Time to Hunt Part 58

He could hear them breathing heavily in the room, but no one spoke.

"And don't you see the cynicism in it, the G.o.dd.a.m.ned motherf.u.c.king brilliance? They knew knew this country so G.o.dd.a.m.n well. They just this country so G.o.dd.a.m.n well. They just knew knew that when any of you Ivy League heroes looked at that data, you couldn't see past Trig, because, no matter which side he was on, he was one of you. that when any of you Ivy League heroes looked at that data, you couldn't see past Trig, because, no matter which side he was on, he was one of you. That That would be the tragedy, and the fog it would release in your little pea f.u.c.king brains would keep you from ever figuring it out. It takes an outsider, someone who ain't been to no college and doesn't think the word Harvard or Yale means s.h.i.+t in this world. It takes guttertrash rednecks who you all pay to do the dirty work with the rifles so you can sit in your clubs and make ironic little jokes. Or plan your little wars that the Swaggers and the Fenns and the Goldsteins have to go fight." would be the tragedy, and the fog it would release in your little pea f.u.c.king brains would keep you from ever figuring it out. It takes an outsider, someone who ain't been to no college and doesn't think the word Harvard or Yale means s.h.i.+t in this world. It takes guttertrash rednecks who you all pay to do the dirty work with the rifles so you can sit in your clubs and make ironic little jokes. Or plan your little wars that the Swaggers and the Fenns and the Goldsteins have to go fight."

The silence lasted for a long moment.

Then finally, Bonson spoke: "Cla.s.s anger aside, does this make any sense to you Skull and Bones boys?"

It took a while, but finally someone said, almost laconically, "Yeah, it makes perfect sense. It even explains why it's happening now. It puts them in a desperate situation. They-that's PAMYAT, the old GRU security bunch hiding behind nationalism and financed by mob money-have to keep this information quiet. They couldn't take a chance that just as he's closing in on the presidency, their man is revealed as a murderer of American nationals on American soil. That would make it impossible for him to work with any American president or with big American corporations. That information has to be buried at all costs. Their lives, their futures, their party depend on it. They had had to eliminate the last witness, particularly as Pas.h.i.+n's fame is getting bigger and bigger." to eliminate the last witness, particularly as Pas.h.i.+n's fame is getting bigger and bigger."

"Sir," said someone else, "I think we could game out some very interesting tactical deployment for this information. We might have a hand ourselves in determining who their next president is."

"Okay," said Bonson, "you game it out. But I want it going in one direction. I want to kill this motherf.u.c.ker."

PART IV BACK TO THE WORLDThe Present

CHAPTER F FIFTY.

The snow didn't last. It melted on the third day after it had fallen, causing floods in the lowlands, closing roads, wrecking bridges, creating mud slides. But on Upper Cedar Creek it was a serene day, with blue skies, eastern zephyrs and creeks full of sparkling water. The pines shed their cloak of snow; the gra.s.s began to emerge, green and lush, and seemingly undamaged by the ordeal.

By now the excitement was over. Bonson had departed with a handshake the previous morning, after ensuring that a quickly convened Custer County grand jury found no culpability in the death by misadventure of one Frank Vborny, of Cleveland, Ohio, as the fake identification doc.u.ments read in the dead sniper's pocket. Ballistics confirmed that indeed Mr. Vborny had shot and killed two innocent people in the Custer County Idaho Bell substation in Mackay; obviously a berserker, he next attacked a house that was luckily rented out by a gun owner, who was able to defend himself. The gun owner's name was never published but that was all right, and in Idaho most people took satisfaction from the moral purity of the episode and its subtle endors.e.m.e.nt of the great old Second Amendment, a lesson most Westerners felt had been forgotten in the East.

Up in the mountains, the state police had pulled out, the helicopters and all the young men and women had gone back to wherever it was they came from, and there was little sign that they'd been there.

Bob and Julie had a check, in the odd sum of $146,589.07, and had no idea how that exact figure had been selected. It was from the Department of the Treasury, and the invoice ba.n.a.lly read, "Consultancy," with the proper dates listed and his Social Security number.

