“Beyond any standards. Better than my own. Whoever loaded it knew a thing or two about precision reloading for accuracy.”
“Do you know who it could be?”
“Oh, I have an idea or two.” He moved on to other matters.
“Why didn’t you know you were being set up in New Orleans? I mean, you knew there was some other game going on, that they weren’t quite what they said they were.”
“You’re right. I was a goddamn fool. I think I wanted that Russian shooter, that T. Solaratov, so much it blinded me. I’d been thinking about him for so many years, not knowing who he was, only what he’d done, but just dreaming about going up against him. So I got careless and I got greedy. It’s killed more than one man and it sure as hell nearly killed me.”
“Was there a Solaratov? Does he really exist?”
“I sure don’t know. What I do know is that these boys must have studied me like a bug on a pin for a long, long time. That’s how smart they were. They knew how to get inside and turn me like a key. Burns my ass even now thinking how stupid I was and how those smart boys played; I feel like I’ve been raped from the inside out.”
“They probably had a psychiatrist run a study on you. CIA is heavy into psychiatry now, it’s doctrine. And there’s a lot of CIA doctrine in this RamDyne.”
On the subject of his recuperation, Bob would say nothing, other than that a friend had helped him. But Nick put it together; he knew it was a woman, the woman who’d called him. With that fake country-western accent.
About his ordeals, after the bloody escape from New Orleans, Bob was not eloquent.
“Yep,” he said, “thought my hash was salted many a time. But somehow, I kept going.”
Nick had a funny moment here, calculating how he and Bob had been weirdly circling each other through this whole damned mess, how many times they’d moved through each other’s wakes. He shivered.
“I have to tell you if you ever get caught I can’t be of much help. If these guys have been as professional as you say, they won’t have made any mistakes. That setup in Maryland? It’ll be – ”
“It is,” said Bob. “That was my first stop after I died. All those signs of that place are gone. The trailer that was their headquarters? Towed away. Turned out they just took out an option to buy an old shooting club property, put up twenty-five thousand dollars, then let it lapse. It’s back for sale now. Didn’t surprise me much.”
“Yeah. And on the other hand, the forensic and ballistic evidence against you is overwhelming. I’ve read the Bureau lab report. They got your rifle with your fingerprints and your reloaded cartridge and…the bullet. They couldn’t read the markings because the bullet was mangled and – ”
“Yeah, I saw that in the papers. That’s why they haven’t done any shooting tests on the rifle.”
“Yes. If they get to court, they don’t want to say they tried but couldn’t get a match. It makes them look bad in front of a jury.”
“I get you.”
“But they have a very sophisticated test that analyzes the metallic residue left in the gun barrel. And it said positively that the bullet that hit the archbishop was consistent with the metallic residue. That’s going to be hard to beat.”
“I figured out how they did it, or how it could have been done.” He explained the concept to Nick.
“Okay,” said Nick, “yeah, I understand. Same bullet, slightly larger bore, paper-patching. But…you have to find some way to convince a jury. The jury won’t be able to follow something that technical; they’ll just look at the neutron analysis test – and Mr. Swagger, you are one screwed turkey.”
Bob nodded.
“They did a very careful job on me. But just maybe nobody’s quite as clear on all this as they think.”
“Let me tell you right now,” Nick said, “your best course is to hire a good lawyer. I can call the Bureau and we can work out some kind of deal. With my evidence and – ”
But Bob was just looking at him.
“Son, I don’t think you understand. These boys killed my dog.”
“I’m telling you, this is the twentieth century. You just can’t go to war on people, not in America. And that kind of attitude will – ”
“Now, you listen here, Memphis. Even if I could walk out on this thing now as a free man, I wouldn’t. Those boys would scatter and slip into new identities or whatever it is they do. We’d never catch them. They’re too damned slick. They’d have gotten away with it. And in a year or so, when it was cool, they’d be back in business. What I mean to do is tether a goat and draw them in. They’ll think they’re hunting the goat, but the goat is hunting them. And who’s the goat? I’m the damned goat. The only thing is, this goat has teeth. This goat bites. Now this is hard, hairy work, Memphis; there’s going to be some shooting and some people are going to die. It won’t be pretty and we’ll be all alone. It is a war. I didn’t start it, but by Christ I mean to finish it. Now, Pork, tell me – are you in or are you out?”
Nick thought of the pig-gleam in Payne’s eye; and this RamDyne with its willingness to do the hard thing; and he thought of how he’d been brutalized; and he thought of how confident and smooth and big these guys thought they were. And he thought about how they’d committed a war atrocity and gunned down women and kids.
And he thought about how he’d been dying to get back on a SWAT team.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m in.”
Something hard and metallic flickered in Bob’s eye, like the shine of a brass cartridge as it catches a glint of light before the bolt locks vault-tight behind it.
“Now what?” asked Nick. “I’ve got some great ideas about Annex B. It seems to me – ”
“Hold up there, Pork. First thing is, we’re going to see a man about a rifle.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Partial body found in bayou,” proclaimed the cheerful headline.
“Go ahead,” said Shreck, “read it.”
Dobbler squinted.
The partial body of a man was found floating yesterday near Spencerville, Lafayette Parish. Sheriff’s deputies said the victim, who has been identified by fingerprints as Tomas Garcia Montoya, of McDonoughville, was evidently the subject of an alligator attack as his body, from the chest down, was missing.
Cause of death, however, was listed as a gunshot wound to head.
Montoya, a Cuban émigré, had listed his occupation as “consultant” but was known to police and other New Orleans law enforcement agencies as a paid informant. He was 54 years old.
Deputies speculated that he may have also been a victim of the escalating drug warfare in the state’s rural parishes, in a struggle for control of the city’s drug routes between old-line mob interests and newcomers representing the cocaine cartels of Central America.
Montoya was shot in the head by a heavy caliber rifle bullet.
“Only a large-caliber center fire rifle bullet does massive damage like that,” said Lafayette Parish coroner Robert C. LaDoyne. “This man was shot, judging by the wound channel and tissue displacement, by a hollowpoint bullet of.30 caliber or more.”
Parish deputies said it may represent the coming of a new kind of professional killer to the parish’s drug wars.
“Mob boys favor the silenced.22 from close range,” said Deputy Ed P. St. Etienne. “The Colombians like little machine pistols, and fire a hundred bullets into their victims. This boy is something entirely new.”
“He’s not new to us, is he, Dobbler?” said the colonel.
“No,” said Dobbler, swallowing. “How on earth -? He’s dead! We saw the – ”