"Yeah, well," said Jorge, "whatever. Anyhow, we tie the whole thing together on secure cellulars. We move south this afternoon, as I say, three cars, three men in a car, and me, I'll be in a pickup, I'll hold the goddamned thing together while I'm talking to the boss. We know where he lives, but I don't want to do it there. We hunt him on the roads. We move in hunter-killer teams. You get a sighting, we work the maps, we plot his course, we pick him up. Very professional. Like we are the fucking FBI. We get him and his pal on a goddamned country road, and then it's World War III. We'll show this cabron cabron something about shooting." something about shooting."

21.

Now it was his turn to dig. He looked around, making certain. Yes, yes, this was it. The fallen loblolly, over there, snarled in moss, that was the first marker. The gray chunk of rock ten feet away was the second; he remembered it well, though it seemed to have worn over the years. Standing where he could see a notch in the high ridgeline of Black Fork Mountain through a gap in the pines was the third. Triangulating between the three, he knew: this was the spot.

Bob set himself, and with the same sure spade strokes that he had seen liberate the coffin that was not his father but some poor young man he attacked the earth. It fought him, but he was in a mood for a fight. The spade sliced and cut into the earth and lifted it; he began to sweat as he found a rhythm, and beside him a pile of dirt grew.

It was still early. He'd arisen before dawn, while the boy slept, and headed up this trail, a mile from his trailer. He used to walk it all the time with the dog Mike, but Mike was gone now. So Bob was alone, with the spade and the earth. As the sun rose it sent slats of light through the shortleaf pines and they caught the dust that his efforts raised, enough to make a man cough. He worked on, taking pleasure in the power of his movements.

It wasn't a coffin he uncovered. It was a plastic tube, nearly a foot in diameter, nearly four in length. Pulling it from the ground at last, he felt its considerable weight, even as its contents shifted a bit, but that was fine. He got it out on the ground and stood for a moment, breathing heavily. All around him it was quiet. His actions had scared the birds. No animals came around, and it was too cool yet for bugs.

He wiped his brow with his handkerchief. Then he put his boot on the cylinder to hold it steady and thrust the sharp blade of the spade against the cap of the cylinder, punching at the Loc-Tite bonds that sealed the capsule, until at last they gave. With his hands, he pulled the cap entirely off, then reoriented the cylinder so that he could get at its contents easier and began to empty it.

First came a Doskosil gun case. He opened it, flipped away the envelope of desiccant and took out a Colt Commander .45, dead black, with Novak sights and a beavertail-grip safety. He pinched back the slide to reveal the brass of a Federal Hydrashock; eight more rested in the magazine. It settled into his hand, almost nesting; he hadn't touched a gun in years. Thought he was done with guns. But in his hand the gun felt smooth and familiar, knowing almost. It fit so well; that was the goddamned thing about them: they fit so well. He cocked the hammer and locked the safety up; cocked and locked was the only way to go. Somewhere in here there was a holster too, and a couple of more magazines, but for now he only wedged the pistol, Mexican style, into the belt above his right kidney.

What came out next was a longer gun case, and when he got it out and opened, he saw a Ruger Mini-14, a kind of shrunken version of the old M-14, almost delicate-looking, light and handy. He seized the weapon, threw the bolt and clicked the trigger against an empty chamber. It was a carbine-style semiauto, capable of firing a 5.56mm cartridge that could chew through metal or men, depending. It looked fine too, though oily after three years underground. The film of oil and the packs of desiccant strewn about the tube had done their job.

He pulled out a last trophy, a canvas sack, and looked inside: four Mini-14 magazines, one of them an oversize forty-rounder, the Galco holster for the Commander, six boxes of .45 Federal Hydrashocks, five boxes of hardball 5.56mm and five boxes of M-196 tracer.

He sat back, then turned.

"Whyn't you come on down and fill in this hole for me?" he called.

Silence.

"Russ, you don't know enough how to move through the woods quietly. Come on out."

