Joe Gores - Glass Tiger

Flanking the narrow blacktop was dense forest; beyond were Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. Camouflage tarps covered the Secret Service Command Post and the roof of the comm center.

‘Were they already in place before 9/11?’

Franklin sucked hard on a Marlboro. He was just as hostile as his boss. ‘Yeah. Towel-heads aren’t the only ones gunning for the President besides your shit-heel buddy Corwin.’

They didn’t speak again until Franklin swerved into the woods to stop at a one-story 3,000-square-foot rustic cabin with a half-log exterior. Reverence entered his voice.

‘Behind those logs is a solid-concrete inner shell with Kevlar plugs. Bomb and weapon resistant. The basement is stocked with supplies and reinforced to ground-zero specifications in case of a nuclear attack.’

The door opened and Hatfield gestured at them impatiently.

‘Thanks for the ride,’ Thorne said.

‘Fuck you,’ said Franklin.

Dominating the big informal room was a burnished dining table with a halfdozen chairs around it. Framed cowboy art, landscape photographs, and western-motif tapestries covered the walls. Two overstuffed sofas were covered with textured pillows.

The president, Jaeger, Hatfield, and the Bobbsy Twins, Crandall and Quarles, were already at the table. For the moment, no Johnny Doyle. When Thorne began his presentation he realized that he didn’t have many friends in the room. Hatfield’s play obviously was to get Thorne’s input, downgrade it in the president’s eyes, then present it as his own.

Thorne began, ‘Mr. President, in your website announcement of locations where you will be giving speeches on your trip, I noted one in the Bitterroot Mountains of western Montana.’

‘Yes, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is releasing two young grizzly bears back into the wild there. It’s an experiment, not popular with everyone, to show my support for the environmental movement.’

‘Corwin will be there,’ said Thorne.

‘The Secret Service will be there too,’ said Hatfield. ‘In force. The local ranchers claim the grizzlies will attack their livestock, and Montana and Idaho are loaded with anti-government militia and survivalist groups. Security will be very tight. A fucking squirrel won’t be able to get close to the President.’

‘Corwin doesn’t have to get close. He’s a sniper.’

‘Was a sniper — forty years ago. We’re talking about a mountain meadow surrounded by mixed hardwood and conifer stands. In the forest, Corwin has no shooting lanes. The surrounding peaks are too far back for a sniper shot, and he can’t get close enough for a knife or a bomb or a grenade. So it has to be a handgun, and a snap shot at that, from the crowd. Forget it.’

Thorne made his voice incredulous, though it was what he had expected from Hatfield.

‘We’re talking about the life of the president of the United States here! I was brought in because the computer told you that the scenario I worked out would probably be the one Corwin will use. Well, this is where I would strike. A sniper shot from outside the Secret Service security perimeter.’

Hatfield had come prepared. He snapped his fingers; Johnny Doyle appeared with a topographical map to spread out on the table. All carefully choreographed. Had Hatfield’s hostility blinded him to the dangers of this site? If he had considered it in private, he now was rejecting it in public.

‘The closest places from which he could get a clear shot are seven-hundred-fifty yards out.’ Hatfield jabbed his finger at the map. ‘There and there and there. Corwin wouldn’t waste his chance on a shot he’d be sure to miss.’

‘I agree. But he will be using a high-powered rifle with a sniper scope from an elevated rock-face beyond seven-hundred-fifty yards out.’ Thorne was doing his own finger-jabbing. ‘Here, say, or here. It’s what I would do if I had his skills.’

‘What the hell do you know about his skills? After he left Vietnam, we have no hard facts about—’

‘But in Vietnam,’ said Thorne quickly.

When Corwin was in a bodybag he’d file a report with the facts he’d dug out, but not before. They knew nothing about Victor Blackburn’s intel, nothing about Corwin hiding out in his old cabin near Portage, nothing about those thousand-yard practice shooting sites. Thorne wanted to keep it that way.

‘He’s fifty-six fucking years old,’ sneered Hatfield, ‘and half-crippled. His hand and eye coordination have to be going.’

‘Do you want to take that chance? Let the Secret Service handle the upclose and personal. It’s essential that your men set up at seven-hundred-fifty yards, looking out and up, not down and in. I can be on site, monitoring—’

‘Like hell you can! You’re here in an advisory capacity only — your own request. No field work. Well, you’ve advised. Ray Franklin is waiting outside to take you back to the chopper. You will return to D.C. forthwith to await further instructions.’

Thorne looked to Wallberg for support. It was the man’s own life that was at stake here. The president wavered, then looked away. Hatfield had convinced them that he had it under control. None of them understood how formidable Corwin was.

Jaeger said, ‘Thank you for your input, Mr. Thorne.’

Thorne walked out. It was up to him to go to Montana and assess the site in person rather than on paper.

‘I say we ship his sorry ass back to Kenya,’ said Hatfield when he was gone. ‘His usefulness here is ended.’

‘What if, just what if, he’s right?’ asked Wallberg. ‘What if Corwin is there and does try to shoot me when I—’

‘Then my men will tag him before he can fire. This is my game, Mr. President. I know that nobody can make a thousand-yard down-angle shot while dealing with those mountain updrafts.’

‘With the Secret Service and the FBI’s hostage rescue men on site,’ Jaeger added unctuously, ‘we will have security, and containment of the fact that there’s a lone gunman from the President’s past stalking him with murderous intent. That he’s a deluded psycho is irrelevant. If the fact that he’s out there became known, the political fallout would be unthinkable.’

Thorne told the Mayflower’s front desk that he could be reached c/o Victor Blackburn at Fort Benning, Georgia, then sent Victor an e-mail.

Victor: Check me into the BOQ, then make yourself scarce for a few days. We’re out in the woods getting drunk like all good Rangers should. Details later. Thorne.

He back-doored his minders, walked out to the depot on L Street, and caught a through bus to Atlantic City. From there he flew commercial to Missoula, Montana, rented a car, drove to Hamilton, and checked into the Super 8 Motel under his own name. The risk was small: officially, he was at Fort Benning.

The next morning he drove south on 93, turned onto narrow 473 well short of towering white-clad Trapper Peak so he could approach the meadow the way the presidental party would enter. Using his temporary FBI credentials for site access, he spent the day working his way up and down the granite rockface, and through the tumbled massive boulders on the slope overlooking the meadow. Hatfield was right: no ambush sites up to 750 yards out.

The next day, he drove south of Trapper on 93, went west into Idaho on narrow unmarked dirt tracks, then north again seeking a way up to the western side of the Bitterroot ridge whose eastern slope facing the meadow he’d combed the day before. He found a subalpine valley and hiked up it, looking for man sign. None. But this was the way Corwin would have to have come to prep his shot. If he was here at all.

For the next two mornings, Thorne, seeking sniper sites, worked his way up over the ridge and down the far side toward the meadow. The more acute the downward angle, the harder the shot. By the last day he could safely work the mountain before Hatfield’s Feebs arrived, he had three maybes: 950 yards out, 1,095 yards out, and a literal long shot at 1,210 yards out.