"It's where an ore ship fell out of the sky—killed the boss's daddy."
"But why did you call it the Scar?"
" 'Cause that's what it looked like. Damn thing tore up the ground, burned all the trees, poisoned everything for a long time. Ground cover just started coming back these last few years."
Ed turned at the sound of horse and rider erupting from the barn. Hawkes was giving the mare he had picked its head, letting it move as fast as it wanted. Disraeli bounded along behind them, snapping and barking. Watching them disappear around the edge of the main house, Ed said, "I know him. He ain't been out there since he got back. He's got to pay his respects."
"You seem to know the ambassador better than anyone I've ever met," said Stine. "I've never known him to get close to anyone before. Have you worked for him a while?"
Ed Keller took a long look at Stine. He had been foreman for Benton Hawkes's father—had raised him after his father's death. He knew other people never got the chance to know the real Ben Hawkes—the one he knew. Oftentimes he thought it was a shame. But he also knew the reason why the ambassador kept people at arm's distance. It was an old thing, a private thing, one he was sure Hawkes still meant to keep private for a long time.
Keller studied Stine for a moment. He knew the younger man wanted to get closer to the ambassador. He wondered briefly if perhaps it had been kept private for too long.
"Hand me that bit of hose, will ya?" was all he finally said to the younger man, however, deciding that the Ben Hawkes he knew was old enough to make his own friends and choose his own company.
THE DAPPLED MARE BOLTED AS SOON AS SHE REACHED the open path for the back forest. She and Hawkes left Disraeli far behind, leaving the poor retriever's piercing bark to fade quickly to nothingness. As he raced through the trees brushing close on either side, the ambassador momentarily forgot about CME, the continual pleas as well as the campaign to get him to go to Mars . . . forgot about everything except the reins in his hands and the breeze in his face.
It felt good to be back in the saddle, back in the mountains—his mountains. His throat went dry from the air rushing into his open mouth. He knew it was no way to ride, but it had been too long; the feel of the air—over his teeth, through his hair, on his head, over the back of his hands—it felt so . . . right.
The crushing pain of Washington, of Carri's demands— both in Australia and in Washington the week before— the brutal reality of Clean Mountain and their designs on his heritage . . . the weight of it all began to break up, to fold down into smaller, more manageable packages. On what seemed an hourly basis, the government was leaking stories that Hawkes would soon be leaving for Mars. Pressure had been brought from every direction to try to get him to change his mind.
So far he had refused. Send someone else, he had told Carri. Tell them I'm sick, tell them I'm dead, tell them I just don't care.
Benton Hawkes had selflessly given the world more than thirty years of his life. Now, in the end, he had little more than when he had started. His father's ranch was all he had ever wanted, and it was all he had. All his resources were tied up in keeping it going—in simply keeping it, period. He had gotten nothing out of his years of service except a handful of private gifts from grateful parties.
Yes, he thought, and a dozen powerful enemies for each piece of junk I bothered to keep.
Eventually the mare sensed her rider's growing calm and began to slow her pace. Hawkes paid scant attention. His conscious mind relaxed as he watched the birds and insects move in the forest, darting his eyes from one patch of breakthrough sunlight to another. Beneath the surface, however, he finally began to replay his meeting with Michael Carrri, trying to determine what the senator really wanted.
Can it be as simple as he laid it out? Australia was no big deal . . . I'd like to kill you, but we need you on Mars, so all is forgiven . . . pack your bags—and that's it?
Hawkes wondered if it was possible he was overcomplicating things, suspecting Carri of duplicity not because he could actually see any, but because he did not like the man's style. The thought gave him pause to remember the words of Camillo di Cavour. Hawkes studied the nineteenth-century Italian statesman's work when he had first entered the corps. One quote had been burned into his mind when he first saw it, and it never left him: "I have discovered the art of fooling diplomats," the long dead politician had said. "I speak the truth and they never believe me."
Is that what I've done? Allowed Carri to chase me off with the truth? Is it possible he doesn't want me to go to Mars? Is he using my own vanity against me?. . .
Like you've done to so many others? his cynical side asked.
Yes, he admitted, just like that.
It would have been a subtle irony, one Hawkes had not thought the senator capable of. It made sense. So far, all of the ambassador's research had failed to find any lies in what Carri had told him. The situation on Mars did look bad. Desperately bad. News traveled so slowly between the two planets, especially real news. Voices and pictures could be beamed back and forth quickly, but solid, tangible evidence that could be turned over in one's hands, that still took weeks.
