Point of Impact

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Nick was fast; Bob was faster.

“Don’t you do it, son,” he said, the.45 Colt automatic a blue blur as it rose from nowhere and locked onto Nick’s chest. Bob’s voice was dead calm, dead serious.

Nick’s hand had flashed to his own Smith, his fingers were wrapped around the shaft of the piece – a very good speed draw, in fact, by Bureau standards – but he was dead by a clean three-tenths of a second if Bob so chose.

Nick put his hands up.

“Hey, what – ” Howard said.

“You boys just relax. Young lady, you relax too. I came only to get my old hound Mike, and no man should have to die for so silly a thing as a dog that’s been dead a month or so, right, Memphis?”

There was a weirdly cheerful crackle in his voice.

The girl behind the counter sat back and her eyes got big as eggs. Howard, meanwhile, was still not quite with it.

“Who – ”

“Howard, it’s him, it’s Swagger. He beat us here – no, he set us up. Isn’t that right?”

“You, older guy, don’t you do anything stupid, even if you do look stupid. Gun out, left hand reaching around, set it on the counter, just like the kid here.”

“Mr. Swagger, there are federal agents all arou – ”

“Just do it, old man, there’s a good boy.”

It stunned Nick how calm Bob was.

Howard’s big Model 19 came out, went onto the countertop delicately.

“Young lady, pick each one up by the barrel and put ’em in that wastebasket over there.”

She did as she was told, shaking all the way.

“Now, young lady, I want you to lie down on the floor over there by the wall and curl up, with your hands over your ears. You just stay there. If you hear shooting, you just stay there. You’ll be fine if you just stay there.”

The girl, a blonde with a murky face, did just that, sinking to the floor.

“Swagger,” said Howard, “give it up. You won’t make it out. If we don’t get you today, we’ll get you tomorrow. We have a thousand men on this.”

“You just shut your mouth, sir,” said Bob. “Now y’all come with me, smiling like we’re old pals, you being just a touch ahead. Remember I can put the third of three bullets into each of you before you feel the first two. Now let’s go. We’re headed back past three halls, then turning to the right. Then you, Memphis, you’re going to tell the man there, a Dr. Nivens I believe, how it’s time to give up on the dog’s body and send it on to Washington for further tests. You pick it up. Then we’re going to walk out to my truck, and I’m going to drive off. And nobody has to get hurt over a damn dog. Fair enough?”

“Swagger, we have six eight-man reactive squads in the area. We can have a SWAT team here in three minutes. We have choppers and dogs. You’ll never get it done. It’s over. You shouldn’t have come back.”

“I came back to bury my old dog, and nobody’s going to stop me. Now let’s get going.”

The three of them walked stiffly through the swinging doors.

“Now up here, to the left. You boys put him in the human morgue. That’s proper, because he’s a better man than most men, I’ll tell you.”

They reached the morgue.

“Here we are, Memphis. Don’t fuck this up like you fucked up Tulsa. You hit the first time, Pork.”

Nick blanched; his shame, yanked up out of the past on him. How had he known?

“Yes?”

It was Nivens, the county coroner, who’d done the autopsy on the dog.

“Uh, Dr. Nivens, my name’s Nick Memphis, FBI,” Nick said. Nick drew out his credentials and the three of them faced the runty little doctor.

“We’ve, uh, we’ve decided to send the dog’s body on to Washington for further testing and – ”

“Oh, God, Bob, Jesus, don’t shoot – ”

The doctor had recognized Bob even as Nick was talking. So Bob pulled the Colt out and said, “Now, don’t do anything stupid, Doc, I just come to get my damned poor old dog. Give him to this young fool here.”

But in the face of the pistol, the doctor simply surrendered; he was one of those natural victims eager to give up. He went to his knees and blubbered at Bob not to shoot him because he had three children, a mortgage, a sick wife.

“Where’s the dog, dammit?” Bob asked.

The doctor mumbled something about Number 7, and Bob gave Nick a shove in the direction of the drawer marked 7. Nick ambled over to it. He had a Colt Agent.38 snub in a ballistic nylon holster strapped to his ankle, in accordance with the new Bureau reg that permitted backup guns in units with high-contact probability, but the problem with an ankle carry is its awkwardness. He’d never get to the piece, get it unstrapped, get it into his big hands and find a shooting position before Bob had shot him several dozen times. But he knew that Howard had a piece on his ankle also and he was afraid that Howard, now furiously ashamed to be taken so easily and caught up in the drama of a collapsing career, might lose it and go for the piece and get himself and probably everyone else in the room killed.

