Point of Impact

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dobbler always found Shreck’s occasional absences frightening. The customers here at RamDyne were tough guys, like cops or soldiers, or if not tough, they were distant, techno-nerd types, and both groups looked upon the large, soft psychiatrist with an attitude characteristic of their professions: either contempt or indifference, depending. So the doctor tended to sit in his grubby little office when Shreck wasn’t around to act as his sponsor in this strange world.

The RamDyne offices – offices wasn’t exactly the right word – were located amid the cargo terminals and warehouses of Dulles International Airport, just south of Washington, D.C. They were a shabby warren of jerry-built light-industrial units sequestered behind double Cyclones that wore double spirals of razor wire, guarded viciously by armed men. The sign next to the guardhouse at the sole entrance said only BROWN EXPORTS, without corporate logo or escutcheon. It had a prosaic, unexceptional quality to it, and the guard who always looked fiercely at Dobbler, as if he never recognized him after a full year on the payroll, went with the outfit’s bunker mentality.

Dobbler’s office was a dingy closet unbecoming an assistant professor at a junior college in Idaho; with concrete floors and surplus wardroom furniture, it looked like the office of a doomed teacher who never would get tenure and would live forever on the hook of his department chairman’s whim. Everything in it was junk, from the sagging bookcase to the desk scratched with strange initials to the ancient safe for confidential documents. It even had bars at the window, an irony not lost on Dobbler. The fluorescent light was imperfectly calibrated, and threw shadows no matter how you sited yourself in it, that is, when it wasn’t flickering wanly.

But it wasn’t as if Dr. Dobbler had the worst office; Colonel Shreck’s, in another building, was equally crummy; it was just a bit bigger, with a moth-eaten sofa near a window that yielded a vista of cargo planes taking off or landing. It didn’t even have a bigger safe, but exactly the same beat-up model as Dobbler’s. The doctor often wondered if it had the same combination!

Dobbler now sat in his office, trying to focus on the problem before him. He found the silence ominous, as if a spell had been cast by the freakish escape of Bob Lee Swagger. And that, in fact, was the problem Dobbler now faced.

The last words from Shreck had been simple.

“Doctor, go back over the documents. Tell me where this asshole went.”

Dobbler answered tentatively, as he always did.

“Y-you don’t think he’s dead?”

“Of course not. Now, I’ve got to go out of town for a few days,” said Shreck. “Try and let me have a report when I get back. I have the utmost confidence in you.”

Before Dobbler the material fluttered in and out of focus.

Concentrate, he instructed himself. Man on the run. No friends. Where does he go? Where can he go? Who would have him?

He had the files of data assembled by Research in its first evaluation of the subject and his own psychological reports.

Breathing heavily, he began to shuffle through them. Bob’s life in the years before his recruitment seemed comprised of two things: his guns and his long walks through the Ouachitas. He was hiding from the world, Dobbler thought, feeling himself unworthy of it.

The detritus of Bob’s life spoke of no warm personal relationships, at least not outside of Polk County. His only friend was that crotchety old Sam Vincent, who’d helped him sue the magazine. If he were alive, he might eventually try to return to Polk County, and maybe to Sam. But now, on the run, where would he head? There was no indication – no sisters, no brothers, no old Marine buddies, no women, not a thing. The man was too much like some kind of exiled warrior – Achilles sulking in his tent came to mind – to need companionship of any kind.

Even the financial records, uncovered by a credit agency, confirmed this pattern. Clearly, Bob kept his finances in control by iron discipline – he could live off his fourteen-thousand-dollar government pension because his expenses were low and he had no creature comforts, no interest in clothes beyond their function, no travel or diversion. There was no record of what he’d done with the thirty thousand dollars he’d received from the magazine in his out-of-court settlement. He had a credit card – a Visa, from the First National Bank of Little Rock – but the reason seemed to be convenience; he could make telephone purchases of reloading components and shooting supplies, thus saving himself time and trouble writing up orders. He bought his clothes from Gander Mountain, Wisconsin, his powder from Mid-South Shooter’s Supply and a couple of other places. He lived to shoot, that’s all; and, Dobbler supposed, he shot to live.

