He returned to the UN, an easy mark, everyone was doing it. Americans, Russians, Chinese, French, Israelis—anyone with internet and an interest, the United Nations was as insecure as a sophomore girl at the senior prom. Or so he imagined, having never been to a prom let alone saw a girl there. As inept as the UN was at security they were meticulous in recordkeeping. He held out hope.
He came away with nothing.
Now he was daunted. He had reached the edge of the map: Hic sunt dracones.
Here be dragons.
The foreboding territory where dwelled defense and intelligence three-letter acronyms. They spread monstrous wings and breathed fire, immolating all who would dare steal their treasure. Enter that wilderness at your peril. If it wasn’t a foreign agency—and Nielsen’s story proved old Uncle Sam was involved—then it was either the heavy-handed, overwrought labyrinthine DoD or the CIA, and he would put money on the latter, as this kind of clandestine cynicism reeked of the Christians In Action network.
He didn’t want to go after the CIA. Which of their thousand locks to pick, each attempt a risk? The dragon always won given a long enough timeline. He needed others more willing to chase this dragon.
Not dragons. Windmills. I need Don Quixotes.
Attack the flank. Go at them sideways. That’s what the spooks did.
He browsed New World Order conspiracy sites, the surest access to the fodder of government collusion and corporate global domination if you could get past the illuminati and lizardmen. Using dummy accounts, he posted inquiries regarding false-flag UN vehicles or similar events on paranoid forums and ancient BBS boards where the cranks and whackos were most prolific.
The response was quick. And thorough. Those folks lived to show what they knew. For two days he sieved and dismissed and guffawed and grimaced at man’s gullibility. And yet aggregated at the bottom of the barrel there were suspicious UN vehicle sightings in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Somalia. There was a Doctors without Borders discussion in Dutch that added Uganda, Nigeria and Sudan to the list. Largo Freight was repeatedly mentioned, a rumored front, its trucks observed in questionable circumstances all over Sub-Saharan Africa, the Ukraine, Venezuela, Mexico, and even in the United States.
Largo Freight appeared to be a quiet, international trucking company. It was also owned by the Easton-Riddle Corporation, who just so happened to be another Norton subsidiary.
Was he on to something?
The day McConnell was driving home from Portland he had received an anonymous message via IRC. Just the phrase “a little bird tweeted” and a link to an old Caltech gaming BBS that he knew to be dead only now it wasn’t. He found nothing there except one solitary zip file. Downloading it required a password.
As intended he waited, only he did so upstairs in the warmth of the sunny kitchen where he made paella. He jumped at the doorbell; just FedEx with his dry-iced ostrich, bison and tuna sashimi. Upon his return to the cool gloom below he discovered a new response to a different one of his forum posts. Short and sweet:
WH8T d1d tWEEt1E s8Y?
Not terribly clever multi-factor authentication but it wasn’t supposed to be. He typed the answer out in a text file, verified it looked correct and gave it a shot as the password:
“1t8Wt1s8W8PuddYt8t”
The archive began downloading.
His palms were sweaty. That hadn’t happened in a long time. There was something here, but was he about to step onto a landmine. Maybe it was all an elaborate setup, a digital honeypot. Curiosity was what killed the cat.
Rocking in the chair, he poked Ms. Kitty. She rolled over, annoyed but alive.
His palms were damp again but not from excitement. What to share with McConnell, if anything at all? Would it be dissuasive? Or encouraging? Hard to tell with that ornery bastard.
He held no blind optimism about the world. He knew it to be a much darker place than his inner sanctum basement. He had always suspected the scenario unfolding on his screens, the details varied but not the narrative of malfeasance. History—wash, rinse, repeat.
Was that foulness more frightening than McConnell’s impulsiveness wedded with his capabilities?
Hard to tell.
CHAPTER 24
JULY
Asotin County, Washington
His grandpa was repairing the chicken coop as a brown and white German shorthaired pointer paced about the fowl, keeping them in line.
