Dead Zero

CASCADE MEADOWS, IDAHO

32 MILES EAST OF Boise

1515 HOURS

SIX MONTHS LATER

Julie came out of the office where she’d been checking the expenditures at the Missoula barn when she heard the racket, watched the horses jump and shiver in the corral. The helicopter settled slowly out of the blue western sky, and in its rude, invasive way kicked up dust and energy everywhere. It certainly was an impressive machine, a huge green hull with lots of portholes, a bubble canopy behind which sat two men in goggles looking very insectoid, landing gear, struts, insignia-USAF-under the great swirl of the blade at idle. It looked like it had emerged from CNN, on the television set.

A hatch opened and, as she expected, it was her husband’s friend, a man named Nick Memphis, now a hotshot executive with the FBI. They’d been trying to reach Swagger for some time now, but he wouldn’t talk to them. He was sick of them and, in a way, of the world, or at least the world they represented. He no longer read anything but big, fat World War II novels from the forties and fifties. Television annoyed him, he hated his cell phone and the e-mail process, and wasn’t interested in iPods or iPads or whatever they were, BlackBerries, all those little electronic things. Hated ’em. Mostly all he did was work like a bastard around the place and take his daughter Miko to junior rodeo events, which she usually won or placed high in, proving to be, at twelve, a fearless competitor in the barrel race.

But after Nick, another figure emerged, familiar and yet not immediately recognizable. She searched her memory and then it came to her. Trim, pantsuited, waves of raven-black hair, a certain elegance, Asian: yes, it was a woman named Susan Okada, a mysterious figure who had appeared from out of the blue nine or so years ago with a gift that had lightened everybody’s life and spirit-the child Miko. She knew without having been told that Susan Okada worked for that mystery entity that went by the three initials C, I, and A, and knew that if Susan were here, it meant, without being stated, that an old favor was being called in. Perhaps Susan’s presence established some principle of obligation, a call to duty, whatever. They needed him and there would be no turning them down this time.

“Hi, Julie,” called Nick as he got to the house.

“Nice ride,” she said.

She hugged him, kissed him, and did the same to Susan: you could not but love a woman who had somehow gotten you your second daughter, through some magic hocus-pocus making the bureaucracy and the waiting and the traveling and the interviewing all vanish.

“It’s so good to see you,” she said to Susan.

“I hear Miko’s turned into a rodeo champ.”

“She knows what she’s doing on a horse. Of course we pushed the rodeo, thinking the horses would keep her away from boys, and we ended up with both horses and boys.”

She drew them onto the porch and into the living room. It was a beautiful, big house, the house of a man of property and success. That was certainly Swagger. He’d become something a bit more than prosperous and now owned fourteen lay-up barns in six states, enjoyed referential relationships with the veterinary practice in those locales, the key to the whole thing, and really it was Julie, an organized and determined woman, who kept the wheels turning and the engine grinding forward into the black. The pension from the Marine Corps and the medical disability pay was only the frosting, ammunition money.

But then she turned to Nick.

“I know this is business. You didn’t come by helicopter for small talk.”

“Sorry for the melodramatics, but you can’t get his attention any other way. He’s not even opening e-mail or accepting registered letters, much less phone calls. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think we had a real situation.”

“I’ll go get him. And I’ll pack. I’m guessing you’ll be taking him with you.”

“I’m afraid so, Julie. He knows the stuff and we need someone who knows the stuff. I know he’s sick and tired of us. I’m sick and tired of us. But still… it’s a real situation.”

“And a tragic one,” Susan Okada added.

Swagger, in jeans and a blue work shirt, sat across from them, his coffee untouched. He was sixty-four now and almost always in pain. The goddamned cut on his hip-exactly where all those years ago he’d taken the bullet that shattered the hip and almost killed him-had never really healed properly and gave him trouble every day. Yet the painkillers turned him groggy and he hated being groggy, so he just got through it. Riding horseback was a special agony, so he traveled most places these days by his three-wheeled all-terrain vehicle, beneath a straw Stetson, much weathered, and a pair of sunglasses too cool, he thought, for such a worthless loafer. His hair had never turned white but stayed a kind of pewter gray, wiry like his old man’s, with a will of its own, and would only answer to butch wax; his cheeks had sunk for some reason and he thought he looked like a death’s-head, but when he saw how many men his age had turned to blobs, he supposed he ought to be grateful. He still had the face of some kind of Comanche warrior from some forgotten age; he still carried himself with regulation Marine Corps grace and posture, as some systems imprint so deep they never go away.

“You’re a hard man to reach,” said Nick.

“I’m not good for much,” he said. “That last one nearly killed me. I’m still tired from it. All I do is sleep or think of sleeping. Or dream of drinking. Can’t have a drop in the house, or I’ll suck it down. Been on the wagon thirty years and there ain’t a day I don’t miss it. Without all these damn women around, there’s no way I’d stay sober.”

“Don’t listen to him,” called Julie. “He’s just playing the martyr to the choices he made himself. It’s not attractive.”

“Let me lay this out,” Nick said. “Give it a listen, tell me if you don’t think you can contribute. Miss Okada’s agency got aboard when they heard what’s going on. She wouldn’t be here if this weren’t a situation.”

Swagger looked at Okada, who other than an opening hug had said nothing to him. All that seemed so long ago: the mad, twisted run through the Tokyo underworld, the deaths by blade, the oceans of blood, the loss of some good people so tragic and hurtful even all these years later, and his own survival, the terrible luck of it, when he fought a man with swords who was a hundred times better than he was and somehow survived it.

But there was this other thing. He had already lied: he said he dreamed of sleeping and drinking. But he also dreamed of Susan Okada. In ways that were too solid to be denied, he knew that she was The One. It just had to be, exactly as it never would be, their lives on different sets of railroad tracks heading in different directions, further separated by class, education, experience, levels of sophistication. So it could never, ever be and he’d never, ever act upon it, but at the same time, the unattainability, the taboo, the so-wrong-wrong-wrong of it made it delicious, a private, somehow comforting agony that he held close, telling no one. First thing he’d done, damn him, was to check her finger for a wedding ring and it was bare. That pleased him in ways he couldn’t have predicted and it also frightened him.

“Hey, how come you’re not getting any older?” he said to her. “I turned into the cranky old neighbor in the dark house by himself and you’re still, what, on the cover of Vogue three times a year?”

“Four, but down from five,” she said. “But you’re right, I am eternally twenty-eight, even if certain inaccurate documents insist I’m thirty-eight. And you still look like Hector on a break from a hard day’s night on the plains outside Troy.”

“Them damned Greeks,” he said. “You cut ’em all down, and the next day, they’re back, just as pissed as before!”

“Okay, guy,” said Nick. “I know you’re old, old friends. But let me get to the pitch. Here it is. And it’s why the Bureau and the Agency are working together, despite a long history of political animosity.”

Nick leaned forward.

“About six months ago, in Afghanistan, the Second Reconnaissance Battalion of the Second Marine Division, Twenty-second Expeditionary Force, operating in Zabul province, asked for and received permission to deal with-kill-a warlord local intel suggested was secretly allied with Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces. The marines were losing people in ambushes, IEDs, sniper attacks, and the like. It all led to this guy.”

“Do I need to know his name?”

“If you haven’t been watching television, his name won’t mean a thing to you, Bob,” Susan said.

“So,” resumed Nick, “a sniper team was sent. Led by a very able guy. Idea was to mingle with the locals, come in from the Pakistani- border side of town, hit the guy with a rifle shot, and beat it before the locals got organized. The rifle was a Dragunov, expendable, untraceable.”

“Got it.”

“A day out, the team got hit. We don’t know what happened, but they were jumped by another sniper team and the spotter was killed, the commo equipment was totaled, the sergeant, we think, was hit.”

“I’m guessing he didn’t turn back.”

“You got that right. Very impressive individual. Your type of guy. You, in a way, twenty years ago at the top of your game. Gunny Sergeant Ray Cruz, full name Reyes Fidencio Cruz, forty-two years old, father a retired lieutenant commander, U.S. Navy, of Portuguese ancestry named Tomas Cruz, mother a Philippine national, Urlinda Flores Marbella. He grew up essentially on the big naval station at Subic near Cebu City, where his dad became head of the golf club as a second career. The kid should have been a pro golfer. Instead he became a sniper.”

“Good for him.”

“Pretty outstanding guy. Everybody wanted him to go to Annapolis, but he went to UCLA instead. A shooter. NRA junior champion small bore, three years running. Went distinguished in high power in a single summer before he was twenty. Talent with the rifles. High IQ. Good grades. Just the best.”

“Not your country-boy sniper type. Why isn’t he running a software company somewhere?

“Because his parents were killed in an auto accident and it really upset him. He joined the marines in ninety-one, won a batch of marksmanship awards, served with distinction in the first Gulf thing. He was offered commissions up the wazoo but wanted to stay a sniper. He thought it was a growth industry, I suppose.”

“He was right.”

“Was he ever. This is his fifth deployment after two in Iraq, two previous in Afghanistan. Hit twice, fast recovery. Incredible record all the way through. Now this is a guy who could have quit at any time, gone to work for big dollars at some security multinational. He could have taken a commission, retired a colonel, gone to work for GE or somebody. He could have started his own tactical school, run SWAT people and wannabes through for a thousand bucks a head a day and lived in the big house. He could have joined the Bureau, Secret Service, the Agency, State Department security, any outfit with initials instead of a name. Fool for duty. Stays operational, stays in the suck. Seems to love the suck. Goes out on this mission and gets whacked and keeps on going, full-tilt boogie.”

“What happened?” Bob asked, loving the sniper already-where are we going to find more people like him?-and fearing the answer.

“Somehow, again, we’re not sure how, he survived the first hit, he worked some fancy clever game on his pursuers and evaded them, and he made it to the target, but they were on his tail.”

“How do you know all this?”

“He was carrying a GPS and transmitter and the satellite could track. At the battalion’s S-Two bunker they were getting a real-time feed from a recon drone the whole time. It was Monday Night Football. They have his signal at the shooting site at the time of the hit.”

“He made the hit?”

“There was no hit. There was a mysterious explosion. Thirty-one people died.”

“That was on TV too,” said Susan.

“Another night I must have missed,” said Bob.

“The hotel-he was on the roof-was cratered. Nobody knows how or why. Missile? Doubtful, as we had no Reapers in the area-”

“The drones are our program,” said Susan. “We had no missile activity at that time. I’ve gone over the records very carefully. Ugh, I went there, a princess like me, and talked to the on-the-ground people.”

“Maybe your outfit even has secrets from you.”

“This isn’t The Bourne Conspiracy, Swagger,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Never mind.”

“Gas-main explosion. IED,” continued Nick. “Ammo cache, bomb factory, nobody knows, and our forensics people weren’t invited in to go through the wreckage. The Dutch made an investigation, but I’ve seen it, it was poorly done, and they were clearly uncomfortable outside their protected compound. It’s wild and woolly out there. Maybe the blast was legit, we don’t know. Things explode in tribal Afghanistan all the time.”

“And this Ray, he was blown up.”

“That would seem to be the case.”

“What a waste. Remind me again what we get out of this thing?”

“No politics. Only cop stuff. And here’s where it gets interesting,” said Nick. “The blast seems to have seriously shaken the target, a fellow named Ibrahim Zarzi, also known as the Beheader. He left the city-Qalat-and moved to Kabul. He’s hereditary aristocracy, well educated, cosmopolitan, he’s got money, lots of it, don’t ask why or where it comes from. Anyhow, about this time, conditions in Zabul province improve, no more ambushes, no more bombings, and Second Recon makes it home with no more battle deaths. Everybody gets a promotion.”

“And this guy Zarzi,” said Susan, “he suddenly becomes an aggressively pro-American player in Kabul. He makes overtures to State, they ask us to look into it, and we vet him up one side and down the other. Supposedly, he’s now clean, he’s broken all his old associations, walked away from the sources of his fortune.”

“Drugs?”

“He was dirty. Now he’s clean. We had him at a safe house in Kabul for a week, at his insistence, and polygraphed him, drugged him, interviewed him in English and in Pashto, Agency, FBI, DEA, State, everyone, did the full nine yards’ dance on him, and he comes up clean. Very attractive guy, he may be emerging as a candidate for president in the upcoming elections. We view that possibility as very encouraging and are working discreetly to make it happen.”

“You can’t trust ’em,” said Bob.

“People do change. It happens. We worked this bird hard and we believe he’s genuine. I don’t know how he could fake something like that and get it through all the vetting we laid on him. So our new policy is: you can trust them. The future depends on it.”

“Maybe you’re seeing what you want to see.”

“Fear of that remote possibility shouldn’t preclude our making full use of this development,” she replied. “The trust has to start somewhere or your daughter Miko will be serving in Kabul.”

Bob grunted, signifying that he didn’t quite buy it. But then he moved on.

“So what does all this have to do with me?”

“As part of State’s initiative to upgrade Zarzi’s profile before the fall elections, he’s coming to DC in a couple of weeks. You might call it a sort of further test, see how he stands up to that kind of DC pressure. Lots of things have been laid on. Debriefings both at State and at the Agency, news conferences, speeches before the foreign policy Council, a big national talking heads broadcast, and finally a medal ceremony at the White House, where all the biggies will be in attendance. He’ll announce his candidacy for the presidency, and a big Mad Avenue firm will take over the election. He’s our man in Kabul.”

“And?”

“And Ray Cruz isn’t dead. He’s alive. He’s back. He’s all snipered up. And Ray Cruz has said he will finish his job. He will hit his target and complete Whiskey Two-Two’s mission. He’ll take Zarzi down.”

“How do you know all this?”

“He told us.”

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

RITZ HOTEL POOL DECK

MIAMI BEACH

1600 HOURS

Pablo trundled discreetly around the pool with a wireless telephone on his tray. He wore a tropical shirt, white shorts, and sunglasses. He was a good find. He’d also connected Mick with several high-end hookers, a very nice supply of blow, and every third drink off the hotel’s books. Behind him, the glass, turquoise, and alabaster crescent of the building itself formed a bulwark against the offshore Atlantic breezes, so that even the palms were still. The sun sparkled off the pool’s glossy blue waters. Many young women in bikinis the size of thumbprints were lounging about and most of them would sneak a peek at Mick once in a while. No surprise, since he had the hard body of an NFL linebacker-muscles without fat, all of them nicely bunched and protuberant-and the tattoos were all professional and elegant and military, not jailhouse shit with crude images of Jesus bleeding out on the cross or some chick named Esmeralda woven into hearts and violets. Mick took another sip of his Knob Creek on the rocks as Pablo reached him and presented the phone.

“Señor?”

“Can you throw it in the pool?” Mick asked.

“It would not be a good idea.”

“Agh,” said Mick. Who knew he was here? No one. That meant someone with the connex.

“Hello?” Mick said.

“Bogier. Enjoying the view?”

MacGyver. He thought he was done with that asshole. It played out as per, and indeed the agreed-upon large sum had been wired to Mick’s account. Mick had also decided it was time to quit Kabul, in case someone caught on to something and marines came looking for him. So he awarded himself liberty. Maybe it would stop the ringing in his ears.

“I was until I heard from you.”

“Don’t be testy.”

“I’m on vacation. I’m whipped.”

“Vacation’s over. A detail has come loose.”

“And that would be?”

“The guy you were paid to handle? Well, chum, you didn’t handle him. He’s back.”

“Hey,” said Mick, “you guys cratered that hotel. He was there, I put him there for you, and you pushed the button and ka-boom, no more hotel. By the way, thanks for almost killing me too. However you did it, that sucker blew like a nuke. Man, that was a payload.”

Mick remembered. How could he forget? He was a little off the street with his screen of Izzies in the alleyway. He disconnected the phone, turned, and signaled the war party to fall back. Then a screaming came across the sky, and the det went. Jesus fucking Christ. He had been around explosions his entire professional life. He’d set them, he’d planned them, he’d been inside a couple, he’d been close enough to a couple to catch a ride through the air for twenty-five feet, he had a thousand pepper marks on his otherwise glorious body from supersonic debris. But nothing like this. Explosions have personalities and they express ideas, they are not all the same. This one carried the message of serious mega destruction. It wasn’t a warning or an exclamation point, it wasn’t witty, ironic, amusing, or earnest. It was the end of the world in a very small package and it literally evaporated the hotel in a single nanosecond with a percussion that seemed to drive the oxygen from the surface of the earth and in the next nanosecond deposited a rain of dust, wreckage, human and animal parts, chunks of iron and masonry, windowsills, curtain rods, shards of glass on everything for miles around. It knocked him down. What the fuck. That was a goddamned blast and a half.

“It was thermobaric. We warned you to take cover. Did you need an engraved invitation?”

“The timing was a little off. It came in ahead of sked and capped thirty-one pilgrims and almost buried yours truly under a pile of heads and arms.”

“Cry me a river why don’t you. That’s the suck, your chosen workplace. You’re in this particular operation, you’ll work it through to the end. Got it? We don’t have time to do a recruitment drive. We pick you and you don’t have the latitude here to say no, mister.”

Unsaid: whoever MacGyver was, his power in finding and reaching Mick here or in the Cat’s Eye cafe in Kabul where all the coyotes hung meant again: he had the connex. A phone call from him could bring major heat beaucoup fast on Mick’s ass.

“Not on the same bill,” said Mick. “That one’s over. This one’s starting up. Same fee structure. I don’t work cheap.”

“Corporate, aren’t we? ‘Fee structure,’ very Graywolf. Yes, of course, lots of money for you.”

“Okay,” said Mick, “come to think of it, I would like to fry this little bastard for good.”

“I’m sure he feels the same way about you. Can you reassemble your team?”

“Tony’s with me, Crackers went home to his wife and kids in Fayetteville. I can get him back, no problem. What’s the play?”

“This time, not only are you hunting this character, but so are the FBI and the CIA and just about everybody else. So you’ve got some competition. But to make it harder, they just want to stop the guy. You have to kill him, Mr. Mission Impossible.”

“That’s what I do.”

“Little evidence of that yet, friend, though I understand you’re hell on goats. He’s trying to finish the mission you stopped him from completing. He wants to put a bullet in Ibrahim Zarzi, the Afghan politician, who arrives in Washington for a high-profile visit in two weeks. This time, you stop him, permanently. He is under no circumstances to whack Zarzi or fall into police hands and go all Chatty Cathy on us.”

“Leads, you have leads?”

“The Bureau-Agency team handling this has gone to an old guy named Swagger, a former marine sniper with a lot of experience in these games. He’s you with brains, talent, imagination, stamina, and guts. I’ve seen the file.”

“The Nailer. A classic oldie. I’ve heard of the guy.”

“I’ll bet you have. He makes Ray Cruz look like a kindergartener. Swagger has the best chance of nailing Cruz, so you’ll be given all sorts of little gadgets to make tracking Swagger something within your Neanderthalic reach.”

“If I get ’em together, I have the okay to dust ’em both? I don’t like the idea of pulling down on a knight of the round table, but there may not be another way.”

“Bogier, don’t go soft on me and start humming ‘Halls of Montezuma.’ Collateral’s part of the business. This one is about getting the job done by any means possible. Don’t fuck this up.”

“Get over it. I didn’t fuck up the last one. I delivered. Your thermobaric nuke didn’t quite do the job.”

“Bogier, this is unbelievably crucial. At your level you can’t possibly understand what’s at stake. But trust me: you must come through on this. No pussy, no blow, no uppers or downers, no new tattoos, no three hours in the gym every day. You get it done.”

“I have it.”

“We don’t like to use coyotes. But we have no choice. Show us we haven’t misjudged.”

“Roger, wilco.”

“And one more thing: no witnesses.”

CASCADE MEADOWS, IDAHO

32 MILES EAST OF BOISE

1635 HOURS

He told you?” Bob asked.

Nick reached into his briefcase and pulled out a file, reached into the file and pulled out a decrumpled piece of yellow paper now preserved in cellophane. It was a Marine Corps incoming radio communication form. Nick handed it over.

Bob saw the operator’s name, the unit designation “2-2 Recon” and the date, sometime last week, and the time, 0455. He read the message:

“‘Whiskey Six, this is Whiskey Two-Two. Authentification Olympic downhill. I say again, Olympic downhill.” There was an asterisk scribbled in pencil next to the transmission, and at the bottom, after the footnote style, next to the parallel asterisk the operator had written, “No record of ‘Olympic downhill’ as verifier.”

Unrecorded was the radio operator’s response, which must have been something like, “Codes and verifier invalid, who are you, Two-Two, over, what is your situation, why are you in communication with this unit?”

Ray just bulled ahead, and the young man had written down:

“Whiskey Two-Two is on-site and will proceed with operation as planned. Target will be destroyed sometime next two to four weeks. Hunting is good, morale is high. Semper Fi. Out.”

“The kid thought it was some kind of joke, but it went into the log and the next day, the CO’s looking at the log. He used to be the exec and he remembered Two-Two. He got on the phone to division and on to marine headquarters at Henderson and then to us.”

“So the thinking is,” Bob said, “Cruz survived the blast and didn’t limp back to his FOB but instead went AWOL big time as a way of going rogue. Somehow, he got out of Afghanistan and found a way back. Now he’s pissed at what he has decided is some kind of betrayal that killed his spotter and thirty-one Afghans. Maybe he’s a little nuts. So he’s going to whack this politician anyway, just out of spite.”

“Something like that.”

“Come on. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Especially now that the Afghan is on our side, publicly and loudly. So Ray is now betraying his country and his service. It’s like he’s working for them. He couldn’t have been captured and turned?”

“Seems unlikely, but there are cases like it.”

“That’s not Ray,” said Swagger, who now believed he knew Ray or at least could feel the way his mind operated. “No, he’s got some other, deeper game in play. He’s got another objective, and we’re not smart enough to see it yet.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t worry about motive at this point,” said Susan. “Maybe we should just deal with what we have and figure out how to stop it.”

“So my part in this is to be your sniper consultant,” Swagger said, looking as if each of his sixty-four years had cost him a thousand dollars’ worth of grief.

“You’re with us every step of the way. We want you to eyeball the possible shooting sites and tell us where he’d shoot from, what he’d see that we wouldn’t. We want you to analyze his ingress and escape routes, his fallbacks, his hides, all the things that even our best experts might miss. We want you to be him when we game out possibilities or permutations. We need your intuitive access to his heart and mind over the next few weeks.”

“So you can kill him.”

“If it comes to that,” said Susan, whose specialty, now as then, was delivering the hard truth. “Nobody wants it, but there are other issues at stake. We have to stop him, Bob. Do you have any idea how humiliating it would be to this country internationally if an Afghan politician under our sponsorship was publicly assassinated by a marine sniper?”

Nick outlined the deal. Bob would actually carry an FBI badge and be legally entitled to represent himself as an “FBI investigator,” though not an “agent” or a “special agent.” The consultancy fee would be substantial, not that it was about money. Under certain circumstances, with written authorization, he would be permitted to carry a firearm and make arrests. He would be granted all authority and respect within the federal system and the military in accordance with his police powers. He would report directly to Nick and Susan. He would have an unlimited travel budget.

“My heart is with the sniper,” he said. “You have to know that going in. I want to get him out of this fix, get it straightened out. I don’t want to kill him.”

“We know that. We need that. We’re buying that.”

“Then my first move is to Camp Lejeune. I want to talk to his CO, his peers, and get a sense of him.”

“We’ll make the phone calls,” said Nick. “Oh, and raise your right hand.”

Bob complied, mumbled the appropriate yeses, and, cranky and old and ever so tired, realized he was back to taking the king’s gold, which meant he might have to do the king’s killing.

U.S.-MEXICO BORDER

27 MILES WEST OF NOGALES, ARIZONA

0356 HOURS

THE NEXT MORNING

The van was dirty and spotted and squalid, a ’92 Ford Econoline with Arizona plates. It smelled of unwashed bodies, long nights, junk food, and urine. But its suspension was sound and its engine tuned. It looked like any van from a coyote outfit, and it looked like it had made many journeys to and from el Norte.

Now it prowled dusty trails, switchbacks, and arroyos in the dark of night, but slowly. Dust rose. No moon guided them. The landscape was raw and ugly, mostly tall, spiny vegetation that could kill you. Bilal drove, trying to stay on the donkey track before him without headlamps, and his Mexican contact Rodriguez, a veteran of many crossings to and from, sat next to him, squinting to read the map and compare it with his memory.

Behind them, crouched in the darkness of the cargo area this side of a black curtain, were two elderly gentlemen named Dr. Faisal and Professor Khalid. Both were educated men, unused to roughness in transit. One was a university lecturer, the other an engineer of some renown. They had never met before this little adventure, but they immediately recognized in the other a kindred spirit. They could not stop talking excitedly about politics, literature, spirituality, poetry, science, history, and the law, and it seemed each knew everything about these topics there was to know and like men everywhere, of every creed and kind, upon discovering such a commonality of spirit, each wanted to totally destroy the other. The arguments! They were driving Bilal, an earthier sort, crazy with this kind of endless aggression.

“Old buzzards,” he said, “shut up. We need to concentrate.” It turned out that of the several languages spoken by the passengers in the vehicle, the only one all four shared, if imperfectly, was English.

“The young,” said Dr. Faisal. “So rude these days.”

“He is such a pig. Bilal, you are a pig, you have no manners, no respect,” said Professor Khalid.

“These two,” said Bilal. “They know everything about nothing and nothing about anything.”

“At a certain age,” said Rodriguez, “they all go off a little like that. It should be right around here.”

“You should know I do not like this ‘should be,’” said the testy Bilal. He was a rangy man around thirty-five, all sinew, extremely shabbily dressed in a hand-me-down tweed jacket over a frayed black sweater, jeans, and beat-up Nikes. He was a Mediterranean type of the sort usually called “swarthy,” for darkness of skin, eyes, and hair, and perhaps eternal melancholy, except that if you could get him to smile, you saw that he was quite handsome. He had a mop of unkempt hair dark as any wine-dark sea; a vague sense of coffeehouse revolutionary to him; and quick, furtive eyes that missed little. He was one of those uncomfortably intense men most people find a little unnerving, as if his rhythms were a little too rapid, or perhaps he was too quickly wired through synapse, or bore too many unforgivable grudges, or was too quick to haggle to the death over a nickel.

“It’s the desert,” said Rodriguez. “It changes continually.”

“I know something about the desert,” said Bilal.

“Then you know that the wind moves mysteriously and covers and uncovers rocks, reshapes cactus, sometimes seems to move-there it is!”

His flashlight beam penetrated the dirty windshield to illuminate a certain crack in the earth that widened eventually into a full gully. This time of year there was no water and even the mud had turned to crushed pottery. The gully would run like a superhighway for about two hundred yards, and reach the border fence and open a channel beneath it. With a little industrious snipping, the gap in the fence would be wide enough to drive the van under. Then it was another hundred or so yards of rough but not impossible transit to a long, straight road that ran to a major highway. A left turn at that junction and into the belly of America you flew.

“Hold on,” said Bilal. “You, old dogs, cut the chatter. It’s rough and dangerous through here.”

Alas, Dr. Faisal did not hear him. He was making an exceedingly important point about the Greek myth of Prometheus, bringer of fire, and how he had been punished by Zeus. It was his carefully considered opinion that the tale was out of something the Jew Jung had called “the collective unconscious,” and it wasn’t really fire that Prometheus brought, it was the foreknowledge of the arrival of Muhammad and the fire was the destruction of the West.

Professor Khalid thought this rather a stretch.

“I agree,” he said, “that many of their myths suggest that in their view of the ethos they are unconsciously aware of something missing, something yet to come, something yet to rule, something yet to proclaim truth, but I wonder, truly, if one can be so explicit in assigning meanings.”

“Yes, yes, yes!” shouted Dr. Faisal. “You can! Have you read the original Greek? I have read the original Greek and I tell you there are meanings-”

“Shut up!” screamed Bilal. “It is very dangerous here. You fools have no idea what is happening. Keep those old yaps shut until we get across and up into Arizona. Then you can talk all you want.”

“It’s almost time to pray,” said Dr. Faisal.

“Prayers are canceled today,” said Bilal, “with Allah’s permission. I guarantee you, Allah understands.”

