The reporters exploded out of the courtroom to file the day’s astonishing events. In this ruckus, almost unnoticed, Bob stood, smiled easily, shook Sam Vincent’s hand, then came over to Nick, his bonds at last off.
“You did good, Nick. You can spot for me any day.”
“You did good yourself, old man.”
“Aren’t we a damn team, though? You sure you weren’t a Marine?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Well, you take care now. It was fun.”
“It was.”
Bob Lee walked away, and within seconds, somehow, was gone. It was the sniper’s gift. To disappear, leaving no trace, gone suddenly and totally.
Nick turned to Sally, but instead found himself looking upon the ruined face of Howard D. Utey.
“Howard, you weren’t even close. You didn’t even muss his hair. He just blew you away.” Over Howard’s shoulder, he could see the old man Meachum standing in the shadows, watching. Nick almost called out to him, but Meachum stepped back and he too vanished.
Then he turned to Sally.
“You want to get out of here?”
“Boy, do I.”
“Where to?”
“Oh, I think we could figure something out.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The scandal was a flame. It burned hot and bright and it devoured those who attempted to control it. Howard was unceremoniously retired by a humiliated Federal Bureau of Investigation before the week was over, as were the other three members of the Lancer Committee; the U.S. Attorney’s Office reassigned young Philip Kelso to a far western state, but he refused the assignment, resigned, and went into private practice. The real shocker, however, was Hugh Meachum, dead on the third day after the hearing by coronary aneurysm. His heart simply exploded, as if hit by a bullet.
When he heard, Nick thought: He got them all. Every last one of them.
He was spending a long, glorious week just being with Sally, in her apartment mostly, but with a few other stops, when at last a phone call tracked him down. It was Hap Fencl.
“Quite a mess here, bub.”
“Yeah, well,” said Nick.
“Know where I might find a good, slightly used special agent? We got some snappy cases going down, need a guy with experience.”
“Wasn’t I fired?”
“Oh, Nick, gee, some guy may have had an idea like that, but he’s long gone, and I don’t think you could find anybody in the personnel office who knows where the paperwork went. Nick, seriously. This is where you belong. You were right. Howard was a mistake. They come along, sometimes. But they destroy themselves. It’s a good outfit. Guys like you make it good.”
“Oh, hell.”
“Come on, Nick. Nothing special, just street work, New Orleans, the same salary, back pay. Some guys in Washington want to talk to you about this RamDyne thing, so you may as well get paid for it.”
Nick breathed heavily. He just wanted to be an FBI agent, that was all he’d ever wanted.
“Okay,” he finally said, “see you tomorrow.”
“And Nick. Marry that damned girl, will you?”
“Well, dammit,” he said, “I did. Yesterday.”
“Congrats. See you, partner.”
So Nick went back on duty, and spent his honeymoon in Washington, two weeks of telling his RamDyne story over and over again, as a crack team of hotshots tried to track down the elusive truth. That unit is due to release its report. It will happen any day now, you may be sure of it.
It would have helped matters immensely, of course, if they’d ever found Dr. David Dobbler. But they never did; he was either dead in the fastness of the Ouachitas, or perhaps living by his wits under a new name in some Southern California resort town. Nick always favored the latter explanation.
Of RamDyne, no trace remained. Its staff dispersed, its seedy headquarters languished and is now the location of a small software concern; those who spoke to the FBI were lower-level people, who knew nothing. Colonel Raymond Shreck’s body went unclaimed; it was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, not far from John F. Kennedy’s, because after all, the colonel had won the Silver Star and the DSC in Korea and another Silver and three Bronze Stars in Vietnam. John D. “Jack” Payne was buried in the United States Army cemetery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He, too, had been a hero.
And James Thomas Albright, or Lon Scott, his secrets lost forever, went into a mausoleum outside Danville, where his remains joined those of his father and his mother, which he had had disinterred and brought down from Vermont. He willed his collection of benchrest rifles and shooting memorabilia to the National Rifle Association, and the Tenth Black King now resides in its National Firearms Museum in Washington, D.C., testament to a time when skill with a rifle was the most gentlemanly of all pursuits and men like Art Scott represented their country proudly with Winchester’s best in their hands. The Association had little use for the other effects, including a curious collection of fired 162-grain.264 caliber bullets from some bizarre project or other in the early sixties, found in his safe deposit box. His corporate portfolio, amounting to over seven million dollars, went to the National Association of Quadriplegics.
Bob Lee Swagger was another instant MIA. When all state charges were dropped as a consequence of the collapse of the federal case, he vanished from public sight almost immediately with the woman Julie Fenn. But he paid his debts, in the currency of his choice.
An ex-big game hunter in Oklahoma was astounded to discover a package delivered to his doorstep. Opening it, the old man cackled with glee.
It was a pre-’64 Model 70 in.270 Winchester.
No note accompanied the weapon, only a tag.
“This rifle once belonged to Bob Lee Swagger,” it said. It was signed Bob Lee Swagger.
And one day, a month after his return from Washington, Nick answered a knock on the door to find a UPS guy with a package about three feet long that weighed about seven pounds. He signed for it, took it into the basement and opened it.
It was the Ruger Mini-14.
“Nick,” said a note in careful, almost childish handwriting, “am moving on. Thought you might want this as a souvenir of our days on the lam. You sure you weren’t a Marine?”
No signature.
Nick looked at the damn thing. A small, handy, neat little rifle, once owned and used by Bob the Nailer. He shook his head.
“Honey, what is it?” Sally called down.
“Ah, just a deal from a guy I used to know,” he said and went over and slid it behind the water heater, where to this day it remains, rusting.
They came over the last rise.
In the desert, the town looked like a patchwork of bright and dark shapes, flung across the living radiance. It was hot and dry and above the sun blazed down without mercy.
“It’s not much,” she said. “No mountains, no trees, just scrub pine and little sticky things that will kill you. And hot. It’s so hot out here most of the time that people live on iced tea and air-conditioning.”
“It looks like rough land. Not too many people around, though, is that right?”
“Hardly any,” she said.
“And lots of room to move and nobody to pay you mind?”
“Only me,” she said.
“Sounds pretty good,” he said. “Now let’s stop somewhere and get us a dog.”
“That would be fine,” she said. “We can raise him with this damned baby I seem to be carrying.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEPHEN HUNTER is the author of thirteen novels. He is the chief film critic of the Washington Post and won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. He is also the author of one nonfiction book and two collections of film criticism. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
