Joe Haldeman - Work Done for Hire

“Sure we could.” I sat back down on the bed and tried to open the tough plastic bag. Finally punched a hole through it with the door key and widened the hole enough to get the bullet out.

“What is it?” It was heavier than a normal cartridge and had a small crystal lens on its tip.

“Smart round,” I said. “Like a little guided missile. You fire it at the target and little fins snap out for steering. Self-propelled, slow.” I pointed at the tip, painted light red. “It’s an incendiary, for good measure. I’m supposed to shoot some poor dick with this and hope the ensuing fire will dispose of the evidence?”

“Or cause confusion,” she said. “Would it be a big fire?”

“Don’t know; I never used one except on the range. It doesn’t look like it could be a big fire, unless you hit a gas tank or something.” I turned it around in my hand, looking for clues. “Of course the red paint doesn’t really mean anything; they could paint it baby blue if they wanted.”

“Does it shoot like a regular bullet?”

“Yes and no.” I opened the end of the cardboard box and slid out yet another M2010. This was a civilian one, the Remington Model 700, with a heavy blond wooden stock sporting expensive grain, and a big heavy finderscope. I eased the bolt back slightly; it wasn’t loaded.

I pushed a tab on the side and a three-by-three-inch screen popped out beside the fat Leupold finderscope. It had a blurry picture with bright crosshairs and a faint bull’s-eye. Hadn’t seen one since the desert.

“Watch this.” I slipped the cartridge into the receiver and pointed the rifle out the door; the picture on the screen snapped into focus, a bright picture inside a dark circle, like looking through a keyhole. The parking lot.

“So it shows where the bullet is going?”

“Exactly.” I set it down and reached inside the carton. Taped into a square of Bubble Wrap, a little box with a joystick. “That’s weird.”

“How so?”

I set it down carefully. “I did spend a week training with things like this. But that was like ten years ago, twelve. They expect me to squeeze the trigger and then guide this thing into a target, with no practice? I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to, not with any certainty.”

She picked it up and studied it. “Maybe they don’t know that? They seem to think you’re one of the people you write about.”

Odd but true. Maybe there were people with the combination of power and ignorance required for that kind of mistaken identity. The only thing I was sure of, though, was the ignorance on our side. “Let’s think. We should just go to the cops. Homeland Security.”

“Where they’d have your file open on the desk before you sit down.”

“Granted. But the Enemy has way upped the ante now. Or again, rather. And I still haven’t broken any law.”

I eased the cartridge out and held it in my hand. “You can’t buy this shit in a store, not anywhere. I don’t think they let hunters take deer with incendiaries—Smokey the Bear and all. It’s a plain terror weapon.” The weight of it was both repellent and fascinating. In training we had fired off a box of these, one for each of us, aiming at old paint cans, each with a spoonful of gasoline inside. Boom, fireball. Better than winning a Kewpie doll.

“Pretty expensive?”

I nodded. “The sergeant made a point of that. The round was worth more to the United States Army than we were. So aim. Or you might have to be the target next week.”

“They wouldn’t do that.” She was serious.

“Not really, no. You weren’t disposable till you were overseas.” I hefted the rifle. “This thing is heavy . I guess it’s a match model, for accuracy. Deepens the mystery.”

“How so?”

“It’s wasted on me, really. I’m a pretty good shot, but I was far from the best in my platoon, even my squad. The army’s full of people who could shoot one round from a sniper rifle like this and shave a hair off a fly’s ass.”

“None of whom wrote a novel about a sniper.”

“More’s the pity.” I aimed it out the door. The scope really was beautiful, a hard bright image with no color fringe. I could spin the power up to 40X, but without support the image danced around like crazy; I couldn’t even tell what I was looking at.

“Can I try it?”

“Sure.” I spun the power all the way down and automatically made sure the safety was locked, not just “on.” Product of a thousand spot inspections.

She put it to her shoulder and pointed into the parking lot, the muzzle waving around in a sloppy orbit. She craned her neck, peering into the scope. “Don’t see anything.”

“Your eye’s too close. Back off to a natural distance.”

“Like this?” She leaned back too far.

“No—” I reached toward her and the room suddenly darkened as a huge form blocked off the light.

“What you all—” the big black woman said, and then screamed, and backed away so fast she tripped into the parking lot and fell hard onto her back.

I ran out to help, and Kit was right behind me, still holding the rifle. The woman’s eyes were open, showing mostly whites. I couldn’t feel a pulse in her neck, but her wrist had a slight one. “She’s alive.”

“Call 9-1-1?”

“ No! Jesus!” I looked wildly around; there didn’t seem to be any eyewitnesses. “Leave the bikes. Get in the car and get the fuck out of here.”

“But…” She looked as helpless as I felt.

“I know. Let’s carry her in onto the bed and go!” She put the rifle down and took one arm. I took the other and we dragged the woman in through the door.

No question of lifting her dead weight onto the bed. I scooped up the book with all the hundreds. The loose high-tech round, the joystick. Picked up the rifle off the sidewalk.

“Maybe we should leave all that stuff behind?”

“No, maybe we’ll ditch it someplace else. Let’s just get outta here!”

We threw everything into the car and it started right up. I backed out carefully and turned it around.

In the distance, sirens.

“Fuck it!” I floored it and fishtailed out of the gravel lot onto the two-lane road.

“Don’t!” she said.

“’Course.” I took my foot off the gas and pulled over, reaching for my wallet. “‘I wasn’t running from the body, officer. Just the FBI and DHS.’”

Two Highway Patrol squad cars bore down on us, sirens screaming, blue lights flashing. They went right past the motel without slowing down. I clenched the wheel and watched them close in—and then pass us, engines roaring flat out.

We looked at each other. “So what was that all about?” she said. “We must not be the only criminals in Mississippi.”

“At least they’re not after this car.” I put it in gear but sat for a moment. “We really ought to…”

“Yeah. She could be really hurt.”

“We should check.” Still I hesitated. “Hell. ‘Avoid the appearance of wrongdoing.’” I did a slow U-turn and went back to the motel parking lot. The door to the room was still ajar.

She was still where we had left her, but her eyes were closed now. Still a pulse in her wrist. Her name tag said “Mary Taylor,” and tasked her with Customer Relations. And everything else, I supposed.

“Mary?” I said. “Miz Taylor?”

I put my hand behind her head and raised it slightly. There was a little blood in her hair. Her lids fluttered.

“You fell and hit your head,” I said, which was true.

“I was… you was…”

“You slipped on the gravel,” Kit said.

She stared at Kit. “You had a gun.”

“Hunting rifle,” I said. “She was just checking the sights when… you came to the door.”