“Coyote again?” McConnell asked, stepping down from the truck. He wore a simple T-shirt, faded Levi’s and his old, broken-in boots. There was still dew on the grass, though evaporating quickly. It was going to be a hot one.
“Sonofabitch is gettin’ crafty.”
“See Briar came back.” The dog continued minding the chickens. A ranch dog, work to do, at least while the old man was watching.
The old man straightened and assessed his handiwork. “That should keep the bastard out.”
“I don’t know why you don’t just shoot him.”
His grandpa gave him a look. “What the hell for?”
They broke the fast with coffee, cold honey-baked ham and raspberry Danishes one cousin or another had baked. “Where’s your dog?”
“Left him at home.”
“See you lost that gut that was hangin’ round your middle, finally shaved the beard, then went and let some girl color your hair like a fairy.”
“Didn’t quite happen like that.”
“Down visiting your ma?”
“Yeah. Also need to sight in a rifle.”
“A rifle.” As surprising as his sunny hair, apparently.
“Thought I’d get back into hunting.” As a boy he had hedged around the truth but never outright lied to his grandpa and he wasn’t about to start now.
“That would do you good. Eat some real meat. Not that processed Mcburger crap.” He rose. “Well, let’s have a look at her.”
“Oh. Yeah, okay. Wait here, I’ll get it.”
He jogged over to the truck, unrolled the Tonneau cover, opened the case and brought the rifle back. The old man squinted at the weapon.
“Military issue, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“Your brother’s?”
“Nope.”
The old man looked down his nose at him, then the rifle, then cracked a Budweiser. “Hell of a weapon there.” He sat back down, leaned back in his chair and drank. “Remember the way? Just up along the crick ’bout a mile.” The old man waved west past the pasture.
“You wanna go?”
“Too damn hot for my blood. Take some cold ones with you.” He gestured to the fridge on the porch.
“I’m good.”
“Take Briar if you want.”
“I’ll be alright.”
“Well. You know what you’re doing.”
The broad azure roof of the world was marred by a few high cumuli, beneath which soared a lone, patient hawk hunting up his morning meal. The air lazy, growing warmer by the minute, redolent of dry earth and the fishy smell of the creek as the truck bounced down the overgrown track that ran between the verdant riparian vegetation and the sporadic alder and cottonwood dotting the yellow and brown hills to his right. After a while the hills pulled back, yielding to an ancient flood plain dotted by bluebunch and yellow and purple forbs fighting for their claim in the sunbaked dirt.
A smattering of haystacks appeared ahead, and he could just make out the weathered targets covering their flanks. The bales marched towards him at intervals up to a solitary wooden shack with a couple forlorn wood benches in front of it.
He parked next to the old maple by the creek to shade the truck as long as possible from the sun, opened the tailgate and slid the gun case out. The night before he had mounted the 8.5x PVS-10 scope and the bipod. The scope had fought him until he figured out the built-on mount that fit right onto the rail, a smart contraption, which in the end made things very easy.
Slinging the rifle over a shoulder, his CamelBak over t
he other, he scooped up the box of ammo under an arm and made his way over to the weather-beaten shack.
The door opened onto dim, musky memories. He didn’t dwell on them. He had things to do. An old stove sat in the middle with a piped-chimney that ran up to the corrugated steel above. A box of targets and a few fold-up camping chairs filled one corner; fishing poles, tackle boxes and a stack of sandbags another; and in a third, cases of bottled water next to shelves filled with a first aid kit, a rack of flashlights, boxes of matches, canned goods and PowerBars. Nothing much had changed since he was last here a decade ago save the PowerBars.
