The Third Bullet

CHAPTER 22

Richard made all the arrangements. Bob met him at Dallas/Fort Worth International a week later, and the two flew direct to Boston, then caught an American Eagle puddle jumper to Hartford, where Richard had booked two rooms in the airport Marriott. Dinner in a local steak house.

At eight the next morning, Richard picked Bob up in a blue rental Ford Focus, and they set out for the two-hour drive west through the rolling Connecticut countryside for the arrival at Marty’s estate in Litchfield County, west of Warren.

“Beautiful country,” said Richard. “Reminds me of the Cotswolds, in England.”

“Never been there,” said Bob. “But beautiful it is. And you don’t see any shacks or rusted-out cars on cement blocks or run-down places like you do in the South. The American South or any south.”

The trees, the houses, the farms, the towns: all mature. Mostly white, wooden clapboard, impeccably serviced, shutters boldly painted a primary color, all well scrubbed by people for whom maintenance was an obsession. They took care of stuff, these people. Flowers beautiful, hedges trimmed, all towns, big or small, boasting a civic hall, a hotel, a park, a church. It felt like some kind of ancient land as imagined by Disney. Every other building seemed to have been built in some far-off place called the eighteenth century, and laws of Enlightenment rationality were still in control.

Swagger ate it up. It was in his genes, it lit his imagination, it was the way things should be, a military duty ethos fused seamlessly with daily life. He was also scanning for air cover – a shadowing chopper or some other sign that Nick had violated the agreement and laid in backup too close; he’d wondered if the next little Revolutionary War burg would conceal gunmen with body armor and RPGs.

“You seem tense, Jack.”

“I can’t stop looking over my shoulder. I told you, I’ve had a price on my head, and once you’ve been hunted, you never fully relax.”

“Jack, it’s a beautiful day in a beautiful part of America, and you are part of one of the most exciting historical-intellectual developments of our time, which, I should add, will probably have a tremendous financial upside. You should just enjoy the ride in.”

“You are so right, Richard. Man, I wish I had it in me to click the off switch and go to take-it-easy. I just want to look at this rifle case, get the business deal set, and get to work.”

Onward they went, passing through Warren, passing more rich Yankee farmland and forest, finding the hills on the rise, and feeling the gentle slope as the car climbed several hundred feet into the hills.

“There it is,” said Richard. A rusty green sign at a rusty gate sunk in faded concrete abutments with pretensions of grace announced “Adams Glen,” and Richard slowed and took the turn.

The road ran through thick trees on hillside, with slope above and below the dirt of the track. Dust flew in two tire contrails behind them, smearing the pristine beauty of the azure, windless, cloudless day, but on either side, the world seemed green, dense, and hushed. Bending over, looking through the windshield, Swagger could see the hill rising, buried in forest the whole way, to a rounded peak another four hundred or so feet up. Cubed limestone boulders, like fallen ceremonial heads, showed here and there among the trees, which were heavier or lighter in density depending on nature’s whimsy.

They rounded a last gentle turn and the hillside opened up to permit a spacious house against its flank, on the same theme as all those before: a huge clapboard mansion, built with an eye toward symmetry and precision in an age when those things were beauty. This one was beyond mature and had eased almost into senility. The landscaping had grown ragged, with lawn unkempt, weeds annoyingly clotting the beds, hedges out of square and in some places out of hedge, just jumbles of bush.

Richard eased the car to a halt and Bob got out, noting how badly the house could use some saving paint, having faded from white to something near pewter, with more than a few of the slats corrupted by rot, the shutters flaky and mottled. It was a million-dollar house a million dollars away from restoration.

“Hello, hello,” said the chubby Marty, beaming, stepping from a lesser door. He wore baggy blue jeans and a blue button-down shirt and a shawl-collar cardigan, as sloppy as the decaying house from which he had emerged. “Right on time. You engineer everything just right, don’t you, Jack?”

Swagger smiled, taking the soft, plump hand and shaking it. “Nice place,” he said.

“This old monster? Been in the family three generations. Damn, I’d love to get the money together to get it all brand-spanking-new again. Then it would be something. Sorry it’s so ratty, but the taxes alone eat me alive, and I can barely keep my nostrils out of the brine. Come on in.”

Marty led them into darkness and more of the same. The house had a mildewy quality, many of its rooms filled with ghost furniture under white sheeting, the smell of dust hanging in the air, and where slants of sunlight fell through shuttered windows, they revealed an ecosystem lively with debris.

Marty took them into what was his workroom and presumably had been a pater and a grandpater’s study. It alone was populated by dead animals, all with intense glass eyes caught up in the taxidermist’s high drama, shot by one generation or other of Adamses. The room was paneled and shelved with every book ever written on firearms, some of them by Marty. Behind the cluttered desk stood the glory wall, the young Marty in black-and-white slimness with this or that prosperous-looking older man of the gun world. Swagger saw a few he recognized, a few he knew.

“Say, isn’t that Elmer Keith, the gun writer?”

“I knew Elmer. He was very old by then. You like the old gun writers? God, what men. Look, there’s Jack O’Connor, and over there, Charlie Atkins, Border Patrol gunman and dangerous gent. This one is Bill Jordan. He was also Border Patrol. He had hands like hams, and I swear, I never saw a man so fast. Bill could put an aspirin on the back of his right hand, draw his Smith 19, and blast the falling pill before it hit the floor. He did it once on Ed Sullivan.”

Swagger had some memory of most of these fellows. They’d been his heroes growing up, not ballplayers or fighter aces or disease-defeating doctors but gunmen, like his father. He could say nothing because those memories didn’t belong in the head of Jack Brophy, retired mining engineer.

“When I was trying to learn more about all this,” he said, “I think I read a batch of them. They all seemed to have good times.”

“They sure did,” said Marty. “Now look at this–” and he was off. The next half hour was spent observing his treasures strewn about on random shelves, and he did have many. He had the first serial number in the last six models of .22 target pistol his father had manufactured, pristine, in perfect, untattered cardboard boxes. He had Colt’s experimental 9 mm double-action automatic, offered to the army in the early sixties for consideration in replacing the government model. He had the .300 H&H Winchester Bull gun that Art Haymon set twenty-seven national records with in the late thirties, before being nudged aside by the great Lon Scott. He had Henry rifle no. 15, the brass-framed gun that could be “loaded on Sunday and fired all week,” which ultimately morphed into the 1873 Winchester, which won the West, though as frequently for red people as white. He had Colts, Smiths, Marlins, all exquisite, all virtually pristine, all glorious.

“Sell the guns, Marty,” said Richard. “They’d buy your house a new paint job.”

“Oh, no,” said Marty. “You don’t sell history. At least not this history. I hope – again, maybe it’s more a dream than a hope – to display the collection coherently in its own museum. Maybe this place, all spruced up. That would be an Adams legacy.”

“Marty, don’t tell me you’ve lost that gun case?” asked Swagger, meaning it to be perceived as a joke. “And you’re just softening the blow?”