The boy came out sheepishly.

"I saw you go. I followed you. I heard the sounds of your digging."

"You shouldn't sneak around on an armed man."

"You weren't armed when you left."

"Well, I am now."

"What the hell is going on? You have to tell me. You owe me."

"What is going on is I want you to go home. This thing may get hairy. I was meaning to speak to you on it. Yesterday, I realized. I should have realized earlier."

"Bob, I'm not going. This was my idea from the beginning. I have to stay."

"I don't want to have to call your father and say, 'I got your boy killed for nothing.'"

"It doesn't matter about my father."

"Your mother, then. It would kill her."

"She's been killed before."

Bob said nothing.

Russ came over and started shoveling the dirt into the hole.

"I'm not giving you a gun," Bob said. "I don't have time to train you and I won't be around an untrained man. If there's shooting, boy, you just hit the deck and pray for the best."

"I will."

"Well, we'll see how it goes. I'm sending you home at the first sign of heavy weather. This ain't a picnic. Ask your father. He'll tell you. It's about as goddamned scary as it gets. Now let's move out. You carry the ammo. It's the heaviest."

They walked down the path. It was a fine morning, with the sun now up and blazing through the pines; between the shafts, Russ could see the green heights of the Ouachitas dominating the horizon. It was a quality of his mind that he was highly irony-conscious. Thus it provoked him that the scene was so innocent and sylvan, such an emerald-green panorama of natural goodness, and here he was walking with a heavily armed and very dangerous man, setting off on a mission that this man suddenly thought could end in violence. He shook his head. He was a writer! writer! What was he doing here? What was he doing here?

"Something funny?" Bob asked.

"It's just ridiculous," said Russ.

"Whatever it is, it ain't ridiculous," said Bob. "It may be dirty, it may be ugly, it may be evil. It ain't ridiculous and the people who put it together ain't funny. They're professionals."

"The sniper who killed your father?"

"He's just a little piece of it. He's working for someone else. Someone called the shot, someone laid it out, someone put it together very tight and solid."

"How do you even know know there was a sniper?" Russ finally asked. there was a sniper?" Russ finally asked.

"It started with the bullet weights," said Bob darkly, as though he hated to explain to an idiot. "They recovered three bullets from my father. Two were 130 grains. One was 110 grains. The 130-grainers were clearly from Jimmy's .38 Super. But the 110? It's possible a third 130-grainer hit him and broke apart and only 110 grains' worth was recovered, but the goddamned list didn't say nothing about that. So that gets me thinking: where the hell does a 110-grain bullet come from? And what is is a 110-grain bullet? Do you know?" a 110-grain bullet? Do you know?"

"No."

"Your father would."

"Fuck him."

"It's a carbine bullet. M-1 carbine, handy little job they used in World War II. Underpowered, but sweet-handling."

"Okay. So? What would the significance of that be?"

"I'll tell you when I'm ready. The next thing was the grocery store job. Forget why. Don't worry about why. Just look at the job: too clever. The right grocery store, the right time of day, very professional. Jimmy was a small-potatoes car thief. How'd he figure on that so quickly?"

Russ said nothing.

"Then the getaway. Even you got that one. How'd they get sixty miles south, through all them roadblocks? You could write it off to luck, I suppose, unless you looked at it carefully. They had a lot of other other luck that day too. How'd they get so damned lucky? On the other hand, it wouldn't be a thing to load that car in a semi and haul it down here. You'd sail through. Trucks sail through all the time." luck that day too. How'd they get so damned lucky? On the other hand, it wouldn't be a thing to load that car in a semi and haul it down here. You'd sail through. Trucks sail through all the time."

Russ said nothing.

"The .38 Super. It's a pro's gun, a criminal's gun. It's a man-killer. Bank boys love them, mob hitters, that kind of thing. Seems very goddamned odd the best man-shooter in the world just happens to show up in Jimmy Pye's hands the day he gits out of jail."

