Now, finally, it had begun.

He reached the loading area, and when the shooter ahead had finished and cleared, and the targets had reset, he was approached by the lead range officer.

“Load ’em up, Red.”

“Yes sir,” said Red. He walked to the lever gun, slipped ten.44-40s into the chute on the ’92 receiver, leaving the lever down to show empty chamber, and laid the rifle where designated. He returned, drew each Colt, threaded five robin’s-egg-heavy cartridges-“cah-ti-ges” the Duke had called them as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers-into each chamber as accessed by the popped-open loading gate of Sam’s marvelous, intricate machine, an orchestration of lines and symmetries and streamlines and densities like no other. One in, he spun the cylinder past the next, then sliding in four more, then cocking under control to rotate the cylinder one last time, then closing the gate and restoring the masterpiece to its leather. That ritual was to assure that no live cartridge nested under the firing pin’s pressure, a design weakness in the old gun so grave nobody noticed it for over 110 years. Then, finally, he took his shotgun from his guncart, its pump racked backward to expose empty chamber and empty magazine as well as all the spring-driven, leverage-turned ingenuity of its interior, and moved to set it on the table next to the far window.

He readied himself at the starting line, shivering a little, pianoing his fingers to get them loose and ready, tensing and relaxing his upper-body muscles. He put his earplugs in, then his hands came to his waist and he put on his grimace-tight gunman’s face.

“Shooter ready?” came the question, muffled by the ear protection.

He nodded.

He heard the three-beat timer ticking down, ding, ding, and dong, and on dong-more precisely on the d- so that he was halfway to the first station by the -ong-he raced forward, seized the ’92 in a liquid, practiced choreography, slid it to shoulder, keeping muzzle level and downrange even as he was closing the lever, and fired the first shot as the sight came into focus over the blurred image of the bad guy, in this case a black metal plate, and the trigger came back and the gun shuddered gently as it sent its hunk of lead on its way at a little over six hundred feet per second.

The trick here was not to wait for the clang of the hit and the sight of the plate toppling on its hinge but to be already into the leverwork and already moving the gun by that time, and he fired again and again and again and againagainagain, only aware at the unfocused edge of the drama of the ejected shell casings flipping through the air but most attuned to the great spurt of white, a billow at each report that rivaled the clouds above. And when the last plate fell, he left the action open, set the rifle down, and moved his ass fast to the next window.

This was the killer. The subtlety of cowboy action was that it wasn’t an athletic contest of speed of foot and dexterity, but of course it was, and that it wasn’t a fast-draw contest, but of course it was. You had to calibrate effort versus grace, for to seem to hurry could be called “against the spirit,” a ten-second time penalty; at the same time if you loafed, you lost.

Red had it today; the gods had been kind, and in his last practice, he had suddenly felt the gun rock solid all the way through the string. He’d hit plate after plate yesterday, watched them prang and fall, and felt oddly accomplished. All that practice. He’d done it. He’d mastered the goddamned thing. He was a gunfighter.

He came to the window, turned, drew, and in the same fluidity the gun was in his hand, thumbing back as it rode up, and he saw the sights against the black blur, and axiomatically the gun discharged, and again he thumbed a new cartridge home, rotating up from the next-in-line position in the cylinder, perfectly sustained and perfectly timed by Sam’s engineering genius all those frosty years ago, and each time the gun popped, and he was moving it and thumbing back the hammer and restoring the grip just as Clell had taught him before the just-hit plate fell. Five and he was done with gun number one, holstered smooth as butter. He rotated to the left for the next snatch and brought that beauty in line, cocking as he got it there. Five soft pops, five spurts of glorious white fume; they stood for America, for liberty, for the West, for patriotism, for old movies and TV, for growing old with grace and still winning every goddamn thing. He was done, slipped number two back into its leather den, and was halfway to shotgunland before the last plate fell.

This was pretty easy for Red because in another life, as a southern billionaire playboy, pheasant and dove hunts with $14,000 Perazzis had been a Sunday necessity in the fall, if the Falcons weren’t playing at home, and he had no problem with the four inserts, the four pumps, and the four shots, each of which delivered a handful of spattering birdshot to the larger, heavier plates, and down they went ker-plunk.

“Good shooting, Red,” said the range officer, reading off the time-29.2-to the scorekeeper, adding, “all targets down, no penalties.”

Red sat back, smelling the gunsmoke, watching the white gas drift and seethe until a light breeze took it and it dissipated.

Soon enough Clell would be there to tell him how well he’d done, urge him to stay cool and collected-no rush, no sweat, no nerves, no expectations, just there, in the zone-and a nice round of applause rose to congratulate his efforts, some of it from people who surely recognized him and were sucking up as if he’d give a clapper a mil just for kicks, but much of it genuine, from those who didn’t know.

But he knew it best of all: Texas Red has it.

49

Anto slowly revved the ATV, then slipped into gear and took it down the gentle slope of the valley toward the center. He had a black-comic thought of accidentally running over the heads of his own sniper team as he progressed, and had to fight a grin in case Swagger, from his own hide, was eyeballing him.

He switched back, left then right, eating up the distance, came in out of the high grass onto shorter, where ugly prairie things-they looked like turds but were some kind of cancerous vegetation-littered the ground, along with the odd low scrub of bush, the scraggily but unspectacular cacti, stones, smallish boulders, what have you. He was a man who’d spent many days in action and had taken more fire than even the many professional soldiers of his culture, with the scars to prove it, and he wore that time in hell well. In fact it was not even hell to him, as it is to most men. The truth is, high-level professionals like Anto and his mates from 22 SAS and most commandos in the forces and Seals and various foreign alphabet-soup high-contact teams don’t fear battle at all; they relish it. To them it’s an exhilaration like a drug high, and they truly savor the act of taking life, at close range or by rifle through optics; it’s like scoring baskets or goals in the sports-driven youths that most had.

So Anto was far from scared, far from choked with dread, far from concerned with his own death, which, through many wounds and much recovery time, had nevertheless only seemed like a final joke. He was pure alpha, the war dog in its most distilled form. Oh, this one would be so damned much fun!

He got to the creek where advised, eased down the throttle to an idle, came out of gear, and slipped into neutral. He let the motor run on general principle. Although unlikely, a mechanized getaway would be a lot more efficient than a barefoot one, running uphill nude for nine hundred yards among prickers and buffalo shit.

As instructed, he scissors-stepped off the vehicle, moving ten feet away. At that spot, he assumed the position, faced east, hands up, legs spread. Now where was that bad boy Swagger? Would he come over the hill on an ATV and take his time, letting Anto bake even redder in the sun as he trekked down for the exchange? Raymond knew: don’t shoot until he’s still, and he and I have had a chat. That was the sign. Then take him, because of course Anto wanted to watch him die from as close as possible, possibly even having a word or two with the mortally stricken man.