White Star
Page 24
She was hurrying. More than hurrying, she was frantically pedaling her legs. Again Gray brought up the binoculars. Sweat flowed freely down her face, and her mouth was open and panting. He used the field glasses to search the trees behind her, but she was not being chased. As he watched her ascend the bowl, he pulled an apple from his pack and ate it from the bottom up, and consumed every part of it except the stem, which the twins had told him was the weirdest thing in existence. He had learned to eat an apple that way in Vietnam because an apple core might be found by an enemy trying to follow him.
He liked watching Adrian Wade, Gray admitted to himself. She moved with the grace of an athlete, even on the unstable slope and even though she was breathing heavily in this oxygen-weak altitude. She reached the loose scree just below his hide and used her hands to climb the last yards up to him, pumping her legs as the rocks gave way.
She gasped. "I don't suppose you could have met me halfway."
"I was eating my lunch." He flicked away the apple stem.
She climbed onto the ridge and collapsed on the soft soil and gravel. Her chest heaved as she worked the thin air. She leaned back on her elbows. Her face glimmered with sweat. She dragged a sleeve across her forehead. Gray lifted a canteen from his pack and handed it to her. Her pistol was a bulge under her coat.
She drank greedily, then said, "I thought I was in good shape."
"You were running like you had turpentine on your butt. What's going on?"
After a moment her breathing eased. She smiled and said majestically, "I have your answer."
Gray scratched his neck where a deerfly had bitten him. "I have more questions than you have answers, I'll bet."
She laughed gaily and shook her head. "I'm good, you know that? Man, I'm good."
Gray couldn't help but smile along with her. "You are busting your buttons."
"Owen, you are going to grovel with thanks before me. You've spent years and years wandering around in the dark, your hand out in front of you to ward off unseen dangers, and now I'm going to lead you to the light." She tilted her head back and laughed again, a victorious chortle.
The sun played with her hair. He had not seen the flecks of red and gold in it before, but the harsh high-altitude light found tiny glints of color among the ebony. And the light made the shock-white skin of her face translucent, revealing delicate blue lines beneath. Her mouth was curved and lush and red. Perspiration made her face shine as if in the afterglow of passion.
Her mouth came together to say something but Gray beat her to it. "I know. I'm staring. I'll stop."
Her eyes were amused. "Go ahead and stare." Then another laugh. "I'm going to blow you off this ledge with my news."
"Stop crowing and tell me."
"I don't want you to think it came easily."
"You're still crowing."
Surrounded by computer and communication equipment, Adrian Wade had spent hour after hour in her corner of the cabin's living room. Last night Pete Coates and Gray sat at the table under the antler chandelier sipping coffee and watching her. She seldom rose from her seat in front of the monitor, and when she did it was to insert or retrieve a document from a fax machine. She would stare, then pound the keyboard, then stare again, gritting her teeth, drumming the table, occasionally leafing through the pages of several three-ring binders. Or she would speak into the telephone, sometimes in English but usually in Russian. Gray once delivered coffee to her, but it remained untouched on the desk until it was cold. Once in a while she would say something aloud but only to herself, and Gray doubted she was aware she was speaking. Things like "Good for Captain Mason. I've got the patch through." And, "I didn't even think Donetsk had telephones." And, "His assistant owes me one, so I'll try him." Coates and Gray would look at each other and shrug, not having the slightest idea what she was talking about. Her voice and manner changed from one phone call to the next. At times she was as hard as a labor negotiator. On other calls her voice had the dulcet tones of a diplomat. Sometimes she wheedled and entreated and cajoled, then abruptly became angry, then smoothly placating. It was an entertaining performance, even though Gray and Coates could not understand most of what she said. Last night she had been at her station when Coates and Gray had turned in, and she was there when they got up in the morning. Gray did not know if she had slept.
She demanded, "Give me a date between 1947 and half a year ago."
"A game? I don't feel like playing games."
"Any date."
