Brian Garfield

The Marksman

By Way of Introduction…

This story was written in the mid-1980s as an original screenplay. The producer to whom it was delivered sent back a note indicating his disappointment with the script. He wrote, “The story is too old-fashioned. It has a beginning, a middle and an end.” I’m not making that up. In that estimable gentleman’s honor, I have divided this narrative version of the story into three acts, labeled — well, you’ve already figured that one out.

The organization that was to have filmed this one tumbled into Ozymandian ruins, like most independent movie companies, and Marksman went to a shelf in my house where, like most unfilmed scripts, it remained unread by anyone except a producer and the author’s agent and the author’s wife.

In its original form the script is 105 pages in length. It would have made for a movie about 95 minutes long; but a screenplay contains a great deal of white space. It is in fact no longer than a novelette, or extended short story. A screenplay is nothing more than a sheet of instructions for filmmakers and actors to keep at hand while they assemble their movie out of such components as they may have gathered. Often it’s true that the tricks attributed by cineaste critics to “marvelous directorial touches” are in fact specified clearly in a writer’s screenplay before a director ever gets near the picture; but generally speaking, a screenplay does not (or at least should not) tell directors how to direct, actors how to act, cinematographers how to photograph, or audiences how to feel. The screenplay simply tells us what happens. It’s up to the actors, the director, the photographers and the sound team, the editors and the audience to interpret these happenings. The writer creates the story, but everyone has to bring something to it — the writer alone does not make a movie unless he also happens to be producer, director, cast and crew.

Screenwriting Rule One: A script is a blueprint for illusion, and its every sentence must meet one of two criteria — it must be dialogue, or it must begin figuratively with the words “we see” or the words “we hear”.

If the camera can’t see it or the microphone can’t hear it, then it cannot be filmed, and therefore it doesn’t belong in the screenplay.

In preparing this story for publication in narrative form, I’ve eliminated the abbreviations and jargon that may make screenplays annoying or confusing. (How many readers can be expected to know that because of an obscure Hungarian director’s pronunciation in the 1930s, “MOS” means “Mit-Out Sound,” which is filmese for “without sound” or “silent”?) I’ve added bits and pieces in order to clarify events — a few lines or words here and there, in the effort to make it readable. But I have not tried to disguise its origins; it remains quite staccato. In movies people rarely talk in long paragraphs — everything’s a one-liner. It’s best to leave those essences alone.

I think most screenplays that are padded into novels turn out to be anemic novels at best; a movie script is a simplified form of storytelling because it is external — it cannot go inside a character and feel what that character feels, nor can it deal very effectively with ideas of any complexity.

This was not yet a shooting script; it was a second or perhaps third draft, and because of minor revisions it contained a few loose threads, unnecessary characters and incomplete thoughts. Those probably would have been caught by the writer on the next go-round, or by a director or producer, or at least by a script supervisor on the set. In the present situation, however, if the reader should chance upon an incongruity or mistake, please blame it not on the writer — never on the writer! — but on the Optical-Character-Recognition scanner that rendered the script into computer-editable form.

The Marksman is an action-suspense story, in which changes in the main character are triggered by violent events. It contains very short scenes and jump-cuts; I haven’t tried to smooth them over. It does not confine itself to the viewpoint of any single character in a scene, as narrative fiction ought to do. It makes leaps in logic, understanding that actors can bridge those by creating appropriate shifts in the ways their characters change their minds about one another and therefore change the ways they behave with one another. It asks the reader to become camera and microphone — to imagine and visualize the people and events that are depicted in blueprint form — and it provides plenty of leeway for the stunt wranglers and FX enthusiasts who have become the tail that wags the dog of commercial cinematic storytelling. All this may make more work for the reader; I hope it does not harm the story.

— Brian Garfield

Los Angeles: October 2002

A Beginning…

On a sagging cot in a flyspecked room in an inner-city flophouse, a man tosses and turns. In his sleep he’s hearing a racket of combat — explosions, automatic weapons, screams. Against his eyelids images flash like the intermittent flare of artillery on a battlefield at night.

He pushes the half-awake nightmare away. The effort is enough to exhaust him. After a few moments his breathing steadies and he rises in a sweat, disoriented for a moment before he recognizes his drab surroundings.

He hasn’t shaved in a while. His brown hair is stringy. There’s a wicked long scar across his temple; the old wound makes his head ache — makes him wince when he bends over to get into his rumpled old clothes.

C. W. Radford — that’s his name. He’s got the remains of a good constitution but he looks barely one step up from a homeless tramp. The jeans and work-shirt are threadbare. His shoes are utterly worn out. He laces them up with bovine listlessness. The headache makes him dizzy.

In the rickety bedside drawer is a small case that was designed to be a diabetic’s insulin kit — its ersatz leather worn away at the corners now, cardboard showing through the edges. He flips open its lid on loose hinges to expose the syringe within, and the small rubber-topped bottle with its prescription label: “every four hours as needed for pain.”

Radford draws liquid into the syringe and injects himself with its needle.

Radford trudges across a filthy street in a bitterly silent part of the city — beat-up cars and derelicts human and inanimate. The corner is dominated by an all-night joint, Charlie’s Cafe — in its original incarnation a drive-in burger joint; subsequently expanded to a quarter-block sprawl of counters and Naugahyde booths, all of it much the worse for wear now — neon beer ads in the windows.

A dealer, wearing a wild shock of red hair and clothed in what used to be combat fatigues, transacts business with a skinny teenage girl. Radford glances at the two of them, shifts his glance away and continues walking toward Charlie’s Cafe.

With the deftness of a sleight-of-hand artist the dealer pockets the girl’s money, looks warily around and slips her a tiny package. When she hurries away, the dealer sizes up Radford with a bellicose challenge but Radford shuffles past, appearing to ignore him.

Reflections glitter off the license plate on a parked van — 7734 OL — and above the plate two men sitting in the van watch Radford. They both wear shirts, no jackets; collars unbuttoned, ties at half mast. The guy in the passenger seat is polished, neat, fortyish and smoking a cigarillo. Next to him the driver bats ineffectually at the smoke. This driver is big, tough, a body-builder. The van is a custom camping job — drapes etc.

It would appear that Radford gives them no more attention than he gave the redheaded dealer.

The two guys in the van watch while Radford approaches the side door of the cafe. The guy with the cigarillo has a file-folder open in his hand; in it is a printout dossier — he squints against the curling smoke to see a military mug-shot photo of a younger, neater Radford clipped to the file.

Radford climbs up onto the curb as if it’s only another step half way along a wearisome journey up a mountain-high pyramid. As he turns painfully toward the door of the cafe, a young dude comes rushing out of the alley, flailing an expensive attaché case in one hand and a heavy Glock automatic pistol in the other.

The dude is immaculate in a flashy tailored suit — the uniform of a drug wholesaler or a pimp, or both — but he’s hardly more than a child: a teenage kid trying to look like a big shot.

Radford stops. The dude is right in front of him, arm’s length. He’s laughing hysterically but behind the laughter the dude is able to make an instantaneous judgment: he dismisses Radford and wheels, grinning, laughing, and aims his automatic back at the alley. He’s wild: spaced out.

A pursuing policeman runs into sight — sees the dude; reacts, skids, ducks, and the dude’s shot goes wild overhead.

A lot of noise now, people dodging to cover and shouting inarticulate warnings — the two guys in the van dive beneath their dashboard out of sight and the dealer flattens himself back against a wall as if trying to press himself back through it into invisibility, and Radford stands bolt still.

The dude laughs on, full of wild bravado. He is trying to steady himself to take aim on the policeman when the sound of screeching tires brings his head whipping around in time to see a squad car squealing to a slithery stop behind him.

The dude’s gun swivels to meet the new challenge as two cops pop open the doors of their unit and brace their weapons across the tops of door and car, aiming at the dude.

One cop says, “Drop the gun.”

The other gestures. “On your knees, asshole. And then on your face. Now.”

Radford stands unmoving, without expression, while across the street the redheaded dealer slides around a corner like an eel and disappears. Radford appears to pay more attention to that than to the confrontation between dude and cops.

“Drop it, asshole!”

Now there’s the policeman at the corner — the one who was chasing the dude on foot — and there’s the pair of cops at the car, and there’s the dude, and they’ve all got their handguns up but the dude can’t quite decide which of them to aim at and he swings his pistol back and forth, first one cop and then another, and presently he stops with his finger whitening on the trigger and the muzzle of the Glock leveled toward Radford’s scarred forehead.

Radford faces the gun with utter indifference.

The cops hesitate, probably fearful that any move could get the bystander shot dead.

The dude keeps laughing. His head whips around in a frantic effort to keep all the cops in view. His arm wavers; he starts to drop into a crouch and his automatic goes off—

The bullet unzips a crease in the pavement within an inch of Radford’s foot.

Radford doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t move at all.

Within a single broken instant of time all three cops fire simultaneously, and the dude is physically blasted off his feet by the combined firepower. The bullets drive him down hard…

In the wake of it, the echoes of the gunshots fade into a stunning silence.

In the parked van the two guys sit up and appraise the situation with scientific interest.

From their various directions the three cops cautiously approach the dude. He lies broken across the curb. Guns out, two of the cops walk past Radford with only a glance; they’re intent on the dude, whose brains are all over the sidewalk. One of the cops mutters dispassionately, “Angel dust. Laughing his head off.”

His partner says, “Where’s it say a spaced-out maniac can’t have a sense of humor?”

Radford trudges to the side door of the cafe as if there’d been no interruption. He knocks.

One of the cops is saying, “Get Forensics.”

Charlie the cook, who owns the cafe, opens the door from inside and stands in his apron, peering out cautiously. Charlie has a prosthesis in place of one hand. He recognizes Radford — they go back a long way together — admits him.

The two guys in the van consult rapidly and the driver turns the key and crams it roughly into gear. The van lurches. The passenger’s voice is pained: “Hey — Easy with my van.”

One of the cops is calling in on his car radio. The partner is swiveling full-circle on his heels, gun half raised, waiting for another shoe to drop. The foot-patrol cop strides across to the dude and kicks open the attache case that the dude dropped. He looks dryly at the dead dude. “You have the right to remain silent.”

Charlie the cook holds the door open. Several sleazeball waiters trail tentatively out to study the carnage.

Radford moves past them and goes inside. He pulls down an apron off a peg, ties it on without hurry and proceeds to stand all alone washing dishes.

Later in the day Radford, still in his apron, swabs the floor. Two or three scuzzy waiters move past him, carrying trays in and out. Cooks and other kitchen staff are at work — the place is busy.

Radford keeps to himself, talks to no one, looks at no one. A beer-bellied bruiser named Don — pack-leader of the waiters — sneers at Radford. Other kitchen staff are watching. Knowing he has an audience, Don picks up an open can of tomato juice, then steps on Radford’s mop, stopping it. Radford just looks at him. Don deliberately pours tomato juice on the floor. No reaction; Radford merely begins to mop it up.

“D’you used to mop up for the I-raqis like that?”

Don reaches for the side of Radford’s waistband, pulls it out past the apron and pours tomato juice inside the front of Radford’s pants. Radford pulls away but does not fight.

Don shouts at him — “What’s with you — fuckin’ coward?” — trying to get a rise out of Radford.

It’s loud in the room but Radford barely hears what Don says; what he hears, interspersed with clatter of dishes and silverware, is the growing sound of explosions and automatic weapons and the dreadful screams of the injured and dying.

Radford picks up a tray of dirty dishes. Don sticks out his foot. Radford can’t see it — the tray blocks his downward view. He trips over Don’s foot. In his head the sound of battle fades as dishes tumble with a loud clatter.

Don waits, taunting, hoping Radford will fight. Don’s one of your martial-arts types and he just knows he can beat up anybody — especially somebody who won’t fight back.

Radford is picking up the scattered dishes. He doesn’t even look up at Don.

Charlie the boss strides across the aisle and grips Don roughly by the arm. “Hey, bozo. Bust my dishes, you pay for ’em… I told you leave him alone.”

Don gives him a look, decides not to make anything of it right now, and walks away.

Charlie helps Radford to his feet. “You got to remember to fight back.”

Radford thinks about it, visibly. He has to marshal the things swimming around in his head before he can formulate an answer. Finally he says, “Don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“C.W., you gotta look out for yourself.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Radford resumes picking up dishes.

Charlie pulls him up straight and makes motions as if dusting him off. “Go get yourself cleaned up.”

At the sink of the tiny employees’ washroom Radford stands in his shorts scrubbing tomato-stain out of his trousers. Then he locks the door. His head aches terribly. He takes that same insulin kit out of a pocket and injects himself with painkiller. He’s hearing again that sound of sporadic combat fire.

He sees a Middle-Eastern town, arid, devastated by war, and a gaunt undernourished teenage girl moving silently through the night, alert, weapon ready, her face lit by sudden distant flashes; we hear continuing sound of combat fire. The girl takes a step forward — steps on a mine — abruptly Radford’s memory explodes in a white flash as the girl disintegrates…

He sees himself, then, watching from up in the gaping skull-like third-story window opening of a bombed-out shell of an apartment house. He holds a ’scoped sniper rifle. He’s very young (22), in camouflage uniform, face blackened, revealing no feelings except fear. Scared… sweating in the bitter cold, frightened, he aims his rifle at something in the distance. He can hear its approach, the Iraqi helicopter, and he squints into the scope, aiming up into the sky — steadies his aim and fires. The recoil rocks his shoulder gently; he’s used to that. When he lowers the rifle, his expression has gone blank — he seems no longer afraid. The sound of the helicopter rotors changes, becomes rattly and uneven, and Radford watches while the machine begins to sway from side to side as if on a pendulum before it shatters against the slope of a jagged rock hillside. The explosion lights up Radford’s face like daylight and he shrinks back into the shadows of the bombed-out building.

…In the cafe bathroom he puts the syringe and bottle away in the case, and pockets the case, and straps on his grease-stained uniform. In his aching head the sound of combat fades. He tries to open the door. It won’t open. Won’t budge. He shoves hard at it. Nothing now, except after a moment he begins to hear men chuckling beyond the door. He kicks the door. The voices outside begin to laugh aloud.

The harder Radford tries to open the door, the louder they laugh.

He feels as if the room is closing in on him…

Outside the door, in the cafe hallway, are grouped several waiters, including Don. They’re the ones who’re laughing. A chair is propped under the door handle, wedging it shut.

Don opens a fuse box on the wall. His finger flips a circuit-breaker from “on” to “off.”

Inside the bathroom Radford is plunged into darkness and panic overtakes him. He thrashes at the jammed door.

Out in the hallway the waiters’ laughter stops abruptly when the door is kicked out in splinters.

Radford comes exploding out through the smashed wreckage.

They gape at him.

In a sweating panic Radford stands panting.

Don backs away in sudden fear.

— And Radford walks away.

The waiters try to laugh again, but it’s uneasy and it trails off…

After nightfall the cafe’s trade changes. More of an upscale crowd now — thrill seekers looking for something they won’t find behind a velvet rope in the more trendy sections.

In a corner booth sit the two guys who earlier were in their van watching Radford on the street. Their names are Conrad and Gootch. Conrad’s the dapper dandy who likes to smoke cigarillos but he can’t smoke inside here so he’s drumming his fingers on the Formica tabletop, an unlit cigarillo between his fingers. He’s watching Radford swab the floor, mopping under tables. Conrad, the body-builder, is facing the other direction, intent on something or someone. Conrad asks, “What you lookin’ at?”

“Curly, Larry and Moe over there.”

Conrad swivels, hikes his arm up over the back of the booth and twists his jaw to look back over his shoulder. He sees three tough-looking punks drinking beer at the counter. “Uh-huh.” He looks at his watch. “You know that’s what I hate about theater. You bust your ass to get there on time and the fuckin’ curtain never goes up when it’s supposed to. Fifteen, twenty minutes later they get all the stragglers seated and some dickhead gets on the mike and says please turn off your fuckin’ cellulars and pagers. Where the hell’s our leading lady tonight?”

Back in a doorway, half hidden in shadow, Don the waiter swigs beer and watches everything.

Now a slim woman enters — attractive, blonde, thirties, well put together and nicely dressed; too sophisticated for this place. She looks around nervously.

Radford glances at the woman, looks away, continues to mop the floor.

