It felt unclean, as if he were dishonoring someone who might be as great as himself. But he again yielded to practicality: this wasn't about honor among snipers but doing the job.
He threw the bolt, ejecting a shell, and put the crosshairs squarely on the underside of the chin, exposed to him by the man's supine, splayed position. This would drive a bullet upward through the brain at eighteen-hundred feet per second. A four-inch target at 722 meters.
Another great shot. He calmed himself, watched the crosshairs still, and felt the trigger break. The scope leaped, then leaped back, the body jerked and again there seemed to be a cloud, a vapor, of pinkish mist. He'd seen it before. The head shot, evacuating brains in a fog of droplets. The fog dissipated. There was nothing more to see or think.
He rose, threw the rifle over his shoulder. He gathered the equipment--the ten-pound sandbag was the heaviest--and re cased the binoculars. He looked about for traces of himself and found plenty: scuffs in the dust, the three ejected shells, which he scooped up. He grabbed a piece of vegetation from the earth and used it to sweep the dust of his shooting position, rubbing back and forth until he was convinced no sign of his having been there existed. He threw the brush down into the canyon before him, and then set out walking, trying to stay on hard ground so as to leave no tracks.
He climbed higher into the mountains, expertly and without fear. He knew it would be hours at the least before any kind of police reaction to his operation could be commenced. His problem now would be the remote possibility of running into random hunters or hikers, and he had no wish to kill witnesses, unless he had to, which he would do without qualm.
He walked and climbed for several hours, finally passing over the crests and descending to rough ground. He hit his rendezvous spot by three and got out the small transmitter and sent his confirmation.
The helicopter arrived within an hour, flying low from the west. The evac was swift and professional.
He was done.
CHAPTER twenty-eight.
Bob rode up through the trees and across the barren, high desert to the mountains. He loped easily along, trying to calm himself, wondering if he could make it before the sun rose fully. The black dogs seemed to have gone back to their kennel. They kept no schedule, nothing set them off, they were just there some days and not some others. Who knew? Who could tell, who could predict?
He tried to think coherently about his future. Clearly he could not stay here much longer, because the weight of living off his in-laws was more than he could bear. It turned all things sour and made him hate himself. But he doubted he could get started in his profession, which was running a lay-up barn for horses, not until he sold his spread in Arizona and had the money to invest in an upgraded barn and other facilities. Plus, it would mean getting to meet the local vets, getting them to give him referrals. Maybe the place was already crowded with lay-up barns.
He could sell his 'story.' Too bad old Sam Vincent wasn't around to advise him, but Sam had come to a sorry end in that Arkansas matter which even now Bob had his doubts about starting up. It got a lot of people killed, for not much but the settling of forgotten scores. He had some shame left in him for that thing. Maybe scores weren't worth it.
But if Sam wasn't around, who could he trust? The answer was, nobody. He had an FBI agent friend in New Orleans and a young writer still struggling with a book, but not yet having had any success. Who could he approach?
The jackals of the press? No, thank you, ma'am.
They turned him off beaucoup.
No, the 'story' thing wasn't any solution to his problems, not without the advice of somebody he trusted. That left shooting. He knew his name was worth something in that world--some fools considered him a hero, even, like his father, a blasphemy he couldn't begin to even express--and the idea of making that pay somehow sickened him. But if he could pick up work at a shooting school, where they taught self-defense skills to cops and military personnel, maybe that could bring in some money and some contacts. He thought he knew some people to call. Maybe that would work. At least he'd be among men who'd been in the real world and knew what it meant to both put out and receive fire. He tried to imagine such a life.
The sound was clear and distinct, though far off. No man knew it better than he.
Rifle shot. Through the pass. High-velocity round, lots of echo, a big-bore son of a bitch.
He tensed, feeling the alarm blast through him, and had a moment of panic as he worked out that it was possible the shot had come from exactly where Julie and Nikki ought to be. In the next split second he realized he didn't have a rifle himself and he felt broken and useless.
Then he heard a second shot.
He kicked Junior and the horse bolted ahead. He raced across the high desert toward the approaching mountains, his mind filling with fear. Hunters, who happened to get a good shot at a ram or an antelope in the vicinity of his women? Random shooters, plinkers? But not up this high. Maybe there was some trick of the atmosphere, which made the sound of the shots travel from miles away, up through the canyons, and it only now reached him and was meaningless. He didn't like the second shot. A stupid hunter could shoot at something wrong, but then he wouldn't shoot again. If he shot again, he was trying to kill what he was shooting at.
There was a third shot.
He kicked the horse, bucking a little extra speed out of it.
Then he heard the fourth shot.
Christ!
Now he was really panicked. He reached the darkness of the pass but had a moment's clarity and realized the last thing he should do would be to race out there, in case someone was shooting.
As he slowed the animal down to a walk, he saw Nikki's horse, its saddle empty, come limping toward him.
A stab of pain and panic shot through his heart. My baby? What has happened to my baby? Oh, Christ, what has happened to my baby?
