At a mile away, Bob the Nailer still scared him.
“He’s here,” Nickles shrieked into the hands-free mike, forgetting all radio procedure. “Bob the Nailer’s here.”
Bob stopped at the turnoff to Skytop and got out of his car. He took a look around. What he saw was miles and miles of lush North Carolina landscape, rolling hills, a few rills of hard rock, a universe of green. It had been a hot, dry fall and although it was October, the leaves hadn’t begun to turn yet.
He took a deep breath as he looked around and his trained eyes probed and saw nothing. The sky was an intense blue, untainted with cloud. The sun was high. It seemed as if the day had stalled somehow, calm and guileless.
Bob took another deep breath, climbed back into his car and went down the road between a double line of swaying poplars to the house. He pulled up on the gravel patch that awaited visitors.
He went up the stairs and knocked on the door.
“It’s open,” came a call from deep inside. “Come on in, Agent Memphis.”
“Thanks,” said Bob, walking into the wide hall, and into a sunny beauty of a room lined on one wall with floor-to-ceiling books. The open sliding glass door at the rear gave way to a small jewel of a swimming pool—he could smell the chlorination in the air—and beyond he saw the slope of a large green hunk of hill.
“Mr. Albright?” he called.
What he heard next was an electric purring. Then a man in a motorized chair emerged.
“My name isn’t Memphis,” said Bob.
“I don’t believe it is. I believe it’s Bob Lee Swagger.”
Bob’s eyes beheld the man calmly. He saw the powerful shoulders, the long arms, and the deformed body, soft and twisted and mulched and locked in its chair; and the legs, spindly and bizarre.
“And I believe you’d be Lon Scott.”
“Yes, I am.”
Bob’s hand slipped back into his jeans; without hurry he had the .45 out, thumb snicking off the oversize safety. It was now cocked and unlocked, two pounds of trigger pressure away from the shot that would be the end of Lon Scott. But Scott was still, evidently unarmed.
“You won’t shoot me. No matter what we’ve done to you, I still don’t believe you’re the kind of man who could shoot a cripple in a chair.”
“Cripple? For a cripple, that was a right smart shot you hit in New Orleans, mister. You dropped that bishop at fifteen hundred yards.”
“It was fourteen fifty-one. I rebarreled the Black King to .318 and saboted one of the rounds you pumped into the bank in Maryland behind 59 grains of IMR-4895.”
Bob raised the pistol and put the front sight on the middle of Lon Scott’s swollen belly. He wondered if he shot whether pus would come out. It was like aiming at a tumor or a larva or something. He took about a half a pound out of the trigger.
But Scott didn’t scare. It was as if he really didn’t give a fuck if Bob pulled the trigger or not.
“It’s over. When I saw your face, I took my hand off the chair here and uncovered a photoelectric cell. That sent a signal. Even as we talk they’re on their way. Lots of them. Pulling that trigger doesn’t mean a thing. You want to take me hostage? Go ahead. They’ll shoot right through me into you.”
Bob put the pistol down.
He heard the roar of the helicopters. Outside, leaves began to shake under the pulsing of the rotors and vibrations filled the air as the birds swooped in to offload the first squads of killers. It reminded him of the ’Nam; the swift arrival of the choppers, the deployment of the men, the merciless closing in upon the prey. It was the classic air-assault tactic.
“Bob,” said Lon Scott, over the noise, “they’ll be here in seconds and once those Latino cowboys show up with their assault rifles, there’s no stopping them. Let me save you. Let me give you a new life. We’re the same man.”
Bob flicked the safety back on the Colt, slid it back into his jeans, then smiled.
“Don’t kid yourself, wormboy. I’m a soldier. You’re only a murderer. And because of what you’ve done, every man who ever loved a rifle is a suspect in his own house. I know who you are. And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Then he turned and raced out the door.
Dobbler looked inside the safe. Its contents were prosaic. He saw a handgun, some kind of automatic. There was a wad of bills, and a passport and driver’s license, both fake. The colonel had made plans for a fast getaway, prudent enough preparation for a man in his line of work.