Conrad says under his breath, “Curtain going up.”

And now — quickly…

Conrad and Gootch look toward the counter where the three punks sit.

The three punks — Curly, Larry and Moe — drain their beers and get up. Their path toward the exit just happens to take them near the blonde.

Don from his shadowed corner watches everyone.

Curly, the leader of the three, does a take as he play-acts recognizing the blonde.

She doesn’t look at Curly; she’s seen them out of the corner of her eye and she’s alarmed. Abruptly Curly shouts: “Your brother owes me two large.”

The blonde at first doesn’t look at him. Then, startled to realize it was addressed to her, she tries to conceal her fear. “Were you talking to me?”

Curly bellows, “He owes me money!”

Curly jerks the blonde forward roughly, his face an inch from hers.

“Let go!” She looks around frantically for help but there’s only Radford, mopping the floor.

Curly grips the blonde’s throat. She tries to fend him off but Larry grabs her wrists and stands behind her, immobilizing her arms, and Moe moves in close, menacing. The blonde whispers, “Somebody please…”

Curly says, “Let’s take it one more time from the top. Start with where’s your brother at?”

The blonde in terror finally blurts, “I don’t have a brother!”

Radford watches but makes no move.

Curly slaps the woman’s face hard and tightens his hold on her throat. Larry pulls her arms up behind her back. She cries out. Moe kidney-punches her from the side and Curly slams his fist hard into her midriff, doubling her over. “Let’s try one more time.”

The blonde can barely gasp. “What’re you talking about?… Please…”

Moe gets set to hit her again and then suddenly rocks back — something has hit him hard in the back — and as he falls away from the blonde his fall reveals Radford. He’s jabbed Moe with the end of the mop-handle.

Radford says, “Hey man, please.”

The punks react. All three turn on Radford. By the swiftness of their reaction, and the way they suddenly ignore the blonde, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see this whole set-up has been rehearsed. The one they’re really after is Radford.

As the three attack him he stabs the mop handle toward Larry’s eye and it makes Larry flinch away and in the flow of the same motion Radford swings the pole against Curly’s cheek, hard enough to knock the man off his feet, but now Moe has recovered from the kidney punch and he swarms toward Radford and all of a sudden the three of them are on him like bears on a honey pot and the pain in his head is beyond unendurable but still, somehow, moving faster than anyone ought to be able to, Radford protectively pushes the blonde into a booth before he swings to face them and speaks before any of them can nail him:

“Hey, guys, I don’t want to hurt you.”

That provokes Curly’s harsh laugh. They come at Radford and he backs away, looking for a way out, really a coward… And all three punks pile on him, beat on him, lock him in a hold that a crowbar couldn’t pry loose…

Conrad and Gootch are watching with keen interest. They see when Radford knows he can’t get out of it and begins to give in with unhappy resignation.

Conrad speaks under his breath to Gootch: “Now we see if he’s a player.”

The three punks have Radford pinned. His mind is screeching, running off the track now— All of a sudden he’s in a chilly fog as he comes heaving up out of a basement under some derelict building like a monster creature. He’s young, in combat fatigues, hauling his sniper rifle — he tries to slip away in the night but abruptly there’s the gleaming point of a bayonet against the back of his neck and he reacts… turns his head slowly to see a child holding a rifle at the other end of the bayonet. A boy, not more than twelve or thirteen, looking half stoned, wearing wretched street clothes but a soldier’s kepi on his head.

A blank mask descends over young Radford’s expression. With resignation he lifts his hands in surrender.

Curly is whipping toward the blonde’s booth while Larry and Moe keep Radford locked in their grip but now, seeing where Curly’s headed, Radford explodes. He hammers backwards with one heel against somebody’s shin and, with that opening breached, skillfully kicks his way out of their hold and now he goes after the three punks with the silent cold precision of a demolition ball. There’s no question of “fighting fair;” Radford swings a leg toward Curly at the booth, kicks Curly in the groin and flashes around to face the other two. He uses anything as a weapon — steel paper-napkin holder, table, bottle of ketchup, chair, his own hands and feet — this isn’t a neat clean choreographed thing. It’s a brutal fight; Radford fights dirty.

The blonde watches this, wide-eyed. Conrad and Gootch watch with clinical interest. Don the waiter stares, inscrutable. Charlie the owner comes from the kitchen scowling, drawn by the racket; picks up a kitchen knife and comes around the counter lofting his prosthetic hand, but by then the fight is over. Charlie is pleased with him — pleased for him. “O-kay.”

Radford has knocked the living shit out of all three tough guys.

Charlie says, “Finish ’em, C.W. Bust up their kneecaps.”

But the three are down, and Radford backs away.

Curly and Larry painfully pull themselves together and try to rouse the semi-conscious Moe.

Radford hardly even seems to be breathing hard. The scar on his face glistens with sweat.

Don the waiter fades back, disappearing silently.

The blonde seems to be looking for a way to sneak out without being noticed.

Curly and Larry help Moe outside.

Radford watches Conrad and Gootch as they cross to the door and exit.

Outside on the street, the redheaded dealer appears from shadows while Conrad flicks his cigarillo into the gutter; he and Gootch get into their van. This time Conrad takes the wheel (it’s his van). He says to his companion, “That’ll do it. They do a background, they’ll find out he just about beat three guys to death.”

Inside, Radford looks out through the cafe’s big picture window at the three punks who’re staggering away down the sidewalk. His attention is drawn to the van when its engine revs up. What he sees, reflected in window glass, is a puddle behind the van. In the puddle he can see an upside-down backward reflection of the van’s license plate — a reflection within a reflection. The plate number is 7734 OL, and seen upside down and backwards it reads quite plainly “To hell.” Even Radford may remember that…

The van drives away, rippling the puddle, destroying the image.

The blonde comes toward Radford’s shoulder. “Hey, I really — I’d like to…”

Ignoring her, he carries his mop back toward the kitchen.

Mystified, the blonde looks at Charlie. “He always so sociable?… What’s his name?”

“Radford. C. W. Radford.” Charlie shrugs, smiles and goes away toward the back, where he finds Radford washing out the mop as if nothing had happened. Charlie takes out roll of cash, peels off some, tucks them in Radford’s shirt pocket. “All right. Take the night off, will ya?”

Radford’s only acknowledgement is to hang up his apron and head for the back door out.

Charlie says, “See? You can still take care of yourself. Think about it, C.W.”

Radford doesn’t look back; he opens the door and goes out.

Outside as Radford trudges away from Charlie’s, the redheaded dealer intercepts him. “Hey, my man. You was pretty cool back there. This mornin’ and now those guys. You want to buy?”

Radford shakes his head “no” and walks on.

A car approaches him from behind. Its headlights throw his long shadow ahead of him. It seems ominous because of the slow pace with which it catches up to him but he only glances at it — particularly at its rent-a-car plate holder. The car paces him. Then its window opens and we see it’s the blonde who’s driving.

“You never gave me a chance to thank you.”

“Wasn’t looking for gratitude.” Radford’s voice sounds rusty, as if from disuse. Then he looks directly at her. “Lady, it’s three in the morning and this is no neighborhood to go driving around with your windows open.”

“I know. I’d feel ever so much safer if you were in the car.”

He looks back over his shoulder. He can’t be sure — is that slow-moving shadow back there the same van as before?

He keeps walking until the woman guns her car forward and pulls into the curb to block him. She gets out and confronts him.

He says, “Uh-huh?”

“You restored my faith — I was starting to think chivalry was dead, or at least traded in on a second-hand Toyota… That’s a pun, son. Not even a chuckle?”

She opens the passenger door. After a beat, with no break in expression, Radford gets in the car.

When she shuts the door on him Radford glances at the door’s wing mirror. The van’s still back there. Pinpoint glow of a lit cigarillo.

The blonde gets into the car beside Radford, behind the wheel, but before she puts it in gear she leans close and gives him a deeply questioning look. She runs her hand along his coarse beard stubble. “C. W. Radford. That what you call yourself?”

“Mostly I don’t call me at all.”

“Me, I’m Anne. Anne with an ‘e.’ “ Then after a momentary silence she says, “You’re supposed to ask if I’ve got a last name.”

It doesn’t inspire a response in him.

She says politely, “It’s Hartman. Anne Hartman.”

“All right.”

In the streaming hot water of Anne Hartman’s shower, Radford stands with a borrowed Gillette ladies’ disposable, shaving by feel. He’s not alone, naked in the steam. Anne is scrubbing his back. She’s laughing.

And then in her bed he’s clean and shaved and mostly ignores the woman while very gently she explores his many injuries. “All these scars — kind of sexy.”

Through slitted lids his eyes explore the room. It’s a stodgy furnished flat on the ground floor of an apartment court, impersonal as a hotel room. She says, “Where’d you get ’em?”

“What? The scars? Place called Kurdistan.”

Anne gets out of bed and crosses into the bathroom. Radford doesn’t stir; he lies on his back with hands over his eyes — that headache again.

Anne’s voice chatters at him from the bathroom. “Yeah, so I work for a political action committee. You know. Fundraisers, campaign literature, get out the grassroots knuckleheads.”

On the pillow he rolls his head back and forth in pain. Then he hears the woman approach — her voice growing louder: “C.W.? Hey — you okay?”

Anne sits down on the edge of the bed and gently strokes his forehead. “You don’t have a hell of a lot of small talk, do you? What’re you thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

“You can’t think about nothing.”

“Yeah,” he says. “You can. You can teach yourself to do that.”

“Why would you want to?”

He’s thinking about that detention camp on the northern border of Iraq — primitive; stark. Watchtowers. Tangles of barbed wire. Prisoners dying slowly in filthy rags, Kurds mostly, a few volunteers from Kuwait and Armenia, and two gaunt Americans, one of whom is himself, Radford, just a kid then really, covered with suppurating bruises and cuts, and the other of whom is Charlie the cook — also that much younger, and even more beat-up — with a bloody stump, hardly staunched with rags, where his hand used to be.

She brings him back from that camp. She bends down gently to kiss his scarred forehead.

He says, “Lady, don’t waste sympathy on me. I broke.”

She doesn’t quite understand.

“I talked. You know? Went on the telly… Iraqi TV.”

And in the black-and-white TV monitor in his mind he can see his whipped young self speaking straight into the camera with lifeless calm. He says to Anne, “I told the world how wonderful life was in Saddam’s paradise. I recited all the lies they told me to tell.”

She’s stroking him. “I see.” Then she says, “No one can blame you for wanting to stay alive.”

“Nobody stayed alive.”

She takes his face in both hands and kisses him. After a bit, he begins sluggishly to respond…

In the daylight he stands at the window in his stained trousers, sips coffee and looks out at parked cars and little kids splashing in an inflated wading pool. As the phone rings, Anne enters in a robe, toweling her hair. She makes a face when she looks at the condition of his trousers. “Let’s get you some new clothes.” And she’s picking up the ringing phone. “Hello? Oh — hi. Ha, right. Well none of your nosy business… What? Now? I, uh, I forgot. All right, okay, sure. I’ll be there in, like, an hour?”

She hangs up and says to Radford, “I promised some friends I’d go target shooting. Want to come along?”

He only looks at her, without any change in his expression.

The sign in the old building corridor announces the path to “Alvin York Memorial Gun Club — Open Mon — Sat 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closed Sundays.” The sign is on a door, and Anne opens it. She’s very sexy, painted into skintight jeans. Radford, in new trousers and shirt, follows her in.

The foyer needs paint. Its scratched metal reception desk is unoccupied. The decor consists of gun ads, hunting prints and NRA posters. A long window separates Radford and Anne from a shooting range where they can see the backs of three men wearing ear-protector headsets and shooting rifles at targets; the snap of each shot is barely audible in here.

Anne leads the way through the inner door onto the indoor range. A big guy looks up — Harry Sinclair, 50, bearded, muscular and rough — from where he’s hand-loading ammunition at a work table. The thick beard hides most of his face. When he smiles, he has a badly discolored front tooth, second left from center.

Anne says sotto voce, to Radford, “Come on — lighten up.”

Harry says, “Hi.”

Anne says, “Hi yourself. Harry, this is C.W.”

“Ha’re you?” And, to Anne: “You havin’ any trouble breathing?”

“No. Why?”

“That outfit of yours so tight I’m havin’ trouble breathing… Got a weapon you want to sight in?”

Radford shakes his head. “No. I’m just a spectator.”

Anne teases him: “Oh come on.” And to Harry: “C.W. told me he used to compete in target matches.”

Harry looks at him with sudden recognition. “C.W. — Wait a minute. You’re, what’s the name, no, don’t tell me, I’ll get it—”

On the range one of the shooters looks this way. All three wear goggles; perhaps Radford recognizes Conrad, from the van. Conrad pretends no interest in Radford or Anne; so do his two companions. One is Gootch; the other is Wojack, 25, dapper and Ivy League in a high-priced suit.

Harry is going right on with his recognition exercise: “You were just a kid, you won the Wimbledon Cup on the thousand-yard range at Camp Perry… I got it. Radford. C. W. Radford. Am I right, hey? Am I right or am I right!”

Harry claps Radford amiably on the bicep. Radford’s reaction is stony but Harry doesn’t seem to notice.

Harry puts on a pair of thin gloves before he selects a 308 target rifle from the rack. “Damn gloves — solvent on my hands, don’t want to soil the goods.” He turns, smiling, and proffers the rifle to Radford. “Here, try this 308. I’d admire to see you shoot.”

Radford shakes his head, refusing the rifle. “You go ahead.”

Harry is taken aback, then puts on a smile and ushers them forward toward the firing line. Anne and Radford watch Harry load the 308 rifle; he still wears the gloves. The three shooters are intent on their own target-aiming. Their faces are concealed by goggles and ear protectors; Radford never gets a clear look at any of them.

Harry says, “This here’s the rifle, for my money. Shoot across rooftops or shoot across the street. Great support for a GPMG team. Your perfect weapon for urban area combat.”

Anne says, “Harry’s the world’s greatest combat expert. That’s because he’s never been to war. But boy, just let ’em invade Tenth Street and Main…”

Harry gives her a look. He and Anne put on ear protectors. Then abruptly, with a grin, Harry tosses the rifle to Radford.

Reflex: Radford catches it. He scowls at Harry, then studies the rifle briefly, then turns and aims casually and fires one shot downrange.

Harry puts his eye to a swivel-mounted telescope to spot targets.

“Jeez. A perfect bull’s eye. Wow. Awe-some!”

By this time Conrad, Gootch and Wojack are watching Radford with intense interest, but Radford doesn’t seem to notice this. With distaste he shoves the rifle back into Harry’s gloved hands. “No thanks.”

Harry says to Anne, “Fantastic. Dead center, perfect bull’s eye, like there wasn’t nothin’ to it.”

And now, behind Radford’s back, Harry and Anne exchange glances.

Anne’s car draws up outside the big sign of Charlie’s Cafe.

“Thanks. For the lift and — everything.” Radford is about to get out. Anne holds him in place while she takes something out of her handbag.

It’s a key. She slips it into his shirt pocket and gives him one of those bright smiles that can light up your whole day. Radford just looks at her — a grave beat. Then he gets out and she watches him walk to the cafe. She doesn’t drive away until he’s disappeared completely inside, but he never once looked back at her.

Night again, and the street’s deserted until Charlie’s side door opens. Radford, untying his apron, pokes his face out into the night air and takes a deep breath in an attempt to clear away his headache. Charlie appears behind him and takes the apron. “G’night, C.W. Take care.”

“Yeah.” It’s a noncommittal grunt. Radford walks around the corner, then past two hookers, then past the redheaded dealer, who gives him a glance. Radford is tired and everything hurts. When he puts his hands in his pockets, he discovers something in one pocket and takes it out and looks at it.

Anne’s key. He thinks about it.

But he goes back to his flophouse and finds it unchanged, the cot as always unmade. Radford rummages through the few paltry possessions in his duffel bag, finds a worn envelope, takes a creased photograph out of it and sits looking at the photo. He was very young then, handsome in his tailored class-a uniform, posing proudly with his arm around his best girl.

Dorothy McCune. In the photo she’s quite young and very beautiful in a cocktail dress. On her other side stands her father, a very distinguished guy. They’re at a posh political rally; big banner reads “Tom McCune for Senate.” They’re all happy.

