Time to Hunt Part 49

"I didn't say he," he," said Bob. "I wouldn't ask another man to do it. But I'd do it." said Bob. "I wouldn't ask another man to do it. But I'd do it."

"What the h.e.l.l is HALO?" asked Bonson.

"High Alt.i.tude, Low Opening."

"It's an airborne insertion technique," said the young man. "Highly trained airborne operators have tried it, with mixed success. You go out very high. You fall very far. It's sort of like bungee jumping, without the bungee. You fall like h.e.l.l, and in the last six hundred feet or so, the chute deploys. You land hard. The point is to fall through radar. You're falling so fast you don't make a parachute signature on radar. Most Third World radars can't even pick up a falling man. But I've never heard of anyone doing it in the mountains in a blizzard at night. The winds will play havoc all the way down; you have no idea where the h.e.l.l you'd wind up. You could be blown sideways into a face. SOG tried it in 'Nam. But it never worked there."

"I was in SOG," said Bob. "It didn't work there because the problem was the linkup after the drop. We never could figure out how to rea.s.semble the team. But here there ain't a team. There's only me."

"Sergeant, there's real low survivability on that one. I don't think this dog hunts."

"I'm airborne qualified," said Bob. "I did the jump course at Benning in sixty-six, when I was back from my first tour."

"That was thirty years ago," someone pointed out.

"I've made twenty-five jumps. Now, you guys have terrific avionics for night navigation. You got terrific computers. You can pinpoint the drop location and you can get there easily enough by flying above the storm. You can plot a drop point where the odds of my landing in the appropriate area are very high. Right?"

The silence meant a.s.sent.

Then someone said, "Instead of a smart bomb, we send a smart guy."

"Here's the deal. You get me there, over the storm. I'll fall through the blizzard. I can't chute through it, but I can cannonball through it and my deviation won't be that bad. I can open 'way low, to minimize wind drift, maybe as low as three hundred feet. If you liaise up an Air Force jet and a good crew, you can have me there in six hours. I can't think of another way to get a countersniper on the ground in that circ.u.mstance. When I'm on the ground, you can triangulate me with a satellite and I can get an accurate position and I can move overland and get there in time."

"Jesus," said Bonson.

"You owe me, Bonson."

"I suppose I do," said Bonson.

"Sergeant Swagger, there's not one man in a hundred who could survive that."

"I been there there before, sonny," said Swagger. before, sonny," said Swagger.

"Get Air Force," said Bonson. "Get this thing set up."

Swagger had one more thing to say.

"I need a rifle. I need a good good rifle." rifle."

CHAPTER F FORTY-SIX.

Go down and shoot her, he thought.

Go down now, kick in the door, kill her and be out of here before the sun is up. It's all over then. No risk, no difficulty.

But he could not.

He stood on a ridge, about five hundred yards from the ranch house, which was dark and hardly visible through the whirling snow. Its lights were out and it stood in the middle of a blank, drifted field of white. It was a cla.s.sical old cowboy place from the Westerns Solaratov had seen in the Ukraine and Bengal and Smolensk and Budapest: two-storied, many-gabled, clapboarded, with a Victorian look to it. A wisp of smoke rose from the chimney, evidence of a dying fire.

He hunched, looked at his Brietling. It was 0550; the light would rise in another few minutes and it would probably be light enough to shoot by 0700, if the storm abated. But what would bring them out? Why wouldn't they stay in there, cozy and warm, drinking cocoa and waiting for time to pa.s.s? What would bring them out?

The child would, the girl. She'd have to frolic in the snow. The two women would come onto the porch and watch her. If she was as bold and restless as he knew her to be-he'd seen her ride, after all-she'd be up early and she'd have the whole house up.

Yet still a voice spoke to him: go down now, kill the woman, escape deeper into the mountains and get out, go home go down now, kill the woman, escape deeper into the mountains and get out, go home.

