Стивен Хантер - Game of Snipers

Juba began to calculate the strategy he would take if escape became necessary. This old car, with its worn tires and problematic acceleration, trying to outrun speedy American police cruisers! The only chance would be to veer across the median, head in the other direction, look for a soft spot where he could get off this highway, and perhaps onto a smaller country road, and, if far enough ahead, abandon this car and head cross-country. But he didn’t like the chances at all.

“O Jesus, please show mercy,” prayed Alberto.

“You are not even of the faith!” exclaimed Juba.

“I never said I was. My father was Catholic, my mother Egyptian. I studied for the priesthood!”

“God laughs at me,” Juba said. “He sends me to death with an infidel.”

“I am, at this point in my spiritual life, quite flexible. If you want me to pray to Allah, I will happily do so. O Allah, I beseech Thee—”

“Shut up.”

With a lurch, the 18-wheeler ahead pulled free and began to speed up, and Juba knew police would be on him with their flashlights in seconds.

But there were no policemen.

There was nothing except the sign, by the side of the road, blinking furiously as it beamed its message to the traffic it had slowed to a jam in the rain and dark.

“What does it say?” asked Juba.

“It says ‘Welcome to Wyoming, Speed Limit 75.’”

The ranch

Aftermath

Almost instantly, four FBI SWAT members emerged to take over the scene. They had been dispatched by Nick to follow the tracks of the bloody cowboy boots through the tunnel. Emerging, they caught his footprints to the north before they melted in the rain, followed, and there came upon Mrs. McDowell and Swagger.

At almost the same time, the long-anticipated secondary convoy, with its med technicians, forensics teams, interrogators, dogs, and locals, showed up — a long, well-lit convoy pouring in from 193, and its commander stopped to be debriefed about where the shooting had taken place. And finally the rains really let go, falling in slanting, pelting anger, turning dirt to mud, and warm to cold, and set the breeze to howling. Time to get under cover.

So it was not for a few hours before Nick and Bob — somewhat recovered from the verge of death by a carotid puncture at the hands of a man who thought he was a snake — settled in with Mrs. McDowell, herself soaked, but somewhat warmed by coffee from the kitchen that one of the cooks had started running. Why not? Nobody was working for Señor Menendez anymore. Nick ran the meet, Chandler took notes for the after action report.

The story Mrs. McDowell told: her ex-husband’s sister was married to a colonel in the Maryland State Police, and one of his responsibilities was to oversee liaison with FBI, with whom he was on very good terms. When all the news about the killing and gunfight in Wichita broke, not only had she concluded Juba was the triggerman, she’d caught a glimpse of an agent she knew from the coverage on CNN.

“Agent Chandler. She’s so beautiful, the CNN cameras had to show her.”

So she knew that Juba was in play, and she asked her ex-husband’s sister to ask her husband for any news or info. He responded by saying that all the feds were agitated because an urgent directive had come out requesting certain SWAT teams to report to Salt Lake City for possible deployment in a big raid. Baltimore’s field office was all ticked off because they hadn’t made the list, though they regularly came in first or second in the FBI SWAT Olympics held every year.

Figuring that action was coming up, Mrs. McDowell had flown to Salt Lake City, where, at a Radio Shack, she had bought a police scanner, with which she quickly found the FBI Clear Channel and was able to follow the assembly of a major raid task force in Jackson Hole. She also had her Glock.

“It’s completely legal,” she said. “I’ve owned it for five years, and I have one of those crazy Utah licenses that let me carry in thirty-three states. I can’t carry in Maryland, but I can carry in Florida, Texas, Wyoming, and a batch of others. I declared it and flew out with it. I drove out to Jackson Hole, monitored the FBI channel, could tell you were setting up to jump, and just followed the raid in. I parked on 193 and walked down the access road. I see this fight, I run to it, and this snake monster is on top of someone — I couldn’t tell it was Bob Lee Swagger — but it didn’t matter. I could see his blade gleaming in the light, and I sort of assumed if he had a snake face and was about to stick a knife in somebody’s throat, he was probably a bad guy.”

“So?”

“So? So I shot him in the face.”

“Twice,” said Swagger. “The first got his attention, but the second made sure he was listening.”

“I’ve got guys lined up in the rain to see this guy,” said Nick. “He was a piece of freak pie.”

“Janet, by the way,” said Swagger, “thanks for saving the bacon. Between you and Chandler, you’re going to keep me alive until the next century.”

Chandler said, “You want backstory on the Snake?”

“Sure,” said Nick. “I haven’t had a laugh all day.”

“We ran the prints, and I got some preliminary info from DEA out of the Mexican State Police. Called La Culebra, Spanish for ‘the Snake,’ he was born in Mexico City as Antonio Jorge López and was known from the age of fourteen as a knife fighter. Very colorful teenage years. Worked freelance; his specialty was cutting out the hearts of snitches. He was so good, he signed on permanently with the late Raúl Menendez. He started this reptile bit a few years ago, since he was no longer on the road. Obviously crazy, but useful in cartel culture: when Menendez met with other cartel big guys, he liked to have the Snake standing close by, in his mask, which is a play on lucha libre , a form of Mexican professional wrestling where everybody’s masked. Anyhow, DEA suggests that there may be some sexual dysfunction as well, since a number of prostitutes have disappeared everywhere La Culebra puts up for a bit.”

“Janet, you couldn’t have picked a better candidate for your first kill,” said Nick.

“I had hoped to find you guys drinking beer over Juba’s corpse,” Mrs. McDowell said.

“And we’d hoped for the same,” said Nick. “But the bastard seems to have given us the slip once again.”

“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” she asked.

“Nope. I am legally enjoined from doing so. You have no security clearance.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“It isn’t. But I have to play very much by the rules, for now. I can’t say a word, except to officially express the Bureau’s appreciation for saving one of its delinquents. And promise a nice letter for your Glory Wall.”

“I don’t have a Glory Wall.”

“It’s your letter, do with it what you want. Now, I’m going to have you give a deposition to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, have them buy you a big, hearty Wyoming breakfast, and put you on a plane back to Baltimore. When it’s over, maybe Swagger can brief you unofficially. He owes you that much.”

“I can guess most of it already. Juba’s here to take a really long shot. We all know who it’s got to be.”

“See, that’s what I can’t have,” said Nick. “If we assume we know, we fall into the trap of confirmation bias, where we only see what supports our interpretation because we want to be right. I purposely haven’t addressed the target issue yet, and I’m not ready to without hard evidence. Speculation is counterproductive. That’s the real reason I’m chasing you out, Janet. I don’t want you tearing down the weeks of professional discipline these guys have shown. That may be their best attribute: the ability to keep an open mind.”