The van puttered shakily along the rough track, rolling over rocks, grinding through vegetation, knocking down this or that cactus. It was not completely beneath ground level, as the gully was only around five feet deep; a foot and a half of van top stuck out, and when they reached the fence itself, most of the lower strands had to be cut.

“What was that?” said Bilal.

“You are seeing things,” said Rodriguez.

“Oh no,” said Bilal. “See, there, there in-”

Something poked him in the ribs. He looked and saw Rodriguez had a shiny automatic pistol in his hand, pointing apologetically at Bilal’s middle.

“So sorry,” the Mexican said, “I must inform you of a slight change of plans.”

Two men came from out of the dark, illuminating the van in their flashlight beams. They wore red cowboy bandannas around their heads, almost like turbans, and carried AK-47s with the easy grace of men who’d spent a lot of time with gun in hand. Bilal could see that each wore a shoulder holster under his jeans jacket, with another shiny gun. They had the raffish, ignorant insouciance of Israeli paratroopers.

“Out, you and the old ones, and we shall see what is so important that you must smuggle it into Los Estados instead of merely driving through the border posts.”

“What is he saying?” said Dr. Faisal. “Why does he have a gun? Bilal, what is going on?”

The door of the van was slid open roughly and the bandits grabbed the two old men, shoving them to the ground.

“Now you,” said Rodriguez, “don’t make no trouble. I am reasonable, but my two amigos are locos. Bad ones. I think I can control them, but you must show them you respect me, or they will get very angry. And I know you have more money, señor. I know you would not be going for a long trip in America with these two geezers without no money.”

“I have money,” said Bilal. “Lots of money. I can pay. No need for anything unpleasant to happen.”

“See, that’s the attitude. My friends, the young man here will cooperate, he understands.”

One of the two huskies came over, grabbed Bilal by the lapel of his decades-old sports coat, and threw him hard against the side of the truck.

He opened the coat, looked up and down, then backed off, nodding.

“You tell me where the money is,” said Rodriguez amiably. “Emilio doesn’t like to be kept waiting. He is an impatient person. You tell me where it is, and I will get it. Oh, and another thing. We must have a look at what treasure behind the curtain is so important to get into Los Estados. Oh, it must be something very interesting to go to all this trouble.”

“It is religious tracts. Booklets on the true faith.”

“Oh, yes, I believe that one. You must think I’m a fool. Besides, the true faith is our lord Jesus and his immaculate mother, heathen.”

“Sir, I-”

Rodriguez struck him hard in the face.

“Money, then treasure, monkey asshole.”

“Yes, of course, sir.”

Professor Khalid called, “What is happening, Bilal? Why did he strike you? Who are these men?”

“Tell the old one to shut his yap,” said Rodriguez, “or Pedro, I’m afraid, will kick in his teeth.”

“Professor, it is not a problem. Just another few minutes and we will be on our way.”

“Indeed,” said Rodriguez, “now tell me where-”

Bilal hit him with five bunched fingers in the center of the throat, crushing the larynx. He began to make unpleasant sounds and quickly lost interest in his firearm. Bilal pivoted, way behind the two AKs coming up, but he had hands faster than Allah’s, it was said in the training camps. He got the.380 Ruger LCP taped inside his left wrist into his right hand and in the next second it became evident that the nasty boys Pedro and friend had yet to cock their AKs before firing, an amateur’s mistake that Bilal or any of his cohorts would not have made, and each bolt was at the halfway point when Bilal fired the tiny pistol twice, putting a.380 into each head. He was a superb shot, even with so small a gun having all but nonexistent sights. The bullets were so tiny they didn’t deliver much impact, that is, other than the instant animal death they generated by pulping the deep central brain, and one of the men began to walk around strangely, blood pouring down his face, as if he were trying to remember how a chicken dances. He disappeared into the blackness, clucking. The other merely sat down disappointedly and sagged off into an eternal nap.

Rodriguez sat against the wheel of the van. He was coughing blood as well as expelling it copiously from his nostrils, holding his ruptured throat as his lungs and all other available vessels filled with liquid, drowning him. Bilal had not been trained to recognize any kind of mercy, as the camps were not an environment that emphasized mercy as a value, but the look of pain was so extreme that without willing it, he shot the man in the temple.

Professor Khalid came racing over.

“I have to get away from him! If he tells me he read the myth of Prometheus in the original Greek one more time, I will strangle him, and then where will we be?”

Dr. Faisal was not far behind.

“What can you do with the uneducated? The fool knows nothing. He is all hot air and opinions without a single reliable fact. I cannot continue this trip with such a fool!”

Somehow, Bilal got them into the truck and on their way.

TGIF NUMBER 133

915 BRAVERMAN AVENUE

JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

2030 HOURS

Anything would do. Did they still sell breakfast at this time of night? Maybe eggs and bacon. But eggs and bacon wouldn’t work without coffee, and he couldn’t drink the decaf and he couldn’t afford a sleepless night in the motel, even if, on the FBI per diem, the Hilton was an upgrade from many of the places he’d stayed.

Swagger had a headache, the beginnings of a cold, and a serious case of exhaustion. This “investigating” was debilitating. You had to be “on” all the time, your mind alert. And even after fifteen hours of it, you got nothing.

“Have you decided?” asked the waitress.

“Double Jack neat, please, with a side of water.”

“Sir, we don’t-”

“I know, I know, my idea of a little joke, ma’am, peculiar, I know.”

She smiled. She had the look of some kind of marine wife or girlfriend here a couple of miles off the main entrance to Lejeune, and maybe her husband or boyfriend was deployed somewhere and she needed the dough, serving old coots such as himself to keep going with two kids and not enough allowances. It was sometimes harder on the ones left behind, and there were no guarantees the man wouldn’t come home in a box.

“Okay,” he said, “I guess I’ll have the Caesar salad and this grilled fish special.” No meat; that would make Julie happy.

“Anything to drink? We do have wine and beer.”

“Ma’am, water’s fine.”

She left, and he pulled his briefcase up to the table. It contained the notes he’d taken today during a full day of interviews on Camp Lejeune in 2nd Recon Battalion headquarters, a Xerox of Cruz’s career-long 201 file, and preliminary reports from field agents and NIS canvassing of previous duty stations for information and background, still woefully incomplete.

He got his yellow notepads out from today, recording his conversations with Colonel Laidlaw; Lieutenant Colonel Simpson, his successor as 2nd Recon commander; Major Morton, former S-2 of 2-2, now at Division S-2 while he waited to get out and head off to law school; Sergeants Kelly and Schuman, both snipers who’d served in Sniper Platoon with Ray Cruz; and Lance Corporals Sigmond and Krahl, who’d been friends with Lance Corporal Billy Skelton.

It was pretty much the same all the way through. You couldn’t find a bad word about Ray Cruz on this planet, much less the South Carolina sector of it.

Colonel Laidlaw: “I didn’t know Cruz except by report and reputation. I’m not one of those meet and greet leaders. I just can’t stand it when the boys get hurt or killed: I keep my distance so I can do my job. I’m way too old for combat, I know. Anyhow, I found him to be a quiet, intense professional. I was aware of the many times he’d been offered commissions and his opportunities outside the corps but I understood his commitment to his job. He was one of, hell, maybe he was, the best.”

Lieutenant Colonel Simpson: “At any time, he could have written a ticket out of there. He didn’t have to keep going on the missions. I said to him, ‘Look, Sergeant Cruz, I’m getting tired of writing commendations and listening to you call me sir when I should be calling you sir. Will you go be the next commandant or something?’ He’d smile, and say he was fine with it the way it was. He liked saving people. He believed that’s what a sniper does. If some unit got in a firefight, Ray was the first one on the track to get out there; he’d work his way around, taking incredible chances, and bring fire on the hadjis, and after he dropped two or three, they’d be gone. It must have happened a thousand times. A sniper dings a kid and Sergeant Cruz saddles up and slithers out. A few minutes later we hear a shot and a few minutes later, Cruz is back, checking on the kid. And note: we didn’t have to go to Hellfire and blow up a house or go to Apache and blow up a neighborhood or go to F-16 and blow up a town. One shot, one kill. Everybody’s happy.”

Morton, the intelligence whiz: “Look, I’ll be frank with you. When you brief or debrief these guys, you do become aware of the limits of their minds. Some aren’t what we’d call ‘smart’ in an intellectual way, but their strength is doing exactly what they’re told and then reporting back exactly what happened. Not Cruz. He was smart smart, if you know what I mean. He got it. He’d seen through all the follies of the corps, he knew Simpson was sucking up like a whore to Colonel Laidlaw to get the battalion, he knew that Kelly was smarter than Schuman but that Schuman was more reliable under fire, he knew that Skelton was one of those college guys in the marines who hide from some issue in civilian life but was still the smartest and the best of the spotters. Cruz knew what was bullshit and what was real. Yet still: he risked. He risked so much, even knowing that in the end it would all be decided by assholes in suits sitting at tables. To me, to have that kind of IQ-what was it?”

“One hundred forty-five,” Bob had said.

“Much higher than mine. But to have that kind of IQ and understand that it was all a kind of bullshit and yet still believe in it and still go out, day after day, that was something.”

Sergeant Schuman: “Ray was, you know, Oriental in his ways. He was kind of zen, you know? Never got excited, never raised his voice, never had to, because he never made a mistake. Everybody knew he knew a better way, a faster way. Even under fire, never any panic in his voice, never a wrong move, and if you got hit, he’d stay with you until evac. Ray would never leave anybody behind. If we’d had a mascot, Ray would have stayed behind with the pooch, putting down hadjis to the end.”

Lance Corporal Krahl: “Billy hated the corps but he loved Ray Cruz. He’d never let Cruz down. Cruz was the mythical sergeant. He seemed like he was out of the movies or something. In the end, I wish he’d loved Ray less because he wouldn’t have worked so hard to impress him and to become Ray’s spotter. Loving Ray got him killed. I hate to say it, but that mission was a major fuck-up from the start, sending guys way out in bandit country with no air, nothing but fucking goats as cover, help two hours away. But if anyone could do it, it would have been Cruz, and if Cruz was going, Billy had to go. God, I miss Billy. Such a good kid, deserved so much more than a facedown in some shit hole full of people with funny hats.”

Swagger’d also watched videotape of the ambush over and over, this under the guidance of the S-2.

It took a while to make out, the angles so grave, the visual information so sparse: the men were, viewed from the top down, just glowing jiggles of light against the multihued dark of the landforms beneath them, the goats faster moving, longer. Still, in time, it became clear. You could watch the ambush team setting up. You could see them checking maps, and whoever was in charge put his security people exactly where any experienced soldier in any army in the world would have put them. He set up his big gun, squirmed behind it. Next to him had to be his own spotter. They held to good ambush discipline, no fucking around, utter stone stillness, no excess motion, men hunting hard and well.

“The colonel wanted to put a Hellfire into them. Would have blown the mission, I think, but would have saved our guys. But there was no way we could get an Apache in close enough in the time frame. We just had to watch and hope the bad guys didn’t shoot, but they did. It was horrible in the bunker, watching it all happen, not being able to do anything about it.”

The major froze the video image of the ambush team setup and still, the targets moving in along their goddamned goat track a distance calculated to be 841 meters out, completely blind to anything except the bleating of the goats.

“Did you request Reaper coverage from the Agency?” asked Bob.

“No, sir. It involves going through a lot of protocols, and no one really trusted that the info would stay private. It’s one thing when a big unit moves out-everybody already knows everything-and another when an outfit is under fire and you can bring Reapers in fast, so there’s not an issue of security. Here we wanted to run as tight and quiet a ship as possible.”

“Major, how do you figure these guys knew where Ray and Skelton were, and set up so perfectly? I mean, if I had to textbook an ambush, I’d use this tape.”

“I don’t know. A leak? Maybe. More likely these hadjis were on some mission and they saw targets. They had a new toy, a.50 Barrett they’d recovered somewhere. They’re not the most mature individuals, are they? So they set up to take the goatherders down, to test the weapon, to spread the word, maybe to blame the Americans. Only, one goatherder gets away, so they follow him, because he’s no longer a random victim, now he’s a witness and maybe if he makes it out, he gets them in trouble with their own command. I don’t really get how their minds work. I don’t know how they can kill so much and think it’s moral. It’s baffling to me.”

The food came, jarring Swagger back to the real world. He shoved his notepads to one side, ate sparingly, not really paying attention, trying in his mind to find something that would tell him any little thing. Was there a Ray Cruz explainer in there? A little anecdote that revealed an insight, if indeed it was Ray Cruz on the other end of that radio message? The one thing that stood out had come from the sniper Kelly, when Bob asked him, “Tell me about his shooting. He was, for sure, an excellent shot. But was there anything peculiar or unique about his shooting?”

Kelly thought awhile. Then he said, “There wasn’t a shot Ray couldn’t hit and a position he couldn’t hit from. He was like a machine, mechanical, unhurried, classic by the book. But, this is strange, we never shoot standing in battle. No one stands up in a battlefield. Good way to get your head chopped.”

Bob nodded. It was true.

“Ray decided he needed that shot. I thought it was a waste of time and ammo, but he didn’t even bother arguing the point. He just put hours in on the range on his legs, used up crates of Match 7.62, until he could put three in an inch offhand from a hundred yards. He was slim, but very strong, very tough, much stronger than you’d think for a guy like that.”

“Offhand?” Bob wrote.

“I don’t know if he ever had a use for it. He just didn’t want no holes in his game, no matter how small.”

He saved the picture for last. It was an official Marine Corps promotion shot, on the occasion of the last stripe, couple years back. He didn’t want to stare at it, let it become a blur of dots and shadows. It lost its voodoo with overconcentration.

Bob just stole a glimpse, trying not to bore too hard into it. It seemed so straightforward: white sidewalls, the face smooth, the eyes with that slight Asian cast, the cheekbones prominent, the lips thin, maybe Cruz’s father’s Portuguese aquilinity to the thin nose; Swagger also picked up on the sniper’s wariness, his quickness and depth of vision. Or maybe he didn’t, maybe he was dreaming things. After all, it was just a picture of a marine NCO on what was nominally a good day professionally, a souvenir utterly banal in its lack of meaning.

He put it back in the file, wondering about only one thing: why was the sensation it generated so connected with the idea of loss? Losslossloss. Why did it cause an ache so deep and inconsolable?

He thought maybe in Cruz’s face there was a trace of a first lieutenant named Bill Go, Japanese-American, his first officer in Vietnam, 1965. Great guy: smart, fair, calm, steady as a boulder in combat, judgment superior, a real superstar. Bill didn’t make it beyond month six. Some meaningless firefight, some worthless jungle ’ville, over in a second, a spatter of shots from them, a spatter in response from us, and only Bill Go didn’t get up because he’d been shot just under the lip of the helmet in the right eye. So much loss, so much grief. It fell to Buck Sergeant Swagger to get the boys back humping, to finish the job, to make it back to the compound. His first “command,” as it were, and he got through it by going into hard NCO mode so no one could imagine how much he felt the loss of Bill.

Or was it Bill? There was another, an Army master sergeant with SOG, second tour, Russell Blas, a Guamese, great guy, pure guts in a fight, captured on one of the hatchet missions he so loved to lead, and never heard of or seen again. Poor Russell, probably dying of malnutrition in some shit hole…

He didn’t want to go there anymore. That’s what had eaten a decade of his life away in a wash of bourbon and rage and self-hatred. He told himself that the picture had no connection with anything. It’s just a new marine. It has nothing to do with Bill Go or Russell Blas or Vietnam. Those memories were too hurtful and could not be entertained cavalierly, in schlock restaurants on jobs set in the real, the new, the only world that counted.

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

DOLLAR STORE PARKING LOT ACROSS FROM TGIF

914 BRAVERMAN AVENUE

JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

2035 HOURS

It’s gotta be him,” said Crackers the Clown. “Check it out. Right age, thin, rangy, sniperlike, discipline, dignity, seems to have a limp, he’s looking at data, he’s on the wagon.”

The three of them sat in a nice black Ford Explorer. They looked at Bob through the window, each with a pair of high-end European binocs.

“Plus,” said Crackers, the unit intellectual, called “Crackers the Clown” because he had the demeanor of an Iowa mortician, “the time matches up. We caught him out of the main gate at 1950, he’d been there all day talking to folks, now he’s tired out, he’s reviewing his shit, he’s eating a little, and he’s going to go back to the hotel, send out e-mails, call the wife, and go to bed. Tomorrow, the same thing again.”

“On the other hand,” said Tony Z, the cynic, “he could be the guy trying to sell Lejeune on a new brand of trash masher for the enlisted dining areas. He’s here trying to make a fucking pitch. He works for Grinders-R-Us dot com, out of Gomerville, Indiana.”

There were no pictures of this Swagger, that was the problem. Everything was theoretical and judgmental and the theoretical and the judgmental were slightly beyond Bogier’s areas of competence.

“I hate this shit.” He stewed. “I’m an operator. I break things and kill people. Now I’m supposed to be some kind of James Bond super-agent bullshit performer. Man, I hate this shit.”

Crackers was pro IDing the john as Swagger; Tony Z, despite his cynicism, was leaning toward pro, but still a little unable to commit.

“It should be him, it has to be him, nothing else makes any sense, but when you make an assumption, it always bites you in the ass.”

“Is there any way you could test? Maybe call the restaurant, ask for a Mr. Swagger, see if he gets up?”

“I think this guy would see through it,” said Bogier. “I don’t even like eyeballing him from here; guys like him, they have radar, they can sometimes feel it when they’re being watched.”

The binoculars went down.

“So do you want to move, Mick?” said Crackers the Clown. “We may never get another chance like this.”

“But we’ve only got one card,” said Tony. “If we do get it planted and it’s planted on the wrong guy, then we’ve got to get it back and still find the right guy and plant it again.”

“Agh,” said Mick.

The card was the latest in high-tech bullshit James Bond spy craft. It was a red BankAmericard made out to Bob Lee Swagger. The idea was somehow to sneak it into Swagger’s wallet under the theory that few men examined their wallets carefully and would notice the addition of a new credit card. Except it wasn’t a credit card. It was actually a miniature transponder called an “active RFID” for radio frequency identification device. It gave off a return signal when it received a recognized interrogation signal. It used 16 nanometer technology, a unique dual-layered nano lithium-cadmium battery that was actually part of the card itself, along with the molded-in single strand of antenna wire. It responded to an inquiry signal sent from a classified Aegon satellite that had the highest sensitivity and best signal-to-noise ratio of anything placed in space. When the satellite sent the inquiry, huge umbrellalike antennas began to look for the specific frequency and tone of the encoded response, which, diminutive as it is, still can be counted on to register. Of all this, Bogier, Crackers, and Tony Z knew exactly nothing.

The second part of the deal was a BlackBerry with software that could find the appropriate Google map and then would receive the satellite information and track the card on the map. Mick and his pals could easily track the bearer of the card from any distance, even over the horizon. There’d be no hassle over staying close in traffic or through sudden turns or accelerations. They could always stay in contact, until the moment Swagger recognized an extra credit card in his wallet, which would probably be never.

“Okay,” said Mick, finally. “Let’s do it. If it ain’t him, we can get it back in a more direct way than we have to plant it.”

“Ooh, cool,” said Tony Z. “I like that part.”

TGIF PARKING LOT

915 BRAVERMAN AVENUE

JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

2115 HOURS

Swagger finished the meal, sat back, tried to relax a bit, yearned for booze, daughters, wife, a simple life, and an endless amount of time to sleep, and lied to himself harmlessly about a deep and rewarding platonic friendship with Susan Okada as well. Why not dream about having it all? But none of that was apparently in the offing. Worse, this late, his hip sometimes ached a bit. It seemed to have gotten better in the past few months, but if he put a lot of weight on it over a long day, it could become inflamed and begin to declare an unhappy memory. Now, it felt restive, as though in the pre-pain stage.

He signaled the girl, gave her a twenty, waited for change, left too big a tip, grabbed the receipt, dumped it into the briefcase, and stood, favoring the good leg. A wave of stiffness came but he shrugged it off, went out the front doors and looked for his car in the lot. Hmm, a rental, what was it again, oh yeah, a Ford Taurus on government contract from Hertz. He spotted it, and walked toward it down the half-full aisles, behind a screen of low bushes that marked the roadway, the whole thing red-gold in the neon of the big TGIF sign up on top. He reached his lane, and turned down it to the car.

When the guy hit him, he hit him hard, crushing him against the car rear, not hurting him so much as completely de-coordinating him.

“What the-!” Swagger felt himself blurt out as the muscular energy of his assailant nailed him hard against the trunk and he slid down. Flashbulbs, pinwheels, Roman candles ignited behind his eyes at the impact as his optic nerves shot off, but then he came back-an instant too late. A heavy knee went on his back, another on his neck, and between them they bore the weight of a big man.

“Keep your fucking mouth shut, mister, or I’ll crack you good.”

The guy had total leverage, pinning him by weight and power. Bob squirmed under the assault, but knew he was way outmatched. He turned his head sideways, felt as his robber ripped up Bob’s sports coat, pulled the wallet out, then grabbed the briefcase and began to pry it open.

“Hey, you!” came a shout from across the parking lot.

“Fuck,” his assailant said, rising.

He turned to run, and Bob watched as he sped out of the parking lot, leaped the low hedge, and started down the road. But an athletic-looking guy intercepted him from out of nowhere with a superb open field tackle right at curbside and the two of them went down in a tangle. The robber was a tough motherfucker and managed to get a driving right-handed blow into the Samaritan’s ribs, knocking him back, and enabling the thief to squirm to his freedom. He was upright and gone and last seen hoofing it down the street, disappearing behind a strip mall a little bit farther down.

Bob got there just as the good guy was picking himself up.

“You okay, mister?” he asked.

“Ah,” said the guy, “my mother hit harder than that.”

Bob saw a rangy guy, midthirties, completely athletic, like a ballplayer, who just picked up and put back on his Yankees cap then wiped sweat off his face.

“Hey,” said Bob, “no kidding, you were great, but you really shouldn’t have done that. Guy could have had a knife or a gun.”

“You know,” said the guy, smiling, “it happened so fast I didn’t even think about it. I just reacted. You want to call the cops or anything?”

“Well,” said Bob, foreseeing an hour giving a report that would yield absolutely nothing, “not really. I’m not hurt. Oh, my wallet. Shit, he got-”

But the guy said, “Wait, I saw something drop off him as he ran. Let’s check.”

They walked a few steps ahead and there was the wallet, splayed out on the sidewalk.

The guy picked it up, opened it, peeked in, and said, “Are you Mr. Swagger?”

“That’s me,” said Bob, taking the wallet.

“I doubt he had time to take anything,” said the hero.

Bob did a quick check. His stack of ATM twenties was still intact, and paging through the plastic card display, he saw nothing missing.

“Looks okay,” he said.

“You sure you’re okay?” said the guy. “Physically, I mean.”

“I have a few scrapes, and maybe a bruise or two. But nothing particularly traumatic.”

“I could call an ambulance.”

“Nah,” said Swagger. “Who’s got time for that?”

“Okay,” said the guy. “I guess I’ll go on in and get myself some food. You sure, now? No assistance necessary?”

“No, and thanks again. You must have played football.”

“Years ago,” said the guy with a laugh. “Baby, I thought my tackling days were over.”

They had a good laugh, Bob offered his hand, and they shook. Then Bob went back to his car, thinking, Strangest goddamn thing.

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

HILTON HOTEL PARKING LOT

JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

2300 HOURS

You’re sure?”

“I guarantee it,” said Crackers. “It said ‘Bob Lee Swagger,’ plain as day, on the Idaho license.”

“And you got the card in,” Mick asked Tony Z.

“I did. Between two cards in the card thing, you know, the plastic thing. Meanwhile, the Clown is punching me in the fucking guts.”

“Hey, you whacked me pretty hard too, goddamnit,” said Crackers.

“Damn right. After you fucking laid me out like Ray Lewis.”

“You didn’t know I was all city?”

“A pussy like you-”

“Easy, little girls. I’m going to call MacGyver. This is good news, we did this part, I don’t want any screwups. Let’s go over it again.”

They sat in the SUV across from the Jacksonville Hilton at the edge of the city, near the freeway, seven miles from the main gate to Lejeune. It was in a zone of fluorescence, chain restaurants, car dealerships, fast food joints, all gleaming plastic and chrome. Each guy went over the event again, slowly, step by step.

Finally Mick accepted the reports. He picked up the satellite phone, pushed the magic button, and in a few seconds the control came on.

“Okay,” Mick said, “good stuff to report. We got the RFID planted, he didn’t suspect a thing. We followed him a mile off, no visual contact, all the hardware is working A-OK, and he’s gone to bed for the night. No matter what, from now on we’ll know where he is.”

“Like actual professionals,” said MacGyver dryly.

“We’ll just stay with him, far back, we won’t push anything. If he can find Cruz, we’ll be there and we’ll take them down.”

“You boys and your toys. You love the toys. It’s your favorite part. What did they get you? I don’t even know.”

“M4s, an MP5, plenty of mags. SIGs and Berettas. A.338 Sako. Best of all, another Barrett. This one’s much better than the last. I wouldn’t mind an RPG. We couldn’t miss with that.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We can’t have you blowing shit up in Hometown, USA.”

“Anyhow, I can do him with the.50 from a mile out or the.338 from half.”

“You missed the last time, Tex.”

“No, I hit. I just hit the wrong guy because I didn’t know which one was the right guy. The guy I missed was already on the move when I zeroed him. Tough shot. Nobody could make it.”

“Cruz could. Swagger could. Make sure you’re never in their kill zone, Bogier. They won’t miss, I guarantee you. And don’t you miss again.”

“I won’t, goddamnit. Now we’re going to settle down here for the night, and follow him. I’m guessing he’s going back to the base tomorrow for more meetings. Nothing’s going to happen tonight.”

“Oh shit,” said Crackers the Clown, on the BlackBerry in the front seat. “He’s moving.”

MCDONALD’S

SUBURBAN OKLAHOMA CITY

1322 HOURS

A clown stared at the three rather scruffy men. He had big eyes, a huge red nose, puffs of crazed red hair, and lips the size of cucumbers. He was 100 percent polyurethane. Blond children made up like cats and dogs ran around his legs. A crusader father tried to keep order. Two of the kids, a boy and a girl, got in a fight over a milk shake and the girl seemed to be getting the better of it, until the dad adjudicated on behalf of the shorter, weaker boy.

“You are an infidel,” said Dr. Faisal.

“Alas,” said Professor Khalid, “it is true.”

“You must be destroyed.”

“Surely, I will be,” said the professor.

“You will not go to heaven.”

“My belief insists there is no heaven.”

Dr. Faisal turned to Bilal and demanded, “Did you know? He is a traitor, he is a monster, he is a heathen.”

“Yes, I knew,” said Bilal. “I read his important essay in the Islamabad Islamic Courier. But he is not a Christian, if that’s what you think. If I understand it, he is an atheist.”

“I would say a realist,” said Khalid.

“Realist, atheist, what’s the difference? He is not of the true faith.”

“It is not a matter of faith,” said Khalid. “It is a matter of political will.”

“Again,” said Bilal, taking a gulp of his chocolate shake, “if I understand him, his political will is strong, possibly as strong as your faith. So you both go on this enterprise, you both risk all, you are both martyrs. What private nuances transpire between each set of ears, it is of no matter.”

“I am shocked,” said Dr. Faisal.

“By realist,” said Khalid, “I mean tribalist. I am of the tribe that is culturally Islamic. The god at the center is meaningless, a delusion. Moreover, I happen to have been educated in the West-”

“I was educated in the West too, do not forget. It did not affect my faith. It made it stronger.”

“Hear him out,” said Bilal. “I have fought many times with men of indifferent faith. They were just as good as fighters as the devout. Some drank alcohol, ate pork, some were actually of the homosexual perversion, some lacked hygiene and spat at God, but under fire were as willing to die as any.”

“Why then,” asked Dr. Faisal, “would you face death, believing that beyond is nothing but oblivion? Could I have another milk shake?”

“No,” said Bilal, “no more milk shakes. We must go, we are behind schedule, I have many more miles to drive and we do not have immense quantities of money.”

