73 years old. Bob Lee Swagger has earned a retirement that allows him to spend a couple hours a day on his front porch
rocker looking over the serenity of the Idaho pasture and mountains. Sure he still tinkers in his gun shop cuz it’s what he likes to do. It's who he is. Rides horses when his titanium hips allow. Buys little, talks
less, doesn’t vote. That he lives like this is testament to his skills
honed over a life viewed through a sniper’s scope. His is a good life considering all
he’s been through.
But as any skilled hunter of men knows, it can’t last.
Mrs. McDowell comes up his drive in a rental car. She’s one of those Gold Star moms. Her son came back from Baghdad in a box 14 years ago, killed by a sniper. She didn’t just accept the flag and go home to spend a life in grief. She went on the offensive. She wants the guy who pulled the trigger. She is on the fast track to going broke as she became an amateur spy, political and military lobbyist, a prisoner, a rape victim, converts to Islam and learns Arabic to move amongst the Muslims all in an attempt to find the shooter.
She does. Sort of. She has a name, or his nom de guerre,
Juba the Sniper. An Islamic sniper for hire. Even knows his preferred method:
set off an IED. Targets scramble into cover that actually is Juba’s kill zone. The
Islamic ying to Bob the Nailer’s yang. She even has some clues to his
whereabouts – some barely on the map village in southern Syria.Where he is training. For a mission. A big one.
Bob Lee feels for her but isn’t interested in any more
hunts. But he is willing to pass along what she knows to a friend in the Mossad
who goes by ‘Gold’. They meet in Israel. Juba is perhaps Israel’s highest value
target after he slaughtered a school busload of children some years ago. A
mission is quickly cooked up and the Mossad goes in hot, but Juba had just left
the village. Last second escapes is an important skill for Juba.
Juba is prepping for a mission. By Swagger and Gold’s read of the evidence, Juba has been hired by sources unknown to do what no one has done . . . hit a target from long range on American soil. Swagger and Gold hit up Swagger’s old FBI friend, Nick Memphis, to sell him on the need not just for a hunt, but a highly compartmentalized hunt.
The hunt begins. Dearborn, MI. Greenville, OH. Wichita, KS,
Rock Spring, WY. Anacostia, DC. At each stop, the FBI closes in an inch at a time only to have
Juba slip away (Be forewarned: that summarizes probably 75% of the
book). Along the way, Mrs. McDowell is called back a few times for insights the FBI minds
might’ve overlooked. Remember, she knows more about Juba than any intelligence service.
Throughout the hunt, the FBI team thinks they’ve learned the date, the time of day, the distance (>a mile) and a few other tidbits. They feed all the information critical to prepping for a long shot into geographic databases to narrow down where he'd train. Tough job given the size of the US. They’ve purposefully avoided thinking about the target as that might cloud their judgement. Having all that info about the geography and roughly when the shot will be taken, they start narrowing down potential targets.
They are ready to take Juba down . . . they think.
They hope.
The first Stephen Hunter book I read was iSniper and was immediately
hooked. The boys here at MRB has since reviewed every Swagger book (about both Earl, the
daddy, and Bob Lee, the son). And while we have some favorite mystery/thriller writers (like Michael Connelly,
Robert Crais, CJ Box, Craig Johnson, Louise Penny, et al.), from where I sit, no one tells a story
with so many moving parts in ridiculous detail about the religion of the gun, those who sit in that cathedral, and the nuances of the hunt as well as Stephen Hunter. Clancy may have
invented the techno-thriller with all its detail about military might, but
Hunter takes his technical knowledge about shooting (the rifle and its
design, parts, assembly, the scope, the machining of the pieces of a bullet, the chemistry of the gunpowder, the process of hand loading, sighting, weather, angles, environmental and geographical issues, etc.) to a
level we readers may not fully understand but can still grasp. Wonderful story. Magnificent plot. Expertly told. Doesn't get any better. Had it
not been for being an online virtual kindergarten teacher’s aide for a
grandson, this would’ve been a single sitting read. Go ahead, let Bob the Nailer
nail you to your favorite location for reading.You can thank me later.
ECD
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