Hit and The Marksman (32 page)

Radford comes out on his belly, holding a wet towel across his mouth and nose, snaking under the smoke. Billows envelop the armored limo, hiding it, and he slides through it into the driver's seat of the limo.

Vickers is squinting against the smoke and flames, trying to see the back of the shop. He peers intensely, then suddenly reacts as, like a monster from hell, the armored limo comes roaring out of the smoke straight at him.

Vickers blasts it with the shotgun.

It has no effect.

He drops the shotgun and now stands with feet spread, revolver lifted in both hands, fearlessly shooting at the windshield as the limo roars straight at him.

The limo roars forward. Bullets bounce off the glass.

It veers at the last minute and slithers past Vickers, fishtailing into an alley. Vickers swivels and pulls the trigger again but his revolver is empty …

Around him, cops are blazing away at the fleeing car. Hit but unscathed, the limo skids away, bullets ricocheting off its armored body.

All around the burning shop, police cars and government cars begin to peel out in pursuit. Vickers leaps into one of them, and it nearly collides with arriving fire engines …

Radford flees in the armored limo, pursued by an army whose bullets bounce off the armored metal and glass and rubber.

Into a six-point intersection, late at night, police cars converge from every street and alley until they create a tangled gridlock. Everyone stops. Cops and feds emerge from cars—some furious, some simply bewildered.

Clay and Vickers get out of adjacent cars. Clay on her cellular phone. She's looking up at a helicopter that swoops overhead; she's talking to its pilot. “Which one?” She gets an answer, glances at Vickers and points to a parking garage.

Solid buildings all around the intersection. No way out except the streets, which are clogged with cop cars. Various stores (closed for the night), office buildings, restaurants, a theatre with surprised patrons at the front door watching the Keystone Kop activity.

Vickers and Clay walk slowly toward the garage, ushering cops in with arm signals. Heavily armed, the detachment deploys into the building.

In the garage, on a second-level ramp by the Disabled parking slot, crouches the limo. A sad, silent, bullet-smeared mess, but nonetheless intact.

Dickinson walks over to it, uses a gloved hand to open its door—he's ready to shoot if somebody's in there but he doubts it and he's right; it's empty. He raises his voice in weary summons: “Over here.”

From the hallway of a restaurant-bar on the top floor of a high-rise, Radford has a splendid view of the city. He's on a pay phone by the rest-room doors. “Like to leave a message for Commander Clay … I know she's not in her office right now—”

Down through the plate glass he can just make out Commander Clay as she emerges on foot with Dickinson from the ramp-entrance of the garage. Radford says into the phone, “This is C. W. Radford. So take this down and get it straight.” He sees Clay and Dickinson cross to a police car; Clay takes out its radio mike and begins to broadcast.

Into the phone Radford is saying, “Tell Denise Clay she's the next target for assassination. Tell her the boss honcho behind the assassinations is Colonel Vickers. That's not a mistake. I don't give a shit if
you
believe me. Colonel Damon Vickers. Tell her I said it.”

Down below, he sees Vickers join Clay; Vickers says something—probably sarcastic—and Vickers and Dickinson get into an angry shoving match, with Clay trying to calm them down.

Radford walks away from the phone.

The Vickers house at dawn is secluded to the point of isolation, manicured, exurban, surrounded by flowing meadows. From a hedgerow of trees Radford studies the place. It's just past dawn. Nothing stirs.

While the sun rises, Radford waits with infinite patience, moving a few inches around the bole of his tree each time the sun begins to reach around to him. He's not doing anything at all—just watching the house.

And an End …

In the open maw of a high barn somewhere in back hills a camouflage-painted Humvee stands squat and forbidding, like a sentry across the opening. Vickers walks in past it and sizes up the six men assembled: Conrad, Gootch, Wojack, Curly, Moe and Larry. They're assembling automatic weapons that they've just cleaned and triple-checked. Moe's is an Uzi submachine gun. Wojack, in neat Ivy League duds, sits on a crate, wiping down his 308 with the studied care of a perfectionist.

Vickers says without preamble, “They have a few questions for me.”

Wojack says, “Well they came to the right place. You're the one with all the answers.”

Ignoring him, Vickers says to Conrad, “Seems they got a phone call from Radford … We have to assume those two talked their heads off in the gun shop.”

Conrad says, “I told Harry that blonde would get him done in.”

Gootch says, “So where's Radford?”

For some reason this all amuses Wojack. “He was all used up. Didn't care if he lived or died. It never occurred to you that you back him into a corner, he'd turn and fight. Poor bastard. They all think he's a deranged homicidal maniac—some animal that needs to be exterminated. And here he's the only innocent son of a bitch in a hundred thousand square miles.”

Vickers gives him a look, decides it isn't worth the trouble, and turns to Conrad. “We have to assume Radford knows where I live. So that's where he's going to be. You're all coming with me to wait for him.”

