He smiled warmly and without a trace of shame, then got up and gracefully left.
Nick watched him go, thinking, Oh Christ, where is this going?
15
It turned out to be almost too much fun. Bob had to watch himself; he could be seduced by the pleasure of the three days into forgetting why he was here, which was to recon iSniper and see if he could get some kind of look at the student log and learn who had purchased and been taught to use the thing. But he almost had to force himself into that: most of the time was spent on the range among guns and gunners, men like himself, who’d been and done, except they’d be and do again. So he more or less slipped aside and watched as Anto and his boys helped the younger Americans master the toy.
It was almost as advertised. It could put you on target without a doubt in the world faster than anything going, and in the sand it would be a major boon to American sniper teams, if it held up. There were some ergonomic issues, and the iSniper cadre, led by the irrepressible Anto Grogan, took careful notes to feed back to the iSniper geniuses for the next generation. For one thing, the ranging button atop the monitor to the left of the nodule was difficult to access quickly, unless you were well used to it and had done it ten thousand times and had burned it into muscle memory. It was the key to initiating the target sequence; it was also the same size and height as the enter button and the reset button, and the young snipers sometimes groped for it or hit something else. A slightly roughened surface to distinguish it from the other buttons would help. Then there was a problem with the battery housing, which worked well enough in the day on the range with access to tools but might be a bitch in some frozen third world bog with bad actors on the prowl all over the joint, even if the batteries were said to last for a thousand hours. The housing latch was too small for men with big, blunt fingers and no
fingernails; it had to be redesigned more generously for the big-size boys marine and special forces snipers tended to be.
But the real issue was the necessity of taking the info off the readout screen; it meant you had to come out of your hold, out of your cheek weld, out of your proper eye relief, out of your focus, out of, in short, your shooting world, read a set of numbers, then mentally retain the figures and work them out in the delta of aiming points under the crosshairs. It worked well enough, though when you came up, you always lost your scope vision, your pupils dilated, and it cost you seconds when you came back to the eyepiece to reach max efficiency.
“Aye, it could be better on that score,” admitted Anto. “It’s not perfect, not quite, maybe in the next generation. We told ’em it would be something if you just pushed the ranging button, the leprechauns inside did the heavy lifting, and then instead of presenting a number for you to look at on a screen, the proper aiming point just lit up, you never having to leave the scope. You put it on Johnny, and bingo-bango, time to paint a new swastika on your fuselage. Maybe they’ll get there some time.”
“It’s still the best,” Bob lied, as if he were familiar with the other items from anything other than a Google experience. “Horus is too much time off the scope, though I like its reticle design. DTAC has too busy a reticle with all those other graphs there, and the same with the Holland. Y’all had any luck with Horus out there?”
“Yes sir,” said Blondie, “it gets you on target, but like you say, it’s too slow, too much Palm Pilot and Kestral stuff. I like this here too; it cuts the time way down from figuring to shooting, not quite perfect but perfect enough.”
“Have we made that sale yet, Mr. Swagger?” Anto asked.
“You’re damned close,” Bob said. “I just want to see how the things hold up over the extensive shooting you put them through these five days.”
“We’ll beat ’em to hell and gone and they’ll keep on ticking, you’ll see, sir. I’m here to serve, oh great and mighty and shining one.”
“Anto, I’m just another—”
“Anything I can do I will, which is why they’re paying me the big buckeroos.”
But that all went away at nights, off the range, where the snipers took over a bar called the Mustang across from the Red Rooster where iSniper had booked all. Then it was just men of the gun, lots of beer, war stories, a sense of the smallest, most exclusive community in the world, men who’d shot for blood and lived to tell about it. Bob went too, under the pretext that he might learn something off Anto in a moment of weakness, but Anto never had any, and anyway the love that came to Bob was something he was unprepared for and had never encountered before.
“Mr. Swagger—”
“Please call me Bob, young guy.”
