Стивен Хантер - G-Man

“This belongs to the Bureau,” said Nick. “It’s a perfect example of what not to do in a gunfight. It’s Dade County all over again. Or, rather, Dade County was Barrington all over again.”

He was alluding to an infamous Bureau gunfight where an anti-bank-robbery team had jumped a duo of heavily armed hard cases who wanted to go all the way. Who had to go all the way. Who, like their predecessor and icon, Lester “Baby Face Nelson” Gillis, had been dreaming of such an Armageddon in a very small space his whole life, and when it happened, he was ready for it, all gunned up, crazy-brave as any SS lunatic on the Eastern Front, and you could only beat him with courage, a mind as tough as his, experience, and bigger, faster bullets. That’s how Michael Platt killed two agents and wounded four more in three minutes of gunwork in August of 1987.

“Ballistics,” said Bob. “If you have ballistics on your side, you have God on your side.”

“Baby Face had the big gun, no doubt about it,” said Nick.

“That .30–06 on full auto must have been a terrifying thing. I’m just thinking that even as it hit the earth, even as it missed, it blew out such a chunk of planet, it had to drive the agents back, taken their aggression from them. In ’Nam, first tour, some of the RVNs were armed with old War Two stuff, and the BAR and the Browning Thirty did a job on any structure, any man, any vehicle, any anything they hit. There’s poor Sam, with a Thompson he’d never fired before, sending three-quarters of his shots into the sky or the dirt. There’s Hollis, a good man in a fight but stuck with a shotgun with a range of fifteen good yards before the shot pattern breaks apart. He goes to pistol, but he’s shooting a moving, advancing killer, while another one is suppressing him with full automatic.”

They were silent.

Then Bob said, “Charles Swagger would have shot Nelson in the knee, blown it out, and when he was down and still, shot him in the head, all from a hundred feet out. Then he would have set the car tank afire with Thompson tracer, and when Chase ran out in flames, screaming, he would have tracked him and blown his head off. And we wouldn’t be sitting here reading this.”

More silence.

Rawley emerged from the woods line, as before, his hands up.

“Last chunk,” he said, bringing the package over.

“This one’s got some surprises.”

Swagger took it, flipped through it, took a deep breath.

“You sure you want to read it now, sniper man? You may learn something you don’t want to,” said Braxton.

“Shut up,” said Nick.

“Fair warning,” said Rawley. “I’ve read it. He hasn’t.”

Rawley was right. Whatever Charles did or didn’t do, whatever he became, why his spiral was downward toward dissolution and death, it was here in this little nest of pages.

BARRINGTON, ILLINOIS

November 27, 1934 (cont’d)

Just inside Barrington’s limits, the traffic backed up. Charles opened his door, and stood to see it was stopped by the presence of two police cruisers by the side of the road a hundred yards ahead. He got out his badge, got back in, and rolled down the window. Honking, he got enough room to maneuver to the shoulder, and progressed to the scene, where an officer halted him until Charles showed his badge.

The cop said, “Okay, sir, go on. They’re your people, all right.”

Charles felt his stomach drop out when the cop spoke. Never in a fight had he had such a feeling, but this one was straight off the cliff, all the way down, faster and faster, until he hit and was smashed to pieces.

He took a deep breath, moved ahead a few more yards to the police cruiser, and got out.

He could see Sam on the ground, blood everywhere on his lower trunk, the Thompson ahead of him in the grass, chinks of brass littering the site, a cop kneeling over, not doing much since there wasn’t much to do. Even from where he was, Charles could see the wound. He’d seen it before, in the war, and a fight or two along the way. The gut, straight through, blowing chunks and tubing out, opening a dozen unstoppable bloodstreams, pulverizing the mysterious organs that kept you alive. It was fatal.

He looked and a hundred fifty feet away saw the Ford, not so shiny now. Windows all shot out, one tire flattened, so the thing perched at a broken angle, dust and bullet holes all across it. From the site, he could pretty much read the story of the fight, and the tracks of the missing Hudson, heavy in the grass, told him the rest of the story.

He went to Sam.

The man had the death pallor, a rim of blood around his lips, his eyes sliding toward glassiness as he contemplated sky and nothing else. Flecks of blood dotted his skin. His Brooks Brothers striped shirt was seeped in magenta and flecked by kernels of black dried blood. His breathing was hardly there. But as Charles knelt, Sam managed to turn his eyes. Charles put his hand on the man’s shoulder, for there wasn’t enough energy left in him for him to lift a hand.

“Charles, he wouldn’t go down. I hit him over and over. I put that front sight on him, I fired short bursts. I know I hit him, but he kept on coming.”

“I’m sure you hit him bad, Sam. I’m sure he’s dead and they’ve dumped him in a hole somewhere. We’ll find him soon.”

“Oh god, Charles, I tried so hard. Tell my boys how hard I tried.”

“You can tell ’em yourself, Sam. They’ll sew you up and you’ll be back in no time.”

“How’s Ed, Charles? I haven’t heard anything, I haven’t seen him. I…” He trailed off.

Charles looked at the cop on the other side of Sam and the cop gave him the bad news with a quick shake of the head and Charles knew Ed was gone.

“They’re working on him now, Sam,” said Charles. “Like you, he’s going to pull through.”

“I know you’re lying, Charles. It’s okay. I was brave, wasn’t I? I did the job, the Duty. No one can say—”

“What they’ll say is that Division agent Sam Cowley stood up and shot it out with the most dangerous man in America. They’ll say that, because it’s the truth. You’re the best, Sam.”

“Charles, go now. Get him. He went south on the highway only a few minutes ago. He’ll stay under the speed limit. It’s the number nineteen car, blue Hudson, plate G45511.”

Charles nodded. He pressed Sam’s hand, and rose.

“The ambulance will be here in seconds,” he said.

The cop said to him, “Sir, you’d better take the guns along. This place is going to be hopping in minutes and there aren’t enough of us to keep control of the scene.”

“Good idea, Officer,” said Charles. He bent, picked up Sam’s Thompson, noting from the weight that it was empty. He walked to Ed — the blister of the entry wound was right above the eye — and picked up the Remington 11, also empty, and Ed’s Super .38. He walked back to his Pontiac and dumped them in the trunk, locking it. Then he had a second thought. He picked up the Thompson, hit the thumb latch, and slid the empty drum off the gun. In his trunk was a bag of assorted training items and he reached into it now, withdrew another fully loaded drum, fitted it to the rails on the receiver, and slid it home. He didn’t notice a T for “Training” painted crudely on its dark frontal surface. It locked solid. He pulled back the bolt, feeling the slide through resistance as the spring recoiled, until it too locked. Then he thumbed the safety prong to up — this is “On”—and put the weapon on the offside front seat. He thought he had time and returned to Sam.

“I’m going now.”

“Get him, Charles. I know you can.”

“You keep fighting and we’ll laugh about this on the patio one night.”