Gun Work

“They’re hunting us,” said Armand. “We’re not as smart or cool as we thought we were. We destroyed their operation in Mexico and now the sonofabitch is going to pick us off locally. The only reason he missed you is because you’ve spent so much time staking out the hotel. Me, I can’t figure. We might walk out of here and right into a gunsight.”

“I know where he is,” said Barney.

“Then we take him. Sudden death overtime.” Armand nailed his friend eye-to-eye. “I know what you’re going to try to sell me. You’re going to say the hunt is over, that this isn’t Mexico, that it’s your problem. Then, when I don’t believe that, you’re going to say it’s not worth it. They hired a guy to kill you in Mexico when you were slightly less mobile than a rutabaga, and they’re going to keep hiring soldiers until we are dust. You and me are the same, now — our dead friend in the drawer there is proof positive.”

“I was going to suggest you go hole up with your brother in Cincinnati until the gunsmoke clears.”

“Let history pass me by? Fuck that.”

Sirius’ dead, closed eyes offered them no counsel. No one else was present to waste time by suggesting maybe it was all an accident, random, unrelated, a tragedy, sure, but nothing more.

“You’ve got the bloodlust, partner,” Armand said. “Keep it boiling and don’t let it blind you to tactical reality.”

“Armand,” Barney said. “I let one go in New York City. I shouldn’t have. I let one go in Mexico and I shouldn’t have. But each one was a negotiative play for a bigger target. It’s me that Tannenhauser wants; let me take the risk. I don’t want you getting waxed now that Karlov and Sirius are gone.”

“I’m a big boy,” said Armand. “Practically a grownup.” He waited a beat. Barney was not smiling. “All or nothing.”

They left the morgue. No place was safe. The person who had killed Sirius had walked right up to him, put a pistol to his temple, and fired.

Barney flexed his hands, trying to remember what they had looked like when they were whole.

“You’re right. This isn’t over until they’re all gone.” Grimly he thought, Or we are.

Their entire arsenal — what they had not disposed of in Mexico — was trapped at the gun range, inaccessible. It was tainted ground until they were clear. Barney had his Super .40 and Armand had his Ruger, end of story. It would be so easy to hit the freeway and keep on driving. This was not home anymore.

“See, now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” said Armand, slapping his friend on the shoulder.

“We just jump in the car, drive to the hotel, kill some people and then have a steak dinner?”

Armand remote-fobbed the doors on his ride, a low, gorgeous Cadillac DTS V-8 in pewter. “No. We jump in the car, drive to the hotel, smoke the snake-in-the-grass motherfuckers that subtracted Sirius from our lives, and then go have a steak dinner. Chez Jay’s. I’ll buy. Our dead buddy in there needs one toast at least.”

Yes. At least. At least in a couple of hours it would all be done...

Barney was nearly at peace with that brutal truth when Armand grinned at him over the roof of the car. Then everything behind Armand’s ears burst toward Barney in a macerated mist of red blood, white bone, gray brains.

Barney walloped his chin on the car roof in his hurry to hit the deck, saturated in the remains of the back of Armand’s head. Armand collapsed in a boneless tumble. Two seconds ago, this had not happened yet.

Another .338 Lapua round pierced the door on Armand’s side and exited through Barney’s door three inches from his head. It was a flat trajectory. The shooter was so far away that the echo of distant report came after the bullet had struck. These were boat-tailed, full metal jacketed military rounds, Super Magnums with a muzzle energy of nearly five thousand foot-pounds. This was the sort of death you got at the hands of an expert with a four thousand-dollar rifle and painfully precise optics. The guy could be 1500 meters away. Anywhere.

Barney had about two feet of clearance he was pretty sure the shooter could not aim below. Clawing his own gun out would have been pointless. This was surgical, dispassionate, the slaughter of farm animals.

He crawled on his belly toward a palm tree planter made out of UltraCal while several more rounds chopped and channeled Armand’s car. It was absurdly quiet. There was a good chance the sniper had not seen him move.

Barney actually heard the whine of the incoming slug cutting air. A cloud of gasified fiber turned the air yellow and the palm tree fell over like a British butler, bowing.

Even if he could make it back to the car, what was the point? There was probably a bullet deep in the engine block by now.

Sirius had been killed at the gun range, and the enemy had figured Barney and Armand would come to the morgue. The question that might save Barney’s life was: Had the sniper seen Barney’s car?