“And then …”
“And then we reel him in. Slowly. Ever so slowly, trusting our instincts and our reading of Swagger’s character. We reel him in and destroy him. It’s like hunting a predator with bait. The bait is the research … or it’s his illusion that he can get out of this and somehow clear himself.”
Shreck nodded.
“It is clever,” he conceded.
Dobbler looked at Shreck and realized that for the first time, he wasn’t frightened of him.
For almost a week there were so many times they were close that it made them almost half-crazy. They spent the days on the phone in the Syracuse loft, and after the close of business hours in the last of the western states, they’d come out and go for a walk, get something to eat, just stretch and decompress. They made an odd couple: the tall, thin middle-aged man who had a way of holding himself in; the thicker, friendlier younger man, hair blond and thatchy, eyes brown and warm, whose gentle bulk hid considerable strength. They almost never talked as they walked and ate. They seemed comfortable in the silence.
Then one night, Bob asked about the chair.
“What’s it do to a person? The chair.”
At first Nick thought he was asking about the electric chair, and thought somehow in his FBI career Nick had seen an execution or two. But then he realized Bob meant to touch on something he’d said at Colonel O’Brien’s. Chair. Wheelchair.
“Ah. It sucks. I think I hated it more than she did. Because it was my damn failure, my damn guilt. Sometimes at night, I’d lie there listening to her breathe. You could see the damn thing in the moonlight. It was like it was laughing at you.”
“Suppose you were in it? Suppose your own daddy had put you there, and then blown the top of his head off in grief. What would that do to you?”
“I don’t know,” said Nick.
“Well, dammit, think about it. Give me an answer. I have to know why this bird did what he did.”
“Hell, bitterness, I suppose. It could cripple you so bad you’d hate the world. That didn’t happen to her, of course; she was too special and decent. But to someone else? I suppose it could easily lead you to guns, to feel the power in them that your body was deprived of. The gun could complete a paraplegic. It could make him very, very dangerous. But there are so many killers in this world who aren’t crippled. What’s so special about one that is?”
Bob just looked at him, rather sadly.
“You still don’t get it, do you, Pork?”
“Get what?”
“Come on, we’d best be heading back. More phone calls tomorrow.”
But as the time passed, the chance of the great breakthrough seemed to recede. All the calls had been made, sometimes two and three times. In ever widening circles, they’d tried to match death certificates against the seven names, patiently hunting through counties and then states. Somehow, however, the connection seemed to evaporate as they drew near to it.
“Suppose we’ll just have to drive out and find each of these damn guys and eyeball ’em and go from there,” Bob said. He was looking at the current issue of The Shotgun News, which he’d just picked up on a newsstand, as he did every other week, irritating Nick no end. It was such a dirty little rag, full of close print and murky black and white pictures of surplus guns. “The rag,” Bob called it with a snort of joyful contempt. It didn’t even have stories—just pages and pages of gun deals.
“You know, I’m really beginning to wonder if pursuing Annex B might not be a more reasonable course at this point. Working with Sally Ellion, there still might be a way to get into the Bureau’s computer bank. She’s very smart. She likes me. I think—”
“You just want to nail that nice young gal, Pork, why don’t you admit it?”
“No, she’s a nice girl, I just—”
The phone rang.
“Agent Memphis.”
“Mr. Memphis. I’m Susan Jeremiah, in the Clark County, North Carolina, registrar’s office?”
“Oh, yes, right, I remember. I talked to you some days ago. About the seven names—”
“That’s right.”
“And you couldn’t help?”
“No sir. But I got to thinking on it. One of those names on that list was a James Thomas Albright. And there was no James Thomas Albright on my list of deaths for the years 1935 through 1945.”
“No. That’s what you told me—”
“But I got to thinking there was an Albright. A Robert Parrish Albright, who died when he was two in 1938, right here in Clark County.”
“I see,” said Nick.
“The names being so similar. I just got curious and couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I went and checked our names registration. You know, with a valid birth certificate, you can petition the court to change your name legally.”
“Of course.”
“And I was stunned to discover that in June of 1963, a Robert Parrish Albright of this county petitioned the court to change his name to James Thomas Albright. The request was granted, and nobody had ever bothered to check the changed name against the death certificates. No one knew that the real Robert Parrish Albright had died in 1938.”
Nick swallowed. He felt as if he’d just looked behind a veil someone had very carefully put in place years back. For him it was one of those queer, powerful moments when an investigation, out of so many loose threads and blind paths and false leads, suddenly connected into something. A small, powerful jolt blasted through him.
“Thank you, Mrs. Jeremiah. Thank you so much.” And then he turned to Bob, trying to seem laconic.
“I found him,” he said.
“Oh, yeah,” said Bob, yawning. “James T. Albright of North Carolina. Hey, I found him too.” He held up The Shotgun News. “The dumb bastard wrote a book!”
The suspense was murderous: all those phone calls from all over the United States. It shouldn’t have amazed Dobbler that there were so many of them but it did.