First thing was bore sighting the rifle. Some used a laser system but he trusted to the old, reliable method his father had taught him. Back outside in the blaringly bright sunshine he removed both the bolt action and suppressor, then sandbagged the rifle on the bench to promote a steady aim. He peered down the bore and adjusted the rifle and sandbags until the bore was dead-on with a sun-bleached bull’s-eye on a haystack a hundred meters away. Then he adjusted the scope’s azimuth and elevation until the reticle aligned, checking for possible parallax between the plane of the reticle and the plane of view, not expecting there to be any but you had to be sure.
He replaced the bolt but not the suppressor, threw two sandbags on his right shoulder, grabbed a couple boxes of shells and a few targets and marched out across the sod, his T-shirt already dark with sweat.
Ripping down the old targets he hung three new ones. He walked twenty-five meters back, dropped the bags on a haystack, loaded five of the three-inch rounds into the magazine and locked it into place. Pressing earplugs into his ears, he swiped at the sweat beading up his brow, dropped into a rested position. Using the sandbags to steady himself he listened to the wind, the faint sound of the creek, some sparrows far off in the brush. He willed his breathing to slow, felt the pounding of his heart and told it to relax, focused, poured himself through the scope, forgetting everything but the feel of the trigger guard, the firm fiberglass stock snug against his shoulder…
It wasn’t feeling right.
He adjusted the end of the stock by a half-inch and moved the cheek up a little. He resettled. Better but not quite. He knocked one of the sandbags to the ground and turned the other one on its side, bending it a little. There, that was it, that felt perfect. Breathing, clearing his mind, pouring himself through the scope, just him and the target, the target in the middle of the duplexed reticle, thick crosshairs that tapered to thin lines at their intersection, he took in a breath, slowly released it, inhaled again, slow, steady, again, his heart beating, beating, then in between beats he squeezed the trigger.
The trigger had a light pull, the kick was solid and reassuring, the powder explosion overtly loud with the ballistic crack of supersonic thunder tearing away off up the hills. He fired a grouping of three into the first target and was pleased with the results. All three on paper, their center two inches to the right and two high. The MOA for the PVS-10 was half-inch azimuth and one-inch elevation at a hundred meters per, meaning at twenty-five meters he had to multiply everything by four. He made his adjustments, fired another grouping. Center was a half-inch right of a bull’s-eye. Adjusted the windage again and this time he was dead-on, all three bullets leaving a large hole through the black.
Picking up the casings he dropped back to a hundred meters, screwed the OPS INC. suppressor back on, settled into position and fired another grouping.
The report was a minimized snapping, almost feminine compared to the rolling sonic boom that followed. He dropped back another hundred meters, pleased again as all three shots found the black of the next target with a minor adjustment for a welcome breeze.
It wasn’t like riding a bike. But it was close.
Like most modern scopes the PVS-10 utilized Mil-Dots. He’d never used them before but understood the principle and spent the next couple hours dropping to the ground all over the field, calculating and testing the formula: size of target in meters multiplied by a thousand divided by apparent size of target in mils. It could get tricky because you had to be precise to the tenth of a mil but he started to get the hang of it, was hitting in the range of .5 MOA, accuracy considered a kill shot by most sportsmen and snipers alike.
Around one he broke for lunch, ate peanut butter and honey sandwiches and downed them with Gatorade. His clothes were covered in dusty soil. It coated his sweaty arms and face. The muscles in his neck and shoulders burned but he felt good being back in the country, beneath a wide-open sky, soaking in the sun and getting dirty. He felt young again. Younger anyway.
For a while he forgot why he was there, forgot what the rifle in his hands was to be used for when Mitch finally stopped playing games and told him what he’d found. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he would never use it for that. Maybe he would just do some hunting this season. Maybe he’d bring Katie along. That would require them talking. Maybe hell would freeze over.
Pouring a pint of water over his head he gathered up his gear and made for the arid brown hills, sending gophers back to their holes and field mice scurrying for cover as he traipsed their domain.