Nick slid open the drawer; it was cool inside. The dog, wrapped in a human body bag, was light enough. He hoisted it.

“Fine,” said Bob, watching him, watching the doctor, watching poor Howard, “now bring him over here.”

“Swagger, give it up,” said Howard, “before somebody innocent gets hurt.”

“Now, sir,” said Bob, courtly as ever, “you just mind your own business and nothing sudden will happen to anybody. All’s I want is to bury my dog.”

Suddenly, they heard sirens.

“Colonel?” It was one of Payne’s men, an ex-cop, and he’d just caught up with Shreck in the corridor.

“Yes?”

“It’s Jack, in the Electrotek 5400 in Arkansas. He’s just monitored an FBI report from outside Blue Eye to the effect that they’ve got Bob Lee Swagger caught in the Polk County Health Complex. They’re just this second bringing in their SWAT teams and snipers, and the state cops and the local cops are pouring all kinds of stuff into the place.”

Shreck’s eyes acquired the color of ball bearings.

“I want you to get to Operations and bring it up off the shortwave on loudspeaker. I’ll be there in a second. And clear the room. I want to hear this one without a lot of asshole chatter from the teams.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right,” said Shreck.

He felt nothing: no elation, no dizzying blast of happiness, no relief. He was a professional. But in the tunnel that was his mind, he had just a split second of pleasure. It was about to end.

He raced toward Operations.

“All right,” said Bob, gesturing to Howard and the doctor. “Y’all lie down on the floor. Keep your heads down and don’t try anything foolish. You, chubby, you’re coming with me. Bring the dog.”

Abruptly, they stepped through the swinging doors, leaving the stunned victims in the morgue.

“Hold it,” Bob commanded.

He positioned himself next to the doors, and two seconds later they blew open to reveal Howard with his little.38 on a rampage, and Bob simply clipped him between the eyes with the hard butt of the.45, in a kind of insolent, backhanded swat, sending him down to the floor with a thump, his little revolver clattering away.

“Wasn’t he the stupid one?” he said laconically to Nick, who watched the whole thing in astonishment. “Now, this way,” Bob directed with his.45, as the sirens grew louder outside.

“You got every SWAT team in six states on your ass,” said Nick.

“Pork, you’re here to carry the dog, so why not just keep that mouth buttoned up?”

Everywhere they ran through the building they encountered frightened people who melted away with shrieks or faints. But no officers; Howard hadn’t gotten any men into the building yet and probably wouldn’t until the evacuation was complete.

Nick felt his Colt Agent jostling in the ankle holster; but he still had no good shot at getting it out, not with the eerily aware Bob shoving him down the hallway toward God knew what.

“Where we headed?” he asked.

“Shut up, Pork,” said Bob.

Suddenly the loudspeakers boomed through the hallways.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the FBI requests that you stay in your offices. There’s evidently a felon loose in the complex.”

“Jesus,” Nick said, “they got you now.”

A state police car whirled down Route 71 from Mena toward the health complex, siren blaring, blowing by the Electrotek van, which had been discreetly parked at a wayside stopover. Behind the police car came another and another. A helicopter churned overhead.

In the van, a scrawny ex-cop named Eddie Nicoletta and called Eddie Nickles, said, “His ass is grass.”

But Jack Payne didn’t say a thing. He just sat there listening to the orchestration of the law enforcement units over the radio intercept. Nothing showed on his mean little face.

The radio chattered on.

“Command, I got three State teams coming in.”

“Okay, good, Victor Michael Five, I want you to work ’em around back and coordinate with our sniper post.”

“Ten-four, Command. Are we green light?”

“That’s a negative, Victor Michael Five, we have a federal officer as a hostage, I repeat, we have a federal officer as a hostage. I’ll call the shot if it goes to it.”

“But suppose we get him clean?”

“Ah, we’ll have to get back to you, Victor Michael Five,” said the command voice.

“Fuckin’ feds,” said Nicoletta, “they take over and then they don’t know what the fuck their policy is. I remember this time, working narc, when – ”

“Shut up, Nickles,” said Payne. Then he turned to Pony, a Panther Battalion communications technician really named Pinto, and asked, “They getting this back at Dulles?”

“Loud and clear,” the Salvadoran said. “I tell you, man, with this stuff you could start a radio station.”

