“What’s your angle?”

“I want to ride the mike thing. Who makes these things, how are they dispersed, who owns them? How would people get hold of them? We can justify it by saying that it’s a possible stolen government equipment thing, if you get any heat on it. But just let me attack it through that angle, and in a week or so, I’ll let you know what I’ve come up with.”

“Ahh,” said Hap, “it’s not making me happy, Nick, I have to answer to Washington and you know what pricks they can be. Tell you what, you do me a favor, I’ll do you a favor, and we’ll see how we shake down end of the week.”

“Name it.”

“Well, your favorite Mickey Mouse outfit, our old pals in the Secret Service are – ”

A chorus of groans. Secret Service personnel were arrogant, reputedly the best shots in federal service, very showy, very touchy, and always hard to deal with because they put their agenda up front of everything.

“ – hold the cheers, girls – anyway, they’re sending a security detail down because, in, um, three weeks, Flashlight is coming. Yep, the man himself. Anyway, Washington wants us to cooperate up the kazoo with Secret Service and the bad part is the people on Pennsylvania Avenue are sending a heavy hitter down to run the liaison because yours truly doesn’t quite carry enough weight. But we have to provide support. So I need a gofer to run errands for this big guy and keep him out of the office’s hair and make my life easier. So here’s the deal, Nick, you fill this guy’s coffee cup for him and kiss his butt just where he likes it to be kissed, and dovetail with the assholes from Secret Service, and I’ll cut you some slack to run this investigation.”

It was a deal Nick couldn’t say no to, and so he said yes, happily, but the happiness only lasted a second.

“Yeah, now I got you, buddy. Guess who the Washington shot is?”

Nick had a presentiment of tragedy.

“No.”

“Sorry. Yeah. Guy’s a comer, what can I say. It’s Howdy Duty.”

Howdy Duty was the nickname of Howard D. Utey, special assistant to the Director, former head of counterespionage, staff director of counterterror, former assistant director of organized crime, one of the hardest-charging law enforcement executives in the Bureau and a man much loathed and feared by all who knew him.

But especially Nick, for in 1986, Howard D. Utey, Howdy Duty, on his way up fast, had been supervisor of the Tulsa office. Howdy Duty had been on the other end of the mike when Nick took his shot.

Howdy Duty was Base, howling in his ear as he blew out the spine of the only woman he’d ever love.

Bob made a fast check from outside; if they’d been in, they’d been damned careful and very professional; he could find no trace of entry, no tracks or disturbances in the dust, no sign even of scuffing where they might have wiped out tracks. Most important, the dog Mike was slightly mangier for wear, but not dead, and Bob knew that if anyone had tried to enter the trailer compound, Mike would kill or die himself. Sam Vincent had kept the beast fed while Bob was gone, and Mike, part sloppy beagle and part God-knew-what from deep in the Ouachitas, was on him when he unlocked the cyclone gate, tongue wet and gloppy, eyes warm yet mournful. Mike was another solitary creature, a great pal who could seem to make no other friends and simply gave himself wholly to Bob’s service.

Bob rubbed him and made him sing for joy, then got him some food as he opened his various padlocks – the trailer first, immaculate and pristine as he had left it, the gun vault, all guns gleaming in their patina of oil (he quickly replaced the Remington 700 while doing this), and finally the shop out back, where the problematic Winchester 70, damn its stubborn soul, still sat disassembled.

He looked at it, felt a yearning to lose himself once more in its intricacies and try to get at its secrets. Why was it now betraying him? Had it grown bored with loyalty and not enough attention? Had it a weak character, was it not a piece to be trusted when things turned dark and hairy? Or was it just tired, being fifty years or so old, an ancient piece of steel that had lost some inner fortitude?

But as he stared at it, he knew he could not give himself to it, no matter the ache involved. He had something to do now, something he wanted so bad it hurt him in places where he didn’t think it would hurt ever again or that he even had.

He remembered himself lying with Donny’s heavy stillness atop him, Donny’s warm blood flooding over him, mingling with his own as the flies came and feasted on the stuff and from just inside the embankment the major was yelling, “Don’t you move, Bob, goddammit, we got a fire mission coming in, we’ll smoke his fucking ass.” He remembered remembering while he lay there the time in the An Loc Donny had stood out in the motherfucking green open with his M-14 calmly shooting at gooks and drawing lots and lots of fire as poor Bob, busted from cover downslope like a covey of quail, scrambled up to the safety of the crest amid a sleet of destruction, his 700 flapping stupidly in the breeze, the jungle floor erupting from the misses around him until he finally made it to the top and the two of them fell behind the crest, laughing like maniacs, just spared death, high and nuts on danger, so in love with the great fun of their profession and the sense of the edge that made all pleasures so infinitely tasty.

“Oh, Christ, Bob, you shoulda seen the look on your damn face coming up that hill, damn, I near to bust a gut.”

“You dumb sonovabitch kid, why didn’t you get your ass down, no sense both our asses getting wasted.”

“Fuck, Bob, it’d been worth it to die to see you lookin’ so scared,” and he dissolved in laughter.

He remembered his old dream: he and Donny and Donny’s beautiful young wife Julie, a few dogs, some good old Arkansas whiskey for cold nights, all of them somehow living together in the Ouachitas, away from civilization, with their rifles, hunting every day, drinking every night. It was a stupid dream, he now realized, stupid as they come, because there was no way the world would permit such a thing; but he’d been young and dumb when he’d thought it up.

And he remembered when the major came in and saw him, his leg slung above him in plaster, the whole left side of his body immobilized.

“Didn’t know they had someone who was that good,” the major had said. “It was a hell of a shot.”

Oh, yes it was. It was a hell of a shot.

I want him! Bob thought. Oh Jesus I want him. But it was a year before his body was well enough to hold a rifle again, and by that time he’d heard the rumors: white guy. Specialist. Someone brought in for just one job. But by that time, too, his war was over.

So now he thought he’d tremble or cry. The dog’s warm tongue came slopping across his open hand, jarring him back from there to here. He shook his head a bit to stir the memories and make them flee, and was aware how rocky he suddenly felt.

Oh you Russian, how I want you for what you took from me!

Then he got hold of himself, felt his remade self fly back inside his body; he was all right. He was Bob again, who never talked but to three or four men in Blue Eye, Sam and Doc LeMieux, Sheriff Tell, the late Bo Stark when he was sober, and who shot at least a hundred rounds a day, rain or shine, and had given himself up entirely to the rifles so that he could live out his life and feel nothing at all.

He was all right, he had work to do, it was fine, now he was ready.

Bob worked it out, on decaf coffee and TV dinners, his own way. That is, eighteen, twenty, twenty-two hours at it, nailed at the kitchen table under a dim wash of bulb or a gray wash of thin January sunlight, with only the morning walk with Mike and the few hours’ sleep to break up the journey. He did it slowly, carefully, never speeding up, never slowing down, looking through the maps and plans, drawing diagrams, taking measurements off his calculator, studying the architectural renderings of the buildings, making notes to himself.