The day was scorching by the time he reached some altitude. He huffed in hot air, took a sip of water and got back to work. Falling amid the dry, crackling bush, he fired off several more rounds, getting a feel for the mils with elevation. When he ran out of ammunition he gathered up the empties as before and, hot and sticky, his shoulder throbbing, dirt in his ears and nose, the back of his throat raw with the acerbic taste of gunpowder, slip-slided in large lunges back down the hillside, sending cascades of loose rock ahead of him.
He counted spent shells while he let the rifle cool then broke out the deployment kit, cleaned the weapon, careful not to mar the inside of the barrel. Then it was his turn. He stripped naked and jumped into the creek and rinsed off the earth, plunging beneath the sparkling surface to blow it out his nostrils and spit it out of his teeth. He stretched stiff muscles by splashing as much as swimming, then floated on his back, grinning in boyish defiance at the relentless, balled fist of flaming fury high above.
Afterwards he lay on the tailgate, one leg dangling over the edge, dozing beneath the broad cover of the maple’s leaves, the hot blossomy wind drying him.
Evening was just thinking about making an appearance when he returned to find the old man on the porch working at a basket of huckleberries.
“Your cousins stopped by,” the old man said.
“Which ones?”
“Tim, Blaine, Bobby. Just missed ’em. They wanted to come see if you could still shoot but I told them you wanted left alone. Said they’d catch you next time.” He peered into the basket and found the berry he wanted. “So how’d you do?”
“Not bad,” he said.
His grandpa snorted. “You ain’t been ‘not bad’ since you were eight.” His grandpa handed him a Bud and John cracked it, took a big swig, and while he did his grandpa said, “They brought their wives out. God almighty that Tanya will talk you to death. Still, your mom thinks you should get one.”
He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Had one. Didn’t work out.”
“Dime a dozen, get yourself another. It’ll make her happy.”
His face was starting to itch and the tops of his ears burned. He had forgotten sun block.
“Guess I got a bit of sun.”
“A bit.” His grandpa squinted into the sunset. “You gonna hunt woolly mammoths with that rifle?”
“You seen any around?”
His grandpa eyeballed him, spat out an ornery, large seed, gestured to the chair next to him. “There’s aloe in the house. Help me with these berries while I go hunt it up.”
His mom made him sit for more aloe and a lecture about melanoma then pivoted to Sean and the military’s jingoistic “he died a hero” fable. It was eating her, too. Was their lie that pathetic or was she just being a mother?
“I wish we knew more,” he said, and that was true. What he knew wasn’t enough, not to
share, not with her. Not now.
She nodded her agreement. She looked better but sadder. He let her cook and force-feed him two pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy, and beets. He hated beets (Sean was the one who liked beets).
“Quit using Grandpa for your dirty work,” he said.
“Stop your pouting, and finish your milk.”
He pouted anyway but finished the milk all the same. She added another pork chop to his plate.
“Good God, Mom. No more.”
“Why is it so difficult?”
“It just is.”
“You go out, you see a pretty girl, you say hello, you ask her to dinner. That’s it.”
“The single women my age…they’ve seen behind the curtain. Know what I mean?” Her look said she did not. “They’re jaded. Often bitter. Angry. Not all of them, but most. They’ve been used, abused, deceived. It’s a story that I don’t want to hear.” He had his own story he didn’t care to share. Maybe that was really it.
She nodded. Maybe she got it. And then she surprised him. “So date someone younger.”
“Mom—” he began but wasn’t certain what should follow. She helped him.
“I want more grandchildren, Johnny. I’m told I have one but I’m not so sure. I haven’t seen her in ten years.”
“It hasn’t been ten years,” he protested around a mouthful of chop.
“I’m serious. It’s what we old people look forward to; why do you think your grandpa’s lived so long? All you brats running around the place.”
“I’ll work on it.”
She gave him a sharp look. “You look great. Like your old self. That beard finally gone, you should have no problem meeting a young woman and convincing her you’re worth something.”
“You want me to run out, pick up the first girl I meet and knock her up right now?”
He got up as if he would leave to do just that.
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