the lobby.
“Nick, I want you to stay at the command post to handle the communications. Or do you want to ship out today?”
“No, Howard, I’ll hang around until – ”
But Howard had already turned away from Nick.
“I also want us to have people in the morgue and people on the floor and in the office. I want an observation post up near the snipers, ID-ing everybody who pulls into the lot.”
“If we get a positive, will you green light?” asked Hap.
“Yes.”
There was a quiet moment. Green light. Pull the trigger. Shoot to kill without warning. It was a rare operational condition.
“I want to take him here in the lot, not inside. We could get ourselves in some hostage situation or God knows what if he gets inside,” said Howard. “This man is very dangerous. He could take down half a dozen men in the blink of an eye, and suddenly I’m looking at more dead than Miami.”
“Howard,” said Nick, knowing it was futile, “he had me dead to rights in New Orleans with my own pistol when the smart thing was to drill me, and he passed on it. He hasn’t been found guilty of – ”
“Nick, you are really disappointing me.”
“Yeah, Nick,” said Hap. “Howard’s right. Gotta tag the guy if a clean chance shows.”
Nick nodded bitterly. But what if he’s innocent? Then he realized it didn’t really matter anymore.
“All right, Hap, you get the men out and sited, very quietly. I don’t want a lot of action on this. It’s possible Bob has sympathizers in the community, and he’ll be getting advance reports.”
“Howard, he’ll also scope out this place before he moves in,” said Nick. “That’s how he works. He’s very careful. You’ll want to be real careful how you hide these people. This guy can smell a trap a mile away.”
“Nicky, we’re pros too, remember,” said Hap. “Hey, we’ll do a real nice job. He won’t know what hit him, Nicky. If he shows.”
“Nick, you come with me,” said Howdy Duty. “I want to see the administrator here and get all this cleared before we move in. I may need your diplomatic skills.”
Nick and Howard went into the lobby waiting room, a bland, government-grim office that smelled of newness and plastic – the place was only a year or so old – where beige furniture stood against beige walls and one bearded geezer was up at the desk, jawing in deep Arkansese with the girl there.
Howard led Nick to the counter and they waited politely in the otherwise empty office as the hillbilly or mountain man or whatever he was carried on ’bout the damned government or some such, and the girl listened with half an ear and half a brain, and kept saying, “But the papers aren’t
She was just letting him blow some steam and after a while he seemed to settle down and stepped aside, and Howard pushed his way to the counter, pulling his identification and announcing himself as Deputy Director Utey, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It was only then that Nick looked up into the face of the man they’d rammed aside, and behind the blond beard and under the deep tan, realized he was looking into the gray eyes of Bob the Nailer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nick was fast; Bob was faster.
“Don’t you do it, son,” he said, the.45 Colt automatic a blue blur as it rose from nowhere and locked onto Nick’s chest. Bob’s voice was dead calm, dead serious.
Nick’s hand had flashed to his own Smith, his fingers were wrapped around the shaft of the piece – a very good speed draw, in fact, by Bureau standards – but he was dead by a clean three-tenths of a second if Bob so chose.
Nick put his hands up.
“Hey, what – ” Howard said.
“You boys just relax. Young lady, you relax too. I came only to get my old hound Mike, and no man should have to die for so silly a thing as a dog that’s been dead a month or so, right, Memphis?”
There was a weirdly cheerful crackle in his voice.
The girl behind the counter sat back and her eyes got big as eggs. Howard, meanwhile, was still not quite with it.
“Who – ”
“Howard, it’s him, it’s Swagger. He beat us here – no, he set us
“You, older guy, don’t you do anything stupid, even if you do look stupid. Gun out, left hand reaching around, set it on the counter, just like the kid here.”
“Mr. Swagger, there are federal agents all arou – ”
“Just do it, old man, there’s a good boy.”
It stunned Nick how calm Bob was.
Howard’s big Model 19 came out, went onto the countertop delicately.
“Young lady, pick each one up by the barrel and put ’em in that wastebasket over there.”
She did as she was told, shaking all the way.
“Now, young lady, I want you to lie down on the floor over there by the wall and curl up, with your hands over your ears. You just stay there. If you hear shooting, you just stay there. You’ll be fine if you just stay there.”
The girl, a blonde with a murky face, did just that, sinking to the floor.
“Swagger,” said Howard, “give it up. You won’t make it out. If we don’t get you today, we’ll get you tomorrow. We have a thousand men on this.”
“You just shut your mouth, sir,” said Bob. “Now y’all come with me, smiling like we’re old pals, you being just a touch ahead. Remember I can put the third of three bullets into each of you before you feel the first two. Now let’s go. We’re headed back past three halls, then turning to the right. Then you, Memphis, you’re going to tell the man there, a Dr. Nivens I believe, how it’s time to give up on the dog’s body and send it on to Washington for further tests. You pick it up. Then we’re going to walk out to my truck, and I’m going to drive off. And nobody has to get hurt over a damn dog. Fair enough?”
“Swagger, we have six eight-man reactive squads in the area. We can have a SWAT team here in three minutes. We have choppers and dogs. You’ll never get it done. It’s over. You shouldn’t have come back.”
“I came back to bury my old dog, and nobody’s going to stop me. Now let’s get going.”
The three of them walked stiffly through the swinging doors.
“Now up here, to the left. You boys put him in the human morgue. That’s proper, because he’s a better man than most men, I’ll tell you.”
They reached the morgue.
“Here we are, Memphis. Don’t fuck this up like you fucked up Tulsa. You hit the first time, Pork.”
Nick blanched; his shame, yanked up out of the past on him. How had he known?
“Yes?”
It was Nivens, the county coroner, who’d done the autopsy on the dog.
“Uh, Dr. Nivens, my name’s Nick Memphis, FBI,” Nick said. Nick drew out his credentials and the three of them faced the runty little doctor.
“We’ve, uh, we’ve decided to send the dog’s body on to Washington for further testing and – ”
“Oh, God, Bob, Jesus, don’t shoot – ”
The doctor had recognized Bob even as Nick was talking. So Bob pulled the Colt out and said, “Now, don’t do anything stupid, Doc, I just come to get my damned poor old dog. Give him to this young fool here.”
But in the face of the pistol, the doctor simply surrendered; he was one of those natural victims eager to give up. He went to his knees and blubbered at Bob not to shoot him because he had three children, a mortgage, a sick wife.
“Where’s the dog, dammit?” Bob asked.