Gray pinched the bridge of his nose. "April 5, 1956."
"Nikolai Trusov has six weeks remaining in the third form at the Korsko Preliminary School in the village of Valosk, south of Moscow. He is wearing a cast on his forearm because of a fall from a tree."
"December 6, 1975."
"Trusov is in Olympic training at the Central Army Sports Club facility near Pervouralsk in the Ural Mountains. He is skiing forty miles a day, is on a rifle range two hours a day, and is undergoing an hour of weight training each day."
"August 12, 1987."
"Trusov is operating near Safir Chir, a town in the Panjshir Valley about seventy-five miles north by northwest of Kabul. He is attached to the 1st Recon Company, 2nd Motor-Rifle Regiment, 15th Motor-Rifle Division."
"I'm impressed," Gray admitted.
"I've known all this for two or three days. But there was a hole in my Nikolai Trusov calendar, and try as I might, I couldn't fill it in."
"What dates?"
"July through November 1970. General Kulikov and his staff in Moscow appeared to be working hard, but they couldn't find anything. I began to wonder about the dedication Kulikov was bringing to his investigation. Armies around the world produce mountains of records, and half of any army is employed generating documents about the other half. A chronicle of those five months of Nikolai Trusov's military career had to exist somewhere."
"So what did you do?"
"I goosed Kulikov." She leaned back further on her elbows, and her back touched the scree. It rattled and shifted, and a small stone slipped onto her shoulder. She flicked it aside. "At my request, FBI Assistant Director Robert Olin spoke with the Russian Republic's Vice President Felix Ogarkov, whose main job is lobbying western governments for aid for Russia. Olin spoke of how our government would view favorably in its foreign aid considerations any further and diligent assistance General Kulikov might give to the investigation of Trusov. This was yesterday morning. As I understand it, Ogarkov immediately alerted General Kulikov that should Kulikov help in procuring American aid, a diplomatic position might open up somewhere for him, maybe a consulship in the U. S. or Europe."
"It worked?"
"Kulikov dug his heels into his horse, I think. He found what I was looking for. In the late 1960s a training brigade was formed from troops in the Moscow Military District. So secret was the new brigade that rather than being somewhere in the chain of command under General Polynin, who was head of all ground forces, the brigade was under General Bukharin, chief of the Main Political Directorate."
"A training brigade that was secret? That's unusual, isn't it?"
She let the question hang for a few seconds before delivering the hook. "The 1st Special Training Brigade was sent to Vietnam. The Pentagon has long known that Soviet pilots trained North Vietnamese pilots. And now it seems that the Soviets were training soldiers, also. Nikolai Trusov taught marksmanship and fieldcraft. And he did some shooting, maybe in Vietnam. The general found out that Trusov already had eleven kills before he went to Afghanistan. Polynin said the files weren't complete, and he doesn't know the nature of the kills, but they are recorded. So with Trusov's seventy-eight kills in Afghanistan, he's up to eighty-nine."
A cable seemed to tighten around Gray's chest. "He was in Vietnam?"
Another smile. "He trained NVA and Viet Cong snipers. General Kulikov has now spoken to three other sniper instructors in the 1st Brigade. They all have clear memories of Nikolai Trusov, and they all remember his last day of active servi
ce in Vietnam."
Owen Gray stopped breathing.
She said, "The 1st Brigade instructors all knew of you, Owen. White Star was famous and feared. You and the other American snipers were the reason the 1st Brigade went to Vietnam. You had shown the devastating effect of a lone man and a high-powered rifle, and the Vietnamese were determined to counter you with their own snipers. So in came the Russian instructors."
Gray willed his lungs to work, and he asked, "Where was Trusov in Vietnam?"
"He spent most of his five months in Vietnam at an NVA camp near Chu Lai until he left the camp to travel south."
Gray closed his eyes.
"He bragged to his 1st Brigade friends that he was the finest marksman in the world, and there was only one way to prove it. He told them he was going to hunt you down. And so one day in November 1970 he took off, knowing you were operating somewhere in Elephant Valley."
