Time to Hunt bls-1

by Stephen Hunter

  "Commander Bonson," he said, "Sierra-Bravo-Four is on the phone."

  Bonson looked about himself, stunned, then took the phone and waited for the switchboard to route it to him.

  "Bonson."

  "Sierra-Bravo-Four here," he heard Swagger's voice.

  "Where the hell are you?"

  "You didn't tell me about the baby-sitters."

  "It's for your own good."

  "I work alone. I made that clear, Bonson."

  "We don't do it that way anymore. You have to come in. You have to come under control. It's the only way I can help you."

  "I need some questions answered."

  "Where are you? I can have you picked up in an hour."

  There was a pause.

  "I'm outside, asshole."

  "What?"

  "I said, I'm outside, with a cellular I picked up at the Kmart a few minutes ago."

  "How did--" There was a clang as something hit the window.

  "I just threw a rock at your window, asshole. Good thing it wasn't an RPG, you wouldn't last long in a war, asshole. I rented another car and followed the baby-sitters you had staking out my car back to your place. Now, let me in and let's start talking."

  Swagger came in, past the team whom he had so adroitly out managed

  "All right, people, get out of here. I'll talk to him."

  "Do you need security, Commander?" said an ex-state cop, correctly reading the anger in Bob's body.

  "No. He'll see reason. He knows this isn't a pissing contest between him and this team, right. Swagger?"

  "You just answer my questions and we'll see what's what."

  The men and women he had vanquished slid out of the room and then Bonson took him into another one, neatly set up as an operational HQ with computer terminals and phone banks. A few technicians worked the consoles.

  "Okay, everybody on break," Bonson called.

  They too left. Bob and Bonson sat down on a beat-up sofa.

  "I got the name of your Russian."

  "All right," said Bonson.

  "His name was Robert Fitzpatrick, he was affiliated with GRU, according to the Brits. But they don't have nothing on him, what he was up to."

  "Swagger, good. Damn, you are an operator. I'm impressed.

  So what did you do with this? Where did you go?"

  "You'll find out when I put it all together, which I ain't done yet, but I have some ideas. What have y'all got on this guy? I need to find out who he was or is, what became of him, what this is all about. He had the Brits buffaloed.

  They only found out he was operating in their country after he was long gone."

  "Fitzpatrick," said Bonson.

  "Fitzpatrick was a recruiter.

  That was his specialty. He was one of those seductive, smooth presences who just gulled people into doing what he wanted, and they never, ever knew he was persuading them. You see, that's what's interesting about him. I don't think Trig was his only project. I think he may have recruited others, and whatever his business with Trig was, it wasn't the main reason he came to the United States."

  "What was he doing?"

  "He was recruiting a mole."

  "Man," said Bob, "this shit is getting fucked up.

  Secret-agent crap, like some paperback novel. I do not want to be a part of this shit. My mind don't work that way."

  "Nevertheless, that was his great gift, his special talent.

  We know a little more about him than the Brits--and the timing works out right."

  "What do you mean?"

  "For the past twenty years, the Agency has been in a curious down cycle. It seems to have had an enormous fund of bad luck. Every once in a while we smoke somebody out. In the early eighties, there was a guy named Yost Ver Steeg. A little later there was Robert Howard.

  Early in the nineties, we finally caught onto Aldrich Ames. And we think, well, that's it, we're clean at last. But somehow it never quite pans out that way. It never does.

  We're always a little behind, a little slow, a little off.

  They're always a little ahead of us. Even after the breakup, they've stayed strangely ahead of us. I'm convinced he's here. I can feel him. I can smell him. He's someone you'd never believe, someone totally secure.

  He's not in it for the money, he's not so active he's obvious.

  But he's here, I know it, goddammit, and I will catch him. And I know this goddamn "Fitzpatrick' recruited him in the year 1971 when he was in this country. And, goddammit, I just missed him that year. I was a couple of hours slow, because your pal Fenn wouldn't roll over for me."

