Point of Impact

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Beneath the Presidential Security Detail and the Site Preparation Team, at the furthest reaches of the security pyramid, was that blur of extra bodies known as “Cooperating Agencies” and it was well within this blur, sitting in an automobile with a cold cup of coffee, a red lapel button and an attitude problem, that Nick Memphis found himself at nine-thirty in the morning on the day of the president’s speech. He was one of several thousand cops, FBI agents, military personnel and the like who had to surrender their weekend because the president, ever mindful that his popularity ratings in the Latino communities, so high after the war, had begun to slip just a bit, and so he had chosen to give the Freedom Medal to the Salvadoran archbishop Jorge Roberto Lopez.

Nick was by himself, which didn’t please him much; he’d somehow expected more, having kibitzed so valiantly with the Secret Service advance detail over the preceding three weeks, been loyal and obedient as any dog, doing Howdy Duty’s bidding whenever possible and with a smile on his face. But at intense moments all institutions default to turf warfare, and Nick was pained to discover that Secret Service did not want the Bureau anywhere near the zone of its highest visibility and responsibility, so he’d been exiled to a further outpost of the empire of security. Worse, Mickey Sontag, his most recent partner, was sick; so poor Nick had to spend all of game day by himself.

He now sat a good four blocks off the motorcade route and the site of the speech, parked on St. Ann Street in the Quarter, a block or two down from Bourbon’s luridness and the crush of tourism. Around him were old brick residences, all quaint, all pastel, all shuttered. Ahead, in the far distance, he could see the grotesque wrought-iron arch that signified the entrance to Louis Armstrong park on North Rampart, one reason why the White House had chosen the site: access to it, through that gate, was so limited. There were still worries, left over from the Persian Gulf War, about terrorists. The sun above was bright and now and then people would stream by, in hopes of getting a good early location on the president’s motorcade or a good seat for his speech.

Idly, Nick listened to the security network, Channel 21 on his radio unit, as Phil Mueller held the whole thing together from a Secret Service communications center on the roof of the Municipal Auditorium, which was just off the site of the speech.

“Ah, this is Airport, we have Flashlight on the ground and taxiing toward the hangar.”

“Reading you, Airport, this is Base Six.”

Nick recognized Mueller’s authoritarian voice over the radio; he knew that Howdy Duty would be standing right next to him, really there more for public relations, to keep the Bureau’s profile high, than for any meaningful security reasons. Nick tried to generate some feeling for Utey, pro or con. But he couldn’t get himself to hate the guy, even after Tulsa all those years ago. Hate just wasn’t in Nick, not a bit of it.

“All teams in place, we are waiting momentarily for Flashlight to disembark.”

“Thank you, Airport, please confirm when Flashlight is out of plane and motorcade is proceeding.”

“Reading you and roger that, Base Six.”

“Uh, people, Game time coming up, I want to run a last security check, make sure everybody’s on station. So by the numbers, I want you to check in and give me a sitrep.”

One by one the security units checked in, a torrent of radiospeak and bored, commanding voices crackling and soupy over the distorting radio network – all of them, because Mueller was a stickler. That was three helicopter teams, over fifty men spread around on rooftops, maybe seventy-five police units at various intersections on and nearby the motorcade route, all the high-powered lookout posts in the immediate vicinity of the site, and of course the hot dogs of the Presidential Security Detail, many of whom had come ahead and were already in position on site.

When it came time for Nick, he was on the ball.

“Ah, Base Six, this is Bureau Four, I’m on station on St. Ann, ah, all activity normal, I’ve got nothing on rooftops or any visible window activity.”

“Affirmative, Bureau Four, keep your eyes open, Nick,” said Mueller.

The touch of personal recognition pleased Nick, not that it meant a damned thing.

“Four out,” he said, and went back to eyeballing whatever was around him, which was not much. He squirmed uncomfortably, because the Smith 1076 was held in the Bureau’s de rigueur high hip carry in a pancake holster above his right buttock, and though the pistol was flat, unlike a revolver, it still bit into him. Many agents secretly kept their pistols in glove compartments when they drove around, but it was Nick’s law to always play by every rule, and so he just let the thing gnaw on him under his suitcoat.

