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The Van Doekken Longbore.

The most sought-after sporting rifle in the world. One of those things that people will swear to their dying day is a myth, a fantasy, a fairy tale. But it’s for real.

Only a couple hundred of the Longbores exist, no one knows the exact number, except maybe Van Doekken, and he’s dead. It’s the sort of thing owned by royalty, whether kings and queens or movie stars and rock stars. Made in South Africa in the seventies, hand-tooled, engraved, world-class accuracy, the favored trigger of millionaires and well-paid mercenaries. I saw my first Longbore in Central America; it belonged to one of the CIA flavors of the month down there. The second was in a silk-lined case at the South African Embassy in D.C. This one, in the
steady hands of the Bravo, is my third, and it looks like Juan E’s getting the fourth.

I wonder if he even knows what he’s getting, but his eyes widen as CK hands him the prize. He’s dancing inside his skin like a kid who’s struck it rich on Christmas Day.

The Longbore is huge, well over four feet long, almost three feet of barrel, and it weighs somewhere near fifteen pounds. It’s got a bolt-action repeating center-fire that supposedly sings.

These numbers have been customized, outfitted for the savanna. The titanium-blue barrel is topped off with a Nikon scope and a laser aimer. Satinwood stock, Bavarian cheek piece, gold-plated trigger assembly. Hand-crafted stock work, metal work, inlays. Such a beautiful piece of iron, and such a fucking shame. This is meant for museums, not mobsters.

And whether Juan E and the Bravo know what they’re looking at or not, this isn’t right. This is not right at all.

In a room full of crazy men and guns, money, and drugs, there aren’t many options. I keep my mouth shut, but I put my hand to my belt, find the grip of the Glock. When the shit goes down, I’m not going down too.

Take a look, gentlemen, CK is saying. Take a look down that scope.

Juan E’s got the Longbore to his shoulder and he’s peeking down that sight like Davy Crockett.

The Bravo, Daddy Big, is intense. His hand circles the grip and his finger dances at the trigger guard. Itching.

Mackie is looking out the window again, and when the Bravo swings the Longbore his way, peering through the scope all the way to Albany, the room takes a slight spin to the right.

Boss, Mackie says. He turns away from the window, looks at the Bravo and that big rifle and doesn’t even blink.

Boss, he says again. We got to get going.

CK ignores him. You can drop an elephant at a thousand yards with that baby, CK tells his grateful audience. But with that scope, that feel, hell, you can drop an ant if you want to.

Juan E swings the rifle around.

Careful, CK tells him, and laughs.

Mu’fuck, Juan E says. Damn.

The Bravo is still silent. He looks through the scope, then pulls away, squints, looks into the distance with his own eyes. Then he goes to parade rest, feels the heft of the gun.

Want some target practice? CK says. Out of his jacket pocket he pulls a shiny magazine. He waves the magazine at Juan E. Let me show you how it’s done.

He presses the magazine into Juan E’s right hand. Then he digs into his jacket, pulls free another magazine, and tosses it to the Bravo. I cannot believe this is happening.

Okay, CK says. Three-shot magazine, .557 in Magnum calibers. They’re monsters. Winchester FailSafes, crossbreed of the best two bullets on earth, the Nosler Partition and the Barnes X. They’ll shoot through a Mercedes to get to what you want. A little tricky to load, though. You can’t just stick those babies in there. You go at an angle, notch forward and first, okay?

Juan E works the magazine into the Longbore, slaps the bottom. Très chic, he says, with that golden smile. You know what I’m sayin?

Boss, Mackie says. We really do have to go. Like now.

Okay, okay, CK says. But he’s talking to Juan E and the Bravo. Now this is the hard part, he says. You got a three-position safety. Let me show you the drill. Toss that baby over to me a minute.

Juan E pitches the rifle toward CK, and the rifle twists, tumbles, rolls, and the sunlight sprays off its gold and into my eyes and I don’t know why, I don’t know why, I just don’t know why but I cry out:

No

And then it happens.

Mackie leaves his place at the window, his hand darting up from beneath his jacket to stab the silenced pistol into the back of Juan E’s skull, which erupts in a sudden whoosh of red.

Dawkins sweeps past the Bravo warlord with a sickle of a forearm that slams him against the wall and sends him and his rifle to the floor.

Django and the other Bravo jerk and fall as Quillen empties his silenced pistol into their torsos.