“No, no, it’s here,” he said. “I can see I’ve kept you waiting long enough. You boys sit over there. Coffee?”

“Not now,” said Bob. “Suppose I spill it on the thing.”

More laughter.

“Okay,” Marty said. He went to what seemed to be a wall and pulled on some lever or something, and the shelving, laden with books, floated outward on hinges, state-of-the-art 1932, to reveal a vault door, dead black, dead steel, dead heavy. He leaned and grabbed a knob beneath the rotary of the combination dial, pulled down, and a heavy steel clank reverberated through the room, loud enough to awaken the dead animals on the walls, stir dust from the books, and maybe make a buried Adams or two turn over.

The vault door swung out, and Marty dipped in.

He emerged in white gloves. He held in his hand a stoutly constructed pigskin-and-canvas case, maybe two feet wide, three long, one deep, of extremely elegant manufacture. He set it down on the bare coffee table before his two guests – before Swagger, really, as Richard’s contributions at this time were negligible. Swagger leaned forward, hungry to apprehend its meanings.

It wore its age well, with scuffs and stains and obscure marks everywhere, but integrity vouchsafed and complete. The leather seemed richer in patina, as if the process of aging had turned it from the utilitarian to the exquisite. Bob didn’t touch it. He put his nose two inches from it and scanned every detail. The locks were tarnished, but he’d noticed that there was no play between lid and case, so he presumed it was tight and nothing had loosened or worn within.

“You have no key?” he asked.

“No. Maybe if you went to the Arkansas state police and got Mr. Albright’s possessions from his death in ’93, it’d be on a key chain. But at this end, nothing.”

“I’d hate to damage it when we open it,” said Richard.

“We’ll have a bonded locksmith open it,” said Bob. “He can get it open without damaging it; he can attest to the age of the lock; he can date the lock and notarize it for us.”

“See, those are the things I’d never think of,” said Marty.

“Marty, do you have a magnifying glass? I’d like to look at the shipping tags.”

“Of course,” said Marty. He went to his desk, got the glass, and returned to give it to Bob. “I’d prefer to handle the tags with the gloves.”

“You got it,” said Bob.

Richard crowded next to him, and Marty hovered close on the other side, leaning to lift the tags for Bob’s inspection.

In the circle of the glass, the red one floated in and out of focus until Bob found the right distance between eye, lens, and object for clarity. He examined every square inch. In black crayon clerk’s scrawl against the stiff red paper under the company rubric BRANIFF AIRWAYS, INTO THE BRIGHT TOMORROW, he saw:

Date: 11-24-63

Flt: 344 DAL/RICH

Psnger: Scott, L.D.

The tag was looped over the double handles of the case, sealing them together. Since the handles were on different halves of the case, that meant it had not been opened since 11-24-63. The heavy paper appeared unrotted and, at least under Marty’s gentle handling, didn’t show any give-and-take when manipulated, suggesting that whatever adhesive unified the two ends of the loop, it held solid, itself without decay or much in the way of loosening. But it looked brittle, as if to bend it would send flakes of dead glue to the floor.

“Looks goddamn genuine to me,” said Bob. “I guess we’d have to find an expert of some sort to verify that as the proper Braniff tag, in the proper time frame, and do some chemistry on the glue to make sure it’s the same kind Braniff used.”

“Where would we find such a guy?” said Marty. “That’s pretty arcane knowledge.”

“The FBI forensics people are good at document interp. And this is a piece of evidence in a crime, don’t forget. I’m thinking we’re going to have to bring in law enforcement.”

“I’m not wild about that,” said Marty. “Those guys might want to hog the spotlight. They’ll sniff the gold. I hate to be mercenary, but I have a house to paint. This thing is pure gold.”

“If it’s got what we think it has. Let me look at the other tag.”

Marty let the shipping tag fall and scooped up the other. It was less frail, a luggage ID locked in place by a leather case, its face spared the elements by a sheet of plastic.

LON DUNN SCOTT, it said in blue fountain pen, presumably in Lon’s own handwriting. And below that, SCOTT’S RUN, RR 224, CLINTONSBURG, VA.

Bob said, “It’s possible Lon’s fingerprints are under the plastic. I’m assuming they’re all over the locks and the stuff inside. The more, the better. Marty, could I see that X-ray again?”

“Sure,” said Marty, disappearing to his desk, reappearing in seconds. He laid the heavy dark celluloid sheet over the case. Bob could see that it was a one-on-one ratio.

“Got any backlighting?” he asked.

“Yeah, I have a light table over there. I use it to go over contact sheets for the picture books.”

Marty led them to the light table, a large metal frame supporting a square sheet of white-frosted glass. He turned a switch, and the fluorescent bulb inside blinked to life. Marty laid the X-ray out, and it displayed the case’s contents in perfect outline, everything recognizable.

The incomparably graceful Monte Carlo stock, the ovoid trigger guard still on, bolt, action, containing receiver, bolt slot, barrel, with the scope – a long tubular construction belled at the muzzle end, maybe fourteen inches – held parallel above the action by the ancient Redfield mounts and rings of the time, and above them all, a long tube with a flange at one end that had to be the Maxim suppressor. In the corner were a collection of screws, what looked to be a folded gun cloth, and a small bottle, presumably cleaning fluid. In the other corner, the silhouettes of three cartridges.

Bob took something out of his pocket and laid it next to the three. It was a .264 Win Mag cartridge with a 140-grain spitzer hunting bullet. “Look at it,” he said. “The shells are the same size. Two-sixty-four Win Mag. See how Lon’s have a blunt tip compared to the point on the hunting bullet? That’s because he’s loaded a Carcano bullet into the .264 shell.” He went on with a brief description of his newly revised theory on the ballistics deceit that lay at the heart of the issue. Possibly Marty understood, or at least took it on faith; Richard gave no sign of being awake.

“I think we’ve figured it out,” said Marty.

“No,” said Swagger. “There’s the big issue of speed. We won’t have anything till we have that. If the route wasn’t chosen until late on November 19, they only had two and a half days to set it up. Impossible in that time. They couldn’t have done it. But they did it.”

“You’ll figure it out,” said Marty. “It’ll be something stupid and obvious that everybody’s missed.”

“If it’s stupid and I haven’t figured it out,” said Bob, “then I guess that makes me stupid.”

“I think we’re already there,” said Richard. “You’ve got stuff nobody has gotten before. Believe me, I know this crap up and down, I–”

“What did you say?” said Bob.

“I said we’re already there. You’ve got it. The rest is just details.”

Already there.

“Already there,” he said. “Goddamn, already there.” The insight hit him blindside.

“What on God’s earth are you talking about?” said Marty.

“It’s the final piece of the puzzle,” Swagger said, as much Swagger as Brophy in the flash of revelation. “I couldn’t figure out how they could put it together so fast. They were already there on some other job. They had Oswald under discipline, they had the ballistics, they had Scott in town, ready to shoot. Then fate brought them Jack Kennedy, and they couldn’t resist taking him down. It would have been so easy!”