Would he run to shooters?

This was an alien world to Dobbler, so he tried to imagine it. Then he realized that from what little he knew of shooting culture, there’d be no place in it for Bob. Those folks tended to be conservative rural Americans; they’d have no sympathy for a man whom they thought had winged a shot at the president of the United States. Which left him with…

In several hours of close scrutiny, he came up with nothing. He looked around; it was late in the afternoon. The place was quiet. There were no answers anywhere. He was ready to give it up. Maybe tomorrow he’d notice -

And then he saw it.

He looked, blinked, squinted, looked again. It was so little. It was so much nothing. It couldn’t be.

It was a telephone billing on Bob’s December 1990 Visa bill.

A place called Wilheit’s, in Little Rock. The phone number was given.

It seemed… familiar.

He rifled through the credit report, looking for the other Visa bills, and found nothing until…December 1989. Wilheit’s.

Quickly he found December 1988… Wilheit’s.

The bill was roughly the same, seventy-five dollars.

What was Wilheit’s?

He called the number, and waited while AT &T shunted the connection through dialing stations and off satellites, and the phone rang, sounding far away, and then was answered.

“Hello, Wilheit’s, c’n ah hep you?” was how Dobbler heard the Little Rock accent.

“Er, yes. Um. What do you sell, please?”

“Whut do we sell?” said the voice.

“Yes. What sort of establishment are you?”

“We’re a florist, son. We sell flowers.”

“Ah,” said Dobbler, hanging up.

Now who on earth would Bob Lee Swagger be sending flowers to every December? A Christmas thing? But Bob wasn’t a Christmas sort of guy.

Jack Payne was not a happy camper.

Like the other two men who had been in the room at the time, he was haunted by the resurrection of Bob Lee Swagger.

Since then, Jack had stayed clear of the colonel, knowing he’d probably have to answer for the blown shot.

But how could it have been blown?

Well, someone on the team had said, the damn Silvertip probably didn’t open up, that’s all, so it just went on through, and old Bob fought his way through the shock, and was up and running. He was a Marine, see, Marines are tough.

No, Jack thought there was something else. It was his own rotten luck with a handgun. In truth, he hated pistols. That’s why he carried the cut-down Remington, because almost was good enough with six 12-gauge double-oughts at your fingertips. In Vietnam once, his first tour, ’62, Jack just a scrawny corporal, he had been on the way to the shitter and looked up in horror as a gook came at him with a bayonet on an old French boltgun and sheer murder in his eyes. Jack had left his carbine somewhere and pulled a.45 and squeezed off seven quick ones as the little man charged crazily at him. He missed all seven. Missed them all, fell to his knees and waited for the blade. What happened next was that from thirty yards some guy with a grease gun cut the gook in two – literally, into two pieces – and Jack lived to fight another day. But he hated that moment because he had pissed and shat in his pants as he went to his knees, knowing he was finished and too weak to do anything.

“Hey, Corporal, you’d best git yourself a pair of diapers,” his A-team leader had said to him after the firefight, and the whole goddamn team erupted in laughter. That’s what he hated the most, the fury of the humiliation. And that’s when he swore he’d never carry a handgun again and he’d never humiliate himself again.

But now Swagger had humiliated him twice.

That’s all right, Payne had told himself. I’ll get me another shot at you and this time I’ll put two, three, maybe all six double-oughts into you, motherfucker. Some of these kids on the team think you’re some kind of bull-goose macho motherfucker, some kind of super-cracker, a Dixie boy full of piss and leather; not me, Swagger. Double-ought cut you down to your rightful size real good.

Then Jack snickered, remembering.

I already started having my fun with you. I killed your fucking dog.

A thousand leads, a thousand nothings. The man had just vanished. Nick, now more a glorified clerk than an actual federal investigating officer, sat in the office for twelve hours at a stretch and watched every single lead dissolve into wisps, every report fizzle, every trace turn up counterfeit.