But if he went down, he'd have to kill them all. There was no other way. He'd have to shoot the child and the other woman.

Do it, he thought.

You have killed so many, what difference does it make? Do it and be gone.

But he could not force himself to. That was not how his mind worked, that was not how he had worked in the past; that, somehow, would bring him unhappiness in the retirement that was so close and the escape from his life.

Do it, the smart part of himself said.

Nyet, he answered in Russian. I cannot cannot. He was tselni tselni, which is a very Russian term for a certain kind of personality. It is a personality that is bold and aggressive and fearless of pain or risk. But it is in some way one piece, or seamless: it has no other parts, no flexibility, no other textures. He was committed to a certain life and as stubborn in the mastering of it as a man could be; he could not change now. It was impossible.

I cannot do it, he thought.

Instead, as he moved along the ridge, he at last located the spot he wanted, where he could see onto the porch yet was still far enough to the east that the sun would be behind him, and would not pick up on his lens. He squatted, took off the Leica ranging binoculars and bounced a laser shot off the house to read the range. It was 560 meters. Using a 7mm Remington Magnum at a velocity of 3010 feet per second and a 175-grain Sierra Spitzer Boat-tail bullet developing muzzle energy of over two thousand foot-pounds would drop about forty-five inches at that range, a fantastic load-velocity combination, untouchable by any .308 in the world. But he knew that to compensate, he'd still have to hold high, that is, to aim not with the crosshair but the second mil-dot beneath it in the reticle. That would put him nearly dead on, though he might have to correct laterally for windage. But it was usually calm after a blizzard, the wind spent and gone. Remember, he cautioned himself: account for the downward angle in your hold.

He visualized, a helpful exercise for shooters. See the woman. See her standing there. See the second mil-dot covering her chest, how rock steady it is, how perfect is the range, how easy the shooting platform. Feel the trigger with the tip of your finger, but don't think about it. Don't think about anything. Your breathing has stopped, you've willed your body to near-death stillness, there's no wind, you put your whole being into that mil-dot on the chest, you don't even feel the rifle recoil.

The bullet will reach her before the sound of it. It'll take her in the chest, a ma.s.sive, totally destructive shot-still over eighteen hundred pounds of energy-that explodes her heart and lungs, breaks her spine, shorts out her central nervous system. She'll feel nothing. The secrets locked into her brain will be locked there forever.

And that's it. It's so easy, then. You fall back, about four miles, and you call in the helicopter on the cellular. He'll be on you in twenty minutes for evacuation. No police or civil authority will reach this place until midafternoon at the earliest, and you'll be far gone by that time.

He slipped down behind a rock to take himself out of the gusting wind. He settled in to nurse himself through the coldness that lay ahead. But it would not be a problem, he knew. He had beaten that one a long time ago.

The dark of the plane was serene, coc.o.o.nlike. Swagger was geared up. He wore jump boots, some kind of super-tight jumpsuit and was struggling to get his chute straps tightened. He was quite calm. It was Bonson who was nervous.

"We're getting close," Bonson said. "Alt.i.tude is thirty-six thousand feet. The computers have pinpointed a dropping point that should put you down in the flat just northwest of the Mackay Reservoir, about a mile or so from the location of the house. If you carry farther you'll go into the Lost River Mountains, see, here." here."

He pointed to the map, which clearly showed the Thousand Springs Valley that ran northwest by southeast through central Idaho, cut by the Big Lost River between the Lost River range and the White k.n.o.b Mountains.

"The chute will deploy at five hundred feet and you should land softly enough. You'll just have to make it across the flatlands under the cover of dark, get into the house, warn the targets, and if you have to, engage him."

"If I get the shot, I'll take it."