“Bob, I’m not supposed to let this out, but me and Chip are Delta snipers, headed now to Afghanistan for my third, his second, tour with Fifth Special Forces.”
“My hat’s off to you fellows. You’re doing a hell of a job out there.”
“Nothing like you, sir. We’ve heard the An Loc story; it’s a legend. You stopped an NVA battalion, a fucking battalion, that was headed into an A-camp under siege. I just wanted to say, it’s a fine moment for us to be here with you.”
“Y’all make me out to be more than I am. I didn’t stop no battalion. I slowed ’em down, that’s all. Took some of their officers. The rain helped, but what helped most of all was the young man with me, who I am so sad to say didn’t make it home. Anyhow, it was the Phantoms that did most of the killing. They got there with the dawn just as the weather broke, and I have to say those were brave men in those planes; they got so low to the deck to put the burning jelly where it hurt the most, I’m betting most came back with grass in their scoops. I just watched it.”
“He’s a modest man, our Bob,” said Anto, leaning in, “but the story as I heard it has him racing through Indian territory by his lonesome and squeezing down on that battalion for two solid days. Officially it was eighty-seven, was it not, and I’m betting it was eighty-seven that day alone, with no officer there to check. That’s a soldier of the king, I’m telling you, and it shows the power of the fella with the rifle.”
“It was so long ago I can hardly remember,” said Bob, “and I won’t talk no more about myself because you’re doing it better and harder than I ever did, no matter what this drunken IRA bastard says, but I will raise a drink, even if it’s a Diet Coke, to the fella with the rifle.”
When he got back on the second night, the message light on his cell was blinking. He called, knowing it would be Nick, but instead it was the young special agent Chandler and she asked him first off how it was going.
“Going fine. Having a hoot. Ain’t found out much, though. I see Anto’s got some kind of book with him, and he’s a well organized man, so I’m betting he’s got notes taken on all the tutorials he’s run. I’d like to get a look-see at that and let you know if it’s worth subpoenaing.”
“You have to be careful. If you peek and it comes out you’re working for us and we used any information you obtained, a defense attorney can use it against us in court, along the lines of a highly problematic warrantless search, and no matter what, the whole thing could go away. You’re much better off just looking and learning what’s in the open, taking careful notes, and we’ll see where we go from there.”
He sighed. It was clear she had no feel or imagination for undercover work. Her tendency was to push him toward the strictly legal, can’t-get-in-trouble line. But he knew that sometimes you had to push it, just a little, poke it, dance around it. Either that or walk away.
“Yes ma’am. Did you get the info I requested on this fellow Anto Grogan?”
“Yes, we did. He seems straightforward, nothing to indicate tendencies.”
“That’s good to know. Seems like a nice fellow.”
“Here’s the dope. Born Killarney, Ireland, 1964, down there in the south far away from all the crap in Belfast. His dad and his dad’s dad were British Army in their time, and he was drawn to it from the start. Highly decorated service record, lots of deployments in famous actions and not-so-famous actions. He was one of th
eir best guys.”
“Royal Commando?”
“No. He’s Twenty-two all the way.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s Twenty-second Regiment SAS, kind of their Delta Force. He was a colour sergeant, I guess that’s staff sergeant, in Blue Troop, which is what they designate their sniper element. He was a longtime Sabre Squadron guy, which is what they call their operators as opposed to their staff people, as I understand it. He was in what they called the Counter Revolutionary Warfare wing. He deployed in ninety-one to the Gulf with SAS, had a long stay in Afghanistan in oh-two to oh-three, where I’m told he racked up quite a score. He then spent some time back in Credenhill, where SAS is headquartered, where he bugged so many people he got himself sent to Basra in oh-five, where he ran sniper elements again. He seems to have had some trouble there. You would know more about this than I would, Mr. Swagger, but our military liaison picked this up from his contact with the British military liaison; apparently Anto Grogan was rather too enthusiastic in getting his kills. He evidently got a lot of them in Basra, ran his own intelligence-gathering operation, took a lot of people down, and the British Army was a little, um, embarrassed, I guess. That’s why he left and went to work for Graywolf, where he also ran intelligence, organized security on caravans and dignitary visits. Did you know that Graywolf owns iSniper? So he’s still working for them.”
