by Jack Carr
“Ears,” Raife said, tossing his friend a set of electronic hearing protection. After all the explosions and gunfire they’d experienced throughout their time in uniform, both were sticklers about preserving the hearing they had left.
They moved into what they called a “Prevail Drill,” a twenty-round course of fire developed by one of their University of Montana professors who had been a Special Forces Project Delta sniper in Vietnam. The six stages varied from five to twelve yards and included standing, kneeling, single hand, and dual target engagements under a specified time tracked by a shot timer. Anything outside the “ten zone” meant failure and was intended to indicate they would have died in a real-world gunfight. Both operators put all twenty shots in the kill box.
As they topped off magazines, Raife caught Reece eyeing his recurve bow that hung on a stand on the shooting range.
“Let me know when you are ready to take off your training wheels and shoot something that takes some skill,” Raife said, mocking the modern compound bow he knew Reece had been spending time with lately.
“You mean this old struggle stick?” Reece asked. “Mind if I give it a shot?”
“Be my guest. When you’re ready we’ll head down to Colorado and have South Cox measure you for a Stalker and stop in to see Tom Clum for some lessons.”
One of Reece’s favorite things to do was surprise his old blood brother. Unbeknownst to Raife, his guest had been spending time in Glacier Archery working on his traditional bow technique.
Reece gripped the ancient weapon, pretending he was unfamiliar with how to properly hold it, registering Raife’s folded arms and smug look.
Slowly picking up a beautiful wooden arrow from the stand, he took a breath and centered himself. His short routine had become subconscious: load, anchor, back perpendicular to target, bent slightly at the waist, elbow inside the string; arrow, target, string, archer as one being, one natural system.
Reece’s fingers scraped along his face and past his ear into the follow-through and finish position, his arrow slicing through the mountain air before striking the kill zone of the 3-D mule deer target at thirty-five yards.
“Nothing to it,” Reece said to his astonished friend with a smile. “Remember, the arrow that is not aimed… See you tomorrow.”
* * *
Reece maneuvered through the trees toward his section of the ranch and thought through the rest of his day. He planned to head into Whitefish to run some errands while Raife scouted for deer and elk. The Hastingses’ family attorney had set Reece up with a bank account and post office box in the name of one of the family’s corporations to help conceal his location. His military pension and CIA paychecks were direct deposited into his account under the alias David Hilcot, courtesy of the CIA’s director of Clandestine Services. There were no documents that placed his name on the cabin where he lived and the utilities were all billed to the Hastings family, making him virtually invisible in a modern world, where privacy was all but dead. Once a week, Reece would make the hour drive to Whitefish to check his mail and fuel up on caffeine at Montana Coffee Traders. He would sweeten it up to his heart’s content, browse the local bookstore, and spend some time talking shop with the resident bow-hunting experts in Glacier Archery. If anyone recognized him during his forays into civilization, they didn’t let on. For Reece, the “keep to oneself” culture of northwest Montana certainly had its benefits.
Back at his cabin, Reece approached the line and took a breath. Though he loved the challenge and purity of traditional archery, he also couldn’t separate himself from the adage he’d learned on the battlefield: exploit all technical and tactical advantages. His compound bow blended the past and present for him in a way that felt natural.
Archery had always been a pursuit that centered him, calmed him. A place where all worries and stresses were put aside, a meditative state where archer, bow, arrow, and target were connected. To the uninitiated, archery looked like a hobby. To those who lived the way of the bow, it was much more. Archery was discipline. Archery was freedom. Archery was Zen.
Stance, grip, shoulder, anchor, peep, pull, and finish, Reece thought, reviewing the basics. As with anything in life, the best do the basics exceptionally well.
The range was set up with multiple foam shapes of realistic-looking animals at distances from ten to one hundred yards. Reece had never taken a hundred-yard shot with his bow at an animal but being competent with his setup out to that distance certainly increased confidence when his prey was within forty.
Reece looked the forty yards to his target, a foam-shaped bull elk.
Build your foundation, Reece, he remembered his friend and one of the best archers on the planet telling him years earlier. Winning starts from the ground up. Reece had hit it off with John Dudley years earlier at the Total Archery Challenge, a 3-D archery shoot held at various locations around the country. Reece had been a solid archer, growing up with a bow in hand, but he was primarily self-taught. “Dud,” whose life had been the pursuit of excellence in the science and art of archery, had passed along lessons that brought Reece’s skills with the ancient weapon to new levels. They were lessons Reece would never forget.
Reece glanced at his feet and moved them into a perfect neutral stance, his back foot just slightly off centerline, then adjusted his grip.
The shot begins and ends in your hand.
Going through his shot routine focused his mind and emptied it of thoughts that would interrupt the process and therefore disrupt the flight of the arrow. Reece’s time with the bow was not so much about hitting the target as it was about the discipline of the art. It was a meditative state where any outside influences and distractions ceased to exist. There was no murdered wife and child, no mission of vengeance, no brain tumor, no dead teammates; no past, no future, no betrayal. There was only the now; the flow of the process. The discipline. There was only the shot.