"That's fine. Our priority here is your wife. She's the target of this mission, so thwarting him is what counts. As soon as it's flyable, I've got a squad of air policemen heloing in from Mountain Home to set up a defensive perimeter, and park rangers and Idaho State Policemen ready to go into the mountains after this guy. If you get the shot, take it. But, man, if we could get him alive and her alive, we'd have-"

"Forget it," Swagger said. "He's a professional. He killed two people already. He won't be taken alive. The rest of his life in a federal prison is no life for this guy. He'd take the L-pill, laughing at you as he checked out."

"Maybe so," said Bonson.

Swagger finished with the parachute; it seemed okay, with the preset alt.i.tude-sensitive deployment device.

That was the tricky part. The alt.i.tude sensor read alt.i.tude from a predetermined height above sea level so that it was set to pop the chute five hundred feet over the flatland; if he drifted into the mountains, the chute might not pop at all before he hit some gigantic vertical chunk of planet. The Air Force people had explained this to him, and told him that, more than anything, was why this was so foolhardy. The computers could read the wind tendencies, compute his weight, the math of his acceleration, add in the C-130's airspeed and determine a spot where the trajectory would be right, navigate the bird to that spot and tell him when it was time to go. But the jump wouldn't be in a computer, it would be in the real world, unpredictable and unknowable; a gust of tailwind, some tiny imperfection, and he'd be dead and what good would that do?

The plane was making about 320 miles an hour, after a government Lear jet had zoomed them from Andrews to Mountain Home in less than five hours, during which time he and Bonson had been on the radio with various experts trying to work out the details.

They landed at Mountain Home and were airborne again in ten minutes.

Bob checked his electronics and other gear, all secured in a jump bag that was tethered to his ankle. In it, a cold-weather arctic-pattern camouflaged Gore-Tex parka and leggings had been folded. He also had a new Motorola radio, MTX-810 Dual Mode portable, with microprocessor and digitized, a tenth the weight of the old PRC-77 and with three times the range, which would keep him in contact with a network; it was linked to his belt, and secured to his head by a throat mike, sound-sensitive, so all he had to do was talk and he was on the net. He also had a Magellan uplink device to read the Global Positioning System satellites, which orbited overhead broadcasting a mesh of ultra-accurate signals, similarly digitized and microprocessor-driven, which could enable him to chart his position in milliseconds if he should wander off track. He had night-vision gear, the latest things; M912A night-vision goggles from Litton with two 18mm Gen II Plus image-intensifier a.s.semblies, which provided three times the system gain of the standard AN/PVS-5A.

He had a Beretta 92 in a shoulder holster under his left arm, a 9mm mouse gun shooting a lot (sixteen) of little cartridges not worth a d.a.m.n, but n.o.body had .45s anymore, G.o.dd.a.m.n their souls.

And he had a rifle.

Taken from the Agency's sterile weapons inventory, it appeared to be some Third World a.s.sa.s.sination kit of which the rifle was but one part. The rifle lay encased in a foam-lined aluminum case, the Remington M40A1, Marine-issue, in .308, with its fibergla.s.s stock, its free-floated barrel, its Unertl 10X scope. It would shoot an inch at one hundred yards, no problem; and two boxes of Federal Premium 168-grain MatchKing boattailed hollowpoints.

He'd examined it closely and saw that the proprietary shooter had taped a legend to the b.u.t.t stock.

"Zeroed at 100 Yards," it said. And under that: "200 yards: 9 klicks up; 300 yards: 12 klicks up; 400 yards: 35 klicks up; 500 yards: 53 klicks up."

"Okay," said Bonson, leaning close, "let's check commo."

"Just a G.o.dd.a.m.n second," said Bob, trying to guess the range he'd be shooting at.

What the f.u.c.k, he thought, and started clicking, fifty-three times.