Radford broods at the picture, then puts it back where he got it.

Outside Anne’s apartment court near the wading pool Radford stands in the night for a long silent stretch of time before he finally goes up to Anne’s door and pushes the bell. He waits, and when there’s no response he turns to leave. That’s when the door opens.

She’s in a nightgown, sleepy.

He’s apologetic, hesitant. “Hi. Sorry.”

“Well don’t just stand there.” She draws him inside.

In the afternoon Charlie’s Cafe kitchen staff go in and out on their errands. Don the waiter stacks dishes — and watches the aproned Radford scrub a griddle.

Charlie enters — with Harry. Charlie says to Radford, “Fella wants to talk to you.”

“Harry Sinclair. Gun club — remember me? Look, there’s a turkey shoot-out on the hill range tomorrow — small potatoes, but I’ll put up the side bets and you take a third of my winnings. Nobody around here knows you. We can make some bucks. What do you say?”

Radford studies him. “I guess not.”

Charlie razzes him. “Shit, go ahead, C.W. Shoot some bull’s eyes — have some fun.”

“Charlie, I haven’t shot targets in years. What if I get the shakes and come up Maggie’s drawers?”

Harry says, “Then I’ll eat my losses. But it won’t happen.”

Charlie says, “Man’s got confidence in you, C.W.”

Harry looks satisfied. “Tomorrow morning. Pick you up at eight. Hey. What d’you say?”

“Do it, C.W. I’ll give you the day off — hell you don’t even have to ask, you know that.”

Radford thinks it over.

On a general-aviation runway, the executive jet taxis to a stop. Its door opens. The motorized stair extends down and locks in place. A couple of cops stand at the foot of the steps, watching the horizon.

Led by motorcycle cops and flanked by squad cars, a limousine draws up — little flags above its headlights. Diplomatic flags. Several suits come down the stairs from the plane. We can tell by his carriage that one of them is the VIP and by his clothes that he’s foreign. Threading the phalanx of security people, he walks toward the limousine.

All this is being watched from the parked van by Conrad, smoking, and Wojack, who focuses binoculars on the activity at the plane. Conrad looks over his shoulder into the gloom of the van and he sees Slade still back there, a fat cop nearly busting the seams of his uniform, on the bench side seat looking uncomfortable with his wrists dangling over his knees.

Conrad says to Slade, “It’s on. You be in the building early.”

“Don’t sweat it, Conrad.”

“You’ll ice the perp in self defense. Just make sure he’s all-the-way dead, right? If he’s alive to talk—”

The fat cop waves it off. (“Sure, sure.”)

Harry Sinclair drives his SUV off the main road onto a rutted dirt track. Beside him Radford sits strapped in, not talking, not seeming to notice the scenery. Harry parks by a lean-to shack and gets out. He’s wearing gloves. He takes that familiar 308 rifle out of the back seat and walks around the car and hands the rifle up as Radford gets out. Then, talking, Harry walks away, past the shack. “Come on — it’s just up the hill.”

Hidden from Radford’s view behind the shack, Don the waiter and Conrad’s partner Gootch pull stocking masks over their heads to hide their faces.

Harry’s still talking: “We’re an hour early. I figured you’d want to get the feel of the place, maybe squeeze off some practice rounds.”

Radford, following without much interest, comes around the corner after Harry — and suddenly, without warning, is jumped: expertly attacked from behind by the masked Don and Gootch. One pinions his arms while the other’s hands grip Radford’s throat front and back with expert pressure, clamping off the flow of the carotid arteries. That’s when Harry grabs him around the knees to keep him from kicking.

Radford, taken by surprise, tries to struggle but it’s no good: the rifle drops away and the carotid hold renders him unconscious. He slips to the ground…

Harry sits back and, in relief, peels the phony beard and stage make-up off. Now we see him clean-shaven.

Don produces a syringe, which he fills from a phial while Gootch rolls up the unconscious Radford’s sleeve…

A Middle…

The office building is a high-rise with a multi-story parking garage connecting to one side of it. Inside a fourth-story office, vacant of all furniture, Conrad and Wojack stand at the window looking down at the street below. Both wear surgical gloves. Wojack looks like a bright Ivy League college senior dressed for a job interview. He has a suction cup against a lower corner of the window; he’s working around it with a glass-cutter. Finally he pops the glass disc loose and sets it aside on the windowsill, leaving a neat, open hole in the window. We notice he leaves the glass cutter and the suction cup on the sill. He picks up that familiar 308 rifle and screws a ’scope sight onto it. Conrad doesn’t smoke here — he’s too professional for that. He wears a headset-and-mouthpiece cell phone. He listens to his headset and talks back to it: “Affirmative.” He turns to Wojack: “It’s on. It’s a ‘go.’”

Conrad looks at his watch. Wojack aims his rifle down through the hole in the glass at the street below. Conrad steps forward beside him to look down out the window. Wojack says, very dryly, “Do I get fifty points for a little old blind lady in the crosswalk?”

Down there through crosshairs he’s peering at the steps of the government building across the street. On the fringes of the ’scope’s image he can see a gathering of cops, officials and reporters with their TV cameras and microphones, all waiting for the limo to arrive…

Now Conrad and turns to look past Wojack into the darker recesses of the unfurnished office. He sees Gootch and Harry bracketing the unconscious Radford. Harry is pasting his phony beard back in place.

Conrad says to Harry, “Time to give him the upper. Wake the son of a bitch up.” Then, to Gootch, “Lock the elevator and go start the van.”

Obeying, Gootch exits.

Conrad watches Harry take a disposable syringe from its package and begins to fill it from a phial.

At the window Wojack, sighting down through the hole, tightens his aim.

In the ’scope sight he can see the windshield of the limousine — the one with the foreign flags — as it pulls up, escorted by cops on motorcycles. Reporters crowd against a cordon of cops; a wedge of security people surrounds the man emerging from the limo — that same vaguely foreign VIP from the plane. Wojack’s practiced grip zeroes in the crosshairs on the center of his torso and there is the sudden sound of the shot: the image jerks upward in recoil and then settles down again as the VIP falls dead on the steps.

By the time the VIP has fallen dead to the steps, Wojack has already wheeled back away from the window and is jacking a fresh cartridge into the chamber of the rifle.

Conrad and Harry drag Radford across the room, stooping to remain below sill-line, dragging the groggy man directly beneath the window.

In the street there’s a crowd around the body; people are pointing up this way. Cops rush across the street toward the building.

Quickly and efficiently, Wojack and Conrad prop Radford against the wall and place the smoking rifle in his hands. Harry takes a quick look out the window.

Conrad murmurs, “Let’s go…”

The three run to the door.

Radford stirs — a twitch…

In the fourth floor corridor, an elevator stands open. Gootch waits there, holding the door. Conrad, Wojack and Harry run into it. Conrad turns a key. The doors close…

Down on the ground level several cops swarm across the lobby and up the emergency stairs. Two or three stand guard in the lobby, watching the elevators. The indicator of one elevator shows that it’s descending from the 4th floor… 3rd… 2nd…

In the vacant office Radford struggles to wake up.

Cops thunder up the echoing stairs, guns up.

In the lobby, cops watch while the indicator of that descending elevator passes the ground floor. A cop punches the button in angry frustration. The indicator stops at “B.” The cops look at each other; suddenly two of them bolt for the stairs and go running down the stairs out of sight…

In the vacant office Radford lurches to his feet, dazed.

In the garage Conrad’s van roars past a doorway, heading out the exit. Its license plates, smeared with mud, are unreadable. A split second after it disappears up the ramp, the two cops come running out of the stairwell in the office building next door. They see nothing.

In the vacant office the fat cop Slade busts the door in and drops to a two-handed crouched shooting position. He sees:

— no Radford.

Nothing.

Slade has just enough time to be amazed before Radford jumps him from behind the door, slamming the buttstock of the 308 rifle against the back of Slade’s head. Slade goes down. Radford drops the rifle, scoops up Slade’s revolver and nightstick, and bolts out of the office…

Out in the corridor, he lurches groggily and stumbles out of sight around a nearby corner just before two cops come racing out of the stairwell. As they run forward, elevator doors open, decanting several more cops into the corridor. All of ’em squeeze into the vacant office, because it’s the one whose door stands open — the cops go in fast, guns up, and the first ones trip over the stunned Slade, who lies clutching his injured head.

Even more cops enter; they part to make way for a veteran sergeant, Dickinson. He takes in the scene with a quick look around. Then he makes a face; it expresses volumes.

Below, in the lobby, there’s a willy-nilly darting of cops. A uniformed bald cop, having lost his hat somewhere, burrows into a crowd of officials and reporters and cops. Among them is Dickinson. There’s a babbling racket of simultaneous conversations. The bald cop approaches Dickinson. “Who’s catching?”

“All the way to the top. Commander Clay.”

“Oh shit.” The bald guy immediately straightens his uniform and examines his brass and shoe polish.

Up in the unfurnished office the scene is very busy. A technician threads his way through the throng, struggling to reach Commander Denise Clay, forties, a black woman in immaculate uniform. She is homicide chief of detectives. She’s talking to an officer: “… Probably still in the building. I want double security on every exit — doors, windows, roof, basement, every rathole. Go.”

Now she turns to face a handsome business-suit gent — Colonel Vickers. He’s near 50 — very youthfully so. A uniformed cop is talking on a walkie-talkie.

The officer behind Commander Clay talks into a cellular phone: “… Got the outside exits covered. She wants to start a sweep in the basement, work your way up—”

Vickers grabs the officer. “What’s going down?”

“Who the hell are you?”

Clay and Dickinson approach on collision course just as Vickers swings violently around in anger. They nearly butt heads. Vickers is roaring now: “What the fucking hell’s going on? You let him get loose?”

Dickinson snaps, “Who’re you?”

And Clay says to the officer with the cell phone, “Officer, show this gentleman out.”

Vickers shows his ID. “No ma’am. Not me. Colonel Vickers…”

Clay gives it a glance. She does a take and examines the ID. “White House?”

The officer with the phone is on it again. “I said he’s loose in the building! Bottle him in…”

Down there, outside the building, squad cars and motorcycles squeal into sight, bringing massive reinforcements… Cops push a growing corps of press and TV back across the street, farther from the building…

In a law firm’s low-partitioned bullpen typists at computer terminals watch as cops, with guns up, search methodically. Corners, closets, under desks.

The lobby now is utterly still. Armed police stand guard at the entrances in silent tableau… The elevators… Paramedics carry Slade out on a stretcher…

And in the multi-story garage a sudden deafening noise precedes the appearance of white-helmeted cops on motorcycles who come roaring up the ramps.

And up in the unfurnished office Clay is barking at the uniformed officer with the cell phone: “Shut down every elevator…”

The officer begins to relay the instructions into his phone…

In the elevator shaft Radford clings to a narrow perch high up inside the shaft. He’s got a firm grip with one hand; in the other he holds Slade’s service revolver. Several elevators are at various levels; two or three are moving. Then suddenly, jarring the cables, all the elevators stop. Radford reacts to the sound of men’s footsteps in a nearby corridor. He can hear voices but can’t make out the words.

On the double doors nearest him is stenciled the legend “7th floor.” Abruptly the point of a crowbar appears, sliding through between the doors. It begins to pry the doors apart…

Radford reacts. Reaches out, nearly loses his balance, gets a grip on one of the thick cables, swings out into space…

The revolver falls from his grasp, tumbles down into darkness; after a significant and scary length of time he hears the sound when it hits bottom.

The crowbar has slipped, allowing the doors to close again, but now it’s prying them open again…

Radford clings to the swaying cable…

No choice. He allows himself to begin sliding down the cable. He goes faster and faster, dwindling downward…

The crowbar has pried the doors open enough for a cop to stick his face through; several hands hold the doors apart for him. He looks up, around, down.

All the cables are swaying.

And after a moment the cop speaks. “Nothing. Let’s go.”

In the dark at the bottom of the elevator shaft, Radford picks himself up slowly. His hands are bleeding. He lurches to one side, finds his balance uncertainly, begins groggily to feel his way around the concrete walls, searching for a way out…

In the unfurnished office frantic activity continues: Clay, Vickers, Technician. Vickers now holds a CB radio; he’s trying to listen to it while he badgers Clay: “What’ve you got on the assassin?”

The technician talks to Clay, overlapping: “Remington 40-XC National Match. Caliber 308.”

Vickers scowls. “That’s a target rifle.”

The technician says, “Yeah. We’re trying to raise the serial number. Acid.”

Vickers says into his radio, “You can assure the director we’ve got the lid screwed tight.” He cups the mouthpiece and glares daggers at Clay. “The United Nations Secretary General wants to know what the fuck’s going on here.”

Clay hasn’t got time for him. She’s tagging Dickinson: “How many men on the roof? Where’s that chopper?”

In a basement corridor a cop prowls with a nightstick past a large metal ventilation grille in the wall — a return-duct for the air-conditioning system, through which Radford, hands bleeding, filthy and grease-stained, peers out while he tries to dry the blood from his palms on his shirt. He sees the cop open a door on the opposite side of the hall and looks in: glimpse of a utility-furnace room. The cop shuts the door and comes toward Radford’s grille and turns; he posts himself on guard, his back to the wall, half blocking the grille.

Radford looks up… the inside of the duct is constricting, claustrophobic.

He’s sweating.

The cop beyond the grille doesn’t budge.

Dickinson and the bald cop walk into the unfurnished office with a uniformed Army medical corps major — Dr. Huong Trong. Dickinson walks the doctor up to Clay. “Commander — this is Major Trong… Doctor Trong.”

Clay is glad to see Trong. “Okay!” She takes the doctor by the arm and steers him toward the cut-glass hole in the window. “C. W. Radford. One of yours, I think.”

“Used to be,” Dr. Trong concedes. “Belongs to the V.A. now… You believe he’s the assassin?

“Smoking gun — literally, Doc — his fingerprints all over it — and the injured cop gave us a positive make on his Army photograph. Doesn’t leave much reasonable doubt.”

Dr. Trong says, “Did anybody actually see him do it? Because if they didn’t, you might want to keep an open mind.”

Vickers scowls at Dr. Trong. “What’re you, Major? Japanese?”

“Korean.”

“Yeah.”

The cop stands with his back to the grille. Two SWAT officers jog quickly past, toting riot shotguns; they nod to the cop; he nods back. They jog out of sight… Abruptly the grille comes slamming out from the wall, knocking the cop off his feet, and behind it Radford explodes from the duct, elbow-chops the cop and drags the insensate man (including nightstick) through a doorway into the utility-furnace room… When the door closes behind them the corridor is empty and silent…

Dickinson is bitching to Clay. “Reinforcements getting jammed up in the afternoon rush hour.”

Clay says, “I called a shift for traffic control…”

Vickers is menacing now. “Commander Clay — if you let the scumbag get away—”

Clay tells him, “If you’re upset about something, maybe you should call the police.”

“Ho, very funny. Do you have any idea the international repercussions—?”

“You people can play global politics,” Clay snaps. “I don’t care if the stiff was left or right, east or west… Colonel Vickers, I know what the situation is, here. You are not helping.”

A uniformed cop with two nightsticks climbs the stairs from landing to landing. At each floor an armed cop is posted. The cop with the two sticks waves a careless hello to a cop on duty, and turns to climb the next flight.

It’s Radford, in cop’s uniform.

On a higher landing there’s a fire emergency station with a coiled high-pressure hose. Beyond it is another uniform standing guard. When Radford climbs into sight the cop starts to smile and greet him, then scowls — recognition. Something not quite right in the way Radford wears the uniform.

“Hey—!”

The cop draws his gun… And on other landings the other cops hear his cry… And—

Radford kicks the revolver from the cop’s hand, takes the nightstick away from the cop, then — all this with lightning speed — busts the fire-hose loose, opens the valve and just as cops start shooting, he uses the high-pressure blast from the hose to drive ’em back above and below.

Bullets ricochet… He hears a cop cry as he tumbles downstairs… The cascading flood obscures his view…

On an upper floor of the garage near the top of its spiral ramp, half a dozen police motorcycles are parked on their kickstands. A helmeted motorcycle cop stands guard over the bikes, and watches everything at once. He can hear a lot of activity — distant voices; sirens in the city; running feet…

Now a uniform approaches from some distance away. He carries two nightsticks. The helmeted motorcycle cop sees him coming, but is not alarmed until Radford walks up and abruptly slams him upside the helmet with the two heavy nightsticks. The blow knocks the cop to his knees. In a flash, Radford is bestride a motorcycle.