And that was it. No family jewels, no dark secrets, nothing remotely incriminating. Dobbler was somewhat disappointed. He’d expected a bit more. He replaced the passport and the license, and felt his fingers bump against something. He withdrew it. It was only a black plastic videotape cassette, unmarked.
Dobbler stood in the darkened office. He could hear each tick and sigh in the building, but no human activity. He stared at the cassette, tempted, a bit afraid. He looked over and yes, the big Sony TV was still at the table on one side of the room, a VCR underneath it on the shelf.
He walked over and inserted the cassette.
His finger trembled as he pushed PLAY.
Bob dashed through the open door to the pool and saw three of them. They had just come around the side of the house at a hell-bent pace, safeties off, fingers cupping and tensing their Galil triggers. They saw him.
They were fast. The rifles came up … Bob fired three Silvertips in what seemed a burst but was really three aimed shots unleashed in three tenths of a second, the gun flicking from recoil to sight picture to recoil to sight picture at a speed too quick to measure. He killed two instantly with center-chest hits, dead before their knees gave and they toppled; the third, hit in the throat, began to bleed out spectacularly all over the cement. Then Bob, hardly having paused to fire, cleared the deck of the pool, fell into the deep underbrush and began to thrash his way toward the hill.
When he reached the incline, he paused just long enough to shuck his jacket, hit a fast combat reload on the Colt. He climbed through loblolly and stunted pines, clawing his way over ground cover and tufts of dried grass. The trees were not tall here, and now and then he’d run a dangerous trek over open ground. Behind him, he could hear the choppers ferrying in more troops. This was a big operation. They were throwing everything at him. Now and then a shot would come arching toward him, and one hit close by, lofting a cloud of dust and fragments. He winced but kept climbing.
At one point, he paused for a quick recon. They were searching for him with binoculars but he knew they would wait until they had all the men there, could ring the damned thing, before they’d move up the hill in coordinated maneuver. That’s how he’d do it, at any rate, and he knew these cowboys were pros. He looked and thought he could see movement, the troops assembling into their squads under the cover of the trees. The house was visible below and Lon Scott in his electric wheelchair was talking to somebody in jungle fatigues by the pool. They were pointing up the hill. Bob could not make out the other man’s face. But he guessed he knew who it was.
He turned. The hill was steep here and he was almost out of cover. Then there was a last hundred feet up the bare ground to the summit. He slid the Colt back into the holster. The summit was a bare knob standing out against that blue, pure sky. Sweat raced down his face into his eyes; he blinked.
Now he had to move. This was the worst part, the open part. Would they have snipers? Would they have a guy with a good rifle, a steady hand, who could down a running man at six hundred feet? Time to find out.
Bob touched the green grass and took a deep breath and began the last pull over the bare ground to the hilltop, thinking, Lots of men have died on hilltops.
“There he goes,” said Lon, whose eyesight, like Bob’s, was still extraordinary.
Shreck picked him up in the next second, a man running desperately up the scruffy hilltop. He brought the binoculars to bear and through their magnifying lenses saw a tall angular figure racing agilely up the last few feet to the top of t
he hill.
“I could have hit him,” said Lon.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Shreck. “He’s finished now. It’s all over now.”
A few shots rang out from lower down the hill as various Panther Battalion troopers, having a view of Bob, threw their rifles to their shoulders and squeezed off rounds. The bullets struck near him and at one point they thought they saw him falter, but he regathered his strength and launched himself over the edge, out of sight.
“General de Rujijo!” Shreck barked.
De Rujijo, who had been standing next to his RTO and two junior officers, came over smartly.
“What’s your situation?”
“Colonel, we have all one hundred twenty men on the ground now. I’m only waiting for a confirmation from my second platoon, on the other side of the objective, that they are in position. Then I’ll move my assault troops up in two elements, and in a few minutes I’ll bring enfilading fire to bear, move my final assault team up, and bring you this man’s head.”
“I just want his corpse,” said Shreck.
He turned back to Scott.
“We’ve got his ass now.”