The last of the security team left, the rifle and recovered Beretta were returned, the foam case with its cargo marked officially as "operational loss," and Sally had taken Nikki for a walk down to the mailbox on Route 93, when he at last had an opportunity to talk to his wife.

"Well, howdy," he said.

"Hi," she said. Doctors had examined her after her ordeal; she was in fine shape, her collarbone knitting properly. She seemed much stronger now, and was able to get about better. Sally would soon be leaving.

"Well, I have some things to say. Care to have a listen?"

"Yes."

"You know we have some money now. I'd like to git on back to Arizona and restart the business. Joe Lopez says they seem to miss me down there. It was a good business and a good life."

"It was was a good life." a good life."

"I went a little crazy there. I put everybody through a lot. I wasn't very grown-up about my troubles. That's all in the past now. And what I learned was how important my family was. I want my family back. That's the only thing I want. No more adventures, no more s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around. That's all finished."

"It wasn't your fault," she said. "It had nothing to do with you. It was all about me. How could I blame you for anything? You saved all-"

"Now, now," he said. "No need for that. I thought all this out. I just want the old life back. I want you to be my wife, I want my baby girl to be fine, I want to work with the horses and take care of y'all. That's the best life there is, the only life I've ever wanted. I get these bad moods. Or I used to; I hope I'm over that. If I had some ghosts, they ain't walking out of the cemetery no more. So ... well, what do you say? Will you let me come back?"

"I already called the lawyer. He recalled the separation request."

"That's great."

"It'll be good," she said. "I think we should use some of that money and go on a nice vacation. We should close up the house here, the house outside of Boise, but then go to some warm island for two weeks. Then we can go back to Arizona. R&R."

"G.o.d, does that sound like a plan to me," he said with a smile. "There's only one last little thing. Trig's mother. She was very helpful and she told me that if I ever learned anything about the way her son died, I should tell her. Tell her the truth. I still feel that obligation. So in a couple of months or so, when all this dies down, when we're back, I may take a bit of time and head back there to Baltimore."

"Do you want us to come with you?"

"Oh, it ain't worth it. I'll just fly in, rent a car, fly back. It'll be over quicker 'n' you can believe. No sense putting no trouble to it or taking Nikki away from her riding. h.e.l.l, I may drive instead of flying, save some money that way."

He smiled. For just a second she thought there might be something in his eyes, some vagrant thought, some evidence of another idea, another agenda; but no, not a thing could be seen. They were depthless and gray and revealed nothing except the love he felt for her.

Little by little, life for the Swagger family rea.s.sembled itself toward some model of normality. Even the big news of a spectacular murder in Russia failed to make much of a stir. Bob just watched a little of it on CNN, saw the burning Jeep Cherokee and the dead man in the back, and when the hysterical a.n.a.lysts came on to explain it all, he changed channels.

Sally stayed until they moved back to Boise, and then Bob drove her to the airport.

"Once again," she said at the gate, "the great Bob Lee Swagger triumphs. You killed your enemies, you got your wife and family back. Can't keep a good man down."

"Sally, I got 'em all fooled but you, don't I? You see clean through me."

"Bob, seriously. Pay attention to them this time. I know it's easy to say, but you have to let the past go. You're married, you have a wonderful, brave, strong wife and a beautiful little girl. That's your focus."

"I know. It will be."

"There's no more old business."

"Is that a question or a statement?"

"Both. If there's one little thing left, let it go. It doesn't matter. It can't matter."

"There's nothing left," he said.

"You are one ornery sumb.i.t.c.h," she said. "I swear, I don't know what that woman sees in you."

"Well, I don't neither. But she's pretty smart, so maybe she knows something you and I don't."

Sally smiled, and then turned to leave, good friend and soldier to the very end. She winked at him, as if to say, "You are hopeless."

And he knew he was.

When the cast came off a little later, and Julie was back among the supple, the family flew to St. John, in the U.S. Virgins for two glorious weeks. They rented a villa just outside Cruz Bay on the little island, and each morning took a taxi to the beautiful Trunk Bay beach, where they snorkeled and lay in the sand and watched the time pa.s.s ever so slowly as they turned browner and browner. They were a handsome family, the natural aristocrats of nature: the tall, grave man with gray eyes and abundant hair, and his wife, every bit as handsome, her hair a mesh of honey and brown, her cheekbones strong, her lips thin, her eyes powerful. She had been a cheerleader years ago, but she was if anything more beautiful now than ever. And the daughter, a total ball of fire, a complete kamikaze who always had to be called in, who pushed the snorkeling to its maximum, who begged her father to let her scuba or go water- or para-skiing.

