31

It had been a good day for the general. At eleven, he had finally closed a contract with Colonel Sanchez of the Honduran Army. Colonel Sanchez was el comandante of Battalion 316, the counterterror and insurgency specialists, American-trained. Though the Hondurans had plenty of money to spend, the general could see no justification for pushing the No. 1 System, as it was called. The SR-25 with the Magnavox thermal sniperscope and the JFP MAW-7 suppressor was the most sophisticated system in the world but it was labor-intensive maintenance-wise and he doubted a third-world nation without a sophisticated technical culture would be able to maintain the units through heavy usage. And heavy usage was expected: the current guerrilla war showed no signs of abating and indeed was moving into the cities, where Battalion 316 and Military Intelligence rightly understood that a long-range precision night-vision sniping capability would prove invaluable.

After much hassling and wrangling, the general had finally convinced Colonel Sanchez that a system built around rebuilt army AN/PVS-2 Starlights mounted on state-of-the-art McMillan M-86s with the JFP Technology M14SS-1 suppressors was exactly what the doctor ordered. Twenty of the units would be in .308 Winchester, ten in .300 Winchester Magnum and ten in .223 Remington, giving Battalion 316 a great deal of tactical flexibility.

Of course JFP sniper cadre would field-train designated marksmen in the usage of the weapons system and serve, for an interim time, as consultants and advisers vis-à-vis their deployment in the combat environment. The general had a talent pool of several ex-SWAT and Green Beret snipers who performed such tasks, and were damn well paid too, both in money and in the odd extra kill they could pick up.

The general and the colonel then went to lunch, demolishing mighty amounts of rare roast beef at one of Oklahoma City’s finest establishments, and the general dropped the colonel off at his hotel, to prepare for the flight home. The general himself went to his club, where he played three quick games of squash with his lawyer and one of his board members. He took an hour in the steam room, showered and got back to the office at four. He expected to spend another two hours on paperwork and to begin work on a presentation set in a month’s time for the German GSG-9 antiterrorist group; if he could snatch them from the jaws of Heckler & Koch and its blasted, overrated PSG1, it would be a wonderful feather in his cap!

He sat at his desk, and Judy, his secretary, came in with his messages.

“Anything important?”

“No sir. Your wife. She’s waiting for her payment.”

“Dammit, I sent that check,” he said.

“Two calls from Jeff Harris at the FBI.”

“Yes, yes. They may go night-vision. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“A Mr. Greenaway, the procurement officer for the Cleveland Municipal Police.”

“Oh, I’ll get right on that one.”

“Long-distance, Mr. Arrabenz from Salvador.”

“That old pirate. Okay, I’ll get back to him. In fact, you may as well start trying to put the call through now. It’ll take hours.”

“Yes sir. And Mr. Short.”

The general thought he misunderstood.

“I’m sorry?”

“Mr. Short. He said it was about Arkansas. He said he’d call back. Frenchy Short, the name was.”

The general nodded, smiled, thanked her.

She left the room.

The general sat there, finding his breath hard to locate in his chest.

It was coming back. Swagger, now this.

Goddammit.


He waited and waited. His technicians left at five, as usual, and Judy went home at six, but the general stayed in his office. Twice after Judy left, the phone rang; one was a wrong number and another a hang-up.

You bastard, he thought, nursing a glass of Scotch neat. You bastard.

Finally, at 8:27 the phone rang.

He snatched it up.

“Hello.”

“Jack! Jack Preece, you old son of a gun, how the hell are you? It’s your old pal Frenchy Short.”

The voice was southern and arrived in a laughing tone of fake heartiness.

“Who are you?” Preece demanded. “You’re not Frenchy Short. Frenchy Short is dead. He died in Vienna in 1974. I saw the Agency report.”

“Details, details,” came the voice. “How are you doing these days, Jack? That divorce still takes a pretty penny, I’ll bet. Your daughter likes Penn, does she? Business is booming, isn’t it? Battalion 316? Excellent, Jack. That’s quite a healthy little shop you’re running.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Frenchy Short.”

“Goddammit, who are you?”

The man on the other end let him sweat for a few moments.

“Jack, you’re right. Frenchy’s dead. You might say I’m his heir apparent.”

“What the hell is this all about?”

“Jack, Frenchy Short was the best thing that ever happened to you. You’ve lived a charmed life ever since you met him. You got the commands you wanted. You moved up through the ranks. You had clout, power, prestige. You ran that sniper school, the premier sniper command in the Western world. You’ve seen your night doctrines accepted by the army. You’ve got a chestful of ribbons and medals. You’ve become a wealthy man. Jack, you owe Frenchy Short a great deal.”

“Stop bullshitting me. Get to the goddamned point.”

“Here’s the point, Jack. In 1955 you did Frenchy a big favor. You hit a shot for us that no one else in the world could have hit. It bought us all kinds of things. And it bought you all kinds of things. Now, forty-odd years later, that case has been opened again. Somebody’s come hunting us. You have to take another shot. You have to put him in the ground. Night shot. Long-range. Your specialty.”

“No,” said Jack. “That is the one thing I regret doing. That man was a law enforcement officer who did no one any harm. He was a hero. That is the only shame I feel. I don’t care what the consequences are.”

“Jack, I forgot how brave you are. You won the Bronze Star, didn’t you? All right, Jack, go noble on your old pal Frenchy Short. You say you’ll face the consequences? You’ll give it all up, your good name, your firm, your family? You’ll endure the scandal? That’s not what it’ll cost you. No, no, if he comes for me, I’ll make certain no matter how it works out, he gets your name, Jack, then he’ll come for you. He’s the best. There ain’t no better.”

“Swagger?”

“And how, ten feet tall and really pissed off. Still the best. Still is. Dusted ten pros the other day, maybe you read about if?”

Preece had, dammit.

“Jack, I’ll give you to Swagger and he’ll take you apart. Or I’ll set him up for you. One shot, one kill.”

The general was quiet. He looked around at his marksmanship trophies, his paneled office, his medals on the wall. If Swagger came for him it was over.

“Then I’m out?”

“For keeps. You go back to your life, I go back to mine.”

“How?”

“Tomorrow you move out with your gear. You go to a farm way out on a dirt road on County 70, off of 71, just north of Blue Eye, Arkansas. It’s way, way out, near a little place called Posey Hollow. Your contact will be a boy named Duane Peck. He’ll get you settled in. Meanwhile, I’m working to set Swagger up in the woods. He’s got to be drawn in slowly, carefully. It can’t be rushed, but I’m thinking a few days, maybe a week. When it happens you’ll have to move fast and quiet. I’ll get you your shot. You better not miss, General Jack, or he will bury you good and deep.”

“I never miss,” said the general.

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