Another chopper roared down the road.

I want to be there, thought Jack Payne suddenly, a yearning going off in him like an inflating balloon.

But he sat tight.

“Don’t touch that dial,” he said.

Bob stopped to pull on the padlock of a door marked ENGINEERING ONLY. Magically, the lock popped open.

They stepped into a little closet. There was a grating on the floor and Bob bent to open it; beneath, Nick could see a metal ladder.

“That’s our ticket out, Pork. Get your ass and a half down there and then go to prone, on your belly, legs and arms spread. You make a stupid move, I’ll have to dump your bones here. Sad for a big boy like you to have to die over a dead dog.”

Nick struggled down with the dog’s corpse; he could sense Bob above him, the yawning bore of the.45 always locked onto him. The man carried the gun lightly, easily, as if he’d been born with it.

At the bottom Nick looked up, and there was Bob, the gun on him. Obediently he went to the floor as Bob clambered down, pulling the grate shut after him.

“This way, now,” he said.

Nick had to admit it; yes, he was impressed. Bob knew the layout of the place cold; he’d left the woman up front to call the cops because he wanted lots of commotion and chaos; he figured he could get out. But he couldn’t make it with the dog, so he’d had to wait until a strong enough man showed up who could carry Mike while he, Bob, negotiated the obstacles.

Recon, remembered Nick. A good sniper always recons the area before he operates. He never goes in blind. He knows where everything is, he plans escape routes, evasion maneuvers, always has a plan.

At the end of the narrow tunnel they came to another ladder; this time Bob went up first, back against the rungs, the gun on Nick. Nick followed, covered the whole way, and had trouble lugging the dog’s body up the ladder, but Bob didn’t help him a bit. Finally, grunting heavily, he was up.

“Damn dog is heavy,” he said.

“You ought to try humping a seventy-pound pack in the boonies in a-hundred-twenty-degree weather, Pork,” said Bob. “Now shut up. This part might be tricky.”

They were in another closet, close in the dark. Outside it, they could hear motion, the staticky crackle of a radio, the low murmuring of serious men.

“Hold on to that dog,” whispered Bob.

Then he pressed open the door. They were in some sort of garage a good seventy yards from the main health complex building. Outside, Nick saw three state police cars set up to form a perimeter around the building. Cops were crouched behind their wheel wells, aiming shotguns or scoped rifles. But Bob and Nick were outside the perimeter.

“Now, we go out here, we walk, we don’t run, about a hundred yards, to where you see a generating shack. Around back, there’s a red pickup. That’s where we’re going. You make any sudden moves, son, and you know what’s waiting for you.”

“Yeah,” said Nick.

“So let’s do it.”

They walked out into the bright sunlight and didn’t look back. The damn dog was getting even heavier. Nick’s arms ached. He watched as the generating shack wobbled closer, wondering when the hell Howard would shake the cobwebs from his skull and figure out what was going on and order his snipers to green light the two walking men. The bullets would sing out and since the guys didn’t shoot worth a shit at any range over seven yards, he knew he’d get blasted. What made it worse was the sense of commotion rising behind them, two or three new choppers arriving, while all the sirens in the world seemed to be sounding, as if it were some kind of state police convention in Little Rock.

But they made it to the shed, and behind it found the red truck.

“Put the dog in back,” said Bob, who had opened the cab and pulled out a short-barreled lever action carbine, an actual Winchester.

“Now, get in, Pork. You’re driving, and I got this little rifle on your butt.” He spat a leisurely gob into the dust.

“Jesus, now we’re just going to drive on out of here? Like, nobody’s going to notice? There’s maybe five hundred men out there by now.”

“We’re going out the back way and up the hill.”

“What back way? There is no back way.”

“I think you’re going to be surprised, son. Now get going. Key’s in the ignition and I’ve got this damn poodle-shooter on you.”

Suddenly there was a helicopter hovering overhead, whipping up a brisk curtain of dust and beating the trees back.

“You in the truck,” came the loudspeakered voice, “out, or we’ll fire.”

“Shit,” said Nick.

“Punch it,” said Bob.

Feeling extremely mortal, Nick punched the truck. With a stunning leap, the vehicle took off, blowing up its own curtain of dust as it zoomed along the perimeter of the fence.

The shadow of the chopper stayed with them. Sirens rose; from around the sides of the building a fleet of squad cars emerged, plunging like a cavalry charge across the grounds at them.

“Now left, left,” shrieked Bob.