The other men didn’t like to be seen talking to Nick. They’d deny it, of course, but he noticed that when he joined a knot of kibitzers on the rare down minutes, one by one the guys would peel off and he’d be stuck facing a blank wall. Only Sally Ellion always said hi because she was too pretty and popular to run any danger of career contamination. She once even told him she was sorry he was having troubles.

“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” she said.

“I’m sure it was,” he replied.

“I heard that you might be going to another office.”

“Yeah. Well, not for a while, not until this thing gets done. They need bodies now. Somebody’s got to wash out the damned coffee cups. But I’ll probably be heading out. Maybe not such a bad thing. New Orleans hasn’t really worked out. I’ll get a start somewhere else.”

“I know you’ll do well, Nick,” she said, “wherever you go.”

He smiled; she was a nice girl.

Meanwhile the office pool was running odds of eight to one that Bob was dead; no man could disappear so completely from the largest federal manhunt in history, leaving no traces at all. Especially a man who, as reports developed, hadn’t a friend in the world, had no network of allies, no organization, no peers. The complete and absolute loner.

But meanwhile Nick clerked and cleaned for the first-stringers, bearing his humiliation with as much dignity as he could muster; and maybe it was while he was washing out the coffee pot that he had his bright idea.

Don’t do this, he said to himself.

You are in deep enough trouble already.

Man, they are going to eighty-six your ass out of here if they catch you.

And it’s so unlike you to do anything at all contrary to official policy.

But…it was such a good idea.

And like all good ideas, it was simple.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the man he’d found cut to pieces in the motel three months before the Roberto Lopez shooting. It struck him as something more than coincidental that the man was Salvadoran, as Wally Deaver had told him, even if his credentials and the Bureau ID’d him as an Eduardo Lachine of Panama City, Panama. But one man had seen Lanzman. That was Deaver, in Boston, back when he’d been a DEA agent at the Bush drug summit in Cartagena, Colombia, in 1990.

Why not fax Wally a morgue ID of the stiff? And that way find out if…

He tried to think of what it would mean if a Salvadoran secret agent had been murdered in New Orleans a few months before the assassination of a Salvadoran archbishop unloved by his own country’s regime. But it gave him a headache, and he went back to work.

The general leaned forward, proposing a toast, his white teeth gleaming, his eyes radiant with joy.

“To our friend, Colonel Raymond Shreck. A very great man. A truly wonderful man!”

He raised his glass, which was filled with an expensive wine.

The general was a sleek, smiling man named Esteban Garcia de Rujijo, and at thirty-eight, through great ferocity in a multitude of hardfought campaigns, he had become the commanding officer of the Fourth Battalion (Air-Ranger), First Brigade, First Division (“Atlacatl”) of the Salvadoran Army. His unit was nicknamed Los Gatos Negros, or Panther Battalion, for their jet-black berets.

“Thank you, sir,” said Shreck, in Spanish.

Shreck, eyes hooded, wore his old uniform with Ranger tabs, Special Forces MACV lightning patch, his Corcoran jump boots glossy black, the trousers bloused into them. He carried his green beret under his epaulet. The uniform still fit perfectly and its creases were razors. The Combat Infantry Badge dominated a chestful of ribbons, including the Distinguished Service Cross and the Purple Heart and the Silver Star with two Oak Leaf Clusters, all of which were his.

Shreck and the general – and a third man – sat at a dinner table in a large museum of a house, on two thousand prime acres in the hills just north of the seaport city of Acajutla, in northern El Salvador. The house was not the general’s, at least not yet. It belonged to another man also named de Rujijo – the general’s father. It had been owned by the de Rujijos since the Spanish had conquered the region in 1655.

The third man, who was sitting next to Colonel Shreck, was a small, merry, elderly gentleman named Hugh Meachum, formerly of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Plans and, since his rude retirement from the Agency in 1962, a fellow at the Buddings Institute of Foreign Policy in Washington, D.C. If the general was el gato negro, then Hugh Meachum, a connoisseur of pipes and wines and ironies, was el gorrión, the sparrow.