As he sat there, Nick phased out the rest of security check-ins, and tried to reassemble his thoughts on the Eduardo Lanzman case, because he wanted to really get cracking on it as soon as Flashlight was out of town. The report from Salvador, just in, had been a disappointment: the Salvadoran National Police had no Lanzman on their rolls, and who up here could prove different? And Nick also had the Bureau research people trying to find something out about this RamDyne outfit he’d picked up on from Till and he thought that -

But then the message came rumbling across the net, “Ah, Base Four, Flashlight has debarked and the motorcade is about to commence.”

“All right, people, let’s look sharp,” said Base Six. “Game time.”

“Ah, Base Four, Flashlight has debarked and the motorcade is about to commence,” Bob heard over the radio. Then, “All right, people, let’s look sharp. Game time.”

“Bob, that’s it, the show’s begun.” It was Payne nearby.

“Okay,” Bob said, “got you clean and simple and am all set.” But he wished he had a rifle and in fact felt like a simpleton without one.

He was a good four hundred yards from the president’s speech in the fourth-floor room of an old house on St. Ann, but he didn’t look toward the park; he looked back, toward and over the French Quarter. Seated at a table, he stared through a Leupold 36× spotting scope that he had carefully aimed at the church steeple still another thousand yards out. It was the steeple from which he’d predicted the shot would come. Payne and a New Orleans uniformed cop named Timmons were with him, Payne on the radio, Timmons just more or less there.

He heard the security people on their network.

“Ah, Base Six, this is Alpha One, we are progressing down U.S. Ten at approximately forty-five miles per hour, our ETA is approximately 1130 hours, do you read?”

“Have you, affirmative,” said Base Six. “Units Ten and Twelve, be advised Flashlight and friends are moving through your area shortly.”

“We have it under advisement, Base Six, everything looking fine here, over and out.”

Bob thought it was like a big air-mobile operation in the ’Nam, an orchestration of elements all moving in perfect syncopation and held together by some command hotshot on the radio network, as the various units through whose sector Flashlight moved called in their reports.

“Ah, Base Six, this is Ginger Dragon Two, we have all quiet in our secure zone at present,” he heard Payne speak into the phone.

“That’s a roger, Ginger Dragon Two, we’re reading you, our apprehension teams are on instant standby.”

“Anything yet?” Timmons now asked him. He was a large, dour man, whose belly pressed outward against his uniform; he seemed nervous.

Bob’s eye was in the scope. Though the target was so much farther out, he could see three ramshackle arched openings under the crown of the steeple, each louvered closed, each dirty and untouched.

“It’s the middle window,” Payne now said calmly.

“I know what window it is,” Bob said. Why were these guys talking so much? “I have no movement.”

“Maybe he’s not there yet,” said Timmons.

“Oh, he’s there. It’s too close to time. He’s there.”

If he’s anywhere, Bob thought, he’s there. He’s sitting very still now and though we can’t see him, he’s drawing himself together for the shot. He’s probably taken as close as can be constructed to this shot a thousand or so times, maybe ten thousand times. I know I would if I were in his shoes. But he’s a little nervous; he’ll want to be alone and he’ll want it quiet. If there are others in the room with him, then they’re just sitting there, not making any noise, letting him accumulate his strength.

According to Colonel Davis, a very skilled FBI embassy penetration team had discreetly planted light-sensitive sensors in the belfry, and the sensors had recorded data to suggest that every night between four and five A.M. a working party of five men entered the room and made preparations. Bob assumed they were soundproofing the walls and building a shooting platform to get the proper angle into the president’s site fourteen hundred far yards away. At the precise moment, three or four of the louvers would be removed; he’d scope and shoot and the team would replace the louvers. The window of vulnerability was maybe ten seconds.

“Ginger Dragon Six, we are beginning our apprehension maneuver.”

“Keep it discreet, apprehension teams.” Bob recognized Colonel Davis, who was running this operation, the one concealed within the larger drama of the president’s arrival and security.

“Fuckin’ A,” said Payne, “they getting ready to nab the sucker.”

