The Hunters

by W. E. B Griffin

  There was a glass dark with whiskey on the desk and a capped plastic vial of medicine issued by the pharmacy of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

  He knew what the label on the medicine vial warned about taking alcohol after taking “one or two tablets as necessary for pain,” but he picked up the vial and read it again anyway.

  “When it doubt, do both,” he said aloud.

  He pried the lid open, shook out two white tablets, and put them in his mouth. Then he picked up the whiskey glass, raised it, and said, “Mud in your eye, Seymour, you little shit. Vaya con Dios, buddy.”

  Then he drank half of it and set the glass on the desk.

  He looked at the whiskey glass for a moment, then picked it up again and drained it.

  The instant he set the glass very carefully on the green blotter of the desk pad, a light flashed on one of the telephones on the desk. He looked at it, wondered if he could ignore it, then reached for it.

  “Miller,” he said.

  “Major, there are two gentlemen to see you,” Mr. Agnes Forbison said.

  “This is a really bad time. Is this important?”

  “I think you’d better see them.”

  “Give me ninety seconds,” Miller said.

  He put the telephone back in its cradle, then, wincing with the pain, lifted his leg off the open drawer and carefully lowered it onto the floor. He then put the whiskey glass and the bottle of Famous Grouse into the drawer, then closed it.

  Again wincing with the pain it caused, he shifted his body so that he could get the vial of painkillers into his trousers pocket. Finally, he pulled up his necktie and buttoned his uniform tunic.

  Almost immediately, there was a discreet knock at the office door.

  “Come!”

  Sergeant Major John K. Davidson and Corporal Lester Bradley, USMC, marched into the office, stopped twelve inches from the desk, and saluted.

  “Good evening, sir!” Davidson barked.

  Miller—in perhaps a Pavlovian reflex—returned the salute.

  “Jack, it’s been a bad day and I’m not drunk enough to be amused. What’s on your mind?”

  “Sir, the sergeant major has come to enlist.”

  “What?”

  “Sir, I have a permission to enlist note from my daddy,” Davidson said.

  He took a half step forward, laid a small sheet of paper on the desk, then stepped back and resumed the position of attention.

  Miller picked up the piece of paper, saw it was general officer’s notepaper, and read it.

  * * *

  6 August 2005

  Chief

  Office of Organizational Analysis

  Washington

  I will defer to your judgment as to where SgtMaj Davidson will be of the greatest value to the service.

  McNab

  * * *

  Miller looked up at Davidson and saw that he and Bradley were still standing at attention.

  “I told you, Jack,” Miller said, “I am not in a mood to be amused.”

  Davidson didn’t move.

  “Stand at ease, goddamn it,” Miller said.

  Davidson relaxed.

  “You want to enlist in what?” Miller asked.

  “Oh, come on. I know what’s going on here, Dick.”

  “What’s going on here is classified Top Secret Presidential,” Miller said.

  “So Vic D’Allessando said.”

  “And the pride of the jarheads here? Has he also been running off at the mouth?”

  “Only after Vic told him to fill me in on the details. Before that, Lester was like a clam.”

  “How did you get this out of General McNab?” Miller asked, waving the sheet of notepaper.

  “I reminded him that Char—Colonel Castillo—was going to need a replacement for Kranz. And that we were going to have to find a better place to hide Lester; Mackall wasn’t hacking that. The jarheads going through the Q course were already getting curious.”

  “That’s all?”

  “And that I’d been around the block with Charley a couple of times and knew when he had to have someone sit on him.”

  “That’s all?” Miller asked again.

  Miller happened to be glancing at Bradley and saw on his face that there was indeed something else.

  “Well, I told McNab that I was getting so tired of Camp Mackall that I was giving serious thought to taking my retirement,” Davidson admitted.

  “You had the balls to threaten McNab?”

  “That was more like a statement of fact, Dick,” Davidson said.