“Hello, my name is Walter Murbach of Sherman Oaks, California. I am very interested in the book about the Tenth Black King. My Visa card number is …”
There were dozens like that, and in a week or two the dozens permutated into hundreds. Over 350 calls were received, all of them earnest, none of them, according to vocal signature, Bob or Nick Memphis.
“I don’t think it’s working,” said Shreck.
“It will work,” said Dobbler. “I know Bob. Bob has been my project for close to a year. I know him. This is the only way.”
Shreck grunted, displeased.
And so they waited. And so another day passed and another, and Dobbler was at home in his apartment, paging through back issues of The American Rifleman, when the phone call came.
“Dobbler.”
“Dr. Dobbler, it’s the phone watch operations officer. We think we’ve got a positive ID on a phone call we received approximately seven minutes ago. The computer analysis makes it an almost perfect match to Memphis.”
“What name did he leave?”
“Ah … he left the name Special Agent Nicholas Memphis, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Yes, this is Special Agent Nicholas Memphis, Federal Bureau of Investigation, calling for Mr. Albright. We have reason to seek an interview with Lon Scott, who was the son of Art Scott, and wonder if Mr. Albright has any information pertaining to his whereabouts. The number is four-four-two, three-one-two, three-oh-eight-oh. I should add that refusal to cooperate could be actionable under federal statute.
Nick’s voice spun itself out of the tape recorder.
“Congratulations,” said Shreck. “Now give me some sense of how we play it.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” Dobbler said, secretly very pleased. “Now, um, as to operating principles. There’s only one, and I can’t press it too forcefully. At no point until the ultimate moment must we seem aggressive. Bob is abnormally attuned to aggression; he lives in Condition Yellow, never completely at rest, always scanning the horizon for clues. His radar never goes do
wn. And when he senses threat, it sets his bells off; nothing must be forced. No one must stare. Nothing must be elongated. No hints of trap must be given. We must operate totally without self-consciousness. Now. Who’s going to call him?”
“You are,” said Shreck.
The phone rang.
“Oh, my,” said Nick.
“Answer it,” said Bob.
“Oh, my,” said Nick again. It had been almost a week since they’d made the initial call.
“Go on,” said Bob.
“Agent Memphis,” Nick said, picking up the phone.
“Yes, this is James Albright. I was told to call you in a phone message last week. I only played the tape today. I—What’s this all about?”
“Yes, thank you for getting back to me,” said Nick as officiously as possible. “It’s come to our attention that you’ve published a book about Art Scott, the target shooter?”
“Yes. I knew Art years back. I saw him shoot one of his last championships. He was a wonderful—”
“We have reason to suspect that a rifle owned by Mr. Scott’s son Lon may have been used in a serious Federal crime—”
“The Tenth Black King? Do you know where it is?”
“Ah,” said Nick, a little taken aback, “no, no, we hoped you might know where it is?”
“I wish I did. That rifle would be worth tens of thousands of dollars today.”
“Well, we’re trying to locate Lon Scott, who seems to have vanished thirty years ago.”
“Now there’s a mystery for you. Wish I could help you.”
“Hmmm. Yes. Your ad says you have some of Art Scott’s personal effects—”
“I have all his shooter’s notebooks, his notes on reloading, the results of his experiments, many of his medals and ribbons. But nothing personal—well, a couple of diaries which I never paid much attention to.”
“I see. Mr. Albright, it’s imperative that we locate either Lon Scott or his remains. It’s my thought that in his father’s effects there might be information useful to us. Perhaps I could send a team down and examine the materials.”
“That’s all you want? Hell, why didn’t you say so. Sure, come on down. Be happy to let you see the stuff.”
“Thank you very much.”
The man on the other end gave him directions and Nick said he’d see him in two days, Thursday, at nine-thirty. Mr. Albright said that was okay by him, he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Not bad,” said the Colonel.
“Did I slather on the old-boy business too heavily?” Dobbler wanted to know.
“No,” said the Colonel, his shrewd eyes narrowed in concentration. “You brought the family in, then backed out of it. You established your distance from ‘Lon Scott.’ What they think they’re getting is another step in the link, and not the final step. Now all we have to do is wait. They’re coming in.”
The waiting was hardest on Payne, man of action. Thus, without orders, he seconded himself to central Virginia and the RamDyne training facility. The men of Panther Battalion, his old compadres under arms, had arrived on its thousands of acres to prepare their assault on Fortress Bob.
There he watched as the lean young troopers worked on the assault plan. He watched them deploy, having moved off their mock helicopters, move up the hill that was a close duplicate of Bone Hill under heavy automatic weapons suppressive fire, and assault its summit, where Bob would be alone with no weapon other than the Colt automatic he was known to favor.
Even Brigadier General de Rujijo had come along on this mission.
“Is it not too much, Sergento?” he asked Payne. “This is one man, no?”
It was a logical question. With a base of full automatic suppressive fire, plus the fire and movement elements pouring out lead as they progressed upwards, Payne had calculated that over ten thousand bullets would be hurled at the summit in less than two minutes. For one man?
“He must be el grande hombre,” said de Rujijo.