“Does this call for champagne?” asked Marty. “Shall we toast? I don’t need much of an excuse to pop a bottle.”

“Nah. It’s just something I’ve been working on.”

“This is exciting,” said Marty.

“Marty, please put the case away and lock it up tight,” Bob said, pointing at the case.

“I will.”

Marty did as requested, and the three returned to the couches around the coffee table. Under the raging glass eyes of animals dead nearly a century, they talked a little bit more business, mainly schedules. Swagger’s job was to refine his theory and put it in writing, striving for clarity and simplicity. Marty thought photos would help, because both he and Bob knew that many Americans had no idea what “reloading” was and how plastic it made the medium of the cartridge. They’d have to be talked slowly through Bob’s theory. Richard’s job was to find the various experts that the project would require. Meanwhile, Marty would put together a proposal, forward it to the others for comment, and then, with their permission, send it to his agent. He thought Bob ought to be ready to come to New York to meet the agent, and then meet the publisher, the editor, and the team who would handle the book. Once that process was in shape, Marty would draw up an outline and they’d begin to deal with ancillary rights.

When no one could think of anything more, they ambled outside, and Bob took a deep breath of the pine-and-oak-scented air, enjoyed the pure blue of the sky, and felt the pleasant, persistent pressure of the breeze. It felt good to be out of that mausoleum.

“I think we’ve got something here,” said Marty. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am. In fact, now that you teetotalers are gone, I believe I will open a bottle of bubblelicious and drink that toast to Jack, to Richard, to our good fortune in coming together, and to our bright and shining future.”

“I still can’t believe this is happening,” said Bob.

“It is. Pinch yourself, it hurts. You’re awake.”

“I guess I am.”

The three walked to the car. Handshakes all around. Then Bob said, “Richard, do you mind if I drive?”

“Sure, no problem,” said Richard.

“Great.” He got in and slammed the door behind him as Richard eased into his seat.

Swagger pulled out, and Marty watched them go.

And so at last the mighty day had arrived.

My killers had infiltrated two days before and lay without moving over that long stretch of time in case any rogue surveillance had been put in place, as unlikely as that might seem. Besides movement discipline, they maintained radio silence throughout and simply lay in place, vectored on the kill zone while passing the time in isometric hell.

Meanwhile, at no time were the approaching Swagger and Richard monitored. Part of the plan was to place no human eye upon them. Besides Swagger’s sensitivities, there were practical reasons: the super-cautious Swagger might have hired or gotten from his pal Memphis at the Dallas FBI his own team of countersurveillors to stay with him from a discreet distance and look for signs of followers. We couldn’t run that risk. But we did have Richard under control, though he had no idea for what purpose, and his constant e-mail updates by iPhone informed us that he and Swagger had flown the day before from Dallas to Hartford, secured a blue rental Ford Focus, license number given, spent the night at a Marriott in Hartford, and would leave early the next morning for the assignation. They were slated to arrive at the rural Adams estate at 9 a.m.

I was pleased, therefore, when I received, at approximately the appropriate time, the notification from Richard: “Everything cool. Leaving now.”

In the car they would have privacy. No need to plant a bug that Swagger might pick up on. Also, I had decided not to electronically penetrate Marty’s place. Swagger might have some kind of miniature scanner that would alert him to the possibility of electronic ears, which could give up the game; and there was the possibility that somehow, some way, whoever went in would leave a sign of his presence, and Marty might pick it up and divulge it to Swagger in casual conversation, alerting the man. Worse, he might decide not to divulge it, which would cause him to sustain a fiction over the meet, and Swagger would detect that easily enough and take compensatory measures, which could ruin everything. It was important that monitoring of Swagger, by whatever means, be kept to an absolute minimum. I didn’t have him shadowed by air, though I had the helicopter on standby; he might notice an orbiting bird, catch a glimpse of reflected sunlight off the windscreen, hear the pitch of the rotor blades changing as the craft began to descend. All these tells could ruin us.

I settled into jittery anticipation. Two hours of travel time, then perhaps two hours of meet time. In four hours it would be finished. I watched Double Indemnity for about the six hundredth time; superb movie, with the great Fred MacMurray and that scheming little vixen Barbara Stanwyck. It ate up the time admirably, but I still had over an hour to kill. I summoned Shizuka. Finally, there was nothing left to do, or at least nothing I could do, except wait. Tick-tock, tick-tock. It was about time for Swagger to arrive at the estate.

I lay on my veranda dressed in expensive apres-M’Bongo wardrobe – I was hunting, after all – of cargo pants, boots, and a heavy dark green cotton hunting shirt with epaulets and bellows pockets. I suppose I looked ridiculous: Francis Macomber’s wardrobe lavished on a spry pink eighty-three-year-old who couldn’t weigh 135 dripping wet. At least I didn’t have one of those absurd hats with a leopard-skin band, as Preston had worn in the movie. My prescription Ray-Bans lessened the glare of the sun, but at this time of year, the day wouldn’t turn hot.

I used my Bic and energetically updated this memoir, bringing it at last to the present, in which I now write in real time, and felt sadness. In truth, I’ve enjoyed the writing over the past few weeks. Recalling my life has been an invigorating experience, confronting my follies and misjudgments, recalling the men and women I loved, seeing them again in the middle distance of my memory. God, I’ve had a great life. Who has lived as hard and well as I, who has known such giants as I? Grand old Lon, the immensely gifted Jimmy with his nerves of steel and his bright laugh. Peggy. I miss you, old girl. You were the best. I’ll see you all soon, my friends. Not quite yet, and you’ll forgive me for not rushing, but soon enough, Hugh Meachum will join his wonderful colleagues, all of whom he was so lucky to serve with–

The buds in my ear were linked to the commo center, where a fleet of experts bounced signals between dishes and orbiting orbs so that I could eavesdrop on the drama as it played out. Now the buds crackled to life, and I picked up the initial confirm as my commandos registered the arrival of the Swagger vehicle at the compound with a brief break of radio silence.

“Blue Team, this is Three, I have a visual on road dust. They’re on the property.”

“Easy, Blue Team,” said Blue Leader, “I will confirm on passage. I want all your eyes down, don’t try to see anything, don’t make visual contact.”

“Roger, Leader.”

There was a pause.

Then, “This is Blue Leader, I have a confirm on vehicle, two occupants, blue Ford Focus, Connecticut license plate checks as Romeo Victor Foxtrot 6-5-1, as per intel. Target confirmed on-site. Stand down for now, I will call a weapons check within the hour.”

“Roger, out,” came three crackly voices in simo, trying to out-abrupt one another.

They were there. So far, so good. I lay back and enjoyed all that I saw before me. The surrounding forest was lush, and the meadow that was open a mile to the river for some reason at this late-summer date blazed green. I’d never seen such a vibrant shade. It seemed almost to shimmer as the sun rolled across it, matted only by a few clouds, all of it given animation by the persistence of a low, friendly breeze.

