Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 7-12, page 335
“Damn,” Dan Murray said at his desk. “It did start here, eh?”
“Looks that way,” said Chuck Baker, the assistant director in charge of the criminal division.
“Run this one down, Chuck.”
“You bet, Dan. This one’s getting pretty deep.”
Thirty minutes later, a pair of FBI agents arrived at the office of the charter company at the Teterboro, New Jersey, airport. There they soon ascertained that the aircraft had been chartered by one Joseph Serov, who’d paid for the charter with a certified check drawn on an account at Citibank that was in his name. No, they didn’t have a photo of the client. The flight crew was elsewhere on another flight, but as soon as they came back they would cooperate with the FBI, of course.
From there the agents, plus some photocopied documents, went to the bank branch where Serov kept his account, and there learned that nobody at the branch had ever met the man. His address, they found, was the same damned post-office box that had dead-ended the search for his credit card records.
By this time, the FBI had a copy of Serov’s passport photo—but those were often valueless for the purposes of identification, intended more, Director Murray thought, to identify the body of a plane-crash victim than to facilitate the search for a living human being.
But the case file was growing, and for the first time Murray felt optimistic. They were gradually turning up data on this subject, and sooner or later they’d find where he’d slipped up—trained KGB officer or not—because everyone did, and once you appeared on the FBI’s collective radarscope, nine thousand skilled investigators started looking, and they wouldn’t stop looking until told to stop. Photo, bank account, credit card records . . . the next step would be to find out how the money had gotten into his account. He had to have an employer and/or sponsor, and that person or entity could be squeezed for additional information. It was now just a matter of time, and Murray thought they had all the time they needed to run this mutt down. It wasn’t often that they bagged a trained spook. They were the most elusive of game, and for that reason all the more pleasing when you could hang the head of one over the mantelpiece. Terrorism and drug-trafficking. This would be a juicy case to give to a United States Attorney.
“Hello,” Popov said.
“Howdy,” the man replied. “You’re not from here.”
“Dmitriy Popov,” the Russian said, extending his hand.
“Foster Hunnicutt,” the American said, taking it. “What do you do here?”
Popov smiled. “Here, I do nothing at all, though I am learning to ride a horse. I work directly for Dr. Brightling.”
“Who—oh, the big boss of this place?”
“Yes, that is correct. And you?”
“I’m a hunter and guide,” the man from Montana replied.
“Good, and you are not a vegan?”
Hunnicutt thought that was pretty good. “Not exactly. I like red meat as much as the next man. But I prefer elk to this mystery meat,” he went on, looking down with some distaste for what was on his plate.
“Elk?”
“Wapiti, biggest damned deer you’re ever gonna see. A good one’s got maybe four, five hundred pounds of good meat in him. Nice rack, too.”
“Rack?”
“The antlers, horns on the head. I’m partial to bear meat, too.”
“That’ll piss off a lot of the folks here,” Dr. Killgore observed, working into his pasta salad.
“Look, man, hunting is the first form of conservation. If somebody don’t take care of the critters, there ain’t nothing to hunt. You know, like Teddy Roosevelt and Yellowstone National Park. If you want to understand game, I mean really understand them, you better be a hunter.”
“No arguments here,” the epidemiologist said.
“Maybe I’m not a bunny-hugger. Maybe I kill game, but, goddamnit, I eat what I kill. I don’t kill things just to watch ’em die—well,” he added, “not game animals anyway. But there’s a lot of ignorant-ass people I wouldn’t mind popping.”
“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” Maclean asked with a smile.
“You bet. Too many people fucking up the place with electric toothbrushes and cars and ugly-ass houses.”
“I brought Foster into the Project,” Mark Waterhouse replied. He’d known Maclean for years.
“All briefed in?” Killgore asked.
“Yes, sir, and it’s all fine with me. You know, I always wondered what it was like to be Jim Bridger or Jedediah Smith. Maybe now I can find out, give it a few years.”
“About five,” Maclean said, “according to our computer projections.”
