I, Sniper

Everybody filed off, and David trotted away to package the photo and begin his calls. A few people clapped him on the back, there was a punch on the arm, a thumbs-up and a wink, but best of all someone genuinely, and without irony, congratulated him.

It was Fong.

32

She was right, of course.

He sat in his motel room in Indianapolis, depressed.

Starling, the young FBI agent, seemed to have dealt him a mortal blow. You have imposed a meaning on these events. You have not discovered a meaning. And your imposed meaning stems from your anger at Tom Constable, billionaire lefty, business genius, owner of lefty networks, famous playboy and sportsman, above it all, husband to movie stars, friend of Castro, hero to millions, shit to millions of others, such as me.

The way you get Constable is simple: the man behind this thing has to be wealthy and powerful. He has co

You have no proof.

It was true. Other than the marriage to one of the victims, there was not one single objective fact that co

The guilty parties could have been some other players entirely-political, criminal, governmental, any entity with some power and some leverage in the spook world, and these days that could be just about anybody.

What do I know? he asked himself. Know as fact, know as reality, know as physical presence in the world?

I know somebody made very good shots to kill the four. Very good. Too good.

I know baked paint debris linked to the ceramic coating on the iSniper911 was found on Carl Hitchcock’s rifle, and the iSniper911, in skilled hands, was capable of permitting the kind of shooting that took down the four.

Who knows? Maybe it was Carl. Maybe he secretly spent seven grand on an iSniper911, put it on his own rifle, did the deeds, then took it off, tossed it in the river, put his old Leupold back on, and blew his brains out. Maybe he was so titillated by the accuracy the unit offered, he wanted to claim that as part of his legacy too. If he was nuts enough to conceive of the plan in the first place, anything is possible.

Or maybe it was some other iSniper school grad, with the same anti-lefty agenda, and he just wanted to take out those bastards, but he didn’t want to pay the price. So he put the thing together; he was one man; he was somehow able to do it and was just sitting in his trailer enjoying the big show. Meanwhile, as he said he was, Tom Constable was going crazy with all the speculation and he wanted to put it to an end, and being a big-foot asshole, he put a lot of pressure on poor Nick, and it had nothing to do with nothing. And again, it was just coincidence that he was in the shotgun chair with De

Ach. Ugh. Oof.

He wished he were still a drinking man. The lure of the bottle was immense now. Boy, would it be nice to go for a fine dip in the bourbon pond, feel the world turn blurry and mellow, slide away greased by delight and optimism. Oh, it would be so nice now. The bottle was so tempting.

He shook his head. His hip hurt. He’d left his new painkillers in his room in Chicago, which, incidentally, he was still paying for. It was a dull buzz, not a throb so much as a grind. Somehow the sword blade-that fight seemed so long ago, in a Japan he hardly remembered-had ruptured the surface of the stainless steel ball joint, and that irregularity had cascading consequences of unexpected pain. That had to be taken care of. He was tired of the limp; he was tired of being on the wagon; he was tired of looking for conspiracies where only coincidence existed on top of bad luck and strange but not impossible occurrence.

Okay, he thought, train back to Chicago. Check out, settle up. Go to De

Then back to Idaho. Back to the porch. Back to the rocker. Back to my daughters, to my wife, to the world.

He called her.

“Okay,” he said, “this one’s over. Coming home. Standing down.”

He explained brightly how he’d been mistaken and launched off on a fool’s crusade, an old goat’s dream. But his new plan would change all that. He told her about going to Chicago to somebody’s funeral, then back to Washington to straighten things out with Nick and his people, and then he’d be coming home, for good. Gosh, it would be so great.

“Bob,” she said, “I love you so and want you with me, but you are lying to me, and you are lying to yourself. I can hear it in your voice, and if you don’t get it settled in a way that satisfies you, it will suck the pleasure out of the peace you’ve earned. I know you. You are samurai, dog soldier, marine fool, crazy bastard, marshal of Dodge, commando, the country-western Hector. You are all of those things. They are your nature. The girls and I are just where you park when you’re not warring. You love us, yes you do, but war is your life, it’s your destiny, it’s your identity. My advice, old man, is win your war. Then come home. Or maybe you’ll get killed. That would be a shame and a tragedy, and the girls and I will weep for years. But that is the way of the warrior and we have the curse upon us of loving the last of them.”

“You’re terrific,” he said. “You help me see clearly.”

“If you have a problem, solve it the old-fashioned way.”

“And that would be?”

“The way your people and my people always solve problems. Hard work. Hard, hard work. Now hang up, have lunch, and get to work. Good-bye. Call me on DEROS.”

All right.

It was clear now: he had to locate some kind of co

What do I know?

I know that Strong and Reilly knew Tom Constable; I saw the picture of the four of them, Joan Flanders being the fourth, at some di

The question was, did Strong have a way of reaching Constable, an e-mail address, a special cell phone number, a contact? That would indicate something more than a casual relationship.

The second question was, how does a guy in a hotel room in Indianapolis with no powers, no contacts, no sponsorship, no authority, no resources, find that out-fast?

Impossible.

Can’t be done.

It took him three minutes.

He went to the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Web site, clicked on the Department of Education, found that of course it hadn’t been updated since the deaths; then he went to the departmental secretary, a Eustace Crawford, number given. He reasoned that secretaries know things, they see things, they get things. But nobody has talked to this one, because Jack Strong was never investigated; he was the victim of the obviously mad marine sniper who simply chose him for his symbolic value.