“I wonder what he’s thinking about,” said Scott. “It would be very interesting to know what such a man thinks about at such a moment.”
Shreck said, “I was once on a hill waiting to die. You don’t think about much. You think about how you wish you could get another day, that’s all. But this son of a bitch is probably thinking about how many of us he can take out before we nail him. Well, I have one last thing for him to think about.”
General de Rujijo was suddenly waving at him.
“Colonel Shreck, the ring is complete. Shall we move out?”
“One second,” said Shreck. He turned to Scott. “I want to send this bastard to hell knowing all the bad news.”
“Colonel Shreck,” said Scott. “You shouldn’t let it get personal. Hugh wouldn’t want it to become personal.”
“Fuck Hugh,” said Shreck, “it’s always personal.”
He raised the bullhorn.
Bob lay atop the hill. He was extremely winded. Below, about four hundred yards or so, he could see the house, Scott in his chair and some officers and several junior officers standing around the pool. Men moved through the trees below.
Suddenly, there came a voice vibrating through the air.
“Bob Lee Swagger. Bob Lee Swagger. You know who I am. Swagger, I wanted you to know before I send the troops up to get you that we found your woman in Ajo, Arizona.”
Shit, Bob thought.
“I sent Payne. Payne will kill her. She may be already dead.”
Swagger sat back from the rocks.
He heard whistles as the troops began to move out.
Payne had no trouble at all. It went so easily, the flight to Tucson, the rental car, the hour or so drive to Ajo. He found the trailer without difficulty. He parked, and went up to the door and knocked.
When she answered he said, “Nurse Fenn?”
“Yes?” She was the kind of woman that Payne had never had. He’d had whores all the world over, listless women with shriveled tits, or young and stupid and poor and desperate. Having sex with them was nothing. It was like doing yourself and in time Payne lost interest in either, unless he was drunk.
This one was classy, somehow. It enraged him that Bob had once had such a fine woman and he’d had nothing like her.
“Aren’t you the one who was with him?” he asked.
“I’m not sure I—”
“You know, him. Bob Lee Swagger. Tried to kill the president in New Orleans.”
Her face lost its color; she was not a liar.
“I—Are you with the police?”
“No such fuckin’ luck, lady,” he said, and pulled out the Remington cut-down as he stepped inside. Standing, he felt his force overpower her. He advanced, driving her to the wall, and stood against her, squashing her, the huge 12-gauge muzzle against the flesh of her cheek.
“What is—”
“Just shut up and listen. Your goddamned boyfriend is alive, in case you don’t know, but now he’s dead, I mean really dead. Now you just sit down and cool it, or goddammit, I’ll kill you myself. Just shut your mouth and do what I tell you.”
“I don’t—”
“Shut up. Now, we’re gonna hang tight for a time. Don’t you try nothing. Believe me, I ain’t like any guy you ever met, and if I have to, I will shoot you in the head and walk away from it without looking back.”
“I understand,” she said.
“Swagger can’t help you now,” he said. “Some boys got him on a fuckin’ hilltop and they ain’t got no mercy in their hearts.”
She looked him in the eyes. Then she said, “He’s been on hilltops before, you fool. Don’t you understand it yet? He loves hilltops. It’s where he belongs.”
The images were grainy, hard to make out. Soldiers, burning huts, people running every which way, all of it caught in the jumpy, ill-framed haste of the inexperienced cameraman.
Dobbler swallowed.
Then he saw Colonel Shreck and Jack Payne and a third man, a Latino officer, in a black beret with mirror sunglasses. All wore exotic camouflage uniforms and were heavily armed.
They were conferring over a map.
Dobbler hit FAST FORWARD.
The images hurtled by at warp-speed, made ridiculous, like vaudeville. The soldiers were burning the huts and it looked like the pictures he’d seen taken in the Ukraine in 1943, where the SS men had burned the villages as they retreated. But it was so different, because these soldiers were young and strong and having so much fun.
As the tape rushed along, the troops left the village and seemed to head down a slope. The camera panned and he could see what had drawn them. The village people had escaped to the water. They stood in the torrent of the river, but were blocked at both ends by small knots of soldiers with machine guns. They stood, shivering in the water. He could see that they were mostly women and children.