And CK moves with righteous certainty toward the far window, the
Longbore raised in his gloved hands, while Dawkins slides the second Longbore from the floor, swipes the magazine from the fallen Bravo’s hand, and I see that Dawkins’s hands are gloved, too, those white latex gloves, and he slams the magazine home and moves with that same righteous certainty toward the other window.

I turn and look out, I turn and look down, across the street, to the Free African Methodist Church, to the place where the tide of pink and blue and yellow and white is parted, circling the mighty staircase to the church’s open doors, where the microphones are arranged, where the suits are black and the uniforms are blue, where the red-robed pastor gives way to his white-robed colleague from the south, the white-robed man I’ve seen on TV, in magazines, the newspapers, the white-robed man who is named Gideon Parks, the Reverend Gideon Parks, who is leading his people, these people, from their long captivity in this modern Egypt, out of slavery and into salvation.

The sound is brute thunder, and the kick of the Longbore shudders through CK and the glass of the window shatters and sends light in all directions and then comes the distant ring of the shell casing as it hits the wooden floor and then the thunder again, this time from my left, from Dawkins’s rifle, and the second window shatters, and then again from my right, and then again from my left, and after six shots, three each, they are done, they are done with their shooting but not with what they have planned.

CK spins around, kneels, drops the Longbore to the floor and stabs its stock into the flat of Juan E’s lifeless right hand. Dawkins tosses his rifle into the corner of the room. Like Oswald, I’m thinking, just like Oswald.

Okay, CK says, standing and snapping a peek at his watch. Five minutes. Dawkins, Quillen. Go.

Just as the door opens and Rudy Martinez looks in and whistles, says: Party time. He slaps the butt end of the magazine on his machine pistol and heads on down the hallway. Dawkins and Quillen follow, and I hear Martinez, yelling:

They killed Juan E. Those fuckin Bravos killed Juan E.

I look at CK.

CK looks at me.

What the fuck are you doing? I say to CK.

Not a thing, CK says. Not a goddamn thing. Jeez, Lane, I’m not even here. Mackie, Dawkins, Quillen … they aren’t here.
You
aren’t here.

Wild animals are growling somewhere, a few rooms away. Automatic weapons, bursts of rapid fire. Then voices. Shouts. More gunfire.

Listen to that music, CK says. Niggers do such good work. And it’s always the same work. They even got a name for it: Black-on-black crime. They’re killing each other.

Oh, yeah, I tell him. Nice. Real nice. Let me guess about tomorrow’s headlines. Something about a street gang that killed a civil rights leader.

Close enough, CK says. For government work. Because guns and drugs spells assassins. They’re the perfect bad guys. They kill the Reverend Gideon Parks and then they kill each other.

Then he says to Mackie: Go.

CK reaches inside his leather jacket and hauls the .44 Magnum from his shoulder holster.

Thought I told you to get out of Dodge, he says.

His eyes drift to the side of my head and his knuckles flex and I pull to the side as he squeezes down and there’s this scream in my left ear, this wide-mouthed scream, and I grab at my ear as I look back behind me and I see that Bravo warlord, Daddy Big, trying to stand and then going down like a kid on a Slip’n’Slide, his feet losing it first, arms flailing, and then—bam!—flat on his back. Only this kid isn’t getting up to play anymore.

CK looks down the silver snout of that cannon and says to me:

I just saved your life.

I can barely hear, but I tell him right back:

I don’t think so. I think that was temporary. I think I’m dead, and it’s not so much a question of when but where. You want to tell me why?

If you did what I told you to do—

If I’d done what you said, then what? What?

You’d be heading south, heading home.

As if I care whether you kill me there … as opposed to, let’s say, here?

I ain’t got time for this, Lane.

No, I tell him. They’re coming. If you can get past the Bravos and the U Street guys, then the guys downstairs are coming. Cops. Feds. They’re coming, CK. They’re coming.

He takes another look at his watch. Seems ready to yawn.

Yeah, he says. All in the line of work.

That’s when I pull the Glock, there’s nothing else to do, I pull the Glock from my belt and I hold it on him as I scoot past the bodies, and he’s smiling, just standing there smiling.

Where you gonna go, Lane? Where you gonna go?

I don’t know, CK, I tell him. Maybe to hell.

I fire once, blowing plaster out of the wall beside him.

I just saved your life, I tell him. So now we’re even.