  Miller saw on Bradley’s face that he was shocked to hear Sergeant Major Davidson address a major by his first name.

  “What do you think Charley’s going to say?” Davidson asked.

  “Inasmuch as Colonel Castillo is unable to accept that there are times when he should indeed be restrained from an impulsive act and that he knows you are one of the very few people who have proved themselves willing and able to restrain him, the colonel’s reaction to being informed that you want to join his merry little band is almost certainly going to be not only no but hell no!”

  Davidson exhaled audibly.

  “I could be useful, Dick, and you know it. Could you talk to him?”

  “I could, but that would be what is known as pissing into the wind,” Miller said, and then articulated what he had been thinking. “What we’re going to do is present him with the fait accompli. When he gets to Buenos Aires, he’s going to find you there. We are going to suggest, imply—anything but outright bold-faced lie—that this is another brainstorm of Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab.”

  “Thanks, Dick,” Davidson said, simply. “He’ll accept that. It won’t be the first time the general has sent me to try to keep a tight rein on him.”

  “How do you think we should handle Corporal Big Mouth?” Miller asked, looking at Bradley.

  “Hide him in plain sight,” Davidson said. “At the embassy in Buenos Aires.”

  “One of the reasons Castillo brought him here was because he knew the gunnery sergeant of the guard detachment there was going to want to know what he’s been up to and wasn’t going to back off until Bradley told him.”

  “I know a master gunnery sergeant named MacNamara at Eighth and Eye—Marine Corps Headquarters?”

  “I know where it is,” Miller said.

  “He’s a heavy hitter in Force Recon. Lester said if he got on the horn to the gunnery sergeant in Argentina and told him to ask no questions, he would ask no questions.”

  “What are you going to tell your friend about why you want him to make that call?”

  “I’ll tell him I can’t tell him. He’ll go along.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Let’s not cross that bridge until we get there.”

  “See if you can get him on the horn now. If you can, tell him to come here. We’ll dazzle him with Charley’s office and my Class A uniform and see what happens.”

  Davidson nodded.

  “You pack a suitcase?” Miller asked.

  Davidson nodded again.

  “Okay. If your master gunnery sergeant will go along, we’ll get you both on a flight out of Miami tomorrow night.”

  [THREE]

  Danubius Hotel Gellért

  Szent Gellért tér 1

  Budapest, Hungary

  0125 7 August 2005

  Lieutenant Colonel Castillo—half asleep—became aware that something wet and cold was pressing against his face. The first thing he thought was that he had drooled on his pillow, then rolled over onto the wet spot.

  This happened to him every once in a while and he hated it. Telling himself that he couldn’t be held responsible for drooling while he was asleep didn’t help any more than applying the same logic to what was euphemistically known as nocturnal emissions. It was embarrassing, annoying, and even shameful. Age seemed to have dealt with the nocturnal emission problem, but drooling remained a real pain in the ass.

  He put his
hand out to push himself away from the wet spot—and suddenly was wide awake, his heart jumping.

  There was something warm, firm, and hairy in bed with him.

  In the same split instant, he became aware of a deep growl.

  “Max, you sonofabitch! How did you get in bed?”

  Max growled again—but not at Castillo.

  He had left Max in Billy Kocian’s bedroom, presuming Max would prefer sleeping in there—on a huge, fluffy dog bed on the floor next to Kocian’s enormous, antique canopied bed—instead of here, in another bedroom.

  Castillo had felt like an intruder, a voyeur, in Kocian’s apartment, especially the bedroom. But curiosity had overwhelmed those feelings, and he and Otto Görner had spent a half hour in the huge, high-ceilinged rooms, examining the photos on the walls and furniture. There were all sorts of photographs, some of which were obviously of Kocian’s family and many of what obviously had become Kocian’s second family, the von und zu Gossingers.

  There were several of Castillo’s grandfather and Kocian together, in uniform. And more of the former Herr Oberst in shabby civilian clothing, apparently taken right after the Second World War. There were others as Castillo remembered him, elegantly tailored.