Gootch says, “What if the cops are there too?”

“Then he'll die while resisting arrest.”

Wojack, thumbing cartridges into his rifle one at a time, inspecting each one with practiced care before it slides into the magazine, talks half to himself, with a soft note of derision. “Patriots. Heroes. How do you tell a freedom-fighter from a terrorist without a scorecard?”

Vickers snaps, “I'm paying you for your marksmanship, not your lip.”

Wojack shakes his head. “You people amaze me. Don't you ever think of yourselves as the bad guys?”

Vickers answers civilly because he wants a convert. “We've tried working within the system. Hell, I practically am the system, but when you're surrounded by idiots it's no good. The world gets more dangerous every day and those morons just keep playing pork-barrel politics as if … Well we're dealing with monsters who don't play by rules. Assassination's the only way to get at them. You cut off the head of the menace. And you keep cutting off each new head as it emerges, until they learn to change.”

Wojack slams the rifle's bolt shut on the final cartridge. “Sure. I mean, you're not trying to steal the deed to the ranch or anything. Bad guys never see themselves as bad guys.”

Conrad says, “And who the hell are you? Some hired two-bit hit-man!”

“It's my trade. I'm a craftsman … At least I know what I am.”

The room is an office-library. Lots of high-polished woodwork. Radford stands just inside a kicked-open set of French doors. He's looking at the display case beside him and the framed photographs on the leather-topped desk. Photos of Vickers in uniform getting medals pinned on his chest; Vickers in front of the White House; Vickers at a podium, flanked by American flags, addressing a crowd, with a big caption “Col. Damon Vickers,” and a big banner above his head that reads: “America Now!”

Radford has the nutcracker in one hand, a revolver in the other. He looks all around, ready for anything. Nothing stirs. He rams forward out of the room.

His charge takes him through a hallway into a big kitchen; all the mod cons. The stove is a gas range. There's a center-island counter. Nobody in the room until Radford reels in from the hall. He looks around, picks a direction arbitrarily, plunges through a door …

Conrad drives a luxury sedan down the blacktop highway; Vickers and Wojack are in it with him. The other guys—Gootch, Curly, Larry, Moe—are in the Humvee four-by-four behind them. And there's something ominous simply in the way the two-vehicle convoy rolls relentlessly forward, not speeding at all but somehow implacable, as if they'd run right over any innocent pedestrian who happed to be in their way and then they'd just keep right on going without even glancing back.

Radford prowls into a dining room. He hears a sound of approaching vehicles so he goes to a window and looks out and sees the two vehicles approach, crunching their way up the driveway, in no hurry. From this angle he can see the smashed-open French doors of the house, so he's not surprised when the car and the Humvee stop some distance short of the place and seven guys get out. Radford recognizes Vickers, who examines the place with field glasses, then makes hand signals and leads the other six in a spreading-wide skirmish line, converging toward the house on foot, most of them carrying automatic weapons except for one Ivy League–looking man who hangs back, holding a 308 rifle at the ready but not joining in the war-game maneuvering. That one watches the troops with a pose that conveys sardonic bemusement.

Radford fades back into the house.

Vickers sends Conrad around one end of the house. Conrad goes, walking straight up as if invulnerable to enemy bullets—he knows Radford's not going to shoot him without warning.

Vickers looks back, sees Wojack ambling forward with his rifle ready, and angrily waves Wojack toward the opposite end of the house. Wojack shrugs and turns that way, watchful but not enjoying this part of the game.

Radford squeezes himself into a narrow space so confining and so completely dark that he can hardly breathe. He begins to sweat—claustrophobia …

Without making a sound Gootch appears in the den, gun first, framed in the smashed-open French doors, and comes in, watching everything at once. Behind him the others curl into the room and fan out fast—Larry, Moe, Curly. Then Vickers enters behind them. Vickers signals with his automatic weapon toward the far door, and Gootch sidles out through it …

In the kitchen Gootch and Curly and Moe poke under counters and table, nobody making a sound.

In his narrow dark enclosure Radford is really starting to come unglued, but with a tremendous effort of will he remains absolutely motionless.

At one end of the house Conrad eases up to a window and looks in. He doesn't see anything exciting.

At the opposite end of the building Wojack hangs back in the shade of a tree, studying the turf. He's a sniper, not a close-quarters brawler; far as he's concerned, snooping in closed quarters where you could get ambushed is not included in the price of his ticket. He stays by the tree.

Moe is stooping to pull a door open and look in the cabinet space under the kitchen sink when behind him a broom-cabinet pops open and Radford plunges out, gasping for air. Radford whacks Moe's wrist with his nutcracker.

“Hey—!”

The nutcracker loosens Moe's hold on the Uzi and whips the weapon away before Moe can figure out what's happening.

Gootch and Curly wheel—Curly opens fire with his automatic weapon before he's had time to see who he's shooting at, and his bullets cut Moe in half.