So it was not for a few hours before Nick and Bob—somewhat recovered from the verge of death by a carotid puncture at the hands of a man who thought he was a snake—settled in with Mrs. McDowell, herself soaked, but somewhat warmed by coffee from the kitchen that one of the cooks had started running. Why not? Nobody was working for Señor Menendez anymore. Nick ran the meet, Chandler took notes for the after action report.

The story Mrs. McDowell told: her ex-husband’s sister was married to a colonel in the Maryland State Police, and one of his responsibilities was to oversee liaison with FBI, with whom he was on very good terms. When all the news about the killing and gunfight in Wichita broke, not only had she concluded Juba was the triggerman, she’d caught a glimpse of an agent she knew from the coverage on CNN.

“Agent Chandler. She’s so beautiful, the CNN cameras had to show her.”

So she knew that Juba was in play, and she asked her ex-husband’s sister to ask her husband for any news or info. He responded by saying that all the feds were agitated because an urgent directive had come out requesting certain SWAT teams to report to Salt Lake City for possible deployment in a big raid. Baltimore’s field office was all ticked off because they hadn’t made the list, though they regularly came in first or second in the FBI SWAT Olympics held every year.

Figuring that action was coming up, Mrs. McDowell had flown to Salt Lake City, where, at a Radio Shack, she had bought a police scanner, with which she quickly found the FBI Clear Channel and was able to follow the assembly of a major raid task force in Jackson Hole. She also had her Glock.

“It’s completely legal,” she said. “I’ve owned it for five years, and I have one of those crazy Utah licenses that let me carry in thirty-three states. I can’t carry in Maryland, but I can carry in Florida, Texas, Wyoming, and a batch of others. I declared it and flew out with it. I drove out to Jackson Hole, monitored the FBI channel, could tell you were setting up to jump, and just followed the raid in. I parked on 193 and walked down the access road. I see this fight, I run to it, and this snake monster is on top of someone—I couldn’t tell it was Bob Lee Swagger—but it didn’t matter. I could see his blade gleaming in the light, and I sort of assumed if he had a snake face and was about to stick a knife in somebody’s throat, he was probably a bad guy.”

“So?”

“So? So I shot him in the face.”

“Twice,” said Swagger. “The first got his attention, but the second made sure he was listening.”