“The general is very pleased with you, Raymond,” said Meachum. “He should be. You certainly saved his bacon.”

“Yes, bacon,” said the general, who had been educated first at El Salvador’s National Military Institute, and then at the National War College in Washington, D.C., and the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

“It is not an easy thing to kill a priest,” said the general. “Not even a communist priest.”

“The general believes that Archbishop Roberto Lopez was a communist,” said Meachum. “He truly does.”

Shreck knew this was the sort of thing that amused Meachum. Meachum often privately marveled at the sheer barbarity of these people. They were capable of anything, and it took a great deal of skillful handling to prevent them from going hog wild. They were capable of killing in the thousands. The general had killed in the thousands.

“A most excellent operation,” said the general. “Muy excelente. The world thinks that a crazy American tries to shoot the president of the United States and accidentally hits this pious bystander. And nobody knows it’s really justice reaching out to kill a communist priest.”

He had a pockmarked face and a dark mustache. He was dressed in evening clothes, including a red plaid cummerbund. He wore a high-polish stainless steel Colt 10mm Delta Elite in a shoulder holster. Shreck had noticed its ivory grips when the general had bent to pour the wine.

“It was an expensive operation,” Shreck said.

“Cheap, whatever the cost.”

“And oh-so-very necessary,” said Hugh Meachum. “That archbishop was going to get the Panther Battalion investigation opened again. And he had the president’s ear, too. And how very, very embarrassing for many people that would have been.”

“It was wonderful,” said the general. “Tell me, though, Colonel Shreck. The great shot that brought this communist priest down. A great shot, no?”

“A great shot, yes,” said Shreck.

“Who do you have who could make such a shot? What a shot! It is truly an amazing shot.”

“It was,” said Shreck. He himself wished he knew who hit that shot. Whoever he was, the guy could shoot, maybe better than Bob Lee Swagger.

Shreck looked over at Meachum, who only twinkled, as if he’d had a bit much to drink.

“I would someday,” said the general, lifting his wine, “consider it an honor to shake this man’s hand.”

So would I, thought Shreck.

“We will convey your sentiments, of course,” said Hugh Meachum.

“It was muy excelente,” said the general. “Perfecto. Number One.”

Shreck almost said, Yes, except for the asshole who got away. But Meachum had warned him not to raise the subject. The general was somewhat touchy.

Shreck took a quick glance around the baronial dining room of the de Rujijo estate; outside, in the twilight, a vast garden undulated over rolling land down to a pond, a perfect oval, inscribed into the earth so that the setting sun would reflect dazzlingly off of it at twilight. Beyond was the jungle; and beyond that, the sea, a gleaming band some two miles or so away.

“You should know, Colonel Shreck, that for us it did not go perfectly.”

“Oh?” said Shreck.

“But not to worry.”

“Oh my,” said Hugh Meachum. He took another sip of wine.

“A traitor. Yes. A traitor.”

Shreck nodded, waiting, thinking, oh shit, what now?

“Who learned of our arrangement. And fled.”

“Messy,” said Hugh Meachum. “Very messy. Certain people will not be pleased.”

“Not to worry,” the general repeated.

“And why not, sir?” asked Shreck.

“The traitor was betrayed himself. He was hiding in Panama. When he finally thought it was safe, he flew to New Orleans. To the FBI. But we were waiting. Do you remember the wonderful electronic surveillance vehicle your organization provided to our intelligence service?”

“Affirmative,” said Shreck.

“With this, we tracked him. We made certain it was our Eduardo, and we eliminated him in a manner that communicates to all who know of such matters our seriousness of intentions.”

Shreck nodded.

“And now I drink,” said the general, “to my brave compadres and to the glorious future of our two nations.”

“Hear, hear,” said Hugh Meachum.

Fuck you, thought Shreck.

The next morning, waiting for the helicopter that would take him to the airport for the jet back to the United States, Shreck stood in the meadow before the great house and looked at the sea. It was a gray day, windy and moist, with a chill in the air surprising for the tropics. The chill made him think of the mornings in Korea, when he’d been just a kid, and all the times he’d sworn in Korea that no matter what happened to him, he’d never be cold again in the morning.

