“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.”

It was. How could anyone refuse it?