Reece raised his front shoulder, locking it forward and down for stability before slowly pulling the seventy-four pounds of PSE’s EVO NTN to full draw. He then anchored his drawing hand lightly against his cheek, his eye moving to the round peep sight, aligning his front pin in its center, the tip of his nose just barely touching the string. His sight pin was in a slow, effortless float on the kill zone as he eased his thumb to the trigger of the Nock2It release. This was a moment of solitude. The focus was bliss.
As with the many rifle shots he’d taken in training and combat, at his natural respiratory pause he executed, the tension from his back and shoulder naturally flowing through his arm to his thumb on the release, transferring the bow’s potential energy into kinetic energy and into the arrow as the cams returned the string to its neutral state.
Just before the shot broke, the elk target transformed into someone Reece had only seen in surveillance photos, a short man with a stainless steel watch. A man Reece was going to kill.
It was as if Reece’s bow had fired itself. He followed through just as he would with a rifle, the arrow rotating flawlessly, finding its mark almost half a football field away. He was in the zone. It was effortless, perfection. He repeated the process five more times before moving downrange to collect his arrows. This ritual had become part of his morning routine. This was his meditation. Now, with a clear mind, he would move forward and continue to recover. The scars on his head were not the only ones healing. The emotional strain and trauma of the past two years needed to heal as well. Reece knew those kinds of wounds have the tendency to fester and tear, and would be felt long after the incisions on his scalp were a distant memory.
CHAPTER 16
Saint Petersburg, Russia
IT SEEMED AS THOUGH the CIA had half of the nation on the payroll. Contract employees were making big money working overseas gigs. When the military drew down their footprint in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and Colombia, they filled the void with experienced special operators. Men who could train, equip, and lead local “indig” units against America’s enemie
s. Some did it for the money, some in the name of patriotism, and some because they simply couldn’t let go of the action. Whatever their motivation, they were invaluable tools in the fight and the government paid them accordingly.
He had reached the last financial institution on his list: Flathead Bank & Trust. The monotony of these searches had nearly lulled his mind into complacency, but now was not the time for that. He was running out of patience when he needed it most. The checking account in question was owned by HDI, LLC, which appeared to be a holding company with numerous accounts, many of which held significant amounts of money. The account in question received two direct deposits every month: one from the Agency and a second from the Department of Defense that appeared to be the appropriate monthly sum of a retirement payment for a prior-enlisted O-4 with twenty years of service. He worked with renewed focus.
What, or who, was HDI, though?
Grey found scans of closing documents on the website of the Flathead County treasurer in the name of HDI, Hastings Diversified Investments, signed by its president, a man named Jonathan Hastings. A web search of that name brought up numerous results, most of them associated with Hastings’s various landholdings. Jonathan Hastings was on the board of directors of the Montana Cattleman’s Association, the Montana Outfitters and Guides Association, and the Selous Scouts Regimental Association. On the second page, Grey found an engagement announcement, dated June 2014, in the Montana Standard.
“The Honorable Timothy and Katherine Thornton of Butte are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Annika Grace, to Raife J. Hastings, son of Jonathan and Caroline Hastings of Whitefish. Raife is a 1999 graduate of the University of Montana and is a rancher, having recently retired from the United States Navy, where he served as a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy. A September wedding is planned.” There was a photo above the announcement: two young, beautiful people, posing candidly and looking very much in love. The woman looked like she could be a model with her perfect jaw, long, graceful neck, flawless skin, and delicate shoulders. Her suitor looked like a thirty-something version of the Marlboro Man: hard, gritty, and masculine yet undoubtedly attractive. Grey could just make out a scar that ran down the man’s face, making him look even more intriguing.
Grey looked at the whiteboard; James Reece had attended the University of Montana and was the same age. They were both in the Navy and the Hastingses’ family ranch, located in some of the most remote country in the lower forty-eight, would be an ideal place to hide from the world.
Had Raife Hastings been a SEAL?
Grey felt the rush of victory. He might not have the intimidating physical power of the men he hunted, but he had the intellectual advantage. He still needed on-the-ground confirmation, but if he had located his target, Reece would soon be reunited with his dead family.
CHAPTER 17
Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York
KOYCHEV LOOKED AT THE package delivered by courier the previous evening. Though there were various electronic means of communication thought to be secure from the prying eyes of the American law enforcement and intelligence agencies, an old-fashioned hard copy, hand-carried on a Moscow to New York flight, was still the best way to stay off their radar.
He used his pocketknife to unseal the padded manila envelope and dumped the contents onto his desk. There was a small stack of papers, a thumb drive, and what Koychev recognized as an Iridium GPS tracking device. There was a cover letter of sorts, typed in Russian and signed by a fellow Avtoriet, a brigadier in the organization. The letter was indirect, making references to events and people that only the reader would understand. It was an effective, if informal code; no computer or word sleuth could decipher it. The message was simple: locate the target, identify his vehicles, and develop a pattern of life. This was to be acted upon with the highest urgency as the request was coming from the Big Boss himself. It didn’t take a man of Koychev’s experience to determine that someone’s days were numbered.