“If you would let me explain,” said Khalid. He let his face compose itself, he sought the dignity of the earnest student encumbered with the truth and the need to spread it, and he leaned forward in piety and humility, even as the red-nosed plastic clown examined him like an interlocutor. “Although these people around us seem very nice, they are actually devils. Not in their daily demeanor, which as you can see is moderate and full of love of family and fun, but in the economic implications of the resources they require to live in such invisible comfort. They have no idea what crimes are committed in the name of this monstrous pillow of comfort, and if you tried to show them logically, they would not be able to process it. It would seem a delusion, a bad dream. If they looked at the cesspool of the camps and the degradation and depravity visited upon those children, they would say, ‘Oh, it’s so sad,’ and perhaps even give a dollar or two to some charity and feel good about themselves for a day. And yet they are as responsible, in their addiction to the great comfort-the cocoon of pleasantness, not sensual pleasure as you can see, but the pleasantness of driving down the street and buying their child a milk shake exactly like the one you so greedily desire, Dr. Faisal-they are responsible for the war against our people, for our suffering, for our pain. They are as responsible as Israeli paratroopers or helicopter assassins or Hindu missile designers-”

“This is very troubling,” said Dr. Faisal. “Please, Bilal, I am begging you, another milk shake.”

HIGHWAY 541

OUTSIDE JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

0117 HOURS

Swagger drove through darkness, having long since left any trace of the suburbs. He was in some rural zone, off main highways, on ribbons of blacktop, coming now and then to stop signs but rarely to streetlights.

He’d gotten to his room, unsatisfied. What a wasted day. Nothing but banalities regarding the strange case of Ray Cruz and his threat to take out the new hope of the Afghan political scene, Ibrahim Zarzi, once known as “the Beheader.” Opening his laptop, he’d sent an e-mail more or less summing up the day to Memphis at FBI HQ. Then a late e-mail registered, stating only that no sightings of Ray Cruz had yet been confirmed, that the NIS canvassing of marine bases or other spots where he might be tempted to go to ground had yielded no new information, but that some new stuff had come in from various parts of the background investigation of Cruz, and photocopies had been FedExed to Swagger. He called the desk, the package was located, and he went down to pick it up.

Not much. His eyes ran over the reports from various agents who’d been interviewing Cruz associates at marine bases the nation over, all of it confirming exactly what the men of 2-2 Recon had been telling him today. It seemed to add up to nothing. But… there was a curiosity. It seemed that someone had dug out a letter Cruz had sent to the Energy Department upon returning from his second tour in Iraq in 2004. The Energy Department was known to deploy extremely sophisticated SWAT teams at nuclear facilities the country over, and Cruz, evidently a little worn down from a year’s hard combat in and around Baghdad, dodging IEDs and seeing the effects on those who did not manage to dodge the IEDs, had succumbed to the generalized despair of the presurge environment. Who could blame him? Everybody had. So Ray, in a moment of weakness, had thoughts of leaving the corps before his twenty and taking up as a firearms and tactics instructor with Energy. The pay was said to be high, he’d come in at a high GS grade, and he’d be in one place for a long time doing what he loved to do, without anybody attempting to blow him up with a bomb disguised as a pile of dog shit.

The Energy people, anxious to get someone as well qualified as Ray on their team, had written back enthusiastically and invited him to contact this officer at this number for further discussion of employment opportunities. Evidently Ray never had, had resigned himself to another few years, and then Bush’s surge kicked in and morale soared as the killings went down. Final score: Us 1, them other guys 0. He’d gone on to another tour in Baghdad before the tour in Afghanistan, which had been terminated under such unusual circumstances.

But included in the xeroxography of the correspondence was a curriculum vitae in which Ray listed his accomplishments and his credentials. It was clearly meant for civilian eyes only. It indicated that he was investigating something, on his own dime, that was heretical at that moment to marine doctrine.

Ray listed courses he’d taken under the heading “Civilian Schools Attended,” and they included such learning adventures as Advanced Sniper Techniques and Team Entry Techniques and Team Communication Techniques at several companies, including Graywolf, which had a training division in Moyock, North Carolina, and others such as the confusingly titled Gunsite and Frontsite training facilities in Arizona and Thunder Ranch in Oregon under an ex-marine of excellent reputation named Clint Smith. But the one that leaped out at Bob was a week-long course in Urban Sniper Operations, offered by Steel Brigade Armory, of Danielstown, South Carolina, under the tutelage of a Colonel Norman S. Chambers, USMC (Ret.).

That name was familiar, and so Swagger did a quick Google on Chambers. What he learned provoked him: Apostate! Heretic! Defier! Enemy of the Jesuitical code of the Marine Corps Sniper Program! Chambers actually had not come out of the program at all. Instead he’d been straight infantry with time at the Command and Staff School at Leavenworth; he was a combat leader, not a sniper acolyte, which meant he wasn’t bent double under its doctrine. He was the critical outlier, the Billy Mitchell of sniping, who felt free to scorn the doctrinaires, at the same time risking the reputation of bitter wannabe, failure, whatever. Among his apostasies: he hated the M14 and thought the idea of welding up the old battle horse of the early sixties into a sniper rifle for the war on terror was a waste of time. He had been right on that one, and the corps, though it dug a great many of the old beauties out of mothballs for accurizing and scope fitting at the dawn of the war, soon learned the hard way that the zero on such a jerry-built assemblage would go wrong, and would never consistently deliver the accuracy at long range that would justify the careful and expensive training a sniper would get. Chambers also saw the M40 system-an iteration of the Army’s M24 system, which was a highly accurized Model 700 Remington with a Kreiger barrel and Schmidt & Bender or U.S. Optics on top-as stopgap at best.

Chambers was an exponent, outspoken and sometimes brutal and mocking, of the SASS, or semiautomatic sniper system. His weapon of choice for general issue to marine sniper teams was the Knight’s Armament SR-25, as derived from the original ArmaLite AR-10. In fact, both the SR-25 and the common infantryman’s M16/M4 rifles had common ancestry in the AR-10, which, designed in the late fifties by Eugene Stoner and some aerospace hotshots at Fairchild Aircraft, had seemed like some kind of plastic ray gun from outer space. But its profile-the straight-line design, the rakish pistol grip, the magazine well just forward of it, the need for high sights either optical or concealed in a carrying-handle assembly, plastic foregrip with ventilations, triangular front sight and flash hider at the muzzle-had become the basis of the Western combat small arm of the last half of the twentieth century. Chambers pushed hard for the adoption of the SR-25, once it had been proven in competition, courtesy of the Army Marksmanship Unit in the nineties, signifying that a semiauto or full-auto weapon was capable of the accuracy a bolt gun routinely produced.

Chambers argued, generally within the pages of arcane publications like Precision Shooting, The Infantry Journal, or Defense Review, that the advantages of an SASS far outweighed the advantages of the bolt gun. It allowed the sniper to engage multiple targets in near simultaneous real time; it allowed for fast follow-up shots when windage or mirage caused a miss; it gave the squad another fire point in a fight, should one develop; and it also allowed the sniper, using battle sights appended to his scope in the form of a diagonally mounted micro red dot, to become essentially a BAR man, bringing heavy volume of fire if the hadjis got inside the wire, where the bolt gun was all but useless. Moreover, the Russians had proved the system in combat since 1963, when they first fielded their Dragunov SVD in Vietnam against American troops-the CIA had somehow obtained an early one-and later, very successfully, in wars in Africa, South America, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Chechnya.

Against that he chalked up only minor disadvantages: one was that the ejecting brass case, sailing through the air, was a tell as to the sniper’s position, but Chambers could find no actual evidence that such an ejecting case had ever given away a sniper’s hide in combat, much less with any regularity. The second was the gun’s ungainliness: unlike the bolt gun, it was fairly deep and denser for its size. It had to be monitored constantly as, fired heavily, its zero was subject to disengagement. It would tempt commanders to deploy it as a kind of squad automatic weapon instead of allowing it its full tactical potential as a long-range-out to a thousand or so meters-precision instrument.

Perhaps it was that Ray saw the future; clearly, he’d wanted to study and learn at the feet of the master, following the smaller, more aggressive SEALs committed to the SASS/SR-25. He’d taken sabbaticals to study with Chambers and to master the intricacies of the weapon, when on his first three tours he’d been strictly the bolt gun guy. Such an agnostic’s move would certainly be something to hide from the corps’ Jesuits.

So that intellectual connection between the apostate Chambers and the pure sniper Cruz was extremely provocative to Swagger. The more he thought of it, the more it seemed to suggest possibilities. If Cruz was back, and serious about the mission he’d set up, he’d need to mount it from someplace. Initial FBI thought was that he’d draw on his connection to the marines or possibly to ex-marines, but no one had made the link to Chambers before.

Swagger had seen that the “Steel Brigade Armory,” out of which Chambers ran his little sniper think tank and mail-order empire (high-end tactical goods, such as Badger Ordnance rings, Nightforce scopes, reinforced recoil lugs, sniper data books, and so forth), was in rural South Carolina, within forty miles of Jacksonville, just across the state line. He guessed it might be an informal marine sniper hangout where the guys could cluster off duty and tell war stories and theorize about possible futures (for example, the latest info was that Chambers was running an exhaustive R & D program on the new.416 Barrett to see how it matched up against the.308 of fifty years’ service duration, and the big.50 boomer now used for those very long engagements so common in Afghanistan). Before he knew it, he was in his car, roaring through the dark down these country roads, aiming for the Steel Brigade Armory complex.

Was he going to sneak in? No, but he had to see it, make an initial recon, see who hung out there, what the milieu was. He had to figure out how to approach it: as an anonymous FBI investigator requesting answers, or as the Great Bob Lee Swagger, hero and celeb in this little-bitty world, expecting the royal treatment but also aware that if he wasn’t honest about his Bureau affiliation, he was somehow dishonoring the bond between long-range life takers.

Thus, well after midnight, he pulled through a tiny rural burg called Danielstown, turned right down Sherman at Main, and just when it looked as though he would run out of town, came across a surprisingly unimpressive recent building, aluminum siding under a flat roof, with two or three garage doors at one end, minimal landscaping, unfenced, and with a gravel parking lot out in front. It might have housed an infirmary, a battery warehouse, a software firm, but instead wore the nondescript sign STEEL BRIGADE ARMORY.

A light in one window was on.

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

OUTSIDE DANIELSTOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

0238 HOURS

They pulled off the road out of town and, looking at the Google map of Danielstown, calculated where under the nest of trees and buildings, at the crossroads just ahead, Swagger must have stopped and now sat in his car, unaware that the tiny transponder in his wallet was broadcasting his position.

“Okay,” Mick said, pointing to Crackers, “you cut through backyards and you get a night vision look-see on him. Tell me where he is, what he’s doing. You do not scare the neighbors, arouse the dogs, watch the widow lady jacking off nude in her shower or Jimmy Dick fucking Sally Pussy on the couch of the Pussy mansion. Remember, you are secret agent man.”

Too bad Crackers had no sense of humor. He didn’t even fake a grin. He adjusted his see-in-the-dark apparatus-a head harness that supported a single battery-controlled optic called a dual-spectrum night vision goggle, new to the inventory, fresh out of a box-fiddled with it to bring the world into the greenish focus of intensified ambient light, then slipped out, silently. He was a pretty good operator, after all. Soon he was gone.

In seven or eight minutes, the radio crackled, and both Mick and Tony Z stirred and picked up their handsets. Through a gravy of static, Crackers’s voice came in, sans radio protocol ID games, as it was a small net and only the three of them were on it.

“This thing is really cool,” said Crackers, noted gearhead. “You can switch between intensified ambient and thermal, or you can combine ’em and get a real good picture show.”

“Save it for your column in Soldier of Fortune,” said Mick. “What have you got on, you know, what’s it called? Oh yeah, our mission.”

“Okay, I’m prone in the bushes of a house about two hundred yards out. He’s sort of waiting or something in the parking lot of some kind of low cottage-industry-type building, you know, like where an air-conditioning supply house would be-”

Both men knew instantly the kind of building.

“Can you ID it? Does it have a name or anything?”

“Yeah, bright as day on the NV. It’s called Steel Brigade Armory. It doesn’t look like an armory though.”

“Okay,” said Mick. “How’s your secure?”

“Total. I was invisible and I low-crawled the last hundred yards through some lady’s garden. No bowwows, nothing.”

“What’s Swagger doing?”

“That’s the funny thing. Nothing. He’s pulled off the road but not quite into the parking lot. He’s just sitting there.”

“Is he on a phone?”

“Not from his profile. I think he’s just trying to figure out what to do next. There’s one light on in the building and there’s an SUV parked in the lot, so I’m guessing someone’s at home.”

“Okay, stay in position, give me any changes ASAP.”

“Got it.”

Even as he set down the unit, Tony Z handed over the Thuraya satellite phone. Bogier pushed the preset button and in a few seconds, a voice spluttered on.

“What the fuck? Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“This is a twenty-four/seven gig,” Mick said, glad, for once, to have a little leverage on the normally unflappable MacGyver.

“Don’t lecture me, Bogier. I know a little about this business.”

“Okay, okay. I have Swagger at some place in a town called Danielstown, South Carolina, maybe twenty miles southwest of Henderson. He’s pulled up at a nondescript low-threshold industrial facility that seems to call itself Steel Brigade Armory. We need a quick read on it.”

“I’ll call back,” said MacGyver.

The two men sat in the quiet car, listening to the southern night wind around them. Bogier looked at his Suunto and saw that it was getting on to 0300. What the fuck was this guy doing out here at this hour?

The radio crackled.

“Okay,” said Crackers. “He’s going in. He went to the door and knocked.”

STEEL BRIGADE ARMORY

DANIELSTOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

0305 HOURS

Nothing. He knocked again, louder, heard some kind of stirring inside, the sound of someone on metal steps.

“Get the hell out of here,” a voice said through the steel door.

“Colonel Chambers?”

“I said, get the hell out of here. Come back tomorrow. I’ll be here from eleven on, friend.”

“I have to talk to you.”

Even through the door, there was no mistaking the heavy clack of a shotgun slide racking.

“Don’t push it, friend. You don’t want to come through that door. You’ll be a sorry pup. Come back tomorrow, goddamnit.”

“Sir, I’m going to push my driver’s license through the mail slot. Then I will back off a few feet while you decide whether to see me.”

“Goddamnit, I said-”

But Bob peeled his license out of his wallet, slid it through, and backed off.

No noise came from the building.

Finally, a door opened, to reveal what you’d expect a marine infantry colonel (Ret.) to look like: burly, crew cut, lots of weight training under the plaid shirt, late forties/early fifties, shotgun in hand, glasses on square face.

What you might not expect on that square face was love.

A flashlight spot-lit Bob in the doorway.

“Goddamn,” said Chambers. “You are him, aren’t you?”

“I seem to be,” said Swagger.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

The colonel, now transformed into a fourteen-year-old girl at a Justin Timberlake concert, ran to him and almost hugged him. He was both utterly impressed and awestruck. He seemed to have some trouble finding words. Then a torrent of garbled Bob-love came out, and he grabbed and hugged the old sniper.

“Colonel Chambers,” said Bob uneasily, “I’m very appreciative, sir, believe me, but I’m not here because of old times. I’m here for these here new times. I’m on a job for the government people.”

“You’re with the FBI now?”

“In a manner of speaking, sir.”

“Okay, come on, come on up.”

They went into the building, the colonel locking it tightly behind him, resetting a complicated alarm system. Then he led Bob up some metal stairs to a drywall hallway that displayed the flimsy, haphazard construction of the building. At the end of the hallway lay the colonel’s office, a nave dedicated to the religion of the sniper. A walk-in gun safe dominated one wall, and on the others, from racked rifles of a highly evolved nature, to bookshelves full of memoirs, military texts, and battle histories, to a computer station, to well-punctured targets, to photos of several of the great ones, including Carl Hitchcock and Chuck McKenzie, to say nothing of the picture of a twenty-six-year-old Staff Sergeant Bob Lee Swagger, of Blue Eye, Arkansas, on the occasion of his victory in the Wimbledon Cup 1,000-yard national match in 1972, the colonel’s obsession was well demonstrated.

“Looks like a hall of fame or something,” Swagger said.

“My hall of fame,” said the colonel. “Drink, Gunny? May I call you Gunny?”

“Friends call me Bob,” said Swagger.

“Then let’s be friends,” said the colonel, full of dumb love. “I would consider that a great honor. Drink? This calls for libations and salutations.”

“No, sir. Actually, I wish it were social, but if it were, I’d be here at a decent hour. As I said, I’m here in a kind of semiofficial way. I hope we can be friends after the business is done.”

“Well,” said the colonel, “let’s see if we can manage that.”

“I’m on a temp contract with the FBI to advise and consult on the case of a marine sniper named Ray Cruz, thought to be killed in Afghanistan six months ago, but possibly here in this country with mischief on his mind, tragic mischief in my humble opinion. But I have just learned that you have an association with Cruz.”

“Ray,” said the colonel, his face jumping to life. “Alive! Jesus, would that be a trick! Now, I would drink to that, believe me. Hell of a guy. You’d like him, Bob. You and him, you’re brothers of the high grass and the long kill.”

“Sir, that may be so, and what I’ve learned of Sergeant Cruz suggests it is. But if he is alive, he has got himself on the government’s shit list by making certain threats, if it’s even him.”

Bob kept his focus on the colonel’s eyes, trying to read them for sparks of hidden knowledge. He’d already noted that the colonel had done a nice Ray-is-risen act, and it seemed spontaneous enough, so that was a plus. On the negative, the colonel hadn’t had a nanosecond of private grief when the death of Ray Cruz was mentioned, as you might imagine if the pain was still considerable. The colonel hadn’t even reacted. Then he did, as if catching up to his own character in the drama.

“When I heard he was dead, it broke my heart. So many good men gone in a war half the population doesn’t even know we’re fighting and the other half hates. So wrong. But don’t get me started.”

“What I’ve said about Ray going his own way. That’s the Ray you knew?”

“Ray had his own ideas, certainly. He was one for doing the right thing. But it was quiet, not loud. He wasn’t a yeller or a crusader. He was a doer. And he just didn’t stop coming.”

The colonel told a story about Ray working an early version of the then-unadopted Stoner SR-25. He’d worked it all night in the shop, taking it apart, piece by piece, putting it together, trying somehow to divine the religious essence of it. Wanted to know the zen of every last screw and spring. Just wouldn’t stop coming.

“Maybe it’s the Filipino in him,” Chambers added. “We had to invent the.45 ACP to stop the Filipinos, you know. They didn’t stop if they’d set their minds to do something until we invented a big, fat bullet for them, did you know that?”

“I think so, sir. Sir, I came across your connection to Ray Cruz about two hours ago. As far as I know, it’s completely new information, as no one else understood the significance. But tomorrow I am formally obligated by contract and duty to notify the people I work with. I ain’t got no choice on that. By noon, an FBI task force will be here, with forensic investigators, assistant attorney generals, subpoenas, and search warrants. They will take this place and you apart in their hunt for Ray. Your files, your phone records, your credit records, your accounting, your business dealings, it’ll all be gone through. So I’m here unofficially ahead of that tidal wave. Probably shouldn’t be, may get yelled at on account of it or some such. That ain’t important. I felt I owed you something for your service to us grass crawlers and long-shot takers. So I’m begging you: if you have any knowledge of Ray, of his plans, of his survival, you’d best give it to me now and go into the records as a cooperating witness. These federal people have a job to do and they mean to do it, and if you get in the way, it don’t matter to them, they’ll crush you.”

“I appreciate the warning, Gunnery Sergeant,” said the colonel, his voice going official marine. Then he said, “Do you mind if I pour myself a glass of bourbon?”

“Please do,” said Bob.

The colonel opened a drawer, pulled out a half-full fifth of Knob Creek, dispensed a shot into a small glass, and downed it in one swig.

“If Ray was back,” Bob said, “and he was in fact going to try to hit a certain fellow available in Washington starting next week, he’d have to mount a mission out of some logistical base. Our working theory was that he’d use old marine contacts, maybe at Two-Two Recon. I was down here to look at that. But he could just as easily do it out of your shop, using one of your custom builts, your ammo, scope, laser ranger, the works. It would be logical, and I bet you think so highly of Ray, you’d pull in with him without much rigorous thinking. If he’d have come to me, hell, I might have. You just have to know-well, if you’re involved-you’re playing with very hot fire that can burn down everything you’ve built in just a few days. It ain’t worth it, sir. And it would be a real hard tragedy, the saddest, in my book, if Ray thought he was doing something noble and right and he was just setting himself up for the rest of his life in some shit-hole pen. That would be such an injustice.”

“On the other hand,” someone said, “maybe Cruz is playing the only card he’s got the only way he’s got and he thinks he’s doing it for the corps, not in spite of it.”

Swagger turned to face Ray Cruz.

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

OUTSIDE STEEL BRIGADE ARMORY

DANIELSTOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

0305 HOURS

Mick was now an up-to-speed expert on Steel Brigade Armory and the life and times of its founder and presiding genius, Colonel Norman Chambers.

“So,” he explained to Tony Z, putting down the phone after his callback from MacGyver, “this guy’s some kind of sniper guru.”

“I think I read a piece he wrote in Precision Shooting. He’s not a bipod guy. He doesn’t think sniper rifles ought to have bipods. Cause more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Try shooting a Barrett without a bipod,” said Mick. “See how far into the next state it gets you. Anyway, Swagger may have somehow come across something suggesting that Cruz the sniper at one time knew Chambers the guru. So Swagger decides to come hell for leather across South Carolina in order to have a chat with Chambers.”

“At three in the morning?”

“Swagger’s an action hero. He can’t sleep on a twitch. He’s got to go check it out.”

“He thinks Chambers can lead him to Cruz,” said Z. “God, I wish we had a mike in that room.”

“Now, when Swagger leaves, what the fuck do we do? Do we stay with him? I guess so. I mean, we got the plant on him, right? We went to all that trouble. But if we switch to Chambers, maybe he’s the magic ticket to Cruz. Maybe he goes to Cruz tomorrow, to tell him about Swagger, and we can put the Barrett on him, blow him out of his boots, and go back to the pool much richer than we are.”

“Mick, it’s tempting, but it ain’t orderly. As you say, we have Swagger in our pocket. We can stay on him out of sight, no rush-”

“Hey hey hey-” came the sudden crackle of Crackers the Clown through their earphones, “hey, I got another guy in the room.”

“What?”

“I just discovered it. This thing, this optic, you can go ambient light, you can go thermal, you can go combined ambient/thermal, which is where I’ve been, but I just went all thermal.”

Mick wanted to strangle the guy. He didn’t care about this shit. Who was the third man?

“So I flick on thermal, reads heat, you know, cool night, that building’s pretty much an aluminum eggshell, plus they’re in an outside room with only one wall, and goddamn I got three body heat signatures. Three. I don’t know where the other guy came from. He wasn’t there when they went into the room.”

“Was he hiding?”

“Maybe there’s a dead zone, a strong room, another entrance, I don’t know. I’m just telling you what I see.”

“Jesus,” said Mick.

“If it’s Ray,” said Tony Z, next to him, “we could maybe go for the kill tonight. Now. In the next ten minutes.”

“If it’s Ray,” said Mick, thinking.

“How can we find out?”

“We can’t,” said Mick.

He was right. Without some visual or at least aural penetration of the room, there was no way of knowing from outside if indeed the third man was Ray Cruz.

What to do now?

Bogier’s mind ratcheted through possibilities.

1. Nothing. Maybe Swagger’d convince Ray to leave with him, they could ID him in the car, and do a drive-by on the two of them, spray-paint Swagger’s car with 5.56, get two, good, confirmed kills.

2. Nothing also. If Swagger had led them to Cruz this time, he’d do it again. If he leaves alone, we stay with him. We can’t stake out in this little town in daylight, because by 7:30 A.M. everybody’s going to wonder who’s in the black SUV parked on the roadside. That’s the way small towns are. That gives Ray Cruz, if he’s there, plenty of time to make a good E & E and they might never get him again.

3. Nothing a third time. The mysterious third man is Colonel Chambers’s son or an employee, his wife, his ho, whatever, and came in to join the conversation. It means nothing, and tomorrow they’d be hard on Bob again and maybe he’d strike pay dirt then. Maybe that would be the smart thing, though of course it went against Bogier’s nature, and as he considered that nature, he came upon-

4. Go in hard now. Blow the door, hit the steps, kick in the office, dynamic entry SWAT style. Could probably make it up there in twenty seconds. If it’s Ray, blow him away and the witnesses as well. If it’s not, kick the shit out of them, rip out the phones, steal some rifles and what cash is on hand, and then disappear and try and disguise it as a gun robbery. Or maybe kill them anyway, what did it matter? Well, it mattered in that it informed whomever that another team was on the field and that would cause a stir, raise questions, start investigations that couldn’t be controlled, lead to all kinds of unforseen questions. Agh.

And that led to another possible outcome of 4. That Swagger, the colonel, and the third man were just as much spec op superstars as Mick and his guys were, and in the twenty seconds after they blew the door and began the big rush, the targets got all gunned up and went to total war and instead of, like moron citizens, being behind the action curve were actually in front of it, and so Mick, Tony Z, and Crackers the Clown found themselves on the wrong end of a 5.56 shitstorm and bled out eight seconds after they hit the ground.

And then there was 5.

5. Hmm.

5. Oh yeah, number 5.

5. Oh, he liked it.

Mick toyed with it, savored it, tried to look at it from a batch of directions to find a flaw and found none.

“Phone,” he said.

“Mick, I see a tiny gleam of piglike intelligence in your eyes. Are you cooking with gas?” said Tony Z.

“Just listen to daddy, little amoeba, and learn something about how we adults go around blowing up shit and killing people, but not in a bad way.”

He punched the button. MacGyver was quick to answer.

“Well?”

“We have a situation,” said Mick, and laid out the scenario.

“But you are not sure it’s Cruz?” said MacGyver.

“No, sir. But who else could it be?”

“A tinker, a tailor, a candlestick maker. The man in the moon. Barack Obama, Michael Jordan, Ernest Borgnine, David Nix-”

“And suppose someone mysteriously kills David Nixon? Actually, I think you mean David Eisenhower. Suppose someone kills David Eisenhower? We took a risk, we didn’t get a payoff, but are we any worse off than if we let David Eisenhower live?”

“Yes,” said MacGyver. “Because you’ve informed the world that you exist.”

“But nothing would connect the bodies with Ray Cruz and an Afghan politico. The forensics here are still in the Stone Age. It would just be some local crazed trailer-camp murder spree. And down here all’s you got is Barney Fifes on the case and no evidence. We’re out clean.”

MacGyver’s silence told Mick he’d gotten the control’s attention. So he laid on the rest.

Unlimber the Barrett and rest it on the window ledge of the SUV, just like a Chicago gangster’s tommy gun in 1927. Full ten-round magazine of 750-grain warheads moving out at about 3,000 feet per second. Mick’s on the big gun, crouched next to him in the seat well is Crackers the Clown with his thermal imaging instrument, and Tony Z is driving. Pull around corner, take road to Steel Brigade Armory in its flimsy tinfoil building. Halt when distance to the building was shortest and the angles flattest, about thirty yards from the roadway. Crackers goes to thermal, which would be even stronger at the closer range, and gets a fix on the three living bodies behind the aluminum walls. He indexes Mick on the body locations using the window as the baseline, as in “two are clustered in same line about three feet to the right of the right line of the window, and one is two feet farther right.” Hell, maybe he’s able to throw a SureFire circle of light at the wall position.

Mick fires ten times in four seconds. He’s that good, he can be depressing the trigger even as the beast is setting down from its recoil impulse. The bullets shear through the metal, almost without deviation, and they whack the citizens so hard they are fluffy puffs, gossamer unravelings, oozy twists of pink mist before they know it.

The car pulls off into the night. And though the gunfire racket is terrific, it takes a good forty-five minutes before any serious cops can get there. Best part: the Barrett ejects its spent casings into the SUV, leaving no evidence at all.

