Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

“Okay,” he told them in the safe house in Rosslyn, Virginia, the agency maintained as a staging area for emergency ops, “don’t kid yourself. This guy is very, very experienced. He has been in gunfights and battles his whole life. He operated as a recon team leader for SOG for a long year up near and inside Cambodia in sixty-seven. He was an immensely heroic sniper who may be the only man in history to have stopped a battalion by himself, in seventy-two. If you look at the dossier I’ve distributed, you see that he’s been involved in dust-ups ever since then: some business in New Orleans in ninety-two and then, two years ago, he spent some time in his hometown in Arkansas and the state death-by-shooting rate skyrocketed. This is a very, very salty, competent individual. He is strictly at the top of the pyramid.

“So let me repeat: your job is to monitor him, to report his activities, to tap into his discoveries, but that is all. I want this understood. This is not an apprehension; it’s no kind of wet work. Is that clear?”

The team nodded, but there were questions.

“Commander, do you want his lines tapped?”

Bonson hesitated. That would be helpful. But it was illegal without a court order and you never knew how these things would end up playing out. His career was his most important possession.

“No. Nothing illegal. This isn’t the old days.”

“We might be able to make a nice acoustic penetration on him in the old lady’s place.”

“If you can get that, fine. If not, that’s okay, too.”

“If he burns us, do we disengage?”

“No, you go to backups. That’s why I want six cars, not the usual four. You stay in radio contact. I’ll be monitoring in the control van. Each hour I’m going to broadcast a frequency change, to cut down on the possibility of him countermonitoring us.”

The team understood immediately how unusual this was. Under normal circumstances, no executive at Bonson’s level would serve as case officer on an operation. It was like a brigadier general taking over a platoon.

“Are we armed?”

“No, you are not armed. If you should unexpectedly encounter him, if he should make you and turn you out, you go into immediate deniability. You deny everything; you all have fake IDs. If you have to, you go to jail without compromising operational security. I do not want him knowing he’s being watched.”

Notes were taken, procedures written down. Bonson discussed call signs, probable routes he’d take to the old woman’s house north of Baltimore, that sort of thing. But then—

“One last thing: this man claims he is also being hunted by a former Russian sniper. I tend to believe him, though his record would incline him toward paranoia. But we have to take the sniper as a real, not an imaginary threat. So let’s assume that sniper has no idea where he is and thinks he’s still in Idaho. But he’s an enormously resourceful man. If the Russian is farther ahead of the game than I have even begun to suspect, and you encounter him, you fall back and contact me immediately and, if no other option exists, you may have to move aggressively. You may have to risk your lives to save Swagger, in that eventuality.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Swagger knows something. Or he has the power to figure it out. He’s a key, somehow, to something very deep and troubling. He cannot be lost. He still has work to do for his country. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s still got a mission.”

“Commander, could you tell us what this is about?”

“The past. Old men’s dreams, young men’s deaths. The spy that never was but is again. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re on a mole hunt. We’re after the one that got away.”

In Boise, Solaratov’s first move was to call the hospital, asking to speak to Mrs. Swagger. Mrs. Swagger had checked out of the hospital two days earlier. Where had she gone and in whose care had she been left? The hospital operator wasn’t permitted to release such information. What was her doctor’s name? Again, no answer.

Late that afternoon, Solaratov parked his rented car in a national park that provided access to the Sawtooth National Forest, and, outfitted as any hiker, began the seventeen-mile trek along the ridgeline that ultimately left national property and deposited him nine hundred yards above Swagger’s ranch house. He set up a good spotting position, well hidden from casual hikers, of whom there were likely to be none, and equally invisible from the meadows and pastures that stretched beneath him. He settled in to wait.

He waited two full days. The house was absolutely empty. Even the livestock had been sent elsewhere. In the middle of the second night, he came down off the ridge and penetrated, using a lock pick to spring the locks. Then, making certain the shades were drawn, he explored the house using a powerful flashlight for six hours, a thorough, professional examination as he sought some clue as to where the Swagger family had gone to cover. But on the first pass, the house yielded nothing. The Swaggers had vanished.

The home was orderly, jammed with books on the subject of war, very clean. The little girl’s room was the messiest, but only by a small margin. The living room was messy too, but it was a superficial mess, a one-day job, not the accrual of weeks of untidiness, and he could see where someone had spent a long night on the sofa. He found an empty bottle of bourbon in the garbage under the sink.

One ordinary hunting rifle, a Model 70 in .308, more a useful tool in this part of the country. A lightly customized .45 Colt Commander. No precision rifles. Swagger had seemed to leave that behind him. There was a study, where someone had done a lot of reading, but that was about all. He looked for family account books or financial files, in hopes that such would yield another possibility, but again, he found nothing.

It appeared to be hopeless. He was wondering what to do next. He went outdoors, carefully locking the door behind him, and went over to the garbage cans by the side of the house, still in the cart by which they would be hauled to the road twice a week. He opened one can and found it empty, but the second produced a last green plastic bag, knotted with yellow plastic ribbon at the top; it hadn’t been picked up or even set out. Perhaps the garbage contract had been cancelled when the family decamped.

He took the bag to the barn, sliced it open with his Spyderco, and went through the materials very carefully. Not much: old yogurt cups, the bones of steaks and chops and chickens eaten carefully, used paper towels, tin cans, an ice cream package, very sticky, coffee grounds, the usual detritus. But then: something crinkled, a yellow Post-It tab. Very carefully he unrolled it and saw what it revealed.

“Sally M.,” it said. “American 1435, 9:40 A.M.”

Bob took his time driving back from the McDonald’s, letting his baby-sitters enjoy their presumed advantage over him. He went back to his motel room just outside the airport, called Mrs. Carter and told her that he hadn’t found anything at the site but that he had some other ideas to pursue and he would certainly keep her informed.

He went out, got some dinner and caught a movie at a suburban mall, a stupid thing about commandos who fired and never missed and who took fire and never got hit, just to eat up the time. When he got out of the film it was 2300, which meant in London it was 0600 tomorrow. That was fine. Instead of returning immediately to his car, he walked around the strip mall until he found a pay phone, well aware that at least two cars of watchers were in the lot, eyeballing him.

Using his phone card, he placed an overseas call to the American embassy in London, getting a night-shift receptionist; he asked to be transferred to the embassy Marine guard detachment, was passed on to the duty NCO and asked for the NCOIC, Master Sergeant Mallory, who should be up and about, and in a few seconds Mallory came to the line.