extended a hand. "Make us some joe, why don't you, and we'll sit down and talk proper."
As a pot of coffee made its way into mugs, and into their bellies, accompanied by a few fried eggs and pieces of coarse bread torn from a round loaf, Janson learned a few things about his would-be executioner. She grew up in Red Creek, Kentucky, a hamlet nestled in the Cumberland Mountains, where her father owned the town's only gas station and spent more of his money at the local hunting supply store than was good for them. "He always wanted a boy," she explained, "and half the time he kinda forgot I wasn't one. Took me hunting with him first time when I wasn't any more'n five or six. Thought I should be able to play sports, fix cars, and take down a duck with a bullet, not a cartridge full of shot."
"Little Annie Oakley."
"Shit," she said, grinning. "That's what the boys in high school called me. Guess I had a tendency to scare 'em off."
"I'm getting the picture. Car would break down, boyfriend would start hoofing it for a roadside phone box, and meanwhile you'd be communing with the carburetor. A few minutes after they set off, the motor roars to life."
"Something like that," she said, apparently smiling at a memory his words brought back.
"I hope you don't take offense if I say you're not standard-issue Cons Ops."
"I wasn't standard-issue Red Creek, either. I was sixteen when I finished high school. Next day, I lift a thick handful from the gas station cash register, get on a bus, and keep going. Got a knapsack filled with paperback novels from the wire racks, and they're all about FBI agents and shit. I don't get off until I'm in Lexington. Can you believe, I'd never been there before. Never went anywhere - my daddy wouldn't stand for it. Biggest town I'd ever seen. Go straight to the FBI office there. There's a fat-mama secretary at the front desk. Sweet-talked her into giving me an application form. Now, I'm just a gawky teenager, all skin and bones, mostly bones, but when this young Fed happens by, I'm batting my eyes at him like crazy. He's like, 'Somebody got you in for questioning?' I'm like, 'Why don't you take me in for some questioning, 'cause you hire me, it'll be the best decision you ever made.' " She blushed at the recollection. "Well, I was young. Didn't even know you had to have a college degree to be an agent. And he and another guy in a navy suit are, like, joshing around with me, since it's a slow day, and I tell 'em I can pretty much hit whatever I aim at. And one of them, as a lark, takes me to the shooting range they got in the basement. He's calling my bluff, kinda, but mostly just foolin' with me. So I'm on the shooting range, and they're like, be sure you got the safety goggles on, and the ear muffles, and you sure you've handled a twenty-two before?"
"Don't tell me. You hit in the X-ring."
"Shit. One shot, one bull's-eye. Four shots, four bull's-eyes. No scatter. That hushed their mouths, all right. They kept punching up new targets, I kept hittin"em. They went long-distance, gave me a rifle, I showed 'em what I could do."
"So the sharpshooter got the job."
"Not exactly. I got a position as a trainee. Had to get a college-equivalency certificate in the meantime. A pile of book learning. Wasn't all that hard."
"Not for a bright-eyed girl with engine grease beneath her nails and cordite in her hair."
"And Quantico was a piece of cake. I could skedaddle up a rope faster than almost anybody in my class. Hand-over-hand climbing, second-story entrances, first-over-fence, whatever. Buncha football clods, they couldn't keep up with me. I apply for a job at the Bureau's National Security Division, and they take me. So a few years later, I'm on a special NSD assignment, and I catch the eye of some Cons Op spooks, and that's that."
"Like Lana Turner getting discovered on a fountain stool at Schwab's Drugstore," Janson said. "So why do I think you're skipping over the most interesting part?"
"Yeah, well, the details are messy," she said. "I'm in sniper position, in Chicago. A stakeout. It's a funny case, corporate espionage, only the spy actually works for the People's Republic of China. It's Cons Ops' baby, but the Feds are providing local backup and