Three dead for sure. No links, no tracks, no evidence, no forensics because the.50s are moving so hard that after passing through metal, flesh, and more metal they fly out into the countryside. Best of all, there’s no sense of high-tech professionals at work. It could be any gun guy with a Barrett, and in this neck of the woods, there were probably dozens of them. It was big-bore territory.

The sum of the parts: if it’s Ray Cruz, end of problem. If it’s not, it’s somebody else’s problem.

“Bogier, you are clinically insane. I had no idea how insane you were. Really, you should be studied by Harvard. Someone there would surely win a Nobel Prize in medicine.”

“Okay,” said Mick, “it’s a little loud. It could be called messy. But consider: we may never get a shot like this again. Ever. If we let it slide, we will look back on this minute and hate ourselves into eternity. I say, fuck it, it’s here, let’s do it.”

“Note to self,” said MacGyver, “do not invite Bogier and his insane crew of mongoloid sociopaths to daughter’s wedding. Okay, do it, Mick. And hope that God favors the incredibly brutal.”

“He must,” said Mick. “Look at how much fun he has with earthquakes.”

STEEL BRIGADE ARMORY OFFICE

DANIELSTOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

0305 HOURS

Cruz, my name is Swagger.”

“I know who you are, Gunny,” said Cruz, thin, intense, almost feral under a thatch of black crew cut. His eyes were, as promised, exotic, even Asiatic, but his face was white in its prominence of cheekbone, thinness of nose and lip. He wore jeans and a hoodie and a pair of New Balance running shoes and a purple baseball cap with a crow on it. He had a Beretta in his hand, but wasn’t pointing it at Swagger.

“Is that pistol for me?” Swagger asked.

“No,” said Cruz. “It’s for me. There’s a lot of people who want me dead. I’ll have a piece close at hand at all times, thank you very much. Nothing’s faster than a gun in the hand.”

“Cruz, you sound a little paranoid.”

“Bullets cutting your spotter in half will do that to a man.”

“I know about losing spotters, Cruz. I also know how it can fuck up your mind. I’ve been there.”

“Nobody’s been where I am now. And nobody can get me out but me.”

What was it? Who was he? The information was rushing in on Swagger so hard he had trouble staying with it. He was talking to a ghost. Bill Go, all those years dead in that anonymous little ’ville? Maybe. Maybe not. It wasn’t an aura, a vibration, a tingle in the blood, but something was leaving tracks in the snow and Swagger knew he wasn’t smart enough to read them. What? What?

“Cruz, I don’t know what game you’re up to, but you have a whole lot of important people upset. They’ll stop you to the point of killing you. That would be so fucking wrong, Sergeant. We can end this tonight and get you back on duty next week if that’s what you want.”

“You were the best. You were a god to all of us. But you don’t get it, Gunny,” said Cruz. “If I go in and we all kiss and make up, in a day or maybe a week, I’m dead. They won’t stop now. And whatever it is they’re up to, it goes on and it finally happens.”

“Cruz, you-”

“I saw a very good kid named Billy Skelton torn in two by some motherfucker on a Barrett. A hadji? Uh-uh, that would have been war. No, I hunkered down for a look and the guy with the big gun and his buddies were white. Contractors. I’ve seen enough of ’em in the zones to know. These guys were sent to hit Two-Two. It wasn’t war, it was murder.”

“Maybe Russian mercs. Maybe Iranian advisers. Maybe Chechen volunteers. It’s only skin.”

“These were American party animals. I could tell.”

“I’m not convincing you, I see. But I am on contract to the FBI. You say the word and I go to my cell phone here and in two hours, maybe less, you are under protective custody. Whatever you charge, it will get a fair hearing. I’m working for a very good guy who’s an assistant director, and I’ve known him a long, long time. I can guarantee you safety, that fair hearing, and a follow-up on your charges. It’s the best way and this is the best offer you’ll ever get.”

“Everyone says you’re the best, Gunny. Love to trust you, but I only trust the colonel because he’s completely outside the system. You may not even know who’s pulling your wires. So I will-”

In the hundredth or so of a second before he lost consciousness, Swagger was aware of the wall exploding inward in a great demonstration of the physics of high velocity and, insanely, the big steel desk behind which sat the silent colonel leaped off the deck as if it weighed an ounce and its leading edge hurled at Swagger, striking him so hard it knocked him into instant oblivion.

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

SUV

OUTSIDE STEEL BRIGADE ARMORY

DANIELSTOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

0305 HOURS

Oh, this is going to be so fucking cool,” said Crackers.

Z drove, turned the corner, headed down the two-lane; the building, low and unprepossessing, was a few hundred feet ahead.

Mick, curled on the backseat, was on the big gun, which was supported on the window ledge with a combat jacket scrunched under it for padding. The weapon was an oar, a wheelbarrow, a ton of fun-close to twenty pounds of semiauto rifle, unwieldy in any but the strongest of hands and arms, looking like some kind of steroid-engorged M16. He crushed its butt plate into his meaty shoulder and with his strong right hand tense on the grip and his strong left hand tense on the comb, guided the thing deftly, as if it were a child’s.22. He was magic on the rifle. He squirmed to locate the right eye relief to the $4,000-worth of U.S. Optics scope on top of it, then cranked down to 4 power for the short-distance shots to come. He hard-tapped the magazine to make sure it was well seated. That thing alone weighed about six pounds, stuffed with the missilelike 750-grain cartridges, immensely heavy for their size.

“Hey,” yelled Tony Z, because everybody was wearing earmuffs, “you’re shooting without the bipod, just like the guru said. He’ll be so pleased.”

“We like to leave ’em happy,” said Mick.

The car slowed, then halted. The black wall of the building was less than thirty yards away, one window blazing but, because of the upward angle from the vehicle, showing only ceiling.

Crackers the Clown squirmed into position from the seat well behind Z, next to the heavy forearm, ventilated for cooling. He put the NV monocular to his eye. He was already in thermal.

“Much better,” said Crackers, “big as life. Okay, I got one guy separated from the two other guys by about five feet. All are seated. I’m guessing the guy out of the group is the guru guy, behind some sort of desk, because I’m not getting a full-body signature on him. The other two guys are directly facing each other.”

“Index me off the left line of the window,” said Mick.

“I’m estimating five feet; I think you should hold a little low on center of mass because you’re shooting upward. You do the first guy, rotate maybe six inches farther right, and do the second guy. Then come back and do the colonel.”

“I’m two feet low of the window left line,” said Mick, rotating the heavy rifle to the right a bit as he held a solid cheek weld and a solid eye relief to the scope lens, “and I’m coming right, damnit, Tony, give me another foot or so.”

Tony took the foot off the brake, and, easily, the vehicle slid forward.

“Good, good, good, okay, I’m going to shoot, tighten up, three, two, and-” He felt the trigger break and then it was as if a comet had smashed into Earth, a flaming ball of destruction to suck up the oxygen and flatten the vegetation and scorch the earth in the exact moment that something hydraulic unleashed full force against his heavily muscled shoulder.

The rifle rose in recoil, having sent a nuclear flash into the air along with its 750 grains of pure mayhem and a sonic boom, then settled, and Mick rotated just a bit, cheek and eye relief still perfect, fired again, producing the same assault upon the senses by flash and bang, sending another hot spent casing flying from the breach, which itself was in the process of ratcheting and clacking in the bolt blowback sequence.

He waited for recovery, rotated back left, and fired at what should have been the colonel. Three shots, in under two seconds. Took a good, trained man to do that on a Barrett.

“Rock and roll!” he shouted, while up front Tony Z was going, “Whooooooaaaaahh, mother fucker!”

Reindexing on the zone of his initial targets-he could see two craters spewing pure illumination where the big slugs had bludgeoned through the aluminum and wallboard-he really put the pedal to the metal. He fired six more times, trying to hold his strikes within the parameters of the first two penetrations, and with each arrival a blast of fragmenting metal and spewing dust and streaks of flaming debris snapped off the wall in supertime.

“Fucking A,” said Crackers-he’d ducked to the floor during the shooting, to save his eardrums and his night vision-“look at that!”

The burst of.50s had literally ripped a slash in the wall next to and a little beneath the building. It looked like the hull of a ship that had caught a torpedo full on, a twisted mass of metal, bent struts, sheaves of tormented wallboard, all in a haze of dust and smoke.

“Ma, we won the war,” said Tony.

Mick pulled the big rifle back into the truck, awkwardly got it into the back space over the edge of the seat, and said, “Okay, punch out. No, punch out slow, no howling. No more than fifty-five. Just drive, son, drive into the dawn.”

“Fuck,” said Crackers. “I didn’t get to see any of the hits.”

“It looked like a fucking movie. Man, did those suckers kick ass.”

“It would have been cooler,” said Mick, connoisseur of destruction, “if we’d had tracers.”

“Oh shit yeah,” said Tony Z. “Man, what a fucking show that would have been.”

“Should we go and check-”

“Yeah, and run into Barney F with his double barrel who happened to be pissing behind the gas station? Punch it.”

They got so far so fast they never even heard any sirens.

STEEL BRIGADE ARMORY

DANIELSTOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

0306 HOURS

Ray didn’t know his reflexes worked in that science fiction time zone. He was on the ground before the desk, lofted mightily into the air by the first shot, crushed Swagger hard in the head, putting him over backward in his chair. Ray squirmed into the fetal as another big hammer punched through, and hit his own chair-the one he’d just vacated-and sent it spinning crazily through the air as well. Nothing stood against these heavy hitters and he knew without putting it into words that it had to be Ma Barrett and her half-inch, 750-grain progeny, atomizing all that lay in their way.

The next shot hit flesh and it could only be the colonel’s. The sound of bullet on meat is instantly knowable and completely unforgettable to those who’ve heard it: a kind of whap! of vibration being quieted by the density of flesh, a sickening wetness implied under the abruptness of the noise. Either in that second or the next, the back of Ray’s neck felt a shower of warm droplets and mist.

He got his eyes opened for the next six big hits. Whoever was shooting was damned good. He kept the recoil in check and put the six in a neat pattern, almost a group, between the first two holes with but half a second between, and each, hitting the wall, blew it asunder in a cascade of vibration that lifted Ray from the floor and sent shards of supersonic metal spraying into the atmosphere but, following the laws of physics, on a slight upward direction and thus mostly missing him.

Dust jetted everywhere, as did debris of mysterious origin, flaming chips of wallboard, chunks of metal from the struts of the structure, all of it illuminated in the fluorescent light up above: it was an image of a turbulent universe. Would they reload and fire another mag? Would they now rush? He had the Beretta and knew he’d go down hard, taking many along on the trip.

But it stayed quiet, even though his ears rang like alarms. It was through an actual hole in the wall that he spied a flash of motion that told him the shooters had been in a vehicle and had now taken off.

Shakily, he stood, turned to see the colonel against the far wall, the impact of the huge bullet unkind. Metal does things to flesh, as no one knew better than Ray, and he deduced in a second that no first aid was capable of fixing the colonel. He felt a stab of pain: old friend, good guy, sound advice giver, supporter in time of need, really a true believer in the Church of Ray. And for that he’d been taken down hard by assholes on a.50. That goes in the book, he thought. Ray will deal with that when the time is right.

He then turned to the old sniper. Swagger, a dry stick of a man, all ribs and bones and sinewy grace, under a butch-waxed moss of gray, was either dead or unconscious. The edge of the flying desk had opened a bad, deep cut along his cheekbone, and it was oozing blood, though the lack of squirt action suggested no arteries had been cut. It ran down his still cheek, caught in his nostrils, then sluiced to the floor, forming a lake. Ray touched him, felt a heartbeat. Quickly he lifted the desk off the bottom half of the fallen man and dragged him to the wall. Had to get him upright so he wouldn’t drown in his own blood.

Ray peeled off his hoodie, wrapped it around the broken head, and secured it with his Wilderness belt. Maybe that would keep the crotchety old bastard alive until the medics arrived.

Having done what he could do, Ray turned and zipped out into the hallway. Knowing the building well, he got to a rear door, unlocked it, and slipped out, and set out across farm fields and backyards, even as sirens were finally beginning to sound, as firemen and officers tumbled out of bed. Ray knew exactly where he was going; he was far from unprepared.

He’d loaded his equipment in the trunk of a clean, legally purchased, and unstolen Dodge Charger, parked behind the Piggly Wiggly in town. He popped the lock, got in, and quietly started up, turned left and headed out. As far as he could tell, no one had seen a thin, athletic man in jeans and a UCLA T-shirt with a Baltimore Ravens ball cap up top. He disappeared-it’s the sniper gift, after all-into the night.

HOLIDAY INN MOTEL

ROANOKE, VIRGINIA

1730 HOURS

The phone awakened Bogier. It was Tony Z in the next room; he and Crackers were up now, and were going to start drinking. Did Bogier want to come? No, Bogier did not want to come. Had Bogier heard from MacGyver? No, Bogier had not heard from MacGyver. He would wait until he did and then join them.

Bogier lay naked in the dark room, under clean, crisp sheets. His massive, beautiful body was a god’s, though he’d been a week out of the gym and yearned to get back to the discipline and purity of the heavy-iron dead lift. He could tell; the ridges that defined the tectonics of his delts were a little less precise, the knobs that represented his abs a little less jagged, the bulge of his veins a little less prominent. It was, ever so slightly, beginning to soften. He was still doing this shit.

He’d been up for forty-eight straight, the last twelve of it driving mad-assed across the mid south, monitoring radio stations for news on the incident at Danielstown, South Carolina, where it was said a deranged ex-sniper had opened fire on the offices of Norman Chambers, a former marine and some kind of sniper warfare expert, who had been killed in the incident. But no other news was forthcoming.

So when they hit Roanoke, it was nappy-nap time. A Holiday Inn just off the interstate would do fine. He hit the sack, and drifted into thick, dreamless sleep. Now, he was awake, hardly feeling perky. Agh.

After a while, he got up groggily, took a shower. The Suunto showed him it was close to six. What to do, what to do? When would that bastard call? Was it over? Had they-

The satellite didn’t ring, it buzzed. He picked it up, and hit the button.

“So?”

“So you didn’t get him.”

“Shit,” said Bogier, feeling disappointment bite deep and hard. He knew what would come next. Asshole MacGyver would ream him hard and he’d have to sit there and take it like a schmuck.

“He was there all right. You got that part right. His prints were all over the place.”

“Christ,” said Bogier.

“That’s the bad news. The good news: you also didn’t get Swagger. You conked him hard on the head, and he’s out like a light in some hick hospital, but expected to recover. You did, however, blow a hole the size of a football through Colonel Norman Chambers, USMC, retired. Congratulations: you managed to kill the one man in the room who had nothing to do with this shit.”

“Fuck him if he can’t take a joke,” said Bogier. “Collateral damage.”

“Yeah, well, be careful you don’t ‘collateral damage’ your way into the gas chamber, sparky.”

“It’s war. It happens. Nothing personal. You go for an objective and a shell lands in downtown Shitbrick City, population, people seventy-five, chickens two hundred forty. Sorry little brown people, but important personages put our nation’s values over Shitbrick City.”

“I forgot. You’re a patriot.”

“You forgot. You okayed the hit. You’re pretending like I went rogue.”

“Bogier, your job isn’t to outsmart me in debate. Remember, you never got higher than master sergeant. I’m the guy in the officer’s tuxedo eating pheasant at the post club. If I want, I can arrange a nice duty detail for you-stables to be mucked out, garbage cans to be scrubbed, grout on latrine floors to be scraped out with toothbrushes. Your job is to outsmart Cruz, another sergeant. You’re both mud crawlers, sentry knifers, bridge blowers, laser painters, macho action jocks, so you ought to be up to that, or at least I’m betting you think you are. So let’s concentrate on what’s what.”

In Bogier’s mind: an image of this ponce, with a goatee and a cigarette holder, wire-frame glasses, an ascot, as he crushed his head in his bare hands, spurting gray matter out of the ears and nose before the eyes popped like Ping-Pong balls from a toy gun.

“Good idea,” said Mick, grinding his teeth.

“Okay, what we have to worry about now is whether they shit-can Swagger.”

“Why would they?”

“Duh, went in without backup or informing HQ. If he were a special agent, his ass would be grass. Maybe they let him slide but keep him on a tight leash because he’s fundamentally an amateur who happens to know a lot about the bang bang.”

“Don’t forget, that ‘amateur’ found Cruz in twelve hours his first day on the case while everyone else was jerking off.”

“He’s a smart guy, no lie. That’s why we have to hope they keep him aboard. Assuming he hasn’t found the magic credit card in his back pocket. So let’s assume next they still want to use his brain in scoping out the sniper. So they move him to DC, does that make sense?”

“We’re on our way.”

“My guess is, you’ll pick up that RFID response at the FBI building on Pennsylvania. You stay on it. He’ll figure out where Cruz is sooner or later. Maybe you can get a hit on Cruz that saves Zarzi’s life and be a big hero. Mick Bogier, the new Bob Lee Swagger. Then you and your new best friend Bobby Lee can go on dry-drunk rages together.”

MacGyver insulted Mick for another few minutes and then let him go. Mick checked the Suunto and headed toward the bar to drive out the image of MacGyver roasting in flames to the laughter of all the fellows in the grog-and-wench shop called Sergeants’ Valhalla. Tonight would be a big night for getting drunk. Tomorrow: Washington, D fucking C.

INTENSIVE CARE UNIT

BRIGHTON COUNTY GENERAL HOSPITAL

HOPKINS, SOUTH CAROLINA

1642 HOURS

THE NEXT DAY

The first time he awoke was when some doctor was pulling up his eyelids and shining a flashlight into his eyeballs. That hurt. The second time, someone had given him a shot. That hurt. The third time it was Nick Memphis, poking him. That really hurt.

His eyes came open. It felt as though a camel had been licking his face for a month. His limbs were dead, his fingers dead, his legs and feet dead. Consciousness was a thick sludge, and he fought his way through it, struggling for focus and breath.

“Oh, shit,” he said, his voice evidently not dead.

“He’s coming out of it,” Nick said, and the next person who leaned in was Susan Okada, beautiful and untouchable-why had she come back, damnit?-and looking at him as, say, the shogun’s executioner might look at someone whose neck he would in the next second split.

“Hello,” she said uncheerily, “anybody home?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied and found that his body did move, he wasn’t quadded out. He had a headache that only a dozen Jacks in an hour would justify, and the right half of his face was swaddled in bandages, the eye occluded by pouches of something-his swelling, he guessed-pressing against it from all sides.

“Water, please,” he said.

She poured it for him from a bottle.

“Our hero returns from vacation,” she said.

“How do you feel?” Nick said.

“Like shit.”

“Funny, that’s what you look like,” said Susan.

“Oh, Christ, what happened?”

“You were smashed in the head by a flying desk. You have a concussion. Your cheekbone for some reason refused to break, but it took thirty-one stitches to close up the slice beneath your eye. The swelling will go down in November. You look like an abused grapefruit.”

“Agh,” he coughed. “And what about, um, that colonel, and Cruz.”

“The colonel’s dead, Cruz is gone. Total catastrophe.”

Bob swallowed the water. Goddamn, his head hurt. The news about the colonel hit him hard. The guy was just-

But what was the point?

“Tell me what happened.”

“Sure. Then you tell us what happened.”

Nick explained: ten.50-caliber slugs through the wall of Steel Brigade Armory, a fluke of ballistics that the first one hit and spun the desk through midair instead of blasting Bob into particles, another one zeroing in on Colonel Chambers-“You don’t want to see the crime scene pictures”-and the others generally ripping the hell out of the place. Cruz’s prints were all over, but the lack of blood samples suggested he’d gotten to the floor in time to just miss getting jellified, then slipped out the back after the shooters pulled away. There were no forensics on the shooters except a partial tire track near the edge of the road that pointed the way to sixteen million Goodyear Wrangler P245 tires.

“Oh, hell,” said Bob.

“Now, your turn. Excuse me for asking the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, but what the hell were you doing in a conversation with the object of a federal manhunt and why oh why oh why didn’t you call for backup, for guidance, for anything?”

“Oh, that,” said Bob, and he searched feebly for a joke, almost saying, “Backup is for pussies.” But he didn’t. Nobody seemed much interested in his sense of humor.

He told it as simply as he could. He explained it, then justified it.

“I just went out there to get the lay of the land. I knew I’d be back the next day, I didn’t want to go in cold. A recon, that’s all. When I seen, excuse me, saw the light on, I figured, what the hell? I thought it was going to be another old geezer who probably knew who I was and I could get more out of him on my own, man to man, than if I was part of a goddamned invasion force. I didn’t know Cruz was there. I had no idea someone was going to start blasting with a fifty. I didn’t plan on taking a ten-thousand-caliber desk in the head.”

Nick was silent.

Susan said, “Tell us exactly what Cruz said. Can you remember?”

Swagger tried to re-create the conversation in his own head.

“‘Nobody’s been where I am now. And nobody can get me out but me.’ That’s the line I remember. He had an idea people were trying to kill him. Seems like he was right on that one, or maybe these stitches on my face came from my imagination. But he’s a serious man hell-bent on a course. He’s burned bad because of the death of his spotter. He thinks he’s the only one who can figure it out because all of us are in ‘the system’ and can’t be trusted or are being manipulated by shadowy forces. Wasn’t interested in coming in. I played that line hard, but he wasn’t having none of it, any of it.”

Nick let a melancholy ton of air escape his lungs.

“So, basically, we’re nowhere.”

“We do know it’s him. And we know that somebody wants to kill him. We do know that,” said Bob.

“We don’t,” said Susan. “Excuse me, but this colonel knew a lot of snipers, he ran courses for snipers, and among them are sure to be some unstable people. Maybe one had a grudge against him. You just can’t jump to the conclusion that it was an attempt on Cruz’s life without a thorough professional investigation. Maybe he was in a love affair, a business crisis, a lawsuit, any one of a dozen mundane reasons-”

“They’d go for him with a Barrett? His wife’s boyfriend goes for him with a-”

“Barretts are civilian legal,” said Nick. “If you wanted a safe way to kill a guy who was known to work very late in an aluminum building, a Barrett semi would be number one on your wish list, especially if you knew a little about guns, as anyone who knew the colonel probably did.”

“So you’re not going to-”

“Go on a witch hunt, no,” said Susan. “I know how conveniently the Agency fits all manner of paranoid fantasies, justifies any interpretation, satisfies any mandate of evil or conspiracy. We will not use this as an excuse to probe in areas that are off-limits unless we develop hard evidence, and I mean hard, that suggests Agency personnel were involved. Unknown gunmen shooting up a building in the night in rural South Carolina doesn’t cut it.”

“High-level gunmen. You could tell because he fired so fast and he kept his shots tight. He’d ridden that recoil before in dusty places full of guys with tablecloths on their heads and daggers between their teeth. Do I need to point out that it was almost certainly a Barrett that the guys in Afghanistan used on Whiskey Two-Two? Coincidence? Sure, the world’s full of them. Anyhow”-Swagger coughed, in the grasp of a phlegm-throated oxygen debt-“who are they, what are they doing here? What’s their interest in Ray?”

“Nothing ties them to Ray,” said Nick. “Sorry, but Okada is right. Without hard evidence we have no license to poke our way into Agency business. No one at the Bureau wants that. This temporary truce is something everybody wants and I can’t endanger it on the evidence of nothing.”

“You people and your rules,” said Bob. “It’s like dealing with kindergarteners at a goddamn ice-cream party. ‘I want the ice cream!’ ‘No, no, it’s my ice cream.’ How do you stand it?”

“The system is the system, Swagger,” said Susan. “Look, there is indeed a schism in the Agency: those who believe in Zarzi, those who don’t. The disbelievers have been exiled because the Administration also wants to believe in Zarzi.”

“Is it possible some of the pro-Zarzis have gone overboard in their protection of him?” Bob said. “They want the Zarzi ice cream, they’re crazy for the ice cream, and so they’ve gone around the bend to make sure it don’t melt?”

“These are professional people. They don’t go around bends. I will make certain delicate inquiries, but my accessibility itself has been threatened by this episode. They’ll all know we had a shot at Cruz and whiffed. That doesn’t help, Swagger.”

Delicacy! Swagger wanted to say: Are you here for them or for us? Is your job the truth or is it to protect your bosses? But he couldn’t. She had stood hard for him and gone into battle with swords for him. She had brought him the rest of his life in the form of his daughter, Miko. She had nothing to prove to him.

“Susan, I will obey any policy you say. I’m sorry if I suggested otherwise. You can count on me not to betray you or disobey you.”

She nodded. Then she said to Nick, “Look, let me talk to him alone.”

“Sure, but no necking on company time.”

“Ha-ha,” said Susan, “count on the Bureau for laugh riots.”

But she turned to Bob once they were alone.

Her gaze was steady, as it always was, her face annoyingly perfect. Her hair looked a little mussed, and of course that made her seven or possibly nine times more attractive.

“Look, this isn’t easy,” she said. “I am well aware that they put me here because we worked together before and I get a sense, once in a while, that you seem to like me a little. They know that, they’re using that, just as they’re manipulating me through the fact that I never met a cowboy with brains before until I met the old dog. Cowboys are cheap, but the smart ones are one in a million. So don’t think I don’t feel whatever it is we’re not supposed to talk about. But, Bob, I have to cover for the Agency. I married it, it’s my husband, everything I ever got I got from it. It’s my Marine Corps. I know its follies, its pretensions, its weaknesses, how many of its people are self-infatuated fools. But it is necessary and it is the only one we’ve got, so no matter how many times I remember when Samurai Swagger kicked in the door and faced off with that creepy Yak and sent his head in the direction of Sevastopol, I have to pull back to my loyalty to the Agency. Okay? You have your code, Semper Ho and Gung Fi and all that, and I have mine.”

“I’m hearing you, Okada-san. You were a hell of a case officer.”

“Get some sleep, cowboy. We need you on two legs and a horse.”

He smiled-a little-through cracked lips.

Nick stepped back in.

“Okay,” he said, “old friends’ time officially over. Bob, we will forward any info we develop to the state police detectives-they’re waiting for your statement, by the way-who have to solve this case. In the meantime, we will continue our pursuit of Ray Cruz. We need you in Washington to read the possible shooting sites. Be on our team, be our friend, okay? As Ms. Okada says, rest a few days, wait till the ringing stops and you only look like a tomato and not a grapefruit, and come back to work. Is that clear?”

Bob said yes, knowing secretly that he would never leave this case till the end, if it killed him-or anybody else.

He had to find out: who was trying to kill Ray Cruz?

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

THE 600 BLOCK OF NORTH CHARLES STREET

OUTSIDE THE RESTAURANT ZABOL

MOUNT VERNON DISTRICT

1530 HOURS

A FEW DAYS LATER

It had to be Baltimore. The thinkers at the various agencies, offices, bureaus, and departments all agreed. They discounted the Meet the Press site because, although the studio had a transparent rear window to show the dome in the background, the material was high-strength ballistic glass through which no bullet could penetrate and the only shooting location would be in public, somewhere on Capitol grounds, even up a tree, impossible to hide. The White House was also a no-go, as security was extraordinary, and that night, the Secret Service, the FBI, and the Washington Metropolitan Police would be out in abundance. No sniper could get close enough. The speech at Georgetown was in the center of buildings that could be easily controlled for access.

Just as important, the three Washington sites were terra firma for security people, who knew every nook, cranny, crack, and fissure in the zone. It would be extremely hard to penetrate without an elaborate set of false documents that were almost certainly outside the reach of lone gunman Ray Cruz, who was a singleton, without elaborate intelligence professionals backing him up. The cordons in all three cases would be tight with choke points everywhere in a city that was used to and unfazed by choke points and presidential security.

That left Baltimore, and a neighborhood of aspiration called Mount Vernon, after the square that dominated it. The site centered on a civilian restaurant on a main thoroughfare, plenty of ingress and egress, hundreds of windows. Baltimore was terra incognito, open ground, untested, just as new to the Secret Service as it was to Ray Cruz. It so happened that Ibrahim Zarzi’s brother Asa owned an extremely successful restaurant much favored by the city’s many academics and medical personnel, where lamb kabobs, rice, red wine, and squares of unleavened bread were served; colorful knit garments hung on the walls; and the photos of wily, craggy Pashtun faces gave the place a touch of the Hindu Kush without the danger of an IED, which was for marine L/CPLs to face on MREs in unarmored Humvees. So if Cruz was going to take the fatal shot and send Zarzi to his next destination, it would have to be somewhere along Charles Street, two or three blocks each way from the restaurant, as the Great Man was hustled into or out of the building.