But there was nothing left but Cyclone fence.

In Operations, the men sat quietly, faces grave. Nobody looked at anybody else. From the bank of communications equipment, they could hear the drama playing itself out.

“All units, all units, I have suspects in red pickup inside the wire perimeter, goddamn that’s him, I swear, goddamn – ”

“This is Command, this is Command, all units, stay in position, I want state police in pursuit, do you read, Victor Michael Five, get after him.”

“Are we green light, are we green light?”

“Only if you get a clear shot, all units, suspect is armed and dangerous but he’s got a federal hostage.”

“Is hostage expendable?”

“You must not let suspect get away, that’s imperative, all units.”

“Jesus,” said one of the Operations guys, “whoever’s on command just said go ahead and drop their own guy if they have to. The feds want this boy bad.”

Not as bad as I do, thought Shreck.

“Left!” screamed Bob, himself reaching over to shove the wheel. Nick felt the truck swerve and before it there was a steel fence post and he knew it would stop them and he’d end up wrapped around it. But the post went down like a snowman, yanking with it twenty feet of fence – Nick knew instantly it had already been cut through, that Bob had laid the whole thing out hours ago – and now they faced hill. Nick didn’t need instructions. He pressed the gas and rocked backwards through the gears and the truck bucked and clawed its way up, through underbrush, until it felt like a rocket ship ascending toward gravity’s release. It seemed almost vertical; he waited to slide back, felt the truck fighting and fighting and fighting.

Then, amazingly, they were over the crest of a ledge and on a dirt road.

“Go, go, you sonovabitch!” Swagger was yelling. “Wooo-eeee, left those old boys way back there.”

Indeed the police cruisers and the FBI cars didn’t have the gear ratios to make the incline. Nick could see one or two of them stuck halfway up and the others paralleling his course at ground level. But the choppers were everywhere, two, three, now four of them, darting like predatory birds.

“You won’t shake the choppers,” he yelled.

“You just drive, Pork. You let me worry about that,” Bob commanded. He actually looked a little happy.

A shot tore into the hood of the truck with a clang.

“Oh, fuck, they’re shooting,” Nick said.

But Bob squirmed half out the window and brandished the carbine, and instantly the choppers fell back.

“Gutless bubbas,” he said, sliding back in.

They tore down the high road at eighty, dogged at a distance by choppers. And behind them rose state police cars, their lights flashing. The squad cars gained.

“Go on, boy, hit it. Push this damn thing or I’ll have to dump you at hundred miles per.”

“It’s pushed, dammit, I got the pedal on the floor, they’re gonna get us!”

“Another mile or so, boy, that’s all.”

This distance narrowed appreciably over the next few seconds, as the state police cruisers rocketed down the road much faster than the truck could hit. In the rearview mirror, Nick could see the offside man in the lead car slide a pump gun out the window and try to find enough of a sight picture to fire as the car drew nearer, but the road bucked too hard and the dust was too thick.

“Okay, boy, get ready!” shouted Bob, “she’s coming up now.”

Nick looked at him in horror and watched as his hand snaked out gleefully, seized the wheel, and gave it a hard yank to the right. Nick’s foot reflexively shot to the brake but it was too late. The truck careened at sixty miles an hour off the edge of the road and back down the mountainside.

Through the windshield, the world tipped crazily, and turned to instant vegetation as branches and tufts of high grass whipped at the truck. It rocked savagely as it plummeted downward, now and then feeling about to launch itself in a gut-squeezing, heart-crushing thrust through the air. Then the wheels touched down again and the truck tore through the underbrush. Nick fought the wheel for some semblance of control; he saw trees again and heard himself screaming – and then he lost it. The whole thing flipped; the windshield stretched and shivered and seemed to liquefy as it turned to silver webbing in the instant before it shattered, pouring a torrent of glass atop him. He felt himself careening and the smell of dust and gas filled his ears, amid bolts of pain as he banged his head hard against the door pillar. And then they were still.

It took Nick a second or two to realize he was alive. He heard the ticking of the truck and shook his head, touching it, tasting salt as blood ran into his mouth. His eyes shot open. He lay half in, half out of the vehicle, which had come to a twisted rest in a tangle of trees at the end of the long plunge down the mountain. Up top, he could see the police cars halted and a couple of troopers, guns in hands, edging down the steep slope. A chopper hovered above and then another one swooped low overhead, its roar deafening. Nick turned and watched as a whole cavalry charge of police cars roared across the flatland at them, still a good three minutes distant.

