Point Of Impact (1993) by Stephen - Bob Lee Swagger 01 Hunter

Author:Stephen - Bob Lee Swagger 01 Hunter [Hunter, Stephen - Bob Lee Swagger 01]
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-01-13T03:03:13.906000+00:00

Chapter TWENTY-THREE

Shreck watched the church burn. When it was burned to the ground, he hit REWIND, and watched it burn again.

And each time, an earnest television correspondent repeated the news breathlessly.

"Behind me is the funeral pyre of the notorious attempted presidential assassin Bob Lee Swagger, whom Arkansas State Police officers and FBI agents pursued to this bucolic spot after his dramatic attempt to kidnap his dog's body. Despite the lawmen's requests that he come out, Swagger opened fire on the officers. A tear gas canister ignited the old structure into conflagration. The church has been burning for two hours now. In the morning, officials say, it will be cool enough to sift through the ashes for the body of Bob Lee Swagger."

Shreck saw holocaust. The flames gobbled the structure from the roof downward. They danced madly through it, issuing a lazy, smeary column of smoke.

He hit REWIND again.

It was dark in the room. Three or four of the men from Jack Payne's Operations unit were in the room, and Dobbler, making a rare appearance outside his cell-like little office, had slipped in, too.

"Play it again," said Shreck.

The TV people, in Blue Eye on rumors of federal activity and monitoring the police channels on the radio, had gotten there efficiently; they had it from a variety of angles. From a helicopter it looked like a funeral pyre: Shreck could see the church standing in the devotional ring of police vehicles a little to one side of the copse of trees and the old graveyard. It throbbed with flames.

"Nobody could get out of that alive," somebody said in the dark.

"Man, he's fried."

Then Shreck spoke.

"It's nothing until they find the body and issue a forensic report. Until then, it's nothing."

But he watched it again. The flames billowed orangely as they ate through the old building standing in a meadow in the lee of mountains on a bright and beautiful Arkansas day.

"I think it's over, sir," somebody said. "I think we can chalk it off."

"Then why would he do something so obviously stupid for a dog? This guy was a prick, but he wasn't stupid."

"But he was obsessional," said Dobbler, in the dark. "The dog mattered to him. It wasn't stupid to him. To us, yes. To Swagger, it mattered so much he was driven to come back."

"I'll buy it when they bring me his teeth," said Shreck.

His eyes went back to the television. He hit REWIND.

Hap found him the next day.

"Here, here he is, goddammit," he called after lifting the air filtration mask the men wore to protect their lungs from the clouds of ash. His words carried to the twenty agents and fifteen state policemen on hands and knees who sifted and pawed through the remains of Aurora Baptist, while a hundred yards away, like gawkers at a carnival midway, the reporters were kept in check by three more cops and a rope line.

The cops and agents gathered around. Nick pushed his way through the crowd. His head ached from the pounding he'd taken and he was afraid his stitches might not hold, but he had to see.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.