I, Sniper

But Fedders was in a safe house in Roanoke, Virginia, and Bureau policy was never to call, because you never knew who was listening in, and if Constable somehow got away, Fedders’s life would be at risk, to say the least. His security was not only mandated by regulation but paramount to Task Force Sniper’s enterprise.

“Oh, shit,” said Nick, sitting back.

“Nick, we can get FAA, we can find out the flight plan of his Gulfstream, and we can move an apprehension team there ASAP.”

“Good. Get going on it, Starling. I’ll call the director and get his authorization to assemble apprehension teams at all field offices so that when we find out, we can move them fast.”

Nick looked at his watch. It was now well after three. He felt like he was going to have a heart attack. All the shit they’d gone through and now it was beginning to topple-

“Wait a second,” he said.

He took out his cell and called a number.

The phone on the other end rang and rang and rang.

“Swagger.”

“Hey. How do you feel?”

“Better. Did some drinking last night, nothing much, I’m happy to say. Had a good time with a good pal. Is something up?”

“I’m afraid so. The good news is I’ve got a fed indictment on Constable, I’ve got search teams ready to-well, I told you all that.”

“Yep.”

“Okay, short version. We fucked up somewhere along the line and one of the search teams jumped early. It’s possible-it would depend on who, if anybody, was staffing that New York office-the upshot is that it’s possible someone could notify Constable that he was the subject of a federal operation. You know the guy has access to a jet. He could bolt overseas, we might never get him. He’d just end up more famous and admired by the world’s assholes than he is now.”

“Yeah,” said Bob.

“So we need to bust him now, not in four hours when I had it set. But we’ve lost contact. We don’t know where he is. I’ve got people tracking his plane; I may violate a regulation by calling someone I shouldn’t to get his cell phone number so we can satellite-locate on him. I’m thinking… I don’t know, just a shot: you were on his property, whatever, maybe you overheard something that would give us a tip.”

“Well,” said Bob, “I can give you a general location.”

“Great! Oh, great!” said Nick.

“Yeah,” said Bob. “He’s in Colorado-”

“Alert Denver!” Nick shouted to his people.

“And he’s, um, he’s somewhere between, I would say, now this is just a guess, a rough one, one-sixty, one-sixty-five feet from me right now.”

“What?”

“Yep. And here’s the funny thing. He’s dressed like a cowboy. And here’s another funny thing. So am I.”

55

Last stage, the Mendozas. The hard one. Oh, he was so close. He now sat in second, because Marshall Tilghman had screwed up his reload in the Buffalo Gulch thing, and Two-Gun Jack had had a couple of misfires-his own handloads!-on the last stage, Ambush on the Overland.

So only Tequila Dawn stood between Texas Red and the seniors championship. Tequila had been at this a long time, had won championships in other divisions, had even quit for a while and licensed his name for use on holsters, an Uberti Colt clone, boots, run a cowboy action shooting camp, but had finally come back to the game. He was good, but like Red, he was old, and he made the old-guy mistakes that Red had heretofore avoided, like dropping a cartridge in reloading or missing a target and having to come back to it, breaking his rhythm. That’s why Red, so much slower, was still close. But now they were at Tequila’s best event-straight pure pistolero artistry-and Red’s worst one: the Mendozas.

Five into five Mendozas, shift guns, five into five more; then move through the saloon doors, reloading one, then the other gun as you went, and in fifty feet or so, you were in a corral where ten more Mendozas waited. Sure were a lot of Mendoza boys; well, maybe some weren’t brothers but cousins or in-laws or something. And of course by the rules of political correctness, they were no longer identified as Mendozas, as that might be considered disrespectful to Latino Americans, more and more of whom were coming to the cowboy action world. They were just bad guys, but since the stage was a classic and had been around a long time, most people still called it by its original and now memory-holed name.