But he felt cold.

“Colonel, you are all right?”

It was General de Rujijo, now in his camouflages with his black beret. The high-polish Colt automatic hung in a shoulder holster under his left arm.

“I am fine, sir,” said Shreck.

“You look under the weather, Colonel.”

“No sir. Not at all.”

“Good. I have a little present for you. From my very own archives.”

He snapped his finger and an aide brought over a briefcase. The general reached inside and pulled out a black plastic box that Shreck recognized as a videotape cassette.

“I record all my battalion’s operations,” said the general. “For training purposes. This is a copy of the action on the Sampul River. You should find it educational, how well our troops mastered their lessons.”

Shreck had an impulse to smash the man’s skull in. But he smiled grimly and took it from him.

“I have many more,” said the general. “You may have that one.”

“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”

The general smiled with courtly dignity, saluted and when Shreck returned the salute, he turned and walked away.

Shreck looked at his watch; the chopper was late, nothing ever happened on time in this goddamned country.

“Colonel, you seem especially morose today.”

Of course it was old Hugh, who was never quite as drunk as he seemed, even if, at eleven A.M., he had a gin and tonic in his hand and a pinkish hue to his face.

“That asshole just presented me with a tape of the Sampul River job. I guess the point he’s trying to make is that we’re all in this together, like it or not. If he goes down, the tape reaches somebody important and we all go down.”

“The general is a practical man.”

“It makes me sick that a motherfucker like de Rujijo thinks he’s got us. He reminds me of some of those shit-ass gook generals in their fucking jumpsuits who made it out in seventy-five with a couple of hundred million bucks in the sack.”

“Raymond, I’ve always appreciated your tact. You never say what you think, do you?”

“I don’t get paid to think, Mr. Meachum. I didn’t go to Yale, like you did. We both know that.”

“Of course not. Well, the general. The general has his uses. He’s a dreadful man, a war criminal most certainly. A great importer of la cocaína. But he and he alone was not responsible for what happened with the Panther Battalion troops on the Sampul River. We made that mess, too. You, Colonel, too. You were there. Those were your trainers in the field. And, if we are to be responsible adults, we must clean it up.”

That didn’t really satisfy Shreck of course: it was too easy.

“We did what we did,” he said, “in perfect awareness of the consequences and the risks – and the costs. We did it because we believed in the long run it would save far more lives than it took.”

“Indeed we did. That, after all, is the sort of calculus they pay us for, isn’t it? But that same principle extends to this last operation, which you implemented so well in New Orleans. It costs us two men – an intellectual bishop with a surprisingly intractable moralistic streak, and a beat-up war hero who’s a complete gun nut. If we don’t use those men, and somehow the archbishop’s will prevails and it comes out about Panther Battalion, and who did what and why, then the left and the right in this bloody little country will never ever get together. There will be no treaty; the fighting will go on, the thousands will continue to die – ”

“Come on, Mr. Meachum, that’s not what worries you. What worries you is that the lefties might win here, even as communism is crumbling or has crumbled all over the world, and we’ve kicked ass bigtime in the Persian Gulf. That’s what sticks in your craw.”

The old man smiled one of his mischievous Meachum smiles, then faded behind a mask of remoteness.

“Well, Raymond, believe what you will and for whatever reason you wish. But agree with me on this one sound operating principle. That this man Swagger must be found and destroyed.”

“We’ll get him.”

“Speaking of which, I had an idea. The Electrotek 5400. State of the art, is it not?”

“You know it is.”

“It seems a shame to let it sit up in New Orleans until the general figures out how to get it back through customs. It occurs to me how very useful it might be to you in your quest.”

“Jesus,” said the colonel.

“Yes, I thought you’d be pleased. You see, Raymond, even though you don’t think so, we do take care of our own. We always have. We always will. And I’d destroy that tape if I were you.”

“I will,” said Shreck, looking at the goddamned thing in his hand.