Flashback

“Then you need to remember that the prime minister and members of the National Diet are nobodies. Heads of these corporate-alliance keiretsu like Hiroshi Nakamura, who also head up their own family monopolies called zaibatsu that have made such a comeback, all want to be Shogun of the new Southeast Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere that the Japs are carving out of China and the rest of Asia. Being an Advisor to America the way Nakamura is means that he’s one of the top players in that feudal nightmare that these Nipponese samurai-businessmen call a culture. Assassination has always been fair game between these keiretsu and zaibatsu. You really don’t want to get involved in their wars, Nick.”

He looked up at her. They were so close that he could smell the subtle fragrance that she’d worn when they were partners working out of the 16th Street house. “I have to get involved in it, K.T. If there’s the slightest chance that Dara was involved, I have to be, too.”

K. T. Lincoln straightened up and seemed to be looking at the blank wall behind the booth. But she didn’t leave. After a few seconds, she said, “Do you know why I’m part of the tiny five percent of Americans who’ve never once tried flashback, Nick?”

“You’re Amish?”

His former partner didn’t smile. “No, it’s because I already have too many important dead that I’d spend most of my time visiting in the haze of that motherfucking drug. I read in a report that you saw that Google punk Derek Dean yesterday. So you know how sick this habit of going to live that false life with the dead is, Nick. Every hour under the flash is an hour lost from your real life forever.”

Nick looked at her without blinking. When he did speak, his voice was firm, emotionless. “What real life, K.T.?”

She closed her eyes for a second, then turned to leave but paused, speaking over her shoulder. “Be careful at Coors Field this afternoon. The department has info that this Hideki Sato you chose as your sniper-second is one of these zaibatsu assassins we were talking about.”

“Good,” said Nick. “Then he should be able to shoot straight. Call me as soon as you have something and we’ll meet again.”

Lieutenant Lincoln walked out of the diner with the same confident, aggressive strides she’d used to enter.

No visitor went into Coors Field armed, so Nick spent more than a half hour donning the Kevlar-Plus armor that went under his street clothes and up and over his neck and head like an overlappingly scaled and lightweight metal-ballistic-cloth balaclava. Nick’s face was exposed, so an inmate could always shoot him there—and there were guns as well as shivs, cleavers, spears, spikes, saps, and full-scale combat knives in the prison called Coors Field—but the K-Plus would turn away most blades and other cutting edges and, with luck, allow his sniper-second to step in.

But a long blade in the eye socket, struck in with lightning speed and an inmate’s Body Nazi–exercised and honed muscle, would serve as well as any bullet. These hard cases in Coors Field were the fittest and strongest men in the state of Colorado.

“Only men here?” asked Sato. Warden Bill Polansky and head guard and chief of the sniper squad Paul Campos were there watching Nick armor up. Polansky was the kind of quiet but solid midlevel administrator who, if he were in public education, would either be superintendent by the time he was forty-five or ready to blow his brains out.

Campos—with his head of silver, short-cropped curls and deep-water tan—was a man who’d blow any other man’s brains out before his own. And he’d do the job not happily but with absolute efficiency.

“Only men,” said Warden Polansky. “We have no indoor cells here except the emergency isolation holding cells under the stands. Women are housed in the nearby ex–Pepsi Center.”

“I used to watch the Nuggets and Avalanche play there,” Campos said. “And I heard Bruce Springsteen there once. Are you familiar with the rifle, Mr. Sato?”

Sato grunted and nodded.

Busy fitting the body armor over his genitals, Nick looked at the unloaded rifle that Sato was hefting. It was a basic M40A6 bolt-action sniper rifle of the sort the U.S. Marines still used. Nick could see that it had a five-round detachable box magazine. The range in Coors Field was relatively short—about one hundred eighty meters maximum—so it made sense that the prison snipers used the lighter 7.62 × 51mm former NATO cartridges rather than heavy, armor-piercing .50-caliber models.

Campos tapped the scope. “A modified Schmidt and Bender 3 – 12 × 50 Police Marksman II L with illuminated reticle. Daytime scope. You’ll probably be shooting into shadow under the second deck—that’s where D. Nigger Brown lives—but this will gather enough light to give you a clear shot, even if it gets cloudy.” Campos paused. “Have you used this particular weapon before, sir?”

“Yes, I have,” said Sato. He set the long gun down on its bipod on the table.