“Bridger? Smith?” Popov asked.
“They were Mountain Men,” Hunnicutt told the Russian. “They were the first white men to see the West, and they were legends, explorers, hunters, Indian fighters.”
“Yeah, it’s a shame about the Indians.”
“Maybe so,” Hunnicutt allowed.
“When did you get in?” Maclean asked Waterhouse.
“We drove in today,” Mark replied. “The place is about full up now, isn’t it?” He didn’t like the crowding.
“That it is,” Killgore confirmed. He didn’t, either. “But it’s still nice outside. You ride, Mr. Hunnicutt?”
“How else does a man hunt in the West? I don’t use no SUV, man.”
“So, you’re a hunting guide?”
“Yeah.” Hunnicutt nodded. “I used to be a geologist for the oil companies, but I kissed that off a long time ago. I got tired of helping to kill the planet, y’know?”
Another tree-worshiping druid, Popov thought. It wasn’t especially surprising, though this one struck him as verbose and a little bombastic.
“But then,” the hunter went on, “well, I figured out what was important.” He explained for a few minutes about the Brown Smudge. “And I took my money and hung it up, like. Always liked hunting and stuff, and so I built me a cabin in the mountains—bought an old cattle ranch—and took to hunting full-time.”
“Oh, you can do that? Hunt full-time, I mean?” Killgore asked.
“That depends. A fish-and-game cop hassled me about it . . . but, well, he stopped hassling me.”
Popov caught a wink from Waterhouse to Killgore when this primitive said that, and in a second he knew that this Hunnicutt person had killed a police officer and gotten away with it. What sort of people did this “project” recruit?
“Anyway, we all ride in the morning. Want to join us?”
“You bet! I never turn that down.”
“I have learned to enjoy it myself,” Popov put in.
“Dmitriy, you must have some Cossack in you.” Killgore laughed. “Anyway, Foster, show up here for breakfast a little before seven, and we can go out together.”
“Deal,” Hunnicutt confirmed.
Popov stood. “With your permission, the Olympic equestrian events start in ten minutes.”
“Dmitriy, don’t start thinking about jumping fences. You’re not that good yet!” Maclean told him.
“I can watch it done, can I not?” the Russian said, walking away.
“So, what’s he do here?” Hunnicutt asked, when Popov was gone.
“Like he said, nothing here, exactly, but he helped get the Project going in one important way.”
“Oh?” the hunter asked. “How’s that?”
“All those terrorist incidents in Europe, remember them?”
“Yeah, the counterterror groups really worked good to shut those bastards down. Damned nice shooting, some of it. Dmitriy was part of that?”
“He got the missions started, all of ’em,” Maclean said.
“Damn,” Mark Waterhouse observed. “So, he helped Bill get the contract for the Olympics?”
“Yep, and without that, how the hell would we get the Shiva delivered?”
“Good man,” Waterhouse decided, sipping his California Chardonnay. He’d miss it, he thought, after the Project activated. Well, there were plenty of liquor warehouses around the country. He would not outlive their stocks, he was sure.
CHAPTER 35
MARATHON
It had become so enjoyable that Popov was waking up early, in order to relish it more. This day he woke up just after first light, and admired the orange-rose glow on the eastern horizon that presaged the actual dawn. He’d never ridden a horse before coming to the Kansas facility, and he’d found that there was something fundamentally pleasing and manly about it, to have a large, powerful animal between one’s legs, and to command it with nothing more than a gentle tug on the leather reins, or even the clucking sound one made with one’s tongue. It offered a much better perspective than walking, and was just . . . pleasing to him at a sub-intellectual level.
And so he was in the cafeteria early, picking his breakfast food—plus a fresh red apple for Buttermilk—just as the kitchen staff set it out. The day promised to be fine and clear again. The wheat farmers were probably as pleased as he was with the weather, the intelligence officer thought. There had been enough rain to water the crops, and plenty of sun to ripen them. The American wheat farmers had to be the most productive in all the world, Popov reflected. With this fine land and their incredible mobile equipment, that was little surprise, he thought, lifting his tray and walking to the accustomed table. He was halfway through his scrambled eggs when Killgore and the new one, Hunnicutt, approached.
