by Ed Kovacs
As he entered a shock consciousness, all sound abated. The fuselage opened up to the freezing black. Sections of seats moved away, jagged metal floated by, seemingly languidly. The package remained viced between his feet, but Marcetti had somehow disappeared.
He felt no pain as the freezing lack of oxygen seared his lungs and he surfed the Jet Stream in his falling chair, tumbling on a multi-minute descent to his physical apocalypse in the North Atlantic sea lanes west of the Darwin Mounds reef.
###
Captain Diana Hunt stood in the predawn darkness on the CQC, Close Quarters Combat shooting range at Quantico, Virginia, made a slight bow and whispered to herself, “Hwal bae oom ni da, I am learning the bow.”
At a slender five-feet ten-inches she stood straight but relaxed, feet shoulder-length apart in the two o’clock position as she assumed the ready-to-draw posture. She firmly grasped a traditional Korean horn bow in her left hand and nocked a jook shi, a handmade bamboo arrow, in the bright green silk bow string. She elevated the arrow to forty-five degrees, now ready to draw.
The horn bow set her back $550 while stationed in Seoul with the Eighth Army. Five-and-a-half Benjies represented a hefty chunk on a military salary, and she could have bought a modern laminated bow for much less, but she wanted authenticity. The bow featured a bamboo core, sinew-backed, with oak at the handle. The belly was water buffalo horn, the outer ends of the limbs were acacia v-spliced onto the bamboo using glue made from fish air-bladder. A special birch bark soaked in salt water for over a year and imported from China covered the sinew backing.
To the amazement of anyone who ever saw her shoot, the bow could be pulled back to where the siyahs, the outer portion of the bow’s limbs, lined up practically parallel, yet wouldn’t snap, and a 525 grain arrow would streak out at over 210 feet-per-second.
Wearing a gahkji, an old ox-bone thumb ring, not the plastic kind made from billiard balls, she pulled the string back to full draw with her right thumb and index finger in what is known as the Mongolian Draw. She no longer grasped the bow, it remained in place by the tension of the draw on the bow string.
She closed her gun-metal blue eyes, abdomen tight as a drumhead, thumb and index finger behind her skull almost touching her shoulder, bow string pressed against her beautiful, makeup-free, high cheekbone.
Sightless, her brain deprived of a reference point, she relaxed into a natural release position and breath cadence. Correct breathing meant everything, especially shooting blind, since she had to become the arrow, the bow, the string. She became the moment, the invisible target.
In competition, the full draw position was usually held for no more than three-to-five seconds before release. At nine seconds now, an eternity for western style bows, she approached the limit of her endurance holding the fifty-five pound pull, patiently waiting for the thunk sound indicating a pop-up target had appeared. Targets, actually, for one or more of the cartoon-like forms would be of innocents and only one target a villain. Not that she could see the targets with her eyes.
Straying strands of medium-length strawberry-blonde hair played out from under a baseball cap. She wore a black sweat suit, sneakers, and a blue silk sash around her waist knotted traditionally on her right side, her bow string side. Four jook shi tucked snug into the sash awaited their turn. Her nocturnal visage conjured up a sleekly erotic yet potentially deadly form.
Form was only part of the equation she pondered. How had Korean archers successfully used their art against Western opponents with rifles and heavy weapons? What were their secrets?
Diana chose to honor the old, while at the same time create a new tradition, investing the proven with, in her case, the psychic to reap new ritual. Surely an archer on horseback, charging his stallion up rocky slopes while accurately shooting arrows at moving targets, operated in a zone related to the realm Diana experimented with at Quantico. Maybe her new tradition wasn’t so new.
Her muscles screamed for relief but if she relaxed the draw now and the target appeared the precious second it would take to pull again will mean she had lost the battle. With only a few more moments to muscle depletion, she suddenly pivoted left. Jaw close to the bow-shoulder armpit, her aim leveled, for the target would be no more than thirty meters, meaning elevation for distance was not an issue.
