As always she saved him, pulled him out of the shit. The second he held her, professionalism took over, and the finest sniper alive became one with the unique killer in his arms.
"Cheekpiece, stock, shoulder rest, detent, oiler, adjustment port, spanner port, windage, elevation, parallax, receiver, recoil pad, base plate, grips, trigger housing group, action, image enhancement control, safety, forward guard, bolt, bolt knob, bipod, anchors, objective adjustment, heat shield, Ultronics silencer and flash hider, sling connectors, forward grip, barrel adjustment, barrel—" His right leg kicked out and the door smashed open.
"Wait a goddamn minute—hold it!" He could hear her voice screaming from the bathroom. Water running in the shower. She came out with a towel in front of her and saw Shooter Price's killing face over the top of his baby's business end. That was the last Cindy Hildebrande would see or know. "What?" was forming on her lips when he squeezed one off. Inside the small hallway, it sounded like a telephone-pole guy wire tapped with a metal rod.
Pwiiing! A metallic thwock that wasn't as loud as the sound that parts of Cindy made splattering off the hallway walls. He was covered in stuff, and so was his darlin'.
Nasty! He'd never done anybody up close with the weapon. He'd had no damned idea in the world it would take them apart like that. It was one thing to see the results at a mile away or whatever. But the power of her up close was fucking awesome.
He found a couple of rags and got her wiped off, and then cleaned himself up as best he could, wrapped the rags in another rag and carried his weapon and rag bundle out to the car. There was nobody watching him—that he saw, anyway—and he loaded her into the trunk, put the rags in a box to be thrown away, got in, and started the car.
It was amazing how much better he felt. He flipped the toggle on the OMEGASTAR and saw that Big Petey was nice and quiet. He switched the pager over to OMNI DF, put it back on primary monitor, and drove down the street.
He was almost back to the motel, feeling good again, keeping time to the radio with his fingers on the wheel, a golden-oldies station playing "Hard for the Money," when the movement alarm sounded on the DeMon.
He killed the audio and pulled over, checking the OMNI. The primary target was in motion. He felt like working. Why not? He pulled back out and headed north.
The big boy was moving fast. He unfolded a Kansas City map. What the hell was out this way, he wondered, besides the county line? Well, one thing for sure, he couldn't go too far or he'd be in the fucking Missouri River.
| Go to Table of Contents |
15
Chaingang loved to cruise the strange, darkening burbs of the heartland in the hours following sunset, watching sensors kick the arc lights on, feeling his own vital signs quicken with the coming of the night. He thought of it as sightseeing and he could drive aimlessly through suburban tract developments as one chauffered one's family to see the Christmas lights on a snowy December's eve.
It was invariably fascinating to him, an excursion to slowly negotiate the clean, traffic-free streets, musing about the monkeys who lived inside their overpriced, boxy ranch homes with two-car garages, red-bricked Colonials, and fake Tudors with swing sets and swimming pools in the back yard.
Of an evening the twinkling amber lights would glow from their windows like yellow cats' eyes, portals to mysterious worlds of taxpaying, workaday dads whose preoccupations were with the trivialities of sitcoms and tended lawns. Aliens, they seemed to him, with their absurd play morals and ridiculously structured lives of regimented and duplicitous familial love. Who were these monkeys? Where did they come from—they were everywhere now, snapping pictures, chattering; brainless simians who lived behind five-hundred-dollar door in impeccably decorated Sears showrooms.
They pulled him, you see, with their quiet residential streets and tended shrubbery. He felt the magnet of vulnerable humanity drawing him. How easily he could penetrate their portals, slice through the cozy pseudo-safety of their bolted, locked doors. The weight of his massive killing chain became a serious presence as he thought about how he might enter their lives and turn their worlds into sudden hellish shitstorms of pain….
He flows with the traffic on Sterling, past Norledge, Gill, Chicago, veering northeast now around Mound Grove Cemetery in the direction of Mill Creek Park and a point beyond. Sees the neatly stacked series of firewood logs—a half-dozen racks of wood, perhaps—which appear to have been lined with a plumb bob. Perfectly symmetrical lives play out their days and nights inside. Next door, the house is dark. Maybe up close you'd hear the sonorous sound of ever-present television from within. A "security door" stretches his face into the wide, beaming dimpled radiance that is his most dangerous smile. Pass, his instinct warns him, and he forgets these houses. But then at the next block, midway, he is inexplicably pulled by the hearts that beat inside a home that glows with lights.
Something about this dwelling screams at him. Victim! it shrieks, on a level he cannot pinpoint. If only time permitted. He has so many to do, so little time to do them in. It is impossible to be bored in such a rich and alien world: the phantom empire of Lemuria or Muritania; west of the pillars of Herakles; south of Middle Earth; a thousand million fathoms below the surface of sunken Atlantis; in the subworld towers of topaz; Daniel glides through serpent-infested, monster-haunted seas in search of monkeyfish.
He is nearing the place where they live now and his concentration kicks into third gear. He passes a huge truck stop, and the names on the fronts of the eighteen-wheeler giants type on his mental processor: Freightliner, International Transtar, GMC, Peterbilt. He sees the street sign. Parks. Gets things from his duffel and melts into the shadows.
The DeMon glows like a blue-eyed devil in the darkness of the car interior. Shooter flips the LocLok keys to "3," "ext," and "Trans," hits the intrusion-detector alarm switch, the OMNI DF mobile tracker, and opens the hood of the motion pager switch, flipping the toggle to the ON position, and selecting SILENT on the pager.
He parks and examines his surroundings: a small, bluecollar industrial pocket on the edge of hilly Sugar Creek. Giesler's Country Store and Gas. "REG $1.0l," Stritt Spraying-Seeding and Soil Evaluation. A plant nursery. Mount Ely Auto Body Repair. The immediate surroundings, for some reason, are called Mount Ely, locally. He takes the weapon case and moves across the road and into the tall weeds. Stops. Turns and checks for watching eyes.
Traffic passes: a beige Ford Ranger with a camper, a gray van chrome-stripped in gleaming flashes of silver that glint in the headlights, a beat-up pickup with two boys in the front—he turns and moves deeper into the weeds. Across from him, down a slope and beside a gravel road, he recognizes Big Petey's ride. He sees the familiar form of his favorite behemoth waddle out of the shadows with something on a rope—or so it appears.
Men, tethered to one another with something—a long rope maybe. Three guys. He puts his eye to the Laco, and sees their surly faces. Moves over to Chaingang and his practiced fingers find the bolt knob of SAVANT, and he snicks it back. Loads his lady's mouth with a shiny hard killer. Closes her up tight. Chaingang is smack in the crosshairs.