Black Light

the general’s astonishingly successful stewardship of the Tiger-cat Sniper School, the record number of kills racked up once the mounting problems for the Starlight on the M-21 were solved, and so on.

Late in the afternoon, Bob circled in for another pass.

“Could we just get back to B

LACK

L

IGHT

one more time, sir?” he asked.

“Certainly, Sergeant,” said the general.

“We agreed, the young man and I, that this book would be better if there were some personalities in it. So I’m thinking: there at Chaffee in ’54 ’55: any outstanding personalities involved? How big a team was it? Who were they?”

“The usual. Good men. Toward the end, representatives from Varo Inc. and Polan Industries, who ultimately got the initial Starlight scope contracts. Some civilians TDY from Army Warfare Vision at Fort Devens. You know, I have a picture. Is that interesting to you?”

“Yes, sir. Like to see it.”

“It’s over here, on the wall.”

He led them to the wall and pointed the picture out. Like the others it was a mixed group of civilians and soldiers standing and kneeling; Preece himself, much thinner but somehow rawer, crouched in the front row, holding the carbine with the huge optical device mounted. He wore army-green fatigues with his name on a white name tag and one of those goofy turret caps that were issue in the fifties. The men around him were doughy, unimpressive, unmemorable: they looked like NASA flight controllers, faintly ridiculous in the casual clothes of the era, mostly short-sleeved white shirts with slacks and lumpy oxfords.

“I should have had them write their names down,” the general said with a laugh. “I only recognize a few. That’s Ben Farrell. That’s Bob Eadings, of Polan.”

“Who’s that one?” asked Bob, pointing to a kneeling figure at the edge of the photograph, a young man with a certain pugnacious set to his square, blocky head, who looked strong beneath his clothes and had a set of fiercely burning eyes.

“That guy,” said Preece. “Lord, I remember him. He was from Motorola, I think. He was only on the project for two weeks but it happened to be the two weeks we took the picture. I cannot for the life of me remember the name.”

“Were all these men shooters?” Russ asked.

“No, not really. Ben Farrell was a very good shot. Not exceptional, but excellent.”

“Who did the shooting? Was it a team?”

“Oh, there was only one shooter,” said the general, exhaling a long flume of smoke like a dragon’s breath. “Me.”

After they had gone, the general sat very still for a time. His cigar burned out and he didn’t touch it. He didn’t call his girlfriend or his daughter or his divorced wife or his lawyer or any of the men on his board of directors or his head engineer or any of the old boys in his sniper cadre.

Finally, he got up, opened the cabinet behind his desk, took out a bottle of Wild Turkey and poured himself a tall glass. He sat, looking at it for a time, and then reached for it, noting, as he drew it to his lips, that his hands were still shaking.

24

S

ome dang days a fella couldn’t win. Duane, going on just a few hours’ sleep after having spent all day yesterday bouncing around Polk County on the tail of old Sam, plus answering a few unavoidable police calls, was bushed; but he was up and at it early this morning, on his ordered sweep across all the commercial establishments he could find along the Etheridge Parkway corridor.

Yet he struck pay dirt early enough.

Goddamn, he thought, when the Indian day-clerk woman at the Days Inn at Parkway Exit 7 said yes, an older man and a younger man had checked into a room yesterday at around ten. Was there anything wrong?

Duane puffed and acted like some sort of important investigator, and pretty much bullied the poor woman— she was foreign, with some kind of fucking dot on her head, so what difference did it make?—into giving up the whole story. They’d checked in at ten, the boy disappeared for most of the afternoon, the man made long-distance phone calls all day and they’d left about six in a truck loaded with sleeping bags and, technically, still had a contract on the room, at least until checkout time, noon.

She remembered, because usually they don’t rent rooms before one, but the tall man had insisted.

Duane asked to see the phone records, though he didn’t have a subpoena. Fortunately, the woman was too stupid to know or too indifferent to care. In his notebook, he wrote down the numbers in his big silly handwriting, like a child’s.

He thanked her, helped himself to a free cup of coffee and by ten was on the phone.

He gave his report to the answering machine, including the numbers, then sat back waiting for praise. It didn’t come.

The phone rang.

“Peck, where are you now?”

“Well, sir, uh, I’m in the parking lot of the Days Inn.”

“Git back down to Blue Eye. You stay with the old man today, you understand? You let me know what he’s up to.”

That was it: no nice going, nicely done, good job, just get back on the job.

Damn, you couldn’t please some folks.

Red Bama had experts everywhere; that was one of the pleasures of being Red Bama. So he called one, a communications specialist formerly of Southwestern Bell who handled telephone problems for him, and inside half an hour had a make on the phone calls Bob had made.

One was to the Pentagon, the office of Army Historical Archives. The other was to a firm in Oklahoma, called JFP Technology. It took another couple of calls to get to the product line and meanings of JFP Technology.

When he did, he whistled.

Fucking Swagger was smart. He was inside this deal already, and getting closer and closer to secrets so carefully and professionally buried over forty years ago. This was a powerful antagonist, the best that had come against Red in many a year.

Next, Red made a call to a lawyer he knew in Oklahoma City, a good man who was, as they say, in the life. The lawyer, for a not unsubstantial fee, was quickly able to hire a licensed private detective, and on a crash basis the detective set up a surveillance at JFP after establishing, in the parking lot, the presence of a green Dodge pickup with an odd unpainted fender license number Arizona SCH 2332.

The lawyer reported back to Red, who took a bit of a moment to appreciate what he’d brought off— I found you, you tricky bastard! and then issued further, and very specific, orders.

“I want one thing and one thing only. Just the time they leave that office as determined from an observation site as far away as possible. I do not want, and let me say that again because I love the sound of my own damn voice, I do not want any tail jobs or moving surveillance. Nobody’s to follow. This boy is too tricky,” he told the lawyer. “I don’t know what kind of men you got in Oklahoma City —”

“Good men, Mr. Bama.”

“Yeah, well, not that good. This boy is very, very smart and he has instincts for aggression you would not believe. I guarantee you: he will see any kind of tail you put on and if he does, every damn thing upcoming will fall apart. Is that understood?”

“Yes sir,” said the lawyer.

“The time is very important. Meanwhile, I will think this thing through,” said Bama, “and if I need your services I’ll call you back. I will expect you to be available.”