He was in the standby circle, alone, gathering. His hands felt good, and he’d only raised one cut-the front sight of his left gun had nicked and drawn a little blood- but no bandages were allowed in cowboy action, as there hadn’t been bandages in Deadwood in 1883. But the cut wasn’t deep and only hurt a bit when a drop of salty sweat fell into it. He wiggled his fingers, occasionally bent forward to stretch out his calves and thighs, or reached overhead with one hand to touch the other shoulder, stretching bi- and triceps. He tried not to pay any attention to Tequila. It was best if he didn’t know. He didn’t want to watch and psych himself out of his best per-

Tequila’s first gun rang a quick staccato, and each shot banged home with a clang as the plate fell. Then came the switch of guns; it was fast, and again the five shots were fast but-he missed one! The agonizing seconds ticked by as Tequila reloaded one round, spun the cylinder, and fired, taking down the last target. Then he was on the run, reloading each gun as he went. He got to the corral, and Red heard the shots, lickety-split, each completed by the Gong Show sound of the plate struck at six hundred feet per second by a large lump of lead and-God, he missed another. Quickly the old gunslinger finished the string and decided to reload and fire rather than accept a ten-second penalty for a missed target, and he probably got the reload in and the shot off (clang!) in seven seconds.

Oh God, thought Red, I have a chance. I just can’t miss a target. Slow, calm, collected, the gun reset just right. It’s there. It’s for me. I can do it.

He took a deep breath, trying to keep himself calm as he stepped into the loading area. He showed guns empty to the range officer running the stage, then, one at a time, slipped the cartridges in-one, skip one, four more-then cocked and gently lowered the hammer, keeping the muzzle downrange. Did it twice.

Turned to face the reset plates.

“Do you understand the course, shooter?”

“I do.”

“Are you ready, shooter?”

“Yes.”

“All right then-”

“Mr. Constable! Mr. Constable!”

Aghhhh! There went his concentration. It was Susan Jantz, his secretary. What could she want? Aghh, he could get disqualified.

He turned and saw the range officer trying to push her gently back to the cordoned crowd area. But Susan was persistent, slipped by him, and raced to her boss with his cell phone.

“What on earth-”

“You have to take this call.”

“Shooter,” said the range officer, “I’m going to have to call a ‘spirit of game’ infraction if you don’t-”

Red put the phone to his ear.

“Constable.”

“Mr. Constable, you don’t know me. My name is Randall Jeffords. I’m an accountant in your New York office.”

“Why the hell are y-”

“Sir, I came in to catch up and the place was being torn apart by federal agents. I asked, and they wouldn’t say, but there were some cops with them, and one of them said-I know you won’t believe this-felony murder one. I just can’t believe it. Against you, sir. I’ve been trying for hours to get your number. I thought you ought to know.”

“You did the right thing,” Texas Red said, clicking the cell closed.

He had a moment of disbelief, of stunned nothingness. His first cogent thought: where the fuck is Bill Fedders? He’s supposed to be wired into that system. I’m supposed to know in advance when-

But quickly enough he saw the pointlessness of that line of inquiry. He realized a decision had just been made for him; he had to instantly accept its reality and deal with it first and fastest. There was but one answer: he had to get clear of the country, now. Nothing else mattered. From Costa Rica, he could sort things out, but the deal now was to avoid custody-the circus, the humiliation-and to see what they knew and didn’t.

“Okay,” he said to his number one bodyguard, who had by this time bullied his way forward, violating the rules, and stood waiting near him, “we’ve got to get out of here. Call the plane, tell them we’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Yes sir.”

“Thanks, Susan, you’re the best,” he said to his loyal secretary and daily sex servant.

He started to walk off the event stage.

“Shooter, you cannot leave without showing empty, you cannot leave, I will DQ you if you do not immediately return to the loading area and make your weapons safe.”

Tom turned.

“Fuck you,” he said, and walked off.

“DQ! DQ! Shooter is DQed!” shouted the range officer but made no step forward as the three beefy guards closed in behind Texas Red and the crowd parted in the thrust of the armed man and his armed bodyguards as they headed down the main street of the town of Cold Water, through the corridor of stunned competitors and fans.