Then I’m outside, in the hallway, and to my left I see faces, I see black faces and the faces have guns and they’re coming up the hallway and I turn to the right and I see white faces and these faces have guns, and there is nothing left for me to do, I dive across the hall and there’s another doorway, but there’s Martinez and he’s hosing the room next door with his machine pistol and when he runs the magazine, Crimso steps in with his AK, jolting flames from the muzzle, and you know the room’s a mess. Things go silent and the two of them start to laugh.

Then a voice down the hall, Mackie maybe: Here we go.

Then it’s bang bang bang and it’s that voice—yes, it is Mackie—and he’s saying: He’s down. And then there’s more laughter and I’ve got to get to my duffel bag.

They’re hustling in the hallway. Five, somebody says. Five down. No, no, four, says somebody else. Then CK:

Count em, he says. Eleven came in, I want ten staying. Make it happen.

Quillen comes past, and he’s dragging the body of Daddy Big.

Watch it! Watch it! And this one I can see, some kid darting from his hiding place, a hall closet, and leaping into the middle of them, sawed-off shotgun at his hip.

Gangsta! he yells and lets go with both barrels, but CK puts him down with a classic Mozambique: Two shots to the body, one to the head. Blows the kid right out of his shoes. Punk lost his life to put a couple holes in the ceiling.

It’s no contest. These guys are used to drive-bys or just running up and bopping some joker on the street. CK’s crew is ready for World War Three.

I roll out of the doorway and scramble down the hall, shooting high, covering fire, as I go. Fifty feet to the staircase and my duffel bag and maybe freedom.

Come on, I’m saying to no one, everyone, but really to myself: Come on. I can’t hear the words, just that ringing in my ear and then the snarl of some kind of machine pistol. Rounds bite into the wall behind me, chewing up fat chunks of plaster and drywall and spitting them out.

I pop off the rest of the magazine as I fall into the stairwell. Blue suit coming up the stairs, handgun pointing my way, and I’ve got no time to reload. I pull the other Glock from my coat and let go left-handed. I’m off balance and the shots are high, out of the center of mass, but they’re good ones. Crimson bursts from his head and shoulder, and he spins back and out of sight before I even realize what I’ve done. Oh, Christ, a dead cop. So call me CK, too.

I’m ready for the next one, his partner, but there’s nothing doing in the stairwell. So the cop’s alone. My left ear pulses, this sort of push and pull of pain. More gunfire. Somewhere down the hall, it’s party central: maximum rock’n’roll. What’s left of the U Street kids shooting up the 9 Bravos and trading fire with CK’s little army. A three-ring circus. Insane.

I stay right where I am, because this is no time to move. Either they’re coming this way or they’re not. I say not, but I’m taking no chances. I shake out the magazine on the Glock in my right hand, pull a fresh one from my suit coat, and snap it in.

Footsteps.

Shadows first, then some guy in an Atlanta Braves sweatshirt and fatigues, and then a kid in an oversize shirt and droopy jeans. A couple Bravos. Probably the only ones still vertical. They’re waving Uzis back
down the hallway and lighting things up pretty well until the sweatshirt guy gets lifted off his feet and blown back out of sight, his right torso pretty much torn away by what has to be some heavy-duty fire. The droopy jeans guy doesn’t seem to notice, just runs the mag, tosses the Uzi to the floor, and tears ass down the hall.

I hear him take five shots in the back and then finish the dead man’s dance.

Time, gentlemen.

It’s CK, and it’s one pissed-off CK.

Time is up. Let’s move.

I flatten into the wall of the stairwell and they sweep past me, down the hall, dragging the body of the Bravo warlord and one of our guys who’s wounded.

I’m trying to think this through, trying to think what comes next, trying to know, trying to know what CK knows and as I’m trying to know I suddenly wish I didn’t know, because I don’t want to hear these words, but they come, they come, they come:

Fire in the hole.

I don’t hear and I just barely see Mackie, moving doorway to doorway in a crouch, coming right toward me, and fuck if he isn’t ready, with a Benelli Black Eagle shotgun.

There’s a body at his feet, a gangbanger, and he pushes at the kid with the toe of his shoe and then he pushes again. He sighs and lets his shoulders sag. The Benelli swings down, right into the kid’s head, and when the shotgun kicks, a clot of brains blows up off the carpet and onto the far wall.