Stuart Woods - Orchid Blues

Peck looked back toward the town and pointed to the water tower, half a mile away. A bunch of welcoming balloons was tied to the top of it. "See if you can hit the top balloon," he said. "The round will end up in the lake."

Ham sighted the rifle. The balloons stood straight up in the calm air. "Good day for it," he said, and popped the top balloon with a single round.

"You think you could do that with the Barrett's rifle?" Peck asked.

"Given an opportunity to sight it in, probably," Ham said. "I fired it a few times in Iraq and did pretty good."

"Maybe we'll try that on another occasion," Peck said. "Come on, everybody, let's eat some barbecue."

Ham unloaded and stowed his pistol, and the group walked to the lakeside, where a group of women had set up a chow line beside a dozen picnic tables. Everybody grabbed a plate, and shortly, they were seated at a table, eating barbecue. Ham noticed that Peck and Jim stuck with him, and another man, one he hadn't seen before, joined them.

"Ham," Peck said, "this is John."

The man, who was tall and slim like Ham, and who wore round, steel-rimmed glasses, offered his hand. "How do you do, Ham?"

"Good to meet you," Ham said. "Just John?"

"That's what they call me," the man replied, biting into some cornbread.

"That's all that's necessary," another man said, and the group nodded as one man.

Ham sensed, from the deference shown to John, that he was somebody special to these people. "John, it is," he said, and dug into his barbecue.

"I had a look at your military record," John said after a moment. "You had an interesting career."

"I guess I did," Ham replied.

"Must be a little boring, being retired."

"A little," Ham agreed. "There's just so much fishing a fellow can do."

John nodded in agreement. "That's how I felt when I retired."

"What service?" Ham asked.

"I wasn't in the military," the man said. "You might say I served another master."

Ham started to ask what master but thought better of it. He nodded and continued with his lunch.

"I wonder," John said, "if you'd like to give some of our people a little instruction in the finer points of shooting?"

"Sure," Ham replied. "What sort of shooting?"

"The kind you were doing a few minutes ago," he said. "We've got some good shots in our outfit, but none as good as you."

"If they've got talent, I can train them," Ham said. "They'll have to work at it, though."

"Oh, they'll work at it," John said, "or answer to me. After lunch, we'll take a little trip down to another range we've got out in the pines, and you can watch our people shoot."

"Be glad to," Ham said. "This is damn fine barbecue, Peck. You folks sure do eat well."

"We do that," Peck replied. "John always enjoys our ladies' cooking, too, don't you, John?"

"I do," John replied. "Your women are the best cooks in the group, and that's a fact."

And just what group is that? Ham wanted to ask, but didn't. He sat, ate his barbecue, which really was sensational, and listened to John talk to the men, apparently about nothing. The others were reverentially quiet.

Holly had just come home from work when Ham let himself in through the beach door.

"Hey," she said, giving him a kiss.

"How you doing?"

"I'm okay. I got your message."

"Then where is Harry?"

"Come with me," she said, leading him out the door to the beach Daisy padded along behind, running through the dunes, sniffing out dune mice. Holly led him down the beach a hundred yards, then turned down a path through the dunes to the house next door.

"Whose place is this?" Ham asked.

"Just follow me, Ham." She rapped sharply at the door of the house and let herself in. Harry and two other men were sitting in the living room, drinking beer.

"Hi there, Ham," Harry said.

"You're living next door now?" Ham asked, shaking his hand.

"What you've found out so far about the people out at the lake has made me commit to a full investigation. We rented the place. It's convenient, and it keeps the heat off Holly."

"Good idea," Ham said.

"Ham this is Doug, one of our agents, and this is our ace techie, Eddie. Eddie the Hacker we like to call him."

Ham shook their hands, then he noticed that the dining-room table was filled with computers, printers and some equipment he didn't recognize.

"You want a beer?" Harry asked.

"You betcha," Ham said, accepting a cold Heineken.

"I want to hear about this John character," Harry said, "and Eddie is going to do up a computer-generated face for us."

"Okay," Ham said, and allowed himself to be sat down beside Eddie at the dining-room table.

"Let's start with height and weight," Eddie said.

"Six-three, a hundred and eighty pounds, about like me," Ham said.

Eddie made some entries into the computer, and a male figure, faceless, appeared on the large, flat-screen monitor before him. "Okay, hair color?"

"Gray."

"Short? Long?"

"Fairly short and very curly."

Eddie typed away. "Like this?"

"No, even curlier, almost like a sheep."

"Like this?"

"That's it."

"Face thin, medium or fat?"

"Thinnish, strong jaw."

"Like so?"

"Stronger."

"Better?"

"Very good."

"Nose: fat or thin, straight or curved?"

"Thin, straight and short."

"lips?"

"Thin."

"Color of eyes?"

"I'm not sure; maybe blue or green."

"We'll start with blue." Eddie typed some more, then a face appeared on the screen, very complete, almost like a photograph. "How's that?"

"Good, but he had pretty thick eyebrows, and they were black."

Eddie made the adjustment.

"Higher cheekbones," Ham said.

Eddie typed some more.

"And his ears were fairly small and lay flat against his head," Ham said.

Eddie made the changes.

"Jesus, that's good," Ham said, impressed.

Eddie hit some more keys, and the face turned to its left a quarter turn. "Does it still look good?"

"Yep."

Eddie turned the face to profile. "How about now?"

"The nose isn't turned up like that, it's straight, but the length is right. He looks older than your picture, too."

Eddie typed some more. "What age?"

"Fifty, maybe, or a young fifty-five. No, that's too old. He's fairly youthful-looking, no sagging chin or bags under his eyes."

"We'll make him fifty and well preserved," Eddie said.

Ham watched the changes in the image. "Try forty-five."

Eddie adjusted the picture.

"Eddie, that's the guy. Dead ringer. I swear, I didn't know it could be done that well."

"Okay, now let's compare him to the database," Eddie said.

"Just a minute, I forgot the glasses. They were round, steel-rimmed, on the small side."

"Like this?"

"Rounder. That's it. Now try your database."

Eddie typed for another thirty seconds, and the screen went blank. "This'll take a few minutes," he said. "It goes faster if you don't watch it happen." He stood up, walked back to the living-room sofa and retrieved his beer.

"Anything else you can tell us about this guy?" Harry asked.

"I'd say he was a natural-born leader, considering the respect he got from everybody. They seemed a little in awe of him. He was the first one to actually ask me to do something for the group."

"What did he ask you to do?"

"To train some of his people in shooting."

"Shooting of what?"

"He didn't say; just shooting. I gave them a little demonstration, and somebody asked me if I could shoot like that with the Barrett's rifle."

"What did you tell them?"

"I told them I could, if I had an opportunity to sight it in."

Eddie got up and went back to the computer.

"How's it going?" Harry asked.

"Coming along. It's a big database, remember, and a lot of John's features are common to a lot of other people. Give it a few more minutes."