There was nothing left to do, nothing left to write. I lie here, feeling the slow and easy slip of the seconds, and it seems to go by not in real time but in super-real time, and I don’t dare check my watch, for that would somehow break the spell and I’d be back to the slow tick-tock, tick-tock, instead of being privileged to experience the heated rush of seconds.

“Blue Team, weapons check.”

“Blue Leader, this is One, cocked and locked, sighted in.”

“Roger, One.”

“Blue Leader, this is Two, all samey-same.”

“Blue Leader, Three, ditto on that.”

“This is Blue Leader, all good.”

More silence. It became time to add the last team member.

“This is Blue Leader to Blue Five, let’s get airborne and to your hold.”

“Blue Leader, this is Blue Five, I am lighting up and going airborne and will be monitoring the police channels and holding at point one for quick evac.”

“Roger, Blue Five, notify when on point, good and out.”

More time dragged by.

“Blue Leader, this is Airborne Blue Five, am on point, holding at about two angels, police channel open. The Smokies are all out at some accident on the interstate, and all local roads in or out are low-volume. You are cleared to operate.”

“Roger, Blue Five, I have you so noted, and out.”

Silence. Tick-tock, tick-tock. If a bird cried, I did not hear. If a cloud masked the sun’s radiance, I did not notice. If the wind rose or fell, the temp rose or dropped, the shadows deepened or softened, I did not care.

“Blue Leader, I heard a car door slam.”

“Good work, Two. Go to guns, fire on my fire. Stay ready, Blue Five.”

Four simultaneous “Rogers” crackled out.

“Blue Team, I have road dust rising.”

I could see him, Blue Team Leader, all cammied up like a beast from the bog with a ludicrous green-brown face and a full canteen, leaning in to the machine gun. I could see it all: the car suddenly visible in the trees, then it’s there, in the bright sun of the kill zone on the straightaway, coming right at Blue Team Leader.

“Blue Team, on my fire,” Blue Team Leader said, and the radio picked up the ripping sound of the one and then the three other light machine guns joining as they emptied their one-hundred-round belts into the automobile.

CHAPTER 23

As the green tunnel of trees absorbed them, Richard babbled away happily.

“Boy, that was great, really, this is going so well, we’re contributing something, we will be adding something to our understanding of history, we will make some, maybe a lot, of money, it’s all coming together, and the best thing is we get along, we like, we respect, each other, and it will continue to–”

Swagger hit him in the mouth with his elbow. Richard’s head bolted back, his hands flew to his wound, and his body posture seemed to collapse as all strength left and he became instantly senile. The blow loosened some teeth and opened a two-inch gash that spurted blood down Richard’s chin.

“Jesus Christ! What the hell are you doing? Oh, God, that hurt, you madman, what is–”

“Shut up, Richard,” said Swagger, halting the car. “Now tell me. Who’s behind this thing? What’s his name, where is he, what’s he get out of it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” yelled Richard through a snaggle of loose teeth and two hands attempting to stanch the blood flow. “Why are you doing this, God, you hurt me so bad, I never–”

“Richard, about three hundred yards down the road, we pull into some sunlight, and about five or six guys with machine guns are going to shred this car and anybody inside it. I will clonk you again and let you stay here while they do their job. They will kill you dead as hell. Or you can scurry back to Marty’s and hide in the basement with that fat blowhard. You got one second to decide.”

Richard needed only half a second. “I don’t know. No names. He’s rich, powerful. He talks to me via satellite phone. I report, I get instructions. It’s all professional, top-secret, well done. I have no idea who he is.”

“Not enough, Richard.”

“I don’t know a thing about killing. It was represented to me as some kind of stock maneuver, some high-end Wall Street thing. They want to get a house to publish the book, then they’ll expose it as a fraud, the stock of the house collapses, they buy in and use the leverage to pick up a whole cluster of related companies from a guy they’ve targeted. That’s all I know, I swear.”

“Give me the phone, Richard.”

Richard reached into his breast pocket and came up with a satellite phone with its stubby, folded aerial and handed it over, fingers shaking wildly. “You push one; it’s a direct line. He’s running it himself, but I don’t know anything except he knows everything and he pays very, very well.”

“Okay, Richard, get out of here. Lock yourself in and don’t come out until the state cops arrive and get you. Cooperate with them from the get-go, or you will spend the rest of your life as someone’s boy toy in the Connecticut pen.”

“Who are you?” Richard cried.

“I’m the man with the nails. And this is the day I nail all you guys. Now get the fuck out of here.”

Richard hit the dirt running. He vanished in seconds, not that Swagger noticed. He got out himself, dipped into the looming woods, and came out in seconds with a dead branch about fourteen inches long.

He drove along at twenty, no rush, no hurry, controlled the whole way. The car followed the curve of the road, which followed the curve of the hill, and before him, he saw the darkness of the canopy give way to a blast of sunlight as the trees fell back from the road for a bit. About thirty yards out of that zone, he halted and took time to precisely regulate the wheel, checking to see that the front wheels were locked straight ahead.

He climbed from the car and hunched beside it. He wedged the branch against the seat, saw that it was a little long, pulled it out, and snapped four inches off. He re-wedged it, lowered the unsecured end to the gas pedal, took a last look, and pushed the branch down against the pedal, driving it forward perhaps two inches and holding it there. The car accelerated as he spun away, and whack, caught the rear of the door-well across the back of his right shoulder, knocking him to the ground.

He rolled, found his feet, and began to race down the road as the car hurtled forward.

He heard the firing, one and then three more guns, so loud that they drowned out any sound of metal shearing or glass shattering. The guns roared on for a good three seconds, then quit abruptly.

Swagger turned left and slid through an opening in the trees, but before him, he saw only more trees, all of them vertical against the slope of the hill. Up was the only way to go.

“The seven-six-two did great,” said Blue Two, the first to reach the wreckage. “Unfortunately, there’s nobody here.”

“Shit,” said Blue Leader. “Any blood?”

“Don’t see any. Just blasted upholstery and a million pieces of glass. He set the accelerator with this.” He displayed the branch.

“Okay,” said Blue Leader. “The car couldn’t run far like that, so he set it up fifty or so yards down the road. He got off the road, he’s running hard; the question is up or down.”

“We going after him?” someone asked.

“I don’t know,” said Blue Leader. He pulled up his throat mike. “Blue Five, this is Blue Leader.”

“Roger, Blue Leader.”

“We have a running target. I want you to vector to our kill zone, then look to the south, and I will pop smoke. Orient on the smoke, then deploy your FLIR. I have to know which way the bastard is running and if he’s got a team in there waiting for us.”

“Roger that, Blue Leader.”

“Okay, dump the ghillies, this is high-speed stuff.”

The team collectively shook itself free of the cumbersome branch-and-leaf constructions that had obliterated their human shapes. Now they were in digital cammo, sand-and-spinach-pattern, a weave of forest colors and shadows.

“I want intervals of thirty yards,” Blue Leader barked, “and if Five gets him nailed and it’s all clear, we will pursue. If there’s heavy opposition, we’ll bug out. This is a kill, not a war.”

