Ken Goddard - Chimera

Lightstone sighed and turned back to Achara. “You do look the part, I’ll concede that; but have you ever shot an arrow from a bow before?” he asked calmly.

“No, I haven’t. What difference does that make?”

“The difference is that Fogarty’s daughter is widely-known in the Northwest to be skilled with a bow; and it’s not going to take those assholes very long to figure out that you — ” Lightstone stared to add, and then stopped when Achara whirled away, stomped over to the corner of the trophy room, picked up Sam Fogarty’s spear, and sent it flying across the room. The long obsidian spear-point slammed solidly into a mounted bull African elephant head staring out mournfully from the far wall.

All three special agents stared wordlessly at the six-foot spear shaft vibrating almost exactly mid-distance between elephant’s glassy eyes.

“Who says I have to use a goddamned bow and arrow?” Achara demanded. “Is that some kind of sexist thing? I can’t hunt with a spear like the guys?”

“Could you do that?” Bulatt asked Lightstone.

“No, not likely,” he admitted. “I’m not even sure I could come close to the center of the wall, much less the frigging elephant.”

“Me neither,” Bulatt said. “And I’m starting to think we might be able to pull it off; especially if Mike can rig us a couple of emergency beacons that they can’t spot until we turn them on.”

“No problem with the transmitter,” Takahara said, “but we’re going to have to hustle to get you two outfitted with some cold-weather gear and camping equipment — and then out to McAllister Field — by nine tomorrow morning.”

“Can you do it?”

Takahara nodded. “There’s a U.S. Military Training Center just outside of Yakima. They ought to have plenty of cold weather gear on hand. I’ll give them a call; see what we can work out.” The Tech Agent hurried out of the room.

“Her father is going to be seriously pissed at both of us if she gets hurt,” Lightstone reminded. “We won’t even discuss the ‘if she gets killed’ part. If that happens, he’ll hunt us both down to the ends of the earth.”

“My father is an understanding man, and he knows me well,” Achara said as she walked over to the elephant head, yanked the spear out, and then walked back to the two special agents with a look of defiant determination on her face. “And I’ll tell you one thing for certain: he does not expect me to be a coward in the face of our enemies.”

Bulatt met her gaze for a long moment, sighed, and then walked back into the living room where Stoner was gazing thoughtfully down at the cowered Fogarty.

“Okay, sport,” Bulatt said, staring solemnly at Fogarty as he sat back down in the chair, “here’s how you’re going to play it.”

Sam Fogarty’s Living Room

“Listen to me, Michael, I know what you’re thinking,” Sam Fogarty snarled into the phone. “If I can’t hunt, that just means one more for the taking; but you three are not going to cheat me out of my mammoth! That is not going to happen!”

There were in Fogarty’s expensively furnished living room; Bulatt, Lightstone, Stoner and Takahara sitting in chairs facing Fogarty on the couch as the sweating CEO made his pitch to the acknowledged leader of their private hunting club. Achara was back in the den, sending Carolyn Fogarty’s homemade arrows across the room into the wall-mounted target with varying results, and what the agents all assumed was colorful Thai cussing. There were now several arrowhead holes in the surrounding rosewood paneling that had been smuggled into the country from one of the last such trees clear-cut from a Brazilian Rainforest.

Fogarty winced visibly as another loud ‘THUNK’ and muttered curse signaled the latest damage to his likely irreplaceable paneling, and then listened for a few seconds to the voice on the other end of the line.

“I know what we all agreed to eight years ago,” Fogarty interrupted. “But this is a different situation entirely. There will never be another ‘first hunt of extinct species’ like this again, no matter what kind of creatures these scientists manage to come up with next, and I will not simply ‘sit this one out’ because of an untimely accident.”

Fogarty listened again for a few more seconds.

“That’s not true at all. I’m sure Carolyn is perfectly capable of keeping up with the two of you. In fact, if anything, I expect her to be way out ahead. After all, she’s thirty years younger than any of us, and works out regularly. With any luck, she’ll be the one who makes the first kill.”

Another pause.

“I’m going to send her with the spears, of course; and also that bow I told you all about — the one she hand-carved with that obsidian knife, and then hand-chipped the arrowheads. What? How the hell do I know if the cavemen hunted mammoths with bows and arrows? For all I know, they launched boulders at the damned things with catapults. Who cares? The only things that matter, as far as I’m concerned, are that she makes the kill without using a modern firearm; and that she brings home my mammoth, so I can put it on my wall.”

Fogarty then looked up at Bulatt as he listened to Hateley’s response.

“No, I can’t come with her; I’ve got surgery scheduled for tomorrow, and I have no intention of being crippled for life because I put it off,” Fogarty said. “But I will see to it that she arrives at the airport tomorrow, well before ten, with her fiance — ”

Fogarty hesitated. “His name is Gediminas Bulattus, a Lithuanian-American, nice fellow; and yes, of course he’s going with her! What did you think — that I was going to send my only daughter out in the wilderness on her own, knowing that Stuart would be there? Be serious! Ged will see to it that she’s safe, and that she brings my trophy back to where it belongs. And then, at our next get-together, we will see who takes possession of the boar’s head!”

With that, Fogarty disconnected the call.

“It’s done,” he said, still staring at Bulatt.

“Did he agree?”

“He was reluctant, as you heard; but the four of us have already made substantial — and non-refundable — down payments for this hunt, and he agrees that I have a right to protect my investment.”

“Substantial meaning?”

“A half-million dollars apiece, with another one-point-five million payable when our trophies are delivered to our doors.”

Bulatt blinked. “Two million dollars each, for what amounts to a baby elephant hunt? Are you people out of your collective minds?”

“At some point in the accumulation of wealth, Agent Bulatt, dollars become little more than illusionary numbers in a ledger; things that you use but don’t really much care about,” Fogarty explained. “Those young mammoths, however, are very real and very rare — to put it mildly — and I want one. It’s all a matter of what you value most in life.”

“I’ll have to take your word for that,” Bulatt said. “What about Emerson? How is he likely to take this switch at the last minute?”

“Marcus strikes all of us as being a simple mercenary. I’m sure he won’t care who actually takes part in the hunt, just as long as he gets paid,” Fogarty said. “But what about Carolyn and I? How will you see to it that we have protection — from prosecution, and from Marcus and his men?”

“Larry’s going to take you to the U.S. Attorney’s office tomorrow morning. I’ve already called ahead and let them know that we’re amiable to a deal on your endangered species trophy collection, depending on how things go with this hunt,” Bulatt said.

“But you can’t blame me if things don’t work out.”

“It’s up to us to conduct the covert investigation properly,” Bulatt agreed. “But I wouldn’t want to get out there and discover, in some unfortunate manner, that Emerson and his men — not to mention your CEO buddies — had been warned off. That would turn out to be a much more serious issue.”