Dobbler watched as the hard young men walked to the water’s edge. His finger went off FAST FORWARD.
In real time, he saw Shreck and the powerful Latino officer in discussion.
He heard Shreck say, “Tell them to get it over with. Then let’s chopper the fuck out of here. No rapes. Just finish the job and let’s evac the hell out of here, General.”
The general gave an order and the camera shifted back to the water.
“No,” Dobbler screamed in the office, “no!”
But it did no good.
The machine gun bullets from Los Gatos Negros tore into the people in the water, kicking up foam and blood, knocking them down.
“No,” Dobbler repeated over and over, “no, no, no.”
Bob heard a voice.
“I didn’t think you were going to make it up that damn hill, old man,” Nick Memphis said.
Bob swiveled on his belly and saw him slithering toward him.
“Pork, I have a spry step or two left in these old bones,” said Swagger. “Now where’s my—”
Memphis, in his black FBI SWAT uniform with the Mini-14 slung over his back, pushed a long canvas satchel over at Bob. Swagger unzipped it, reached in, then with a flick of the wrist sent the guncase scuttling through the dust as he unsheathed the Remington 700V with its Leupold 12x scope.
His finger snicked off the safety as he drew the rifle to him, knowing it contained five M852 7.62mm match cartridges, each sporting a 168-grain Sierra boattailed hollowpoint.
“Time to hunt,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Shreck was listening to General de Rujijo.
“I have all my men placed now, Colonel Shreck, and I’m going to give the signal to move out.”
“Good,” said Shreck. “Let’s do it.”
De Rujijo turned to his RTO and reached for the telephone mike to bark orders. He was a vivid, powerful man, in slime-and-mud dappled jungle fatigues, face lean and leathery, eyes sealed off behind
the reflective surface of his sunglasses, black beret pulled low, Uzi slung rakishly across the front of his camouflage tunic, bright black star on his collar.
Shreck saw what happened next very clearly. The general was speaking decisively in Spanish when the bullet hit him, eviscerating the lower rear of his skull just above his spine and tunneling through to blow his jaw off.
The spray flumed across Shreck’s face. Shreck blinked as the jawless apparition with the blank eyes toppled forward just three feet in front of him. He felt a stab of shock and in less than a second crushed it to death by sheer force of will and experience. He understood that the next bullet off the mountain was aimed for him. He dropped and pivoted, executing a neat half gainer off the pool deck, badly spraining a wrist, but getting himself out of the line of fire.
The second bullet instead struck de Rujijo’s aide-de-camp, a young major, in the center chest. The third bullet tracked the now fleeing RTO man, hit the radio, ripped through it, destroying it, and carried into the soldier himself, pulling him down to die of shock and blood loss.
Lon Scott saw the three soldiers die in less than two seconds and he watched Shreck’s swift exit from the kill zone. He fell into spastic panic so intense it almost killed him there on the spot. In a split second, he had recovered, hit the toggle on his wheelchair and spun quickly. Too quickly, because he was leaning forward from the shoulders and he realized he’d blown by the center of gravity; he jerked back, but it was too late. The chair spilled, pitching him on the cement of the pool deck, anchored by the deadweight of the useless lower half of his body.
He was helpless. He heard the shots mounting. The fear in him went berserk.
“Aghhhhhhhhhhh!” he screamed.
Bob lay in the classic prone. Smoothly sliding the rifle around on a hard, flat sandbag that Nick had lugged up to the hilltop, along with the rifle and lots of ammunition, he brought it to bear on the glade of trees where most of the Panther Battalion troops had assembled and were momentarily confused by the sound of the shots. He laid his cross hair upon another officer talking into a radio mike, and tagged him in the chest. He swung the rifle just a millimeter as he rocketed through a bolt throw, and shot another man. He cocked, fired, cocked, fired, cocked, fired. He killed five men in seven seconds, then, pulling the bolt open, grabbed five brass shells from the case six inches from his rifle, and rolled them into the breach, slammed the bolt home.