Savant

11

Shooter Price came out of Kansas City Military Books in a dour mood. Snipers and Silencers, Memoirs of a Sniper, Handbook for CounterSniper Teams, U.S. Marine Corps Scout/Sniper Training Manual, Sniping in the Carpathians, Police Sniper Handbook, Sharpshooters and Yeomanry; same old stuff.

Two mall rats had come bopping out of the store next to the bookshop and looked at him speculatively and giggled at each other. They were fourteen, tops, dressed like typical slut mall rats, and he could see them whisper and stare holes at his crotch, and as they went by he heard one of them say something that sounded like "Where's Winston?" Whatever that meant.

He felt himself turn livid with bottled-up rage. Price was fuming. For a second, he wanted to go back and kick their asses, but the way that he felt an ass-kicking wouldn't do it. His "primary" had been staying up late and moving and he was tired of all the bullshit and he could feel himself snapping and didn't care.

What the hell did he have? He didn't have anybody who gave a shit whether he lived or died. He tried to count his blessings:

In Fort Worth he had his cars and his library. The books were worth maybe half a million at a conservative estimate. But they'd taken him ten million dollars worth of effort to run down in dusty bookshops from Lee's Summit to London: the finest library of books about snipers extant.

Hell, his 490-horse twin turbo F-40 was probably worth as much as the books on today's market. He'd found a degenerate gambler in Nevada who'd lost big time at the poker table and he'd transferred four hundred K to the man's account for the F-40 and a twelve-cylinder cherry "Redhead" with 430 miles on it, the latter Ferrari one that he'd driven a total of once, trading it off in a deal involving a ragtop XJ-S, a Silver Spirit, a Lamborghini Diablo, and a ton of cash. He had his parents' old Bentley Turbo R. All of these under Mylar in a private garage maintained by River Crest Executive Auto. Once a week, this kid ran a half a buck's worth of gas through each of 'em just to keep them ticking. For what? This is what his life amounted to at forty-one? It pissed him off so much he couldn't think straight. He was like a man about to plummet over Niagara Falls in a small canoe—he could feel himself being pulled over the edge yet he was powerless to fight the thing that was moving him forward. It had started with the guy in the tavern parking lot, this release thing with the rifle—scoping out random targets. He'd seen Big Petey return to the place across the river, alerted first by the OMEGASTAR System, and then eyeballing him briefly through the scope as he did his thing. When Shooter saw the flames he knew it was Chaingang's work, even though he wasn't sure he'd heard the blast.

What a feeling of power he'd suddenly had, as he heard the sirens wailing in the night. There were sirens all the time, but he imagined these were ones responding to whatever Chaingang had just done. He thought about sniping the ambulances or cop cars, whatever he saw with a red ball. Maybe taking out some firemen.

The first target he saw through the scope was a figure moving up some stairs in front of a tenement. He squeezed one off and part of her disappeared. He swung SAVANT in a dizzying arc and spotted a lone figure in a faraway lot, loading or off-loading something, and he shot him. Swung halfway back, ejected the second case and reloaded. A man talking to a woman in a doorway. A challenge. He took the man out. Snicked the casing out. Slid another big hard APEX(X) in and got the woman, too—he could see her screaming through a window of the store where she and the man had been. What a blast! Four down in—what?—forty-five seconds, tops. It was better than the best sex he could remember.

He parked in back of an obvious dumping area and took the case, moving in the direction of cover. It was hot and humid and he felt like shit. He found a good place and opened up the fitted case and took his baby out and put her together.

"The system is sighted with the aid of the Laco 40X sniperscope, manufactured by Laco Optical, Inc., of Bettendorf, Iowa. A prismatic optical instrument utilizing forty-power magnification, the Laco lens of Magni-coat enhances the light-gathering capability of the weapon's sighting device to between ninety-eight and ninety-nine percent efficiency." He searched for the mall rats in his scope.

"The unit is controlled by the Eyepiece Focusing Collar, which is adjustable by manipulating collar in clockwise or counterclockwise rotation." Light glinted off a man's glasses and Shooter blew him away. Snick! Case out. Another big, hard round in place. Bolt closed.

"The Height-Adjustment Sleeve, which is manipulated in a similar rotation." BANG! The rifle thumped him as he squeezed her again, disappointed when the long-haired girl he'd scoped turned out to be a guy.

"The Image Intensifier, which is adjustable by accessing the Intensifier Port by means of an allen wrench and by manipulation of the Intensifier Wing Nut Control…" YEAH! A woman getting out of her car. Oh, shit—look at the bitches scatter. Snick. Load. Click.

"The Elevation Range Knob, which adjusts scope elevation…" A boy on the run. Lead the mutha and…Squeeze! Adios.

"Windage…" She was getting warm. He was heating his bitch up good. Slid that old nasty expended shell out and put a nice new cartridge in her hole. He could smell her juices. Click. Good-looking black-haired baby doll in a sweater. He'd give her a fucking Winston right here—Choong!

Ejected the shell. Reloaded slowly. Hell, he could do this all day. What a fucking rush! "The objective lens, which is adjustable by manipulating the Adjustment Ring until scope is focused, is adjusted only when parallax is present." Big son of a bitch about Chaingang's size. Let's see what he looks like when you lay them crosshairs on that big belly and do This! Lordy! What a mess.

Shooter pulled his face away from the scope. Took his darlin' down and put her away, jogging back to the car. He put her in the back seat and got in. It was hot inside. He hated these wheels, even with the top down. To Price it was just another disposable ride. He looked into the rearview mirror and was surprised to see that one of his eyes had a dark ring around it. His best girl had done up and given him a shiner.

