“Here’s the plan,” said Shreck. “Very simple. It’s how we bring Bob into Scott’s kill zone. Scott says he can deliver the one-shot kill at ranges no man, not even Bob, can guarantee. He’ll take it at between fifteen hundred and seventeen hundred yards. A mile, perhaps. He’s operating at the very edge of the envelope, where not even Bob has been before. And that’s our advantage. This is how we do it.”
Payne leaned forward to listen.
“Scott goes in independently about a day in advance of our arrival. He’ll never hit Blue Eye, so nobody will see him or even know he’s there, and no one will believe that a man with his infirmity could penetrate so deep in the wilderness. He’ll go in by ’chute, a HALO job, high altitude, low opening, the night before, landing in Hard Bargain Valley. Nicoletta goes in with him and we’ll drop an ATV. Nicoletta will be his legs and get him up to the ridge and dig him a spider hole.
“Meanwhile, our end of the operation takes the form of a barter. We have the girl. Bob has the cassette. The woman will mean more to him than the cassette to us. We make contact with him, just as he said, in Blue Eye. We’ll offer him the woman for the cassette.”
Payne wanted the woman, too.
“We’ll offer him the woman and a fresh start,” the colonel continued. “We’ll tell him that we can set it up so that he’s no longer a marked man. He can have his life back, he can have the woman. He’ll seem to accept, but of course it’ll be a lie. He’ll make the exchange, then count on his skills to double around and kill us from afar. But he can’t do it until the woman is safe. That’s the key. We have to preempt him.”
“How do we set up a swap?” Payne asked.
“We tell him that we’re worried about his ability to pick us off at long range. We can’t give him that opportunity. We tell him that at 1000 hours on November third, we’ll fire a flare in the sky, a red flare. He makes a compass fix on it and has one hour to make it to the site. When he’s there, he finds a flare pistol.
“The woman?”
“Payne, that’s a stupid question.”
“Yeah,” said Payne.
Nick looked at him for just a moment; the way he processed information somehow got fouled up and then he realized that indeed Bob had said what Bob had said.
“It doesn’t matter?” he exploded. “Are you kidding? It
Bob put down the cleaning implements.
“Pork, this here thing isn’t about getting me off a hook. It’s about something else. I got a woman who did me good who is now Payne’s playtoy. I got a dog that stuck by me when no one else would and ended up in the ground. I got a country that thinks anybody who fought in Vietnam is some kind of crazy sniper who shoots at the president and any man who owns a gun is a crazy man. Those are debts that have to be paid first off. And then there’s the goddamn tape and that letter. I don’t want that goddamn thing playing on the TV like a movie, and all those reporters getting rich and writing books off that letter for years to come. No, sir, not by me, not if I have breath to stop it.”
“You have to let the cards fall where they – ”
“The cards fall where I put them. And here’s where I put them. Plain and simple, we’re going to zip the bag on those boys, and save that woman and then I’ll deal with the other thing. Agree with me or get out of here. Julie first, Shreck and Payne second, and nothing third. Got that?”
Nick looked at Bob sitting there, stolid as a rock. He felt like Geraldo Rivera interviewing Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok at the same time. There was no bend in Bob’s furious rectitude, his nutty conviction that he would do what he had to do.
“Jesus, you are a stubborn bastard, Bob,” he said. “Your only way out is with this letter and the tape and – ”
“Play it my way or don’t play it. That’s all. Got that? If I don’t believe you’re on my program, I’ll ship you out of here. You can go back to New Orleans and that little girl and let me take care of the men’s work.”
Nick didn’t have to think a second. He was in. Always had been. Had to see how it would finish. He’d given himself to this strange bird, and so he elected to stay the course, not that he had a real choice.
“Sure,” he finally said. “It’s fine. We’ll do it your way.”
“I haven’t told you everything,” said Dobbler. “And now I will.”
They both turned to look at him.
“What makes Shreck such a powerful antagonist. One of my duties at RamDyne was to interpret tests. He had once been tested, when he went to work there. The psychologist then was an idiot and didn’t understand. But the results are clear. Shreck is more than a sociopath, he’s one of those rare men who is simply not afraid to die. Who, in fact, wants to die. Payne is the same way. You see, that’s why they are so frightening. Most men care about life. In the end, most men always act out of self-preservation. But these two don’t care and won’t act that way. It’s a function of self-hatred so passionately held that it’s off the charts.”
Another pause. Then Bob said, “You know, doctor-man, you must come from some pretty soft places to find that so remarkable. You could be describing one half of the world’s professional soldiers and both halves of its professional criminals. Truth is, I used to be one of those boys. Didn’t give two hairs about surviving. Now I have something to live for. Now I’m scared to hell I’ll die. Will it cost me my edge?”
He almost smiled, one of the few times Nick had ever seen anything so gentle play across the strong, hard features of his face.
“Sure is going to be damned entertaining to find out, isn’t it?” Bob said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Nick said he’d do it.
Bob was stern. “No funny business. No heroics. You play hero, you kill us all. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I understand. I can handle this.”
“I know you can. I’m just telling you. Whatever they say, you agree. You listen hard, and you agree.”
Nick climbed into the pickup and drove down the mountain in the dark. It was a wet, shaggy predawn and tendrils of fog clung to the hollows and valleys. For Nick, it was like driving through some half-remembered land from his childhood, as if dragons lurked in the tall pines and the deep caves.
Many switchbacks and crossovers later, he came to flatland, farmland and a highway, passed the burned church, and then drove on in to the town of Blue Eye itself, which even in the rain looked festive. The sun was up as he arrived. THE BUCKS ARE STOPPED HERE, the sign still said, fluttering over the town square. Bright shiny pickups and Rec-Vs lined the street, rifles visible hanging in the racks in their back windows. Everywhere Nick could see men proud in their blaze-orange camouflage. Tomorrow was the first day of deer season.
Nick parked and pushed his way through the crowd, which seemed to have been drawn to some epic pan-cake feed put on by the Kiwanis or Jaycees. The boys were talking rifles and loads, hunting techniques, telling stories of giant animals who’d soaked up bullet after bullet and then walked away. There was a common anticipation and a