“Roger that,” came the replies.

The four operators hustled down the road, fingers on triggers. Their equipment bounced as they ran, the MK48s dangling on slings, the M-6s light in hands, ready for return fire in an instant if ambush came, all red-dot optics on and set to ten, smoke canisters and shoulder holsters flopping on harnesses, body armor slopping up and down at each step.

“Fine here,” said Blue Leader. “Deploy into intervals.”

He pulled a smoker off his belt as the boys spread themselves out, went to knee, and began to eyeball at full intensity. Blue Leader pulled the pin and dumped the signal device on the ground. It fizzed, then began to produce copious volumes of roiling yellow smoke that drifted upward, and in an instant, the shadow cut into the sunlight as the helicopter swerved over them. The machine hovered there for seconds that seemed like minutes.

“Do you have anything in your green eye, Five?”

“Okay, okay, I have a fast mover uphill from you, maybe a hundred yards, he’s pulling himself over rocks, he’s twelve o’clock to your line, going straight up.”

“Anything else hot?”

“I have no other targets, I repeat, no other targets. Only the one fast, hot one; man, he’s moving for an old guy.”

“Can you azimuth us to him?”

“Zero-zero degrees. Just go up, baby, he’s dead on a line for the peak and not going much farther once he reaches it unless he finds a stairway to heaven.”

“That’s our job,” someone said, breaking radio protocol.

Blue Leader stood, pointed upward to the three other members of the ground team, who, having heard the conversation, were rising too, and made the whirlybird hand gesture to give them the order they’d been waiting on, which was to pursue and kill.

Swagger climbed. Jesus Christ, he was too old for this. The incline fought him, the trees fought him, the slipperiness of the pine needles and leaves sheathing the ground fought him, the boulders fought him, his hip fought him, gravity fought him, age fought him, everything fought him.

Fuck! A slip and he went hard to ground, slamming his knee against the inevitable rock, sending a flare of pain up through leg to body and brain.

I am way too old for this, he thought.

The sweat loaded in his eyebrows, then dumped to his eyes, stinging them, turning the world to blur. He tried to blink them clear. A gut ache came, bearing the news that he’d been so immersed in this quest over the past weeks, he’d lost a lot of his conditioning. Tremors slithered through arms, dizziness through vision, and he sought handholds, anything to pull him upward. Now and then he’d find a bare spot where his New Balances would find traction and give him a boost, and he’d gain a second or two, but he knew that four young athletes in superb condition, superbly armed, guided by the chopper that floated just over the canopy of the trees, were closing on him.

The hip. He tried to concentrate on it, to accommodate his mind to the pain, which was now severe, but in its time on Earth, that joint had been shattered by a bullet, replaced with a steel ball, then cut deep and hard by a blade of legendary sharpness at full force, and finally, just recently, the whole mess had been shot again, though at a shallow angle, and was not fully healed.

It burned, it boiled, it seethed. It disrupted what coordination was left in his old limbs, and it eroded his will and stamina as he fought for gulps of dry air, wiped his soaking brow, ignored the dozens of raw abrasions his passage through bush and needle, over rock, and in thicket and copse, had inflicted upon him. How close were they? Should he zig? Should he zag? Was a red dot even now settling on his spine, about to sunder it and leave him flat and begging for the coup de grace?

Suddenly, he broke into the light, and the slope lessened. He’d made it to the top.

Up here, the wind precluded the trees achieving any height, but the acre of hilltop was strewn with boulders, clumps of brush, patches of raw earth, and a few small, scabby trees that had managed, against all odds, to hang on.

Around him, the green state of Connecticut rolled away to far horizons, now and then throwing up a cluster of black roofs in trees to signify a town. Blue mountains blurred the edge of the Earth miles away.

Bob slipped, and at that moment a bullet came. Swagger’s luck, the shooter missed by inches, and Swagger felt the push of the atmosphere as the bullet knifed through. He dropped and began to slither.

Too old for this shit.

“Did you get him, Three?”

“No, dammit, he went down just as I fired. I had a real good sight pic on him; goddamn, he is a lucky sonovabitch.”

“Do you see him, Five?”

The chopper, hovering four hundred feet over the hilltop, floated this way and that. “I have a visual, Blue Leader. He’s low-crawling among the boulders, maybe a hundred feet ahead of you. I don’t know where he’s going; there’s no place to go. If I were armed, I’d have the shot. But he’s stuck up here for sure.”

“All right, any police activity?”

“Negative. No reports, no dispatches. It’s all clear on that front, over.”

“Good. I need you to retire to point one now. We don’t need you hanging overhead, attracting attention.”

“Check and commencing.”

The chopper veered off, headed for an orbit a mile away, out of range.

“Blue Team, listen up, mates. You guys on the flanks, I want you to move laterally. Locate at each hard-ninety compass indicator and hold up. I want to come at him from four directions. I don’t want any chance of him evading us and making it off this hill alive, do you read?”

Affirmatives came back at him.

“You are cleared to fire if you get a clean shot. But I think this is shaping up like fire and movement and then an up-top rat hunt.”

“Got it, Blue Leader.”

The three high-speed operators scurried away to their holding spots. Blue Leader crouched, did an equipment check, then took out a smoke and lit up. Always time for a butt. He’d been doing hilltops for about twenty years, sometimes trying to hold them, sometimes trying to take them. It was all the same. Old hand, lots of war behind him, presumably lots of war ahead.

He waited, enjoying the cigarette, an English Oval, a thick blunt fag unlike the scrawny filtered candy tubes the Yanks smoked. When he was done, years of military experience in rank and officers’ mess demanded that he carefully peel the paper, rub the remaining tobacco and ash away between his fingers, crumple the paper, and put it in his pocket.

“Blue Leader, this is Blue Two, I am set at due east and ready to rock.”

“Three?”

“Due west, holding.”

“Visuals?”

“Got nothing but rock and brush. No movement. He’s hunkered down solid.”

“Ditto that.”

“Ditto again.”

“Okay. Let me try a thing.” Blue Leader rose. “Swagger, mate,” he shouted. “Make this easy, go out with dignity. No point in squealing like a pig in the bush as we hunt you down, shot a dozen times, bleeding out in pain. You’re an old bastard, you’ve seen this game a thousand times, you knew your day would come. Dignity, chum. A cigarette, a laugh, a sip on the canteen, I’ve even got some damn fine Scotch aboard, and it’s over clean and painless.”

No response. Of course not. Swagger wouldn’t give a location indicator. He’d play hard to get.

“All right.” Blue Leader spoke to his team via the throat mike. “One and Three, move out. Two, with me on the cover fire, do it.”

He rose, rocked a MK48 burst across his front, and watched the bullets blow lines of dust spasms and rock frags up where they hit. On the other side, Two put in his two cents’ worth.

Then it was Blue Leader’s turn to move, and he went low and hard, hearing the cover fire against the hilltop from the two other points on the compass, got to a nest of boulders, and slid in. He looked and, in the jumbled landscape ahead of him, saw nothing. There wasn’t much area left unpenetrated. Swagger was running out of hilltop.

