Point Of Impact

Bob nodded.

“They did a very careful job on me. But just maybe nobody’s quite as clear on all this as they think.”

“Let me tell you right now,” Nick said, “your best course is to hire a good lawyer. I can call the Bureau and we can work out some kind of deal. With my evidence and – ”

But Bob was just looking at him.

“Son, I don’t think you understand. These boys killed my dog.”

“I’m telling you, this is the twentieth century. You just can’t go to war on people, not in America. And that kind of attitude will – ”

“Now, you listen here, Memphis. Even if I could walk out on this thing now as a free man, I wouldn’t. Those boys would scatter and slip into new identities or whatever it is they do. We’d never catch them. They’re too damned slick. They’d have gotten away with it. And in a year or so, when it was cool, they’d be back in business. What I mean to do is tether a goat and draw them in. They’ll think they’re hunting the goat, but the goat is hunting them. And who’s the goat? I’m the damned goat. The only thing is, this goat has teeth. This goat bites. Now this is hard, hairy work, Memphis; there’s going to be some shooting and some people are going to die. It won’t be pretty and we’ll be all alone. It is a war. I didn’t start it, but by Christ I mean to finish it. Now, Pork, tell me – are you in or are you out?”

Nick thought of the pig-gleam in Payne’s eye; and this RamDyne with its willingness to do the hard thing; and he thought of how he’d been brutalized; and he thought of how confident and smooth and big these guys thought they were. And he thought about how they’d committed a war atrocity and gunned down women and kids.

And he thought about how he’d been dying to get back on a SWAT team.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m in.”

Something hard and metallic flickered in Bob’s eye, like the shine of a brass cartridge as it catches a glint of light before the bolt locks vault-tight behind it.

“Now what?” asked Nick. “I’ve got some great ideas about Annex B. It seems to me – ”

“Hold up there, Pork. First thing is, we’re going to see a man about a rifle.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Partial body found in bayou,” proclaimed the cheerful headline.

“Go ahead,” said Shreck, “read it.”

Dobbler squinted.

Lafayette Parish

The partial body of a man was found floating yesterday near Spencerville, Lafayette Parish. Sheriff’s deputies said the victim, who has been identified by fingerprints as Tomas Garcia Montoya, of McDonoughville, was evidently the subject of an alligator attack as his body, from the chest down, was missing.

Cause of death, however, was listed as a gunshot wound to head.

Montoya, a Cuban emigre, had listed his occupation as “consultant” but was known to police and other New Orleans law enforcement agencies as a paid informant. He was 54 years old.

Deputies speculated that he may have also been a victim of the escalating drug warfare in the state’s rural parishes, in a struggle for control of the city’s drug routes between old-line mob interests and newcomers representing the cocaine cartels of Central America.

Montoya was shot in the head by a heavy caliber rifle bullet.

“Only a large-caliber center fire rifle bullet does massive damage like that,” said Lafayette Parish coroner Robert C. LaDoyne. “This man was shot, judging by the wound channel and tissue displacement, by a hollowpoint bullet of.30 caliber or more.”

Parish deputies said it may represent the coming of a new kind of professional killer to the parish’s drug wars.

“Mob boys favor the silenced.22 from close range,” said Deputy Ed P. St. Etienne. “The Colombians like little machine pistols, and fire a hundred bullets into their victims. This boy is something entirely new.”

“He’s not new to us, is he, Dobbler?” said the colonel.

“No,” said Dobbler, swallowing. “How on earth -? He’s dead! We saw the – ”

“Dobbler,” snapped the colonel. “Look at me.”

Dobbler looked into the colonel’s forceful dark eyes and felt the full might of his wrath.

“Tommy Montoya was a free-lancer we used when we operated in the South. He was with Nick Memphis. Now he’s dead, sniper-dead. That means one thing and you’d better get used to it fast. All right? Comprendez, amigo?”

Dobbler swallowed miserably.

“Yes,” he said. “I see.”

“Swagger is alive. How, why, I don’t know. I don’t even give a fuck, because it doesn’t matter. What matters is this new reality: he’s teamed with the one man in America outside the proper circles who’s seen our file. So right from the start, he knows more than anybody who’s come after us before.”

He looked hard at Dobbler.

“In case you don’t get it, Doctor, we have a war on our hands. This motherfucker wants to track us down and blow us away. But what we’re going to do is blow him away first. Are you listening, here, Dr. Harvard Psychiatrist? No bullshit; we have to get close, put the muzzle against his head and blast his brains all over the landscape. Or he’ll do it to us.”

The colonel’s glare was unsettling; Dobbler swallowed.

“What do you want me to – ”

“What I need from you is an idea how they’ll operate. Their relationship – how’s it going to play out? Will they get along? Will they fight? Do they make a good team?”

“Ah,” said Dobbler, unprepared, “ah, Bob will be the strong one. He’ll dominate the younger man. The younger man is no problem. Bureau trained, he’ll be orthodox and plodding. No, Swagger is dangerous because of the unconventionality of his mind. He’ll come at us out of instinct, brilliantly, improvising madly. He’ll – ”

“Where will they head?”

“Bob will head home. If he was in New Orleans to meet or rescue Memphis, then he’ll take him to the Ouachitas. It’s where he’ll feel safest. And the sense of safety is – ”

“The chances of us making an interception are nil. Not in his territory. All right,” said Shreck, leaning forward, “let me ask you a question. Have you ever hunted?”

“Hunted? Good God, no. I mean, it’s so…barbaric.” A faint look of distaste came across Dobbler’s face, unintended.

“Yes, well, you put all that aside now. You just became a hunter. It’s your job to work out a way we can lure this tough old boy and his new pal into ambush. Hunt him, Dobbler. You don’t have to kill him – we’ll take care of that – but you have to hunt him.”

Dobbler nodded apprehensively. And he noticed something he’d never quite seen before.

He swallowed.

Shreck is scared.

Some days later, Nick Memphis was in a contrary mood.

“Now what the hell is this?” he said. “Why are we – ”

“I think I liked you better when you were Baby Googoo, and you just looked up at me with your mouth open. Now you won’t shut up. Talk, talk, talk, like a woman. Now, don’t say nothing here. You let me do the damned talking. Got that? I don’t want you explaining something to this old coot and putting him into a coma.”

There was no give in Bob’s voice as he looked through the dust-spackled windshield at an extremely spacious