Dead Shot

“Home, sweet home,” said Kyle Swanson as a crewman pulled open the door from the outside. “Thanks for the lift, guys.”

He stepped to the deck while the chopper was still shutting down its engines and ducked away from the powerful downdraft of the rotor blades. A woman moved toward him from the cabin area. She was Lady Patricia Cornwell, in a blouse of blue silk and dark slacks, with a silver necklace and earrings. “Welcome back, stranger,” she said, giving him a tight hug and handing over a cold beer. Her eyes took in everything: the weary movement, the sun-reddened skin, a slight limp. He had been gone for almost two weeks. No questions. “Jeff is on his way back from a NATO meeting and should be aboard before the storm arrives.”

“Good to be here, Pat. Lord, I’m tired.” Clouds were gathering on the horizon, and crewmen in crisp uniforms hurried about, coiling rope and lashing canvas to get the big yacht ready for the approaching heavy weather.

Pat gently touched a small bandage taped on his chin. “Did you forget to duck?”

“Cut myself shaving,” Swanson answered with a laugh.

“You seem to do that a lot these days.” She punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Why don’t you go take a nap before you fall asleep on your feet, Kyle? We will call you for dinner at seven.”

“Yes, m’lady.” He walked away across the teak deck and disappeared into an open hatch, heading for his own cabin as the yacht shifted beneath his feet on the rolling waves.

Pat stared out to where the black waters met the graying sky. An unhappy soul, she thought as the breeze pulled at her hair and clothing. She knew that he would fall asleep fully clothed and that they would not see him at dinner.

Swanson heard a soft bump against the hull and immediately smelled rot and decay. He knew who it was before he shrugged out of bed and went on deck to peer over the rail. Below, bobbing in a long, low craft that rode easily on the churning water, was the Boatman, grinning up at him. Dead people sat erect on the benches, three to a side.

“You’ve been busy,” Kyle observed.

“Wars. Revolution.” The Boatman shrugged with a low cackle. “I always have many waiting to go over.” He pointed a finger of ivory bone toward a narrow ridge of fire in the north, a glowing rim between the black of the night and the black of the sea. When the Boatman pulled on a long oar to steady the craft, the wind pushed the soiled black robe around his thin figure, and his skeletal face flashed an evil smile of broken teeth.

“So what do you want? You already have a full boat, and I ain’t planning to go with you.”

“Not yet. But very soon.”

“Fuck you.”

“I have retrieved the two souls you just killed.”

“Good. They thought they were going to paradise and each would collect his six dozen virgins.”

The Boatman cackled. “They were wrong.” There was a long pause. “You are a good and reliable supplier.”

Kyle spat overboard. “And you are nothing but a bad dream. I’m going to wake up soon and you will be gone.”

The Boatman placed his hand against the white hull of the Vagabond and gave a push, then leaned onto his oar, and the little boat swung away. A few more sweeps put some distance between them before the specter turned and spoke again. “Yes? That is true, but I am never too far from you, awake or asleep. I will be back when you finally decide to put a pistol in your mouth and finish self- destructing. It will be a special trip, and you can have the whole boat to yourself.”

The shuttle craft paddled away with its cargo of corpses, the Boatman disappearing into the storm, trailing a croak of laughter.

When Kyle awoke, he was standing outside on the rolling deck of the Vagabond in his bare feet with wind-driven rain sluicing over him, drenching the clothes in which he had fallen asleep. Lightning sizzled off the water and thunder rumbled through the night sky as he held the rail in a death grip. Just a dream. Just the damned dream again.

Swanson had been trained for years to keep his emotions in check while on a mission, when precision and control frequently marked the difference between success and failure. It was after the shooting, when he was alone, that he allowed his thoughts to deal with what had happened, and the process was not always pretty. Now, the Boatman had become an unwanted part of that procedure.

All of the storms in the world could not wash away what really troubled him, so he staggered into the main cabin, pulled a bottle of tequila from the bar, and went back outside. Rain didn’t bother him. Cold didn’t bother him. Killing people didn’t bother him.

What gnawed at his brain was the simple equation that Shari was dead and he was still alive. He upended the bottle and took a large swallow, feeling the tequila bite in his throat, then he sought shelter from the thundering gale in the corner of the superstructure and drank himself back to sleep. About four o’clock in the morning, a pair of Vagabond crew members found him curled up there, wedged between a locker and a lifeboat, and they hauled him back to his cabin, stripped off the wet clothes, roughly toweled him down, and left him on the bunk beneath blankets.

“WE’VE GOT A NEW mission.” Major General Bradley Middleton made himself comfortable in his Pentagon office by opening the lower right-hand drawer of his desk and propping a spit- shined shoe on it, loosening his tie, and unbuttoning his collar.

Master Gunnery Sergeant O. O. Dawkins, one of only forty-five men in the Marine Corps to hold that highest enlisted rank, occupied most of the sofa. Double-Oh had helped write the book on special operations. Next to him sat Sybelle Summers, who had just flown in from Turkey.

In a chair of burgundy leather sat U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Benton Freedman, whose hair was always tousled, as if he had just gotten out of bed. He was a brilliant computer geek, engineer, and master of all things technical. At the Naval Academy, he was given the nickname of “Wizard” because he seemed to perform witchcraft with electronics and possessed an astonishing memory. Middleton yanked the Navy guy into what was essentially a Marine operation when Trident began, where his nickname became “the Lizard.”

The other member of the team, Swanson, the Dead Guy, was missing, starting an R-and-R.

Middleton pointed at Freedman, whose busy brain had been sucking information from the folder in front of him. “Lizard, summarize it, with anything you have picked up from other sources.”

“Yes, sir,” Freedman said, not looking up. “An Iraqi physicist who we thought had disappeared in 1992 showed up two weeks ago in Baghdad. He arranged a surrender to an Army intel officer and claimed to have vital information about a new weapon of mass destruction at a place he called the Palace of Death.”

Sybelle, studying her red fingernails, interrupted. “A WMD? I thought we killed that old horse and buried it a long time ago. Everybody looked everywhere and nobody found anything.”

“Save the questions and comments,” said Middleton. “Go ahead, Lizard.”

“Other than saying it was a chemical-biological agent, he was reluctant to give much real information until he was formally given immunity from prosecution and protection for himself and his family. He was kept under wraps until yesterday, when a meeting was set up at Coalition Headquarters for the first formal interrogation, and he was being delivered by an armed escort of four soldiers. A sniper picked him off before he got there and also killed the officer in charge of the escort detail.”

“Talk to me, Double-Oh,” said Middleton.

“A good piece of shooting,” said Master Gunny Dawkins as he went through the photographs of the corpses. “The first bullet hit the officer by going through the unarmored point beneath the armpit of his vest and took out the internal organs right to left, including the heart. Then the Iraqi was hit in the jugular vein along the neck, just above the collar of his armored vest, left to right. Exit through his throat.” He closed the folder. “One of those might be a lucky shot. Not two. This sniper hit what he was aiming at, and both victims bled out on the spot. My conclusion is