“Okay, nice and easy, Blue Team, one at a time, you move in twenty or so feet, scan, and hold. He may have an ankle piece on him or a knife. Use your corner discipline, be aware of blind spots. I’d go to M-6, for better movement; he’s just a few feet ahead now.”

Blue Leader let the heavier MK48 fall to sling support, pushed it around to his backside, and deployed the shorter M-6 carbine, stock locked in short, cocked and unlocked, Eotech on and turned to ten so a bright red circle displayed his aim point to either conscious or subconscious.

“One in.”

“Two in.”

“Three in.”

He scurried in, movements smooth, fast, practiced, the gun locked to shoulder, scanning for threat, finger riding the light trigger, ready to put a burst into anything ahead.

He could feel them. They were so close. The shout from the leader, some Brit tough guy, Mick Jagger on steroids, followed by fusillades from all points on the compass that filled the universe with bad news and drove him down so he felt he could shrink into the earth, the cold blade of fear that maybe this time was the time. Then it passed; he had his war brain back and knew exactly how it would work. They’d close the circle, driving him back, and there’d be no place to go. Then it would be over.

He slithered around a rock, forced himself (tasting dust, feeling pain to knees, elbows, and skin) through the low tangle of brush, found a path between more low rocks that seemed to reach center, and scurried ahead.

He saw it.

A red-orange hunting vest, crumpled but vivid, the only primary color in a landscape that ran from dull to duller brown, even with the sun above. He scrambled to the signal, dug behind it until he encountered a canvas strap, and pulled. Fifteen pounds of canvas gun case emerged from hiding. A quick unzip.

It was the Thompson M1A1, thirty-round mag, like the gun with which his father had shot his way across the Pacific. Nick had gotten it here from Aptapton’s widow just in time.

Thank you, Nick. Once again, you save the old man’s bacon. Thank you, Aptapton, for your love of guns, especially the old tommys.

He slid the bolt back, locking it, admitting a .45 ACP to position to be swept up and fired as the first round in a burst. Six other loaded stick mags lay in pouches on a belt curled into the case, and he pulled the belt around him and cinched it tight.

At that moment, a young man – perfect commando, from Oakley tactical boots to green-brown face paint – enough firepower on him to take out a platoon, crept into the space between two boulders not twenty-five feet ahead. They felt each other in the autistic Zen of predators, made a flash eye contact, and got down to business. Swagger beat him on the action curve by a tenth of a second, jacking a ten-round burst into his legs, knocking him down and askew, tearing up limbs and hips but not spending bullets against the armor vest. The guy went down hard, and in a second his twisted lower extremities were wet and red to the world.

Swagger slipped back into the brush.

“Fuck, fuck, he has a tommy gun, a goddamn tommy gun!” screamed Blue Two.

“Are you hit?”

“He blew my goddamn legs off, oh, shit, I can’t stop the bleeding.”

“You hold, Two, don’t panic, use your clotting agent and tie it down to stop the blood flow, we will be with you soon. Hold on, mate.”

“Ah, fuck,” said Two.

Blue Leader had recognized the sound of the .45s instantly and knew it was of the Thompson declension because the rate of fire was well above grease-gun speed. He was not surprised, disappointed, stunned, or breathless. The surprise of it did not occur to him; nor would it ever. The fact that he was hunted as much as hunter did not matter. His hard practical mind simply went through steps.

New situation.

Armed target.

Full auto, heavy bullets.

Savvy, experienced operator.

One man lost.

Need to triangulate, lay heavy fire (back to MK48s), and close to engage. He will be tricky, he will–

Another burst of Thompson fire roared through the atmosphere.

“Blue Three?”

“I’m good, I think he hit One, off to my left. Blue Leader, I am moving on the fire.”

“Do not rush, Three – I will lay down cover on the sound of his gun, move under my cover.”

“Roger.”

He rose, readjusting weapons at speed as he came, got the MK48 up, and fired a hundred .30-caliber rounds into the rocks and brush where the Thompson fire had sounded, and saw and felt what he always saw and felt, the world being ripped to dust and supersonic grit, the blur of the ejection of the spent shells arching to the right, the urge of the muzzle to rise – after all these years, it was still so bloody cool! – while his sharp eyes scanned for movement or target indicators.

The Brit’s gunfire whistled overhead, eating up the world that it struck, raising smeary clouds of fractured dust. Swagger knew the other operator would move under the fire, and he drew the Thompson hard to shoulder, waiting, waiting, as six inches above his head, fleets of supersonic FMJs flew by, seeking his destruction and–

The gun quit as round one hundred passed through it. Swagger jerked up hard and saw to the right the advancing operator in the hunch, not fast enough to get into cover before his time ran out. Swagger acquired and fired in almost the same instant and put a burst into him, watching the bullets lift a straightaway of dust eruptions, then went down fast and crawled, again just under the line of fire of the team chief, who’d gotten a quick new belt into his gun and used it up in the search.

Swagger thought he’d hit his guy, and when he had a chance, as the boulders grew oddly larger, he went to his feet and curled around, putting his target between him and the remaining shooter. In seconds he got around enough to see the downed man, rifle on the ground, wrapping a bandage tight around a bad thigh bleeder. Swagger screamed, “Hold!” But the man went for his weapon – stupid SEAL motherfucker, hard to the end! – and Swagger had to fire three into his only target other than the head, which was the root of the man’s arm where it disappeared into the hole on his vest. He opened a hideous wound, shattering arm and clavicle, rendering the gunman maimed for life. Even still, the man stayed in the fight, shaking off the destruction, looking up in rage and betrayal, his teeth white against the green-brown jungle of his face, and reached awkwardly with his off hand to acquire the 1911 holstered diagonally across the front of his armored vest. Unfortunately, it was tilted to favor the dead hand and tightly Velcroed in, and by the time he got it, Swagger was on him and hit him a butt stroke in the head. He went down soggily, maybe dead, maybe with a concussion to render him eternally stupid.

Swagger noted that this one too had smokers on his web belt beneath the vest, and though the vest was a temptation, he knew he didn’t have enough time to get it off the SEAL and on himself, so he pulled off three smokers, pulled the pins, and tossed them in the direction from which Team Leader’s fire had come.

Smoke! Who would have thought of that? From three points just ahead of him, red, green, blue, catching in the wind, blowing mistily across the scrap of flat if rough ground that comprised the hilltop. It was like a screen of myth, impenetrable, masking all movement. Brilliant improvisation. This old bastard was too good!

Blue Leader dropped hard, feeling vulnerable. He knew he was alone, it was man on man. If he could get close enough to get to hand-to-hand, victory was his. He had about nine black belts and knew shit for which there wasn’t a name and no books had been written. He unlinked the heavier MK48, first disconnecting the belt box and tossing it far, then opening the breech latch so this bad boy couldn’t use it against him. He toyed with the idea of dumping the carbine and making it a pistol fight, which would give him much more maneuverability and let him get to full play on his superior toughness, speed, and stamina. But this old one was a trickster who knew a thing or two and might be circling around or might be, at the same time, two hundred yards downhill, racing like a demon, knowing that in distance lay survival.