Russ nodded.

"Then the shooting site," Bob said. "I'm a professional shooter. I kill people for a living, or at least I did. And if I'm setting up a shot, that's how I'd do it. You have to be high, because the corn gets in the way of a level shot. He's in the trees, maybe a hundred yards away, in a stand. His job is to watch. The setup is to have Jimmy Pye kill my father with the .38 Super. But whoever's pulling the strings, he has to worry if Jimmy's quite the man for the job. And Jimmy wasn't. So there has to be another guy there, just in case. Shooting slightly downhill at a sitting target on a windless night. It was an easy shot," said Bob.

"It was at night. It was at night!!" It was at night!!" shouted Russ. "Could he see in the dark?" shouted Russ. "Could he see in the dark?"

"Yes, he could," said Bob. "That's why he was using the carbine and not a ballistically better weapon. Remember the rattlesnake?"

"The snake?" Why did this strike a note of familiarity with Russ? Who had spoken of snakes? But then, yes, he remembered. The old man had mentioned somebody named Mac Jimson shooting a snake on the road. He said he'd never seen anything like it.

"Snakes are cold-blooded night hunters, but they have some advantages," Bob explained. "They're sensitive to heat. That's how they hunt. They're sensitive to infrared radiation, in other words."

"I don't-"

"Infrared," Bob said. "Black light."

Russ swallowed. Infrared? Black light?

"Infra is light below the visible spectrum, the light of heat. It has certain military applications. If you radiate heat, you radiate light in that wavelength and you have an electronic device that can amplify it, you can see in the dark. Or you can put out a beam in that wavelength and you can see it in such a device. Ours was called the M-3 sniperscope, pretty much state-of-the-art in 1955. It was a scope and an infrared spotlight mounted on a carbine. Worked best on clear, dark nights. He puts out a beam. He watches my daddy in that beam. My daddy never knows a thing. One shot. Only the snake knew. It felt the heat; it has pit organs in its skin, heat receptors, and when the light came onto it, it stirred, rattled. Then it did what a hunter would do. It went toward toward the source of the infrared. That's why it crossed the road, no matter all the cops. It was hunting the sniper." the source of the infrared. That's why it crossed the road, no matter all the cops. It was hunting the sniper."

"But you can't know know," said Russ. "It's all abstract theory. There's no real proof."

"Yes, there is," said Bob. "The bullet hole in my father's chest. It was .311 of an inch, which is the diameter, with impact beveling, that an M-l carbine bullet would make. Jimmy had a .38 Super. Its diameter would be a little more than .357. Bub had a .44 Special, which hadn't been fired. My father was was killed in the dead of night by a .30 carbine bullet." killed in the dead of night by a .30 carbine bullet."

"Jesus," said Russ.

"You see the whole thing was about killing my father. I don't know why. My father must have known known something, but there's nothing in his behavior that last week to suggest anything unusual was going on. But these guys maneuvered very cleverly. Stop and think: They investigated Earl and found his weakness, his soft heart for a white trashy punk named Jimmy Pye. They got to Jimmy in jail, made him some kind of offer so good he had to take it and sell out everything he had. They set up a grocery store job guaranteed to make Jimmy famous, even to the little bit about him stopping for a hamburger! They moved him downstate; he got in contact with Daddy to surrender. They had access to a state-of-the-art piece of hardware and a military shooter who knew what the hell he was doing, just in case. Thorough, professional, very well thought out, all contingencies covered. All to kill one little state trooper sergeant in rural Arkansas in a way that would appear to be open-and-shut. Put the body in the grave, say the prayers and walk away from it." something, but there's nothing in his behavior that last week to suggest anything unusual was going on. But these guys maneuvered very cleverly. Stop and think: They investigated Earl and found his weakness, his soft heart for a white trashy punk named Jimmy Pye. They got to Jimmy in jail, made him some kind of offer so good he had to take it and sell out everything he had. They set up a grocery store job guaranteed to make Jimmy famous, even to the little bit about him stopping for a hamburger! They moved him downstate; he got in contact with Daddy to surrender. They had access to a state-of-the-art piece of hardware and a military shooter who knew what the hell he was doing, just in case. Thorough, professional, very well thought out, all contingencies covered. All to kill one little state trooper sergeant in rural Arkansas in a way that would appear to be open-and-shut. Put the body in the grave, say the prayers and walk away from it."