Thunk. She relaxed the thumb-ring hand. No jerk. And she heard, but could not see, the arrow splinter wood. She sprinted forward five meters, pulled a new jook shi and dropped to one knee. Nothing traditional about this, stance meant so much, but in combat you don’t stand around providing a high profile target. And she was shooting short distance. Ready, full draw, pivot, thunk, relax, splinter.
Then forward again, and again, even shooting at a jog, all in the dew rich damp of the dark before light.
Diana had a standing arrangement with the range master to have the course to herself in the early morning hours twice a month. No one actually saw what she did since she kept the range lights off, and until she turned them on, she wouldn’t know whether she may have killed an innocent. She felt humbled enough by the gift of being able to hit pop-up targets in pitch black. Hitting the correct ones ranked as an even greater grace.
But after the fifth arrow found its mark, the range lights snapped on. Startled and a little perturbed, Diana ignored her handiwork to instead scan the pavilion. From deep shadow a familiar figure emerged: thin and lanky, Major General Kurt Klaymen in uniform and holding a briefcase stepped forward. The general had never before made overt contact to utilize her services.
“Unbelievable.” The general surveyed the range. “Five sets of targets, five bad guys struck with arrows. In the dark. Does anybody know you can do this?”
“The military is still the military and I’d prefer not to be burned at the stake,” she said smiling, casually giving him the once-over. She turned away as she unstrung the bow. He was doing a good job of hiding it but General Klaymen seemed troubled. She sensed a heaviness coming from him, a mix of sadness and anger. Diana felt certain about this, for Diana Hunt reigned as one of the rarest of the rare: one of only three remaining active duty U.S. military remote viewers—a psychic spy.
More than a few black-bag-job break-ins at foreign embassies wouldn’t have succeeded if she hadn’t been there first—in her mind—and mapped out the place. Plenty of disbelievers in the military and Washington continually tried to kill the RV unit by revoking funding, but supporters like the general managed to keep the psychic spies working, albeit in reduced numbers, dispersed, and embedded in innocuous sounding detachments.
“Something happened and I need your expertise.”
His bluntness surprised her; it wasn’t his style. “Officially or unofficially?”
“That depends on where one stands. For you it would be an official assignment. An extremely important one.”
Assignment? So he wasn’t talking about a one-off remote viewing session. She looked at him neutrally and picked up her antique arrow case. “I need to retrieve my arrows, sir.”
They walked off toward the first set of targets. She snuck a glance at him as he exhaled a breath that seemed pregnant with deep sadness. “Three of my men were killed a few hours ago, Captain. There’s a situation that’s... heating up quickly. Your background and special talents are exactly what I need right now. I want you on the team.” He seemed to swallow back emotion as he looked directly at her.
The team? Dead bodies? It reminded her of the past and all the ugliness she left behind. “I’ve been away from fieldwork for some time now, sir. And, to be blunt, I’m not under your command.”
“Correct. I need someone from the outside, who isn’t associated with my outfit. I’ve studied your file. You functioned very effectively as an undercover field operative. More importantly, I know you and I trust you, and I can’t tell you how important that is to me right now.”
A wave of emotion swept Diana; he was trying to recruit her back into the netherworld of spookdom. Real spying, not the safety and isolat
ion of military remote viewers who work in an office. Spies, and their dirty, duplicitous, opaque craft of betrayal and backstabbing... and that was how peers treated each other. Inside-the-Beltway fathers who truly loved their daughters would always warn them away from two things: working on Capitol Hill and working in intelligence.
General Klaymen now headed up MAHG, Military Archive Historical Group, an almost academic command that supposedly chronicled, archived and sometimes taught archaic military weapons and tactics. But Diana knew Klaymen’s background as a former INSCOM staff officer, and pegged him as an intelligence man all the way, someone who still nurtured robust alliances on the Hill, at Langley, with the NSC and DIA. Since Klaymen had been one of the secret patrons of the remote viewing unit, she now clearly understood MAHG to be a cover for something much more interesting.
