Hit and The Marksman (29 page)

Don says to Dickinson, “He's a loony, man. Beat three guys damn near to death—right here in the dining room.”

Charlie says to Clay, “Said something about a gun club in a building on Broadway.”

Clay and Dickinson come out the side door of Charlie's Cafe and walk toward their car. Dickinson yawns, big. Clay tells him, “That waiter—talk to Vice, find out who sent him down here. Something funny there.”

“Yeah. Gotta tell you I am whipped … If we don't nail this turkey fast—”

Commander Clay says, “What if he didn't do it?”

“Come on. You're not buyin'—”

She indicates the cafe. “That guy's his old Army buddy. Knows him better'n we do. And—why is it the murder weapon had his fingerprints all over it—but there's no prints on the ammunition?”

They get into the car …

The Army base is asleep, its drab military buildings and parked vehicles silent. On a company street a couple of enlisted soldiers walk by a sign that indicates the way to the dispensary. Radford, emerging from shadows, goes in that direction. At the dispensary door he looks all around, then tries to open it. It's locked; it won't budge. In a sweat, trembling, he fades back around the side of the building.

There's a high window at the back. Radford strips off his jacket, wraps it around his fist and punches in the window. He uses the jacket to sweep slivers of glass from the frame before he crawls in through the high opening. If he sees the small red light glowing on a keypad panel he disregards it; how's he to know the light was green until he smashed the window?

Dr. Trong and his wife are awakened by a strident buzzing noise. Dr. Trong fumbles for a switch, finds it and silences the alarm buzzer. He gets into his robe and slippers, and takes a revolver from a drawer. At the door he pauses and smiles at his wife. “Yes, dear, I'll be careful.” When he goes out, his wife yawns and goes back to sleep.

In the back room of the dispensary Radford paws with increasing desperation through cabinets. He finds a bottle of tablets and tries to read the label—“Aspirin”—he stuffs it in his pocket and searches on …

Dr. Trong arrives on foot outside the place, in bathrobe and slippers, carrying his revolver. With absolute silence he unlocks the front door and enters, cocking the revolver.

In the back room Radford opens a cabinet door and discovers—a big steel safe, like a half-size bank vault. And a sign on it in great big printing: “In here, stupids. The narcotics. Don't break in. It's booby-trapped.”

Radford reacts: hopelessness. He's trembling violently and soaked with sweat. He looks ghastly. And now he glances around and for the first time really notices the glowing red light on the alarm keypad. As he gapes at it he deflates even further. He seems paralyzed. Then—did he hear something or is it his imagination?

Dr. Trong moves cautiously through the corridor toward the door that leads into the back room. He moves through the dark without sound, and the cocked gun is ready in his hand.

He slowly enters the back room, silent, gun up. He flips the light switch. Lights come on. And just then—

Radford jumps him from on top of a steel filing cabinet.

Dr. Trong starts to struggle, then recognizes him and relaxes. It requires little effort—too little—for Radford to wrestle the revolver away from him.

Radford stands back, holding the cocked revolver, and gestures toward the safe. Dr. Trong obeys: twirls the combination dials. “You look god-awful, C.W.”

When the vault door begins to open, Radford pushes the doctor back, pulls it wide and looks in. Vials, bottles, papers. He rummages among them.

Dr. Trong says conversationally, “Where's it hurt? Your head?”

“No. My big toe, you asshole.”

Radford finds a syringe, loads it from the vial, rolls up a sleeve, prepares to inject himself—all this while keeping the revolver close at hand and one eye on Dr. Trong across the room.

“I didn't assassinate anybody.”

“All right,” Dr. Trong says. “Who did?”

“We didn't get formally introduced.”

“You saw a face? Faces?”

Radford makes no answer; he's distracted, reading the label of a vial. He puts it back and tries another. This one satisfies him.

The doctor says, “Between them and the police, it must feel like Kurdistan all over again—you can't see them but you know they're coming back to nail you again, maybe now and maybe next week, and it's got you all bent out of shape.”

Radford says, “I don't need your sympathy.”

“My sympathy won't kill you.”

“Don't mess with me. I don't want people messing with me any more.”

He injects—and unexpectedly the injection hurts.

“Oww!!” He bends over with pain; rocks in agony, finally fumbles for the revolver. He points it accusingly. “What'd you put in this stuff?”