He kicks the stand out of the way… switches on the ignition… jumps on the starter… doesn’t start…

Alerted by something somewhere, several cops come pouring into sight, chasing him…

And on the ground the helmeted motorcycle cop clears his head and reaches for his sidearm…

One last kick… Radford finally gets the motorcycle started and roars away… The motorcycle cop snatches up his walkie-talkie and barks into it…

Skittering down the hairpin turns of the spiral garage ramp, Radford can see the point several floors below where two squad cars slither into place across the foot of the ramp, blocking it — a fly couldn’t get through there, let alone a man on a bike…

To one side he sees double doors open and two cops on foot appear. They stop, amazed, with guns lifting to aim at Radford on the speeding bike… Nothing to lose now. He aims the screaming motorcycle straight at the open double door — and goes through it like a bullet, scattering the two cops… All the cops react — astonishment…

In a building hallway Radford on the motorcycle comes roaring through the hall. Several gaping civilians flatten themselves back against the side wall as the juggernaut roars by…

The motorcycle thunders through the law office bullpen, smashing glass doors, and roars down the aisle between rows of desks. Typists leap for safety.

Another hallway — and at its far end a solid closed door, and an armed cop lifting his revolver in both hands, as…

Radford on the speeding bike sees the obstacle and slithers to one side, crashing the bike through double glass doors that disintegrate to let him into—

A designer furniture showroom — and the man on the motorcycle wildly plows through the place, knocking over lamps and statuary, making a shambles of the place—

— Then he’s descending one of the building stairwells — zooming downstairs, bumpety-bump…

Vickers bulls his way out of the unfurnished office in time to see a man on a motorcycle heading straight toward him. This is very fast. Vickers gets off two wild shots but then his nerve fails and he stumbles back into the doorway as the motorcycle roars past. Vickers pushes forward out of the doorway to take aim at the dwindling fugitive, ignoring several cops and civilians who are in the line of fire, but now Clay comes out in time to knock Vickers’ shooting arm up. The bullet goes into the ceiling.

Clay is furious. “How many bystanders you want to kill?”

Vickers glares murderously at her…

In the multi-story garage the street floor is all quiet now. Two cops by the toll booths. The don’t notice when a side door softly opens. They can’t see into those shadows, and aren’t looking for it, but then—

— SMASH of sound as the motorcycle lays down rubber, screams around the backside of the toll booths, up over curbs, through a narrow pedestrian walkway, out onto the street as the two cops belatedly open fire…

On the street Radford whips out of sight around a corner, the cops cease firing, squad cars roar out of the garage in pursuit…

That afternoon the boulevards are totally coagulated with multiple lanes of afternoon rush-hour traffic: nothing moving. Gridlock. Horns honking, angry commuters shouting “Assholes!”

Police cars come up against the tangle of traffic and are stymied, as—

Radford on the motorcycle threads a swift bold path through narrow openings — going the wrong way between a couple of stopped trucks — disappearing…

The stalled police get out of their cars, stand on tiptoe and climb on top of the cars to search for the fugitive. They can’t find anything. They look at one another in baffled dismay…

Two joggers trot by in running suits. They look curiously at all the police activity — and they laugh…

Finally the rest of the motorcycle squad begins to arrive. There’s a lot of pointing and shouting. Helicopters swoop above the buildings, searching.

And nobody knows which way he went.

The helicopter that lands on the City Hall helipad has no official markings.

Vickers climbs out, fuming, followed by two business-suited FBI agents. He’s snarling to them: “I don’t believe these fuck-ups.”

Then, seeing the press approaching, Vickers composes his features into a semblance of a confident smile. The agents break trail for him through the crowd, in which Vickers is not happy to recognize newspaperman Steve Ainsworth. Cameras and microphones are shoved at Vickers. He hears a babble of ad-lib questions. He fires responses: “No, we haven’t got him in some secret hiding place. That’s ridiculous… Don’t spread rumors, Christ’s sake. We know of no conspiracy at this time. We’ve identified one suspect and we’re looking for him.”

He escapes into the building.

It’s a busy hive. Ringing phones. Whizzing printers. Talk. Clay issuing terse orders to a group of cops, including Dickinson. Beside her is Dr. Trong, still in his medical corps uniform. Vickers enters with the two FBI agents, again talking to them: “Armed and dangerous. If necessary, shoot on sight.”

Dickinson overhears this last. He swings toward Clay. “That mean we can shoot on sight?”

“No, you may not shoot on sight. You may not shoot at all unless it’s to save a life… Any fool can shoot people. You’ll get no answers out of him if he’s dead.” She’s looking pointedly at Vickers. He reacts. She takes a pace toward him. “On notice, Colonel. Homicide investigation. My turf.”

“You think this is a two-bit murder case? A very important international figure has been assassinated. We’ve got a world-class political flap — they’ve sent these gentlemen and a lot more like ’em from the FBI. We’ve got the State Department on our backs and the Joint Chiefs have their thumbs on the buttons… The President himself—”

“You’ll have to wait on line. It’s our jurisdiction.” Clay isn’t giving an inch.

Vickers glares. Then he decides to defuse things. He puts an arm confidentially across Dr. Trong’s shoulders. “Look, doctor, the man snipes at VIPs… He seems to have a little attitude problem.”

Dr. Trong politely moves away, out from under the Colonel’s arm, showing distaste for Vickers’ old-buddy nonsense.

Vickers continues to thrust: “This is the same clown that turned traitor and did a propaganda broadcast for Saddam’s goons. Now obviously his elevator doesn’t stop on all the floors. You were his shrink…”

Dr. Trong says, “That mean you want my freehand diagnosis? He was an unacknowledged POW in an Iraqi torture camp. They messed with his head. And he’s got a bullet lodged in here.” He points to his own head. “Poor son of a bitch is a mess. If he was a horse you’d have to shoot him.”

“The man committed treason, Doctor. And now assassination on top of it.”

“You trained him to be a killer, Colonel.”

“I didn’t train him to go on TV for the enemy.”

“The man had a head wound. Indescribable pain. He had no resistance left. Sure he broke. Tell me you wouldn’t have.”

Clay tries to calm things. “Iraq’s a few years ago. We’re dealing with right here, right now.”

Dr. Trong says, “For some people the blood still hasn’t dried.”

In an alley there’s a trashing of cans, bottles, empty cartons. Under the mess lies a motorcycle, almost completely hidden. Radford huddles in darkness. His police uniform is dirty and mussed. He’s far beyond exhaustion. He can hear an approaching police siren but it doesn’t bestir him. The sound dopplers down and fades. Radford drags the two nightsticks into his lap and slowly his face changes — anger and the beginnings of resolve — as purposefully he weaves the nightstick lanyards together…

There’s a loading bay behind a boarded-up store. Radford coasts the motorcycle to a stop, leaves it propped against the building and walks away, stumbling a bit, rubbing his head. He holds one nightstick, and the other swings from it. He’s made himself a nutcracker.

Outside Anne’s apartment court he waits, hidden by the wading pool. Nothing stirs.

Old instincts make him cautious. He moves forward like a soldier in a combat zone, from cover to cover… Finally he reaches Anne’s apartment. He warily eases close to a window and looks in.

It’s empty, silent. The furniture’s still in there but the place has been cleared out. No personal belongings remain. There are no sheets on the bed.

It’s puzzling; he tries to think it out. He isn’t tracking too well. This was his last hope; now he doesn’t know what to do. He stumbles with pain and exhaustion. Finally he moves away…

Across from the wading pool, in the opposite direction from Radford’s earlier angle of approach, Harry and Gootch wait in hiding, armed. Gootch is complaining sotto voce: “How the hell’d he get away from that fat cop?”

Harry whispers, “Son of a bitch must be able to handle a dose that’d put an elephant into a coma. Maybe built up a resistance from those pain drugs he takes… Maybe we should’ve thought of that.” Now he sees something; reacts; stiffens. “We got him, Gootch!”

Because that’s Radford across the court, cautiously poking his head out to search.

Harry lifts his gun to aim it.

But Radford is skittish and ducks back out of sight.

“Get the car,” Harry whispers, and heads toward Radford’s corner while Gootch wheels back toward the street.

Radford, passing under a half-open casement window, catches a reflection in it of Gootch running toward the parked car, the same car in which Harry drove Radford to the shooting range. Alerted, Radford fades from view.

Harry runs to the corner of the building and eases past it for a look.

It’s a mess of back yard fences and narrow passageways. The guy could’ve disappeared down any of them.

Harry knows they’ve lost him for now. “Shit.”

Fading with exhaustion Radford returns on foot to the loading bay behind somebody’s shuttered store. The motorcycle’s still here — well that’s not much of a surprise; even a Neanderthal knows better than to steal a police bike. “Which makes me a little sub-Neanderthal,” Radford thinks, not amused, as he gets the motorcycle started and gently pulls away into a street — down which is rolling Harry’s car.

Harry and Gootch are in it. They spot Radford at the same moment he spots them.

Radford peels away — just inches ahead of Harry’s car. The bike and the car squeal away as if welded together… Harry tries to run down the motorcycle. Radford zigzags just in time. The car fishtails after him… Gootch in the car is shooting at Radford… This is a terrific high-speed pursuit through alleys and sidewalks until—

The river. A deep wide concrete channel, bridged by a tubular pipe the diameter of an oil drum. Radford’s cycle roars up onto the conduit and zooms across the span — a spectacular high-wire balancing act…

Harry’s car slides to a stop. Gootch savagely keeps pulling the trigger of his pistol but it’s empty…

The motorcyclist flies off the far end of the pipe, slams down on the frontage road beyond, nearly falls over but then rights himself…

The two men glare in frustration as, across the viaduct, the cyclist disappears…

At sunset Radford rides the motorcycle gently around behind a gas station and stops. The place is closed up — deserted — its pumps taped off from the street. Construction equipment stands around, parked for the night. Radford dismounts, his face weary with pain in the sunset glow. He sags back against the wall, nearly passing out with the pain. His head lolls back and his eyes roll up…

In sudden bright sunshine we’re in the desert. Barbed wire and bomb-damaged huts.

Watched by Charlie and several Kurdish prisoners, all of them manacled hand and foot, a uniformed Iraqi aims his rifle at Radford, who sits on the ground shaking his head stubbornly “no.” The Iraqi begins to squeeze the trigger. Charlie is horrified. The rifle fires… The bullet slashes a streak across Radford’s temple. Blood spurts. Radford drops. Charlie turns his head away in anguish.

A small crowd of officials and techs is swarming around the inside of Radford’s flophouse bedroom.

Dickinson is looking at the illuminated screen of his handheld computer — scrolling down from Radford’s photograph (a fairly old one) past fingerprint boxes and vital statistics. “What’s ‘C.W.’ stand for?”

“Nothing,” Vickers says. “Just initials.”

“Kind of got shortchanged,” Commander Clay observes.

Vickers is glaring at Dr. Trong, who’s looking around the room with curious interest. Vickers says, “It doesn’t fit. You claim the guy’s practically catatonic but he went through that building full of officers like a chainsaw.”

Dr. Trong says, “He was a natural athlete. Under pressure it must’ve come back. But that’s the operative term — pressure. An assassin cares about something, even if it’s only his own rage… That profile doesn’t fit C.W. He barely exists. Barely feels. He doesn’t want to hurt anybody. He just wants to be left alone.”

Clay says, “Somebody’s robot, maybe? Wind him up and put a gun in his hand.” She’s reading the label off a prescription sheet. “Pain meds. You prescribed this.”

“I did,” Dr. Trong agrees. “And he’s about due for a refill. Look, Commander, this just doesn’t fit his pattern. One thing he’d never tolerate is someone trying to use him again.”

Vickers snorts. “The man’s a traitor and a murderer. I’m going to nail him.”

Clay says, “Yeah. Well good luck, Colonel.” Then, to Dickinson, “Walk me out.”

Outside in the night Clay and Dickinson walk toward a car. Clay hands the prescription slip to Dickinson; she says, “He forgot this. If he’s run out, maybe he’ll look for a street retailer.”

Dickinson takes the slip of paper and turns back; Clay gets in her car and drives off. That’s when the reporter, Ainsworth, intercepts Dickinson. “What’s really goin’ down, you old hairbags?”

Dickinson waves the sheet of paper in front of the reporter’s nose, then pockets it too fast for Ainsworth to make out what it is. “A clue,” Dickinson says smugly.

Ainsworth muses: “The federal agent and the lady cop — I see a story in that. I mean aside from the story everybody’s covering. I could use a sidebar byline.”

“Get out of here, pest. No press.”

Ainsworth poises a stylus over the screen of his palm computer. “Chief of Detectives, Commander Denise Clay is a legend. In some quarters she is regarded as incorruptible and virtually superhuman. And now, into her previously unchallenged realm, we see a potentially explosive conflict in the arrival of a new outside authority…”

Dickinson turns and, walking away, says cheerfully, “Blow it out your bottom, huh?”

In the cafe kitchen, Don the waiter prepares a tray. Charlie fries burgers. From outdoors, Radford enters in his mussed police uniform. He’s exhausted — haunted — in great pain. He carries the tied-together nightsticks: the nutcracker.

Don sees him, is galvanized — reaches for a handgun hidden in an ankle holster. Radford reacts — at first sluggish, but he expertly tosses the nutcracker. It tangles in Don’s ankles and trips him. Radford is on top of him at once — disarms Don, recovers the nutcracker, clamps it tight around Don’s wrist and squeezes. He can see in Don’s face the agonizing pain this device causes.

“Move one inch, you’re dead meat.”

Radford’s voice is like a tumble of coal down a metal chute: the new authority in it is enough to convince any tough guy that he means what he says. Don sweats, and lies still…

Radford picks up Don’s revolver — a compact hammerless pocket .38. Radford says to Charlie, “What’s he doing with a piece?”

“Beats shit out of me. Ask him.”

Don says, faint with pain, “Police officer. Wallet…”

Radford yanks out Don’s wallet and flips it open. Sure enough there’s a police badge in it. “And you’re undercover in Charlie’s place here for—?”

“Uh — drug enforcement. Vice.”

“Try again.”

Don begins to regain his bravado. “That’s my badge. You don’t question me, Radford. I question you.”

Radford gives the nutcracker a twitch. It sends beads of pain-sweat to Don’s forehead. But he’s tough enough. “You ain’t on the need-to-know list, C.W. I can’t tell you shit. Even if I did, where would you take it? They got a federal fugitive warrant out on you — know what that means? Dead or alive. Like John fucking Dillinger.”

Radford doesn’t have time to spar with him. He looks up at Charlie. “D’you know he was undercover?”

“No.” Charlie is scowling at Radford as if he doesn’t like what he sees.

Radford says to him, “Hey. I didn’t shoot anybody. They put the rifle in my hands.”

Don scoffs. “Sure. They. Who’s ‘they’?”

“Wish I knew. Some people — gun club in a building on Broadway…”

“Yeah,” Don says. “I hear you sayin’ it.” He looks up at Charlie. “Son of a bitch told a bunch of lies before. On Eye-rakky TV.”

Charlie leans over Don. “You’d have done the same thing, Donny boy, and you’da done it a lot sooner than he did.”

Radford drops the snub-revolver in his pocket and gets Charlie’s eye. “You want to keep this character on ice a little bit? I’ve got to get some answers. Want to know why… Who did this?… Look, I got to hit you up for some moving-around money. A razor… Pair of scissors… And let me borrow your jacket.”

Radford comes out the side door from Charlie’s Cafe, wearing a leather jacket that hides the police uniform. He’s clean-shaven and he’s cut his hair shorter, but he stumbles a bit. He’s disoriented and in pain — that headache: again, still… always.

Charlie looks both ways from just inside the door. “You belong in a fucking emergency ward.”

“I could be putting you out of business here, Charlie. Undercover narc idiot could run you in, aiding and abetting.”

“Maybe he knows me better’n to try that.” Charlie’s deadpan gives way to a wicked unamused grin.

“Yeah… If I’m still alive sometime I’ll pay you back.”

“When’d we start keeping books on you and me?”

Charlie shuts the door and Radford trudges away.