  "So what happened to Fitzpatrick?"

  "Disappeared. Gone. We have no idea. He was never serviced out of an embassy, never had a cut-out, any of the classic ploys of the craft. We never cut into his phone network. He was entirely a singleton. We don't know who serviced him. We don't even know what he looks like. We never got a photo. But it is provocative that suddenly all this is active again. Why would that be? Your picture goes in the paper and suddenly they're out to kill you?"

  "But my picture has been in the paper before. It's been on the cover of Time and Newsweek. They couldn't miss that. So what's different this time?"

  "That's a great question, Sergeant. I can't answer it. I even have a team of analysts working on it back at Langley and so far they have come up with nothing. It makes no sense. And to make it more complicated, Fitzpatrick may not even be working for the Russians, or for the old Soviet communist regime, which is still there, believe me.

  He may be working against it now. It's a tough call, I'll tell you, but I guarantee it's simple underneath. Mole. Penetration of the Agency. The notification of your existence, something coming active over there, your elimination to prevent--what? I don't know."

  Something didn't quite add up. There was some little thing here that didn't connect.

  "You look puzzled," said Bonson.

  "I can't figure it out," said Bob.

  "I'm getting a little alarm. Don't know what it is. Something you said--" Photograph.

  "You don't know what Fitzpatrick looks like?"

  "No. No photos. That's how good he was."

  What is wrong?

  "Why aren't there any photos?"

  "We never got close enough. We were never there. We were always behind him. It took too long, I told you. I was trying to set up a--" Photograph.

  "There is a photograph."

  "I don't--" "The FBI has a photograph. The FBI was there."

  "We're not on the same page. The FBI was where?"

  "At the farm. The farm in Germantown in 1971. Trig had told Donny where it was. My wife went out there with Donny the night he was trying to decide whether or not to give up Crowe. He was looking for Trig for guidance. She saw Fitzpatrick. She said the FBI was there, and when she and Donny left, they got their picture. They were on the hill above the farm. They were about to bust Trig."

  "The FBI was not there. The FBI was back in Washington with Lieutenant Commander Bonson trying to figure out where the hell everybody had gone to," "There were agents there. They got a picture of Donny and Julie leaving the farm. She told me that less than a week ago."

  "It wasn't the FBI."

  "Could it have been some other security agency, moving in on Trig, unaware of the--" "No. It didn't work that way. We were together."

  "Who was there?"

  "Call your wife. Find out."

  He pushed the phone toward Bob, who took out the small piece of paper on which he had written the number of the ranch house in Custer County.

  He dialed, listened as the phone rang. It was midafternoon out there.

  After three rings, he heard, "Hello?"

  "Sally?"

  "Oh, the husband. The missing husband. Where the hell have you been! She is in great discomfort and you have not called in days."

  "I'm sorry, I've been involved in some stuff."

  "Bob, this is your family. Don't you understand that?"

  "I understa
nd that. I'm just about to come home and spell you and everything will be happy. She did separate from me, you remember."

  "You still have responsibilities," she said.

  "You are not on vacation."

  "I am trying to take care of things. How's Nikki?"

  "She's fine. It's snowing. They say there's going to be a bad snowfall, one of those late spring things."

  "It's June, for God's sake."

  "They do things by their own rules in Idaho."

  "I guess so. Is Julie able to come to the phone? It's important."

  "I'll see if she's awake."

  He waited and the minutes passed.

  At last another extension clicked on, and his wife said, "Bob?"

  "Yes. How are you?"

  "I'm all right. I'm still in a cast, but at least I'm out of that awful traction."

  "Traction sucks."

  "Where are you?"

  "I'm in Washington right now, working on this thing."

  "God, Bob. No wonder my lawyer couldn't find you."

  "I'll be home soon. I just have this thing to deal with."

  She was silent.

  "I had to ask you something."

  "What?"

  "You told me that when you and Donny left that farm, you were photographed, right? Some guys were in the hills, monitoring the situation, and they got a photo."