He pulled an inexpensive laptop from his desk, one that he never connected to the internet, and slid the thumb drive into the USB port. The first file was a series of photos of a man, both in and out of uniform. Koychev recognized him from the media coverage: a former SEAL who had gone on a rampage after the deaths of his wife and daughter, becoming the most wanted man in America. Other files contained satellite imagery, maps, bank account records, and other fragments of data that would help find and eliminate the target.
Koychev closed his eyes and thought about the problem at hand. His people were accustomed to operating in cities where they could hide among the masses of humanity. Putting men, particularly foreigners, into such a remote part of the United States would attract immediate attention. He had an idea. He typed “Whitefish Montana bartender jobs” into Google and found two current openings. One of those jobs would work perfectly.
He called his most reliable female employee into his back office, taking a moment to admire her before giving her his instructions.
“Tanya, you are moving to Montana.”
CHAPTER 18
Whitefish, Montana
TANYA WAS NOT PLEASED when Sergey sent her on this assignment, but she’d quickly fallen for the natural beauty and easy pace of the small resort town. Ski towns across the American West were often staffed by Eastern Europeans during the summer months and Tanya befriended a group from Bulgaria and Serbia. Within two weeks of her arrival, she had moved into a crowded house where she shared a bedroom with Elitza from the city of Sofia in the Balkans. She mostly worked nights, pouring drinks at a local bar and flirting with the fly-fishing guides, their wealthy clients, and seasonal residents of this idyllic community.
Most mornings, she could be found sitting on a bench on Central Avenue, sipping from a to-go cup of coffee. Just another young girl in yoga pants, scrolling away on her iPhone or reading a magazine, taking in the warm sun and clean mountain air. Her bench just happened to give her a perfect view of anyone going into or coming out of Flathead Bank & Trust across the street.
Tanya was worried that she wouldn’t be able to identify the man that she’d been asked to locate. From the photos, he looked similar to a decent percentage of the men in town: late thirties, tall, probably bearded. She began to typecast the men she observed, each of them falling into one of a few molds: mustached cowboy locals, scruffy fishing guides, pudgy summer tourists, or obviously wealthy Californians with property nearby. None of them had the hardened look of a combat veteran.
It was late morning, and she was about to give up for the day; she’d offered to work a double and needed to shower before opening for the lunch crowd. She started to walk up the sidewalk toward her home a few blocks away when she saw a Toyota Land Cruiser turn down Central. The off-road SUV looked to be of an older vintage but was in like-new condition and tricked out with an aggressive bumper, lights, and a roof rack.
Interesting.
She leaned against a light pole and pulled her phone back out of her pocket.
The driver was the correct height, about six feet tall, and had broad shoulders and thick arms. He wore jeans, a T-shirt, and hiking boots and looked like he might fit in with the guide crowd. A ball cap and sunglasses shielded much of his face and a dark beard masked what was left. The black glasses looked different from the typical fishing shades so popular in town, but it was his demeanor that gave him away. While nearly everyone else she saw walked with a carefree attitude or had their face buried in their phones, this man’s vigilance set him apart. His head moved constantly, as he took in his surroundings before locking the door of his truck. He reminded her of a fitter version of some of Koychev’s men who sometimes passed through Brighton Beach, hard and serious.
He disappeared into the bank, and she went back to her bench. She opened her camera app and prepared to frame a photograph while looking like she was mindlessly shopping or checking a social media platform. She sat with her knees to her chest to steady the shot and, when he emerged from the bank, she took a
burst of photos followed by a video. He opened the back hatch of his SUV and retrieved what looked like a case for a musical instrument, which he carried two storefronts down into a place called Glacier Archery.
Tanya sent a text message with the video and photos to Koychev in New York, then rose from the bench to prepare for the lunch shift.
CHAPTER 19
Whitefish, Montana
REECE DIDN’T HAVE AN exact routine, but he would head to town at least once a week. He would hit the bank, the post office, the archery shop, and the bookstore. He had become a bit of a regular at Loula’s and would often stop in for a late breakfast or lunch during his forays into civilization. One of the waitresses, with an accent he’d narrowed down to somewhere in the Balkans, had a crush on him. She always commented on how polite he was. Despite her best efforts, though, he hadn’t asked her out.
When he walked through the door of the cafe, Tanya knew that she had about thirty minutes until he would be done eating, maybe longer if Elitza was extra chatty. She waited impatiently before making her move, just in case he’d left his wallet or phone in the truck and came out to retrieve it. After an agonizing few moments, she crossed the street with what to anyone but the closest observer appeared to be a black cell phone in her hand. She knelt next to his right rear tire as if to tie her shoe and reached as far under the vehicle as she could. Her view was blocked by the running boards, but they would also prevent anyone from spotting her handiwork without physically crawling under the SUV. She twisted her shoulder and knelt further to slide the device over the top of the frame rail and felt the tactile click of the powerful magnet as it took hold on the steel. Brushing the dried dust and dirt from her hand on her pants leg, she rose and continued her walk as casually as possible.