EPILOGUE

37

Gelin, North Dakota

Eight Months Later

I’m in the armchair by the window, trying to figure out the Image Challenge in the New England Journal, when the first bullet hits the glass. The image is of two hands with actual horns growing out of them.^[72] Thanks to the pressure switch under the chair, the lights are off by the time I reach the floor.

The second shot sprays a small amount of glass into the room, which means the sniper’s using something heavier than I expected—a Steyr .50, maybe, like Austria sells to Iran. Since by “glass,” obviously, I mean sixty-six-millimeter Kevenex laminate mounted on shock absorbers.

The window’s doomed. Fine with me. I’m already crawling fast along the line of luminescent iron oxide tape that runs across the floor from the chair to the trapdoor. And the bullets can only come in straight-on, since what look like venetian blinds are actually steel slats anchored into the floor and the ceiling. They’re meant to force snipers to use the cover spots I set up for them on the bluffs facing the house. They appear to be doing that.

I slide down through the trap and close the door, which is from a safe by Nationwide that’s rated for light-aircraft impact and ten hours of chemical-fueled fire. Then I get on the sled.

The cement tunnel that Rec Bill’s allegedly untraceable construction company backhoed for me is two hundred yards long: about thirty seconds of sled time. The bunker at the far end is so cramped that my poster of Geronimo stretches from the ceiling to the floor.

I close the second hatch and turn on the strip to the monitors.

Both snipers are where they should be. Six other paramilitary geeks are coming toward the house from the “shoulder” directions, to stay out of the line of their own sniper fire as long as possible. There may be more, but the companies that train these losers favor groups of eight, because that’s the size of a typical Navy SEAL “boat team” and because any more than that tend to get in each other’s way. And to get into fights with each other. People become hitmen for a variety of reasons—true sociopathy, military training paired with a willingness to do anything for money, a pathological need to feel like James Bond—but social skills aren’t high on the list.

On the broad-spectrum monitor I can see they’re wearing infrared chemlights on lariats to differentiate themselves from the target.^[73] That’s okay. I’ve got a bucket of chemlights next to the can of UV-reflecting spray paint I thought they might use to mark themselves instead. Since they didn’t, I go ahead and put on my assault vest.

The best news, by far, is the helicopter. It’s moving into place right over the house, clear on the monitor, positioned to have a shot at me if I go out any of the doors. Helicopters, and people who can fly them, are expensive. And the house is packed with easily enough TATP to take it down.

It’s still too early for that, though. Or even for blowing the sniper positions. The paramilitary geeks haven’t tripped any of the anti-personnel mines yet. Once they do, I’ll flip the rest of the switches with one hand, then go outside and hunt down the stragglers. After, naturally, frying out their night-vision goggles with the various exotic-spectrum lamps I’ve put in the trees.

It’s likely to be a massacre, which is unfortunate. Then again, I didn’t ask anybody to come here. All I did was apply for a notary public license under a false name but with my real thumbprint and this address, something felons sometimes do to get gun licenses. At the time, I worried it might be too subtle.

Are the things I’m about to do justified? Who knows? If you count Teng, McQuillen’s scheme killed five people. My own trip to Minnesota left Dylan Arntz, four of Debbie Schneke’s Boys, and the eight guys sent by Locano dead—and almost killed Violet Hurst, Sheriff Albin, Debbie Schneke herself, and Albin’s deputy. My fault, yes, for getting involved, but the only way to keep something like that from happening again is to either keep running—meaning never work as a doctor under any name, stay out of public view, don’t associate with anyone, and hope I get a lot luckier than last time—or fight back. Hurt the mob so badly they realize David Locano’s vendetta isn’t worth pursuing. Should I wait until I’m in a corner? Maybe I already am. Corners tend to be where you imagine them.

What argues against my doing this, I know—besides the fact that I’ve just spent eleven years trying not to kill people, mostly successfully, and to make up for having done so in the past—is how enjoyable it’s likely to be. How enjoyable it already is.

The skills I’m about to unleash are things to be ashamed of, and I am ashamed of them. They’re also fun as fuck to use, and pretending otherwise won’t change what’s about to happen.

I put my hand on the switches.

I mean, why lie?