She pulled hard to free one of her arrows from a target—she had hit a paper terrorist right between the eyes. “General, I’m a psychic spy who works out of a cubicle at an unmarked underground installation in the Virginia hills. You have personally utilized my skills there. If I have a choice, I prefer to stay put.”
He held up one hand, as if in partial surrender. “All I ask is that you hear me out, Captain Hunt. I'd rather not have any kind of answer from you just yet. But I have to say that you're not the only one who uses their instincts, and mine tell me that you've settled into a rut and are probably tired of sitting in a solitary room as a psychic voyeur on world hot spots. I mean here you are, perfecting a new form of combat archery at zero-dark-thirty when sensible people snuggle warm in bed.”
His words hit home, but she wouldn't admit that. “I didn't enjoy my time working as a covert operator.”
“I’m not here because you’re a beautiful woman. Your gender has nothing to do with this assignment. I’d just as soon you were a man.”
She crossed to the next set of targets, roughly yanked an arrow free, then thrust it into her arrow case. Why did he say that? She worked hard to de-glamorize herself while on duty, but she had the kind of beauty that was hard to disguise. When not tucked up under a cap, her reddish-blonde hair softly cascaded around her shoulders in the kind of off-hand way that women now paid stylists a lot of money to perfect. Her muted blue eyes from a lineage in Pennsylvania coal mining country bespoke a toughness in the genes. And then there were the cheekbones that negated the necessity for much makeup, not that she ever used any while on duty. She’d made it to college on a soccer scholarship, then transferred to West Point. It was there she first started taping down her breasts, to cut back on all the stares and crude remarks.
“I don’t run honey-pot operations.”
Diana flushed. She’d never said a word to a soul about how she felt regarding what happened in Egypt. How much could he know from reading her file?
“What are you referring to, sir?”
“Captain, I don’t have time to do anything but shoot straight with you. When you worked at DISC, they prostituted you on that op in North Africa. Intelligence is a dirty business, but that kind of thing doesn’t happen under my command.”
In that case, you’re destined to fail, she thought. Diana forced herself to move, trance-like, to the next target, focusing on the arrow penetrating the chest of a bearded “terrorist.” The general was dredging up a lot of painful old memories. “Sir, you don’t know the half of it.”
“And you don’t have to tell me. In my opinion, the special gifts you have make you the best candidate for the job. I could tell you that this was of the utmost importance for National Security and all that, but this is more than that. Want to know who we’re going up against? Your old boss, Simon Forte.”
Diana weakened at the sound of the name and couldn’t pull the arrow from the next target. “But he’s retired now, he’s...”
After three pulls, General Klaymen leaned in and yanked the bamboo shaft clear, then handed it to her. “I’ll brief you later, if you come on board. And I won’t compartmentalize your information. You will be told everything I know. It’s the only way we’ll be able to stop him.”
“But sir, I can’t—”
“Captain, you are not only the perfect choice, you are the only choice. You have been preparing for this assignment all of your life.”
Diana reeled. Even though she’d rendered hundreds of remote viewing sessions, most of them classified targets such as the captain’s quarters on a submerged Russian nuclear submarine, the operations center of a secret Chinese rocket facility, or underground bio-chem labs in Iran, she felt a special twinge from the general’s offer.
Being a psychic spy was definitely on the edge, even dangerous, mentally and physically. A number of military remote viewers had turned up dead, suspiciously. If they’d been terminated by a foreign power which didn’t want secrets revealed by Americans snooping through the ethers, well, the team would never be told. So risk existed, but black-ops pumped a whole different kind of adrenaline. And tonight, she felt a calling to the old days. And to go up against Simon Forte, well... Diana suddenly snapped out of her revenge fantasy. “Sir, I’m sorry, the answer is no.”
“I didn’t ask for your answer,” said the general, a bit sternly. “You’ve been cleared to take the rest of the day off. We’ll meet tonight. I need you to RV something for me, and I want you to be sharp.”
