“Yeah, yeah, that’s the bull’s-eye. He saw that the kid’s head was invisible behind the Marshal’s but that it was tending to emerge. By the time it emerged, other things might have happened, and if he fired on it while emerging, it might have moved too far when time in flight finally put the bullet there. But, simultaneously, he couldn’t put the bullet through the Marshal’s head because it might not make it all the way or it might get deflected. So he put it on the edge of the Marshal’s skull, above the ear, beneath the cowboy hat, knowing that it wouldn’t impact straight on and explode, deform, deflect, whatever. Basically, he shot on the deflection, like putting the cue ball off the edge to hit two walls, knocking the eight ball on the other side of the table into the sock. He deflected the bullet about fifteen degrees, and it caught Jared just as he turned and emerged, under the right eye of a target that was probably only a quarter visible. Nobody but Juba hits that shot. What does that tell us?”

“It shows that on top of everything else, he’s creative in real time. A difficult man to outthink,” said Mr. Gold.

“Hope I’m up to it. One other thing. You speak Arabic?”

“No outsider really speaks it, not fully and fluently. But in the shallow sense, then, yes, I speak it.”

“He said something to me, even as he didn’t shoot me.”

“You must have impressed him. He doesn’t seem the loquacious sort.”

Swagger spit out clumsily the sounds that Juba had uttered as he stood over him with the recovered Krink.

“Majnun jiddo,” clarified Mr. Gold. “It means ‘crazy grandpa.’”

45

The ranch

The jet landed at 0345 and quickly went to blackout as it taxied toward Menendez’s private hangar. Juba had sat almost inert during the trip back, seemingly gathering strength after expending so much in the ordeal of shooting and evading.

But when he climbed down the jetway, Señor Menendez himself awaited him and quickly escorted him to the Land Rover. La Culebra, in his sock, and of course the translator, Alberto, necessary to the grandee for many reasons, hovered close by. All climbed into the car and it pulled out, with Mercedeses, fore and aft, full of security.

“Ah, my friend,” said Menendez, “you were superb. What talent, what skill, what a jihadi warrior you are. My god, you accomplished the miraculous, the impossible. I owe you all.”

“I do not want all,” Juba said. “I want safe transport to my shooting site, myself by one route, my rifle by another. I want a new target to shoot, because I have to resharpen reflexes and protocols ignored for too long. All now must be to my task. And if I succeeded with your problem, it was because Allah willed it.”