Fedders savored his drink, letting the mellow glow spread.
“It seems that maybe Memphis isn’t the boy scout everybody thinks he is.”
“Interesting,” said Tom.
“He may be dirty.”
“Very interesting,” said Tom.
“Now the one thing the FBI needs is sniper rifles. They’re in the lengthy proces of acquiring three hundred new ones. These rifles are traditionally built by the custom shop at Remington; they’re something called a Remington 700. A special barrel is mounted on them, a special scope, special ammo is used, all that stuff, and they’re guaranteed to shoot, hmm, I think it’s angle of minute-”
“Minute of angle,” corrected Tom, the world-renowned hunter. “It means very accurate.”
“Yeah, well, although the contract isn’t big in monetary terms-less than a million-within the gun industry it’s considered a big prestige thing. Remington has had it for years, and on account of the FBI’s belief in the product, they’ve become the preeminent sniper rifle supplier to police forces and military units the world over. That million-dollar contract is really worth twenty million annually; it also feeds civilian purchases, because so many of these gung ho gun guys want the rifle the FBI uses, for their hunting and targeting and whatever. Maybe to play sniper themselves, who knows.”
“So?”
“Well, there’s a European firm called FN. It’s part of the Belgian government, actually; FN just means ‘National Factory,’ and it has been making guns for a hundred years, and now they make a lot of our machine guns and stuff. But recently they bought up what was left of the old American firm Winchester, which produces a gun called the Model 70.”
“I have a dozen. Very fine guns, the old ones at any rate.”
“Yes, well FN has started manufacturing Model 70s again at a plant it built in South Carolina. Now if FN could get the FBI sniper rifle contract from Remington to replace the 700 with the 70, it would be an incredible coup.”
“What does this-”
“Nick Memphis, an ex-sniper, is on a committee to pick the next rifle. It seems there’s some internal feeling that it’s time to shake things up by going to the FN product, and according to Banjax’s source, Nick is in the forefront of that move. Now, it turns out he accepted an all-expenses-paid trip to South Carolina-”
“Good God, I can see selling out for a trip to Brussels, but South Carolina!”
“Hard to believe. But they flew him down there to talk to the big shots at FN, which is a big no-no without prior executive permission. It seems also that there’s a long track of ‘gifts’ made to Agent Memphis from his good friends at FN that may well be in violation of FBI guidelines. There’s lots of receipts for dinners at a local Ruth’s Chris and some mysterious checks for a place called the Carousel. And here’s the best part: there may be-and Banjax has a line on it-a photo of Nick at the FN range in South Carolina, with the new FN rifle; there’s even a date visible in the picture, if you blow it up, because he’s holding a target where he’s just fired a.321-sized group, or whatever, and signed and dated the target.”
“Where did all this come from?”
“In my opinion, it came from Remington. These guys play rough and they are very worried about losing this contract. So they hired a security firm to monitor the process, and one of their guys evidently came up with it.”
“So, Memphis is dirty. The Bureau can’t stay with him then, right? He’s out, he’s gone, he’s history.”
“He’s definitely history.”
“And the Times will run this story?”
“They’re way out ahead of everyone, and in that business, that’s the greatest thing. They can feel it so close it’s driving them nuts with desire. A scoop. A big, government-humiliating, career-wrecking scoop. That’s how Pulitzers are won. Corruption and misjudgment, sniffed out by a vigilant press-it’s the cocaine that makes them insane. You’re damn right they’ll run it.”
“So that’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. Or the rifle that shot out the camel’s spine.”
“That’s right, Tom. When Banjax gets the photo and it’s vetted by the photo experts the Times hires, we’ll have him. Memphis has to go. And I’ll make sure the next guy is more cooperative.”
28
Swagger hit the floor hard amid a spray of glass sleet from the windshield as the burst atomized the glass, a bullet flying so close by his neck he felt the breeze. He wedged himself low into the cave under the dash, thanking God he’d forgotten to buckle up for safety, hearing the bullets bang hard off the hood, the engine block, back again to the windshield as the gunner dumped his mag into the vehicle. He blinked hard to force himself to face the reality of what was happening, knowing that if he stayed there in the fetal curl on the floor, the gun boy would come out, stick the snout of his subgun through the window, and dump the next mag entirely into Mr. B. L. Swagger, late of planet Earth.
Inspiration came from-well, who knows? God? Intelligent design? A hundred previous gunfights? The obviousness of what was before his nose, which was Denny’s gigantic foot resting on the gas pedal? Swagger craned upward, spun the wheel against Denny’s dead hands hard to the left, then elbowed Denny’s dead foot, pushing pedal to floor. The car leaped and, as the distance was short, built no killing momentum, but still it hit the killers’ car on the oblique with a clanging charge of energy, enough to spin Bob himself almost backward against the seat.
But now he had a plan, and a man with a plan is a man with a chance. He reached up, pushing Denny’s jacket aside, and plucked the Sig 229 from his hip holster, unsnapping it and making sure to pull it straight out, duplicating the draw angle so that the sights wouldn’t get caught in the holster and no security device would pin it. Out it slid, and now he had a plan and a gun, and he had his opponents possibly in a daze from the unexpected smash of car one into car two. He squirmed back to his own off-driver’s-side door, hit the latch, and tumbled out. Crawling madly down the length of the car, ripping knees and hands to shreds on the pavement, he emerged over the right front wheel well, putting tire and heavy axle and brake system as well as engine block between him and the killers, and saw the enemy car at an angle, slightly askew, its door caved and wearing his own car’s left front as its new fashion accessory. A figure behind the wheel struggled with his seat belt, clumsy from the shock of the collision, mind a stew of confusions.
Bob found the Sig a blocky little piece of guncraft that fit his hands glove-smooth and went to target hungrily; he locked his elbows as he put the front sight smack on the target twelve-odd feet away, fired four times on the angle and watched as the windshield fogged into quicksilver as the penetrating bullets left their legacy of fractured abstraction. Behind those smears, the dark figure kicked taut, then slumped sideways.
Bob withdrew, and a good thing too, as in seconds, maybe nanoseconds, a burst of automatic fire came hurtling his way to spall off the hood and spray randomly into the air, chewing up metallic debris, paint dust, and friction-driven sparks. He saw now what was so strange about all this-the absence of the other man’s percussions, as his weapon was clearly suppressed. The bursts had a low, wet, rattly sound, as if made by a child playing at tommy gun with a throatful of phlegm.
Swagger started to rotate right, to get around the bumpers of both cars, flank the shooter, and take him down from the low defilade, even as he knew that if the guy was no idiot, he too would now be on the move, rotating also to the right. So he stopped, reversed his direction, and began a journey to the left, the long way around, to find and kill his man.
Rat watched the bullets take out the windshield and all behind them in a long sparkly rip, right to left, horizontal, but had a kind of inkling of disaster as the dancing web of punctures didn’t seem to catch up quite to the rapidly disappearing number two target. He realized he should have gone left to right, goddamnit, and cursed himself for fearing the cop’s handgun more than the agility and quickness of the unarmed but highly experienced man. He ate up the rest of the magazine-once you start shooting these things it’s hard to stop, so seductive is the rhythm, the power of the recoil, the imagery of the world dissolving before the godlike reach of your bullet stream-shooting out more windshield glass, tearing up the hood, hoping to start a fire or send something through to take out the quick mover, but he knew: Houston, we have a problem.