“Okay,” said Swagger. “Just hear me out. If it matters, my eyesight has degraded: from twenty/ten to twenty/twenty. I spend three hours a day on horseback. Ever see any fat cowboys? No, because the horse works your muscles like an exercise machine, keeps you limber and strong. As for the guns, that’s pretty much all I do. I can shoot with or against anyone in the world and either win or tie, and if I tie, I’m dead, but so is he. Raiding? I did an extended tour in Vietnam with CIA Studies and Observation Group—‘commandos’—and that’s all we did was plan raids, raid, look for new raids. I come from raiders. My father raided five Japanese islands. My grandfather raided the Huns for eighteen months in the first big war. Ask the Germans about him, they still remember. He also had a spell raiding motorized bank gangs for the FBI in the ’30s. Note the lack of a motorized bank gang problem now? Too bad you don’t have either of them, I agree, but you’re stuck with me. As for diplomacy—really, I’ve signed a contract, and to the world I’ll just be another hard-ass contractor trying to get his kicks. Happens every day all over the world.”

The Director looked at him impassively. Not a guy to go “Gee, wow!” easily.

“But all of that is irrelevant,” Swagger continued. “I can stay here with you Mossad rabbis under the presumption that everything is going to happen exactly as it’s planned. Has there ever been a mission like that? Even at Entebbe, the best special op in the history of the world, your commander got plugged. So if things go bad—say, there’s more resistance; say, militia units from nearby get on-site faster than we expect—you need someone to eyeball that place. Maybe you get Juba, maybe not. And if you don’t, you nevertheless have to learn what he’s planning. You need a sniper, a gun guy, to read Juba’s setup. If I see his equipment, his targets, his ammo, his scopes, I can do that, and we can draw conclusions. And from conclusions, we can move on to intercepts or preparations, whatever. And if we do that, we can save lives. So the priorities here have to be these: nail the big guy first, or, failing that, get hard intel on upcoming activity. Anything less than that is failure and not worth the effort. I’m not the afterthought; I’m the thought. I’m the whole goddamned dog and pony show. Do you understand?” he added for the Director.

“I suspect he does,” said Gershon. “He went to Harvard.”

The Director looked at Swagger.

Finally, he said, “It’s Lieutenant Commander Motter’s mission. We’ll let him make the call.”

“You’ll be fine,” said Cohen, smiling at Swagger. “Motter went to Harvard too.”

•   •   •