”

Nick sat there. The cab had slewed onto the shoulder and cars whirled by toward the city ahead.

No, he thought. He didn’t get this far. Because if he’s going to the Palm Court Motel, you can’t get there once you get onto I-70. You’ve got to make your mind up before you take the ramp.

“Buddy?”

“Shut up,” said Nick.

What does that tell you?

That tells you he made his pursuers on the access road, was afraid they’d nail him on the road, and made a snap decision to hunker down before they could do so.

It also meant he knew exactly how desperate they were – that they would be willing to risk some kind of terrible public scene to stop him. Pros prefer to work in private; they only go public with wet business if they have no other choice, unless they’re Colombian drug scum.

“Back up and head down Veterans Boulevard.”

“Hey, mister, I can’t back up and – ”

“There’s a fifty in it for you.”

“Okay, but if a cop comes – ”

“I am a cop,” said Nick, reflexively, then wished it were still true.

The driver backed up the ramp, executed a Kamikaze-like 240 and managed to get them, after some honking and screeching, headed down Veterans. The Palm Court was the third motel past the turnoff.

“Pull in here,” said Nick.

The driver obeyed.

“You want me to – ”

“Just wait a minute.”

Nick sat, thinking.

He’s been made. He knows they’re close. Whatever he’s got – documents, a microchip, photos, whatever – he’s got to dump in some place that he can recover .

Dump it. Go into the motel before they spot him. Get a room near the Coke machines in case they’ve got electronic penetration capacity, call Nick Memphis, and then wait.

He doesn’t know they’ve got an Electrotek 5400. He doesn’t know they’ll hear his call. He doesn’t know that when the knock on the door comes, and he says who’s there, and the answer comes “Nick Memphis,” he’s letting his own death squad in.

No matter, Nick thought.

The key thing is, he’s got to hide his package.

Something else came to Nick.

Eduardo, you’ve been hit now, you’ve been whacked by guys with axes, they’ve cut your fucking heart out. But somehow – Jesus, man, you had a set of balls on you – somehow you crawl into the bathroom and on the linoleum you write a message in your own blood. No, not the name of your killers, but something else.

You write – ROM DO.

What’s it mean? What’s the message?

ROM DO.

“I want you to go back to the airport where you picked me up, and then repeat this journey.”

“You kidding?”

“I am not.”

“Okay, pal. Hope you got a big expense account.”

The cabby swirled the vehicle around and returned to the terminal.

“Don’t stop. Just follow the same route.”

Nick watched the scenery roll by.

Along here you were made, he thought. You looked up, you saw a car following you that wasn’t a taxi, you hit the panic button. You saw them, maybe reading their profiles through the windshield or maybe recognizing the vehicle. But it had to be here, along this dull, limited access road, with no escape, no place to hide, not even a place to stop.

They reached the parking lot of the motel again.

“Okay, pal?”

“Shut up,” said Nick.

He sat there, trying to think.

ROM DO.

ROM DO.

He looked around for ROM DO. But the only words he could see from the parking lot were inside the cab. JERRY NILES, it read, in caps, up there on the sun visor.

Dobbler felt absurd. Here he was among country types in the very small and rude town of Blue Eye, Arkansas, a few hours west of Hot Springs. There was nothing friendly about the place. What had happened to the famous American small-town hospitality? People looked at him sullenly. It was one of those one-horse places, a scabby, peeling town square around a Confederate monument. A banner floated above the main street, proclaiming to all the world THE BUCKS ARE STOPPED HERE. Hunting. Dobbler shivered. He felt trapped in this godforsaken nightmare, sealed in by the mountains everywhere he looked, towering claustrophobically over the town.

The mountains scared him. Heavily encrusted with pines and on this rainy morning shrouded in mist, they looked as if they could kill you. He didn’t want to go up there but he had to. That’s where Bob would be.

Dobbler really had no idea what to do. With the cassette in his briefcase, he knew the only safety lay here. That is, if he could find Bob Lee Swagger. No one else could stop them. That was the irony. In America, with its FBI and its hundreds of police forces, no one could stop them except Bob Lee Swagger, the man with the rifle.

If these people knew anything they weren’t talking, especially to an outsider like him, in his lumpy suit, with his eastern beard. They probably thought he was gay. He’d better watch himself. High school boys might beat him to death with shovels or festoon him in a dress and drag him behind a pickup truck through town to the boundary of Polk County. But he had to have a plan. There had to be a plan.

He had thought he might go back to the now-notorious Bob sites, the burned church, Bob’s own still-sealed-off trailer eight miles out of town or the Polk County Health Complex, where Bob had so flummoxed the FBI – and RamDyne. But when he’d visited all these places that morning, he’d found them returned to banality, their brush with glory and the national media completely over.

Maybe guns were the hook. He had gone to a gun store on the edge of town and tried to start up a conversation. This was a big mistake. The owner looked at him as if he were from Mars, and asked him rudely if he wanted to see something or what.

“That one,” he said nervously.