"Come on, let's check commo," said Bonson again. Clearly the tools of the trade at this basic level did not much interest Bonson; they may even have frightened him. But there were other devices cut into the padded foam of the case; one was an SOG knife in a kydex sheath, a dark and deadly thing; another was leather-encased sap, just the thing for thumping sentries as you got to your hide; and still another, so discreet in its green canvas M7 bandoleer and therefore complete with firing device and wiring, was the M18A1 anti-personnel mine known as the Claymore, so familiar from Vietnam and just the thing for flank security on some kind of a.s.sa.s.sination mission outside Djakarta.

He had a moment when he wondered if he should have junked all this s.h.i.+t, but as it was all going into the parapack, and would be tethered to his leg, he decided not to worry about it. He locked the case up.

"Come on," said Bonson for a third time, "let's check commo."

"We just checked commo."

"Yeah, I'm nervous. You okay?"

"I'm fine, Commander."

"Okay, I'm going to run up to the c.o.c.kpit and check with the pilots."

"Got you."

He turned and walked up the big s.h.i.+p's dark bay to the cabin, cracked a door and leaned in.

Back here it was dark, with a few red safety lamps lit, and the subtle roar of the big engines chewing through air on the other side of the fuselage. It felt very World War II, very we-jump-tonight, strangely melodramatic.

Here I am again, he thought.

Here I go. Face some other motherf.u.c.ker with a rifle. Been here before.

But he did not feel lucky tonight. He felt scared, tense, rattled, keeping it hidden only because poor Bonson was so much more rattled.

He looked at the end of the bay, where the big ramp was cranked up. In a few minutes, it would yawn open into a platform and he would get a signal and he would step out, and gravity would take him. He'd fall for two minutes. Maybe the chute would work and maybe it wouldn't. He wouldn't know until it happened.

He tried to exile his feelings. If you get mad, you get excited, you get careless, you get dead. Don't think about all that s.h.i.+t. You just do what has to be done, calmly, professionally, with a commitment to mission and survival. Don't think about the other man. It's what has to be done. It's the only thing that makes sense.

He tried not to think of Julie or of the man who'd come across time and s.p.a.ce to kill her for what she didn't even know she knew. He tried not to think of his ancient enemy and all the things that had been taken from him by the man. He tried not to think of larger meanings, of the geopolitics of it all, of the systems opposed to each other, and himself and the other, as mere surrogates. He exiled all that.

"Sarge?"

He turned; it was a young air crewman, a tech sarge who looked about fifteen.

"Yeah?"

"You got your parachute on upside down."

"Oh, Christ," said Bob.

"You haven't been to jump school, have you?"

"Saw a guy parachute in a movie once. Ain't it the same thing?"

The kid smiled.

"Not quite. Here, let me help you."

It took just a few seconds for the young NCO to have him geared up correctly.

Yeah, that made sense. It felt much better; now it fit right, it was okay.

"You need oxygen, too, you know. There's no air to breathe this high."

"Yeah, they told me."

The kid had a helmet for him, a jet pilot thing with a plastic face s.h.i.+eld, an oxygen mask and a small green tank. The tank was yet another weight on the belt over his jumpsuit, and the tube ran up to the helmet, which fit close around his skull and supported it in plastic webbing.

"I feel like a G.o.dd.a.m.ned astronaut," Swagger said.

It was nearly time. Bonson came back.

Behind them, with a shriek of frigid wind, the ramp door of the Hercules opened. It settled downward with an electrical grind, and outside the dark sky swirled by.

Bonson hooked himself up to a guy wire so he wouldn't be sucked out. The tech sarge gave Bob a last go-round, p.r.o.nounced him fit and wished him well. With the ramp down, there was no oxygen and so they were all on oxygen. He felt the gush of air into his lungs from the clammy rubber mask around his mouth, under the face plate. He tasted rubber.

Bob and Bonson edged down the walkway to the yawning rear of the aircraft. The wind rose, howled and buffeted them; the temperature dropped. Bob felt the straps of the chute, the weight of the jump bag tethered to his ankle, the warmth of the jump helmet. Outside he could see nothingness with a sense of commotion.

"You cool?" said Bonson over the radio.