"The man I killed was an American."
She shook her head. "Nikolai Trusov was wearing a U.S. Marine Corps field uniform and backpack. He had gotten it from the NVA, who must've taken it off a dead American. He wore it to confuse you, knowing that at the very least you would hesitate a moment. That's all Trusov thought he needed to defeat you, a moment of indecision on your part."
Gray opened his eyes. Adrian was no longer smiling. He said, "Even if what you say is all true, I killed the man in Elephant Valley."
"As hard as it is to admit for a sharpshooter like you, your bullet was high and wide."
"He was dead. I saw him."
"You put a trench in his head. It knocked him senseless and he bled profusely. You saw a mask of blood over his face, but you weren't looking at a fatal injury. And you've said yourself you only saw the downed target through your binoculars. You never walked to the enemy soldier to check him out."
Gray was staring at the scree behind Adrian, seeing nothing. He stammered, "You . .. you have no idea . . . "
A small wind brushed her damp hair. "I've been unable to discover who found the wounded Trusov in the valley, or when, but we can presume it was an NVA or Viet Cong patrol. But General Kulikov, rushing after a diplomatic post, connected me with the 1st Brigade medical officer who first treated Trusov after he was carried back into the Chu Lai camp. The medical officer is now a professor of medicine at Moscow University. He told me that the bullet had exposed Trusov's brain, left it open to the air. He put a dressing on it, and Trusov was returned to the Soviet Union several days later, still out cold. At some later date he regained consciousness, and later still a metal plate was put in his head."
The revelations seemed to have deboned Gray. He was limp and sagging. He whispered, "For all this time . . . "
"Your ninety-seventh kill wasn't a kill, and he wasn't an American."
Gray was still staring over her shoulder. Her news was seeping into him, impossible to absorb all at once. The central fact of his existence for most of his adult life—the anchor secured to his mind and heart and soul—had just vanished. It left a vacuum, and for the moment he was incapable of filling it with amazement or elation or gratitude.
"So you are back down to ninety-six." Her grin was back in place.
He shook his head. "Ninety-seven. Mrs. Orlando."
"I'm sorry," she said in a diminished tone. "But poor Mrs. Orlando's death was different. You were tricked by an expert. You didn't kill Mrs. Orlando. Nikolai Trusov murdered her. You only pulled the trigger. You might as well blame the rifle's manufacturer as yourself."
"I know all the rationalizations already," Gray said.
"Much of your burden has been that you ran away in Elephant Valley."
"That's so nicely put."
"But it's true," she persisted. "You've railed against yourself all these years not so much because you fired quickly and you thought an American soldier died by your hand but because you ran and never reported it to anybody and left a family wondering. It was a bit of cowardice, and it has worked inside you like a worm ever since."
Gray rubbed his temple.
"Nobody goes through life without an unflattering glimpse of himself or herself. You've had yours. You can fairly ascribe it to pressure of the field or youthful inexperience. But at the very least, the hard fact of killing the American is gone, just disappeared."
He abruptly grinned. "It has, hasn't it?"
Her news was sinking in. He felt lighter, as if gravity were exempting him. And giddy.
She smiled in recognition of her effect. "Am I good or what?"
"I never doubted it." He breathed the sweet air. "God, you have no idea . . ."
"So now all you have to worry about is Trusov."
"Why has he waited all this time to come after me, do you think?" Gray asked.
She shrugged. "Most of the time he was in the army or in a prison and couldn't come. Before that, who knows? Maybe the desire for revenge and to prove himself against you took a long time to eat away at him. Or maybe he wasn't crazy enough yet."
Gray nodded, lost in thought, his eyes on the distant rim of the bowl.
She waved at the valley below them. "What are you doing way up here?"
"I'm learning the terrain. Or relearning it, as I played a lot here as a kid."