Bob looked at his watch; it was only 1115 hours now, still an hour from the shooting event.

“Man, I hope your Federal team has got it together. This is a very nervous cat, he’s got spotters himself making sure he hasn’t been blown.”

“These are the very best guys,” Payne said. “These guys have been training for this one a long time. Lots and lots of dues gonna get paid off today, I can tell you. It’s payback time.”

Something melodramatic and movielike in Payne today irritated Bob.

“Ginger Dragon Two, you have the best angle on the target, you have anything to announce?”

“He’s talking to you, Swagger.”

“That’s a negative. But if they’re there, they probably came in late last night; and they’ll be real quiet. Tell him that. Lack of activity is to be expected.”

“Uh, Ginger Dragon Six, this is Dragon Two, uh, spotter has a negative so far.”

“Is he sure?”

“Oh, Christ,” said Bob. “Tell him they’re there, goddammit, and that I’ll sing out when I get a visual confirm, and that that will be at the point of shooting, and goddammit, he better get set to bounce his people in there fast.”

Now wasn’t the time to begin doubting the scenario. They all believed in the scenario, they’d discussed it dispassionately all afternoon yesterday.

“Uh, confidence here is still high, Dragon Six,” said Payne.

That’s what ruined operations and that’s what killed people in the field – that sudden, last-minute spurt of doubt, like the lash of a whip: it made people morons. So many times Bob had seen it; it was exactly what sniping wasn’t.

“We may have to go early,” said Ginger Dragon Six.

“Do that, and you got nothing,” said Bob. “He’s there. Goddamn, I can feel him. Oh, he’s there and he’s on his rifle, and he’s just settling into it.”

He wished he had a rifle too.

“Okay, Alpha Team, this is Base Six, Flashlight’s ETA is now just five minutes.”

“Base Six to Alpha, Flashlight is now in your zone.”

“We have Flashlight, thank you, Base Six, good job.”

“Roof Team, this is Base Six, any activity?”

“Negative, Six, all clear except for our people.”

“Keep me informed, Roof Team, we are near maximum vulnerability now.”

“Have you, Six.”

“All teams, Max V condition, on your toes, people, on your toes.”

On his toes! Nick felt so out of it he almost had to laugh. This is your life, Nick Memphis. He sat in the car alone in a zone so barren of life it seemed despoiled, or some vista in a sci-fi movie set after the end of the world. All the tourists had hustled on by to get a look-see at the president. Here he was, on the far outside.

Now he saw it. The motorcade hurtled down North Rampart, and just briefly the gates to the park were opened, and through it sped Flashlight’s three-million-dollar Lincoln which no bullet could penetrate, sixteen New Orleans motorcycle cops, the Security Detail quick reaction van, and two cars of reporters and TV people. And then they were gone.

Man, he thought, I’m so far to the outside there is no inside.

He tried to stay alert out of respect for the ritual, and the big Smith in the pancake holster was some help. It gouged him but in his curious way he enjoyed it.

Yet always he felt a little guilt. He’d gotten the easy part: for he knew that the forty minutes of Max V as Flashlight was exposed were absolutely the most terrifying – and exhilarating – for the Secret Service agents who now ran the show.

“Ah, Alpha Four to Alpha Response, I have a squirrel in the fourth row left, can we get a team on him, please, like really fast, guys.”

It was the Crowd Squad, working the people.

“Alpha Four, the Hispanic guy, right, black over-coat?” came Mueller’s response from the roof of the Municipal Auditorium just beside the podium that had been erected in front of a wading pool.

“That’s my squirrel. Guy’s got a shifty, stressed look and his hands are in his pockets. I can’t tell if he’s by himself.”

“Ah, okay, Alpha, we’re moving in.”

The crowd squad maneuvered quickly to neutralize the guy they’d ID’d as a possible. Nick envied them the action even if, as it did 999 out of a thousand times, it turned out to be groundless.

“Okay, Alpha Four, the squirrel just lifted his little girl up to see the Man, and he’s got three other kids with him.”

“Back off then, Alpha Four, good work.”