"You got plenty of time to break your neck when you're older," he told her. "Your old mommy and I can't keep up with such a thing. You have to give us a break. This is our vacation, too."

"Oh, Daddy," she scolded, "you're such a chicken." chicken."

And when she said that, he did an imitation of a chicken that was clearly based on a little real time in the barnyard, and they all laughed, first at how funny it was but second at the idea that a man of such reserve could at last find some way to let himself go, to be silly. An astonishment.

At night, they went into town and ate at the restaurants there. Bob never had a drink, didn't seem to want one. It was idyllic, really too good. It reminded Julie just a bit of an R&R she'd had with Donny in Hawaii, just before ... well, just before.

And Bob seemed to relax totally too. She'd never seen him so calm, so at ease. The wariness that usually marked his pa.s.sage in society-a feeling for terrain and threat, a tendency to mark escape routes, to look too carefully at strangers-disappeared. And he never had nightmares. Not once did he awake screaming, drenched in cold sweat, or with the shakes, or with that hurt, hunted look that sometimes came into his eyes. His scars almost seemed to disappear as he grew tanner and tanner, but they were always there, the puckers of piebald flesh that could only be bullet wounds: so many of them. One of the Virgin Islanders stared at them once, then turned to say something to one of his colleagues, in that musical, impenetrable English of theirs, so fast and full of strange rhythms, but Julie heard the word "bombom mon," which she took to mean "boom-boom man," which she in turn took to be "gunman."

But Bob appeared not to notice. He was almost friendly, his natural reserve blurred into something far more open and pleasant to the world. She'd never quite seen him like this.

There was only one night when she awoke and realized he wasn't in bed with her. She rose, walked through the dark living room, until she found him on the deck, under a tropic night, sitting quietly. Before them was a slope of trees, a hill and then the sea, a serene sheet of gla.s.s throwing off tints of moonlight. He sat with utter stillness, staring at a book, as if it had some secret meaning to it.

"What is that?" she asked.

"This? Oh, it's called Birds of North America Birds of North America by Roger Prentiss Fuller." by Roger Prentiss Fuller."

She came over and saw that he was gazing at a section on eagles.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing. This book has some pretty pictures. Kid who painted them really knew his birds."

"Bob, it's so unlike you."

"I was just curious, that's all."

"Eagles?"

"Eagles," he said.

They returned to Arizona and with the money, Bob was able to upgrade the barn, hire two Mexican a.s.sistants, buy a new pickup and reintroduce himself to the Pima County horsey set. In just a little bit of time, they had patients-seven, eight, then ten horses in various states of healing, all ministered to with tender care. His lay-up barn became a thriving concern after a while, mostly on the basis of his own sweat, but also because people trusted him.

Nikki went back to school but she rode every day, English style, and would start showing on the circuit's junior level the next spring, her coach insisted. Julie resumed working three days a week at the Navajo reservation clinic, helping the strong young braves mend after fights or drinking bouts, helping the rickety children, doing a surprising amount of good in a small compa.s.s.

No reporters ever showed; no German TV crews set up in the barnyard; no young men came by to request interviews for their books; no gun show entrepreneurs offered him money to stand at a booth and sell autographs; no writers from the survivalist press wanted to write admiring profiles. He and the war he represented seemed once again to have disappeared. No part of it remained, its wounds healed or at least scarred over.

One night, Bob sat down and wrote a letter to Trig Carter's mother. He told her he was planning a trip east some time in weeks to come and, as he said, he'd like to stop by and share with her what he had learned about the death of her son.

She wrote back immediately, pleased to hear from him. She suggested a time, and he called her and said that was fine, that's when she should look for him.