She stood up, stepping over his legs, staying well away from the rifle. "I'm going back to the cabin." She turned for her descent. Stones skidded down the steep hill in front of her. She sidestepped down. A redtail hawk drifted over the bowl's ridge, black against the sky.
After several moments Gray put the binoculars to his eyes to watch her. Watch her move. Watch her black hair and her hips and shoulders.
She must have known he was watching her, because she suddenly turned to look back at him and smile and wave. Gray flushed. She knew him better than he had supposed. She disappeared in the grove of trees at the mouth of the valley.
He tapped the sniper rifle's stock and said, "I'm more comfortable with you than with her."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"What are you making?" Andy Ellison asked.
"A surprise."
"For whom?"
"For the people chasing us." Trusov poured nails onto a plate in front of him.
"Are you making a bomb?" Ellison nervously chewed on a lip. He was wearing a Janis Joplin T-shirt and denim cutoffs. A string with one ceramic bead was around his neck.
"Something like that."
"Don't you think that's a little . . . a little violent?"
Trusov shrugged. He used a knife to cut a stick of dynamite in half, then snipped off a length of duct tape to close off the dynamite's open ends.
"Where'd you get all this stuff?" the hippie asked, pointing to the table and then to the green duffel bag on the floor next to Trusov's left leg.
"I find things. I'm good at finding things."
"I mean, a person just doesn't find dynamite."
"He does if he looks in a build house." Trusov inserted a Madoz detonator into the half-stick.
"Build house?" Ellison hesitated, then understood. "The phrase is 'construction shack.' "
Trusov nodded. "I have always been a good traveler. I change my clothes, I change my routes, I change my carrying bag. I pick things up as I go. I watch the ground in front of me, and every fifty paces I check over my shoulder." He placed the dynamite and detonator onto the plate, then placed several more handfuls of nails on top of them. "I'm never caught, not while I'm still moving."
They were sitting in the kitchen of a two-story house on the outskirts of Butte. The vacationing owners—the tiny placard under the doorbell identified them as the Robinsons—had stopped their newspapers, but it had taken the paperboy two days to figure it out. Trusov had found two old newspapers on the front step. He had broken in by a side window. The kitchen floor was of black-and-white tile. Pots and strings of garlic and dried red peppers hung from a frame above the stove. Trusov had spread a newspaper below his work on the table. Near the duffel bag on the floor were several five-gallon cans of gasoline and a box of plast
ic garbage bags. Ellison hadn't asked him about the gasoline. The rifle leaned against the wall behind Trusov. Ellison had glimpsed several other rifles in the duffel bag. The blinds were drawn throughout the house.
Trusov explained. "In Afghanistan our airplane was hit by anti-aircraft. The pilot landed the plane in a field. I walked three hundred kilometers across that country to safety. Nobody caught me. Nobody even saw me."
"What happened to the pilot?"
"I left him at the plane."
"What happened to him?" Ellison asked.
"Sometimes it is better to travel alone. Sometimes it is not." The Russian put a second plate on top of the first and bound the two plates together with duct tape. Inside the plates were the explosive, detonator, and nails. He held the thing up to show Ellison, turning it slowly. "A mine." He picked up yet another plate and ladled handfuls of nails onto it, beginning the second mine.
"Where did you learn English?"
"In prison. From a book." Trusov's smile was turned down at the corners. His grin never touched his eyes. "Now I ask you a question."
"Shoot." Ellison peeled back the wrapper on a granola bar, feeling safer now that the stranger was taking an interest.
"Why do you grow marijuana? Why not get a work?"
Ellison was offended. "The word is 'job,' and that is my job."
"Why not get a job where you don't go to prison?"
"Growing weed is all I know how to do. And it's a matter of principle."
Trusov fiddled with the detonator.
Ellison went on: "I'm holding on to my past as a matter of principle. My girlfriend of fifteen years left me and got a license to sell real estate. My dog wandered off because I wouldn't feed him meat or meat by-products. But I'm sticking with it. Rubbertire sandals, peace medallions, the works."