Nick heard cheers and laughter echoing through the empty streets; the president had made a joke. He checked his watch. They were running a bit behind schedule. It was almost noon and the speech was scheduled to have started at 11:45, but it had just gotten under way. He’d seen the site plan, amazed at how precisely these things are choreographed. There’d even been a rehearsal for the Security Detail to get them used to body moves, to the look of the situation, so that if something ungodly happened, the place at least would be familiar to them.

But Nick could remember from the site plan where Flashlight would be standing, where the archbishop would be, flanked by his own bodyguard. The rest of the guys up there were Service beef, two staff assistants, and Mr. Football, as they called the Air Force staff colonel who was always a discreet ten feet from Flashlight with a briefcase full of that day’s nuclear go-codes. Nick could imagine them up there in the love and glee of the crowd, these happy men who ruled the world, and who would not even in their older age remember this day.

“Ah, Chopper Four, this is Base Six, can you take a right-hand circle about half-mile out? I have a New Orleans police report of some roofline movement. I’m looking at Grid Square Lima-thirteen-Tango, I got a cop in that area says he thinks he saw something. My countersniper team in that zone has called it a no-show, but take a look, will you, big guy?”

“That’s a big rog, Alpha Six,” came the voice from the chopper, and Nick heard the thing roar overhead, a black Huey.

“Ah, Base, I’ve got an all clear, your cop must have seen a mirage.”

“Okay, Chopper, good work.”

“I’m out of here, Alpha Six.”

The bird’s roar fluttered and diminished.

Nick was alone again, on the face of the moon.

“Time,” asked Bob, and lost the answer in the roar of the chopper.

When the bird cleared, he asked again.

“Eleven-fifty-six, pal,” came Payne’s answer.

Bob breathed out heavily, a stupid move, because it somewhat jittered his eye’s placement against the scope; he blinked, lost his image, came back to find a black half-moon of eye-relief error cutting into the cone of his vision because he wasn’t properly aligned. His heart was pumping.

Goddamn! he told himself, be cool, man.

And there it was again, the arch in the steeple, in perfect clarity, its black dullness sealing off his vision, simply a maze of ancient slats. He stared at it as if pouring himself through it, willing what he wanted to be there to be there, so far away, fourteen hundred yards from the target but just within the range of a world-class shooter like T. Solaratov.

Where are you, you bastard?

And then he saw him. He saw the sniper.

It was a subtlety in the light behind the slats, a shifting, a certain tightening, a certain coming together. As his mind raced to put the various-molecules of light and dark together into a picture, he realized that fifteen or so feet back, the sniper, at a bench like any rifle bench, was feeling his way into position. And in the next second or so, the whole thing assembled in his head; for now he saw also the solemn drift of the others in the room, very slow, very steady, but moving ever so slightly, a man on a scope next to the shooter, two men well back from the window. Then he watched as one by one, with the slowness of a glacier’s move, a slat and then another and still a third was removed. The diagonal slash in the arch was three inches wide. Behind it, he saw something move or tighten.

Very quietly, Bob said, “Payne, he’s there, I got his ass, he’s minute or so from shooting, send the boys in, now goddammit, send ’em in, he’s there, he’s there.”

“Ginger Dragon, we’ve got him, go, go, go, go,” said Payne.

“You got him,” yelled Timmons, the cop, “you got him.”

“Send those damn boys fast,” said Bob, “he’s set.”

Christ, he wished he had a rifle. It was his shot. It was a shot that kept him alive all these years – to have the motherfucker there, the man who did Donny Fenn, the man who blew out his hip and ended the life he was born to live, to have him right where the Remington wanted to go, right where he could put it. His trigger finger began to constrict and he imagined the buck of the rifle as he fired. He could take the trigger slack all the way down and ship a.308 hollowpoint out there and send that fuck straight to hell, drive his heart and spine all over New Orl -

“Goddamn, where are they, get ’em in there. He’s going to – ”

“All elements, move in, Ginger Dragon, go, go, go,” he heard Payne on the radio.

Where were they? There should be a chopper overhead, FBI SWAT guys in black rappelling down it, men moving in from all the hidden parts of the universe, men with guns and purpose, moving swiftly to stop -

“Where are they?”