  In Kocian’s bedroom there had been a photograph on the bedside table of a young girl in braids and a near-adolescent boy holding Kocian’s hand—Castillo’s mother and his uncle Willi. There had been others of Kocian and Otto Görner.

  The walls and furniture had held framed photographs at various places of Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger—aged three, five, seven, ten—holding his mother’s hand. There had been several of Carlos Guillermo Castillo, as a skinny Boy Scout, as a teenager on a horse at Hacienda San Jorge wearing a far-too-large cowboy hat, as Cadet Sergeant C. G. Castillo of the Corps of Cadets of the United States Military Academy, and as Second Lieutenant Castillo with just-awarded Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart medals dangling from the breast of his tunic.

  And more than a dozen photographs of women, ranging from in their twenties to middle age. They had been obviously important to Kocian, if not important enough for him to have married them.

  Castillo had left Kocian’s bedroom feeling sad, almost to the point of tears. The old man had to be lonely. No wonder that he was bananas about Max. Max gave him the only love he had in his life.

  Castillo patted Max and was surprised at how tense—actually, he was quivering—the dog’s body was. And he realized the dog was still growling, softly, deep in his throat.

  “Hey, pal! What’s the matter?”

  Max, who had been lying next to Castillo, suddenly got half to his feet and slinked off the bed.

  Castillo’s heart jumped again. He sat up.

  There was just enough light for Castillo to be able to see Max stalking across the floor toward the door leading to the sitting room.

  He’s like a lion, a panther, stalking its prey!

  Castillo rolled on his side far enough so that he could slide open the drawer of the bedside table. His fingers found the suppressed Ruger pistol. He quickly chambered a round, then sat up, pushing back on the bed until his back was resting against the headboard.

  It’s probably Otto, looking for a glass of water. Or another dog. Maybe somebody cleaning the corridor outside the apartment.

  Calm down, for Christ’s sake!

  Max was now crouched but no longer growling.

  There was a squeak.

  What the hell is that?

  The door swung open quickly and two men jumped into the room in crouching positions. Both held Madsen submachine guns at the ready. Max leaped at the first one, locking his massive jaws on the man’s arm. The man yelped in surprise and pain. The second pointed his Madsen at Max.

  Without thinking what he was doing, Castillo raised the Rugerin both hands and fired instinctively—twice, as are flex action—at the second man. The suppressed muzzle made a soft tut-tut sound. Then, without waiting to see if he had hit the second man, Castillo fired at the first. Tut-tut. And then he looked back at the second man. He was now sliding limply down the doorframe. Tut-tut. Castillo’s eyes and the Ruger went back to the first man, who was now sitting down. It looked as if Max was about to drag him somewhere. Tut-tut.

  The Ruger’s magazine had held ten .22 Long Rifle cartridges. Castillo had subconsciously counted as he had fired; he had two rounds left. He leaped out of the bed and ran to the dresser, where he had left the Micro Uzi. Its magazine was fully charged and he could get it much quicker than he could charge the Ruger’s magazine, the extra cartridges for which he had put in the same drawer as the Uzi.

  He grabbed the Uzi and dropped to the floor, pulling the action lever back and then rolling over twice before sitting up with the Uzi pointed at the door.

  There was no burst of gunfire.

  Max trotted over and licked Castillo’s face.

  Castillo felt tear swelling.

  “You big sonofabitch,” he said. “I love you, too.”

  He got to his feet and went to the men in the door.

  The one Max had grabbed was on his back, openmouthed, staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. Castillo could see no entrance wounds. The second man was sitting in the doorway. There were two small holes in his forehead and a third next to his nose.

  Castillo’s heart jumped again and he felt a chill.

  Jesus Christ, Otto!

  He ran across the living room to the second guest room, put his hand on the doorknob, then pushed it open quickly and jumped inside, holding the Micro Uzi in both hands. There was just enough light to make out the bed.

