“Night of Thunder”
What goes well with a NASCAR 500-mile race, you ask?
Why, Stephen Hunter figured it out jest fine. You need a big ole gun fight with a brigade of real nasty bad guys and just one good guy, if that good guy is Bob Lee Swagger.
You see, these big old bad guys think they are Big Jim “Walker” Grumleys. But they musta not listened to the whole song on the radio when Jim Croce came on, cause they missed the unplugged version’s last chorus:
“You don’t tug on Superman’s cape
You don’t spit into the wind
You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger
And you don’t mess around with Slim”
Seldom heard last chorus:
“You don’t fuck with Bob Lee Swagger
You don’t even look at him
You especially don’t threaten his daughter
‘Cause the result will be right grim”
Bob Lee is getting on in age, he is a shot-up, beat-up, cut-up and bruised 63 hard years but he still has a trick or two. Or in his words:
“I am Bob Lee Swagger, Gunnery Sergeant, USMC, eighty-seven kills, third-ranking marine sniper in Vietnam. I have shot it out with Salvadorian hunter-killer units and Marisol Cubano hit men and a Russian sniper sent halfway around the world. I even won a sword fight or two in my time. They all had one thing in common. They thought they were hunting me, and I was hunting them. Faced many, all are sucking grass from the bitter, root end. Here’re your choices: You can come easy or you can come dead.”
He is the author of several bestselling novels, including Time to Hunt, Black Light, Point of Impact, and the New York Times bestsellers Havana, Pale Horse Coming, and Hot Springs.
He lives in Baltimore.