He loaded his new pickup with gear and began the long trip back. He drove up to Tucson, to the veterans cemetery there, and walked the ranks of stones, white in the desert sun, until at last he came to: Donny M. Fenn Lance Corporal U.S.M.C.

19481972 Nothing set it apart. There were dozens of other stones from that and other wars, the last years always signifying some violent eddy in American history: 1968, 1952, 1944, 1918. A wind whistled out of the mountains. The day was so bright it hurt his eyes. He had no flowers, nothing to offer the square of dry earth and the stone tablet.

He'd been in so many other cemeteries; this one felt no different at all. He had nothing to say, for so much had been said. He just soaked up the loss of Donny: Donny jumping over the berm, the vibration as the bullet went through him, lifting the dust from his chest; Donny falling, his eyes going blank and sightless, his hand grasping Bob's arm, the blood in his mouth and foaming obscenely down his nose.

After a while-he had no idea how long-he left, got back in the truck and settled in for a long pull across Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and on to the East.

The last part of the trip took him to the Virginia suburbs of Was.h.i.+ngton, DC, where once again he bunked with an old friend who had become the Command Sergeant Major of the United States Marine Corps. As a few months before, he fell in with cronies, both still on active duty or recently retired, men of his own generation and stamp, leathery, sinewy men who bore the career imprint of the Corps. There were a few loud nights at the CSM's house in the suburbs, the whole thing slightly more celebrative.

It was the next day that he called Mrs. Carter and told her he'd be up the next night. She said she couldn't wait.

He hung up and waited on the line for the telltale click of a wiretap. He didn't hear it, but he knew that meant nothing: there were other methods of penetration.

Now, he thought, only this last thing.

CHAPTER F FIFTY-ONE.

Bob drove carefully through the far reaches of Baltimore County, at sunset. It was as he remembered, the beautiful houses of the rich and propertied, of old families, of the original owners of America-people who rode English. At last he turned down a lane and drove under the overhanging elms until he found Trig's ancestral home.

He pulled in, once again momentarily humbled by the immensity of the place, its suggestion of stability and propriety and what endured in the world. At last he got out, adjusted his tie and went to the door.

It was September now, turning coolish at night here in the East. The leaves hadn't yet begun to redden but there was nevertheless a definite edge in the air. Things would change soon: that was the message.

He knocked; the old black butler answered, as before.

He was led through the same halls of antiques, paintings of patriots, exotic plants, dense Oriental rugs, damask curtains, lighting fixtures configured to represent the flicker of candles. Since it was darker, there wasn't quite the sense of the threadbare that had been so evident his first time out here.

The old man led him into the study, where the woman waited. She stood erect as the mast of a s.h.i.+p-the family had owned s.h.i.+pping once, of course, as well as railroads, oil, coal and more. She was still stern, still rigid, still had that iron-gray uplift to her hair. She was demurely dressed in a conservative suit, and he could see, even more now, that at one time she must have been a great beauty. Now an air of tragic futility attended her. Or maybe it was his imagination. But she'd lost a son and a husband to a war that the husband said was worth fighting and the son said wasn't. It had broken her family apart, as it had broken apart so many families. No family was immune, that was the lesson: not even this one, so protected by its wealth and property.

"Well, Sergeant Swagger, you look as if you've become a movie star."

"I've been working outdoors, ma'am."

"No, I don't mean the tan. I have sources still, I believe I told you. There's some news afoot about your heroics in Idaho, how you disconnected some terrible conspiracy. I'm sure I don't understand it, but the information has even reached the society of doddering State Department widows."

"They say we were able to get some good work done, yes, ma'am."

"Are you congenitally modest, Sergeant? For a man so powerful, you are so una.s.suming you seem hardly to be there at all."

"I'm just a polite Southern boy, ma'am."

"Please sit down. I won't offer you a drink, since I know you no longer drink. A club soda, a cup of coffee or tea, a soft drink, something like that?"

"No, ma'am, I'm fine."

They sat across from each other, in the study. One of Trig's birds observed them; it was a blue mallard.

"Well, then, I know you came here to tell me something. I suppose I'm ready to hear it. Will I need a drink, Sergeant Swagger? A great shot of vodka, perhaps?"

"No, ma'am, I don't believe so."

"Well, then, go ahead."