Tom Clancy - Locked On

“Yes, ma’am,” said Melanie, and she stood to return to her desk.

“But not tonight. Get out of here. Go home and get some sleep. Or better yet, call Junior. Have him take you to a very late dinner.”

Melanie smiled, looked down at the floor.

“He called today. We’re getting together tomorrow.”

Mary Pat Foley smiled.

John Clark was new to trout fishing, and he recognized he had a lot to learn about it. On a couple of occasions he’d managed to catch a few rainbow and brown trout in his neighbor’s creek, though the streams and brooks on his own farm had so far yielded him nothing but frustration. His neighbor had told him there was good trout to be caught on Clark’s own property, but another local contradicted that, explaining that what were called trout in the little streams like those on Clark’s farm were actually just creek chubs, a member of the minnow family that grew up to a foot in length and could be feisty enough when on the line to fool amateur anglers into thinking they were battling a trout.

John figured he’d get a book on fishing and read it when he had the time, but for this afternoon he just stood out here alone in his waders in his neighbor’s creek, whipped his line back and forth, dumped the fly in a slow-moving pool, and then repeated that process, over and over and over.

It looked a lot like fly-fishing, except for the fact that he hadn’t caught a damn thing.

John gave up for the afternoon and pulled his line in an hour before dark. Though he hadn’t managed to fool any fish into biting his fly, it had been a good day nonetheless. His gunshot wound had all but healed, he’d gotten a few hours of fresh air and solitude, and, before his afternoon of relaxation, he’d put a first coat of paint on the master bedroom of the farmhouse. One more coat this coming weekend and he’d bring Sandy out so he could get a thumbs-up from her to begin painting the living room.

On top of that, he’d neither been shot again nor found it necessary to kill anyone or run for his life.

Yeah, a good day.

John packed up his fishing gear, looked up to a gray sky, and wondered if this was what retirement felt like.

He lifted his tackle box and his fly rod and shook off the thought like he shook off the cold breeze rolling down from Catoctin Mountain to the west. It was a good half-hour’s slog through the woods back to his farmhouse. He started the hike to the east by climbing the stones out of the creek up to an overgrown trail.

John’s farm was in Frederick County, west of Emmits-burg and within a mile of the Pennsylvania state line. He and Sandy had been looking for rural property since they’d returned from the UK, and when a Navy buddy who’d retired to a small dairy farm up here to make cheese with his wife told John about a “For Sale” sign in front of a simple farmhouse on fifty acres, John and Sandy came up for a look.

The price was right because the house needed some work, and Sandy loved the old house and the countryside, so they’d signed the contracts late last spring.

Since then John had been too busy at The Campus to do much more than drive up during a rare free day off to work on the house ƀand to do a little maintenance and fishing. Sandy came up with him now and again, together they’d visited Gettysburg just a few miles up the road, and they hoped to get away soon for a weekend trip to Amish Country in nearby Lancaster County.

And when they retired, they planned to move up here full-time.

Or when Sandy retired, Clark reminded himself as he pushed his way up a thick copse of evergreen brush that covered the hill leading away from the tiny stream.

John had bought the property for their golden years, but he had no illusions that he would be one to just fade off into the sunset. That he would live long enough to retire and make cheese until his body slowly crapped out on him from age.

No. John Clark figured it would all end for him a lot more suddenly than that.

The bullet through his arm was about the fiftieth close call of Clark’s life. Six inches inside its flight path and that 9-millimeter round would have gone right into a lung, and he’d have choked to death in his own blood before Ding and Dom could have carried him down to street level. Another four inches to the left and it would have pierced his heart and he would not have even made it out of the attic. A couple of feet higher and the round would have nailed the back of his head, and he would have fallen dead like Abdul bin Mohammed al Qahtani had dropped in the elevator of the Hôtel de Sers.

John was certain that, sooner or later — and John was running out of “later”—he’d die on a mission.

When he was young, really young, he’d been a Navy SEAL in Vietnam working in MACV-SOG, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam — Studies and Observations Group. Clark, along with others in SOG, had lived within a hairsbreadth of death for years. He’d had many close shaves. Bullets that whizzed by his face, explosions that sent lethal shrapnel into men within arm’s reach, helicopters that lifted five hundred feet into the air before deciding that they did not feel like flying anymore that day. Back then these brushes with death just pumped him full of adrenaline. Made him so fucking ecstatic to be alive that he, like many others of his age and in his profession, began to live for the drug called danger.

John ducked under the low limb of a young poplar as he walked, careful to keep his fly rod from snagging on the branches. He smiled a little, thinking about being twenty-two. So long ago.

The bullet that nearly dropped him dead on the Paris rooftop didn’t exactly fill him with the same giddy thrills he’d felt as a young SEAL in ’Nam. Nor did it fill him with dread and fear. No, John wasn’t going soft in his old age. More like fatalistic. The bullet in France and the farmhouse in Maryland had a lot in common.

They both told John that, one way or another, there is an end to this crazy ride.

John climbed over a split-rail section of the fence at the southwest corner of his property. Once on his own land, he hiked through a small wood of loblolly pine where the slope of a hill led down into a tiny valley where a shallow creek wound from north to south near the fence line.

He looked down at his watch and saw it was four-fifteen. He didn’t have any cell phone coverage out here, so for the three hours that he’d been out for his impromptu fishing trip he’d been “off the grid.” He wondered how many messages he’d have back on the landline at the house, and he thought back again to his past, fondly remembering a time before mobile phones, when he didn’t feel guilty for a walk in the damn woods.

Being alone here in the wilds of Maryland made him think of being alone in the bush in Southeast Asia. Yeah, it was a long time ago, but not so long if you’d been there, and Clark had damn well been there. The plants were different in the jungle, obviously, but the feel was the same. He’d always liked being out in nature; he’d sure gotten away from that in the last several years. Maybe once the OPTEMPO at The Campus died down to a reasonable level, then he could spend a little more time out here in his woods.

He’d love to take his grandson fishing someday — kids still liked stuff like that, didn’t they?

He stepped into his creek, felt his way forward through the knee-deep water, and found himself especially thankful that he’d worn his waders this afternoon. The water was ice-cold, spring-fed, and deeper than usual. The current wasn’t as fast-moving as it often was, which is why he crossed here as opposed to a hundred yards or so upstream, where large flat stones protruded just an inch or so out of the water across the width of the creek to make a natural, if slippery, bridge. But today Clark had no problem crossing right through the center of the stream, and even wading through a deeper pool created by a limestone depression, he found the water not more than waist deep.