Russ said, "And it's still going on. The exchanged headstones. Duane Peck."

"Yes, it is."

He nodded.

"Only the snake knew," repeated Bob. "It was hunting the sniper. Now I am."

It came down to a telephone. There was no telephone at Bob's trailer so after he and Russ ate and changed and Bob locked the Ruger and its ammunition in the Tuf-Box bolted across the back of his truck, they got in and headed not into town but to the Days Inn, where Bob rented a room-for its phone and its privacy.

Jorge, leading a convoy of hitters, got to Bob's trailer forty minutes after they left. The truck was not in sight.

"Goddamn," he said.

He went back to the men in his unit. He left one man in the trees across from the trailer with a pair of binoculars and a phone; he assigned the remaining vehicles to begin to patrol on preselected routes in Blue Eye and greater Polk County, in search of the truck, a green Dodge, one unpainted fender, Arizona plates SCH 2332. The instructions were simple. They weren't to make contact or even follow. Instead, they were to phone in; Jorge himself, with telephone consultations with the boss, would try and determine where Bob was headed. The idea was to set the ambush well in advance and spring it with the whole team, in the coordinated way they had agreed upon.

Unawares, Bob started his hunt with a call to the Pentagon, Department of the Army, Archives Division, Sergeant Major Norman Jenks.

"Jenks."

"Say, Norman."

"Bob Lee, you old coot! What the hell, you still kicking around?"

"I seem to be."

The old sergeant, who'd first met on Bob's second tour when he led recons up near Cambodia while assigned to SOG and Jenks had been S-2 staff, chatted for a bit in the profane language of retired senior NCOs. But eventually Bob got to it.

"Need a favor."

"Name it, Coot. If I can do it, I'll do it. I'm too old for them to do anything to me now."

"And too top-heavy," sergeantspeak for having won too many combat decorations.

"Yeah, well," said Jenks. "Go ahead, pard. Shoot."

"You remember you guys had a gadget called a goddamned Set No. 1/M3 20,000 Volt?"

"That piece of shit? My first tour the ARVNs were using 'em. They were old then, and they was supposed to be fungus-proofed but whoever said they was never saw the fungus in Nam. That shit'd eat you for lunch!"

"Yeah, it was old by the sixties."

"It was really World War II vintage. Based on some piece of German gear an OSS team brought back after the war, as I recall."

"Well, anyway, I'm looking at the year 1955. Suppose a fellow had a need to use a night-vision setup in 1955 and he was in West Arkansas. How'd he get a hold of one? Where'd they be? Were they issued widely to troops? Would they have been, say, up at Campbell with the 101st Airborne? Would they have been at Bragg with the 82nd? Or maybe they were up at that ballistics development lab in Rhode Island? I'm just trying to get a feel for how common they was and how close to West Arkansas. And who was their expert? Who advocated them? Who trained on them and knew them? My feeling is, you couldn't become proficient without training."

"You couldn't. It was like looking into an aquarium. The gooks never did figure it out. Anyhow, when do you need this by?"

"If it came yesterday, I'd be late."

"Damn, Bob, what the hell this all about?"

"It's a deal I'm working on with a writer."

"Oh, a book! It'll be a best-seller, I can guarantee you. You gonna tell him about An Loc?"

"I might."

"Okay, I got a light schedule today and a newbie spec 4 just assigned; I'll get this boy right on it. Number?"

Bob gave him the number.

"You hang tight. I'll see what we can dig up."

He hung up.

"Now what?" said Russ.