The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [14]
"Grab yourself a seat," Werner said, pointing, as he finished up a call. That just took another minute. Then Gus replaced the phone and hit the DO NOT DISTURB button.
"Ben Harding faxed this up to me," Werner said, holding the shooting report from the previous day. "How did it go?"
"It's all in there, sir." He'd spent three hours picking his own brain and putting it all down on paper in precise FBI bureaucratese. Strange that an act requiring less than sixty seconds to perform should require so much time to explain.
"And what did you leave out, Dominic?" The question was accompanied by the most penetrating look the young agent had ever encountered.
"Nothing, sir," Caruso replied.
"Dominic, we have some very good pistol shots in the Bureau. I'm one of them," Gus Werner told his guest. "Three shots, all in the heart from a range of fifteen feet, is pretty good range shooting. For somebody who just tripped over an end table, it's downright miraculous. Ben Harding didn't find it remarkable, but Director Murray and I do-Dan's a pretty good marksman, too. He read this fax last night and asked me to render an opinion. Dan's never whacked a subject before. I have, three times, twice with HRT-those were cooperative ventures, as it were-and once in Des Moines, Iowa. That one was a kidnapping, too. I'd seen what he'd done to two of his victims-little boys-and, you know, I really didn't want some psychiatrist telling the jury that he was the victim of an adverse childhood, and that it really wasn't his fault, and all that bullshit that you hear in a nice clean court of law, where the only thing the jury sees are the pictures, and maybe not even them if the defense counsel can persuade the judge that they're overly inflammatory. So, you know what happened? I got to be the law. Not to enforce the law, or write the law, or explain the law. That one day, twenty-two years ago, I got to be the law. God's Own Avenging Sword. And you know, it felt good."
"How did you know ?"
"How did I know for sure that he was our boy? He kept souvenirs. Heads. There were eight of them there in his house trailer. So, no, there wasn't any doubt at all in my mind. There was a knife nearby, and I told him to pick it up, and he did, and I put four rounds in his chest from a range of ten feet, and I've never had a moment's regret." Werner paused. "Not many people know that story. Not even my wife. So, don't tell me you tripped over a table, drew your Smith, and printed three rounds inside the subject's ventricle standing on one foot, okay?"
"Yes, sir." Caruso responded ambiguously. "Mr. Werner-"
"Name's Gus," the Assistant Director corrected.
"Sir," Caruso persisted. Senior people who used first names tended to make him nervous. "Sir, were I to say something like that, I'd be confessing to the next thing to murder, in an official government document. He did pick up that knife, he was getting up to face me, he was just ten or twelve feet away, and at Quantico they taught us to regard that as an immediate and lethal threat. So, yes, I took the shot, and it was righteous, in accordance with FBI policy on the use of lethal force."
Werner nodded. "You have your law degree, don't you?"
"Yes, sir. I'm admitted to the bar in Virginia and D.C. both. I haven't taken the Alabama bar exam yet."
"Well, stop being a lawyer for a minute," Werner advised. "This was a righteous shooting. I still have the revolver I whacked that bastard with. Smith Model 66 four-inch. I even wear it to work sometimes. Dominic, you got to do what every agent would like to do just once in his career. You got to deliver justice