“He ain’t that big a deal,” Payne said. “My boys could smoke him.” But still, he took great pleasure in the display. The bullets, soaring raucously upwards and blasting against the summit, had literally torn it to shreds. There was no place to hide or survive on that mean ground; it was the land of the sucking chest wound and the exit hole six times as large as the entrance.
The plan was simple. Three platoons from the counterinsurgency company of Panther Battalion—close to 120 men, all heavily armed with Israeli Galil assault rifles in 5.56mm—were to be deployed at a small deserted airfield some two miles from Lon Scott’s house, their presence completely unknown to the target, and no hints of it allowed to surface. When Bob made his approach, whosoever was playing Lon—not yet determined—would activate a signal simply by removing his hand from the wheelchair grip and thereby allowing a photocell to be stimulated by the light, no buttons to push, no anything. The four choppers with eight men apiece would be airborne in seconds and deploy for the assault within two minutes; four minutes later the choppers would return with the second load of men, then repeat until all 120 men were on site. The debarked troops, as well as the men from RamDyne’s own Action Unit, would converge on the house frontally. Bob, upon seeing the extent of the trap, would almost certainly depart the back, by the pool and the rifle range and discover only Bone Hill, six hundred feet of scrubby pine, gulches, washouts and switchbacks, up top of which was a bare knob. The sniper would almost certainly choose to climb it. Up he’d go, until there was no place to go.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Lon insisted. And Lon could be stubborn and willful and infuriatingly impossible to budge.
“Mr. Scott, I can’t have it,” Shreck said. “We have extremely competent people for this sort of thing. It’s not for you. It’s far too dangerous.”
“It’s my house. I’m the bait,” he said. “So I’ll be the one.”
“The second he sees you in that wheelchair, he’ll know who you are.”
“Fine. It makes no difference.”
“Suppose he shoots you?”
“Then I’ve had a full life. Considering my limitations, I’ve had a wonderful life. If it happens, it’ll happen. But it won’t happen.”
“Why not?”
“This Marine. He’s not like that. He couldn’t pull his pistol and execute a man in a wheelchair no matter what crimes the man in the wheelchair has committed and no matter that he himself, when he hears the helicopters landing, will understand that he’s a dead man. He still won’t do it. I know him. I knew his type among the Southern shooters before I lost my legs. My father was a lot like him. No, he won’t do it. He’s sick with honor.”
Shreck had to concede that Scott was probably right. No less a Bob Lee Swagger expert than Dobbler had given his acquiescence to Scott’s decision.
But Shreck himself was curious about it.
He looked at the misshapen man, whose handsome skull now lolled idiotically to the left, as its owner had momentarily lost control of it.
“Why? What do you gain from it?”
Lon smiled from his wheelchair and Shreck shuddered. Lon’s even, distant, icy gaze bore into him. Outside he could hear the hammers and crowbars pounding and ripping as a work detail from Tiger Battalion tore down the wheelchair ramp into the house.
Finally, Lon Scott answered.
“I want the chance to look him in the eye. I want to share the moment with him. I want him to see me and know who I am and what I’ve done with what I was handed. I want some eye contact with him and see what electricity transfers between us in those last seconds when he knows he’s doomed. The great Bob Lee Swagger, who’s killed so many times. We should have this moment together, Bob and I. We are at the top of our profession.”
Shreck thought it would be quite a meeting; a summit of professional world-class killers, each strangely courageous.
“All right, Mr. Scott, but don’t do anything foolish. Don’t get cute with him. You let him come in, you remove your hand from the light cell, and yo
u hide. Panther Battalion will be here in seconds; and we waste his ass. That’s all it’s about: killing him, before he kills us.”
“Fine.”
The surveillance was extremely soft, men without radios who had been instructed to stare at nothing, to make no eye contact, but just to hope that what they’d been sent to see would arrive. They were established at various roads into the area, at coffee shops, across from shopping malls, at restaurants.
And it did happen, late that night. A rented red Chevy pulled into the parking area outside the Danville Sheraton, and from the darkness on the roof of the Big Boy across the street a RamDyne spotter watched as a tall lanky man got out, stretched in the bright pool of the fluorescent light, then went into the motel office. He came out in a bit and moved the car. Then he and another man, husky and blond, walked up the outside stairs leading to the second-floor balcony that ran the full length of the building and into two adjacent rooms. The spotter watched as they came back out to the car, and was able to follow its passage a quarter of a mile to the Pizza Hut; then he called headquarters.
Within ten minutes, the Electrotek 5400 surveillance van pulled up discreetly across the street.
“You want me to try and get a tap into their rooms?” asked Eddie Nickles.
“Nah,” said Payne, not quite believing it was happening. “Nah, we don’t even know if it’s them.”
But it was. The Chevy pulled up and parked, and Payne watched as Bob Lee Swagger, big as life, got out of the car two hundred yards away. He’d recognize that lanky walk anywhere, with its faint hitch in one leg from the wound so long ago; he’d studied it for weeks, and dreamed about it for months.
Point of Impact Page 35