He stood, eased forward as the smoke ceased from the two rightmost grenades, and tried to see a target. Nothing. Swagger was somewhere ahead. But Blue Leader saw nothing. This was room-clearing, really, two men squatting as they worked their way through a maze, guns at the ready. Who would see whom first, who would fire first, who would win?

He eased left, then right, feeling the whip of wind, feeling the warmth of the sun. He pushed off his watch cap, ripped off and tossed ears and throat mike for total concentration. He negotiated the avenues between the rocks and brush with care, in that commando crouch, and it happened that, as he edged around a boulder, something flashed in his peripheral and he was on it fast, to see a man withdrawing because he didn’t have a shooting angle, but Blue Leader did and fired, knowing that he’d hit.

He waited.

Nothing.

“Swagger, give it up. I know I hit you. I saw the blood. It’s no good going out like a rat.”

No answer. Was he dead?

He squirmed ahead a few feet and was rewarded with a blood track.

Got him!

Got him!

Got–

Swagger hit him hard with the crown of his head, a smash that skulled both of them into incomprehensibility, but Swagger, expecting it, got in his follow-up and clocked him harder with the inverted barrel of the old weapon.

Blue Leader went so still that he couldn’t have been faking, but in the next second, he tried to fight his way out of the grog and Swagger was on him. He pressed the muzzle hard into the throat, and with his other hand, he ripped the man’s fighting knife away, unlatched the Velcro on the Wilson and tossed it, pulled and threw the M-6 as hard as he could.

He leaned over the Brit, pressing the blunt Thompson muzzle into the neck. “What’s your rank, troopie?”

“I– What, what are you–”

“Your rank and outfit, goddammit.”

“Major, Royal Marines, 42 Commando.”

“Major, get that bird in here fast. Pop your evac smoke and get these men out of here. One’s dead for sure, maybe another, maybe not. Get them to goddamn emergency in Hartford fast, and save them. That’s your last job as commanding officer.”

“I shot you,” said the major.

“In the fucking hip. I been shot there so many times I didn’t even notice. It bounced off. Now get these guys out of here, save some lives.”

“Why?” said the major. “I don’t get it.”

“I only want one more head on my wall. And it ain’t yours.”

I heard the fight. It was brief, violent, and as such things always are, ugly. Gunfire, shouts, bits of panicked radio-speak, screams, something that sounded like a physical tussle, and then the radio went dead. That silence that follows a disconnect. The airwaves located and destroyed, communication lost.

I shook my head.

He did it, I realized. He’d beaten them somehow.

I hated Swagger even as I loved him. God, was he an operator. Could he have prevailed again, against those odds? The man wouldn’t die. Was he Achilles, dipped in the potion of immortality but for a heel that no archer had found?

A hit of vodka calmed me, and I had to appraise my situation realistically. He could know nothing else. He would be stopped by the firewall of the person I’d become. He’d have to set about finding me. Good luck on that, because Niles Gardner, long dead, had built a perfect identity, and it would withstand any attempt at penetration.

I lay back, watching the sun yield its hold on the day slowly. It stayed light so long now, which had the odd effect of elongating life. I felt like these extra hours were a gift to me; they stood for the fact that I would go on and on and on, that in the end, if through longevity as much as genius, I would prevail.

My phone rang.

What? I reached for it, noting that it was not my cell but my satellite. Richard! Maybe Richard had a report.

I pressed the talk button. “Richard?”

“No, he ain’t here. He’s hiding in the basement.”

“Swagger!” I could tell by his laconic voice, its dryness, its ur-text of Southern cadence, its lack of need to dominate, its irony, its detachment.

“Yes sir. We meet at last,” he said. “By the way, if you want to talk to your commando team, they ain’t here neither. The survivors are in the emergency ward.”

“Dammit, you are a resourceful man,” I said. “Woe unto him who tries to outthink Bob Lee Swagger.”

“I ain’t no genius, Mr. Meachum. I just show up and pay attention.”

“How? I have to know. Tell me my mistake, goddammit.”

“It was that forgery in the Abercrombie files. Had me snookered completely. Then I realized, if Abercrombie sent your cousin a rifle in a new caliber and asked for a story, Lon would have written the story. He had to keep the bargain. Part of his noblesse oblige, or whatever you fancy donkeys call it. But he didn’t write no piece on reloading the .264, and I ought to know, as I read every word he ever wrote.”

Lon! It was Lon’s decency reaching out of the grave to bring me down! I almost had to laugh. That is what I loved about Lon, and that is what betrayed me.

I was speechless. Finally, I realized I had only one question to ask. It was the only one that mattered.

“Why? Why does it matter to you, Swagger? Tell me. Did you love JFK, the myth? Do you wish you’d been a trusted knight of Camelot? Did you have a crush on Jackie? Did the brave little boy and girl at the funeral break your heart? Why, Swagger, why?”

“A young man in service to our country was murdered on November 22, 1963. He was handsome and beloved. Everyone who saw him admired him and trusted his judgment. In all eyes, he was a hero. He was slaughtered in the street without a chance. A bullet blew up his brain. He left a hole in society, children who weep today, everyone who knew him. Possibly you have heard of him.”

“His name was John F. Kennedy.”

“No, it wasn’t. He was not the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, about whom I give not a shit. The man I speak of was a Dallas police officer named J. D. Tippit, and like my father, he was doing his duty until someone killed him for it. So that is who I am. I am not a national avenger, I am not Captain America, I don’t give a crap about Camelot. I am the dead policeman’s son, and I did what I did to find out who really shot Officer Tippit. I am the dead policeman’s boy.”

“Swagger, you are a bastard. I know you think you’ve won. But you haven’t. You have no idea where I am, who I am, what my circumstances are. Are you going to indict a dead man? Hugh Meachum is dust and ashes scattered across the countryside outside Hartford. He is a beloved hero, and if you try to bring him down, you will unleash unbelievable trouble on yourself. Meanwhile, I will keep going on and on and on, and you have no idea if I’m a mile from you right now or sitting at the North Pole under the nom de guerre S. Claus.”

“Not so fast, Mr. Meachum. Maybe you ain’t as tricky as you think. Your pal Niles Gardner shared your enthusiasm for this Nabokov, the Russian writer. Niles liked cross-language puns, wordplay, games, that sort of thing. He had one other thing in common. Like his hero, he suffered from a condition known as synesthesia. Because of some confusion in the brain pathways, he sees some numbers in color. He saw the number nine in color, red. That’s why he had a pistol on his desk called a Mauser Red Nine. And when he came to cook up the last and best and deepest fake life for his pal and fellow Nabokov lover, Hugh Meachum, he paid a gamesman’s tribute to his connection to Nabokov, to yours, and to Nabokov himself, by using synesthesia as the key. You were born from synesthesia. You’re the child, the son, of the Red Nine, Mr. Meachum.”

