The target zone, 1,847.5 yards out
There it is,” he said.
It was a building new to this ancient neighborhood, glassy and still clean, and full of optimism, when around it were so much blight, sadness, desolation, and dismay.
It was night in the city. In this far zone, separated by a river from the storied downtown, there wasn’t much in the way of nightlife, street activity, vibrancy. In fact, the glory of the building had exactly the opposite effect that its designers had hoped for. Instead of livening up the street, by contrast it pointed out the tragedy of urban decay that surrounded it. Maybe it was a new start, maybe it too would lose its glamour and go the way of the sad brick and peeling paint that had claimed all the other structures. Who could know?
“Is our trip over?” asked Alberto.
“No. We will make a circuit of the block, then head out, find someplace to put up and stay the night.”
It had been a long, dull trip across the United States. There wasn’t much to see from interstates at night, and they never entered cities, only the fringes, staying in cut-rate motels, eating fast food picked up from drive-thru windows. So to Juba, America was a blur of lights smeared by night, neon-basted plastic eat joints, and the ever-present cop fear. The last was misplaced, as, over the week of travel, no cop had paid them the slightest attention. Now, finally, chunk by chunk, five miles under the speed limit the whole way, they were here.
“Tomorrow,” continued Juba, “you will take public transportation here and spend three hours in the neighborhood. Your job is to look for signs of police or FBI observation. Maybe, somehow, they already know, maybe they are just waiting. Maybe Bobleeswagger has figured it out and he’s up there, waiting for me to walk into his trap.”
“I doubt it. It seems to me you have accomplished the impossible. You have been trapped three, four times, have escaped each time, and have left behind exactly nothing. They could know nothing. Menendez knew nothing, not that he could have told anyone anyhow, not with his brains on the ceiling.”
Juba nodded. “We know that they have studied the ranch, studied the remaining evidence. They have found the shooting site, measured the distance to my targets, examined my shop, seen my dies, my powders, the bullets I acquired. They know what rifle I am shooting.”
“What can they know from all that? Nothing, it seems to me.”
“They know the range, they know that I will shoot soon, because my data is only good as long as the weather here is similar to the weather on the ranch. They will try to infer from that my target, my shooting site, and my schedule. Their computers will help them in all this, which is my biggest fear. A computer could put something together in a second that no human could in a century. That is why Bobleeswagger could conceivably be up there, waiting.”
“He is just a man. And not as good a one as you.”
“Maybe. But to underestimate him is to court catastrophe.”
Juba drove around the building, which occupied a whole block. He could see nothing that indicated observation. Other than a random police car manned by two listless officers, he saw no signs of authority.
“Maybe drive around again?” asked Alberto. “Just in case?”
“No,” said Juba. “You are not thinking like a pursued man. What if, unknown to us, there have been burglaries in the area. So those two sleepy policemen aren’t as sleepy as they seem. Instead, they are carefully watching for cars that are performing reconnaissance for an upcoming robbery: orbiting blocks, parking and watching, hanging out in nearby stores. If they see a vehicle, sirens sound, and other cars arrive out of nowhere in seconds. No rifle, but they find your little bag of diamonds and rubies from the rifle, they check the wires and see that the authorities are desperately searching for two ‘Arabic-looking’ men our age, and, by morning, I am on a plane to a country I’ve never heard of where certain men with blowtorches await. You see, you must account for the unaccountable as well.”
“You must be the most careful man who ever lived,” said Alberto.
The next day, Alberto took the subway to the area, spent time in a coffee shop, had lunch at a sandwich shop, bought a T-shirt and a ball cap at a souvenir shop, and, through it all, kept his eyes open for unmarked sedans sitting idly by, dull, thick men on the lookout, chats into radio microphones, odd rendezvous where one unmarked car pulled out to be replaced by another. Of those phenomena, as charted out for him by Juba, he saw nothing.
Back in the low-rent suburban motel, he said, “I saw no movement, no action, no sign. The building is completely unguarded and unobserved. I went into the lobby and found it without attention. I watched the people come and go. They were black, most of them. It is safe, I tell you.”
“Tomorrow, you will go to one of those big stores and buy a disposable phone. I will make one call on it and it will be destroyed. The chances of an intercept are minimal, but we will take all precautions. If I am satisfied that all is well, I will arrange to take delivery of the key that admits me to a certain apartment in the building, and then I am where I must be. You and your little bag of diamonds and your junky little car—you will be free to go.”
“I could stay,” said Alberto. “I feel now as though this mission, whatever it is, is my mission.”
“No, go far away. Return to your life. Or buy a new one, if you want. Do not get involved in cartel affairs—”
“I wasn’t, to begin with. They dragooned me. I am lucky to be alive.”
“Yes, you are. So am I. You go, you disappear. If I am successful, you will read about it in the newspapers. If I am not, you will not hear a thing. If you hear nothing, tragedy has occurred.”
“Is there a date for all of this?”
“Yes, but I cannot tell you. You see why. Still playing against the tiny chance that somehow you’ll end up in deep conversation with the FBI. They’ll have the rubber hose, and you’ll want to cooperate.”
“I would die first.”
“Everybody says that. But the hose always wins. The only issue is, how quickly.”