That night, Chaingang was working, trying to run down his missing biker buddies from Steel Vengeance. Doing the kind of tracing that keeps you on the telephone as you sort trails and patterns. Price got antsy watching TV and took his lady out for some night air.

He saw a guy walking down the street. Watched him through the Laco without attaching it to the weapon. The guy walked funny. He definitely needed to die.

"To focus the scope continuously watch the target point through the sniperscope, with the eye centered directly in the eyepiece lens, keeping the crosshairs on the bull's-eye, and moving your head slightly to the left. If the bull's-eye remains centered repeat the procedure, moving your head slightly to the right. If, when the head is moved slightly in either direction, the bull's-eye appears to move out of center or change position in any way, parallax is present."

He nailed the center of the sighting hairs on the walking man's head. "Parallax is the apparent displacement or movement of an object seen from two different points not on a straight line with the object." Squeeze! Oooh.

Lieutenant John J. Llewelyn, of the Kansas City Metro Homicide Squad, skidded to a stop, killed the engine of his unmarked car, and got out of the vehicle leaving the door open.

There was tremendous glare from the flashing lights of other cop cars and an ambulance at the crime scene, and he shielded his eyes, a man always careful about protecting his vision, making mental notes of the salient aspects of what confronted him.

"Over here, John," Detective Sergeant Marlin Morris said.

"Who's got the handle on this?"

"Leo and T.J."

"Witnesses?" The Lieutenant and Sergeant went under a bright DO NOT CROSS tape.

"Lady over there." Morris gestured in the direction of a woman in animated conversation with two of his men. "Said she was coming out of this building over here, okay, and the guy blows up. Her words. 'He just blew up. It was awful. I thought something fell on him or hit him or something.' She said he was just somebody walking down the street."

"I.D. on the body?"

"Louis Sheves. Lives in Foley Park. Trying to reach a relative or neighbor, so far no luck."

They reached the body, which was surrounded by people. There was a crime photographer and another evidence tech doing pictures and measurements. The people from Kay Cee Memorial were obviously waiting for the police to finish. There was certainly no hurry. The victim was long gone. Literally. The lieutenant pulled back the cover from the remains.

"Holy Mother!" he said.

"Jesus!" Llewelyn heard another cop murmur. There was nothing left of the head. It had been almost completely torn from the body of the victim by whatever killed him. The force that had exploded the head had ripped it from the neck leaving only a hideous mess of ragged, bloody skin, bone, gristle, torn veins, and arteries, and a bit of spine stalk.

"Where's the man's head?" Llewelyn asked. Nobody answered. They were standing in some of it. Dark blood had stained the filthy street all around the body. Llewelyn could imagine the witness screaming as this lifeless corpse pumped blood from the neck.

Blackened, oily blood was everywhere. On a nearby parked truck. On the splattered coat of the luckless woman who had experienced the bad fortune to be in Louis Sheves's proximity when he blew up, but had the good fortune to be missed by whatever hellish force had struck him. It was the sort of crime scene where you didn't want to think about the soles of your shoes.

"Lieutenant," one of Llewelyn's guys said.

"Leo. Where's the head?"

"We found some skull fragment and hair 'n' that, but"—be shrugged—"the rest of him's all over the street."

"M.E. done?"

"He said they can't tell us anything till they do an autopsy."

"What a surprise," the lieutenant said dryly.

"Witness see anybody? Vehicles? Anything?"

The detective was looking at his notebook, shaking his head. "She works in the building over there. She was coming out and he was walking down the street. 'There was kind of a noise like a baseball bat or something hitting and this man blew up. He just blew up. It was awful. I thought something fell on him or hit him, you know, like that. But I didn't see anything. He just exploded and I screamed and tried to cover myself. His body kind of went up in the air and came back down in the street.'"

"If the evidence techs are done I guess they can take him."

The homicide team moved aside as they covered what was left of the man and the people from Kay Cee Memorial began loading the remains on a gurney. "I want to talk to her," Llewelyn told his men, stepping over to the sidewalk.

"Yes, sir. We're trying to locate anybody else who might have seen it happen."

"Good." Llewelyn watched the emergency team roll what was left of the dead body over to the waiting ambulance, open the doors, and expertly slide the gurney in. The legs folded up under it as it went in the ambulance with its grisly load. That's the way he felt sometimes, as if his legs would fold up under his weight if he moved the wrong way.

Llewelyn was a prematurely balding, bedraggled-looking, thirty-seven-year-old career cop who suddenly felt one hundred and thirty-seven, and not without good cause. He had solid instincts, proven in combat and in the dicier halls of both military and civilian strivers. He could see his captaincy puddling and running down the nearest storm drain before his eyes if this thing got away from him. Oh, he thought, with an exhausted sigh, there was going to be a world of shit on this one. Twelve of the fucking hits—and the thirteen gang kids, which also smelled pro.

He ran a small "elite" unit that people fought to get on. One of his best investigators, Hilliard, pulled up and parked. They exchanged nods and she checked the scene over, speaking with T. J. Kass, the other one of the female dicks on his squad, then came over to where he was making notes.

"You talk to the witness yet, El Tee?" she asked him.

"Uh-uh." He shook his head. "Let's go." They went over to where the woman was beginning her tale of horror for the third or fourth time, telling them what she'd seen, what she thought she'd seen; telling them nothing.

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