He reacts when he sees—

The redheaded dealer. Still wearing those camouflage combat fatigues. Radford asks, “What outfit were you with?”

“Huh?”

“In the service. What unit?”

The dealer frowns. “Man, you got a problem or what?”

“Never mind. I… uh… I just want to make a buy.”

The dealer looks down at Radford’s cuffs and shoes. Police blue and black.

Radford continues, “I need a painkiller bad.”

The dealer’s gaze very dryly climbs back up from the police Oxfords and the blue slacks to Radford’s face. “My man, I got nothin’ for you.”

“Come on. I really need…”

“Don’t they tell you guys about entrapment?” He turns away laughing. “Next time try to remember — eighty-six the pig shoes.”

Radford says, “Hey, you’re wrong…” — and in his desperation he thinks about knocking the dealer over with the nutcracker — but now something stirs in the corner of his vision and he turns to see a cop coming in sight, a block away. The cop looks this way, and Radford shuffles away into alley shadows…

Later in the night the redheaded dealer crosses a silent downtown street and stops in a doorway to see if he’s being followed. When no one appears, he walks on. Then, out of sight one turn behind him, Radford emerges from the shadows and dodges forward, cautiously following the dealer…

Inside Union Depot it’s so late there’s very little activity. The dealer stands at a magazine rack near the bank of lockers and pretends an interest in the magazines while he has a look around. He doesn’t spot Radford, who watches him from a distance. The dealer turns, produces a roundheaded key, opens one of the lockers and takes a package out.

Radford is about to move in when—

The baldheaded officer and two other cops converge from three different directions upon the dealer.

Radford fades back just in time; in harsh disappointment he watches it go down.

The dealer sees he’s trapped. Knowing the routine, he sighs and turns to spread hands and feet and lean against the wall. A cop frisks him. A cop unwraps the package and finds a thick bankroll. The bald cop takes it. He shows a picture of Radford to the dealer. The dealer says, “I know only one thing. My lawyer’s phone number.”

“Okay, then.” The bald cop takes out a cigarette lighter and sets fire to the bankroll. The dealer looks on in horror as his money burns up.

Radford lurches through the dark streets, hammered with pain.

Under a sudden, hard, white light, a younger bloodstained Radford lies on a table in a spartan prison hospital — primitive; rudimentary. Iraqi soldiers watch a doctor probe Radford’s head wound, look up at the soldier who interrogated Radford, and shake his head “no.” The doctor discards the probe, wraps a bandage carelessly around Radford’s head and walks away…

Charlie moves forward and cradles Radford’s bloody head in his hand. And now, to Charlie’s amazement, Radford, horribly cut and bruised, opens his eyes to look at Charlie. He’s alive on sheer will power, everything raw and bleeding. We see Charlie’s tears as he reaches out gently to touch Radford’s cheek.

Under a street lamp in the silent city Radford lurches on — afraid, confused, in pain — blindly into the night…

Conrad’s parked van stands at the curb in front of a suburban house on an ordinary street. Inside the house, in the kitchen, Harry — clean-shaven now — takes two beers from the fridge and tosses one to Conrad. Anne is watching a TV newscast. She’s worried. She glares at Conrad. She fidgets. “I want to talk to Damon.”

“Grow up.” Conrad pops the beer top.

Harry says, “We’ll see Damon sooner or later… You’re gonna stay here right now. Radford running loose, shit, God knows what may be going on in that messed-up brain of his.”

Anne says, “The poor son of a bitch.”

Conrad points a finger at her. “He’s a trained sniper. A killer, and by now he’s madder’n hell. He gets his hands on you, you won’t feel so sorry for him… You just worry what happens if they get him alive and he talks. He ID’s you — you’re an accessory.”

Anne shows a flash of heat. “So are you, Conrad baby.”

“Yeah. Well you just sit here quiet till he’s dead.”

“Jesus,” she says. “And I was once an honest-to-God fevered zealot.” She points at the TV. “Wasn’t supposed to be this way!”

“No, it wasn’t,” Conrad agrees. “Your buddy Radford was supposed to get dead.”

Harry tries to embrace Anne possessively. She pushes him away. “We started as good people. What happened to us?”

Harry says, “Hell, honey, you can’t make an omelet without—”

“Oh spare me. I hear that breaking-eggs shit enough from Damon.”

Conrad says, “This country and the tree-hugger crazies were getting too close together. It had to be stopped.” He heads for the door. “I’ve gotta go.”

Anne won’t let it go. “I bought the philosophy, Conrad — but I’m starting to think it’s a hell of a way to preserve freedom and justice for all.”

Before dawn in a scuzzy downtown park — place of business for felons; home for the homeless — a cop prowls, exploring. A few derelicts sit at trash campfires, eating scraps, drinking out of brown paper bags. Others sleep under trees or in makeshift shelters or on benches. The cop gently straightens an overcoat over a sleeping woman with a small child. He walks on, past a huddled shape under rumpled newspapers. It lifts a corner of paper stealthily to watch the cop depart — It’s Radford, shaking with a fever of pain. When he moves, his head hurts so bad he can’t stop the groan.

In the bright light of an interrogation hut the younger Radford — his face an ugly half-healed scar — peers up without interest into a TV camera. An Iraqi woman clumsily paints pancake make-up over his scabs while a soldier holds up cue-cards beside the camera. On a black-and-white monitor Radford can see himself, and on the TV screen the make-up doesn’t show; he looks puffy but not seriously injured.

He speaks straight into the camera with what seems to be peaceful calm. His eye movements betray that he’s reading from cue cards.

“I’m sorry that the leaders of my country have picked the wrong side this time. I’ve seen the terrible destruction that’s been visited on this little country by American bombs, and I feel ashamed. Ashamed of my leaders, ashamed of the petroleum imperialists who’re promoting this war on innocent civilians. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I just want to come home. I’m asking my government to reconsider — and to get out of this place where they have no business being.”

When he finishes talking, he simply stares unblinkingly into the camera. He doesn’t stir. The monitor’s screen slowly goes to black.

In the city park Radford lies in the night, hopeless amid the homeless. Something draws his attention and he turns sluggishly to see several cars drawing up over at the edge of the park. A dozen men in suits get out of them. Most of them carry shotguns or rifles.

Vickers gets out of the back of one of the cars. Behind him are the two FBI men and reporter Ainsworth. Vickers makes rapid hand-signals. The dozen armed men fan out into the park.

Radford, moving with agony, crouching to stay out of sight, staggers across a street threading traffic… and takes cover by a parked truck, and looks back at the park where the dozen men brutally roust the homeless people, shining flashlights in their faces.

Vickers and Ainsworth watch the search.

“Colonel Vickers, you really think this is going to find him?”

“Only if they get real lucky. The idea’s to give him no chance to rest. Keep him tired out. A tired man makes mistakes… He’s up there all alone without a net. He only has to slip once, and I’ve got him.”

Radford watches from behind the parked truck across the street. A government agent comes up behind him. Radford turns, looks at him. The agent deliberately takes a photo from his pocket and looks at it, comparing it with Radford’s face.

That mug-shot of Radford shows him as he looked in a previous life. The agent isn’t sure whether this is the man or not. “Mind if I see some identification?”

Across the street the dragnet is working its way toward them. In no time at all, somebody in that lot will be close enough to recognize Radford. Knowing that, he moves quickly as he takes out a wallet (cop’s wallet) and flashes the badge at the agent, and feigns exasperation. “Move on, man, you’re fucking up my stakeout.”

Embarrassed, the agent moves on. Radford reacts to the near-miss, and fades back into the shadows just before Vickers comes across the street and collars the agent.

“Who was that?”

“Some cop on a stakeout.”

“Shit. You idiot! Radford stole a cop’s ID along with that uniform.” Vickers looks in all directions, fuming with frustration.

A big illuminated sign emulates a green beret. Sure enough its lettering spells out “GREEN BERET BAR.” On both sides of the door are glass-covered shadowboxes protecting posters of soldiers, guns, combat action. Radford looks up at the “bar” sign and hesitates, and goes in. His head is killing him.

Inside he walks past a hand-lettered sign thumbtacked to the wall: “WET PANTY COMBAT NIGHT!” He goes on to the bar. The place is crowded and very noisy — a lot of exuberant shouting. Several scantily-clad women seem to be dancing in some fashion on an elevated stage, and over the sound of heavy metal music he can hear men shouting:

“Commence firing!”

“Play guns! Come on, play guns, guys!”

“I said — Commence firing!”

At first Radford can’t tell what’s going on and doesn’t care. He pays no attention to the raucous uproar. He gets a barmaid’s attention and grits out the words in pain between his teeth: “Double vodka. Straight up.”

Then he waits, enduring his pain until after an eternity the barmaid sets the drink before him. Radford slugs it down fast and waits for a hint of surcease.

There’s a tumult of enthusiastic yelling — finally he turns to see what’s going on.

Up there on stage four women are dressed in tight T-shirts and skimpy bikini panties. They’re wet. He sees bursts of water drops, and thin streams of water, coming at the women from the audience, soaking them. Not understanding, he shifts his gaze to the men in the audience — all ages; rough clothes mostly; blue collar guys. They’re having a wild time shooting at the women on stage with water-guns that are look-alike models of real submachine guns and rifles and pistols. The guys aim and shoot — some with gleeful enjoyment, some in combat stance with deadly grimness.

“Shoot ’em in the crotch, guys — Right in there between the legs!”

Not believing what he’s seeing, Radford squints.

On stage three of the women thrust themselves forward, pelvis first, grinning at the guys; streams of water soak them. The fourth woman — a little shy, scared — hangs back.

“I wanta see some wet pussy! Man, she’s hot! You see that? I got her — and she likes it!”

Here and there in the audience Radford can see a few women, most of whom obviously have been dragged here by their men and would rather be anywhere else.

“Come on, Francine, you can’t win prize money if you don’t make like a good target!”

The fourth woman gives it a game try, pushing herself forward, but somebody’s spray hits her in the face and she flinches.

The streams of water are zeroing in with increasing accuracy on the four women’s crotches.

“All right! You guys shot like this in Vietnam, we wouldn’t of lost the war!”

Unable to take this, Radford shoves away from the bar and flees out of the place.

He stumbles outside and looks back at the Green Beret Bar. “Jesus H. Christ.”

He disappears.

At some ungodly hour of the morning in the kitchen of Charlie’s cafe, Denise Clay is interviewing Charlie while Dickinson examines Don the waiter’s ID. Don is explaining, “I been working out of Vice…”

“Yeah,” says Dickinson, “so what do you know about this Radford son of a bitch?”

Charlie is saying to Clay, “Said he didn’t do it. Said they put the gun in his hand after the shooting. And I believe it. I know him. If C.W.’d killed the guy, he’d say so.”

Don says to Dickinson, “He’s a loony, man. Beat three guys damn near to death — right here in the dining room.”

Charlie says to Clay, “Said something about a gun club in a building on Broadway.”

Clay and Dickinson come out the side door of Charlie’s Cafe and walk toward their car. Dickinson yawns, big. Clay tells him, “That waiter — talk to Vice, find out who sent him down here. Something funny there.”

“Yeah. Gotta tell you I am whipped… If we don’t nail this turkey fast—”

Commander Clay says, “What if he didn’t do it?”

“Come on. You’re not buyin’—”

She indicates the cafe. “That guy’s his old Army buddy. Knows him better’n we do. And — why is it the murder weapon had his fingerprints all over it — but there’s no prints on the ammunition?”

They get into the car…

The Army base is asleep, its drab military buildings and parked vehicles silent. On a company street a couple of enlisted soldiers walk by a sign that indicates the way to the dispensary. Radford, emerging from shadows, goes in that direction. At the dispensary door he looks all around, then tries to open it. It’s locked; it won’t budge. In a sweat, trembling, he fades back around the side of the building.

There’s a high window at the back. Radford strips off his jacket, wraps it around his fist and punches in the window. He uses the jacket to sweep slivers of glass from the frame before he crawls in through the high opening. If he sees the small red light glowing on a keypad panel he disregards it; how’s he to know the light was green until he smashed the window?

Dr. Trong and his wife are awakened by a strident buzzing noise. Dr. Trong fumbles for a switch, finds it and silences the alarm buzzer. He gets into his robe and slippers, and takes a revolver from a drawer. At the door he pauses and smiles at his wife. “Yes, dear, I’ll be careful.” When he goes out, his wife yawns and goes back to sleep.

In the back room of the dispensary Radford paws with increasing desperation through cabinets. He finds a bottle of tablets and tries to read the label — “Aspirin” — he stuffs it in his pocket and searches on…

Dr. Trong arrives on foot outside the place, in bathrobe and slippers, carrying his revolver. With absolute silence he unlocks the front door and enters, cocking the revolver.

In the back room Radford opens a cabinet door and discovers — a big steel safe, like a half-size bank vault. And a sign on it in great big printing: “In here, stupids. The narcotics. Don’t break in. It’s booby-trapped.”

Radford reacts: hopelessness. He’s trembling violently and soaked with sweat. He looks ghastly. And now he glances around and for the first time really notices the glowing red light on the alarm keypad. As he gapes at it he deflates even further. He seems paralyzed. Then — did he hear something or is it his imagination?

Dr. Trong moves cautiously through the corridor toward the door that leads into the back room. He moves through the dark without sound, and the cocked gun is ready in his hand.

He slowly enters the back room, silent, gun up. He flips the light switch. Lights come on. And just then—

Radford jumps him from on top of a steel filing cabinet.

Dr. Trong starts to struggle, then recognizes him and relaxes. It requires little effort — too little — for Radford to wrestle the revolver away from him.

Radford stands back, holding the cocked revolver, and gestures toward the safe. Dr. Trong obeys: twirls the combination dials. “You look god-awful, C.W.”

When the vault door begins to open, Radford pushes the doctor back, pulls it wide and looks in. Vials, bottles, papers. He rummages among them.

Dr. Trong says conversationally, “Where’s it hurt? Your head?”

“No. My big toe, you asshole.”

Radford finds a syringe, loads it from the vial, rolls up a sleeve, prepares to inject himself — all this while keeping the revolver close at hand and one eye on Dr. Trong across the room.

“I didn’t assassinate anybody.”

“All right,” Dr. Trong says. “Who did?”

“We didn’t get formally introduced.”

“You saw a face? Faces?”

Radford makes no answer; he’s distracted, reading the label of a vial. He puts it back and tries another. This one satisfies him.

The doctor says, “Between them and the police, it must feel like Kurdistan all over again — you can’t see them but you know they’re coming back to nail you again, maybe now and maybe next week, and it’s got you all bent out of shape.”

Radford says, “I don’t need your sympathy.”

“My sympathy won’t kill you.”

“Don’t mess with me. I don’t want people messing with me any more.”

He injects — and unexpectedly the injection hurts.

“Oww!!” He bends over with pain; rocks in agony, finally fumbles for the revolver. He points it accusingly. “What’d you put in this stuff?”

“What’s it say on the label?”

Radford holds his arm in pain. “Don’t lie to me!”

Dr. Trong shrugs. “Morphine… A little oil.” He grins amiably. “Hurts like a son of a bitch, don’t it.”

“You bastard.” Radford’s just about mad enough to shoot him; he’s doubled over — his arm is in agonizing pain.

The headline on the paper at the corner newsstand is a bold banner: “Assassin Escapes — A Loner? Or Part of Intricate Plot?”

Wojack, the shooter, buys a copy and while the news agent fishes for change Wojack remarks in a supercilious Yale drawl: “Every time some politician gets assassinated, people just can’t settle for the simple obvious facts — not good enough to have some homicidal maniac out there — always got to be some far-fetched theory about a sinister conspiracy.”

The news agent nods agreement. Wojack walks to the corner — just as Conrad’s van pulls up. Wojack gets in, and the van pulls away, hardly having stopped at all.

At the wheel Conrad lights a cigarillo. Wojack fastens his shoulder harness. He hands the newspaper to Gootch, who sits in the plush custom room behind the seats.

Gootch glances at the headline and folds the paper; he’s got more urgent things on his mind. He says to Wojack, “Timetable’s moved up. It’s today.”

Wojack considers that, then nods with satisfaction. “While Radford’s still on the loose. That’s very bright of someone.”

Gootch agrees. “He’ll get blamed for this one too.”