Bob walked the street with two Secret Service snipers, their supervisor, the Baltimore police SWAT commander, and Nick. The swelling blowing up the left side of his face had subsided and left a dappling of pinkish-red-yellowish bruise, and a jagged strip of bandage tracing the severing of his flesh on top of the cheekbone. Enough, already, with the “You should see the other guy” line of patter from the guys, though he took it in good spirit, and settled on the comeback, “That was no lady, she was two hundred pounds of steel desk.” Ha, ha, and ha. But all that ended with the initial discussions at the Baltimore FBI offices in a nondescript building just outside the beltway. Now, by caravan, they had reached the prime zone.

It was one of those new urban American paradises, a reborn street in a once crummy zone that had found life hoping to mimic the European model, with low old buildings of stone turrets or copper wainscoting, each with a shiny set of retail opportunities at street level, trees in full leaf, sidewalk cafes, restaurants in various ethnic flavors besides Afghan, including Mexican, Chinese, gay, Indian, sushi, and snarky boho. It was very la-di-da, maybe even a little tra-la-la; it looked a lot like Paris, if you’d never been to Paris. At one end, a block from the Zabol’s facade, was Mount Vernon itself, a cruciform city park with trees. Each of the arms of the cross shape extended a block and offered a meadow, a line of trees, walkways, and benches. At the center of the cross rose a 200-foot-tall marble pedestal, and on top of it a man, also of marble, stood and looked the other way.

“Who’s the general?” asked Bob, noting the marble figure’s tri-corn hat.

“Washington,” said the SWAT commander. “This was the first monument to him, 1820 or something. The joke is, he’s extending his arm, and from a certain angle, if you look up, he’s got the biggest dick in the world. Father of his country.”

All the security pros laughed.

“Great shooting spot,” said the Secret Service sniper, “but I’m guessing we’ll seal it up real tight on game day.”

“Nobody goes near it.”

“So the normal drill,” Bob said, “is control over street and vehicle traffic, countersnipers on rooftops, all windows sealed, airborne surveillance, all tied together on one channel?”

“That’s it, Gunny,” said the Secret Service supervisor. “Do you want to see the maps or read the mission plan?”

“No.”

“This guy is really good, huh?”

“He can shoot a bit.”

“What’s your take?”

“He’s got something you’ve never been up against and he’ll use it against you.”

“And that is?” asked the supervisor.

“He’s got a great standing offhand. Not many do. What that means is that unlike anyone you ever heard of, he don’t need a ‘lair,’ a ‘hide.’ He don’t need a long look at the target, a ranging laser, ballistics tables, wind gauges, and the time to compute all the dope, followed by quiet to gather, concentrate, and deliver, as every sniper everywhere in the world does. Even with a top-of-the-line iSniper911 he’d be slower than with his offhand. He don’t need a calm zone. Nope, not him. He don’t need to be at a bench or prone on bipod. He’s much more flexible and unpredictable. His main thing is concealing the weapon, and he might even go to a short barrel, I mean abnormally short-”

“What about a scoped handgun?” asked the Baltimore commander.

“I’m sure he’s damn good with a handgun,” said Bob, “but he spent last summer working hard on his standing. He can probably set himself, go to rifle, fire, slide the rifle back undercover, and make any shot out to two hundred yards, all in one second. Any one of these folks could be the shooter.” The streets were not crowded but were steadily negotiated by people of all ages, shapes, costumes, and inclinations, and it didn’t take too much imagination to see an old man, say 150 yards down Charles, as a guy able to whip out that short-barreled rifle, put the one shot into Zarzi as his guards hustled him out, full of lamb and wine, to the armored limo. It would be a near impossible shot for even the most trained sniper, but Ray’s extra abilities, his hard operational background, his intensity, made anything possible.

“Is he a suicide guy?” one of the Secret Service snipers asked.

“Nothing would indicate that,” said Bob. “He’s a sniper, marine style, trained to execute, yes, but to survive too. We don’t train our people to give it up for the kill. The point is to kill the other guy.”

“Yet what would he get out of survival? We know who he is and even if he makes the shot and all of us lose our jobs”-they laughed-“and he escapes, what has he got? A few days before he’s run down, then either the rest of his life in jail or some legendary last-stand gunfight that gets him in the history books, but also the ground. He might see that as a glory ride.”

“He’s not a glory boy. He ain’t looking to get his name in the papers, like some mall psycho,” said Bob. “He’s raised a good Catholic boy by good Catholic parents, on an American naval base in the Philippines, and to him suicide, like betrayal and murder, is a sin. He’s not no Moro, he ain’t high on hemp, he’s not no run-amok guy with a machete; everything he does is controlled, calm, graceful, quiet. He’s still following orders. You don’t notice him until it’s too late. The kill would be enough, and in his mind, he’s executing the perfect counterterrorism operation, he’s a hero preventing something else much worse from happening. He’d shoot, then surrender. Then he makes his case in court. He goes into everything he believes about his team being betrayed, he gets a high-profile attorney who’d lay subpoenas on the Agency and the National Security adviser’s office. He’s probably already made his notes and contacted his big-deal lawyer.”

“What all this suggests,” Nick said, “is that if he makes it to Charles Street, we’ve already lost. We have to find him before he deploys that day. We have to find him where he’s gone to ground.”

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL

SUITE 500

M STREET NW

WASHINGTON, DC

1335 HOURS

THE NEXT DAY

The Great Man arrived, by limo, from Andrews. Cops on Harleys; Secret Service gunboat SUVs; Army aviation overhead butter-knifing through the air, scaring off the news choppers; Agency handlers, gofers, commo experts, and upper-floor reps, the whole train about a mile long, tying up traffic for hours. Too bad for the unsuspecting citizen caught in it.

Ibrahim Zarzi, warlord and patriot, boulevardier, seducer, smiler, toucher, gourmand and oenophile, clotheshorse, called by Page Six the “Clark Gable of Afghanistan,” and possible Our Man in Kabul, got out, accompanied by a number one factotum and two Agency functionaries, and was immediately surrounded by the Secret Service Joes from the following Explorer who were designated to take the shot meant for him. And they would too, because that was their job, even if this shady character had once been known as “the Beheader.” All that was in the past, everybody hoped, in a different lifetime, in a different world.

Flashes strobed, suave TV reporters oozed against the ropes that restrained them, attempting to look cool and hot and concerned all at the same time, but Ibrahim Zarzi was rushed by them with no time to answer the shouters.

He was an extremely handsome man, about fifty-five, with a thick head of dark hair, nicely graying temples, a brush-cut Etonion’s mustache, and piercing dark eyes that showed off his blindingly white teeth. Omar Sharif, anyone? He looked like, among other things, a polo player, a bridge champion, a scratch golfer, a man who’d killed all five of the dangerous game species at record trophy size, caught some really big scary fish, a man who had bedded many a blonde in his pied-à-terre in Paris and in his rooms in London, shrewd, ruthless, narcisisstic, and a total watch slut.

Today, he’d gone with the Patek Philippe Gondola, in gold, muted, with a black face and roman numerals, as well as a single black sapphire cabochon on top of the winding stem. It was about an inch by an inch, secured by a crocodile band. It set off his blue, pin-striped Savile Row suit, immaculately tailored, his crisp white Anderson & Sheppard shirt with Van Cleef & Arpels cuff links in tasteful onyx, and his black bespoke oxfords from J. Cobb, one of White Street’s more discreet custom shoemakers. His face was brown, his tie was red (solid; he knew when to stop), and his watch was black. He dressed from the watch out.

“I think I will change to my gold Rolex for dinner,” he said to Abba Gul, his assistant. “And, since it will be informal, my blue blazer-”

“The double breasted?”

“Hmm,” said Zarzi, contemplating the choices, “yes, and an ascot, the red-gold-blue Seventeenth Royal Hussar, I think. A blue shirt, the gold Tiffany cuff links, gray slacks, and that nice pair of cordovan Alden tassel moc loafers. White silk socks, of course.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Gul, who never had to write anything down, who never made a mistake, who understood the Great Man’s moods, needs, pleasures, agonies, ups, downs, wants, and occasional squalls of self-lacerating doubt. “It shall be done.”

Zarzi did not acknowledge the man, who was from a family that had served his own for 250 years, after the first Zarzi, Alazar the Terrible, had swept down from the mountains with his band of fierce Pathans, said to be descended from the fierce Shinwari tribe, driven out the people of the flatlands and all their pretty poppies (or executed them by hanging them upside down from trees and cutting an incision from this hip bone to that nipple), and taken over Zabul, making Qalat its capital. The Guls made themselves useful to the Zarzi clan and were allowed to prosper.

A hotel personage said, “Sir, this way,” after the man had been vetted by the Secret Service, led through the phalanx of Agency goons, and passed muster with the two bodyguards trained to give up their lives in an instant for the Greatness of Zarzi, “and I hope you enjoy your stay.”

“I’m sure I will, Mr. Nickerson”-he’d noted the nameplate, part of his conspicuous charm being that he learned names quickly and never forgot them-“and I love the hotel. Please tell the florist”-he gestured to the sprays and waves of flowers decorating the lush central corridor of the place-“that he has done well, and please have a thousand dollars’ worth of flowers sent to my rooms today and every day.”

“It has already been done, sir,” said the oily, professionally obsequious Nickerson, known to the others on the hotel staff as “the Greaser,” “exactly like last time.”

“Most excellent,” said Zarzi.

“You have the entire floor, sir,” said his Agency gofer, a minor handler with the Afghan Desk named Ryan, “and please, please, stay away from the windows. I can’t emphasize-”

“Mr. Ryan, you forget that Allah in his justice protects me and shall not permit any mischief to befall me. That has been decreed, as it has been decreed I am the one to lead my people out of darkness. I am a river to my people and I must-oh, dear, I believe I’m quoting Anthony Quinn in Lawrence of Arabia again. So easy to get caught these days with every peasant dog tied by tether to the horrors of Google and able to produce instantaneous correction.”

“Ain’t it a bear?” said Ryan.

“A bitch, in fact,” said the charmer.

“You have a couple of hours. Then cocktails with three senators on the Foreign Relations Committee at Ms. Dowd’s place at the Watergate.”

“And how is Mo? Is she still writing those delicious pieces twice a week?”

“Of course.”

“Good for Mo! She’s a jolly spitfire, that one! And tomorrow?”

“The Agency all day, with Mr. Collins and our staff in Afghan.”

“I hope the catering is good,” said Zarzi. “Burger King, double whopper, no fries. I prefer the McDonald’s French fry to the less-textured Burger King product. Surely some young CIA killer can be dispatched to McDonald’s for that.”

“I think so, sir.”

“A future president does not consume substandard French fries,” he said majestically. “So vulgar.”

“I’ll see to the catering, sir,” said Ryan.

“It will be such a pleasure before eating at my brother’s restaurant in Baltimore tomorrow. It will be so nice to see him, but the food! Ugh, I cannot fathom how he sells it. You could find better in any village main street, cooked on a stove the size of a portable television by a barefoot old hag without teeth. Yet he has made a good living. Your press thinks me a scoundrel, Mr. Ryan. My brother is a true scoundrel!”

“I look forward to meeting him, sir.”

“I look forward to seeing him, Mr. Ryan. I loathe the idea of dining with him.”

“It humanizes you, sir.”

“Could we not have met, say, at a nice Popeye’s? Now that’s an advance in civilization!”

He had napped, he had showered, he had deodorized, he had prayed-or had he? hard to remember-he had refreshed with several Dexedrine and felt ready as a tiger. Gul had laid out the clothes. But now, before leaving for Mo’s, came his favorite moment in any journey: the winding of the watches.

“Sir, the servants are ready.”

He sat down, barefoot, poured himself a glass of water.

“They may proceed,” he said.

The factotum muttered a command and one by one a half dozen servants came in bent and reverent, and placed an odd object on the bureau, the coffee table, the mantel, the bedside table, any stable surface in the bedroom of the vast, plush suite. Since there were by far more odd objects than servants, the procession took a while until each had put his object exactly where it should be and gone back for another one, then gotten back in line. When they were finally done, the factotum Abba Gul made certain that all were equidistant in space, all aligned perfectly.

They were watch winders, elegant boxes that opened to reveal velvet, er, whatchamacallits-things maybe?-protrusions, protuberances, armatures, whatever. If there was a word for it, Zarzi did not know it. In effect, they were artificial limbs, wrists actually. Then came the watches, removed from their travel cases. Rolexes, Patek Philippes, Blancpains, Raymond Weils, Vacheron Constantins, Bell & Rosses, Breguets, Chopards, Girard-Perregauxs, Piagets, Cartiers, Omegas, Fortises, and so on and so forth, more than eight dozen of them, all mechanical analogs, all clicking away in perfect time, all second hands indexed exactly to the second designations on the faces and not between, as happens on cheap quartz movements, all elegant, all expensive, all shiny. One by one, in a certain order, a servant slid the watch he bore onto the artificial wrist of the opened box until the room resembled the discreetly expensive private viewing arena of a high-end Parisian jewelry store. It then developed that each box also sported a discreet cord, which was now unrolled by servants and each plug inserted into a lengthy socket box, which was in turn plugged into the hotel’s electrical system.

“Sir?”

“Yes, proceed, Gul,” said the Great Man.

Gul pressed the main switch on the socket box and each of the velvet wrists began a slow, methodical revolution, describing a circle about four inches in circumference. Thus, the watches, all self-winders, the culmination of the watchmaker’s art, received their two hours of energy to keep them running perfectly. No longer was the space a jewelry showroom, but rather a kind of ghost hall full of apparitions rotating the watches to precise life, in soundless synchronicity, a symphony of gently moving disks of numbers. As it was dark, the radiated digits gleamed more brightly, but the many gold pieces had their own organic process by which they magnified what little ambient glow their surfaces caught and reflected.

It was like a slow-motion pyrotechnic show and behind each watch face, Zarzi knew, was a galaxy of gears and shafts and pins and jewels, set together with inexorable logic driven by extraordinary imagination and discipline, traceable back to the original verge escapement device created by who knows what forgotten genius in the European Middle Ages. It was, of course, the West: not computers or skyscrapers or women with bulging thighs and naked, painted toes; all that came later. But this was its core, its essence, and he loved it so and he hated it just as fervently, all the gear wheels, the tiny springs, the rotating winder weights, the hands sweeping inexorably around, measuring not time, as so many thought, but only the tension within their mainspring. That is what the watch calibrated; time was a metaphor against which it was applied. There was no time, not really, not that could be touched, weighed, licked, tasted, felt. The watches ticked against their own winding and the imagination that had designed the winding mechanism; it was magic, it was profound, it was touching, he loved it so much in all its glory and damnation.

BALTIMORE FBI HQ

WOODLAWN, BEYOND BELTWAY

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

1700 HOURS

THE NEXT DAY

Six meetings, and at each, Bob had given his little speech on Ray Cruz’s standing offhand capability. Twice to Agency people, to the Baltimore metropolitans, the Maryland State Police, and two Secret Service meetings and at each positions were marked, radio frequencies verified, aviation coordinates laid in, the parade of intricate planning and counterplanning gone over a third, a fourth, a fifth time.

Everybody was exhausted. But nobody was going home.

Bob sat with Nick and several others-ties loosened, jackets off, sleeves rolled up-in the special agent in charge’s corner office in the bland office building the Bureau had rented, and then decorated in the mind-numbing scheme known as Nineties Bureaucracy. One touch stood out: one of the office’s bosses had been female, and she’d supervised a witty Dick Tracy toy and comic strip exhibit in the foyer, behind glass. None of the men noticed it and none of the subsequent male SAICs bothered to take it down.

The occasion was a situation report, sitrep in the jazzy vernacular. A special agent had just summed up the day’s efforts in locating Ray Cruz, which included a sweep of all motels and hotels, rental apartments, trailer parks, homeless shelters; monitoring all local law enforcement reports, all speeding and misdemeanor charges (idiotic, Swagger thought; Ray Cruz wasn’t about to get in a bar fight); and so forth and so on, including employee canvasses of all retail and eating establishments, review of postal activity, delivery by private carrier, garbage pickup, road crew work, traffic light maintenance, meter maids, et cetera. All telephone tips had been checked out, all the unglamorous clerk’s work that is the essence of law enforcement.

“Nothing.”

“You’re the expert,” someone said to Swagger. “Where’s a marine sniper go to ground?”

“Right now,” said Bob, “he’d be in a hole covered with leaves and branches. His face would be dark green and black; he’d be ready to shit in the hole, piss in the hole, eat in the hole, and die in the hole. He crawled a long way to get to that hole and he ain’t about to give it up.”

There was a little laughter, mostly of a tired sort.

Nick asked a special agent Travis, “Anything new from Washington?”

“More stuff on the Cruz background investigation.”

“Sergeant Swagger, take a look at it, see if it’s anything, when you get a moment.”

“Sure,” said Bob.

“Hey,” said the Baltimore SWAT supervisor, “Sergeant Swagger, I remember you said yesterday ‘good Catholic boy.’ I’m wondering if Cruz could get hold of a priest’s garment and get into that steeple in the square that way.”

“Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate,” someone else said.

“We’ve canvassed the church, but it’s a very good suggestion,” said Nick. “And Cruz seems to have the self-effacing low profile of a priest, so he’d fit right in. I’ll detail some extra men there tomorrow.”

Bob said, “Camouflage.”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant?”

“Camouflage.”

“You’re thinking he’ll disguise himself as a bush? Or maybe he’s already there, disguised as a bush?”

There was some laughter and even Bob had a grin from the agent’s wisecrack.

“No,” said Bob, “I don’t mean in that way. Despite what I just said, he ain’t going to paint his face green and glue twigs to his head or wear no suit that looks like a swamp. But camouflage is at the center of the mind-set. That’s what the mission was about in Afghanistan. Camouflage. Blending in. Okay, not with the ground but with the local population. So… what would he camouflage himself as?”

There was silence.

“Put it another way; where would he locate so he wouldn’t be noticed? What is his first quality? What is the first thing about him?”

“He’s a marine.”

“He’s a sniper.”

“He’s a hero.”

“He’s gone crazy.”

“All that’s no help at all,” said Nick. “Bob, what are you thinking?”

“First of all, he’s Filipino. He was raised in the Philippines. He speaks Tagalog without an accent. With other Filipinos, his features blend in; he ain’t what we’re calling ‘exotic.’ He becomes more Filipino in a group of Filipinos. They probably accept him on faith. He knows you guys ain’t penetrated them because there’s so few of them, a stranger would stick out, and you probably don’t have too many Filipino special agents.”

“Where is this going?” said Nick.

“I’m trying to think how he’d think. Here’s what I come up with: maybe somewhere there’s a Filipino who’s already passed our once-over lightly. He’s got a kitchen job, something in food service, maybe delivery, in the shoot zone. He’s a recent immigrant, don’t speak the language too good. It’s a low-level job, but he’s been on it a batch of months, so it’s okay. So I’m thinking Ray, in that calm, methodical, focused way of his, has found him. He’s befriended him, he’s offered him some money, he’s earned his trust as a Filipino, speaking the language. This guy don’t know nothing, but the money’s for the people back home, how could he turn it down? So Ray takes over that identity tomorrow. He gets in under that name and the people he fools don’t even look close at him. He’s one of the little folks who carry out the shit and scrub the toilets and wipe up the puke and wash the piss off the sidewalks each morning. Ray goes in as that guy, his ID and his name on the list gets him through our security. Nobody’s looking close at faces in photos and faces on people. And he’s Asian, they all look alike to any busy cop at a checkpoint. And remember, he don’t need an escape route. He’s not trying to get out, and that makes his penetration much easier. So tomorrow he steps out of the kitchen across the street or down the block, and he’s got a way-cut-down 700 with scope, maybe just a good red dot. The package is maybe sixteen inches long, enough to get a good shoulder brace and cheek weld, you could do it with a hacksaw. He can see the hubbub, and when the agents come out, out comes the rifle, there’s Zarzi, he goes to target and ticks off the shot offhand standing in one second and you’ve got brains all over the sidewalk. Whiskey Two-Two, mission accomplished, over and out. That’s what he’s got to work with, that’s what he’d do.”

“Is that what you’d do?” asked a police officer.

“I’d have to find a white trash cranky old sack full of hot air and bad breath, but it’s the same principle.”

“We don’t have any evidence,” someone said. “He could also paint his skin black, buy a wig, and go Afro into the shoot zone, knowing that we’re hesitant to confront Afros.”

“But Afro falls apart if he’s confronted. One second of close examination and Afro goes away. Filipino doesn’t go away, and if he’s got the right easy-to-come-by docs, he’s in,” another argued.

“All right,” said Nick, “let’s run this and see where it takes us. Maybe nowhere. Maybe there are no Filipinos in the area and Swagger’s been smoking that weird pipe again.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Swagger said, to some laughter.

Nick ordered, “Check the lists of the already vetted. See if you can come up with any names of Filipino nationals, or immigrants. Maybe we get an address, and if so, maybe we raid. Maybe we nab the guy before he gets out of bed.”

It took an hour. The run-through of the hundred-odd vetted workers in the shoot zone for tomorrow indeed included four of possible Filipino derivation, an Abated, a Batujong, a Ganaban, and an Ulat, working at three different restaurants, an Indian, a Chinese, and a barbecued rib house known to be popular with gays (“Boy’s Town,” as it was called, was the next district north of Mount Vernon).

Calls to Immigration produced data on three of the four, who were not citizens yet. The fourth, a citizen, was a seventy-year-old sous-chef at an upscale place just marginally in the zone. He was discarded.

Immigration faxed the paperwork. Of the three, only one fit the profile. His name was Ricardo Ulat, from Mindanao originally, thirty-six years old, a dishwasher at a popular Indian restaurant just across the street and down half a block from the Zabol. He had been in the country a little over six months. But it turned out he lived at the same address in a suburban town bordering the city called Pikesville as one of the other, older immigrants. Possibly they were uncle and nephew or cousins? There were no legal problems, though the house had been raided once in 2002 in a search-futile, as it turned out-for Filipino illegals.

Pikesville wasn’t in Baltimore but some other entity called “Baltimore County” with a separate police force. New phone calls, new introductions, new arrangements had to be made, but ultimately, the county police input showed no complaints against the house, no altercations or police visits or calls, no trouble. The Filipinos were very good visitors. A traffic ticket for the older Batujong, that was all. The cops put Nick and Bob and the team in touch with the commander of the county police station, responsible for Pikesville and an old hand there, and he gave them a rundown on speakerphone.

“The neighborhood used to be Jewish when Baltimore was the Jerusalem of the East Coast. Lots of big old homes, built by prosperous business owners, bankers, furriers, restaurateurs, that sort of thing, at the turn of the century through the twenties. It’s now what you call a ‘changing neighborhood.’ It’s about sixty percent black, forty percent what we’d call ‘mixed ethnic.’ Real estate has been depressed for a few decades as the rich people move farther out. One of the things we’ve seen is a kind of ‘rooming house’ phenomenon. A restaurant guy, who depends on cheap labor, some of it possibly illegal, will buy one of these big old arks at low cost, do absolutely nothing to fix it up, and turn it into a kind of dormitory for his low-end labor force. With some of these, you’ve got continuous problems that generate a lot of complaints, fights, drugs, parties, noise, trashed property, sometimes a killing, which requires a lot of police activity.

“The Filipinos, though, are different. Never a fight, never a party, no drinking hardly at all, very tidy, lawn is always mowed, no rubbish anywhere. You’d never be able to tell that 1216 Crenshaw has ten occupants, all single. These are usually rural guys; they’re not from the big, crazy cities like Manila or Cebu, they’re not sophisticated and criminally inclined. What they do, they get the visa, they sign up with an employer, a restaurant guy who needs the cheap labor, and they come over here for seven years. It’s pretty awful, living four to a room in a country whose language they don’t speak and whose culture they don’t even get. But they work hard, live very simply, and manage to send home a pile of money. They’re really helping out their families. After the seven, very few of them jump and go illegal; they go back, having done their duty, and another family member comes over. So what you’ve got at 1216 is just that, a houseful of very quiet, hardworking guys without English skills at any level who just want to go home.”

Nick said, “Captain, we may want to raid tomorrow morning at dawn. These guys work late, and our best bet to nab all of them is early morning. I’ve got people at the federal level trying to get a search warrant, I may have to bring Immigration in, but I’m wondering if you’d provide perimeter security for our team, and if we need it, I’m hoping you could make a phone call to a local prosecutor on our behalf, and we’d go in under your flag. It’s not a hard bust, a kick-ass raid. I don’t want to disturb or harass these guys, but I need to contain them totally, and run a careful search for a possible terrorist suspect of Filipino heritage. This seems like our best possibility for apprehending him, if he’s there.”

“Sure,” said the commander. “Happy to.”

“I’m going to give you over to Special Agent Matthews,” Nick said, “for further coordination and logistical requirements.”

He handed the phone off.

“Okay,” he said, “Swagger and I are going to drive out there discreetly and take a look. You guys get on with the planning; again, let me emphasize, this is about containment. I don’t want any battering rams or flash-bangs, I don’t want any SWAT monkey suits or MP5s and Ninja Commando Force 9 bullshit. I want a lot of people in civilian clothes, wearing comfortable shoes and FBI raid jackets, I want to flood that zone, I want it all to go smooth and quiet and I don’t want any of these subjects to have cause to complain of police harassment, is that clear?”

PIKESVILLE, MARYLAND

THE 1200 BLOCK OF CRENSHAW AVENUE

0130 HOURS

Bob and Nick sat in Nick’s government-issue Crown Victoria, across the street and four houses down from the big dwelling at 1216, which just sat there in Gothic splendor, a many-turreted old beast of a house that had to have been built by a jeweler or a dry-cleaning magnate of the century before. Trees overhung the streets, and the houses, all of them big and most of them dark, were smothered in landscaping-though it was shabby and overgrown, as the original owners, with their American dream of success, had long since moved on, and the inheritors didn’t pay as much attention to the details. It was actually only a few minutes’ drive from the FBI office via a one-exit trek on the beltway. But Bob didn’t like sitting there.

“I don’t advise parking here.”

“I want to see if there are any surprises. We have the house plan, we have satellite photos from National Reconnaissance satellites, but I want to make sure no doors or windows are boarded up, or there are any new entrances. Relax. It’s dark.”

Nick was examining the property through his own night vision binoculars, and taking notes.

“This guy has radar for aggression,” said Bob. “That’s how he’s stayed alive so long. If he’s in the house, he’ll note that we pulled up and nobody left the car. Maybe he’s got binocs on us right now.”

“Okay, okay,” said Nick, “almost done.”

“Suppose one of ’em comes home about now and sees the two white guys in the big black sedan spying and tells the others.”

“I hear you, I hear you,” said Nick. “All right, I’m going to pull out, pass the house, turn right on Dickens, and you run a check through these from that side. I’ll go slow.”

“Don’t go slow,” said Bob. “He’ll notice if you go slow. He notices shit like that. He’s a sniper.”

“You mentioned ‘radar for aggression.’ You’ve got it too, I know. Some buried ESP synapse left over from reptile days. All you tactical people have it. Maybe that’s why you become tactical people. But do you feel anything now? You seem jumpy and I’ve never seen you jumpy.”

“I’m worried that this ain’t right. It’s a big gamble.”

“It’s smaller than it seems,” Nick said. “If he’s here, ball game over, we win the Oscar, our class gets the Bible. If he’s not, so what? It’s not as if we’re overcommitting to this. I’m not taking resources that would otherwise be deployed as countersnipers tomorrow. The same number of guys will be on the street. What I’m doing, frankly, is a little management-level ass covering, that’s all. I have to work it hard so no one sitting on the fifth floor with four martinis in him says, ‘Oh, if only you’d done that.”