  He fumbled on the wall inside the door until he found the light switch and tripped it.

  For a moment, the body on the bed didn’t move—Oh, shit, not another garroting! Not Otto!—and then Otto sat up.

  “What the hell!” Görner grumbled. “What are you doing with that gun?”

  “You better get up, Otto,” Castillo said. “There’s a problem.”

  “A problem? What kind of a problem?”

  “You’d better get up, Otto,” Castillo repeated, then went quickly through the living room to the door to the corridor.

  There was a man down—one of the security people from the Tages Zeitung—sprawled on his back by the door to the stairway. His pistol was lying on the carpet.

  Castillo ran to him, saw his bulged eyes and blue skin, then the blued-steel garrote around his neck.

  He ran back into the apartment, found his Swiss Army knife in his suitcase, and ran back into the corridor.

  He managed with great difficulty to trip the lever locking the garrote, but, when it was free, he decided that it had been an exercise in futility.

  This guy is dead.

  He looked down at the man’s face. There was no sign of life.

  What the hell!

  He pressed with all his weight on the man’s abdomen and felt the expulsion of air from the man’s lungs. But there was no sign of breathing.

  Castillo inhaled deeply, then bent over the man, pinched his nostrils closed, and exhaled into his mouth.

  There was no reaction.

  Castillo pressed on the man’s abdomen again and sensed again an expulsion of air. And then there was a sucking sensation. A small, short suck. Then another, a little greater. And then, all at once, a large intake of air.

  And a gasping groan.

  I have absolutely no idea what to do now.

  The man thrashed around, clawing at his throat.

  “Just breathe, that’s all. Just lie there and breathe,” Castillo ordered.

  It sounded as if the man was trying to say something.

  Castillo sensed someone behind him and quickly reached for the Micro Uzi.

  “I’ll call for the police and an ambulance,” Otto Görner said, softly.

  “No police. No ambulance,” Castillo said. “Get Sándor Tor over here.”

  Görner looked as if he was going to argue but then said, “My cellular�
�s next to my bed,” and went back into the apartment.

  The security man tried to sit up.

  Castillo pushed him back down.

  “Stay there,” he said. “Help is on the way.”

  [FOUR]

  Danubius Hotel Gellért

  Szent Gellért tér 1

  Budapest, Hungary

  0150 7 August 2005

  “What did you shoot them with?” Sándor Tor asked.

  He was squatting beside the second intruder, who was sitting against the doorframe.

  Castillo said, “A .22 pistol.”

  “You are either a fool or have a lot of faith in your marksmanship,” Tor said. “Where is it?”

  “On the dresser in my bedroom,” Castillo said and pointed.

  Tor walked to the bedroom. Castillo followed him. Tor picked up the pistol.

  “Okay,” he said. “A silenced .22 pistol.”

  “Suppressed,” Castillo corrected him without thinking.

  “Very few newspaper publishers know the difference, much less how to use one of these…certainly not as well as you did.”

  “If you’re waiting for me to respond to that, don’t hold your breath,” Castillo said.

  Another burly, middle-aged Hungarian came into the bedroom. He carried a ten-liter red plastic gas can. Castillo saw that he was wearing rubber gloves.

  “There’s two more of these in the stairwell,” the burly Hungarian announced.

  Tor nodded.

  “Does that suggest anything to you, Úr Gossinger?” Tor asked.

  “Plan C,” Castillo said. “If they couldn’t snatch Úr Kocian—Plan A—or something went wrong and they had to kill him—Plan B—then they were going to torch the place in the hope that it would destroy Úr Kocian’s files.”

  “You think they thought Úr Kocian was here?”

  “Otherwise, they would have gone to the Telki Private Hospital. I think they were watching this place and saw the lights in the apartment and decided he was here. Maybe they saw Max on the balcony. When he didn’t take his usual midnight stroll, they decided to come after him.”