“Hmm,” said Bob. “You better fill me in on Graywolf.”
“Oh, you know. Famous, big security firm, put together by some ex-SEALs. Teaches shooting and survival skills, manufactures products and clothes for the security sector, puts people in the field on contract. There were some problems in Baghdad when these contractor guys got a little trigger-happy and blew away anything that moved; you might remember the fuss in the papers.”
“Now I do. Give a guy an M4 and a pair of cool sunglasses and a ball cap, and he’s Mr. Murder Inc. in no time.”
“He’s a very experienced man, sir. A great soldier, a great sniper, now working for a big international contractor’s firm that is mixed up in a lot of shaky stuff.”
Bob felt a little indecent having requested the dope on Anto. The problem was, he liked Anto Grogan, as did all the boys, and surely Graywolf realized how personable he was, which is why it took him out of the field and made him the public face of the iSniper division. Now Bob had to use him to get a list of names of the men he’d trained, so each could be vetted by the Bureau and checked against any connection to the four sniper killings.
“How’s Nick holding up?” he asked.
“Oh, it seems the pressure is building on us to issue that report. He gets called into the director’s office three times a day and yelled at by Tom Constable’s people. He ran into one of Constable’s brownnosers last night at dinner and was even offered a little friendly career advice. Mr. Swagger, can I talk frankly with you?”
“Sure.”
“He’s way out on a limb, and what’s got him out there is his belief in you. Sir, if you don’t get anything, pull the plug fast. A lot of us around here don’t want to see the great Nick cut off at the knees by this monster Constable because he wouldn’t play ball for believing in you and you didn’t turn anything up.”
He realized: the girl is in love with Nick.
“I hear you. It’d be a crime if Nick got his career wrecked for old goat Swagger, and it turned out old goat Swagger was just blowing smoke on some dream business. Okay, point taken.”
“This can be a tough town.”
“I get you and I will hurry this thing along, so Nick isn’t out there much longer. But do you mind if I say one thing?”
“Go ahead.”
“I ain’t telling you your business, but to me one of the things you investigators ought to be doing is checking to see if there’s any contact between Graywolf and Tom Constable. Are they players in this thing? Or are they just like everyone else, guys who got sucked up by the sniper killings?”
“I’ll run it by Nick.”
“You do that. Out here.”
“What?”
“Out here.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, sorry, that’s the way we talk in the field. Sounds all gung ho movie bullshit to you, I guess. Maybe it is. ‘Out here’ means I’m out of stuff to say, good-bye, and so long.”
“Ah. Sorry to be so dumb. It’s a girl thing, I guess. Good luck, Mr. Swagger.”
The problem was, there wasn’t a place to penetrate or break into. There was no school, not really. The iSniper tutorial was simply the four-man cadre—Anto, Jimmy, and two other fellows, Ginger and Raymond, who seemed decent enough; they had their teaching props, their charts, their own weapons, crates of ammo, and a world’s worth of know-how, but that was it. There was no there there, like an administrative center, just the four iSniper Irishmen, Bob, and the six young elite-corps snipers whose units had purchased the gizmo and thereby qualified them to attend the week’s schooling. Maybe back at Graywolf corporate headquarters in North Carolina, at the big training center, there was an administrative center, and maybe that’s where you’d have to go to get the dope on iSniper’s schoolees, but that was no one-man job; rather the Justice Department would have to descend, full-strength, on Graywolf, and Graywolf wouldn’t like that, since a lot of its work was classified, as was its client list, and it clearly had big connections in Defense and wouldn’t be prone to giving up its secrets without a fight.
So it came down to one little absurd thing: Anto’s book.
How am I going to get ahold of Anto’s book?