Bob saw the spurt of flame as Solaratov fired.

“Bob?”

He turned and Payne shot him in the chest from a range of six feet.

Nick yawned and -

He heard the sound of a shot.

It froze him. The universe seemed to halt and his heart turned to stone.

Then the radio exploded.

“My God, Flashlight is down!”

He sat up; swallowed again.

The shot came from close by.

“We are under fire on the podium, Flashlight is hit and down, my God!”

“Alpha Actual, Alpha Actual, all units, Alpha Actual.”

Actual was the code word; it meant somebody was shooting at or had shot the president.

“Medics, vector in those medics, get these people out of here!”

“Medevac, this is Alpha Four, we need you ASAP, the man is down and hit, oh, Christ, oh, Jesus, get him fast, there’s some other people up here hit, oh, Christ!”

“Off the air, Alpha Four, your medevac is vectored in, are you still under fire?”

“Negative, Alpha Six, I think it was two, maybe three shots, I don’t, oh, God, there’s blood all over – ”

“This is Base Six, all units are cleared to fire if you have targets, this means you, countersnipers.”

“Where’s that fuckin’ medevac, we have blood everywhere, guys are down.”

Nick listened in horrified fascination.

“Do we have an isolation on the shot?”

“It was a long one, Phil, a sniper, I think it came from someplace out there beyond Rampart, in those fuckin’ houses, maybe that tall one.”

“SWAT people, let’s get going.”

“Negative that, this is Base, goddammit, we’ve got to get that chopper in and get the Man out of here.”

But me, Nick thought. I have to move. I have to move. He was out of the car, hating himself for the five seconds or so he’d lost.

Without willing it, the Smith came up into his hand from the pancake. His big thumb snaked out and pushed the safety up and off.

He ran toward the sound of the shot, which was on the left, the big house at 415 St. Ann.

Payne dragged him into another room. He felt the blood on his chest, warm like urine, so much of it. It felt like the last time.

In the blaze of light, as his head lolled and his limbs went limp, he could see a shooting bench, rigged together of cement blocks and weathered pieces of wood, and on it, there lay a rifle, slightly atilt on a brace of sandbags, a heavy-barreled Remington 700 with a Leupold 10× Ultra scope.

The New Orleans cop was talking urgently into his radio unit.

“Base Six, this is Victor Seven-twenty, I have shot suspect white male with rifle at five-one-four Saint Ann, please send assistance, I say again, Base Six, this is Victor Seven-twenty, I have shot suspect in the attic of five-one-four Saint Ann, please send assistance.”

Then Bob looked at the rifle.

It was his rifle.

“I have wounded suspect,” said Timmons. “Get people here fast. Get me ambulance, get me paramedics, get ’ em here ASAP!”

“Okay, dump him,” said the colonel, stepping out of the shadows as Bob slid off into stillness, “and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Bob sat there, feeling again what he had felt on the ridge line when the bullet tore through his hip: shock, hatred, pain, but mostly rage at his own stupidity.

It was winding down on him. His breathing came with the slow, rough transit of a train that had run off its tracks and now rumbled over the cobblestones. His systems were shutting down, the wave of hydrostatic shock that had blown through him with the bullet’s passage upsetting all the little gyros in his organs. He felt the blood in his lungs; there was no pain quite yet but only the queer sensation of loss, of blur, of things slipping away.

Then something cracked in him.

No you aren’t going let it happen

You been shot before

You can fight through it

You be a Marine

He took a deep breath, and in the rage and pride he found what would pass for energy and without exactly willing it, he stood up, again surprised that there was no pain at all, and with a strange, determined gait began to move toward the door.

“Jesus, he’s fuckin’ up!” he heard the cop’s anguished cry, and another shot rang out, hitting him high in the left shoulder, glancing off the bone – a heavy impact and a red sear of pain – but then he was out the door and there were only two steps to go toward a window and he launched himself, felt the window shattering, and amid a rain of glass he fell through bright sunlight toward God knew what.

