Joe Gores - Glass Tiger

But there was no paperwork to that effect. Wallberg had made sure of that. Whatever wild charges Hatfield might make as he went down, President Wallberg had deniability. And it wouldn’t hurt his ratings that he would be seen as taking an ethical stand: no breaking of the law in the Wallberg administration. But justice would be tempered with compassion. Hatfield would resign from the FBI without jail time.

Just as well. Hatfield was ambitious. In time, he might have become another Jaeger, trying to uncover secrets best left buried, seeking influence with the Oval Office.

Gus Wallberg sighed and put aside his bottle of beer — Leinenkugel Honey Weiss, a good Minnesota brew — and got to his feet. A pity. The national good could demand heavy sacrifices: three people had died on election night, so now it was Hatfield’s turn to pay a heavy price for his country.

‘Time to earn my keep, people,’ he said to his entourage.

There was hearty sycophantic laughter. He blew Edith a kiss and started off, encircled by young, hard-eyed, highly-conditioned men speaking to their wrists or to the collars of their sports shirts. He shook hands, waved, grinned, tossed out greetings as they opened a pathway through the crowd for him to get to the podium. He was in his element. He was the future, Terrill was the past. As was Corwin. And Nisa. And Thorne.

Thorne, in his sniper’s nest, following Wallberg’s progress with his scope. The president’s clothes were carefully casual: a Solumbra sun hat, slacks, and a gaudy short-sleeve sport shirt. In his left hand was a fried chicken leg. A man of the people. He stepped up to the podium where his speech was laid open for him. No one up there to introduce him. He wanted the platform all to himself.

Watching from a distance of twelve-hundred yards, Thorne realized how much he despised this man. Ten years ago, he would have tried the impossible shot and would have lost his own life in the attempt. On this day, Thorne planned no mayhem. He had his sniper’s nest but he had no sniper rifle. He was here to feel just a little of what Corwin must have felt in Montana, sighting in on a hated target a dozen football fields away. This was Thorne’s final bloodless bow to the man he once had been. Soon he would disappear without anyone ever knowing he had been there.

Wallberg looked out over the throng, drawing his power, as always, from their numbers, from their rapt attention, from their devotion to him. And from the dozens of media cameras pointing at him to help bump his ratings ever higher. He had planned to talk about himself a good deal, knock the accomplishments of the previous administration, but Edith had advised him that it might sound petty, self-serving; better to just praise America.

‘My fellow Americans, we are gathered here today to celebrate the birthday of this great nation which has given so many blessings to all of her citizens. Beyond the beer and the potato salad...’ he raised his arm above his head to wave around his chicken leg, ‘...beyond the fried chicken...’ The well-rehearsed but seemingly spontaneous gesture drew wild applause from the crowd. ‘...we honor all of those brave men and women who gave up their lives on foreign battlefields so that we might enjoy the fruits of their sacrifice. From the shores of Tripoli to the trenches of the Ardennes, from the death march of Corregidor to the jungles of Vietnam, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq...’

Dammit, thought Thorne, it isn’t right. This man is a murderer, not a president. Thorne’s finger crooked around the imaginary trigger of the rifle he didn’t have. If it had been real, he would have squeezed off his shot and to hell with nightmares. Instead, he could only extend his arm and point a rigid forefinger...

‘...To Gettysburg, right here at home, where another great American President once said...’

...and whisper, ‘Bang, you’re dead!’ and...

...see Wallberg’s head explode in a bloody froth of brain and bone and flesh, the red mist that every sniper knew marked the perfect head shot. It was almost as if Thorne had fired the fatal round himself.

But he hadn’t. He was already half-climbing, half-sliding down the side of the tree away from the distant speaker’s stand. He dropped to the ground and strolled away along the river bank. In his ear was the familiar pandemonium of death by assassination that had become all too familiar to the modern world.

Thirty minutes later he was driving his Trooper sedately out the Old Shakopee Road, which would lead him to a bridge across the Minnesota River and eventually to 101 West, which would take him... where? No fixed destination. Just away from there.

As he drove, he tried to assess what he had seen. Before speech-day, even though he planned no shot, he had scouted the area as any good sniper should. Apart from his tree, the only site offering a clear shot at the podium was the roof-tower of one of the old stone battalion buildings at Fort Snelling. He had dismissed it out of hand: it was fifteen-hundred yards out. Three-quarters of a mile. There was only one man who could have made such a shot, and that man was dead.

The rather gaunt, mid-fifties man, unarmed except for a sheath knife, slipped silently through the sunlit early morning forest. He looked like someone recuperating from an illness or a dangerous accident. There was a hesitancy in his movements, a hitch in his step. Still, no twig crackled, no grass swished. He passed out of the trees and into the burn by a fire-blasted spruce, walking so silently under a blood-red cardinal on a branch above that the bird was not even aware of his passage. He still was the ultimate woodsman.

A voice froze him in mid-step.

‘A doctor out in LA recently gave me a physical after I had bled out a bit, and his medical advice was, “Eat More.”’

The gaunt woodsman looked at the younger man who had appeared out of nowhere, like morning mist through the trees.

‘I don’t have a lot of appetite. Some bastard shot me.’

‘Guilty,’ said Thorne.

‘How did you know I would be...’ Corwin paused, nodded. ‘Of course.

‘Where else would I be?’

‘Yeah. Still hiding in plain sight.’

‘I’d better change my MO.’ He made a slight gesture. ‘There’s fresh coffee back at the cabin. Do we have time to...’

‘All the time in the world,’ said Thorne.

Half an hour later, they were sitting across from each other at the hand-hewn table, at ease in one another’s company. Corwin was right: the coffee was fresh, and damned good. No food; Corwin’s appetite hadn’t returned yet.

Thorne stood, took a turn around the cabin’s single room.

‘I was up a tree twelve-hundred yards out when you took your shot at Wallberg,’ he said. ‘I was there just to watch the bastard and wish there was something I could do to him. But for me, anything beyond about five-hundred yards is pure fantasy. I’ve always been more assassin than sniper.’

‘You’re talking about that big oak by the riverbank?’

Thorne shook his head. ‘Dammit, Corwin, you’re good.’

‘I considered it myself, but I knew I wasn’t nimble enough these days to climb down and be away before they came looking.’ Corwin’s craggy face was almost serene. ‘Fort Snelling itself was better by far. There, I could have a car waiting.’

‘But — fifteen-hundred yards out.’

Corwin made a gesture. ‘It was that, or forget about it.’

‘A car with a driver,’ said Thorne. Corwin looked at him sharply. Thorne ignored the look. ‘What I want to know is how you survived in the Bitterroot Range. Was it a lung shot?’

‘Yes,’ said Corwin. ‘Anything else I would have gone into shock and bled out.’

Thorne sat down again.