I, Sniper

46

Swagger awoke from dark sleep that felt drugged, shook his head to drive out memories too grotesque to be recorded, wished hard for a cup of coffee. He didn’t feel refreshed or enlivened a bit; he wanted to go back to unconsciousness and escape his reality: in a dirty-smelling nook in the rocks, heaped with the crap he’d brought along, faced with a mission he felt too old for. Have to get my combat mind back, he told himself: have to!

He crawled out of his sleeping bag, crawled up the incline to the mouth of the cave, and went to his Leicas for a good five-minute examination of landscape. It looked fine-a drift of low hills and sparse forestry, a glimpse of green-yellow valley floors, a haze of far-off peaks. At one point he thought he saw a line that seemed a little too straight for anything in nature, and he put down the binoculars to take up the rifle. Through the Leupold Mark IV’s 10X, he studied hard and realized it was a length of birch trunk 240 yards out.

He glanced at his watch, saw that it was nearly 5 p.m., meaning it was 8 p.m. in the East and he was already behind schedule.

He ate three protein bars because he’d need the energy for the long night ahead, and stuffed a couple in his cargo pants pocket. Then he crawled to the mouth of the cave, checked again, crawled out, and pulled out his cell and punched in a number.

Come on, goddamn it, work, goddamn you, and in a bit he heard ringing.

“Where the hell are you?” said Nick Memphis.

“Never you mind,” said Swagger. “Are you back, are you out of the woods, are you the boss?”

“I’m back. Long story. Forget me. You said to Starling, ‘Jump time,’ and then you went incommunicado for three long days. What the hell is happening? What the hell are you doing? What is your situation? What are your plans?”

“Here’s what’s important. I have to get you something. No point describing it. Hmm, don’t see no FedEx offices around this neighborhood, so tomorrow I’ll find a way to get it sent FedEx; tomorrow being Saturday, I’ll pay for Sunday delivery. I want you ready for it, expecting it, set up to receive it, protect it, and understand it.”

“Where’s the nearest big city?”

“Lord, it ain’t that near, probably Missoula.”

“Too far? Give me a town then. I’ll have a team there tomorrow.”

“Place called Indian Rapids, Montana, downstate and east a bit from Missoula.”

“I’ll fly a team in. Bring it to the Indian Rapids airfield or airport. Anytime after noon. Go to the American Eagle desk, tell ’em it’s for Mr. Memphis. An agent will take it from you.”

“And take me too, no doubt. Well, I don’t think it’ll matter none by tomorrow. Tomorrow’s going to be a very damned interesting day, Special Agent Nick, that I guaran-fucking-tee you.”

He broke the co

“Mr. Potatohead. Calling Mr. Potatohead.”

“Is it you, Swagger?”

“It’s me, Potatohead.”

“Tricky bastard, yis screwed all me plans,” came the voice, clear against some marginal static. “We needed them machines to get into Indian Rapids before the bank closed at noon, so’s I could access an operational account with more cash than a scoundrel like yis ever seen. Now it’s all buggered.”

“Then rob it tonight, I don’t care. If I don’t see a ton of cash tomorrow, you get nothing but a bullet between the eyes. The film goes to the feds. Your boss goes to prison. Then I bring some friends in, boys who know a thing or two, and we hunt down the other three O’Flanagans and take heads. I don’t have an Irishman over my mantel yet.”

“Him with the big talking. What’s the game, Sniper? You’ve got a game.”

“Tomorrow you’re up at oh-five-hundred. Oh, and you’re naked. Buck-ass, jaybird nude. That’s so you don’t have a shiv or a.45 slickered away in some dark place.”

“For God’s sake, what about me dignity, man?”

“Not my department. You get aboard an ATV, also stripped, except for that big bag of money, and you set out on the Water Hole Road, and you make tracks to the hole. At the hole, you take High Ridge Trace and you make tracks down it. I’m guessing you’ll hit Big Bend Creek at oh-six-thirty just as the light’s begi

“You’re a bastard, Swagger. Do you know who you’re dealing with?”

“Yeah, a naked Irishman hoping a grizzly doesn’t decide he’s lunch. Sometime in the future, when I’m feeling secure and have thought out the angles, I’ll make contact again. This time there’ll be an exchange not of cash but of account numbers. When mine’s full up, I’ll turn over the last of the film to the naked Irishman. You’ll never see or hear of me again unless you come after me, and if you do, I go after the big guy, and since you know how good I am, you’ll sell him on the proposition that if he wants his legacy clear and to live out his years in peace, he stays the hell away from me. Have you got that?”

“I have.”

“And no one else goes out either. I’ll be watching the house tonight, and if I hear motors on those ATVs as you send the boys out, I’ll sneak down and cut your throat and head into town. They’ll have a long wait tomorrow, and when they get back, they can watch the FBI arrest the boss on the TV.”

“They’s not going nowhere. Where would they go?”

“Tomorrow, oh-five-hundred. Tonight you better hope I don’t have nightmares of you guys holding me down while the water crushed my lungs, because I might decide to take it personally and put a bullet in the potatohead.” He clicked off.

The call finished, Bob knew he had to check kit while it was still light. Though it was probably an u

Weapons: He wore De

The rifle was a stainless steel Remington 700 Sendero with a gray-green camo McMillan stock, more hunting rig than dedicated sniper, but accurate as hell way out there with its 7mm Remington Ultra Magnum 150-grain cartridges loading Swift Scirocco polycarbonate-tipped bullets, of which he had four boxes of twenty. The only tactical flourish was the Leupold Mark IV 4-15X scope with the old mil-dot range-finding system built into its reticle, secured in heavy Badger Ordnance tactical rings and bases. The barrel, which he had taped black to mute the dull silver gleam, was fluted, which theoretically meant it cooled faster and empirically made it lighter, and it wore a Blackhawk black canvas cheek pad lashed to the stock to provide the higher stockweld necessary from the prone.