Bob was quiet as Nick pulled out. The car glided down the street, took the right, and Bob got a good ambient-light view of the southern and the western, that is, the right side and the rear of 1216, seeing nothing out of the usual, no movement, nothing but a big old house dozing in the night, probably looking better because its shabbiness was veiled by the darkness.

“Okay,” Nick said as the car pulled away, “now tell me why you’re really jumpy. What came up on the Swagger aggression radar?”

“Ahh,” said Bob, “you FBI guys, you don’t miss a damned trick, do you?”

“I’m Dick Tracy, didn’t you see my picture on the lunch box in the cabinet?”

“Well, it ain’t nothing,” said Bob. “It’s just… something.”

“Nothing, but something. Yeah, I get it. That’s perfectly clear.”

“Don’t know what. Like a hair tickling me somewhere, like somewhere someone’s watching me. Maybe it’s because I’m so goddamned tired and a little over a week ago I got whacked in the head by a flying desk. I got nothing I can point at and say, now, yessiree, that’s it, that’s the thing. It’s just an oozy feeling I used to get in the bush when bad hombres moved in. I’d say it’s my imagination, except I don’t got no imagination.”

“You need some rest.”

FBI RAID TEAM

SECURITY HEADQUARTERS TO 1216 CRENSHAW

0530 HOURS

He got some rest, three hours’ worth, on the SAIC’s couch. He was awake before they came for him, and stepped into general chaos. He followed the swell of personnel down the hall to the elevator, down that to the entrance to the parking lot where, as if lit for the movies and oh so SWAT-team dramatic, the raid was staging. Special agents buckled on body armor, then pulled raid jackets with FBI emblazoned in huge yellow letters across the back. Most wore jeans, athletic shoes or assault boots, carried their Glocks in cowboy-cool tactical rigs that held them to midthigh, below the extension of the body armor beneath the waist. Everyone had a radio and the air was alive with the crackle of static as call signs and nets were checked. Nick talked earnestly to Matthews, his raid commander, and when it seemed everybody was done being dramatic, Matthews turned, gave the whirlybird rotation with his fingers, meaning “Guns up,” and everybody piled into the six SUVs.

Matthews led, followed by the five SUVs, and last came Bob and Nick in Nick’s sedan. No need for flashing lights at this time of morning, as Beltway traffic was nonexistent. To the east, over downtown, just the tiniest glaze of a pinkish blur colored the sky. The parade roared its one-exit hop, got off on Reisterstown Road, and turned inward toward the city. Now the red-blue dance of the flashing lights began, as the few motorists on Reisterstown yielded to the federal convoy as it blazed through the three stoplights, and into what comprised “center-city” Pikesville, and at the corner of Reisterstown and Crenshaw turned the hard right.

Bob could hear the radio chatter between the feds and the on-scene county police locals.

“Baker-Six-five, this is Twelve-Oscar, we are inbound.”

“Roger, Twelve-Oscar.”

“Be there in a minute or so.”

“We are set to cover your perimeter, Twelve-Oscar. Area is cordoned off.”

“Very good and appreciated, Baker-Six-five.”

Dramatic spurts of color splashed against the trees and houses as the convoy, lights flashing, passed down the corridor of old big houses that was Crenshaw, and came at last to the corner house, 1216, where they halted, then turned spotlights inward to illuminate every turret and gable of the old place. Bob watched as the raid theater continued.

The men piled out, no long guns among them, but hands resting comfortably on or near their holstered Glocks, and went to assigned doors and windows, making egress impossible. That took a minute, as the federal team was well trained.

“One, in position.”

“Two, I’m set.”

“Three? Three, where are you?”

“Sorry, Command, my radio switched off as I was pulling it from the holster. I am in position.”

“Four, I’m ready too.”

“Okay, let’s open her up.”

With that, Matthews, carrying a radio unit but no sidearm and two other agents with drawn pistols but nothing exotic, walked swiftly up the front walk, and pounded.

And pounded.

And pounded.

“Oh, shit,” said Nick. “I wonder what’s wrong.”

Matthews tried the door. It opened to his turn of the knob.

He disappeared inside and came out in a few minutes. He yelled something to the other men, who started to put away their pistols and file into the house. Then Matthews walked straight to Nick. His face was grave.

“I don’t like the looks of this one fucking bit,” said Nick.

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

TWO BLOCKS FROM FBI HQ

WOODLAWN

1230 HOURS

THE PREVIOUS DAY

See,” explained Crackers the Clown, “I’m just not that into this. I’m an operator, a rock star, an action-Jackson guy. I blow shit up and kill people. I learned from the best.”

“You learned from Soldier of Fortune magazine,” said Mick.

“Mick, no, I wasn’t SEAL or DELTA but I was forces, just like you. And I did some shit for an outfit I can’t talk about.”

“The Boy Scouts of America,” said Tony Z. “He got his merit badge in Advanced Paintball.”

Laughter.

“Hey, paintball’s tough. Tougher than Airsoft!”

More laughter. The three of them sat in their by now rather-well-lived-in Explorer. Ahead, the only large building in this zone of cottage industry and light manufacturing, the one whose three floors comprised the Baltimore FBI office, loomed against the sky. As it was somewhat creamy in complexion, though undistinguished architecturally, it was easily visible and its burning lights made it all the simpler to mark.

“I don’t like this shit either,” said Mick. “I don’t like sitting on my ass like some vice cop outside a Korean massage parlor, waiting for a politician to show up. Give me a nice torture interrogation or a shot at laser-designating a Sadr militia warehouse for the Mavericks, that’s my preference. I also really like that big gun and watching them toss when you knock them off at a mile.”

“That’s so cool,” said Tony Z. “I like that part too.”

“But we are stuck on this sucker until we make it go away,” said Crackers.

“I think he has a morale crisis,” said Z. “I’d make an appointment with him for the chaplain.”

“My morale improves with pussy. Any suggestions?”

“We kill this guy, and go someplace with a lot of pussy.”

“You have muscles, so you get chicks who give it out easy,” said Crackers.

“Plus, you’re a psychopath, a great advantage in fucking chicks. Me, I’m a rather nice guy and I always empathize with them. They like me. They don’t want to suck my cock, they want to tell me about their mothers. I have to go someplace special.”

“By ‘special’ he means ‘whorehouse.’”

“Can I help it if I’m not sexually competitive?” said Crackers. “I thought going forces would get me laid more, but so far it hasn’t panned out that way.”

“I thought that’s why you got married.”

“Funny, that hasn’t panned out sex-wise either.”

They laughed.

“Okay,” said Tony Z, his eyes drawn to the BlackBerry in his hands, “got movement.”

Crackers made a doodley sound along the lines of the 7th Cavalry’s famous “charge” bugle call. All three men tried to shake off the dreariness that had turned them to putty over the last few hours.

Mick, behind the wheel, started the SUV and nudged it out into the road. He did not turn on the lights.

Up ahead, advanced by its own blazing headlights, a sedan exited the FBI parking lot and turned right, then left, toward the close-by beltway entrance.

“He’s in that car,” said Tony. “I have him clear.”

“Have they sent him out to get doughnuts, I wonder,” said Crackers.

“Not likely,” said Mick.

They had worked the following technique out well, having learned to keep Swagger in any car within a mile and a half, but not within a mile. Maybe a little closer during daylight, but now, late at night, Mick knew to keep his distance. Only when he verified that Swagger’s car had hit the beltway did he go to his own headlights and approach the giant roadway superstructure at a modest pace. He went up the ramp, merged into a very thin traffic stream, and progressed at just under fifty as the faster vehicles buzzed by on his left.

“One exit,” said Z. “Well, two if you count 795 West, but one actual city exit. Reisterstown Road.”

Mick followed the directions, not really seeing the ratty neighborhood into which the ramp to Reisterstown Road deposited him but rather locked hard into the hunt.

“He’s turning right, third street past Old Court.”

They counted too. Mick doused his lights before the turn so that a psychic voodoo sniper mojo motherfucker like Swagger wouldn’t pick up on the sudden disappearance of light behind him, found Crenshaw, and turned. He followed the roadway through big, softly quiet houses, and eased to the curb two blocks behind the car in which Bob and whoever had parked.

“Now what the fuck is this?” Crackers asked.

“Maybe it’s your whorehouse. Maybe the great Bob Lee Swagger has a bone on, and he’s come down here to Chinatown to get it off. Clarifies the thinking.”

“I’ll take sloppy seconds, no problem,” said Crackers. He didn’t mean it as a joke.

“Okay,” said Mick, “Crackers, on the night vision, you stay low, you move ahead, you find solid cover, I’m guessing between cars, you set up and you keep them in surveillance.”

“Yo,” said Crackers, “action.”

He slipped out.

Mick watched the man, one of those scrawny, thin types with a lot of surprising strength in his narrow arms, slip down the road, low, under the cover of parked cars. A few minutes passed.

“Okay,” came the call over the radio, “I got him in the car, they’re just eyeballing this big corner house.”

“Can you get me an address?”

“Ah, let’s see, let’s see, yeah, 1216, 1216 Crenshaw.”

“What is it?”

“Big dark house, that’s all.”

“Great. Otherwise…?”

“They’re eyeballing, they’re talking, that’s all.”

“Okay, hold tight.”

Mick picked up the satellite phone, sent the call out.

“This better be good, Bogier,” said a groggily irritated MacGyver.

“Don’t know why, but Swagger and an FBI guy are now parked outside a house in a town called, ah, Pikesville. Address is 1216 Crenshaw. But there’s no team here, it’s not a raid or even a real recon. They’re just, you know, studying on it.”

“Crenshaw, 1216. Okay, hang tight.”

“This has just developed, I don’t know how long they’ll be here.”

“I will get back as fast as the system allows,” said MacGyver, somewhat annoyed.

Mick sat back, thinking.

Has he found Cruz? Is Cruz in the house? Why would they be here? But if he’s here, why don’t they have a raid team? Why aren’t they pouring in?

“Whoa, now they’re pulling out. Starting up, heading out.”

“What do we do?” Tony asked.

“Fuck if I know,” said Mick. His head ached. He hadn’t been to the gym in a week. Z and Crackers were driving him nuts. He could feel his body melting along with his mind. He wanted it over. This was the worst shit. He didn’t sign up for this cop shit. He was Special Forces, cross-trained in sniper and demolitions, plus he knew a good bit about radio. He had worked all over the world and here he was sitting in-

“Miiiiccccckkkk,” said Tony, slowly.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t jerk, don’t move fast, but I got a guy across the street, walking toward the house. Or maybe to another house. But he’s an Asian guy, I think, thin, strong, looks sniper to me.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Mick, understanding in a flash why the feds hadn’t raided.

They didn’t know if he was in there either. And if he wasn’t but might be, and they raided now, they’d blow that deal. So they’d hit the place at dawn, figuring the stragglers might come into the house all night, whatever it was. The image of drunken college kids, from any of the six or so schools he’d been kicked out of, came to his mind. From there the connection was easy to Alabama, the big one. Number one recruit, best high school linebacker in history. Great six games, then Auburn, a legendary game, nine solo tackles. Got drunk. Mary Christian DeLaux, the only girl he’d ever loved. The yellow Corvette from Mr. Bevington, the Chevy dealer. Bevy’s Chevys, biggest outlet in town. How ’bout a ’Vette, Rhett? The crash. He tried to push it away. He thought it was gone. But it wasn’t. The word “dormitory” flashed to him from some file deep in his cerebellum.

He turned his head just a quarter of a degree, and a man, thirty-five feet away, directly across the street, walking forward briskly, came into view. In profile he was Asian with a thick bush of stiff hair, very muscular, maybe a little tall, in jeans and a sweatshirt. He gave no sign of noting two men sitting in an SUV across the street; he was intent on his progress, just churning ahead.

But, goddamn, Mick hadn’t gotten a good look at the face.

He picked up the radio unit.

“Guy coming, your five o’clock, on sidewalk, I need you to get a good visual on his face with night vision, but don’t give your position up. Move real slow.”

“Got it,” said Crackers.

They watched. The walker passed the end of the row of cars in the street, diverted across the lawn, opened the unlocked door of 1216, and disappeared. No light came on, he didn’t go to the kitchen for a beer, or kibbitz with his frat brothers in the TV room. There was no TV room, no frat brothers, just darkness.

Crackers appeared in his car window.

“You get him?”

“Yeah. Asian, thirties, muscular, tall, thick hair.”

“Could he be forties? Cruz is forty-two.”

“Hey, I’m no expert. They don’t age like we do. He could be thirty, he could be sixty.”

Mick rooted around, came up with a briefcase, pulled it open, and pulled out a xerox of a photo of a marine sergeant in dress blues in a formal promotion shot. But the duplication had eroded its subtleties and it flowed weirdly toward the generic.

“That him?”

“Hell, Mick,” said Crackers. “It could be. I couldn’t say for sure.”

“God, I wish I’d hear from that motherfucker MacGyver. Where is he when you need him? Look again, goddamnit, tell me it’s him.”

Crackers examined the flimsy photo first in the dark, then in a bright cone of illumination from his SureFire. “Mick, maybe. I suppose. You know, some of them have distinctive faces, round, square, fierce, dumb, fat, thin, whatever. This guy looks like all of ’em, with some white thrown in.”

“Mick, let’s roust ’em,” said Tony Z. “Do it fast. If he’s there, we pop him, we leave. They won’t know what hit them. The fucking door isn’t even locked.”

“That’ll never work,” said Crackers. “We don’t know how many there are, how do we control ’em, we don’t have cuffs or blindfolds, we don’t have balaclavas, we leave prints, man, that is all fucked up. Plus, even if we have him full frontal in the flashlight, how can we be sure it’s him? We just won’t know.”

“Okay, junior,” said Tony, too intensely, “what’s your bright idea?”

“Sit, wait, and see.”

“Negative,” said Mick. “The feds may raid at any second, and when that happens, if he’s there, we have failed, we are screwed, all hell breaks loose.”

Both the team boys were silent.

“I don’t like it either,” said Mick. “But I’m not here because I like it and neither are you. This is what we do. The hard thing. For the right reasons. It sucks, but there you have it. I am open to suggestions for the next five seconds.”

Silence.

“Look at it this way,” said Mick. “You call in artillery, you get a coordinate wrong, a shell lands in a village. Too bad. Our war, their village. You don’t feel good about it, but that’s the price of doing business. Collateral is to be expected. We’ve all seen it.”

“Mick, I don’t know if I can do it,” said Tony Z.

“Sure you can,” said Mick. “You’re a cowboy. You’re a trooper. You’re a one hundred percent life-taking, throat-slitting, mother-fucking rockin’, rollin’ operator, baddest of the bad, meanest of the mean. You’re Ming the Merciless, got it? How ’bout you, laughing boy? I know you’re in.”

“I don’t like it either, Mick.”

“It ain’t about liking,” said Mick. “It’s about doing. Give me the fucking night vision. I’m in the lead, I’m on the gun.”

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

1216 CRENSHAW

PIKESVILLE, MARYLAND

0415 HOURS

Nobody liked it. It wasn’t a thing a soldier would ever brag about. It involved no heroics at all, just suppressed pistols. Mick did all the killing. They slipped into the house, Crackers in the lead with the night vision monocular. Mick just behind, with an untraceable M9 Beretta and a Gemtech suppressor. No kicking in doors, no shouting, nothing. They crept to the first floor and began to edge down the hallway, coming to a bedroom. Crackers pushed the door in, Tony Z, also with a suppressed M9, covered the six o’clock. Mick stepped in, target acquired, and fired.

One or two stirred when Mick hit them. The impacts puffed up little supertime geysers of fabric debris, maybe some blood misting into spray in the force of the considerable subsonic velocity. Mick shot for midbody. Nobody screamed. There were no scenes. Room to room to room. Crackers cupped his hand right at the breech of the weapon, so that each ejected casing struck his palm and was deflected downward. After the shooting in that chamber was finished, he scooped them all up. He also counted rounds. And he handed Mick a new mag. Room to room, floor to floor. The smell of men living together, of showers used a lot, of cigarette smoke. The sound of the heavy breathing in sleep.

One man looked up and Mick shot him in the face. He got to see the details, though not in Technicolor but in the muted tones of ambient light, by which the blood that coursed voluminously from the hole in the cheekbone was dead black.

It didn’t take long.

“You get ’em all?” Mick asked.

“You fired twenty-two times. I have twenty-two shell casings,” said Crackers.

“Okay, let’s extract.”

They left the house and walked to the car. Across the street, a smear of dawn was beginning to ooze across the sky. The air outside smelled fresh and clean.

“You drive,” Mick told Crackers.

“Got it, boss.”

“I feel like shit,” said Tony Z.

“Guess what, nobody cares what you feel like,” said Mick. “You did your job. That’s the important thing.”

CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION

1216 CRENSHAW

PIKESVILLE, MARYLAND

1115 HOURS

Most of the drama was over, though forensic technicians from both the Bureau and the Maryland State Police were still working inside the house. The bodies, ID’d and photographed in situ, had been moved to the morgue. Nick had released most of his team to change, chill, and then move to duty stations in Mount Vernon for that 2 P.M. to 5 P.M. ordeal. The convoy from DC into Baltimore was about to leave, but its trek from one city to the other was in Secret Service’s bailiwick, so Nick hadn’t yet begun to focus on the real business of the day.

He leaned against his sedan fender, across the street from 1216, numbly watching the action at the big house, whose lawn was jammed with law enforcement vehicles and clots of Baltimore county detectives smoking, joking, joshing as they broke it down. Meanwhile everything seemed draped with yellow crime scene tape, like a Christmas celebration. The press was cordoned off down the block and there was more activity there, with all the on-the-scene standups going on, than here.

Next to him, Swagger also leaned, a dull look on his face. He had the thousand-yard stare of the man who’d seen too much.

An agent came up to Nick.

“The last ID came through,” he said.

“And?”

“Dionysus Agbuya, thirty-nine, born in Samar, the Philippines. Employed at Johnny Yang’s Chinese Delight in Columbia, dishwasher, never missed a day of work. That’s it.”

“No Ray Cruz?”

“Not on the prelims. Maybe there’s a fake ID in there, but I don’t think so, Nick. One guy maybe looks-looked-a little like him. Maybe they made that one and thought they had a go.”

“Or maybe one of them hadn’t paid off the Manila syndicate that got him into the country. And this was a message it was sending to its other clients. You pay us first, then your family.”

“Maybe, Nick.”

“Thanks, Charlie. Didn’t mean to snap.”

“It’s okay, Nick. It’s been a long night for all of us.”

Nick took a sip of coffee, found it had cooled beyond the drinkable stage, and flung it out on the pavement.

Swagger said, “This is all wrong.”

“Murder is always wrong.”

“No, I mean the way this is happening. There’s a leak. In your outfit, in Susan’s, somewhere in the Bureau. These assholes keep showing up on us.”

“We don’t know that. It looks that way, but we don’t know it.”

“Come on, Nick. Everywhere I go, they’re there, either ahead or a little after. They’re pros. Barrett.50s, suppressed 9s, someone even has the thought to collect the brass.”

“Maybe they were using revolvers.”

“You can’t suppress a revolver. All the shooting, no noise complaints, had to be suppressed fire. And you wouldn’t do a job like this if you had to fumble through revolver reloads in the dark. This was a kill team. They’d done it before, they knew what they were doing, and they were trying to put down Ray Cruz. They were the same boys who blew up the Steel Brigade Armory offices in Danielstown, South Carolina. And then as now they had a fucking tip-off. We weren’t followed, not through dark city streets at night with no other traffic on the road. We’d have seen it, just as I’d have seen it on dark country roads ten days ago.”

“It’s fabulous stuff, just what I’ve come to expect from you. You’re operating on a level way beyond what I’ve got. That’s your job. But I have to be practical and responsible. That’s my job. We have to collect, catalog, analyze evidence before we proceed to conclusions. We picked up some forensic markers. When the shooter slid through one of the doors, he brushed it with his head, left sweat traces. We’ll run that, and then, maybe-”

“There’s only one conclusion. Well, two. You have a leak. And I’m an asshole for coming up with some bullshit thing that got nine guys killed for absolutely nothing.”

“You’re an asshole because that’s your nature. You can’t help that. All you hard macho door kickers and life takers are assholes. Your thinking was A-one, solid, deductive, top-of-the-line law enforcement creativity. I told you, you have the gift. Nothing wrong with it. Don’t hold it against yourself. As for the ‘leak’ stuff, the time element argues against it. We hadn’t even heard of this house until eight o’clock last night. The requests for subpoenas, the reports to higher headquarters, all that stuff didn’t go out until much later. If something did get out or if there was a mole, how’d the other team put it together so fast? Man, that would be footwork.”

“The team is here, all set, with all the tools of the trade. All they needed was an address.”

“I say again, not likely. Nobody’s that good. They had to follow us, know we’d left-”

“They couldn’t have followed us. We’d have seen them.”

“You yourself ‘felt’ something last night. You have the operator’s weird nerve system that’s unusually tuned to aggression. They had to follow us.”

“Okay, then. Satellite. That’s the only way. If it’s satellite, then it’s CIA. CIA wants Ray Cruz dead before he tells his story and a bunch of people are assigned to look into it. CIA wants Ibrahim Zarzi to be the next president of Afghanistan, no questions asked, forget all that ‘Beheader’ stuff. He’s our man in Kabul. And CIA will want to protect him, even if it means targeting our own guy.”

Nick ceased being Nick. Instead, he became an assistant director of the FBI, in full dignity and severity, posture improved, face drawn into upper-Bureau solemnity.

“I am not making accusations against the CIA,” he said in policy-announcement voice, “until we have something to go on other than your theories. Going against the CIA means opening a big goddamn can of worms, and once the worms are out, you may never get them back in. We have to see where the evidence takes us. There aren’t any shortcuts.”

He looked at his watch and the old Nick came back.

“Come on, cowboy guy. We’re due on station downtown. In all this terrible bullshit, we’re forgetting: Ray Cruz is still out there.”

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

JUST OUTSIDE THE SHOOT ZONE

THE 900 BLOCK OF MARYLAND AVENUE

MOUNT VERNON DISTRICT

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

1650 HOURS

The boys had the blahs. They sat grumpily, without talking. Where was the banter, the wit, the snappy retorts, the fabulous esprit de corps of Special Forces operators? Wherever it was, it wasn’t here today.

Mick was in the off-driver’s seat, his big foot on the dashboard as he sat back against the seat. Man, he could use some shut-eye himself. This was, what, hour number forty-eight without sleep?

Crackers, in the backseat, said, “I am about to pass out.”

“If you do, I will kick your ass all the way to Washington. I need you on game, fully alert, concentrated. We don’t know what breaks next.”

“Easy for Superman to say. Superman has all the answers. Superman has no weaknesses, flaws, human foibles, neurotic conditions. But I am not Superman. I am Mere Mortal. And Mere Mortal needs to go to bed, sleep late, read the Sunday papers.”

“Drink some more coffee,” said Tony Z behind the wheel. The car was parked near a church with a red door and a steeple, one block west of Charles, that is, one block away from all the hubbub of the fabulous Ibrahim Zarzi’s visit to his brother’s restaurant, the Zabol, on Charles Street. From where they were-a block over, but with a parking lot’s emptiness granting a clear view of the shoot area-they could see the convoy of Secret Service Explorers parked in the street’s left lane, their blue-red gumball flashers spitting out blink-fast blasts of light, their windows darkened to hide the gunned-up agents just inside. Meanwhile the street was cordoned off by Baltimore cops; Secret Service, FBI, and news aviation orbited noisily in the ether a few thousand feet up, cops and Bureau boys in raid jackets with big FBI letters, snail cords leading to their ear units, and tactical holsters pinioned to midthigh were up and down the street, looking this way and that.

“The coffee lost its charm sometime yesterday. Anyway, he’ll never get in,” said Crackers. “If he did, he’d never get out. Which means he’d never go in in the first place. So I say we hit a motel and crash for a thousand or so hours.”

“Swagger’s still on the case, so we’re on the case,” said Mick.

He held the BlackBerry, and on its screen, with the map of Mount Vernon glowing as its template, a pulsing light that signified Swagger’s transponder responding to interrogative requests from satellite, blinked away brightly. The guy was less than a quarter mile away.

“He’s another Superman,” said Crackers.

They were low because the victim list from last night’s episode had just been released. Nine names, none of them being Ray Cruz’s. Nine guys taken out, no home run. A complete waste of energy and lives. Not a good day in professional-killer land.

Tony flashed his big tactical Suunto and read the time.

“It’s almost five,” he said. “This party’s breaking up. Where do we go?”

“We’ll stay with Swagger. When he beds down, we’ll bed down. He’s still our best-”

The satellite phone buzzed.

“Oh shit,” said Mick. “Now this guy is going to crap all over me for ten minutes. Man, when this is over, I would like to…” And he trailed off as he wearily hoisted the heavy communication device.

“Talk to me,” he said.

“Genius Bogier. You’ve heard, I assume. You missed him again.”

“Yeah.”

“You killed nine men who had nothing to do with anything.”

“No kids, no women though,” said Mick. “No suffering. It’s not like we tortured them.”

“How reassuring. What a humanitarian you are. Now tell me your thought process.”

Bogier went through the whole thing.

He lamely finished up with, “Sometimes you get the breaks, sometimes you don’t. Last night, we didn’t.”

“A massacre. No one authorized you to massacre anybody. When this is over, I am getting you out of the country ASAP and I don’t want you back for twenty-five years.”

“Hey, there’s no forensics on us. No witnesses. The pistol’s in a river. No DNA, no hair samples, no footprints. We wore rubber gloves. We were clean, we were professional. Nothing leads to us from our end. Your end I don’t know about.”

“There was some DNA and I hope yours isn’t on file somewhere.”

“It isn’t.”

“Memo: you always leave DNA. Always. Got it? My end is secure, don’t you worry about it. What’s the sitrep now?”

“We are off the shoot zone, but still on Swagger, who’s put himself about a hundred feet north of the restaurant. He’s just another street pair of eyes, that’s all. But I don’t think Cruz is going to show because this place is flooded. He couldn’t get in, he couldn’t get out. We’re just waiting. When Swagger goes off duty, we need to crash. We’re on our third day without sleep, which isn’t helping matters any.”

“Good idea. And here’s a little something to improve your morale. Your decision? To hit those people. It was the right decision. It was a good risk. I don’t think it cost us anything. I’m sorry about the collateral too, but it’s a tough-luck world. As I say, after action, you are so gone no one will ever know you existed.”

“We want a beach, a gym, lots of chicks and dope, a really profoundly corrupt law enforcement establishment, and indoor plumbing.”

“You want Gilligan’s Island with porn stars. Really an original fantasy. I can’t guarantee the plumbing. You stay on Swagger, and we all believe he will lead you to-”

“Oh fuck,” interrupted Mick. “I hear shooting!”

THE SHOOT ZONE

THE 800 BLOCK OF NORTH CHARLES

MOUNT VERNON DISTRICT

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

1654 HOURS

Getting him in was a bitch. Getting him out would be a bitch and a half because it took place after everyone had been standing around collecting blood in their feet for three grim hours.

Swagger felt like a ceremonial soldier at some state funeral for a distinguished old general. He stood, not at attention but in the uniform of the day-FBI raid jacket over shirt and tie, black cargo pants bloused into black tactical boots, a radio unit in his hand wired to his ear, along a street, doing nothing but yawning and watching. The only difference between him and the many other boys and girls thereabouts was the absence of a Glock.40 strapped to his thigh in a Nigel Ninja tac holster.

His sniper eyes darted about, looking for… well, what? A straight line where there shouldn’t be one? No, that bromide didn’t work in a city full of straight lines. The glint of sun off a lens? Cruz was too advanced for that. A figure on a skyline? A chopper would catch a rooftop shooter before any ground Joe would make the ID. A speeding black 1937 Cadillac with a Cutts compensator on a Colt tommy gun muzzle sticking out the back window? That made as much sense as anything else. He just watched, waited, looked around, eyes lighting on nothing, more or less committed to the single idea of movement, because if Ray Cruz moved, he’d move fast, and that might be the only way you could spot him, and then only if you happened to be looking at the small section of the universe through which he moved at the precise moment. But try as he could, he could not spot an uncovered area, that is, an area not already on someone’s regularly assigned observation schedule.