Nick was looking around in a spasm of confusion. He’d entered the courtyard of the large brick house because he’d heard the cop over his earpiece claiming that he had hit a suspect. But that was a block away, at 514; he was at 415. He heard a helicopter’s roar as it whirled and darted; he heard sirens rising.

But he stood in the sunlight wondering if he should go back to the street to check the address. He thought maybe he was in the wrong area. It was a maze to him; the building scruffy and dilapidated, lots of other houses close by. Jesus, any one of them could have been the location of the call-in.

He froze, wondering what the hell to do, where to go, what he should be doing, who was in command. The gun grew heavy in his hand. He felt idiotically melodramatic, and at the same time wished he were wearing sunglasses, because the sun was so bright.

Then, immediately above him, he heard what sounded like the breaking of a hundred ice cubes and he looked up into the radiant sun. Amid a sleet of glass, a man had launched himself crazily from a fourth-story window and Nick watched him fall with a sickening acceleration toward the ground, except that fifteen feet into it, he landed with another stupefying, dust-rising whack on the slanted roof of a bay window, rolled akimbo down it, and fell again, this time by some miracle of grace and agility gaining enough control over his body so that he landed on his feet, more or less on the wooden stairway which ran up the side of the house. He lurched down the steps.

Nick stared at him dumbfounded.

The guy looked like death itself, a lean-boned, blond-headed man with squirrely-slit eyes and a deep tan. He was in blue jeans, boots and a blue workshirt. There was blood on him everywhere, and as he tried to stand, he fell back, then got his feet under him and lurched up.

Nick threw out the 10mm and screamed, “Don’t move, don’t move, FBI, goddammit, don’t move!”

The man went to his knees as fatigue and blood loss overwhelmed him and his head pitched forward; he seemed almost to collapse and Nick raced forward, yanking his cuffs from the compartment on his belt, got behind him, and got one cuff on a limb with his one free hand, holding the Smith 10 in his other, even as he smelled blood and sweat and felt the man shiver and groan.

“Fucked me,” the man kept saying, “fucked me so bad, fucked me, fucked me, fucked me.” The voice was cracker-South, a twang drawn over a banjo string.

Holding the cuffed hand up and tight, Nick slid the 1076 back into his pancake, and reached for the other wrist to bring it up to the cuffs.

For just an instant Nick knew he had him, and then the whole thing turned shaky as the man, with a force that stunned Nick, drove up and under him, and Nick felt his center of balance going, reached back for his Smith, but by that time had somehow lost leverage as well as balance as the man beneath him turned into nothing but snake.

The world splintered as Nick, judo-flipped expertly, hit the ground, his breath driven from him. He tried to right himself, but what he saw instead was the man above him, filling the entire horizon of his vision, but now coiled like a cavalry trooper with a saber, except there was no saber but only an elbow, which exploded into Nick’s cheekbone.

In the next second, amid the roar in his head and the shock, he felt a hand groping on him and as he tried feebly to prevent it through the throbbing that had overwhelmed his face, he felt the pistol being slid from his holster.

“No, God!” he shouted, grabbed the hand, but even then failed.

Now the man stood above him, the pistol leveled at his head, its bore a ravenous black mouth that would in an instant spit flame and that would be all.

Nick was dead; he accepted his own death, felt it swell in him, but then was astounded to look past the gun to the man’s looming and anguished face, as if he were looking up at a man hung out to die, his face mottled with suffering and despair, and yet in the gray eyes something terrible and abiding.

Compassion, Nick thought, but he could not believe it even as he recognized it.

Then the man was gone, scuttling off in a half-run, leaking blood.

Nick stood to give chase but a bullet whistled by his ear, fired from above, and smacked up a cloud of dust at the fleeing man’s feet. Two more came, two more misses and then the man was out the gate and in Nick’s car.

Oh, Christ, he thought, because in his urgency he knew he’d left the key in it.

The car started, revved and was gone.

“Goddamn, goddamn, missed him, shit, hit the fuck twice, dammit.”

Nick turned to see a fat and sweaty New Orleans cop racing toward him down the steps and yelling, Beretta waving about in a fat hand.