“What's it say on the label?”

Radford holds his arm in pain. “Don't lie to me!”

Dr. Trong shrugs. “Morphine … A little oil.” He grins amiably. “Hurts like a son of a bitch, don't it.”

“You bastard.” Radford's just about mad enough to shoot him; he's doubled over—his arm is in agonizing pain.

The headline on the paper at the corner newsstand is a bold banner: “Assassin Escapes—A Loner? Or Part of Intricate Plot?”

Wojack, the shooter, buys a copy and while the news agent fishes for change Wojack remarks in a supercilious Yale drawl: “Every time some politician gets assassinated, people just can't settle for the simple obvious facts—not good enough to have some homicidal maniac out there—always got to be some far-fetched theory about a sinister conspiracy.”

The news agent nods agreement. Wojack walks to the corner—just as Conrad's van pulls up. Wojack gets in, and the van pulls away, hardly having stopped at all.

At the wheel Conrad lights a cigarillo. Wojack fastens his shoulder harness. He hands the newspaper to Gootch, who sits in the plush custom room behind the seats.

Gootch glances at the headline and folds the paper; he's got more urgent things on his mind. He says to Wojack, “Timetable's moved up. It's today.”

Wojack considers that, then nods with satisfaction. “While Radford's still on the loose. That's very bright of someone.”

Gootch agrees. “He'll get blamed for this one too.”

Conrad puffs smoke. “Doesn't matter. These things have to be done—if somebody doesn't exterminate these vermin, this world won't be fit to live in. I'd be proud to take the blame if I didn't have orders to stay covert.”

Wojack says, “Your orders don't amuse me very much, old sport. Your money does. I want the next installment tonight.”

“It's waiting. What else you need?”

“High-speed ammunition and a twelve-ex scope.”

“You got it,” Conrad says, and the van turns a corner, running for a green light.

Radford leans against a wall in Trong's dispensary as the painkilling narcotic takes effect. His arm still hurts. He holds the revolver and watches the doctor suspiciously.

Dr. Trong is saying, “—saved all this trouble if you hadn't been too stubborn to die way back then.”

Radford says gloomily, “I should've died.”

“Oh for God's sake quit being so absurdly macho. Learn a little humility, C.W. Get rid of that thousand-yard stare … All right, you felt like the worst fink in history—you thought you were the only man who'd ever been tortured to the point where he broke the code of conduct … You know, we've found out a lot of them broke. You're not so special after all … Hey. Hear what I'm saying. The only thing you did wrong was you were there illegally in the first place and they had no right to send you in there. You didn't do anything.”

Radford broods at him, absorbing it.

Dr. Trong sees he's got an opening. He leans forward. “Wars are fought by old men using young men's bodies. Now somebody's doing the same thing to you all over again. Somebody's used you.”

“Shut up.”

“Come on, then. Get mad. It's all right. Getting mad—it's the first step in getting even.”

In the kind of shop where you can buy any weapon that's legal and—if you know the secret word, some that aren't—three men enter from the parked van out front: Wojack, Gootch and Conrad. A clean-shaven man unlocks the side door to let them in to the shop. The main thing that makes him recognizable is his bad tooth when he smiles: Harry Sinclair. Otherwise he's changed his appearance again—a regular Lon Chaney.

The gun shop is a motley cluttered arsenal. Harry locks the door. Gootch takes an immediate childlike interest in a tripod-mounted machine gun and plays with it—a kid with a toy. Conrad unlocks a steel drawer, takes out an envelope and hands it to Wojack, who leafs through the money inside it, rapidly counting. He says to Harry, “Let me have forty 308s with one-ten-grain soft-points.”

Conrad asks, “Forty cartridges?”

It makes Gootch look up. “You fixin' to start a war or something?”

Wojack says, mock-gentle, “I'd like to burn up a few sighting it in—if you don't mind.”

Harry digs out two boxes of rifle shells and hands them to Wojack. Conrad turns on a TV set, but gets only snow.

Harry says, “These'll give you a minus nine-point-three trajectory at three hundred yards. Or I can give you a boat-tail soft-point that'll give you eight-point-four …”

“These'll do.” Wojack yawns. “They'll kill the man—dead enough.”