“Boring, huh?” said Nick, standing next to him.

“Not fun,” he said.

“I could use some sleep myself. I’m hoping to let everyone go when this guy-”

“BREAK-BREAK, ALL STATIONS, COMING OUT, COMING OUT!”

The Secret Service incident commander from inside the restaurant alerted all that the moment of maximum risk was about to occur, as the principal was about to move to the limo and would be on the street and vulnerable for a few seconds. If Ray was here, this was when he would act, unless he had an RPG capable of blowing through armored limo glass, unlikely.

Along the street, all the drifting watchers tightened up, reasserted control over their dozing nervous systems, put hands on pistols, blinked crud from eyes, went to balls of feet for a few minutes of maximum concentration. Above, the choppers came down a few hundred feet, their rotor wash stirring up flecks of grit from the rooftops they were putting the binocs to, all the Secret Service sniper teams in various designated windows locking hands to comb, cheeks to stock, eyes to scope for serious examination of their shooting areas.

Bob sensed, rather than saw, the flurry of motion as Zarzi, his brother, two children, and about ten Secret Service agents and bodyguards spilled from the restaurant in a sloppy formation, the two brothers chatting animatedly, as if none of this security drama were surrounding them. Ibrahim, of course, had to show off. He dawdled in plain sight, holding the hands of two of the younger children, laughing at old memories of childhood with his brother Asa. He refused to move, out of some polo athlete’s macho instinct by which he dared the universe to destroy him if it had the nerve, while around him the Secret Service people ground molars to powder, looked feverishly this way and that for signs of movement or action, saw only the pedestrian and the banal, the expected, the normal, the dreary: a homeless man far down one block, a flock of pigeons on the park lawn, a hip-looking couple across the street, a garbage truck pulling out of an alley in the next block, a cab on a cross street, nothing to-

Bob thought: Wrong. Something wrong. What is wrong with this picture? What is-

Jesus Christ, in thoughts so fast they defied the words that tried to catch up with them, what the fuck is that garbage truck doing there?

BACK ALLEY

JUST OFF THE SHOOT ZONE

THE 1300 BLOCK OF ST. PAUL STREET

MOUNT VERNON DISTRICT

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

1558 HOURS

Romy Dawkins lifted the can to hoist it into 144’s dumper bin, and that’s when he saw him.

“Hey,” he called to Larry and Antwan, “hey, there’s a guy here.”

The man lay behind the row of cans, facedown, evidently passed out or dead.

Antwan came over, and then Larry climbed down from the cab. As crew supervisor and driver of the big truck, this was not welcome news. They still had half the route to go, there was some big traffic tie-up in the blocks ahead, and now they had to deal with a drunk.

“Fuck,” he said. “Kick ’im, see if it gets him up.”

Antwan drove a heavy boot into the figure, who groaned, stirred, then settled back.

“He’s out, boss,” said Antwan.

“Okay,” said Larry, “nothing we can do. I’ll call the cops, and we go on. We got a route to finish.”

“He could-”

“Let the cops worry about it,” said Larry. “It’s their job.”

At that point, the collapsed man rolled over. He held a dark automatic pistol in one hand.

“Okay,” he said, “I will hurt you if I have to, but that’s not the point. You do what I say, you get out clean. You fight me, you go home in a box.”

He was sort of Asian, semi-Asian you might say, with no accent whatsoever, very hard, sharp dark eyes and a demeanor that suggested he meant what he said. He connected with a lot of kung fu and Hong Kong shoot-’em-ups most of the trashmen had seen on DVD. He looked like Chow Yun-Fat in The Killer, only for real and really pissed off.

“You guys, you haulers, you drop to your knees, fast, come on, fast! You, driver, assume the position against the fender.”

All obeyed.

“Never heard of no garbage truck robbery before,” said Antwan. “You must be one dumb motherfucker you think you gettin’ any change off us.”

“Just chill, trashman,” said the Chinaman.

He knelt and deftly looped a set of flex-cuffs-high-strength, plastic, disposable handcuffs-around each set of big wrists. With a yank, he tightened both of them.

“Ouch,” said Romy. “Too fucking tight.”

“You wanna be tied up or dead, big guy? Okay, get over here,” he said, gesturing with the pistol. He led the three of them to the rear of the truck.

“You two, you climb into the scoop, you lay flat, you don’t breathe, you don’t shout, you don’t yell, nothing. You give me up and before I go, I’ll take you down. Don’t disappoint me, don’t disappoint your widows and orphans.”

Larry the driver helped the bound trashmen into the scoop, which was big enough to conceal the two.

“Don’t fall in love and come out of this engaged,” said the gunman.

“Motherfucker,” said Antwan.

“Throw some shit on them, Larry.”

Larry lifted a can and shook its contents over the two bodies.

“Larry, man, that’s rank, goddamnit,” Antwan protested.

“Okay, Larry, into the truck. You’re going to turn left, hit St. Paul, go right, pass beyond Eager and Read, and turn right in the alley before Madison.”

“Man, they got all that blocked off.”

“Not for this crate they don’t. And if a cop stops you, I know you can talk your way by him.”

Larry got into the truck cab, while the gunman, keeping him covered, moved around, came in the other door, and settled low in the well under the dashboard.

“Chinaman,” said Larry, “this is all fucked up. This is going to cost me my job.”

“You tell ’em I had you at gunpoint and, as a matter of fact, I do have you at gunpoint. You do what I say. This isn’t about you. You’re just a little part of it.”

Larry threw the big truck in gear, ground down the alleyway to his cross street, turned left, then right at St. Paul.

“You’re just a garbageman doing your job. Keep your face still. I can read it like a paperback and you don’t want to get hurt over nothing that concerns you. Believe me, this is not worth dying for unless you lost a son in Afghanistan.”

At the alleyway, Larry turned right, but halted at a policeman’s signal.

“Closed down, big guy,” the officer said. “Some security thing a block over.”

“Officer, I am so behind schedule. I ain’t going through, but I got to get in the alley, collect, then I’m backing out and getting on with my route. This traffic done messed me up bad, bro.”

“It’s not my problem,” said the cop.

“Five minutes,” said Larry. “No shit, then I’m out of here.”

The cop shook his head, seeing a conundrum that could only be solved by mercy. “Don’t nose out onto Charles,” he said. “You get yourself and me in big bad trouble.”

“Got it, Officer.”

Larry geared the big truck into motion, and it lurched, then began to creep forward over the cobblestones, between the looming profiles of old mansions turned into apartment houses, whose perspectives dampened the sunlight away.

“How far?” said Larry.

“Right to the edge of Charles Street. But don’t go out. Not yet.”

Larry eased forward a bit.

“Now what?”

“We wait.”

Helicopters gnashed overhead, their black shapes scooting across canyons between the buildings, and Larry, looking out, could see figures of policemen on roofs.

“What you waiting for?” Larry said.

“When the action starts, the birds will descend. As they descend, their pilots will be changing the pitch of the rotors. I’ll hear it. Then you roll this crate out another five feet, turn it off and put your hands through the wheel, and I’ll cuff you. You fuck me by gunning into the street, I will kill you and you would be dying for nothing on this earth that can be weighed or counted, you hear?”

“I hear you, man. Ain’t dying today, no way.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Man, them guys got a hell of a lot more guns than you, Chinaman.”

“Can’t be helped,” said the gunman.

“You gonna get so fucked up.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” said the gunman, and then even Larry heard the helicopter engines begin to alter the speed at which they churned out their message of fuel consumption, exhaust, and brute energy.

“Go, goddamnit,” said the Chinaman.

Larry eased out till his cab cleared the edge of the building. About two hundred yards to the right, he could see a convoy of black Explorers, blue-red light flashes blinking out from their interiors, before and aft a great black Lincoln limousine. A gaggle of people seemed to be emerging from the restaurant.

“Wrists,” said the Chinaman.

Larry put one wrist through the wheel and the other around it, felt the loop go over one, then the other, then yank tight as the Chinaman pulled hard on the flex-cuff strap that locked in place, even against the power of his strong arms.

Larry watched as the man shifted in the seat, reached under the old overcoat he had on, and rotated out what appeared to be a toy gun with a thick, short barrel. It had a telescope too, and appeared to be cinched somehow to the shoulder under the coat.

“You a fucking terrorist?” he asked.

“Not quite. Now shut up.”

Carefully the Chinaman braced himself, bringing his right leg up, crossing it and forcing it under the left leg, locking it tight, at the same time locking himself against the seat back. Larry understood that he was tightening himself up for a shot.

Holding the rifle in his right hand, he rolled down the window just halfway.

Quickly the rifle came up and Larry understood that he was in the presence of some kind of artist, for the move had the grace of an athlete, that sure manipulation of limbs and torso in liquid syncopation, and Larry knew that whatever he was aiming at was a dead man walking. It was Chow Yun-Fat.

But he didn’t shoot.

What the fuck, Larry thought. Conditioned by a popular culture that rode narratives to completion and left no gun unfired, he felt a secret urge slide into his bloodstream, along with a quart or so of chemicals. Shoot the motherfucker, he couldn’t help himself for thinking.

Swagger’s eyes saw nothing; he had a frozen moment. But then he saw some kind of blurry movement on the truck cab, took another second to relate it to his own knowledge and discern through his fading distance vision that the window had come halfway down, had another thought arrive so fast it came as a rebus, not a sentence: window half down means shot/window full down means curious watcher. Then forces he’d never figure out took over.

He threw himself hard against Nick, shoving the astonished FBI agent against a parked car, reaching simultaneously to the.40 Glock secured against Nick’s leg, nimbly popped the security latch, and pulled the gun skyward. He pulled the trigger five times fast.

“What the fuck?” said Nick.

“Gun, gun, gun,” screamed Bob, “over there, that garbage truck.”

But by that second, everything was lost in chaos, as the radios all shrieked and ten people started talking at once, signifying the confusion on the ground.

“Break-break, shots fired.”

“Principal down.”

“Call a goddamned ambulance.”

“Where is the fire coming from?”

“North, north, a burst of fire north, about a hundred feet up-”

“Negative, negative, that was an agent returning fire. I can’t see a sniper.”

“All units, all units, stand fast, go to glass, get me situation reports fast. What is story on principal, Ground One?”

“Fuck, it’s a mess, we got agents all over him, the kids are crying, I don’t see blood, but I can’t-”

“Did you take fire?”

“I don’t know, I can’t verify.”

“Somebody tell me what the fuck is happening. Air, any air, do you have a visual?”

“Negative, negative, I just see crazy shit around the principal, I see agents and cops racing toward him, I see no-”

Cops were thundering toward Nick and Swagger as well, drawn by the sound of the pistol. Nick held up his hands, waving them off, and went to the radio.

“This is King Four, Memphis, goddamnit,” he said. “My guy fired because he saw sniper activity, 700 block Charles, sited on the garbage truck that’s halfway out of the alley, get people there fast, be very careful, suspect is extremely dangerous, I say again, armed, extremely dangerous.”

“Principal is okay, there was no shot, we have no evidence of bullet damage, no sound of report.”

“Get people on the truck, get people on the truck.”

Bob relaxed, handed Nick the gun.

“They have no bullet damage,” Nick said, incredulously. “And no sonic. He didn’t get the shot off, because you grabbed my gun and started the parade.”

“Fuck,” said Bob, feeling a sudden terrible weariness flood his limbs, coupled with a need to sit down before his knees melted and pitched him onto the sidewalk. He staggered to the car, and set himself against the bumper. I am way too old for this shit, he thought.

“You saw it? You saw it? It must be two hundred yards away, for Christ’s sake.”

“I saw the truck move out, caught my eye. I saw the window come down, or I think I saw the window come-”

“All units, all units, we have principal in Charlie One, we are out of here, we are out of here, secure area.”

But by the time they got there, they found no sniper. They found a city sanitary crew flex-cuffed in its own garbage scoop and cab, they found an unconscious policeman judo-chopped by a lithe Asian martial arts expert but otherwise undamaged, except that his car was stolen. That vehicle was found one hour later, in East Baltimore, a neighborhood named Canton. But no one saw how it got there, there were no prints, and there was no sign of the sniper.

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

MOUNT VERNON DISTRICT

DOWNTOWN BALTIMORE

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

1830 HOURS

Bogier pressed it hard, but finally saw that nothing was gained by remaining on the scene.

He used the satellite phone to run his decision by Mr. MacGyver.

“We’re not doing any good here and we’re running totally on fumes. Swagger will be tied up for hours; he’s not going anywhere. We’re going to check into a motel, crash, and pick up Swagger tomorrow at the FBI HQ.”

“Are you sure, Bogier? Swagger has ways of-”

“It’s just CSI bullshit, without the chicks. Measuring, interviewing, collecting, all that cop stuff. The area’s a complete mess with downtown shut down. We’ll be in traffic for an hour even getting out of here.”

“What’s the latest?”

“I have nothing inside. I’m just listening to the news. Someone-Ray, we know-pointed a gun at Zarzi, but Swagger-I’m guessing it was Swagger-picked up on him and fired pistol shots at him, and the shots set off a Chinese fire drill. Ray never pulled down, Swagger missed, the cops went into crazy-town mode, sirens, ambulances, SWAT team, choppers, the whole nine yards. Somehow Ray got away in the confusion. He conked a cop and slipped out.”

“Shit.”

“So near, so far. He was just a few fucking blocks away from us. But who knew; we had to park where we could find parking.”

“I’d stay with Swagger.”

“Goddamnit, my people are about to collapse. Nothing will happen here for at least twelve more hours. Tomorrow will be press conference bullshit. You can watch it on Fox. I’ve got to get these guys some shut-eye. It’s my call, that’s how I’m calling it.”

“All right, all right, rack ’em out. Come back tomorrow with renewed zeal and exuberance, that renowned Bogier touch you’re so famous for.”

“You have to let us know if they cancel the Washington events. If they do, if there’s no Zarzi to bring Ray out, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“I’ll keep you informed,” said MacGyver, and with his normal arrogant rudeness hung up.

“What a prick,” Mick said. “Okay, let’s head to the ’burbs and sack out. We’ll be back on station 0630 tomorrow.”

“I’m so tired I wouldn’t know what to do if some bitch started sucking on my cock,” said Crackers the Clown, not as humor but as an earnest statement of fact.

“Well, you don’t have to worry because it ain’t about to happen. And we ain’t about to cap Ray Cruz either; he is one slippery little yellow bastard, I’ll say that.”

“I wonder why he didn’t,” said Tony Z. “First time I ever heard of him not shooting.”

BALTIMORE FBI HQ

WOODLAWN

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

2200 HOURS

He didn’t shoot because you scrambled the zone on him. He lost his sight picture because six Secret Service guys jumped on Zarzi. That’s why he didn’t shoot.”

“You’re not getting it,” said Swagger. “He’s much faster than that. I saw the window go down. I whacked you-”

“A little enthusiastically, I might add.”

The other agents in the meeting laughed through their own fatigue. They’d been on-site for hours after the incident, this after the raid in the morning. Everybody was ground down, the coffee was cold, the rats had already carted off the doughnuts, and the Snickers bars had ossified. They’d been going over it for eight hours, and yet no one had said anything intelligent.

“I grabbed the gun,” continued Bob, “I raised it, I fired. That whole thing goes at least three seconds. I’m old, I’m not fast anymore, I didn’t get a clean grip on the pistol, I had to fumble with the release button, I got it out, I got it up, then I fired. All that takes time. Three seconds. Minimum. Maybe more. What’s he doing in that time?”

“Waiting for the target to clear. There’s agents all over the place. He’s shooting into a crowd, he has to get a good sight pic on Zarzi. Zarzi never cleared, then the shit happens, he has the discipline, knows he doesn’t have a shot, realizes this one’s a bust, and beats it.”

“When we get videotape, I’m betting you’ll see that Zarzi was clear. He held when he could have wasted the guy. I know it.”

“There’s no evidence,” someone said. “It’s fine to just say, but there’s no evidence, so why even bring it up?”

Bob ignored the comment. “I don’t see no theory by which he don’t shoot. He’s fast, that’s what’s different. On target in a split second, perfect trigger control, it’s over in less than a second. Yet he had three, and never pulled. Very hard to figure.”

“You raise provocative points,” Nick said. “But maybe you have a natural empathy for the sniper. You want him to be running some game on us, as opposed to simply trying to kill his target out of some twisted sense of vengeance for Whiskey Two-Two, which he thinks was betrayed and targeted. I have to play your insights off against what the evidence says.”

Bob shook his head. He was blurred too, his thinking fuzzy, his reflexes gummy, his tongue tied up in his mouth.

“Okay,” Nick said, “I’m calling it. Get some sleep, everybody. Let the investigators continue to gather info, and the cops to look for Ray, fat chance. I want everybody on duty by 0630 tomorrow, we’ll go over this stuff and get it into a presentational order, I’m under great pressure from DC to hold a presser, so that’s scheduled at ten. Maybe something will break. Maybe Ray will turn himself in.”

The laughter was desultory.

“Nick, we’ve got solid IDs from the garbage crew guys. Are we going to go wide with the Cruz photo tomorrow?”

“I haven’t decided yet. If we do, then we have a thousand reporters digging into Ray Cruz and all that info just floods everything, it’s more bullshit between us and what we have to do. We don’t talk to anybody who hasn’t already been on 60 Minutes. We make him the most famous man in America and what do we get out of it? I don’t think it helps us find him, because he’s too clever. And it dumps a huge screen of smoke on everything. Let me run it by the Agency, see what their cool, giant, Martian intellects think of it. We may want to keep it quiet, hope we can make it go away without much more disclosure.”

The agents stood, began to file out.

Bob leaned close. “Sorry, I’m tired. Do you want me to can it with my doubts? I see it ain’t helping you much.”

“Nah, everybody knows you’re crazy. Plus, you’re the big hero. You get to do what you want. What you’re doing, questioning, prodding, bringing your unique skill set and IQ on to this stuff is very helpful, believe it or not. The kids on the team love you, so it keeps them working hard without complaining. It’s a win-win, but just don’t go mouthing off to any reporters.”

“I hate those bastards.”

“Get some sleep. You’re not Superman anymore.”

“Don’t tell no one, but I never was.”

TIMONIUM HOLIDAY INN

ROOM 233

JUST NORTH OF BALTIMORE

0430 HOURS

He slept the dark sleep of the dead, dreamless and heavy, gone far away from the world. Then a dream began to nudge him. It seemed that one of his hands was bound, he couldn’t move it, it stymied him and he twisted against it, beginning to come up through the various levels of consciousness and REM until he arrived hard at the insight that his hand was bound to the bed head-board and it then occurred to him that he was in fact awake and that he wasn’t alone.

“I’m in night vision,” a voice said softly. “I can see everything you do. Take the other hand out from under the covers and lay it out in front of you, wide open. Keep it there. Otherwise don’t move. I have a gun on you, but I don’t want to kill you. The bullet would probably bounce off, anyhow.”

Swagger knew the voice. It pulled him to full alertness.

“Cruz! How the hell did you-”

“I can get into and out of anyplace. I’m a Ninja assassin from the planet Pandora. I am the trees, the wind, the planet itself, white man. My face is blue.”

He laughed a bit, dryly, at his own twisted sense of humor.

“And I’ll ask the questions.”

“Man, you are crazy coming in here like this.”

“Just answer. What was with all those poor Filipinos who got wasted last night? Does that have a connect to this sordid little game?”

Bob said nothing.

“Come on, Gunny, I don’t have all night. Don’t make me use the blowtorch on you.”

“It was my fuck-up,” said Swagger, then explained briefly how it had happened.

“And the Bureau doesn’t see any tie-in?” Cruz asked.

“They’re not saying that. They’re saying no evidence.”

“They don’t want evidence. They don’t want to go into some cesspool of national security bullshit where a faction of CIA is trying to take out an American sniper team to save an Afghan scumbag from the headshot he so richly deserves, and the whole thing spins out of control in some kind of sick mission-creep phenomenon.”

“They say the guy is clean. They’ve gone over him a dozen times-”

“If he rises, they rise. That’s how it works. It’s politics and ambition, there, here, everywhere.”

“Cruz, maybe you’re overplaying it in your mind. The weight of combat operations, all them tours, the kills-”

“I saw a building in Qalat I’d just exited turned into a crater and thirty-one people thermobarically toasted. I saw Billy Skelton torn in two by some motherfucker on a Barrett.50. I saw Norm Chambers with a hole in him the size of a football.”

“You have too many people working against you.”

“As long as I’m on the loose, as long as you think I’m going to cash out the Beheader, you guys have to ask questions. The more questions you ask, the harder you look, the more likely it is to become unraveled. That’s my game. You want to stop me? Figure out what they’re pulling off with this guy Zarzi-”

“Everything you say sounds like you’re psycho about the Agency. You’re implying the Agency is after you. You should know, the Agency is cooperating with the Bureau. I’m working for an Agency officer I’ve known for years, and she’s smart, tough, fair, and decent. She wouldn’t be party to some scam that targeted our own people.”

He was totally aware that he had become Nick. Now he was the guy saying “no evidence” and “stuff like that doesn’t happen” and “it’s all subjective.” Yet the theater of the moment forced him into his supervisor’s shoes, because if he just dumbly agreed with Ray Cruz, where did that leave him? Not on this side of the law.

“Think about it,” Cruz responded. “At our level, we take out a double-0 license on a warlord. Off Two-Two goes. Halfway there we’re intercepted by contractors who classic-ambush our sorry asses. I discover they’ve been tracking me by satellite transmitter implanted in my SVD. I pull a switch on them and get away. I make it to Qalat, tell my people I’m setting up the shot as planned. I enter the building, then I depart the building, because I know somebody in the system is talking. And they knew which building. A fucking missile totals the building. Much more than a Hellfire.”

Now he became Susan, speaking for the Agency of mystery and endless games, with objectives so shrouded no man could view them. Again, a feeling of rootlessness hit him: if you could change perspectives so quickly, then who, really, were you?

“You don’t know it was a missile. Lots of things blow up in that part of the world. And if they wanted you to abort the mission, they could have simply ordered your battalion CO to issue the withdraw. The Agency has that kind of power. It’s a phone call, that’s all. You’re saying they hired contractors, ran an ambush in tribal territories, finally called in a missile shot, when they could have reached the same ending with a phone call. Sergeant, it doesn’t track.”

“Think harder, Swagger. That’s all I’ve been doing for six months. If they go through channels, through the leaky, penetrated, cheesy-security chain of command, then everybody in country knows the Agency’s got game with Zarzi, and pretty soon everybody everywhere knows. Maybe his own ex-friends behead him. Maybe the newspapers blow it all over the front page and his political future is shot. Langley couldn’t have that. To protect their boy, they had to double-tap Two-Two, and once it started, they couldn’t stop it. So whatever they’re doing, it involves Zarzi. Zarzi’s the key. That’s the end of the-”

He seemed to run out of gas. He, clearly, was exhausted as well.

Finally he said, “Either you stop him or I will.”

“Sergeant Cruz,” Swagger said, “I’ll make you a deal. You go underground. You don’t try no more attempts on Zarzi; I will see what I can see and learn what I can learn. I will get people to help and to talk. I’m their big hero now, I’ve got a tiny amount of juice. You check back with me, and I will have something for you. Just trust me a little. If I discover what you say is true, we will go in together, sniper all the way. Fair enough?”

Again he was aware, painfully, that the deal he offered Cruz he was basically offering himself as well. I will consider it. I will put it on the table and look into it, because in its way, it coincides with my own doubts as well.

The pause told him Cruz was listening.

“You have a few days,” said Cruz.

Bob felt a tug on his wrist and the flex-cuff was cut.

Then the sniper was gone.

ON THE ROAD

U.S. 215 EAST

1430 HOURS

THE NEXT DAY

Can we stop?” inquired Professor Khalid. “I have to go to the bathroom again.”

“Ach,” said Bilal, “you old men. You have to go to the bathroom all the time. We have a schedule.”

“But I can’t do what I must do pissed up. One does not martyr oneself with urine in the underpants.”

“Martyrdom is a week away,” said Bilal, “if this van doesn’t break down or I don’t go mad listening to you two argue all the time.”

“Do you not think,” said Dr. Faisal, “that the boys of Palestine feel a pee drop or two dampen their trousers before they detonate? Yet they detonate, nevertheless.”

“No,” said Professor Khalid. “They are too insane. They feel nothing. Besides, their penises are probably engorged at the prospects of sexual activity in the next world, just seconds away. No pee could pass. Their dicks are hard, their pants are dry, and ka-boom, imagine the surprise when the next world turns out to be a blind walk through eternal blackness, if even that. No breasts, no cunts, no oral enticement of the members, nothing.”

“He cannot say that!” screamed Dr. Faisal. “Apostate! Infidel! He must be beheaded, as the text states clearly! He cannot say such things!”

“Dr. Faisal, if I behead him, then the whole point of the trip is destroyed. You will not have your martyrdom, you will not have your many women.”

“He does not believe in the women thing,” said Professor Khalid. “He cannot let himself state it as such, but in his mind, he does not believe in anything any more than I do. He clings to his faith as a prop to get him through this last ordeal.”

“Is that Disneyland?” said Dr. Faisal suddenly.

“No,” said Bilal, “that is not Disneyland.”

“I would like to see Disneyland,” said Dr. Faisal.

“That is Las Vegas,” said Professor Khalid. “You can be forgiven for mixing up the two. It’s all the same America. Pleasure domes, games, stupid distractions, and the pursuit of ecstasy. No rigor or discipline anywhere. Spiritual torpor. Meanwhile, in his faith, it’s all memorizing bad poetry written seventeen hundred years ago by a psychotic charismatic high on drugs. That is what he thinks is revealed truth.”

“Tell the apostate,” said Dr. Faisal, “that his musings are pornographic. He denies the true faith and his afterlife will be a forever of torment and pain in flames on a spit. He should check 72:23 for a sense of what lies ahead.”

“Who would prepare such a dry, tough dish?” asked Khalid.

BALTIMORE FBI HQ

WOODLAWN

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

1135 HOURS

THE NEXT MORNING

The press conference had not gone well. The pressies seemed enraged that the man the Administration was touting as the Answer to the decade-long war in Afghanistan had almost been shot to death on a Baltimore street. Who was at fault? When it turned out to be the infamous Nick Memphis, who at one controversial point in his career had seemed to utterly foul up the investigation of the death of Joan Flanders and three other martyred sixties peace demonstrators, their anger only grew. Not even Susan Okada, who represented the CIA in this issue and was, incidentally, quite beautiful, could mollify the snide hostility in the questions, even as she expressed thanks from the Agency for the superb job the Bureau had done in protecting the principal. Even the Secret Service rep’s insistence that it was one FBI agent who had foiled the hit did little to quell the emotion. “The system worked,” he maintained. Tough sell. And when the only real news that could be announced was the bland insistence that “we have some suspects and some leads, but this appears to be a very tricky, dedicated individual,” it only pissed them off further.

By contrast, the press conference that Ibrahim Zarzi held in Washington the same day was some kind of lovefest. Declared a hero by the Administration for his refusal to yield to a murder attempt against his personage, he was magnificent: generous, brave, noble, handsome, sexy, cosmopolitan. He specifically singled out the nameless agent who had foiled the attempt, wishing that this brave man would come to visit him in Kabul and see the hospitality of the Afghan people. He expressed his admiration for both the FBI and the CIA for their dedication to his safety. He said he feared nothing, as Allah had given him a destiny and he would fulfill it or die trying. What was death? When so many of the brave have died, what was death? Yes, he agreed that it was indeed ironic that once he had been called “the Beheader” and now his survival was the key point of statecraft of the United States. He promised more for our two great countries, a future of peace and prosperity and so forth. He really laid it on. They really ate it up.

“Not that it matters,” Nick told his inner circle a short while later, “but if we don’t get this guy, I am so gone it’ll make your noses bleed. I will be lucky to end up in Alaska investigating the Fairbanks garbage scandal. But enough about me.”

The overnight reports contained no breakthroughs. The only new piece of information was trashman Larry Powers’s description of the rifle he’d briefly seen in the cab of the truck, a very short bolt-action rifle with a thick barrel and a thick scope.