“I’m FBI! Call it in,” Nick yelled, noting the man’s radio unit.

“Ah, Base Six, where the hell are you, this is Victor Seven-twenty, I have hit the suspect twice, but goddamn, he’s still running, and he jumped some guy and got his car. What’s the number, bubba?”

Ah! Nick didn’t know. He’d checked it out of the interagency motor pool that morning.

“It’s a goddamn Ford, beige, don’t know the number. A Taurus, I think. They’d have the number at the pool. But it’s got a radio in it, he’ll be listening. Who are you?”

“Timmons, Traffic Division. Seen something up on the fourth floor moving up near the goddamned roof line. Called in that chopper, but they didn’t see nothing. Went in, heard the goddamn shot, and bounced the guy. He made a jump at me and damn if I didn’t put a Silvertip right through his chest and knock him down. And two minutes later the guy is up and running. Took another shot, hit him in the shoulder, and then he’s out the fuckin’ window. Took three more shots after he decked you, but missed.”

Nick just shook his head. He tried to figure it out, but one thing he knew for certain, and that was he was in big trouble. Getting your piece taken from you by a presidential assassin who’d already soaked up two bullets was a definite bad career move.

“Man, I’m screwed,” he said in a little burst of self-pity.

“Shit, no sweat,” said the cop. “I seen ’em hit like that before. You may not get ’em with a one-shot stop but they bleed out in ten minutes. He’s a dead guy right now. They’ll find him half a mile away, piled up against a dipsy dumpster in an alley.”

“No,” said Nick, knowing that the fates would not be so kind to him. “Not that guy.”

He turned.

“Get on that thing and put out an all points bulletin. Bob Lee Swagger. Of Blue Eye, Arkansas, and the United States Marine Corps.”

“You know him?” the cop said.

“Yeah,” said Nick, suddenly feeling all sorts of pain begin to fire away all over his body, but the physical pain wasn’t so much as the anguish for the terrible days ahead. “Yeah. I know him.”

Bob drove through waves of hallucination, skidding left-and right-hand turns, watching alleys fly by, terrified most of all of the bird. He knew if a bird had him, he was dead and gone, because a bird could stay with him.

But no bird came. In a second, over the car’s police radio, he learned why.

“Base Six, that medevac all set with Flashlight and other wounded aboard, let’s clear the air so we can ASAP to Shock Trauma.”

“Roger, Shock Trauma, I want all birds to go to ground level while we get the man to the hospital. Any word, Alpha?”

“Lots of blood, that’s all I can tell you, Base Six, and we got paramedics working hard. You let us worry, he’s in our hands now.”

Then other messages broke in and the whole thing degenerated into a cascade of possibilities, of rumors, of men yelling for attention and assistance. He heard a couple of references to “five-one-four Saint Ann” and the fleeing suspect, but that baffled him; he’d been in 415; 514 was a block away, on the other side of the street. Where did they get that number? What was going on? Then he had it. Sure, that’s how well planned it was. Timmons gives the wrong address, as if he’s flustered. The whole outfit goes to the wrong house a block away. That gives Payne and the colonel the time to slip away.

He drove onward, down deserted streets, and now a new problem began to eat at him. His head kept trying to float back to Vietnam. He fought with it, feeling very much two men, a weak one who wanted to return and a strong one who would not let him. He’d been hit in Vietnam too, and once you’ve been hit, it always feels the same. He slid for a second, unrooted in time, the dead past floating up big as a movie in front of him. There was an enormous amount of pain that day, and the pain he now felt brought that back. But this wasn’t anything like it. The pain of the hip had been absolute.

This pain was stunning and pointed but he knew he could beat it. He’d had worse pain than this, plenty of times. This was nothing. He snorted, trying to get out of the ’Nam, and made himself concentrate on old Jack Payne and the happy glint in his pig eyes as he pulled the trigger.

He felt himself slipping into numbness and stupidity. He hated himself for that moment of utter strangeness when he’d been shot.