“Thin, Swagger. So thin. It tells you nothing.”

“I ain’t done yet. His smartest trick was the code that wasn’t a code. It was what it was, in plain sight if you could see it. You don’t even get it, do you?”

“This is nonsense,” I said. “You’ve gone insane.”

“He hung a name on you that gave it up if you could see it clearly. The name began with I-X, Mr. Meachum. Cross-lingual pun. I-X, from English into Latin. I-X, Mr. Meachum, meaning nine. You are the son of the Red Nine. Your new name is Dimitri Ixovich Spazny. Niles really loaded the Nabokov mayonnaise on this sandwich. The old butterfly catcher would be so impressed.”

Niles! I thought. All these years later, tripping me up with his cleverness.

“When it came time for you to ‘die,’ you slipped into Russia and took up again as Dimitri Ixovich Spazny, of KGB, with all the contacts and the timing exactly right. You even own the gun company that manufactured the nine-millimeter I used in the fight in Moscow. As Yeltsin’s pal and money guy, you also own, what, electricity, newspaper, taxicabs, the Izmaylovskaya mob, radio, the air, most of the water, half of Belgium, three quarters of Hong Kong, and what else?”

“By the time you move on me, I’ll be someone else,” I said, though my heart was hammering in my chest. “You’re not fast enough. Brains are meaningless without speed.”

“Then how come I know you’re wearing tan cargo pants and a green shirt? How come I know you’re resting on a chaise longue, in sunglasses, with a yellow tablet in your hand? How come I know you’re drinking vodka? How come I know you’re on your back porch, looking down across a mile of grass framed on either side by pine forest? How come I know there’s a river a mile off?”

I swallowed – or should I say, I swallow. I had not seen that one coming. It hit me blindside. I suck for air, while in my stunned panic, I look for a spotter who is clearly, at this very second, eyeballing me through binoculars.

“You’re lying on the chaise at your dacha down Ulysse Nardin Boulevard behind a thirty-foot green steel wall, in an area patrolled by an MVD special battalion. You’re a mile from the Moscow River. The sun is setting there, Mr. Meachum, but the days are long, and it’s light enough for a sniper.”

Stronski! Stronski is out there somewhere.

“He’s on the trigger now. A KSVK twelve-seven.”

No understanding, no context, no empathy, no regret. Just the sniper’s bullet. It was the ultimate application of the New Criticism.

“See you in hell, then, Sergeant.”

“I’ll be along soon,” Swagger said, and hung up.

And so: yes, it’s come to this. So be it. I’ve had a good life, maybe a great one. I loved my wife and never cheated on her, I loved my sons and saw them grow into fine men and fathers. I love my country and tried to serve it well. I fought its wars–

Never mind. With seconds left, it’s time to face whatever’s next with a clean breast. Talk about an unreliable narrator! Talk about a murderer with a fancy prose style! I killed Jimmy Costello. I blew his action and cover to the RCMP, and I knew he couldn’t let himself be taken alive. I regret it and always will, but what if, in a few years, he – I just couldn’t help myself.

And I killed Lon. I knew by the last move that Swagger was strong and my team was weak, and I bullied and forced Lon to go on that last, absurd mission, and he finally relented and died.

I regret both. Failures of nerve and character. I am so sorry. I deserve whatever it is I’m about to get and I hope

CHAPTER 24

Swagger threw the phone off into the trees somewhere.

Account closed, he thought.

He took a look around saw nothing but green. He tried to think of his next step but had some trouble concentrating. He looked at the wound in his battered hip. More blood than he’d expected. Maybe the bullet had ticked downward into the flesh instead of off into the air.

He didn’t have any first aid or clotting agent. He peeled off his jacket and wadded it against the blood flow, but it quickly absorbed its limit, went magenta and heavy-damp, and proved useless.

Better get to the goddamn road so they can find me, he thought.

But downhill with a bad wound bleeding hard was not easy, particularly as he could feel the leg numbing out on him, and in time it ceased to work in coordination with the other leg, and there came a moment when he lost it, toppled forward, put a bruise into his spine, ripped the hell out of his arms rolling through brambles, felt his shirt rip, and hit a rock solid with his head, which was already concussed from the clout he’d delivered on the 42 Commando major.

He got himself up and put his hand on the wound. It wasn’t gushing copiously, but he could feel the steady, warm liquefaction finding ways around his fingers. He got a little farther down and noticed that a sudden chill had come into the air, as well as a fog that eroded the edges of his vision.

He staggered over a hump and hit the road. He couldn’t remember which way was which and realized it didn’t matter. He’d never make it back to the house, and what was there except those two guys whose names he didn’t remember and he knew they weren’t worth a damn.

He began to shiver. Damn, so fucking cold.

He looked for a splash of sun to warm him up and saw an opening in the canopy a few yards ahead that admitted the light. He limped to it, falling once, then got to it and, of his own volition, decided to stop fighting gravity and let himself tumble into the dust.

It was warmer. In time, he saw someone approaching him. He tried to rise, but the man waved him back down as he rushed to him. Bob saw that it was his father, Earl.

“Dad!” he cried.

“Well, Bob Lee, damn, it’s good to see you, boy.”

Earl came to him and knelt down. Earl wore the uniform of the Arkansas state police, 1955, as he had on the last day of his life, and it was razor-sharp, in perfect duty condition, as it was always for Earl. He had the strong, kind, wise face of a hero, and he was everything a boy could love in a father.

“Dad, God, I’ve missed you, I missed you so much.”

“Now there’ll be plenty of time for a nice long visit, you’ll tell me all the things you’ve seen.”

“Dad, you–”

“Bob Lee, you just relax. I’m so proud of my son, you have made me so proud.”

“I tried so hard, Dad, I didn’t want to ever let you down and–”

“He’s coming back, he’s coming back.”

Swagger blinked, and it wasn’t his dad’s face but some crew-cut young man’s.

Bob coughed, realizing that the guy had just jacked a charge through him with an external defibrillator.

“Hit him again?” another medic asked.

“No, no, he’s good, the lactate is going in fine, the adrenaline is taking effect, he’s breathing again, his pulse is rising.”

Swagger breathed, feeling clean air come into his lungs.

“Jesus Christ, you scared us,” said Nick Memphis.

As Swagger’s eyes cleared and the fog thinned, he lifted his head a bit and saw an ambulance, a batch of state police cars, a lot of police activity along the road, and above him, in the hands of another young man, a bottle of intravenous fluids feeding life through a brown tube into his arm. He lay on a stretcher; his hip was strongly bandaged and bound, but some numbing agent quelled the pain.

“Okay, STAT, let’s move this man to the chopper and get him to Trauma. I’m staying on him to monitor vital signs.”

“I’m riding too,” said Nick, and he turned to Bob and said, “Baby, you were gone, you were in negative heartbeat, but we got you back, don’t ask me how.”

“I saw my dad, Nick,” said Bob.

“And you will again,” said Nick, “but I hope not for a long time.”