Point Of Impact

“Now I think we should – ”

“Memphis, don’t explain anything to me. All right?”

Nick, fuming and pissed at himself and at Bob, had never known anybody so used to silence and so uninterested in conversation, so hidden behind an impassive face. But it wasn’t the impassivity of relaxation – that was a complete illusion, Nick now saw, like some kind of mask to keep the world away while its owner shrewdly calculated moves two jumps down the line.

“Where are we?” asked Nick.

“Ouachitas,” said Bob. “Nobody’s going to find us here, unless we want them to.”

“Ah,” said Nick. “Um, what are your thoughts on what we do next?”

Bob just went on skinning the squirrels.

“I haven’t figured yet.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking,” said Nick.

“Uh-oh,” said Bob.

“I still think the damned key is Annex B. Now, where is Annex B? Well, it’s got to be in Washington. In fact, everything’s in Washington. I think that’s where we ought to go. We can do some nosing around, maybe get a line on it. Then…”

He had nothing to say after the then.

“Now, don’t you think they might figure that out?” Bob asked.

“Well…” said Nick.

“One thing I know. In a war, you don’t go where they expect you. That earns you a body bag.”

“Well, then…what?”

“We lay up here a few more days, till the buzz dies down. We both need sleep; I’ll kill a deer tomorrow so we’ll eat good. Then I’ll figure something.”

“Look, I have to tell you as a professional criminal investigator of twelve years’ experience, we just aren’t – ”

“Young Mr. Pork Memphis, I am not a fancy government man. I only studied at the University of Vietnam. I don’t know anything about investigating anything. But I do know the key to this damn thing is a rare rifle that has been used at least once in mortal circumstances. And I know its owner is one of the best shots in America and one of the great ballistic technicians, as well as having spent almost forty years in a wheelchair. And I have a funny feeling that he works for this RamDyne. That’s the only card I got, so it’s the card I’m going to play. Now let me think on it. Go for a walk or something. But don’t get lost. I don’t have time to go looking for you.”

Well, maybe I’ll do some thinking too, thought Nick, consigning himself to be the only one to press against the mysteries of Annex B.

Dr. Dobbler licked his lips nervously, swallowed a time or two, and then knocked on the door.

“Yes?”

“Colonel Shreck?”

“Yes, come in, Doctor.”

Dobbler stepped into Shreck’s office, to find Payne and the colonel bent in conversation.

“What is it, Doctor?”

“Ah, I have a – a plan.”

The colonel looked at Dobbler. Russell Isandhlwana used to look at him like that, more with pity than anything else. In some ways Russell and the colonel were the same man. They just took what they wanted. And Dobbler knew that he desperately wanted to please them both.

“All right,” said Shreck, waiting for more.

“Bob is too sharp and suspicious to be taken as we had hoped. He’s always watching. We must beat him on his strength, which is patience. We must put something before him so subtly that not a man in a thousand would notice it. But we must put it there and let him sniff at it and go away, sniff again and go away, reconnoiter and re- reconnoiter, until he has at last satisfied himself that the way is clear. We must nurse him in slowly, never being greedy, draw him in with utmost care and discipline, being as ready as he is to disengage if conditions do not favor us. We must be more patient. Then and only then – ”

Shreck was impatient.

“That’s wonderful. Now tell me how.”

“Yes sir,” said Dobbler. “All right. Here it is. Am I not certain that somewhere in the secret files of this organization there is access to a man who does the shooting? Really. There has to be a shooter. An excellent shooter. After all, somebody took that shot in New Orleans.”

Shreck thought about it, but didn’t commit himself. Then he said, “Go on.”

“This shooter, I guarantee you, would interest Bob. He would fascinate Bob. Bob is probably already theoretically aware of his existence and attempting to puzzle out a name for the man, and a location. And certainly Bob noted the rifle such a man used. After all, didn’t he use it in Maryland during the recruitment stage?”

“Yes.”

“My thought is that in the subtlest possible way, we put the shooter’s name before Bob.”

“And what way would that be?”

“There’s a publication called The Shotgun News that comes out three times a month. Thousands of custom or rare rifles are advertised through classified ads in each issue, as well as other items – reloading stuff, parts, surplus clothes, ammunition…and books. This was a surprise to me. But it’s true. These men who love guns, somehow are driven to record and document their love. They’ve created a whole other literature, a parallel literature. And just as mainstream culture is riven by ideological differences between left and right, so is gun culture, though it isn’t really left and right so much as traditionalist and progressive. Anyway, a common thread is guerrilla publishing – self-publishing, if you will. I was fascinated to see a book on Japanese military rifles being sold for thirty-seven dollars through the mail! Imagine that. Someone so fascinated by Japanese rifles that he goes to the trouble to write a book – a catalog, more, I suspect – anyway, he goes to all that trouble and then there are actually people out there mad enough to send thirty-seven dollars through the mail for – ”

“Get to the point, goddammit!”

“Yes, I’m sorry. Why not – a book? A self-published book on the history of that particular rifle Bob used in Maryland. Published by some obscure researcher-devotee in some small town. As advertised in a small item in The Shotgun News. Bob would see it. I guarantee you. And he would think, Hmmmmm. Here’s somebody who knows about this rifle and its background. Maybe in his researches, he came across a clue that will lead me to the next step. And so he would approach this obscure researcher-devotee. He will have to. And in that way we lure him to a remote place and – ”

“A mountaintop,” Payne spoke up for the first time. “You want to drive him up a mountain, so there’s a point where he can’t get any further. Hit him with a lot of men.”

“Yes. Drive him up, then hit him with a lot of men. More men than he can handle.”

“So where we going get a lot of new boys?” said Payne.

“Let me work on that,” said Shreck.

They were sitting outside the cabin well after dark. It was as if Bob had flown off into the ether. Nick realized he’d never quite known the meaning of the word concentration before; there was no concentration like the concentration of the sniper. Nick was afraid almost to speak to him.

Bob sat by the fire, simply staring into it. The fire crackled and blazed, sending small flares out into the night, its light playing across his taut, lean face. His eyes were steady, lost in the middle distance.

Meanwhile, in his solitude, Nick tried to zero on Annex B. How do you get at something deep in the FBI files, especially when you have been suspended by the Bureau and your only source into its computer system has been compromised. But he was convinced that if he could just find some orderly, logical methodology, it could be done. Perhaps some computer hacker could penetrate, some damned high school kid. They were getting into things all the time. Or maybe if he went to someone like Hap Fencl, laid all this out in a nice orderly fashion, maybe Hap would bypass the dreaded Howard D. Utey and go to even higher-ups and that way…but even as he was conjuring the bubble of this fantasy, it burst on him. Hap wasn’t as bad as Howard, but he was Howard in a way: old Bureau,