Bob was asked at the meeting for his opinion on the weapon.

“I’m betting it was a sort of Remington bolt-action rifle, short action, maybe in.308 or even.243 or.22-250. So I’d advise the people in South Carolina to try to find records for a transfer of that rifle in that caliber to Colonel Chambers’s shop. I’m guessing he did the work, or his smith. I’m also thinking a new barrel with an integral suppressor rather than the ‘can’ type that screws on, again for the shorter size. I see a gun that’s mostly suppressor and action, without a lot of barrel or stock. He carries it looped to his body at the shoulder, under a coat. He just reaches in, pivots it upward and it’s already set against his shoulder by the loop, goes to scope, maybe a red dot because, remember, he said it was ‘thick.’ Then he fires, slides it back under his coat, and wanders down the street. You’d never know he had it.”

“Is that legal?” asked someone, and there was laughter because some thought it was a joke, but Bob answered it anyway.

“You’d have to get ATF to clarify, but I’d say no on two counts. The suppressor is classed as a Title III item, like an automatic weapon, meaning it has to go through the legal hoops for private ownership. Did Chambers’s outfit have the legal classification to manufacture and sell such a thing? As for the rifle itself, if it’s less than eighteen inches in barrel length, it cannot have a shoulder stock.”

“Why don’t we turn the whole thing over to ATF,” somebody said, again to laughter that was simply to express the fact that the agents had very little to go on: their own law-enforcement-only distributed picture of the suspect, his habits, his background, and very little else. It looked as if the only chance for an arrest would come if he made another attempt.

“He won’t,” Bob told Nick a few minutes later in Nick’s temporary Baltimore office. Susan was there too, in the usual pantsuit, her hair unusually mussed, and of course the more it got mussed the more Swagger got mussed. She was long, tall, thin, mostly leg, with high cheekbones and some kind of mean intelligence behind her bright eyes that would always keep you from confusing her with your mama. Thirty-eight, going on twenty-five, face smooth, wise, serene, perfectly colored in nuances of lavender and off-pink, like some kind of ancient vase behind glass. She knocked him out every goddamned time.

“How do you know?” she said.

Maybe he said it because it was his job; maybe he said it just to see a flair of response in those dark eyes.

“Well,” Bob said, “because he told me so last night.”

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL

SUITE 500

M STREET NW

WASHINGTON, DC

1300 HOURS

I’d like to follow up, sir, on the irony theme if I may,” asked David Banjax of the New York Times, recently exiled from the Newark Bureau and on a very short leash back in the Washington office, trusted only for a one-on-one setup by State Department flacks. “Do you consider it ironic to visit this city, with its monuments, its marble vistas, its statuary, as the center of a state visit in light of the fact that at one time you were sworn to destroy it?”

“Oh, Mr. Banjax,” said Ibrahim Zarzi, a fraught look on his handsome face, his dark eyes pooling with melancholy regret, “I am afraid you have been misled by early press reports which ascribe to me activities in which never ever did I participate. One has enemies. Enemies fight with more than bombs, they fight with unpleasantly inaccurate information. This is exactly such a case.”

They were in a room on Zarzi’s floor in the Four Seasons immediately after the news conference and all around Banjax, watch faces undulated gently. Square, round, black, gold, white, vivid, subtle, encrusted with jewels, screaming of Special Operations by dark of moon, or seductions in the dining room of the Ritz, it seemed like some kind of slow-motion museum on the theme of time passing. It was hypnotic. He thought of a common scene in a certain kind of movie that always seemed to take place in a field of reeds or wheat things (wheat fronds? wheat leaves? wheat staves? wheat puffs?) weaving rhythmically in the wind. Wasn’t it the one where the girl first gave her heart and her body to her lover? And wasn’t that sort of what was happening now, as it was his job to be seduced by the charisma of this man, whom the Times already supported editorially, and to give him his say about his colorful past? And on top of that, it was making him a little bit sick. In the pit of his stomach, he felt uncertainty.

“Well, sir,” said Banjax, “it is true you were once known as ‘the Beheader’ for the unfortunate death of Richard Millstein, which was videotaped and shown around the world.”

“I am so glad that at last I have a chance to address that tragedy. In fact, no, I was not to blame, nor in any way responsible for Mr. Millstein’s death. That I swear. That I attest, with one hand on the holy Koran. Sir, I am rewarded in my patience that I will make my virtue and my innocence clear once and for all in this matter, peace be upon you.”

He smiled, teeth glittering. He had changed for the interview and now wore gray flannels, Gucci loafers (no socks), a white shirt open to the midchest and displaying bronzed, toned muscularity and a frost of hair, some kind of massive black military watch on one wrist that set off the many gold rings his fingers sported. He was lean, muscular for his age, and bold with macho vitality. Polo later, perhaps? A brace of grouse? Perhaps a ride aboard Jumbo in the forests of the night after a tiger, burning bright, and if the Jeffrey.500 didn’t put the big cat down and he made it up the elephant’s back, then there was always the double-barreled howdah pistol to drive two.600 nitros into the animal’s open jaws and jackhammer him to earth.

“Mr. Millstein fell in among thieves and brigands, alas. In their apostasy, they used my name in order to give a cover of political animus to what was basically a kidnapping and ransom operation. They represented not the Muslim street or even the groups that are called ‘terrorist’ but the simple universal greed of human corruption, as prevalent in our culture, alas, as in your own. It is tragic but it is inescapable. Wars bring out rogues and rascals, opportunists, the like. It was Mr. Millstein’s bad luck to encounter such. You believe me, of course?”

It was hard not to believe everything Zarzi said, for he said it with such earnest conviction. But Banjax tried mightily to offer some resistance, even if the unease in his stomach was mounting.

“Well, sir, it’s easy to say, of course, and you are very convincing. However, some sort of objective proof would-”

“Proof? Proof? What proof would I have? A note from a teacher? Possibly the statement of a wife? My best friend’s testimony? Sir, you require that which does not exist. Had I it, you now would have it. I have only the humble power of my-oh, and one other thing.”

Banjax leaned forward.

Ticktock ticktock went the thousand watches, each in a hulu gyre, reflecting this way and that against their orbit as they rotated slickly through the light patterns. Banjax felt sweat pop on his brow, a wave of wooziness pass, pass again, and pass a third time.

“Of course I ask your forbearance in linking it to me.”

“Of course,” said Banjax, if barely.

The elegant man reached into his briefcase and pulled out a sheaf of documents.

“This is the original report, not by Afghan officials, but by the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-service Intelligence, into the incident. It is, of course, in Urdu. You will have it translated, I’m sure.”

“Yes.”

“Certain elements of ISI are sympathetic to revolutionary movements in Afghanistan, as you know. Thus, it is important for them to know exactly who did what to whom when. They may even be paying certain funding. It is my hope, with the presidency in my control, to engage them and dissuade them from such activities. But the more immediate point is that their agents found no evidence of either my own or revolutionary groups’-terrorist groups’, you would say-involvement in the tragedy. It cost a great deal of money to deliver this from their hands to yours through mine. It is my gift to the West. It is something not even your Central Intelligence Agency has laid eyes upon yet.”

He handed the papers over to Banjax, who took them greedily.

Ah, he was thinking, a scoop.

He remembered his great run of them during his last shot at Washington and the big leagues. The pleasure was intense. He looked up to make his next brilliant point.

And then suddenly it hit him: all those undulating watches, the thickness of the man’s cologne, his closeness, his earnestness, his warmth, so cloying. Banjax felt woozy, then blurry, then defenseless.

He fainted.

BALTIMORE FBI HQ

WOODLAWN

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

1145 HOURS

Oh, Christ,” said Nick.

“Bob,” said Susan, “this is not good. You can’t be consorting with the object of a federal manhunt.”

“If he approached you,” Nick continued, “you should have grappled him to the ground, screamed bloody murder, and we’d all be home free now, and I’d break my long-standing rule never to have a martini before noon. Jesus Christ, this is a mess. You may even have broken the law.”

“Nobody knows better than the man who wasn’t there. Are you done?” Bob said. “Okada-san, got any more shit to pour on me? Nick, I’ll bend over and you can whack me a few times or kick me. Oh that’s right, you’ve got a bum hip. Bring in some young guy.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” said Nick. “So tell the story.”

Swagger did, point by point, tracking Cruz’s revelations: white contractors, planted satellite transmitter in SVD, pursuit by satellite surveillance after first ambush, pursuit after evading second trap, radio contact with 2-2 Recon, missile strike on hotel.

“It’s nothing if he doesn’t give himself up now,” Nick said.

“And I’m telling you,” said Bob, “he doesn’t buy into your ability to protect him. After all, there’ve been two attempts on his life so far by a real hard-core professional team.”

Swagger faced his own absurdity: when he was with Cruz, he argued for Nick and Susan. When he was with Nick and Susan, he argued for Cruz. He realized he had no future in Washington culture, because he couldn’t even keep his own sides straight, much less anyone else’s.

“As for me,” said Susan, her face mandarin and remote and official, “I see where this is leading and I don’t like it. I told you this and I don’t get why you’re not listening. The Agency will not stand still for an outside investigation of its operations in Afghanistan, which are undertaken in good faith and under great danger. I’m here to help you stop Cruz, not lead a witch hunt.”

“It ain’t about a witch hunt. There wasn’t no witches, right? But maybe Cruz does have enemies. And maybe they’re our enemies too. I don’t have no dog in this fight, I ain’t here to steal turf from any outfit called by its initials. I’m here for the truth, and I’m going to find it or look for it until you put me in the bag.”

“God, he’s a stubborn man,” said Susan. “In Tokyo, he went and fought a master swordsman who should have sliced him to shreds. No one could talk him out of it. You cannot talk to the man when he’s like this. It’s like arguing with a forest fire!”

“I want to work this angle, and I gave him my word.”

“The truth is, your word means nothing,” said Nick. “You were not authorized to make commitments. You don’t represent the Bureau.”

“My word means nothing to you. It means everything to me, especially to another sniper.”

“You are so fucking stubborn!” screamed Nick. “It’s like beating your head against a gun stock.”

“It’s a sniper thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

“This is the real world, not a Boy Scout jamboree.”

“Listen. Cruz ain’t going to go again,” Bob argued. “I got that from him. That’s his concession. The next public outing is Sunday, Zarzi’s run of talk shows in DC. He ain’t going to try nothing then. He gave me his word. I gave him mine. So get me out to Creech.”

“Creech is off-limits,” said Susan.

“What’s Creech?” asked Nick.

“It’s an Air Force base north of Vegas where they run the drone war,” said Susan. “It’s where our snipers go to play life-and-death video games with terrorists, gunmen, IED teams, high-value targets, and the like. It’s where the real hunting and killing take place.”

“Nick, get me out there with some smart partner agent to cover my rough edges and let me sniff around. Say an American asset was killed in the explosion in that hotel and some outfit is bringing heat on our asses. They’ll let me on, strictly pro forma, give me the tour. They ain’t going to tell me nothing, not up front. But if I’m there and it gets out what’s being looked into, something may shake out of the trees. Then I can find out if in fact they did put a missile into that hotel.”

“Agh,” said Nick to no one.

Then he said, “Susan, I don’t see how I can say no. He’s a hero. They like him upstairs. And he has found Cruz twice and neither of us has even come close with all our resources. And sometimes he’s right.”

“Been known to happen a time or two,” said Bob.

“You are such a bastard,” she said evenly to Bob. “You are taking this exactly where my orders are to prevent you from going.”

“But you know it’s the right thing.”

“I told you. I went over the records very thoroughly. This shooting off of missiles isn’t casual, you know. Everything is recorded, everything is documented, every shot is noted as to operator, intel validity, time frame, and result. It’s not like the Mexican revolution, bang bang bang, with everybody shooting everything at once all over the place drunk on tequila.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Bob. “But there may be secrets within secrets. Black ops so black records don’t exist. Skunk works shit, black bag shit, wet work, all that ugly crap that spy outfits been doing for four thousand years. It’s in the Bible, even. I’m no expert but maybe I can find something somehow, some way. Maybe you could too if you tried again.”

“You’re telling me I should start prying in locked drawers in Langley,” she said. “I should spy on the spies. I am a spy.”

Swagger was filled with doubts. Maybe this was all bullshit he’d dreamed up to engage her and from there make the leap to something else. It was how the cunning male-sex mind sometimes worked. Goddamned Asian women, he couldn’t get over them, and that brought up a long-dead, bourbon-soaked ache best not addressed now or ever. He also knew he was still fundamentally exhausted, the confab with Cruz who’d caught him cold was upsetting to say the least, and this whole Washington game was more complex than he’d imagined. He’d been the lone gunman, the tall-grass crawler, and now he was exactly where he didn’t belong, in a soup of confusing loyalties, some of them even within his own mind.

So: when in doubt, press ahead blindly and pray for luck and God’s delight in the reckless.

“You know these people. You go to backyard barbecues with ’em. You could ask around.”

She shook her beautiful head.

“I don’t know anything. I never had this discussion, I don’t know a thing about anything.”

“But you won’t rat me out?”

Her silence meant that no, she wouldn’t rat him out, but it also meant that she hadn’t remembered until that moment what an asshole he truly could be.

BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON

INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

CELL PHONE PARKING LOT

1900 HOURS

THE NEXT DAY

Vegas?” said Mick Bogier.

“Yep. Him and this chick. Pretty gal. Maybe the old coot has some Pez left in the dispenser after all. Off to Vegas for a weekend of whoopie. Been known to happen.”

It was Crackers the Clown who’d dogged Swagger, watching him check in with the young woman, head through security and on to a gate. Crackers had pulled a Baltimore police detective badge and gotten through security without a hassle from TSA and followed him all the way to the gate. Now he was on the cell to Mick and Tony Z.

“Unlikely,” said Mick, “this guy’s too duty-crazed.”

“I hate that kind,” said Crackers. “All work and no fun. What, he wants to be a saint?”

“Let me make a call.”

Even before he put the cell down, Tony handed him the Thuraya phone.

“This better be good news,” MacGyver said. “I’m about to make myself a martini.”

“We followed Swagger to the airport. He’s about to fly to Vegas with some young agent. I don’t know what it’s about.”

MacGyver considered.

“We could get the next flight out,” said Mick. “Then we pick up the signal in Vegas and we follow him there. But I don’t know what Cruz would be doing in Vegas or what Vegas would have to do with Cruz. Cruz is here, we know that.”

“I can find out,” MacGyver finally said. “But that’s going to take a while. No, I’d stay in DC. I’d set up somewhere in the vicinity of the talk show studios this Sunday and get ready to roll if there’s an incident.”

“Sure, but that’s thin. This Sergeant Cruz is really good. I mean, he’s fucking big league all the way. The chance of us nailing him before he nails Zarzi without Swagger bird-dogging him first are somewhere between thin and negative one million. Since he’s riding the action curve and we’re trailing it, we’ll be lucky to get there when the smoke is still in the air. And don’t forget there’s going to be about ten thousand cops in the area, somewhat complicating things.”

“I understand,” said MacGyver. “I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m out of answers.”

“MacGyver, your show’s going to be canceled if you can’t do better than that.”

“Hey, asshole sergeant, if I’m canceled you’re canceled, so you better pray for me. Oh, and I make the smart comments, I get to do the sarcasm, get it? Don’t go all Mick Bogier on me. Cowboys are cheap in this world.”

Bogier enjoyed lighting up the asshole like that. He knew it was expected that he would now apologize and show contrition, but he would not do it. Fuck him and the horse he came in on.

“Okay, here’s what you do,” said MacGyver. “Monitor the Four Seasons and the Afghan embassy. You guys have seen Cruz in action, you know his walk, his moves, you know what he’d have to wear to conceal a weapon. You may pick him up on a scouting mission, a recon, just from the way he moves. Ask around, see if anybody’s suddenly started showing up at those places. Meanwhile, I’ll find out what Swagger is doing in Vegas and when he’s due back. He’s still our best bet. After all, he’s found Cruz twice and nobody else is even in the game.”

U.S. 95 NORTH

BETWEEN VEGAS AND INDIAN SPRINGS, NEVADA

1330 HOURS

THE NEXT DAY

Which was stonier, the desert landscape or Agent Chandler’s remote personality? The desert was desolate, rocky, filled with crusted hills, ugly spiny things that appeared to be vegetable in origin, lit by a merciless sun and drifting off to a horizon that was a forever away. She was extremely attractive, eyes beaming with intelligence, but face held in disciplined dullness and disinterest. She drove. She was the special agent. He was a consultant with the rank of brevet investigator. She called the shots. She commanded, in silence and concentration on the road. He sat there, in his off-the-rack suit, hoping for something a little more cooperative, but finding it not forthcoming. He knew she was a Nick mentee, one of the talented young ones Nick liked to work under him, that she was married to a CIA guy, that she had a reputation for “creativity,” whatever that was, and that she’d been a big player and winner in the Tom Constable dust-up of a few years back. He knew her nickname was “Starling” because she reminded people of a movie star who’d played a memorable FBI agent.

They’d eaten lunch separately and were headed out for a two o’clock with Colonel Christopher Nelson, USAF, CO of the 143rd Expeditionary Air Wing (UAV), which is to say the Air Force CIA headhunter outfit at a desert air base called Creech, whose ugly name foretold the ugliness of the installation.

“Okay,” she finally said. “Talk to me. I’m open for business.”

“Ma’am, I follow your lead. You just tell me what you want to know and I’ll answer straight up.”

“I know you’re a gunfighter, an action guy. I know you dusted some very bad people in your time. I like that, I get that. But this is different. It’s interrogation. It demands suppleness, intellectual agility, concentration, patience, a deeply fraudulent charm. Can someone as direct as you work at indirection?”

“Don’t know about indirection, but I do know about fraud. Ma’am, I am a completely fraudulent individual. Too many people think I’m a hero when I’m a total coward. All the brave men died in the war, only us lucky yellow rats made it out alive.”

“Utter bullshit from a man who took down a pro hitter with a subgun at close range, time of engagement three seconds.”

“More like four. He wasn’t as pro as he thought.”

“I guess not. Okay, I will take the lead. We agree on cover up- front. You are looking for signs of weakness, for twitches that indicate untruthfulness, for signs of prevarication and mendacity. Do you know what they are?”

“Eyes mainly. He’ll look up or away if he’s lying, because he’s reading a script in his head. He’ll swallow a bit hard if he’s lying. His lips will dry. He’s foursquare military, he ain’t used to lying because their system is about no bullshit. If he’s got this big command, he must be an up-and-coming guy in the new robot Air Force. He’ll be nervous because the last thing he wants is to screw up his career chances. He’ll pause before answering. He knows the best lie is only a few degrees from the truth.”

“You cannot do anything extralegal. You cannot peek, disappear, misrepresent. All the time you have to be thinking and noticing. Are you capable of that?”

“I’ll sure try,” he said.

“Cool,” she said. “You’re not as dumb as you look.”

“I do look dumb, don’t I?”

“My dad was head of the state police in Arizona. You look like any oldish, unpromotable trooper sergeant, tough as hell, good man in a gunfight, steady, and hopelessly obsolete. My poor dad had to get rid of a bunch of those guys, though he loved them all.”

“Never said I wasn’t no dinosaur,” said Bob. “And I thank you for indulging me against your better instincts.”

They reached Indian Springs, not that they really noticed. It was a trailer park, a convenience store/gas station, and a one-room casino in a glade of barely green scrub trees. The town abutted the base, which looked more like a prison complex than an airfield. A motley collection of brown corrugated-metal buildings, it spread across a desert basin, the same color of dry heat as everything else the sun bleached. It lay behind a barbwire fence and the two security gates were like Cold War border crossings. It was large and flat, disappearing over a ridge at least a mile or so out. In the far distance, on one of the short runways, some kind of white aircraft could be seen, something of a cross between a Piper Cub and a kite, and Bob realized that it was either the Predator itself or its killer progeny, the Reaper, which patrolled the skies of Afghanistan, looking for something to kill.

CREECH AFB

COLONEL NELSON’S OFFICE

HQ 143RD AIR EXPEDITIONARY WING (UAV)

INDIAN SPRINGS, NEVADA

1430 HOURS

I’ve directed my people to cooperate fully,” said the colonel, a solid linebacker guy with one of those square jaws and short, all-biz haircuts the upper-field grades favored. “And I will open any documents or records you require. I just have to tell you up front that a) we are very busy here fighting a war, and b) this matter was previously investigated by an Agency officer and she found no traces of anything handled incorrectly. But you say it’s a criminal matter, not a national security matter.”

The three, plus the Wing Executive Officer and a secretary, were sitting in the commanding officer’s office, a well-lit room decorated with pictures of himself in various stages of his career, standing proudly before beautiful pieces of stainless steel sculpture that also happened to be supersonic jet fighters, all F-somethings, sleek and dangerous looking, like machined raptors hungry for a kill. In a few, as armored as a medieval knight, he sat in a cockpit under a raised plastic bubble with a winner’s wide grin while holding up a thumb as if to say “Mission accomplished” or even “Bogie downed.”

“No, sir,” said Chandler, “we are not alleging criminal misconduct. We only say that it’s a possible criminal matter and that as a neutral agency, we have been asked to look at the data points again. You know the basics. On a certain date seven months ago, a hotel in Afghanistan was obliterated, possibly, but not certainly, by a missile. We have no forensics on the case because it was in tribal territory at the time, meaning an area full of bad guys. Subsequently, the site has been razed. There was a cursory investigation by Dutch security forces repping the UN, mainly photos. It tells us almost nothing except that something made a big hole in the earth. The reason we are here is that of the thirty-one Afghani nationals killed, one was an informant for the DEA. His loss set back one of their infiltration programs a great deal and that is a heavy poppy-growth area, and it ships product that shows up on the streets of, well, Indian Springs, for one, and Vegas, where I’m sure most of your staff and pilots live, for another. DEA says that other informants in the area claim the hotel was detonated by a missile. These reports are persistent, and it’s only a matter of time before they show up in an American newspaper. It would be a black eye if someone accidentally whacked a civilian structure, though of course it happens, and it would be an even bigger black eye if a DEA informant was among the killed, and the worst thing of all-I make no accusations here, but simply state fact-if it turned out a cover-up tried to obscure some second lieutenant’s honest mistake in the heat of battle. We have to be ahead on this one, not behind it, sir. And that is why we are here.”

“Fine. By the way, does the guy who looks like Clint Eastwood ever talk?”

“No, sir,” said Bob, “not since I shot Dillinger.”

Everybody laughed, letting a little tension out.

“All right. Here’s what I’ve set up for you. In the next room, you’ll find our complete documentation of air activities for that eight-hour duty shift. You’ll find a TV monitor and all our fire missions from that shift on tape, and you can look at them. We took sixteen shots that time, at all levels of permissibility. You’ll learn what a ‘level of permissibility’ is shortly. I have my battle manager from that shift on hand, and he can go over each mission separately with you if you need to do so. I also have seven pilots, that is, seven operators who fly, and I mean literally fly, the drones from our op center here at Creech. They’re the real heroes, and I’d hate to get any of them in trouble. They took the sixteen shots among them. I have one missing, First Lieutenant Wanda Dombrowski, whose term of service expired last month and who opted to end her commitment to the Air Force. She was great and I’m sorry to see her go. Anyhow, I have her next address and phone number, and if you feel it necessary to contact her, then you’re of course free to do so.”

“All right,” said Starling. “Then let’s get to work.”

“But first, just so you understand the situation we deal with in our duties, I want to walk you through our op center. I want to take you into the heart of combat, even if you’re in an underground room in a Nevada desert. Either of you have any combat experience?”

“He’s been in a gunfight or two,” Starling said.

“He looks like it. Well, Agents Chandler and Swagger, you’re about to see how the wars of the future will be fought. You won’t have to do as much ducking, Swagger.”

CIA HQ

Third floor “operations”

Afghan Desk bay

Langley, Virginia

1555 hours

So is it true,” asked Jared Dixson, Afghan Desk number two, handsome dog without conscience or tremor, eye-power seducer, and all around not-so-great guy, “that you were in a sword fight?”

“I was, yes,” said Susan. “I held a guy off, until someone stronger stepped in and cut the head off the guy who was about to take mine.”

“Wow. So what does it look like when a guy gets his head cut off?”

“It’s very moist.”

“They should call you ‘the Beheader,’ not Zarzi.”

“Well, if the Times is right, he’s no more a beheader than I am.”

Dixson laughed. “Well, between you and me and the woodwork, the best three words to describe Ibrahim Zarzi are ‘guilty,’ ‘guilty,’ and of course, ‘guilty.’ We call him ‘Dishonest Ib,’ but only when we’re drunk. The Times bought that phony Paki intel report hook, line, and sinker. We had great fun drawing it up. It’s Afghan Desk’s most profound moment of theater, up until the bastard gets the Freedom Award from the president next Saturday night.”

“He’s an asshole?”

“You have no idea. A watch queen with the sexual appetites of a Warren Beatty. He’d seduce the meter maid if you let him. But he’s our watch queen and that’s the point. So we’ll get him all the meter maids we can and let him cut off the odd journalist’s head if it gets us some sort of stability in Crazyland.”

Dixson was assistant to Jackson Collins, who was, in the argot of the joint, the actual Afghan Desk himself, though no one ever called him “Mr. Desk.” They called him “MacGyver,” as he was an ex-SEAL, and had actually blown up a lot of stuff in the way-back when he was operational yet had a kind of too-serious-for-the-ironists quality that rendered him faintly ridiculous and thus earned him the nickname of a fatuous TV jerk from the eighties. Even his serious creds couldn’t make the joke go away: he was an Annapolis grad, Hopkins Institute of Foreign Studies star, former Brookings Fellow, and epic drinker, and under this Administration had become the senior executive in charge of running the Agency’s missions in Afghanistan in coordination with policy goals set by the Administration through the National Security advisor’s office, if not the president himself.

“So,” she said, “are you getting along with Jack ‘MacGyver’ Collins any better now?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Dixson. “He used to call me ‘Pussyboy.’ Now I’ve been promoted to ‘Dr. Vulva.’”

“Wow, that’s progress. I had a guy like that in Tokyo. Office was like a destroyer bridge. We called it ‘the fo’c’sle.’ He was as dumb as a screwdriver. No moving parts whatsoever.”

“These Annapolis guys, what’s with them? They think if you don’t know which one is port and which one is starboard, you’re worthless. By the way, which one is port?”

She laughed. The guy was funny, just the tiniest bit upper-class swishy with a face that was too lively with emotional information. Reputedly brilliant, clearly resentful, Jared had run hard into the Agency’s ancient military cerebellum. But then she said, “Look, you know why I dropped by.”

“Of course. You’re using your appointment to the FBI liaison committee as an excuse to come visit your long-time crush object Jared Dixson. I’m glad that you’ve finally made peace with your abiding love and intense sexual longing for me. It was so wrong of you to play hard to get for all those years. Think of the motel time we could have logged.”

“Gee, another married guy who wants the cookies but doesn’t want to pay for the bowl to mix them in. Oh, that’s right, you’ll be married to-what’s her name, Buffy? Jennifer? Gigi?-forever because she’s got all the money. You can’t divorce.”

“Why, what would one do without three houses, six cars, a stable, a really big sailboat, and a very fine collection of vintage wines? Her name happens to be Bunny. No, Fluffy, no, no, now it’s coming back, Mimsy.”

“You’re such a bastard. Anyhow, I want to go through our missile and munition records for that day when the hotel blew up. One more time. Maybe I missed something.”

“I doubt you ever missed anything in your life.”

“Well, the near-kill in Baltimore has got people asking about Cruz’s motives again. I just have to make sure that base is covered, that we are in the clear. It would prove so embarrassing if Afghan Desk were taking shots at our own people to save the Watch Queen’s ass.”

“You know, that stuff’s way classified. I know you’re cleared most of the way, but how about all of the way?”

“I’m cute, it’s allowed.”

“Okay,” he said. “MacGyver’s a big-foot asshole, but he’s not that big an asshole, I guarantee you. I will get you everything,” he said, “except of course Pentameter. You understand, Pentameter can’t be compromised.”

“Sure,” she said, thinking, What the hell is Pentameter?