Conrad puffs smoke. “Doesn’t matter. These things have to be done — if somebody doesn’t exterminate these vermin, this world won’t be fit to live in. I’d be proud to take the blame if I didn’t have orders to stay covert.”

Wojack says, “Your orders don’t amuse me very much, old sport. Your money does. I want the next installment tonight.”

“It’s waiting. What else you need?”

“High-speed ammunition and a twelve-ex scope.”

“You got it,” Conrad says, and the van turns a corner, running for a green light.

Radford leans against a wall in Trong’s dispensary as the painkilling narcotic takes effect. His arm still hurts. He holds the revolver and watches the doctor suspiciously.

Dr. Trong is saying, “—saved all this trouble if you hadn’t been too stubborn to die way back then.”

Radford says gloomily, “I should’ve died.”

“Oh for God’s sake quit being so absurdly macho. Learn a little humility, C.W. Get rid of that thousand-yard stare… All right, you felt like the worst fink in history — you thought you were the only man who’d ever been tortured to the point where he broke the code of conduct… You know, we’ve found out a lot of them broke. You’re not so special after all… Hey. Hear what I’m saying. The only thing you did wrong was you were there illegally in the first place and they had no right to send you in there. You didn’t do anything.”

Radford broods at him, absorbing it.

Dr. Trong sees he’s got an opening. He leans forward. “Wars are fought by old men using young men’s bodies. Now somebody’s doing the same thing to you all over again. Somebody’s used you.”

“Shut up.”

“Come on, then. Get mad. It’s all right. Getting mad — it’s the first step in getting even.”

In the kind of shop where you can buy any weapon that’s legal and — if you know the secret word, some that aren’t — three men enter from the parked van out front: Wojack, Gootch and Conrad. A clean-shaven man unlocks the side door to let them in to the shop. The main thing that makes him recognizable is his bad tooth when he smiles: Harry Sinclair. Otherwise he’s changed his appearance again — a regular Lon Chaney.

The gun shop is a motley cluttered arsenal. Harry locks the door. Gootch takes an immediate childlike interest in a tripod-mounted machine gun and plays with it — a kid with a toy. Conrad unlocks a steel drawer, takes out an envelope and hands it to Wojack, who leafs through the money inside it, rapidly counting. He says to Harry, “Let me have forty 308s with one-ten-grain soft-points.”

Conrad asks, “Forty cartridges?”

It makes Gootch look up. “You fixin’ to start a war or something?”

Wojack says, mock-gentle, “I’d like to burn up a few sighting it in — if you don’t mind.”

Harry digs out two boxes of rifle shells and hands them to Wojack. Conrad turns on a TV set, but gets only snow.

Harry says, “These’ll give you a minus nine-point-three trajectory at three hundred yards. Or I can give you a boat-tail soft-point that’ll give you eight-point-four…”

“These’ll do.” Wojack yawns. “They’ll kill the man — dead enough.”

Radford holds the revolver. He looks up through the smashed window at the dawn sky. Dr. Trong watches, unafraid. Radford rubs his arm, trying to think.

The doctor says, “Call the police. You haven’t got a chance on your own.”

“They’d put me in a hole. I can’t take that any more.” Radford examines the revolver.

Dr. Trong says mildly, “I don’t think killing yourself is a sensible alternative.”

“Not right away anyhow. It’s not me I want to blow away.”

“I see. But you do want to go after someone? That’s progress, for you.”

“Now you think it’s progress to want to kill people?”

“It’s progress for you to want something.” Then Dr. Trong picks up a phone. Radford moves, as if to stop him — then stops, and after a long beat decides to trust him; he nods permission. Dr. Trong reacts — a profound moment — and then dials.

The doctor says into the phone, “Hi. Me… Any danger of us getting a bite of breakfast?”

On an outdoor shooting range at dawn, with a scrubby hillside for a backstop. Wojack sits at a bench-rest table and sights in his rifle on a long-range target. Conrad smokes. He and Gootch watch from nearby while Wojack fiddles with the weapon — the same kind of .308 rifle as before, with a ’scope mounted on it. He fires a shot and then studies the target through the ’scope. Through its lenses he can see one hole a bit wide of center. He adjusts a set-screw and aims again. When he squeezes it off he can see the image jerk a bit with recoil; it settles down — and the second bullet hole is dead-center in the bull’s eye.

On the indoor shooting range — the target range where Radford first met Harry. Several men and women are shooting at targets. An elderly supervisor looks up as Clay and Dickinson enter. They show him their IDs. And ask him a question or two.

He’s puzzled. “Sunday? Wasn’t anybody here Sunday. I’ve been closed Sundays for eighteen years.”

Dickinson asks, “How many people have keys?”

“Well gosh, I don’t know for sure. Too many, I guess, after all these years. I keep meaning to change the locks, you know, but—” He gives them an apologetic look.

Dr. Trong and Radford sit at the dinette table, having toast and coffee. In the middle of the table is that same morphine vial, and a packet of disposable syringes. Mrs. Trong, in houserobe and slippers, absently kisses her husband’s cheek and turns to go. Her husband touches her sleeve. “See if I’ve got any clothes big enough for C.W.”

She flaps a hand in acknowledgement and exits.

Dr. Trong says, “She’s used to my patients dropping in at weird hours… That injection still hurt your arm?”

“Stings like holy hell.”

“Good.” He indicates the vial and syringes. “Take ’em. I don’t want you busting into any pharmacies. Your burglary technique, you’d getting caught for breaking-and-entering.”

“Right. You got a cellular phone I can borrow?”

Trong looks at him. “You want to call her on the phone?”

Radford just watches until the doctor shrugs and hands him a flip-phone. It slides into Radford’s pocket. Then he winces. “You put something in there. To make it hurt.”

Dr. Trong gathers the dishes and begins to wash them. “It’s harmless… Look, C.W., you just think you need drugs for the pain. You healed a long time ago. The headaches are psychosomatic. You don’t need drugs.”

Wojack studies the consulate through his rifle ’scope, sliding the view across the forbidding fences and walls and the imposing building behind them, then down past uniformed guards to a brass plaque on the gatepost — “consulate” but he can’t see which country’s — and he continues to shift his aim up past the wall to an upper-story window. Through it we see a man sitting up in bed with a pad in his lap, writing. Something foreign about him. He looks powerful; important. The man is smoking a cigarette, deep in thought. The ’scope’s reticule centers on his chest. Wojack speaks softly: “Don’t smoke in bed, you twit. Hazardous to your health.” He squeezes it off and the image jerks with recoil; when it settles the man in bed is dead, his chest blown apart in blood, the cigarette falling from his limp hand.

Wojack runs, stooped over, to the back of the rooftop and swings himself out over the back of the building onto something that looks like a miniature window-washers’ scaffold. It’s supported on a system of pulleys and lines. It lowers him, swiftly and smoothly like a high-speed elevator, to an alley floor where Gootch matter-of-factly recovers the lift-lines and tosses the apparatus into the back of the van while Wojack and his rifle climb into the passenger seat; Conrad puts it in Drive as Gootch jumps into the back and pulls the rear door shut, and the van pulls away at a sedate speed, breaking no traffic regulations.

An Army Jeep pulls up opposite the vast lawn of a house that exudes solid establishment wealth, where a very attractive woman in her thirties, wearing shorts and T-shirt but very well groomed, is snipping roses, collecting flowers. This is Dorothy, depicted in the photograph that was in Radford’s room; it was taken when they both were younger.

Dr. Trong, at the wheel of the Jeep, says, “She waited for you. Even after you cracked. When everybody else gave you up for a traitor, Dorothy waited. I think she may still be waiting.”

Beside him Radford wears windbreaker, khakis — newly borrowed clothes. The engine idles and they continue to watch the estate across the street. Dr. Trong says, “She could accept it even when you couldn’t. She had faith.”

Radford says, “She should’ve married some guy.”

Dorothy, cutting roses, is unaware she’s being watched.

Dr. Trong says, “She understands why you ran away — why you dropped out. I think she’s more understanding than I am. You were on your way, C.W. You’d have been a chairman of the board or maybe you’d have taken over her father’s seat in the Senate.”

“What’re we doing here? Come on. Let’s go.”

“Dorothy loves you, you know. She’s waiting, C.W.”

“Yeah. Well your timing’s terrific. I’ve got nothing to offer her but a death watch.”

By a culvert along the edge of a country road Dr. Trong stops the Jeep. Radford gets out. The doctor says, “It may not be just a death watch. We may just get this thing turned around. If we do, what happens after? I don’t want to see you washing dishes again.”

“I’ll give it some thought when I get the time.”

“Promise?”

“Get the fuck out of here.” Radford waves Dr. Trong away and watches the Jeep drive off. Then he climbs down to the overgrown culvert under the road. He uncovers the hidden motorcycle. And goddammit he’s got a headache again.

In the culvert there’s plenty of reading material. Graffiti, including: “To hell with tomorrow,” printed with surprising neatness.

The headache is too much for Radford. He unwraps Dr. Trong’s medicine and prepares an injection — hesitates but finally shoots up. At first there’s blessed relief. He switches on the bike’s police radio to listen to the calls and hears mostly scratchy dispatch broadcasts that he can’t understand. Then there’s a dreadful pain in his arm. He doubles over, clutches the arm, dances around.

“Holy shit. SON of a bitch!”

And then after a moment he is distracted by sound of the police radio; he crosses to the motorcycle to listen. It’s a woman’s voice, crackling with static: “… State police requested to assist. Subject C. W. Radford. New assassination seven a.m. this morning, same M.O., same kind of rifle. Cancel all leaves and passes. Off-duty personnel report in for overtime assignment.”

Radford stares. He just doesn’t believe this.

Police headquarters is crowded with intense activity — noise, arguments, cops and officials, everything moving busily. Commander Clay hurries toward her corner office. Reporter Ainsworth trails her. “Commander Clay…”

“Later.”

Clay swings into her office and turns to slam the door in Ainsworth’s face. Dickinson squeezes in past both of them.

Ainsworth pleads. “Hey, how about it?”

Dickinson slams the door, shutting Ainsworth out. “Shitfuck. No witnesses, no physical evidence except the 308 softpoint ammo — you can buy it anywhere.”

The ringing phone interrupts him. Clay grabs it up. “Commander Clay. I trust it’s important?” Then Dickinson sees her react. “You’re kidding! Put him on — and trace it.”

Radford stands by his motorcycle around the blind side of the boarded-up filling station. He’s talking on the flipphone he borrowed from the doc. “I don’t have to make this call. I’m taking a chance, right? So listen to me. I didn’t even know about this new killing. I just heard about it on the radio. I’m not the one you want. I’m telling you because I want you to look for the real assassins.”

Clay’s voice reaches him as if from far away in the stars. “They out there with the real killers in the O.J. case? Well hell — describe for me the people you say you saw.”

Radford gives a thumbnail description of Harry, the way Harry looked the last time Radford saw him. He adds, “He knew the club — he knew the range. And there was a woman. A blonde. Natural blonde.” He describes Anne.

Clay says, “C.W., I want you to come in here. We can protect you. I give you my word, we’ll look for them.”

“Some other time, Commander. You find ’em first.”

“You haven’t got a chance.”

“You can’t always go by that. Anyway you’ve got rules. I haven’t.”

“Oh, we’ve all got rules, C.W. Even you… We’ve traced this call and I’m going to nail you.”

Radford clicks the END button, gives the cell phone a quizzical look, then sets it down gently on the lid of a trash can and gets on the motorcycle and rides away, not in a hurry.

He arrives at the back-road culvert on the motorcycle, stops, looks all around, and when he knows he’s unobserved, rides the bike down the embankment and hides it in the culvert under the road. He sits down in his hidey-hole, holding his aching head, talking to himself: “Okay, smart ass. Now what?”

This pain is unbearable in his head. He takes out the syringe kit and gets ready to inject himself. Then he looks at the painful needle — and finally puts it back in the case without using it. He puts the stuff away. Then he bends over — way over, nearly upside down, holding his throbbing head in his hands. And from that angle he’s looking at the culvert wall and he sees, upside down, the graffiti “To hell with tomorrow.” He reacts, because upside down, the “To hell” part looks like “7734 OL.” He sits up, staring at the graffiti. He’s remembering that cafe window reflection of the upside-down backward reflection of the van’s license plate.

Aloud, he says, “To hell.”

Slowly, relishing this discovery, he settles astride the motorcycle, starts her up, smiles, and — lets ’er rip.

At speed on the highway he thrusts his face into the wind and — he’s enjoying this…

Sign on the counter: “Department of Motor Vehicles.”

Radford casually shows his badge to a clerk, who then brings out a book. Radford looks through it, searching for a number — and with sudden triumph he jabs his finger onto the page.

There it is — the 7734 OL license plate — on Conrad’s van. It waits parked in front of a high-rise apartment house.

Radford rides his police motorcycle past it. His eyes study everything at once. He makes one pass, hangs a U-turn and comes back. Finally he parks the cycle. The van has just been washed; it sparkles.

Radford studies the polished van, then looks up at the apartment house above it. Balconies up there. Posh.

He takes a small object from the saddlebag and walks around, pretending to admire the sparkling van. Near the back he “accidentally” drops something in the street. He crouches to pick it up — it’s an all-steel one-piece ice pick. While he’s crouched by the rear bumper of the van he reaches out underneath and thrusts upward several times with great strength.

Fluid begins to drip from the punctured gas tank. It starts to form a pool. Without hurry Radford gets to his feet and, carrying his nutcracker nightsticks, strides purposefully around the side of the apartment house.

The service door is locked of course, but it’s only a spring-lock. He pries his ice pick in against the face-plate, works it hard and finally gets the door open and wheels inside toting the nutcracker.

Conrad is in the front room of his apartment talking on the phone and smoking a cigarillo. An open pack, and a lighter, are on the glass coffee table by the phone. The flat is a modern well-appointed masculine place on an upper floor. Glass doors, leading out onto the balcony, stand open. He’s saying into the phone, “Okay, we had an uptick; go ahead and execute the short sale.” He’s interrupted by the sound of the door buzzer. “That must be Gootch. Gotta go. I’ll talk on you later.” He hangs up and goes to the door.

When Conrad begins to open it, the door slams in against him, knocking him off balance, and a very angry Radford swarms in violently, kicking the door shut behind him, bashing Conrad to his knees and wrapping the nutcracker around Conrad’s neck all in one smooth coordinated move.

“Okay, Mr. Conrad. You can talk to me, or you can die.”

Conrad hacks, half choking, “Get this fucking thing off me.”

One-handed, Radford frisks him. He takes a revolver out of Conrad’s belt from where it was hidden under the shirt. Then he whips the nutcracker away from Conrad’s throat. “Don’t move a whisker.”

Radford does a quick search to make sure no one else is in the apartment: keeping one eye and Conrad’s own gun pointed at the motionless Conrad, he hurries from door to door, peering into rooms and closets. At one trophy cabinet he pauses to look at a couple of photos that are matted on the wall among various golf and fishing trophies. It includes a photograph of a group of rifle competitors at an outdoor meet. Mixed amid half a dozen strangers in shooting jackets and vests, he recognizes Harry (no beard), Conrad and Gootch. Harry, front and center, is holding a trophy and smiling. We see the bad front tooth.

“Hey Conrad. Tell me about your little shooting club.”

Conrad is still hoarse from the nutcracker. “How the hell’d you find me?”

Radford happens to be looking at the adjacent photo — this one showing Conrad standing proudly by his shiny new van, and favoring a banner: “Custom Van Show — FIRST PRIZE.” Radford returns to the photo of the shooters. He rips it down and stuffs it in his pocket. He looks at Conrad, then goes swiftly out to the balcony, looks around, looks down over the edge. From here he can see the street below and, straight below, the polished top of Conrad’s van. He can see the glisten of the spreading puddle of fluid behind the van.

Radford re-enters the apartment. Still holding Conrad’s revolver, he sits down by the phone, studies the photo of the shooting team and contemplates Conrad as if trying to figure out how to handle this. He reaches for the open pack of cigarillos; puts one in his mouth and lights it.

Conrad says, “Thought you didn’t smoke.”

“Why? What gave you that idea?”