CHAPTER 4
Frank Bacavi rode shotgun as Sky Wilder motored his mint condition, 1975 white Jeep Cherokee Grand Wagoneer on Interstate 17 over the parched New River Mountains stunted with scrub and hardy succulents. Even in early May it often got brutally hot in this part of Arizona, and the day promised to be a scorcher. The air-conditioning already ran full blast in Wilder's classic Jeep, which featured “woody” paneling on the sides, heavy duty suspension and shocks, various antennas mounted on the roof, a rear-mounted spare tire and extra gasoline cans. The salty-looking work truck, lifted for maximum clearance, brimmed with gear.
Wilder and Bacavi had been talking non-stop since they'd left Tucson and hadn't noticed the black Chevy Suburban discretely following them. Behind the Suburban’s deeply tinted windows sat two no-nonsense hard-looking men well-stocked with food, drink, communications gear... and weapons.
###
“So what’s so special about this Easter egg hunt that we had to do it this weekend, bro? You got a line on a crashed warbird, right?” asked Frank, as he poured out some darkly roasted coffee from a thermos. He savored a whiff of the rich aroma before taking a sip.
“Well that’s what I said on the phone, yeah.”
Frank raised an eyebrow as he turned to Sky. “What does that mean?”
“Did you have your chipped teeth fixed?” asked Sky, starring.
“Yes I did, but don't change the subject,” barked Frank, who'd done his share of brawling as a kid on the Navajo reservation. But that was another lifetime. He'd finished his schooling at the public high school in Humbolt, Arizona after his father got a construction job in the Verde Valley and moved the family off the res.
Bacavi had excelled in academia and obtained a full professorship at the Tucson campus. His pride in his heritage never wavered, but he had a thick skin and disliked political correctness. If someone demeaned Native-Americans, he took issue, but a sports team using the profile of an Indian chief wearing a feathered headdress didn't bother him at all. That chief represented a fearsome, winning image and so Frank took no umbrage.
“What I'm up to is, well, remember that unbreakable code I was telling you about?”
“Uh-oh. Why do I smell that other stinky moccasin about to drop?”
“I broke the code not long after you left the other night. It kind of came to me in a dream.”
“A dream,” deadpanned Frank. “Think you’re some kind of medicine man or something, white bread? I’m the Indian here, dammit. Dreams, secret societies, hidden tablets, unbreakable codes.” Frank shook his head, like a father hearing a whopper from a wayward son. “This is why I can never officially be involved in any kind of pro
ject with you, my friend. I like my job too much. And my reputation.”
“Redskin, I’m not making this stuff up.”
“Pale-face, am I really supposed to believe that one of these secret tablets is conveniently located less than two hundred miles from your house?”
“Would it make you feel better to know the other two locations are on different continents?”
“Not really.”
“Frank, I know the three locations. Where three different tablets lie hidden. And when put together, viola, they open the door to the Book of Spells and the formula for the elixir of immortality.”
Frank shook his head, not for a moment believing a word of it.
###
The Jeep climbed to 4500 feet in the Prescott National Forest, where short and chubby juniper pine stood sentinel all along the roadside under a cloudless azure sky. The excellent one hundred mile-plus visibility showed the San Francisco Peaks north of Flagstaff in the far distance. Closer were the massive jagged mesa walls of the Mogollon Rim, but immediately below, a two and one-half mile descent led into the historic Verde Valley, where Montezuma and his clan once reigned supreme, carpeted with patches of green and spread out on the high desert floor like a gift from God.
Exiting at Camp Verde, they drove west toward Red Rock country. Heading north on 89A, the road shoulders turned rusty. From a distance, the red mesas blushed dull rouge, but in closer they beamed magnificence. The jagged, starkly dramatic buttes and mesas became even more distinctive closer to Sedona, situated in rugged Oak Creek Canyon, immediately at the base of the southern rim of the Colorado Plateau. Locals affixed colorful names to the soaring vermilion monuments—carvings more than 350 million years in the making—names like Cathedral Rock, Courthouse Butte, Teapot Dome, and Snoopy.