“Sergeant Swagger, this battle is fought each day in every intelligence or law enforcement entity in the world. I have seen it at play in Mossad as well. We even have a nickname for it. We call it the Gray Foolishness. It can’t be defeated, it can only be outsmarted. I would counsel you to waste no energy on this, and we will work out a way to get around it. The important thing, for both of us, is not what makes sense in this building but to catch or kill Juba before he brings yet more chaos and death to the world.”

“That’s what a grown-up sounds like,” said Nick.

“So it’s on me,” said Swagger, “and I don’t even know where to start.”

So Gold gave Bob and Chandler a rough tutorial in the investigation they would have to run by themselves.

“You also must be skilled in pattern recognition, knowing that the little bit you learn here may seem meaningless, but it must not be discarded, as it might fit into some larger scheme and its importance become paramount.”

“In other words,” said Swagger, “I have to become a lot smarter than I am, and really fast.”

•   •   •

That afternoon, Swagger passed into a top secret computer center, and then into a special room, where he and Chandler—she did the keyboard stuff, being younger and faster—went hunting in cyberspace.

Their targets were the mail-order customer lists of EuroOptic Limited in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, Mile High Shooting Accessories in Erie, Colorado, and Sinclair International in Montezuma, Iowa, all purveyors of high-quality and high-cost equipment for the sport of long-range shooting, the first two the only FFL dealers of Accuracy International rifles in the United States.

“There are other marks,” said Chandler. “Surgeon Rifles, JP Rifles, Cadex, Sako, MHSA. Savage is in the game, so too is Ruger, at a much lower price point. How do you know he didn’t do one of those?”

“Well, I don’t,” said Swagger. “But my thinking is, AI was the first and the most famous. It’s also hard combat tested, the others not so much. It was, most importantly, the weapon system used by the British Corporal of Horse Craig Harrison in his mile-and-a-half shot in Afghanistan in 2009. Juba would know that, he would have heard of that, and, in the way his mind works, he wants to duplicate that. Thus, he’s going to put together a kit identical, or nearly identical, to Harrison’s ’09 hit. That’s part of the intellectual appeal.”

“What did Gold say?”

“He thinks it fits the personality—that is, the bastard’s methodical way of thinking and doing. He ain’t no experimenter. He will very slowly and precisely follow exactly what happened before, to get the same result, with the when/where at his choosing.”

“How about Mrs. McDowell? She’s the world Juba expert.”