“What – ”
“You got a job to do.”
“What are – ”
“In twenty minutes you’ll be on a United flight to New Orleans. Be in by seven-thirty.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Annex B. You been
“But – ”
“But nothing. These birds have someone. A woman who helped me once. Goddamned wonderful woman, the best. They got her and there’s nothing I can do but stew and they know it and they like it. It gives them all the goddamned leverage. But when it comes to meeting time, I got to have some leverage or she’s dead. They’ll use her to get at me and they’ll blow me away and then they’ll blow her away and then they go on with the rest of their lives, happy as pigs in a bath of shit. You got to get me some leverage, Nick. That’s all there is to it.”
Nick swallowed.
“I – I don’t know if – It’s hard. Maybe it’s there or maybe it’s in Washington or maybe it’s – ”
“Nick, you’ve been explaining to me how I was doing this all wrong. I’m man enough to say you’re right, I was a fool, all I managed to do was get some people killed. Now it’s time to let a professional work. I’ll step aside. You go get this Annex B.”
Nick looked at him.
He tried to think.
“But it’s probably in Washington. It’s buried in some computer file in Washington that only people on Lancer Committee can get to with special performance and – ”
He stopped himself.
The words ROM DO. formed in his mind.
It all came back to ROM DO. The message that Eduardo Lanzman had left him all those months ago, on the day that his wife died.
Eduardo Lanzman had come to see him.
But think about it, he told himself. He wouldn’t have just
He must have – I don’t know, but we didn’t find anything on his body.
Maybe his killers took it.
No. Why’d they chop him? To get him to talk. But he was a tough bastard, who believed in one thing, Nick Memphis of the FBI. Whatever he had, he hid it. Between the plane and the motel room, he hid it. And he told me where – he left me a message. ROM DO – Romeo Dog. R-D. RamDyne.
“Nick?”
“Huh?”
“Nick, we’re here.”
The truck had stopped. He looked and yes, they were there.
“Remember,” said Bob. “You be back by the first Sunday in November. You meet me at the cabin in the mountains. The day before hunting season.”
The most absurd document in the world, Shreck thought.
He looked at Dobbler’s report on his desk. A glance had told him that it was self-serving bullshit. Dobbler was hopeless.
Shreck was waiting for the doctor to show up. There was work to do and not much time left. His session with Hugh had not gone well. Hugh was capable of being extremely uncivil and in this episode he hadn’t disappointed Shreck. He was a vindictive, bitter old man, who raved about legacy, about heritage, about responsibility. He was enraged that the colonel had endangered poor Lon, after all Lon had suffered. And now Lon had to give up so much. When the colonel told him that Lon seemed happy, even excited about the whole thing and was treating it like some mad adventure, and was quite happily nailing silhouette targets at a thousand yards in central Virginia, it still didn’t sit well with Hugh.
You two Yale boys certainly go back a long way, the colonel had thought. I wonder to what?
Hugh finally wondered, frankly, if he could do a damned thing for the colonel anymore.
Shreck had told him he didn’t want anything, the situation had resolved itself to a three- or four-man play in Arkansas some two weeks hence, and that he would prevail or die, and that would be the end of it.
Nothing would come out. There’d be no embarrassment. Lon Scott could go back to obscurity. The colonel held the trump card, the woman; with the woman, he’d be able to manipulate Bob in ways previously impossible. They could chopper Lon Scott into any point in the mountain range and set him up to handle any long-distance shooting chores, and Payne, probably the best small unit man the Special Forces ever turned out, would be along for the close stuff. He himself had two wars’ worth of taking frontals, as well as twenty years running outfit ops and hits. Then they had the devious Dobbler masterminding things; he’d proven his worth. They needed only one thing – first-class topographic surveys of the Ouachitas, satellite-quality layout of the mountains.
Hugh fumed, but in the end, he saw how little of him was required and how protected he still was. When he realized he knew just who to call, he relented.
Now there was little to do except wait. Lon would be prepping the shot he’d have to take, Payne watching the girl, and he and Dobbler working on the tactical and psychological maneuvers. It was just a period of waiting, staying calm, bringing it off.
“Colonel Shreck?” came the voice over the intercom, one of the Operations people who hadn’t died in the chopper crash.
“Yeah?” said Shreck.
“I can’t get any answer from Dr. Dobbler. And I’ve called three times. No one has seen him since he logged out two nights ago at midnight.”
“Thank you.”
Shreck looked at the document before him. It was some time before it occurred to him that it meant that Dobbler had been in his office, but only thirty seconds after that when he discovered that the videotape was missing from his safe.
“Now what have we got?” Utey asked his assembled people.
Getting himself appointed the head of the Bob Lee Swagger Task Force had not been an easy job, but somehow, demanding returns on favors granted and offering still more favors, uncounted favors, in the future, and working fast off the tip, he’d managed it, and gotten his old team in place and was now staffing the first meeting in New Orleans.
“Sir,” said Hap Fencl, “here’s how it shakes down. They found fifteen discarded cartons of Lake City M852 7.62mm Match ammunition atop that mountain, Lot 543-101B. They managed to track it by that number to a surplus outfit called Survival, Inc., in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, August fifteenth. I went over there myself yesterday morning. They sold a thousand-round case of the stuff to two men. Tall, rangy guy, mid-forties, very quiet. And heavyset blond guy, crew cut, who did all the talking. They couldn’t positively ID Bob but the salesman gave me an absolute total yes on Nick Memphis.”
“Nick, Nick, Nick,” said Utey.
“Howard,” said Hap, “is there any possibility Nick is working very deep cover for someone on a higher level? I can’t believe Nick would go renegade on us. Nick’s a good Bureau guy, Bureau to his bones and even deeper.”
Howard considered carefully.
“You never can tell,” he said. “He loved it more than it could love him, based on his performance. And that’s where the trouble starts. Love can turn to hate, just like that.”
“I can’t believe anything bad about old Nick. He was true blue, a square shooter.”
This disturbed Howard. Couldn’t have men on the team who’d made an emotional connection to the