There was no answer. He went to bed depressed.
The next day at the range, as usual Bob stood aside and let Anto and his cadre work mostly with the young snipers, who’d learned the mechanics of the thing really quickly, being both motivated and highly intelligent, as well as highly dextrous. They could spot an object at unknown distance and take it down very fast, letting the microchip inside 911’s housing do the brainwork, themselves just making sure to master the method of taking the readout info and applying it to the scopeful of aiming points.
Swagger, though, shot enough with it to see its superiority, and a part of him wished he’d had the thing in ’Nam all those years ago. He, Carl, and Chuck McKenzie with iSniper911 on their rifles, what a unit that would have been; we would have won the goddamn thing instead of . . .
The last night, late, a knock sounded.
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Swagger, sir, me, Anto, here. Can I come in?”
Bob opened up.
“Hope you don’t mind if I’m after bending your ear a bit, do you? Wish you’d let me buy you a drink.”
“Anto, you know I can’t drink. If I do, I’m waking up in Kathmandu on Tuesday with a new wife, four new kids, and some very odd tattoos.” It was an old joke he’d told many times before.
“How about this: if it’s not to be whiskey, let Anto buy you an ice cream. Can’t be thinking of no better place for mankillers of our ranking to have a chat than that ice cream shop across the pathway. They mix a high and mighty bowl of flavor. I always overeat when I come to the teaching, I do.”
So Bob and Anto walked across the highway—more dangerous than anything Swagger had done since Bristol—where indeed the ice cream shop was still open, and the two snipers went in, waited among sluggish teenagers with needles in their noses and fathers with squawking babies and a lone truck driver, all travelers consumed with late-night ice cream blue munchies, and got themselves a cone each. Who wouldn’t have cracked a smile if they’d known that these two were professional dealers in death, and now they sat like old fools nibbling at mint chocolate and raspberry and chocolate-chip cones?
“Bob, may I call you Bob?”
“Wish you would, Colour Sergeant.”
“And I’d be Anto. So let’s proceed on to business. Am I asking too much to ask where we stand? The toy, I mean.”
“My report to Energy security will be very positive. I’m extremely
impressed by iSniper; the mechanism is first-class; the training is superb. The guys you run through here go to their units five times more effective. That translates to more boys on the planes home, and I like that a lot.”
“Is there anything—”
“Not in my report.”
“But you know we’re owned by Graywolf, and Graywolf isn’t as beloved under this president as it was under the last one, and we’ve got a lot of pressies peeved at us.”
“I know. I can’t account for which way the winds blow in Washington. You may field the best piece of equipment and still lose out, just because that’s the way it is in that town. I’m not a Washington guy.”
“You are not. You’ve nothing of the headquarters rat to you. Them I hated. Always sniffing about HQ on the lookout for the next appointment.”
“You and I share more than a skill set. I hate them mealy climbers too. Not many in the Corps, but a few. I hate the stink of headquarters. Always corrupt, that’s the rule.”
“It is. Well now, here’s where I am. I know we have the best stuff, because I’ve tested the other rigs too, like you. I know we can save lives; it’s not just a matter of business. So I’ve thought long and hard: what can I do, me, just Anto, what can Anto do to help Mr. Swagger make the right decision? And I’ve come up with something.” He licked his ice cream cone.
“Sure.”
“I’ll give you our records. Every man or team we’ve sold a unit too, his record in the tutorial—and we keep very close records even if it appears we don’t—his subsequent actions, how successfully he’s used 911 or before it iSniper 411, his most recent address and number. With the full expectation that you’ll contact some or all of these folks, and you’ll get a view of 911 in the sand or the mountains or wherever, of what it does, of how it stood up, of whether they stayed with it or went to something else. All of that, I will give you. You use it as you see fit, no strings attached, except that I trust you, sniper to sniper, to burn-bag or shred when you’re finished. That’s how much I believe in 911, sir. It’s quite an offer.”