“We’ve got a file on you — Look, I’d be sore too, in your shoes, but don’t mix that cigarillo smoke with melodrama, old buddy. I’m just a sub-contractor. A voice on the phone, that’s all I know. You can try bamboo under the fingernails but I still won’t know anything that’d help you.”

Radford goes out onto the balcony. He looks down, judges the wind against his moistened finger, then drops the lit cigarillo and steps back, looking deadpan at Conrad. A moment later they both hear the sound of a major explosion. The blast unsteadies Radford on his feet and as he rights them he sees Conrad’s eyes go wide as Conrad, peering past him, sees recognizable pieces of the van soar up past the window in a graceful arc.

Conrad leaps to his feet, runs to the balcony, stares down. Disbelief — astonishment. “You son of a bitch!”

Radford glances down over the edge as what’s left of the van is consumed in a conflagration.

Conrad is beside himself. Radford shoves him back inside. He shuts the glass doors and speaks:

“Now I’ll ask. Just once.”

Conrad walks away gathering his composure; he’s trying to think. Radford readies the nutcracker and begins to walk forward. Half the length of the room separates them.

Conrad says, “I’ve studied you inside and out. I memorized that file. I know you.”

He swings back in his pacing. Walks toward Radford — not hurrying, and not approaching too close. “You got brainwashed someplace between sniper school and coming back from Iraq. What happened, you get hypnotized by some Zen priest? You had a chance to kill those guys in the cafe the other night, but you wouldn’t do it. You had ’em dead to rights, you let ’em go. So you’re not going to kill me now — I’ve got no gun and anyhow I’m no use to you dead… You won’t shoot me in the back.”

And abruptly Conrad leaps to the door, yanks it open and dives through. Radford throws the nutcracker but it’s a fraction of an instant too late; it clatters against the closing door. Radford races to the door, picks up the nutcracker, exits on the run…

He races along the hall, looking every which way… And sees — a door sighing shut on its springs. Red sign above it: “EXIT.” Radford flings it open, plunges through…

He’s on a landing. The stairs go down several stories and he can hear the clattering sound of racing footsteps down there, Conrad fleeing toward the bottom, and Radford leaps down the stairs, half a flight at a bound, pursuing…

On the avenue the racket of fire and police sirens approaches the burning debris of what used to be Conrad’s van, as Conrad comes out of the building at the dead run, racing, reaches the bottom, crosses to an exterior door, exits…

Radford emerges from the back door just in time to see Conrad disappear around the far corner of the building. Radford gives chase, running full-tilt. Around two, then three sides of the building — and then just as Conrad runs out into the street, a police car and a fire engine arrive at the flaming wreckage of the van. Radford stops in cover — sees Conrad running across the street; sees two alert cops pile out of the police car… sees firemen start hosing the van fire… sees one of the cops look at the fleeing Conrad, and the other cop look straight this way, almost as if he’s looking at Radford but actually he’s just trying to see what Conrad’s running away from.

Radford reluctantly gives it up and slips back into the alley.

In Commander Clay’s office, Dr. Trong and his wife face Denise Clay. Dr. Trong is angry. Clay is impatient. “Doctor — Major — whatever, get to the bottom line. I’m busy here.”

“Bottom line, Commander, he couldn’t have done the second assassination because he was right in our kitchen eating breakfast.”

Mrs. Trong gives her husband a dry look.

Clay is stony. “Who’s going to believe that? They know you’re on his side.”

“I don’t care what they believe. I’m telling you to believe it.”

Clay nods. “I could buy him for the first one. But this second murder — it’s political and it’s organized… But he’s our only lead, and we’ve got to get him… If you’re telling the truth, you harbored a capital fugitive and you could do time as an accessory.”

“Not if he’s innocent, I won’t. And some people will have a lot of egg on their faces.”

Dickinson bursts in. “They spotted him…”

Dr. and Mrs. Trong hold their breath. Clay whips toward the door; Dickinson restrains her. “—And they lost him…”

Clay reacts — big exasperation — and Trong smiles at his wife, and she makes a face at him.

Outside a sporting goods store Radford parks his cycle and takes out the photo from Conrad’s apartment — the group photo of shooters, emphasizing Harry and the trophy. He takes it into the store and shows the picture to a saleswoman, asks questions, gets an answer: “Sure, I know that guy. Lives out on Highland…”

In Harry’s kitchen Anne talks on the phone with repressed fury. “It’s too far, that’s all. How many more wet operations are you people setting up?… I don’t care. Don’t talk to me like that. You find Damon. Find him right now and tell him either he calls me tonight or I go to the police.”

She hangs it up violently and that’s when she looks around and sees Radford, standing frighteningly near her.

“‘Wet operations’ — I thought that one went out with the Iron Curtain.”

Anne tries to shrink away. Radford moves in on her. “Or is it what you do under the covers with guys you’re setting up for a frame?”

“C.W. — I didn’t know. Oh God, how can I explain this? They just wanted your fingerprints on the rifle. They said they were going to give you a head start.”

Radford whips the nutcracker around her throat.

“Head start to where?… Where’s Harry?”

She doesn’t comprehend. “Who?”

He whips out the now-crumpled photo of the gun-club group and shoves it in front of her, forcing her to look at it.

“Your husband.”

Anne goes weak. “He’s not my husband. And his name’s not Harry.”

“This is his house. You live here.”

“I… I got a divorce. From my fourth husband. I had no place to go. I never really had any kind of a home — you know? He offered, and I moved in here with him — I never meant to stay.”

“They sicced you on me. I was the perfect sucker, wasn’t I?”

“C.W., I—” She’s very scared. “What do you want?”

Radford taps the photograph. “For openers — him.”

After nightfall behind his gun shop Harry is showing a sleek new limousine to a customer in a chauffeur’s uniform who looks like a bodyguard for a crime boss. “Yes sir, state-of-the-art. Three eighths-inch Teflon armor plate.” He moves around, pointing out features on the new luxury limo. Not far away is parked an older limo. “All bulletproof glass. Not just the windows. Even the mirrors.”

Radford watches this, from concealment in a doorway down the alley. He’s got Anne, not gently; he holds one hand around her mouth.

Harry kicks a tire. “Bullet-proof steel cord in the sidewalls and tread. I’m tellin’ you it’ll take an anti-tank bazooka to stop this mother.”

The customer says, “Okay… When?”

“She’s all gassed up. I’m just waiting on that upholstery. Be in tomorrow, for sure Friday.”

“Well then you call me and I’ll come pay the balance. Right?”

“Right. Sure. You got it, my man.”

The customer goes to the older limo and drives away while Harry takes the keys out of the new limo’s ignition and pockets them — Radford particularly notices this action — and then Harry goes into the shop’s back door.

Radford, carrying the nutcracker, pulls Anne with him, approaching the same door.

Inside the gun shop Harry crosses to the front window. He pulls back a slat of the blind to peer suspiciously out into the night, cupping his hand around his eye to see better.

Out there a police patrol car slowly cruises forward.

Harry lets the blind fall back into place and turns, and that’s when he sees — Radford, looming, moving silently forward — almost on top of Harry — nutcracker lifted… Harry reacts: recognition; dread…

Two cops are in the slow-moving patrol car. The cop in the passenger seat sees something, switches on the car’s swivel spotlight and swings the beam around until it reveals — a motorcycle parked in the deep shadows of the alley.

“Hey.” Softly.

The car stops. The cops get out and approach the motorcycle, with flashlights. One whispers to the other with suppressed excitement: “We got it! Put in a squeal!”

Harry is backing up, flustered, with Radford pursuing him, not hurrying, keeping within arm’s length, swinging the nutcracker at his side, holding it by the end of one stick, holding Anne’s arm with his other hand. Harry nearly falls over the tripod-mounted machine gun. He’s talking very fast:

“You get nothing out of me, hear? You spilled your guts out, but you don’t get a thing out of me. Go ahead. Chickenshit bastard. Fucking traitor.”

Radford swings the nutcracker underarm. Hinged on its lanyards, the nightstick flicks up into Harry’s crotch… Harry’s eyes bug out; he doubles over in shrieking agony… Falls down by the machine gun… Radford stands above him, swinging the nutcracker gently like a pendulum. Harry slowly focuses on it, his eyes hypnotically following it back and forth. When it begins to swing toward him he yells: “No! Hey!”

The pendulum stops. Radford waits, looking down — patient as a Buddha.

Harry licks his lips. After an interval Radford says quietly, “Okay. The hard way.” The nutcracker begins its pendulum swings again.

“All right, all right. Wait. You want to know — the next assassination. Next target… It’s Clay. Commander Clay.”

Anne looks down at him, still able to be shocked. “Oh, Jesus Christ. You bastard.”

Radford says, “Commander Clay. Sure. She’s a real cop. She can’t be bought, so she’s in the way.” Abruptly he crouches and gathers Harry toward him. Nose to nose.

Harry’s glance breaks away.

But Radford isn’t letting up. “Who are you people?”

“We’re just trying to—”

“Give me a name. The head man. Who’s on top of the shitpile?”

And the nutcracker whips around Harry’s throat and begins to tighten. Harry tries to pry it away with his hands but the choking leverage continues to tighten…

Anne makes an abrupt decision. “Damon.”

Radford looks up at her.

She says, “It’s Damon Vickers.”

Harry coughs. He’s relieved now that it’s out; he’s got nothing to lose by going along. His whisper is hoarse. “Yeah. Colonel — Colonel Vickers.”

It takes a minute for Radford to absorb this. “The White House?”

“He ain’t the White House, Christ’s sake. He just works there.”

Radford looks at Anne, then at Harry. They both have the exhausted look of people who’ve given up their most dangerous secret; he’s got to believe they’re telling the truth. “Where does he live?”

Several police cars silently roll up and stop, forming a perimeter around the gun shop. Quietly, cops on foot steer pedestrian passers-by away. As cops barricade themselves, surrounding the gun shop, Commander Clay gets out of her car and meets Dickinson. They talk in hushed voices.

She says, “We’ve had trouble with him before. Automatic weapons, illegal sales.”

“We think Radford’s in there with him. They’ve got a real arsenal in there. Keep your heads down.”

Harry is on his knees. Anne fidgets. Radford flexes the nutcracker. “Tell me about it. Tell me about your outfit.”

Harry hesitates; Anne begins to speak; and they all stop, frozen by the sound of Commander Clay’s voice amplified on a bullhorn outside: “This is the police. You in the gun shop — we have you surrounded. You’ve got one minute to come out with your hands in the air.”

Radford’s eyes dart from front to back. He settles back hard on his heels, his face bleak. Harry’s grunt overlaps the bullhorn speech: “Holy shit!” Anne doesn’t know which way to turn. Radford finally swings toward the front, where the bullhorn sound comes from, and in that instant while his back is turned, Harry swiftly feeds a belt of ammunition into the tripod-mounted machine gun.

Radford catches this corner-of-the-eye action just in time and dives to one side, knocking Anne protectively to the floor just as Harry begins to shoot — full-rate automatic fire — the bullets shattering the big levelor blind and the front plate-glass window…

Cops cover their heads and hunker down as machine gun bullets from the shop spray the street, ricocheting everywhere, smashing car windows, creating havoc…

Commander Clay is rock steady. “Tear gas — now!”

And Dickinson simultaneously shouts, “Open fire. Fire at will. Son of a bitch!”

Clay’s angry “No!” and her sharp look are too late to stop the chaos. Cops open up with revolvers and shotguns. One of them fires a tear gas grenade from a flare pistol into the store.

Inside, the grenade explodes in a puff of evil smoke near the front of the shop. Harry is blazing away, having lunatic fun, overheating the machine gun. Police bullets return the fire, banging around inside the shop, and Radford shoves Anne toward the cover of the counter and scrambles to follow. Tear gas rolls back toward them. All three begin to cough. Radford growls at Harry: “You gun-happy son of a bitch!”

A blaze of police bullets shatters glass everywhere. Anne goes down, shot. Radford tries to protect her. “Give her a hand here!”

Harry ignores him — maybe doesn’t even hear him; must have adrenalin pumping so loud he can’t hear a thing. His machine gun swivels back and forth, raking the street. And runs empty.

Radford lowers Anne gently to the floor.

Harry with deranged glee yanks open a hidden floorboard compartment, heaves out a goddamn flame thrower, ignites the sumbitch and starts to shoot a long spout of deadly flame out through the smoke toward the street.

Under the smoke Radford is trying to rouse Anne but he sees that she’s dead. Finally — coughing desperately — he’s driven back, stumbling back into the fog of tear-gas and smoke.

The roaring blast of flame hoses out from the smoky smashed front of the shop. Cops fall back, desperately seeking cover. And the idiot’s flamethrower has set half the shop on fire; it’s blazing dreadfully.

Inside the thick smoke, coughing, Radford pounces on Harry and wrestles the flamethrower away from him and turns it off.

Harry shoves him away. Both men are coughing hard. Harry yells like a spoiled child whose toy has been taken away. He jumps up and down, throwing a tantrum.

Radford yells at him. “Get down, you stupid—”

But the warning is too late. Harry goes down, cut to pieces in a fusillade of police gunfire.

Amid ragged aftervolleys of police gunfire the smoke billows from the smashed front of the shop. Finally Clay, very weary, stands up. “Cease fire, for God’s sake.”

Total stillness now. An expectant hush. Cops begin to peer out from behind cover…

Now several cars in convoy arrive — Vickers and his G-men get out of them; Vickers deploys his troops with hand motions. Vickers as usual is dressed like a suit mannequin in an expensive shop window.

Dickinson says dryly to Clay, “Cavalry to the rescue right in the nick of time, like always.” As the feds approach, Dickinson gets up and greets them in some disgust, addressing his insult to Vickers: “Here’s Ken. Where’s Barbie?”

“Don’t fart around with me, cop.”

Clay ignores him; she says to Dickinson, “Put another tear-gas round in there. I want to be sure.”

Another tear-gas grenade lobs into the smoke. There’s the muffled puff of its explosion inside the inferno.

Vickers stands with his hands in his pockets, looking dubious. “You sure he’s in there?”

Clay says, “Let’s wait and see.”

Dickinson says, “Nothing alive in there by now but maybe a few cockroaches.”

Vickers thinks a moment, visibly. Then he pulls a riot shotgun out of the nearest cop car and, carrying it, circles around toward the back of the shop. The smoke thickens. Flames appear; the building is a goner. Everyone waits…

Behind the gun shop the armored limousine stands near the back door and Vickers sees cops farther back, in a rough perimeter around the back of the shop, watching nervously. Vickers moves in closer to the building, shotgun in hand, working from cover to cover. Smoke pours from the building, beginning to obscure it, but Vickers can make out the back door. It stands wide open.

Radford comes out on his belly, holding a wet towel across his mouth and nose, snaking under the smoke. Billows envelop the armored limo, hiding it, and he slides through it into the driver’s seat of the limo.

Vickers is squinting against the smoke and flames, trying to see the back of the shop. He peers intensely, then suddenly reacts as, like a monster from hell, the armored limo comes roaring out of the smoke straight at him.

Vickers blasts it with the shotgun.

It has no effect.

He drops the shotgun and now stands with feet spread, revolver lifted in both hands, fearlessly shooting at the windshield as the limo roars straight at him.

The limo roars forward. Bullets bounce off the glass.

It veers at the last minute and slithers past Vickers, fishtailing into an alley. Vickers swivels and pulls the trigger again but his revolver is empty…

Around him, cops are blazing away at the fleeing car. Hit but unscathed, the limo skids away, bullets ricocheting off its armored body.

All around the burning shop, police cars and government cars begin to peel out in pursuit. Vickers leaps into one of them, and it nearly collides with arriving fire engines…

Radford flees in the armored limo, pursued by an army whose bullets bounce off the armored metal and glass and rubber.

Into a six-point intersection, late at night, police cars converge from every street and alley until they create a tangled gridlock. Everyone stops. Cops and feds emerge from cars — some furious, some simply bewildered.

Clay and Vickers get out of adjacent cars. Clay on her cellular phone. She’s looking up at a helicopter that swoops overhead; she’s talking to its pilot. “Which one?” She gets an answer, glances at Vickers and points to a parking garage.

Solid buildings all around the intersection. No way out except the streets, which are clogged with cop cars. Various stores (closed for the night), office buildings, restaurants, a theatre with surprised patrons at the front door watching the Keystone Kop activity.

