is part of her mother's dream for her that she will go east to college, and the skills that are the hallmarks of equestrian sophistication will take her a lot farther than the rowdy ability to ride like a cowboy. Her father does not care for the English saddle, which seems hardly enough to protect the girl from the muscles of the animal beneath, and at horse shows he thinks those puffy jodhpurs and that little velveteen jacket with its froth of lace at the throat are sublimely ridiculous.
Calypso bounds over the rocky path, his cleverness as evident as his fearlessness. To watch the slight girl maneuver the massive horse is one of the great joys of her father's life: she never seems so alive as when on horseback, or so happy, or so in command. Now, Nikki's voice trills with pleasure as the horse at last breaks out onto a shelf of rock. Before them is the most beautiful view within riding distance and she races to the edge, seemingly out of control, but actually very much in control.
'Honey,' cries Julie as her daughter careens merrily toward disaster,'be careful.'
The child. The woman. The man.
The child comes first, the best rider, bold and adventurous.
She emerges from the shadow of the draw, letting her horse run, and the animal thunders across the grass to the edge of the precipice, halts, then spins and begins to twitch with anticipation. The girl holds him tightly, laughing.
The woman is next. Not so gifted a rider, she still rides easily, with loping strides, comfortable in the saddle. The sniper can see her straw hair, her muscularity under the jeans and work shirt, the way the sun has browned her face. Her horse is a big chestnut, a stout, working cowboy's horse, not sleek like the daughter's.
And finally: the man.
He is lean and watchful and there is a rifle in the scabbard under his saddle. He looks dangerous, like a special man who would never panic, react fast and shoot straight, which is exactly what he is. He rides like a gifted athlete, almost one with the animal, controlling it unconsciously with his thighs. Relaxed in the saddle, he is still obviously alert.
He would not see the sniper. The sniper is too far out, the hide too carefully camouflaged, the spot chosen to put the sun in the victim's eyes at this hour so that he'll see only dazzle and blur if he looks.
The crosshairs ride up to the man, and stay with him as he gallops along, finding the same rhythm in the cadences, finding the same up-down plunge of the animal.
The shooter's finger caresses the trigger, feels absorbed by its softness, but he does not fire.
Moving target, transversing laterally left to right, but also moving up and down through a vertical plane: 753 meters. By no means an impossible shot, and many a man in his circumstances would have taken it. But experience tells the sniper to wait: a better shot will lie ahead, the best shot. With a man like Swagger, that's the one you take.
The man joins the woman, and the two chat, and what he says makes her smile. White teeth flash. A little tiny human part in the sniper aches for the woman's beauty and ease, he's had prostitutes the world over, some quite expensive, but this little moment of intimacy is something that has evaded him completely. That's all right. He has chosen to work in exile from humanity.
Jesus Christ!
He curses himself. That's how shots are blown, that little fragment of lost concentration which takes you out of the operation. He briefly snaps his eyes shut, absorbs the darkness and clears his mind, then opens them again to what lies before him.
The man and the woman have reached the edge: 721 meters. Before them runs a valley, unfolding in the sunlight as the sun climbs even higher. But tactically what this means to the sniper is that at last his quarry has ceased to move. In the scope he sees a family portrait: man, woman and child, all at nearly the same level, because the child's horse is so big it makes her as tall as her parents. They chat, the girl laughs, points at a bird or something, seethes with motion. The woman stares into the distance. The man, still seeming watchful, relaxes just the tiniest bit.
The crosshairs bisect the square chest.
The master sniper expels a breath, seeks the stillness within himself, but wills nothing. He never decides or commits. It just happens.
The rifle bucks, and as it comes back in a fraction of a second, he sees the tall man's chest explode as the 7mm Remington Magnum tears through it.
PART I
THE PARADE DECK
Washington, DC, April-May 1971
CHAPTER one.
It was unseasonably hot that spring, and Washington languished under the blazing sun. The grass was brown and lusterless, the traffic thick, the citizens surly and uncivil, even the marble monuments and the white government buildings seemed squalid. It was as though a torpor hung over the place, or a curse. Nobody in official Washington went to parties anymore, it was a time of bitterness and recrimination.
And it was a time of siege. The city was in fact under attack. The process the president called 'Vietnamization' wasn't happening fast enough for the armies of peace demonstrators who regularly assailed the city's parks and byways, shutting it down or letting it live, pretty much unchecked and pretty much as they saw fit. This month already, the Vietnam Veterans for Peace had commandeered the steps of the Capitol, showering them with a bitter rain of medals, more action was planned for the beginning of May, when the May Tribe of the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice had sworn to close down the city once again, this time for a whole week.
In all the town there was only one section of truly green grass. Some would look upon it and see in the green a last living symbol of American honor, a last best hope.
Others would say the green was artificial, like so much of America: it was sustained by the immense labor of exploited workers, who had no choice in the matter. This is what we are changing, they would say.
The green grass was the parade ground, or in the patois of a service which holds fast to the conceit that all land structures are merely extensions of and metaphorical representations of the ships of the fleet, the 'parade
