“My old man was the real hero. I’m just his kid, trying to live up to him, that’s all. That plus good old USMC training, some kind of natural skill, and what can only be called Gunfighter’s Luck. Wyatt had it, so did Frank Hammer, Mel Purvis, Jelly Bryce, D.A. Parker, all those old boys. I seem to have just a touch myself.”

“You have what they have for sure, and it isn’t luck. It’s something else. Arkansas boy like you ought to know the term for it. ‘True Grit’ ring a bell? If not, try Japanese: ‘Samurai.’ Sound familiar? You were there. Marine Corps. ‘The Old Breed.’ Bet you heard that one. Or go back to the ancient Greeks: ‘Spartan.’ Any of it mean a thing?”

“Don’t know, Nick. Maybe it’s just stupid luck. And maybe it’s just who I am, that’s all.”

“Okay, go home, rest, enjoy. You’ve earned it. Get fat. Have more kids. Die in bed in forty years.”

“I intend to. First though, I’m heading back to Knoxville, to pick up my wife and daughters. Boy, am I sick of that damned drive down and back. After I git quit of this part of the country, ain’t never driving that I-81 spur again. Sorry you didn’t get your bad boy, that driver. That one must sting.”

“We’ll get him. If he was expecting a cut of the cash, he came up short, which means he’ll have to work again soon. We know what to listen for this time.”

“Bet you do get him, too.”

“If Nikki remembers-you know, anything, but a face would be best. You have my number. This time I’ll answer.”

“You don’t think-”

“He’s long gone. Believe me, this guy is not hanging around when there’s all this law enforcement buzz.”

The two said goodbye with a little hug-the sort masculine men not given to emotion but feeling it nonetheless are given to perform-and then Nick climbed awkwardly into the seat, and his driver took him away. Bob watched his closest-maybe his only-friend go, then turned, and headed to his own car, now much-loathed, the little green, rental Ford that had hauled him so many places. He had half a mind to buy a really nice Dodge Charger, blood red, the big V8 engine, spoilers, the works, to celebrate surviving another one of his things.

Feeling the omnipresent pain in his hip, he negotiated his way to the little vehicle to see, astonishingly, that someone had pulled up in a brand new Dodge Charger, his dream vehicle, though this one was death black and gleamy. The door opened, and a familiar figure stepped out. It was that young Matt MacReady, who’d taken USMC 44 to a fourth in Bristol.

“Howdy, Gunny. Heard about this meet, thought I might find you here.”

“Well, Matt, how are you? Congratulations on your run.”

“Sir, it wasn’t nothing compared to your run, what I’m hearing. I just drive in circles and nobody’s shooting.”

“Well, most of what I did was crawl in circles, hoping not to get shot.”

“Sergeant Swagger-”

“Bob, I told you, son.”

“Bob, Big Racing won’t ever say a thing, but I came by to thank you just the same. If that thing had come off, it would be a stain. You stopped it. A cop told me you stopped it alone. So, no stain. No ugliness. No memories of bad things. In fact, in some perverted way, I think everybody who didn’t die or lose their business kind of enjoyed it. But the race is still the thing.”

“Thank you, Matt. Everybody seems to think I was an FBI agent and now even the FBI’s pretending to that one, so it looks like it’ll clear up okay for me and I can get back to my front porch.”

“I doubt anything’ll keep you on a front porch. But there’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“This guy, the driver?”

“Yep.”

“Think I know who he is.”

This got Bob’s full attention.

“All right. That puts you ahead of everyone else in this game.”

“He’s the man who murdered my father. On the track, twenty years ago. Ran him hard into an abutment, killed him, everybody knew it was murder, but there was no investigation because Big Racing didn’t want an investigation and a scandal. They just ran him out of the game and made sure he never got on another track again.”

“So he was a racer?”

“The best. Would have been a god. Trained by the hardest taskmaster, made hard and cruel by a hard and cruel mentor, trained to show no mercy, to intimidate, to win or die trying. A monster, or maybe a genius, or maybe the best racing mind and reflexes ever put in one body. Who knows what he might have been? I grew up hearing rumors about him-anytime there was some strange guy winning an unsanctioned event like a coast-to-coast or a mountain climb or some slick driving in a bank robbery getaway, I always thought it was Johnny.”

“You sound like you know him.”

“I do. I once loved him. I guess I still do, no matter what. He’s my brother.”

FORTY

“So let me get this straight, Dad,” Nikki said. “In my own newspaper it reports, ‘An FBI unit pursued the robbers to the top of the hill, killing two and bringing down the fleeing helicopter.’”

“That’s what it says, so it must be true,” he answered. “They don’t put it in the paper if it ain’t true, as I understand it.” He was pushing her in a wheelchair down the hallway from the release office at the Knoxville hospital. She wore blue jeans, a polo shirt, an FBI baseball cap that he had brought her, and a pair of flip-flops.

“But that FBI unit-that was one guy, and he wasn’t even in the FBI. That was you?”

“I have no comment for the press.”

“And this,” she added, reading more from the paper, “‘Other federal units converged on Piney Mountain Baptist Prayer Camp, where they encountered Johnson County Sheriff’s Department Detective Thelma Fielding with evidence that she planned the robbery, Tennessee’s most violent since the 1930s. Fielding resisted arrest and was shot dead.’ That was you too.”

“I don’t honestly remember.”

“Aren’t you a little old for all that cowboy stuff?”

He laughed. It was so good to have her back. His chest swelled. Who said snipers have not hearts or that mankillers are isolate and stark? Through her, he was connected to it all. She was all: civilization, democracy, honor, civility, loyalty, the radiance of sheer life itself. He felt so damned good!

She looked wonderful, her eyes bright with the furious Nikki-intelligence that had always marked her presence on earth. Her face had color in it, her blonde hair was pulled back in a pony tail, and she had that cut-to-the-chase directness he’d always loved so much. She was quite a kid and he thought anew how lucky he was to end up rich, most of all, in daughters.

“Once cowboy, always cowboy, I guess. Didn’t know I could move so fast, nor be so lucky still. I suppose I’m supposed to feel bad about putting those people down, in the modern fashion, but then I remember they targeted my daughter, so I can’t work up no tears.”

“Any tears.”

“Any tears.”

“What boy who loves me can ever compete with you?”

“Nah. You’ll meet him and forget clean about the old goat. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, and just getting you back into the world to meet him and have a great life and contribute wherever you go, that’s enough for me. Now let’s go, Mommy’s waiting in the van. We have to get you back to Bristol.”

He pushed her to the elevator, then the lobby. People waved at Nikki and she waved back, and then he took her outside, into sunlight and southern heat. The clouds had broken, the sun shone, and the trees flashed green as their leaves played in breeze.

“It’s so stupid,” she said. “I can walk perfectly fine.”

“These hospitals have rules. You don’t go home on your own two feet, honey.”

They waited, and then Julie pulled up in a rented red Ford passenger van. The door popped open, and Miko hopped out and threw herself at Nikki. The two daughters embraced.

“Your daddy,” said Nikki, “your daddy is still a tough old bird, sweetie. I fear for the boys you start bringing home in a few years.”