  "Yes."

  "You're sure?"

  "Of course I'm sure. Why would I make something like that up?"

  "Well, you might have it mixed up with something else."

  "It was very straightforward. Donny knew where the farm was, we drove out there. We found Trig and some big blond guy he said was Irish. We left after Donny talked to Trig. We got to our car, got in, and this guy came out of nowhere and took our picture. That's it."

  "Hmmm," he said. He put the phone down.

  "She says yes, definitely, there was a picture taken."

  "What did the guy look like?"

  Bob asked her.

  "Guy in a suit. Heavy-set, blunt, I guess. I didn't get a good look. It was dark, remember? Cops. FBI agents."

  "Just cops," Bob said.

  "Don't you see," said Bonson.

  "Some kind of Soviet security team. Covering for Fitzpatrick."

  Yes, Bob thought. That made sense.

  "And that was everybody that was out there?" he asked.

  "Well .. . Peter, Peter Farris."

  "Peter?" Bob asked. Peter? Something rang in his head from far away.

  "I don't know that he was there."

  "Who was Peter?" he asked, struggling to remember.

  He thought he could recall Donny mentioning a Peter somewhere some time or other and had a bad feeling.

  "He was one of my friends in the movement. He thought he was in love with me. He may have followed us out there."

  "You don't know?"

  "He disappeared that night. His body was found several months later. I wrote Donny about it."

  "Okay," said Bob, "I'll call you as soon as I get back, and we can work this out however you want. You're safe in all this snow?"

  "We may be snowed in for a few days, it's so isolated.

  But that's okay, we have plenty of food and fuel. Sally's here. It's not a problem. I feel very safe."

  "Okay," he said.

  "Good-bye," she said.

  "That was a dead end," he said, after hanging up.

  Peter, he thought. Peter is dead. Peter disappeared that night. Yet something taunted him. He remembered other words, spoken directly to him: It's not about you this time.

  "Well, it's another good bit of circumstantial that the Russians had committed to a major operation, and they were running high-level security on it."

  Then a thought just sort of fluttered through Bob's mind.

  "It is odd," he noted, "that of all the people that went to that farm--Trig, a kid named Peter Farris, Donny-they're all dead. In fact, they all died within a few months of that night."

  "Everybody except your wife."

  "Yeah. And--" Except my wife, he thought.

  Except my wife.

  Bob stopped, caught up suddenly. Something snapped into perfect focus. It wasn't there, then it was, there was no coming into being, no sense of emergence: it was just indisputably there, big as life.

  "You know--" started Bonson.

  "Shut up," said Bob.

  He was silent another second.

  "I get it," he said.

  "The picture, the timing, the target."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "They killed everyone except Julie. They didn't know who Julie was but they had a picture of her. The picture they got that night. But Donny never officially recorded his marriage with the Marine Corps. So there were no records of who she was. She was a mystery to them. Then, when my picture was on Time's cover over that business in New Orleans, it didn't matter, it meant nothing. I didn't even know Julie yet. But two months ago, my picture runs again in Time. And the National Star, when I'm famous again for a weekend. It was snapped by a tabloid photographer as we were coming out of church, Julie and I. It's not my picture they're interested in, or even me. That story told how I had married the widow of my spotter in Vietnam."

  He turned to Bonson.

  "It's Julie. They're trying to kill Julie. They have to kill everyone who was at that farm and saw Fitzpatrick with Trig loading that truck. This whole thing isn't about killing me. It's about killing Julie. He fired at what he thought was me first in the mountains because I was armed. He had to take the armed man first. But she was the target."

  Bonson nodded.

  Bob picked up the phone, dialed quickly. But the line was out.

  CHAPTER forty-four.

  The snow didn't scare Solaratov. He had seen snow before. He had lived and hunted in snow. He had trekked the mountains of Afghanistan above the snowline with a SPETSNAZ team hunting for mujahideen leadership cadres. The snow was the sniper's ally. It drove security forces under cover, it grounded air cover and, best of all, it covered tracks. The sniper loved snow.