Where was Bob?

He blinked, shook his head, pulled himself free. His hand shot down to his ankle and he unlimbered the.38 Agent. Where was he?

Then he heard a grunt and looked back through the cab to see Bob lifting the body bag with Mike’s corpse out of the truck bed. There was blood on his face too, and when he got the body to him, Nick saw him pause; there was a tenderness in him Nick would never have wired into his Bob Lee Swagger profile.

Then Bob spun and began to lurch away.

Nick had him.

“Stop!” He thrust out the.38, cupping it in two hands, as he thumbed back the hammer. He had its cylinder primed with Glaser safety slugs. At this range the bird-shot-loaded bluetips generated seventy-three percent one-shot stops.

“Goddammit, freeze!” Nick boomed again. He lurched forward, blinking blood from his eyes, and feeling himself begin to tremble like a child in the cold rain without a coat. He set himself against the canted hood of the truck, locking his elbows, sliding into a sight picture. It was a good hold; he had Bob, center mass, in the notch of the rear sight and the nub of the front.

Bob himself blinked away some blood as he studied on this new situation.

“Put the dog down and your hands behind your neck and get to your fucking knees, Swagger. You do some speed stuff on me and I swear to Christ I blow your spine out. These are Glasers.”

“Hell, Pork,” Bob said, “if you were going to shoot me, it’d be done by now.”

Then the sonovabitch winked at him! And he turned and began to amble off, dog under one arm, Winchester carbine under the other.

Shoot him! Nick ordered himself. The trigger was a curse against his finger; he yearned to expel it, to end all his failures.

But shooting a man takes one of two things: an overwhelming fear of one’s own death, which Nick did not have in the least; or conviction. It turned out he lacked this component as well.

He didn’t miss vertically; he missed horizontally, Nick found himself thinking as he stood there, watching Bob run away.

Bob got to the field and shot across the meadow a hundred yards or so to what Nick now saw was your picture-postcard country cemetery under a tall stand of ancient trees, hard by a doddering wooden church. He watched as Bob vaulted the stone wall, and there among the teetering, blackened gravestones set the dog down in what must have been a perfectly sized hole already cut from the earth, and snatched up a shovel that must have been part of the master plan. With seven strong strokes, he heaped dirt upon it. In the next half-second, he’d scooped up the Winchester carbine and headed into the church.

Nick heard the cars closing in now, but they would not make it. Bob was inside the church and suddenly out the door skeedaddled a class of black children, running desperately, even as the first state cruiser arrived, and its occupants, Magnums and shotguns aimed and cocked, took cover behind it. Then came a second, a third and then ten more, then twenty; a whole caravan of lawmen was at the church in less than a minute, ready and waiting, when the last occupant emerged, a stooped black gentleman.

They got him, Nick thought.

Someone was screaming in his ear.

“You didn’t shoot! You had him, goddammit,” the voice said. He turned. It was a tough-looking state police sergeant. Behind him his buddy radiated contempt at Nick.

I’ll have to pay for that one too.

“Goddamn,” said another state policeman, holding aloft Bob’s.45 as he found it in the cab. “It’s fucking empty!”

Nick heard a bullhorn demanding surrender. There was just one second of silence. Then the sound of shots rose against the sky, and Nick turned in horror. The lawmen were shooting gas grenades into the church. He watched as the heavy shells sailed through and the cottony white fog began to steam through the broken windows. A tendril of smoke leaped out, and a flame, and then another from another window, and the church began to burn.

Jack Payne stood outside the van with his binoculars. Overhead a TV news helicopter zipped by and shortly a TV news van came screeching down the road toward the mass of flashing lightbars and the howl of sirens. Jack could hear the troopers over the radio intercept from inside the van.

“Shit, it’s going up, that dry timber.”

“Is he coming out?”

“Don’t see a damned thing. I’m gonna – ”

“That’s a negative, Victor Michael Thirty-three, you stay put and keep those eyes open. Anybody seen the goddamned feds?”

“They’re coming, Charlie.”

At that moment four black cars raced by Jack, hell-bent for the church.

But it was too late. Jack watched the smoke, floating upward in a lazy column. Through the glass, he could see the flames.

“Wow.”

It was Eddie Nickles, beside him.

“Shit, they burned him up. Man, he’s all fucking toasty now.”

“Shut up,” said Jack. He didn’t know why, he felt like hitting the younger man.