“Morning, Dmitriy,” the tall hunter said in greeting.
Popov had to swallow before replying. “Good morning, Foster.”
“What did you think of the riding last night?”
“The Englishman who won the gold medal was marvelous, but so was his horse.”
“They pick good ones,” Hunnicutt observed, heading off to get his breakfast and returning in a few minutes. “So, you were a spy, eh?”
“Intelligence officer. Yes, that was my job for the Soviet Union.”
“Working with terrorists, John tells me.”
“That is also true. I had my assignments, and of course I had to carry them out.”
“No problem with me on that, Dmitriy. Ain’t none of those folks ever bothered me or anybody I know. Hell, I worked in Libya once for Royal Dutch Shell. Found ’em a nice little field, too, and the Libyans I worked with were okay people.” Like Popov, Hunnicutt had piled up eggs and bacon. He needed a lot of food to support his frame, Dmitriy imagined. “So what do you think of Kansas?”
“Like Russia in many ways, the broad horizons, and vast farms—though yours are far more efficient. So few people growing so much grain.”
“Yeah, we’re counting on that to keep us in bread,” Hunnicutt agreed, stuffing his face. “We have enough land here to grow plenty, and all the equipment we need. I may be into that myself.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, well, everybody’s going to be assigned Project work to do. Makes sense, we all gotta pull together in the beginning anyway, but I’m really looking forward to getting me some buffalo. I even bought myself a real buffalo gun.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a company in Montana, Shiloh Arms, that makes replicas of the real buffalo rifles. Bought me one a month ago—Sharps .40-90—and it shoots like a son of a bitch,” the hunter reported.
“Some of the people here will not approve,” Popov said, thinking of the vegans, clearly the most extreme of the druidic elements.
“Yeah, well, those people, if they think they can live in harmony with nature without guns, they better read up on Lewis and Clark. A grizzly bear don’t know about this friend-of-nature stuff. He just knows what he can kill and eat, and what he can’t. Sometimes you just gotta remind him what he can’t. Same thing with wolves.”
“Oh, come on, Foster,” Killgore said, sitting to join his friends. “There has never been a confirmed case of wolves killing people in America.”
Hunnicutt thought that was especially dumb. “Oh? Well, it’s kinda hard to bitch about something if a wolf shits you out his ass. Dead men tell no tales, Doc. What about Russia, Dmitriy? What about wolves there?”
“The farmers hate them, have always hated them, but the state hunters pursue them with helicopters and machine guns. That is not sporting, as you say, is it?”
“Not hardly,” Hunnicutt agreed. “You treat game with respect. It’s their land, not yours, and you have to play by the rules. That’s how you learn about them, how they live, how they think. That’s why we have the Boone and Crockett rules for big-game hunting. That’s why I go in on horseback, and I pack ’em out on horseback. You have to play fair with game. But not with people, of course,” he added with a wink.
“Our vegan friends don’t understand about hunting,” Killgore told them sadly. “I suppose they think they can eat grass and just take pictures of the life-forms.”
“That’s bullshit,” Hunnicutt told them. “Death is part of the process of life, and we’re the top predator, and the critters out there know it. Besides, ain’t nothing tastes better than elk over an open fire, guys. That’s one taste I’ll never lose, and be damned if I’ll ever give it up. If those extremists want to eat rabbit food, fine, but anybody tells me I can’t eat meat, well, there used to be a fish-and-game cop who tried to tell me when I could hunt and when I couldn’t.” Hunnicutt smiled cruelly. “Well, he don’t bother anybody no more. Goddamnit, I know the way the world’s supposed to work.”
You killed a policeman over this business? Popov couldn’t ask. Nekulturny barbarian. He could just as easily have bought his meat in a supermarket. A druid with a gun, surely that was an unusually dangerous sort. He finished his breakfast and walked outside. Soon the others followed, and Hunnicutt pulled a cigar from the saddle-bags he was carrying and lit it as they walked to Killgore’s Hummer.