  It fell in huge, lofty feathers, a wet, lush snow from a dark mountain sky. It adhered and quickly covered the earth and drove most people to shelter. The weatherman said it would snow all night, a last blast of winter, unusual but not unheard of. Twelve, maybe twenty inches of it, endless and silent.

  He drove through already thinning traffic and had no trouble finding the Idaho Bell outstation that had been the F-1--primary distribution point--for the phone calls from remote rural Custer County to Nick Memphis's New Orleans address. It was a low, bleak building, built to modern American standards without windows. The happy Bell sign stood outside, inside, it was dark, presumably working entirely by robotics. To one side stood a phalanx of transformers, fenced off and marked with fierce danger signs, which produced a nexus of wires that rose to poles to shunt the miracle of communication around Custer County. A small parking lot was empty. Out back, a cyclone fence sealed off what appeared to be a sort of motor pool, where six vans with idaho bell emblazoned on them were parked next to what looked like a sheetmetal maintenance garage. But it was dark too. Even better, the building was far from downtown, such as "downtown" was, along a country road that would now not be much traveled.

  Still, he did not dare park in the lot, for that lone car on a dark night could attract some attention. He drove several hundred yards into a small development of houses, where some cars were parked along the street, and pulled in, turning the engine off. He waited in darkness, as the snow fell silently on the hood of the car, soon veiling the windshield. He opened the door, got out, slipped it shut without a slam, for the noise would have seemed even louder in the quiet.

  It was an easy walk, between two dark houses, across a field, and then next to the Cyclone fence. He looked for sign of an alarm or electrification or notice of a dog.

  There was none. Taking a pair of wire cutters from the pocket of his parka, he used the massive strength in his fo
rearms to cut the cyclone and bend back an entrance to the wire. He slithered through. He slipped between vans, around the garage, and felt his way along the back of the phone building until he found a metal door. He looked about for signs of an alarm and, finding none, took from his pocket a leather envelope of lock picks. The lock was a simple but solid pin tumbler, he took the two tools he would need, the tension tool and the feeler pick, and set to work. He inserted the tension tool. It was a matter of delicate feel, the tension tool holding the pins down, the feeler tool locating them one by one along the shear line of the cylinder and pushing them back until he felt a slight thump, signifying that he'd gotten all the pins aligned.

  The cylinder turned, the door sprang open.

  He stepped inside, pulled out a pair of glasses with a small, powerful flashlight mounted to them and began to explore the building.

  It didn't take long. He found a map on the wall in what appeared to be the bullpen for the Bell linemen and took it down. It seemed to be Custer County as broken down into phone zones. Indeed, as he searched it in the illumination of the flashlight, he quickly noted small circles denoted along the roads that were numbered in integer sequences similar to the one he'd uncovered in New Orleans. These would be the secondary distribution points for the calls, the F-2s.

  He had a powerful impulse just to flee with the map, but it was stiff and large, and carrying it across the field back to the car would be very difficult. Instead, he began a patient search, zone by zone, of the chart, searching for the magic numbers 459912. Again, it took some time, but at last, along a mountain road high in the Lost River range, he found the pole, it stood in a valley near a rectangle that clearly denoted a ranch house. From the crush of elevation contours close by, he understood that it stood under the mountains, giving him a perfect angle for a killing shot. He carefully copied the map onto a sheet of paper, which he would later compare with the exhaustive maps he had already acquired as he set up his approach to the target area.

  He had the map hung on the wall again when he heard sounds. He fought the urge to panic and slipped down the wall until he found a desk behind which he could hide. He switched off his light, and took a Glock 19 out of his shoulder holster under the heavy parka.

  The lights came on at that moment, and he heard the sound of a man walking to a desk, sitting down and fiddling with papers, sighing with the approach of a night's duty. The man picked up the phone and dialed a number.