“Where’s Caleb?”
“Sir, he ain’t coming, don’t believe. We seen him go down just a second ago. We ought to-”
But the old man didn’t need to be told. He twisted from the news, looked through the entryway from cargo hatch to cockpit where a pilot looked back at him, and gave the thumbs up.
Too bad for Caleb, but that were the Grumley way, and even though the bird was no rocket, they all felt some kind of low g-force as she zoomed skyward, straight up into the black, with four Grumleys and eight mill small unrecorded aboard.
Whooooeeeee, Pap felt himself gush as the bird climbed and began its outbound jaunt, running low, hard and without lights.
Nothing could stop them now.
Bob hadn’t even made it out of the trees as the bird-it was a Blackhawk, no less-took off for the moon or other parts ethereal. It climbed high until it was damned near invisible, and it was out of range in seconds. He didn’t have a shot.
Shit, he thought.
Then he cursed himself for chucking away the phone as he now saw he might have been able to get a call through, somehow have gotten word to somebody that…but he saw that was impossible. Nah. The airwaves were still a mess, nobody knew anything, no-
Mark 2:11. “Arise from your pallet and go to your house.”
Mk.211, Model O, Raufoss armor-penetrating incendiary.
It was time to let Jesus speak for himself.
Swagger ran to the fallen man, who lay in a fetal position, his head bent and crushed by a 6.8 Remington. But that wasn’t the point. The point was cradled in dead hands. Bob picked up the goddamned Barrett rifle, all thirty pounds of it, and ran back with it to the armored truck. He set up over the hood, after performing a quick check with the bolt to make certain a shell lay in the chamber and seeing that it did, he found a good supported position, the heavy thing on its bipod legs. He drew it to his shoulder, aware from Japan that he’d find speed in no speed, he’d find attainment in no attainment, he’d find it all in smooth, and in smooth he ticked them off: spotweld, check, trigger finger, check, breathing discipline, check, bones locked, check, mind numbed to stillness, going, going, going on toward nothing.
The last time he’d fired through a scope was months ago, and what was this scope, what was its zero, who set it up? Well, the bad boys didn’t set it up, because they used it close in, and the shooting they’d done was from the hip, at distances of twenty feet or less, as witness the beefy guy who’d tried to hipshoot him. They’d left it alone, most likely, fearing it a little. What was the origin of the gun? Was it a privately owned weapon, used by some rich gun guy for hitting targets a mile out? No way, too beat up for that, not well enough cared for. Had to be from the same source as the restricted Raufoss ammo, that is, from some Justice Department/Defense Department equipment program, meaning it was a military gun, maybe refurbed by Barrett after use in the sand, declared surplus and turned over to law enforcement cheap for use in the war against drugs and somehow coming all the way to Mountain City. Bob tried to feel its last real shooter and came up with a man like himself, a marine NCO, hard and salty and given to the mastery of the technology, his imagination enflamed by the possibility of doing bad guys a mile away and saving the lives of young marines who’d otherwise have to close and do it at muzzle-blast range.
He’s a mile out, he thought, and whoever set this up, he fired at a mile, that was his pride, his power. He knew with certainty: The scope is zeroed at a mile.
Bob settled behind the reticle, indexed on his approximation of the angle at which the bird had headed, and there it was, illuminated in the light of the speedway its occupants had just looted, the bird in blur, three-quarter profile, bisected in the milliradian-designated crosshairs, and it all came together in the kind of stroke only someone who’d done the deed under pressure a thousand or a million times on training fields and in bad places where they shot back could make happen-smooth and beyond attainment or speed or ambition.
He didn’t even feel the recoil in the nanosecond the bird crossed the crosshairs of the scope, though it may have been ferocious, even as he gave with it, rolled backward, and let the gun resettle for a second shot. He didn’t see the blinding muzzle flash as the huge missile with its tungsten core flew onward at well past the speed of sound, he didn’t feel the noise, which was immense, he didn’t sense the disturbance all those hot, roiling gases unleashed.
He looked again when the show was complete, but he couldn’t find the bird. Where had it gone, what was it-
He saw it sliding out of the sky. He watched through the magnification of the scope and caught the thing in its downward gyre. It wasn’t smoking or burning, but its internal rhythms were psychotic and the fuselage rotated wildly, whipping ever faster, until it was just barely flying, and at the last the pilot, whoever he was, got some control, and the thing hit with a smash against the empty seating of the speedway, its tail boom shearing off and going for a tumble, smoke rising now from a dozen different areas. Then Bob saw men spilling crazily out of it, even one, from this distance, in blue.
Then a glare spotlighted him.
He looked up to see another bird just a few feet up. He felt himself pinned, silhouetted in the harsh light. He raised his hands, holding Nick’s badge up for all to see.
The bird got even lower, and in its own light he now saw KFOXTV written on its boom.
He climbed up to the roof of the truck and the chopper came even lower. He got a foot on the runner, launched forward, and eager hands pulled him in.
He was aboard next to a guy with a fancy haircut and a guy with a camera, both so excited they looked about to pee. But he wedged past them, knowing all too well the interior of the Huey, and leaned into the cockpit.
The pilot handed him a set of earphones, which he slipped on, finding a throat mic at the ready.
“I’m with the FBI,” he said, gesturing with the badge.
“Yes sir.”
“Listen, can you run this baby south to 421, then follow 421 all the way over Iron Mountain out to Mountain City?”
“Sure can.”
“When we get there, I’ll talk you in the rest of the way. You drop me where I say, and then you make tracks.”
“Read you, Special Agent.”
“Then let’s rock and roll the fuck out of here.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
The boss waited. Radio reports were incoherent, inclusive, communicating only chaos and conflicting intelligence. Choppers down, but Caleb had to bring a chopper down. How many? One? Two, three? Hard to say. In the end, it was pointless to listen, and so the boss turned off the unit.
The boss checked the time. After midnight. Here, so far away, the night was calm, the sky full of radiance, the temperature at last bearable, and a sliver of gibbous moon let low gleam smear the southern hemisphere. When the hell would it be here? Why wouldn’t the hands on the watch move more quickly? Why was breath so hard, neck so stiff, mouth so dry?
Suddenly, there it was. The boss felt immense relief. It felt so good. They were here. It was done.
The black bird, running low over the mountain crest, finding this unlit field behind the prayer camp without a problem. He was such a good pilot and now he could be taken care of too.
The boss lit a flare, the only signal necessary.
It’s done. They said it couldn’t be done. But I did it. Now I’m free and clear and rich and untouchable. I’m a legend. They’ll wonder for a hundred years what became of me, what I did with all that money. They’ll tell of the boss who beat the game.
The helicopter set down, pitching up a whirl of wind and dust and leaves, blowing and bending the grass away