Gun-simple fool. He’d been easy for them because he wanted Solaratov so bad, that was it. That was the best trick, how they played on what he wanted. These Agency fucks had somehow found out about him and Donny and how they got nailed by a Nailer coming over the crest, and they used it on him like a club, used his most private thing. Agency hoods, working on something big and dark and complicated, meant to turn on his stupidity and his vulnerability and his need.

Now, I got to stop the blood or I die. He looked about him. On the seat was a bag that said Dunkin’ Donuts. He reached in, pulled out a wad of waxy paper. He tightened it into a ball and stuffed it into the entrance wound, the one that was bleeding so badly.

There. Wasn’t much, but it was what he had.

He knew exactly where he was going, if he could only stay smart enough to get there.

He’d studied it, after all. There was only one escape route. Now, he had only one problem and that was the fact that he was dying.

Or was he? Shouldn’t he be dead by now? The first bullet had gone right through him, for some crazy reason, and he suspected that it was a ball round, overpenetrative, it had missed major body structures, taken out no arteries, whatever. As for the shoulder hit, that part of his body had gone to numbness, but there wasn’t much blood and he had a sense, maybe illusory, it didn’t matter, that no bone had been broken. So on he drove, by this time calmed down and no longer roaring. But he had to dump the car, that was the thing. The car was death.

He drove toward water.

In water there was safety.

“Attention all, units, we have a definite confirm, we have Government Interagency motorpool car, a beige eighty-eight Ford Taurus, plate number Sierra Doggie one-five-niner-Lima, that’s Sierra Doggie one-five-niner-Lima. Suspect is armed and dangerous, a white male, about forty, wounded but considered dangerous, and an early ID for the name Robert Lee Swagger, I say again, all units, he’s armed and dangerous, approach with caution.”

Oh, shit, he thought.

But Bob had seen the water.

He rolled off the road, raising a cloud of dust behind him, slewing through weeds and mulch. Suddenly it was before him, the vast band of blue-black Mississippi, a sinewy, bending thing. He had no real idea of what he was doing because of blood loss. And of course the rage which was making him insane. He had no sense of making a decision. The car just surged ahead and he felt a sense of liberation, of release, similar in fact to the one he’d felt as he blew through the window, and then suddenly there were bubbles and blackness all around him, pulling at him. In the pocket of the cab, the water line rose as the car sank. He rose with it, until his head struck the ceiling. He felt the torrent blasting through the car’s open windows as he sank, and he knew he’d die now, trapped beneath the surface.

But again his rage helped and it released a last pump of energy and adrenaline, and with half a body and the thrust of his legs, he managed to get the door open. He was almost born again. The water was warm and green now and he rose toward sunlight, and then suddenly tasted the air. The plunge off a dock had carried the car maybe fifteen feet out; overhead a helicopter made a sweep of the river, the way the Hueys had buzzed the Perfume during Tet. But it was far off and couldn’t see him.

He flipped to his back, and propelled himself toward shore. Drifting, he eventually found himself among green reeds weaving in the current. Barges plied the water a half-mile or so away, but the river was so wide here it looked to be a placid lake. Bob waded woozily, his hair plastered against his scalp, his wet shirt heavy against his skin, his body drugged with fatigue. He couldn’t believe he was still alive and able to move. It seemed a miracle.

He found a rotting log floating in the weeds. If he stayed there he’d die or get caught and he knew if he got caught, he couldn’t kill them all, kill Payne and the colonel – and kill Solaratov, who made it all possible. If it was Solaratov. And if it wasn’t, he’d kill whoever it was. That’s what he wanted.

Bob got his belt off, stopping momentarily to discover with surprise the gun he’d taken jammed into his waist. Thank God it was stainless steel and probably wouldn’t rust. As for the bullets, would they corrode? He didn’t know. What choice did he have? He slid it to his jean pocket, a tight fit that would hold good. Then he buckled the belt around the log and wrapped his arm through it, and pushed off. With surprising swiftness, the log carried him into the center of the river, and the current picked him up. But he felt amazingly good. Now and then a chopper buzzed by but he wasn’t visible against the log and when darkness came, he swore at the flashing lights here and there along the shore. But Bob just let the current carry him along through the afternoon and the night, and when the dawn broke, he was right where he wanted to be. He was in the jungle.