“You have to smoke in the car?” the doctor complained, as soon as he saw the thing.
“I’ll hold it out the fuckin’ window, John. Christ, you a secondhand-smoke Nazi, too?” the hunter demanded. Then he bent to the logic of the moment and lowered the window, holding the cigar outside for the ride to the horse barn. It didn’t take long. Popov saddled the affable Buttermilk, fed her the apple from the cafeteria food line and took her outside, mounted the mare and looked around the green-amber sea that surrounded the facility. Hunnicutt came out on a horse Dmitriy had never seen, a blanket Appaloosa stallion that he took to be the hunter’s own. On a closer look—
“Is that a pistol?” Popov asked.
“It’s an M-1873 Colt’s Single-Action Army Revolver,” Foster replied, lifting it from the equally authentic Threepersons holster. “The gun that won the West. Dmitriy, I never go riding without a friend,” he said with a self-satisfied smile.
“Forty-five?” the Russian asked. He’d seen them in movies, but never in real life.
“No, it’s a .44-40. Caliber forty-four, with forty grains of black powder. Back a hundred years ago, you used the same cartridge in your handgun and your rifle. Cheaper that way,” he explained. “And the bullet’ll kill just about anything you want. Maybe not a buffalo,” he allowed, “but damned sure a deer—”
“Or a man?”
“You bet. This is just about the deadliest cartridge ever made, Dmitriy.” Hunnicutt replaced the revolver in the leather holster. “Now, this holster isn’t authentic, really. It’s called a Threepersons, named for Billy Threepersons, I think. He was a U.S. Marshal back in the old days—he was a Native American, too, and quite a lawman, so the story goes. Anyway, he invented the holster late in the nineteenth century. Easier to quick-draw out of this one, see?” Foster demonstrated. It impressed Popov to see it in real life after so many movies. The American hunter even wore a wide-brim Western hat. Popov found himself liking the man despite his bombast.
“Come on, Jeremiah,” Hunnicutt said, as the other two entered the corral, and with that he led them off.
“Your horse?” Popov asked.
“Oh, yeah, bought him off a Nez Percé Indian pal. Eight years old, just about right for me.” Foster smiled as they walked out the gate, a man fully in his element, Popov thought.
The rides had become somewhat repetitive. Even here there was only so much land to walk and examine, but the simple pleasure of it hadn’t changed. The four men went north this morning, slowly through the prairie-dog town, then close to the interstate highway with its heavy truck traffic.
“Where is the nearest town?” Popov asked.
“That way”—Killgore pointed—“about five miles. Not much of a town.”
“Does it have an airport?”
“Little one for private planes only,” the doctor replied. “You go east about twenty miles, there’s another town with a regional airport for puddle-jumpers, so you can get to Kansas City, from there you can fly anywhere.”
“But we’ll be using our own runways for the Gs, right?”
“Yep,” Killgore confirmed. “The new ones can hop all the way to Johannesburg from right here.”
“No shit?” Hunnicutt asked. “You mean, like, we could go hunting in Africa if we want?”
“Yeah, Foster, but packing back the elephant on a horse might be a little tough.” The epidemiologist laughed.
“Well, maybe just the ivory,” the hunter replied, doing the same. “I was thinking lion and leopard, John.”
“Africans like to eat the lion’s gonads. You see, the lion is the most virile of all the animals,” Killgore told them.
“How’s that?”
“Once upon a time, a nature-film crew watched two males servicing a female who was in season. They averaged once every ten minutes for a day and a half between ’em. So, the individual males were going three times an hour for thirty-six hours. Better than I ever did.” There was another laugh that the men all shared. “Anyway, some African tribes still believe that when you eat a body part off something you killed, you inherit the attribute of that part. So, they like to eat lion balls.”
“Does it work?” Maclean asked.
Killgore liked that. “If it did, wouldn’t be many male lions left in the world, Kirk.”