Vickers and Clay walk slowly toward the garage, ushering cops in with arm signals. Heavily armed, the detachment deploys into the building.

In the garage, on a second-level ramp by the Disabled parking slot, crouches the limo. A sad, silent, bullet-smeared mess, but nonetheless intact.

Dickinson walks over to it, uses a gloved hand to open its door — he’s ready to shoot if somebody’s in there but he doubts it and he’s right; it’s empty. He raises his voice in weary summons: “Over here.”

From the hallway of a restaurant-bar on the top floor of a high-rise, Radford has a splendid view of the city. He’s on a pay phone by the rest-room doors. “Like to leave a message for Commander Clay… I know she’s not in her office right now—”

Down through the plate glass he can just make out Commander Clay as she emerges on foot with Dickinson from the ramp-entrance of the garage. Radford says into the phone, “This is C. W. Radford. So take this down and get it straight.” He sees Clay and Dickinson cross to a police car; Clay takes out its radio mike and begins to broadcast.

Into the phone Radford is saying, “Tell Denise Clay she’s the next target for assassination. Tell her the boss honcho behind the assassinations is Colonel Vickers. That’s not a mistake. I don’t give a shit if you believe me. Colonel Damon Vickers. Tell her I said it.”

Down below, he sees Vickers join Clay; Vickers says something — probably sarcastic — and Vickers and Dickinson get into an angry shoving match, with Clay trying to calm them down.

Radford walks away from the phone.

The Vickers house at dawn is secluded to the point of isolation, manicured, exurban, surrounded by flowing meadows. From a hedgerow of trees Radford studies the place. It’s just past dawn. Nothing stirs.

While the sun rises, Radford waits with infinite patience, moving a few inches around the bole of his tree each time the sun begins to reach around to him. He’s not doing anything at all — just watching the house.

And an End…

In the open maw of a high barn somewhere in back hills a camouflage-painted Humvee stands squat and forbidding, like a sentry across the opening. Vickers walks in past it and sizes up the six men assembled: Conrad, Gootch, Wojack, Curly, Moe and Larry. They’re assembling automatic weapons that they’ve just cleaned and triple-checked. Moe’s is an Uzi submachine gun. Wojack, in neat Ivy League duds, sits on a crate, wiping down his 308 with the studied care of a perfectionist.

Vickers says without preamble, “They have a few questions for me.”

Wojack says, “Well they came to the right place. You’re the one with all the answers.”

Ignoring him, Vickers says to Conrad, “Seems they got a phone call from Radford… We have to assume those two talked their heads off in the gun shop.”

Conrad says, “I told Harry that blonde would get him done in.”

Gootch says, “So where’s Radford?”

For some reason this all amuses Wojack. “He was all used up. Didn’t care if he lived or died. It never occurred to you that you back him into a corner, he’d turn and fight. Poor bastard. They all think he’s a deranged homicidal maniac — some animal that needs to be exterminated. And here he’s the only innocent son of a bitch in a hundred thousand square miles.”

Vickers gives him a look, decides it isn’t worth the trouble, and turns to Conrad. “We have to assume Radford knows where I live. So that’s where he’s going to be. You’re all coming with me to wait for him.”

Gootch says, “What if the cops are there too?”

“Then he’ll die while resisting arrest.”

Wojack, thumbing cartridges into his rifle one at a time, inspecting each one with practiced care before it slides into the magazine, talks half to himself, with a soft note of derision. “Patriots. Heroes. How do you tell a freedom-fighter from a terrorist without a scorecard?”

Vickers snaps, “I’m paying you for your marksmanship, not your lip.”

Wojack shakes his head. “You people amaze me. Don’t you ever think of yourselves as the bad guys?”

Vickers answers civilly because he wants a convert. “We’ve tried working within the system. Hell, I practically am the system, but when you’re surrounded by idiots it’s no good. The world gets more dangerous every day and those morons just keep playing pork-barrel politics as if… Well we’re dealing with monsters who don’t play by rules. Assassination’s the only way to get at them. You cut off the head of the menace. And you keep cutting off each new head as it emerges, until they learn to change.”

Wojack slams the rifle’s bolt shut on the final cartridge. “Sure. I mean, you’re not trying to steal the deed to the ranch or anything. Bad guys never see themselves as bad guys.”

Conrad says, “And who the hell are you? Some hired two-bit hit-man!”

“It’s my trade. I’m a craftsman… At least I know what I am.”

The room is an office-library. Lots of high-polished woodwork. Radford stands just inside a kicked-open set of French doors. He’s looking at the display case beside him and the framed photographs on the leather-topped desk. Photos of Vickers in uniform getting medals pinned on his chest; Vickers in front of the White House; Vickers at a podium, flanked by American flags, addressing a crowd, with a big caption “Col. Damon Vickers,” and a big banner above his head that reads: “America Now!”

Radford has the nutcracker in one hand, a revolver in the other. He looks all around, ready for anything. Nothing stirs. He rams forward out of the room.

His charge takes him through a hallway into a big kitchen; all the mod cons. The stove is a gas range. There’s a center-island counter. Nobody in the room until Radford reels in from the hall. He looks around, picks a direction arbitrarily, plunges through a door…

Conrad drives a luxury sedan down the blacktop highway; Vickers and Wojack are in it with him. The other guys — Gootch, Curly, Larry, Moe — are in the Humvee four-by-four behind them. And there’s something ominous simply in the way the two-vehicle convoy rolls relentlessly forward, not speeding at all but somehow implacable, as if they’d run right over any innocent pedestrian who happed to be in their way and then they’d just keep right on going without even glancing back.

Radford prowls into a dining room. He hears a sound of approaching vehicles so he goes to a window and looks out and sees the two vehicles approach, crunching their way up the driveway, in no hurry. From this angle he can see the smashed-open French doors of the house, so he’s not surprised when the car and the Humvee stop some distance short of the place and seven guys get out. Radford recognizes Vickers, who examines the place with field glasses, then makes hand signals and leads the other six in a spreading-wide skirmish line, converging toward the house on foot, most of them carrying automatic weapons except for one Ivy League — looking man who hangs back, holding a 308 rifle at the ready but not joining in the war-game maneuvering. That one watches the troops with a pose that conveys sardonic bemusement.

Radford fades back into the house.

Vickers sends Conrad around one end of the house. Conrad goes, walking straight up as if invulnerable to enemy bullets — he knows Radford’s not going to shoot him without warning.

Vickers looks back, sees Wojack ambling forward with his rifle ready, and angrily waves Wojack toward the opposite end of the house. Wojack shrugs and turns that way, watchful but not enjoying this part of the game.

Radford squeezes himself into a narrow space so confining and so completely dark that he can hardly breathe. He begins to sweat — claustrophobia…

Without making a sound Gootch appears in the den, gun first, framed in the smashed-open French doors, and comes in, watching everything at once. Behind him the others curl into the room and fan out fast — Larry, Moe, Curly. Then Vickers enters behind them. Vickers signals with his automatic weapon toward the far door, and Gootch sidles out through it…

In the kitchen Gootch and Curly and Moe poke under counters and table, nobody making a sound.

In his narrow dark enclosure Radford is really starting to come unglued, but with a tremendous effort of will he remains absolutely motionless.

At one end of the house Conrad eases up to a window and looks in. He doesn’t see anything exciting.

At the opposite end of the building Wojack hangs back in the shade of a tree, studying the turf. He’s a sniper, not a close-quarters brawler; far as he’s concerned, snooping in closed quarters where you could get ambushed is not included in the price of his ticket. He stays by the tree.

Moe is stooping to pull a door open and look in the cabinet space under the kitchen sink when behind him a broom-cabinet pops open and Radford plunges out, gasping for air. Radford whacks Moe’s wrist with his nutcracker.

“Hey—!”

The nutcracker loosens Moe’s hold on the Uzi and whips the weapon away before Moe can figure out what’s happening.

Gootch and Curly wheel — Curly opens fire with his automatic weapon before he’s had time to see who he’s shooting at, and his bullets cut Moe in half.

Radford levels the Uzi; Curly ducks down behind the island counter… Gootch, facing the muzzle of Radford’s Uzzi, backs out into the hallway… Radford pulls the fridge door open and uses it for armor-plate while Curly shoots at him from behind the counter. Radford returns the fire. Bullets chatter and scream.

In the dining room Gootch comes windmilling back. Larry and Conrad run forward to join him. Vickers comes in from a hall door, seeing it all, understanding it instantly. Gootch yells desperately, “He’s a banana truck!” while in the kitchen Curly, on his knees, dodges around the end of the island counter, looking for a shot — and suddenly Radford comes vaulting over the counter, kicks the submachine gun out of Curly’s hand and slams Curly upside the head with the free-swinging end of his nutcracker. It lays Curly out cold.

…Gootch returns into the kitchen, followed by Conrad and Larry; and now suddenly Radford from behind the door is all over them — uses his nutcracker as a flail, holding one stick and swirling the other, bashing Gootch and Larry, not wanting to use the submachine gun that’s in his other hand; but Conrad is very fast — deflects the nutcracker by parrying with his gun, then (as Radford lifts the Uzi, ready to use it) wheels back outside with Gootch and Larry.

From the dining room side, Conrad slams the door. Immediately he and Larry and Gootch start firing bursts through the closed door. In no time at all their bullets splinter it, turning it into kindling.

Radford crouches behind the counter. Bullets come in through the closed door, busting the kitchen all to hell. Curly, dazed on the kitchen floor, groans and stirs; bullets are busting him all to pieces. The bullets also tear up Moe’s body.

Vickers yanks open a window — shouts outside: “Wojack — get your ass in here.”

Outside Vickers’ house several police cars arrive fast. Wojack, seeing them, dodges away from the tree with his 308 rifle and hurries into the house.

As Clay, Dickinson and cops spill out of the cars, they hear a brutal racket of automatic fire from inside the house. Dickinson says, “The hell?”

Vickers, having seen the approaching cops, shouts at the three guys but Gootch and Larry are still blazing away through the shattered door and Conrad is reloading and they don’t hear him. Behind them, Vickers slips quickly out of the room.

Gootch and Larry stop to refill their weapons. That’s when — in the abrupt silence — Conrad glimpses Radford — a faint movement beyond the barrier of the island counter — and Conrad opens fire viciously and — the bullets bust up the gas range.

The range explodes — and the fire rapidly begins to spread.

Radford, trapped behind cover against the counter, looks up and around, seeking a way out.

Wojack comes into the den through the busted French doors and stops to consider his options.

Through a kitchen window Radford comes hurtling out of the fire, falls to the ground, lands rolling, picks himself up, runs for cover. He’s still got the nutcracker but not the Uzi.

Behind him, inside the kitchen, Conrad kicks down what’s left of the door and bursts in, crouching, spraying bullets in an arc. The place is on fire. Gootch and Larry are right behind him. And they see there’s nobody here except the bodies of Curly and Moe. Conrad wheels to the busted-out window — and sees several cops running toward the house, led by Denise Clay.

Behind Commander Clay runs Don the waiter — now wearing a police uniform — lifting his revolver to aim at Clay’s back…

Dickinson, behind them both, sees what Don’s doing. In a flash — from the hip — he shoots. Don is hit; falls… Dickinson and a cop, running past, slow briefly to make sure Don is no longer a danger. Don is dead. They run on.

From inside the den, aiming out through the broken-open French doors, Wojack coolly draws a bead on the approaching Clay.

Clay sees the rifle aimed at her — hasn’t got a prayer…

Suddenly in a single startling motion Radford looms up through the French doors and slams Wojack to one side with the nutcracker.

Wojack falls back; the rifle shoots harmlessly into the air. Wojack works the bolt to load a new shell into the chamber but Radford kicks the rifle out of his hands… Slams Wojack again with the nutcracker. It dazes Wojack; he falls back against the wall.

Radford growls, “They’re gonna want you alive.”

And then he wheels to run into the house, as Clay approaches the window, having seen it all. “Radford — wait!” But he’s gone.

Dickinson rushes in ahead of her and picks up the discarded 308 rifle and claps handcuffs on Wojack.

Larry, Gootch and Conrad are backing away from the kitchen’s rapidly spreading fire, into the dining room. Larry shouts, “Where’s my brother?”

Conrad shoves him. “He bought it. Haul ass outa here.” He steers Larry quickly toward the exit — as Clay and Dickinson come slamming in. Conrad lifts his gun but Dickinson (with the 308 rifle) shoots first… Conrad goes down… Larry, moving like an automaton, lifts his automatic weapon and aims it at Clay — and Clay, regretting it, shoots Larry down… Dickinson shakes his head. “Jesus H. Christ.”

Radford spills out the front door, toting the nutcracker. He’s searching for Vickers; he runs along the burning side of the house. Two cops hold the stunned Wojack, handcuffed, in custody… Radford wheels around a corner, to find himself face-to-face with Clay and Dickinson.

And just then, behind the two cops, appears Vickers.

He comes up alongside Clay, every inch the federal man. Running a colossal bluff. He trains his gun triumphantly on Radford. “All right, scumbag. War’s over.”

But Denise Clay pushes Vickers’ gun aside. “Not him. You. Damon Vickers, you are under arrest…”

And suddenly the muzzle of Vickers’ gun is lodged against Clay’s throat and he’s making her drop her gun and he’s dragging her away, using her as a shield…

They freeze: Radford, Dickinson and the other cops — as Vickers backs away with his hostage… The house burns high…

Vickers drags Clay into the nearest car and turns the key in its ignition, all the while holding his revolver hard against Clay’s throat.

Dickinson lifts his gun. He’s going to open fire

Radford says, “Nobody shoots that good. What if you miss?”

Dickinson lowers the gun. Cops hold their fire; they watch helpless frustration as the car begins to back away.

Radford speaks very calmly — icy. “But he’ll kill her anyway! Only chance to save her is now.” And he plucks the 308 rifle from Dickinson’s grasp and in the same smooth synchronous motion drops to one knee and takes careful aim at the retreating car while it swirls backward, turning nose-out, ready for getaway. Dickinson thinks about making a move, decides against it, doesn’t know what the hell to do, and Radford, silhouetted against the flames of the burning house, steadies his aim. Like a rock.

The car slithers for purchase. It’s a very tricky moving target.

In the car Vickers removes the revolver from Clay’s neck long enough to whip the shift lever from reverse to drive, and that is when Radford squeezes off his shot — quick but steady and careful.

It hits square on the skull. Vickers’ head snaps to one side; he is instantly unconscious.

Clay grabs the revolver out of Vickers’ limp hand, and switches off the car’s ignition.

The car stops. Clay closes her eyes and breathes in, very deep, and out, all the way.

Dickinson follows Radford to the car, as Clay gets out and comes around — and looks Radford in the eye. Radford looks right back. In back of them the house burns.

Vickers is flopped back limp against the headrest, his head lolling, bleeding from the head wound. Clay opens the door and picks up Vickers’ wrist, feeling for a pulse.

Dickinson gently takes the 308 and the nutcracker from Radford. Radford doesn’t resist.

A couple of cops bring Wojack along, handcuffed.

Clay says, in surprise, about Vickers, “He’s alive.”

Radford says, “Yeah. I want to hear him explain all this.”

Wojack murmurs, “And a fascinating tale it’ll be.”

Dickinson yaps at a cop: “Call paramedics.”

Wojack looks up at Clay. “Tell you what. I’ll swap you the whole story for immunity from prosecution. What do you say?”

Radford and Clay meet each other’s gaze — now slowly they both begin to smile. She takes his hand in both of hers. A warm bond.

Vickers’ house colors the sky red with its leaping flames…

Dr. Trong parks his Jeep in that same spot across the street from the big lawn leading up to the Senator’s house — gardens, tranquility, solid establishment, wealth.

In the passenger seat Radford looks neat and refreshed in a new suit. The two men exchange glances. Dr. Trong nods, indicating the house.

Radford hesitates, then gets out of the Jeep and, with visible misgivings, walks toward the house, then looks back.

Dr. Trong just watches him.

Radford turns to face the door, and rings the bell.

It opens. Dr. Trong sees Dorothy there. At first she’s shocked. Then with a wonderful smile of disbelieving happiness she invites him in. He goes inside, and the door closes.

Dr. Trong smiles, and drives away.

Content

Brian Garfield
The Marksman

By Way of Introduction…

A Beginning…

A Middle…

And an End…