Radford holds the revolver. He looks up through the smashed window at the dawn sky. Dr. Trong watches, unafraid. Radford rubs his arm, trying to think.

The doctor says, “Call the police. You haven't got a chance on your own.”

“They'd put me in a hole. I can't take that any more.” Radford examines the revolver.

Dr. Trong says mildly, “I don't think killing yourself is a sensible alternative.”

“Not right away anyhow. It's not me I want to blow away.”

“I see. But you do want to go after someone? That's progress, for you.”

“Now you think it's progress to want to kill people?”

“It's progress for you to want something.” Then Dr. Trong picks up a phone. Radford moves, as if to stop him—then stops, and after a long beat decides to trust him; he nods permission. Dr. Trong reacts—a profound moment—and then dials.

The doctor says into the phone, “Hi. Me … Any danger of us getting a bite of breakfast?”

On an outdoor shooting range at dawn, with a scrubby hillside for a backstop. Wojack sits at a bench-rest table and sights in his rifle on a long-range target. Conrad smokes. He and Gootch watch from nearby while Wojack fiddles with the weapon—the same kind of .308 rifle as before, with a 'scope mounted on it. He fires a shot and then studies the target through the 'scope. Through its lenses he can see one hole a bit wide of center. He adjusts a set-screw and aims again. When he squeezes it off he can see the image jerk a bit with recoil; it settles down—and the second bullet hole is dead-center in the bull's eye.

On the indoor shooting range—the target range where Radford first met Harry. Several men and women are shooting at targets. An elderly supervisor looks up as Clay and Dickinson enter. They show him their IDs. And ask him a question or two.

He's puzzled. “Sunday? Wasn't anybody here Sunday. I've been closed Sundays for eighteen years.”

Dickinson asks, “How many people have keys?”

“Well gosh, I don't know for sure. Too many, I guess, after all these years. I keep meaning to change the locks, you know, but—” He gives them an apologetic look.

Dr. Trong and Radford sit at the dinette table, having toast and coffee. In the middle of the table is that same morphine vial, and a packet of disposable syringes. Mrs. Trong, in houserobe and slippers, absently kisses her husband's cheek and turns to go. Her husband touches her sleeve. “See if I've got any clothes big enough for C.W.”

She flaps a hand in acknowledgement and exits.

Dr. Trong says, “She's used to my patients dropping in at weird hours … That injection still hurt your arm?”

“Stings like holy hell.”

“Good.” He indicates the vial and syringes. “Take 'em. I don't want you busting into any pharmacies. Your burglary technique, you'd getting caught for breaking-and-entering.”

“Right. You got a cellular phone I can borrow?”

Trong looks at him. “You want to call her on the phone?”

Radford just watches until the doctor shrugs and hands him a flip-phone. It slides into Radford's pocket. Then he winces. “You put something in there. To make it hurt.”

Dr. Trong gathers the dishes and begins to wash them. “It's harmless … Look, C.W., you just think you need drugs for the pain. You healed a long time ago. The headaches are psychosomatic. You don't need drugs.”

Wojack studies the consulate through his rifle 'scope, sliding the view across the forbidding fences and walls and the imposing building behind them, then down past uniformed guards to a brass plaque on the gatepost—“consulate” but he can't see which country's—and he continues to shift his aim up past the wall to an upper-story window. Through it we see a man sitting up in bed with a pad in his lap, writing. Something foreign about him. He looks powerful; important. The man is smoking a cigarette, deep in thought. The 'scope's reticule centers on his chest. Wojack speaks softly: “Don't smoke in bed, you twit. Hazardous to your health.” He squeezes it off and the image jerks with recoil; when it settles the man in bed is dead, his chest blown apart in blood, the cigarette falling from his limp hand.

Wojack runs, stooped over, to the back of the rooftop and swings himself out over the back of the building onto something that looks like a miniature window-washers' scaffold. It's supported on a system of pulleys and lines. It lowers him, swiftly and smoothly like a high-speed elevator, to an alley floor where Gootch matter-of-factly recovers the lift-lines and tosses the apparatus into the back of the van while Wojack and his rifle climb into the passenger seat; Conrad puts it in Drive as Gootch jumps into the back and pulls the rear door shut, and the van pulls away at a sedate speed, breaking no traffic regulations.