"Yeah," Able said with satisfaction, leaning against the display case. "Collecting these things has given me insights about snipers that've escaped most people."
Gray dipped his chin, encouraging Able.
"Do you know that heart attacks are almost unheard of among ex-snipers? Type A's can't last in the lonely bush, so they don't become shooters in the first place, I figure."
"What else?" Gray asked.
"Snipers prefer gold crowns to the new natural-looking ceramics."
"I wanted information, Arlen, but this isn't what I had in mind."
"Then how about this?" the gunnery sergeant asked with undampened enthusiasm. "Almost all snipers can routinely snatch mosquitoes and flies in midflight."
Gray scratched the side of his nose. "So?"
"Can you? Catch a buzzing mosquito or fly right out of the air every time?"
"Sure." He added hastily, "Not that I do it much. What of it?"
"Owen, I'll bet you don't even know that very, very few folks can do that. Catching bugs isn't something people sit around and talk about like they do bowling or fishing. It's our phenomenal eye-hand coordination that makes such feats possible. Same thing that makes us great shooters."
Gray sighed audibly, something he did not like to be heard doing. "Arlen, do you remember how I used to leave a paper star at my hides?"
"Sure. Wish I had one for my collection."
"Have you ever heard of a sniper who left a cartridge with a red ring painted around it?"
Able looked at the ceiling. "I haven't. He American?"
"Russian, maybe."
"Is he the shooter who nailed your gangster up in New York? I saw it on TV. Sounded like a pro."
Gray nodded. He told Sergeant Able the little he knew about the killings of the Chinaman and Donald Bledsoe.
"Wish I could help you, Owen, but I've never heard of red shells." He put his collection back in the case and the Winchester on the wall. "That all you want to know?"
"That's it."
"How come you flew all the way down to Quantico to ask me one question, Owen? I mean, it's great to see you and all, but don't they have telephones in New York?"
Gray risked another glimpse at his Winchester. It was apparent that the years had recast the rifle in his mind. It was smaller and less malignant than he had remembered, a piece of equipment rather than the embodiment of evil. Gray suffered the fleeting fancy that the Winchester was deliberately disguising its true lines, trying to woo him again, an old suitor returning with a soft knock on the door, a placatory smile, and smooth promises.
"Owen, you've got the Asiatic stare." Able laughed. "The twenty-yard gaze in a ten-yard room."
Gray shook off the notion. "I'm not welcome at my office in New York. Too dangerous to be around, what with holes appearing in anybody I'm standing next to. So I had some time and I drove down in a rental car rather than fly. Brought my kids and their nanny. They're at a motel swimming pool over in Quantico."
Sergeant Able led Gray from the building. The Marines were still standing ten yards behind the firing line, an invitation to Gray to rejoin them. Able gently placed his hand in the small of Gray's back lest his visitor escape to his car. The sun beat down from overhead, seeming to flatten the land under its weight and chasing away birds and insects. The air rippled with heat.
Corporal Paley held his arms out and turned a circle. "Anything wrong with my presentation, Mr. Gray? Am I ready for the field?"
Gray generated a smile. "Your sergeant knows far better than I do."
"I mean, Sergeant Able tells us to fit ourselves out for these sessions as if we were going into the field. Have I missed anything?"
"You look great," Gray said quickly. "You'll do fine. So long, Arlen." He started for the parking lot.
Corporal Paley said, "Advice from you could someday save my life, Mr. Gray."
Gray slowly turned back. "Your dog tags."
"Yeah?"
"I heard them click together when you got up from your firing position. Wrap some tape around them."
Paley nodded, then asked, "Want to show your stuff on this range, Mr. Gray? You can use my smoke pole." He held out the M-40A1.
The spotter, Corporal Sims, added, "There's five degrees of left cranked in."
"Go ahead, Owen," Able said. "Show these young pups what us old gummers can do. The firing lane is open to the thousand-yard targets."
When Able spoke into his radio, the range master bawled over the loudspeakers, "Butt officer, clear for firing. Ready on the left. Ready on the right. Ready on the firing line."
Able took the weapon from Paley and held it closer to Gray, wiggling it by way of invitation like an angler setting a jig. With his other hand, he pointed down-range at the bull's-eye over half a mile away. "You used to own the thousand-yard line. Let's see if you still do."
"Damn it, Arlen. Haven't I made myself clear? I hate to disillusion your men, but I detest weapons. I'm through with them forever."
"What in hell?" Able stared down range.
A red disc was waving above the butt. A bullet had hit the bull's-eye. The distant sound of a rifle shot finally washed over them, softened by echoes and distance.
"Who fired that?" demanded the range master, his anger magnified by the metallic resonance of the speakers. "Take that name, Sergeant Able." Then after a moment, "There's nobody on the line. Who's shooting?"
Owen Gray knew. He spun around to search the headquarters building, then the parking lot, then the hill behind the lot. There the shooter was, amid the pines and grass and wild rhododendrons, made insubstantial by the contours and foliage of the hillside. Then he was invisible, veiled by vegetation as if claimed by the wilderness as its own, merged entirely with the trees and undergrowth.
The shooter moved again, a short mechanical motion at odds with the timberland that hid him, a motion Gray sensed was designed to alert the watchers to his location.
"There he is," Paley yelled.
The form stood out against the backdrop of greenery. A human head, maybe blond, but at too great a distance to be sure. Was that a flash of teeth, a smile? And a rifle. But then he was gone, again slipping into the disguise of the vegetation, shedding his human form to become one with the landscape.
"I can't make him out," Sergeant Able said, shading his eyes with a hand. "That's eerie. He's there, then he's not."
"Your binoculars," Gray demanded.
Bobby Sims passed the Bushnells over. Gray held them up, scanning the hill, but he saw only pines and low bushes, tufts of bluegrass, and gray stone tinged by gold moss. Branches bent and released in the wind, rustling leaves and shifting shadows. Bumblebees flitted in and out of the sun. The shooter had vanished.
Gunnery Sergeant Able whistled appreciatively. "That target he hit is a good fifteen, sixteen hundred yards from his spot on that hill. And it was a center bull's-eye. A pure unconscious shot, a professional cap bust."
Gray's eyes remained at the binoculars. He saw only the lovely east Virginia terrain.
"That was your shooter, you think?" Able asked. "The one who leaves a red shell?"
Gray nodded.
"Looks like he's following you around."
Gray lowered the binoculars. "He is."
The sergeant added quietly, "Looks like you've got a big problem."
CHAPTER SIX
"My dad was an undertaker," Pete Coates said, rubbing the ball of his right foot. His black shoe was on the path next to the bench leg. "I ever tell you that?"
Gray squinted against the sun and shook his head.
"He owned a mortuary on Atlantic over in Brooklyn. I was working up bodies when I was twelve years old. Worst thing I had to do was stitch closed the stiffs' mouths. I'd have to stuff their swollen black tongues back into their gullets, yellow dentures, dead breath, flies trying to get into their yaps. It was no lifeguard job at the country club pool, I'll guarantee you that."