Still, he wished the government would stop issuing statements that they were in negotiations with Hawkes to send him to Mars. It had been more than a week. They ought to know he was not going to go.
Of course, he thought, that could be Carri's game, as well. Since he knew damn well I wouldn't want to go, maybe he's just priming the well. "We asked, but the bastard wouldn't do it." Bad Ben Hawkes, good Mick Carri.
Disraeli glided through the ground cover next to the ambassador's mount. An old and seasoned hunter, the retriever had approached in virtual silence. Hawkes had sensed his presence more through his kinship with the large black dog than through anything else.
Looking down and smiling at his only friend, he said, "What do you think, Dizzy? I mean, on the one hand, taking this governorship would have tremendous advantages. CME certainly couldn't annex the home of a territorial governor—especially the governor of a whole planet. And, I must admit, after all the years of guys like Carri and the rest of the Beltway Circus trying to lose me in one rummy assignment after another . . . putting the end note to my career by shaping the destiny of all humanity . . . well, it is an appealing thought."
But it's not an appealing world, asked a sour voice from the back of his brain, is it?
Hawkes's mare stopped at the edge of the Scar. The ambassador looked out over the burned and ruined gash in his mountains, and suddenly all he could see was the surface of Mars. It was a lifeless vision: one of blowing dust and ten-kilometer-wide craters; frozen ground covered with permafrost; a bitter, dead world, nothing more than a giant space factory with no residents other than the employees of Red Planet, Inc.
People didn't really live there, he reminded himself, they went there to work, period. Like the jobbers who flocked to the Moon and the Maldives when Lunar City and the Skyhook had to be built . . . or to Alaska a century earlier, when the great pipeline was constructed . . . or to Panama before that, to dig the great canal . . . or the gold fields . . .
"Damn it—so they've got tough lives," he spat, looking out over the acres of poisoned land, at the enormous skeletal remains of the fallen aircraft at its center. "What does that have to do with me? Why does that mean I have to eat fungus and go live the rest of my life in a cave? Why me?"
No more steak, started a litany in his head. No more Happy Times—no more fresh water—no more horses— no more trees—no more sunlight—no more grass—no more calamari—no more beaches—no more birds—no more . . .
His eyes narrowed on the massive rusting framework of the fallen ship. Closing them, he could see the ore carrier in the sky once more. His mind took him back to that day completely.
He was eleven again. His father was there with him. They had ridden out to the touchdown site to watch the approaching freighter. They had taken a lunch with them and it had been a happy outing—for a while.
/> Young Benton had spotted the ship first. At least that was the way he had always remembered it. It had loomed up out of the clear sky, a pinpoint that grew into a larger and larger shape, dazzling in the reflected sunlight. It moved with a fascinating majesty—slowly, calmly, and orderly—until the moment when a thin line of fumes began to spray outward from between a set of strained connector plates. After that, it took only seconds for the ship to list badly. A moment after, it began to shake. Another moment saw it shudder as a massive jolt shook the entire vessel. And then, as an exhaust of white mist darkened to fumes of purple, the stricken ore ship began its final, sickeningly dizzy descent. Long before the younger Hawkes had realized what was happening, his father had understood.
"Get to your horse, son."
"Dad, what is it?"
"Move, Ben—now!"
Benton turned to do as he was told, but it was too late. A massive explosion tore the sky apart, blowing a hole in the clouds above the freighter. Benton was thrown to the ground. The sky filled with flames and a thick dark blanket of oily smoke. Benton's horse bolted, racing away in fear.
The senior Hawkes, still standing, his hands on his own horse's reins, looked up—saw what was coming toward them. Benton staggered to his feet, his arm bruised, face bleeding. Without a word, his father grabbed him from behind with one hand and then threw his son up into the saddle of his own horse.
"Ride, boy," was all he said to Benton before he ordered the stallion home, cracking its flank with a vicious slap.
Try as he might, the boy could not turn the horse back to the death his father had foreseen. The horse galloped madly, crashing through the brush in between trees. Benton hung on with all his strength, screaming for his father. Burning chunks of steel and plastic fell all around them, setting the forest on fire. The horse kept running, its fear giving it a speed it had never known before.
In the end, young Benton escaped the slamming, burning carnage by the merest of seconds. His father had been right: had they both attempted to escape on the same horse, they both would have been dead.
Hawkes opened his eyes with a shudder. Still gazing out over the edge, he watched a gigantic shadow move across the face of the Scar as a cloud drifted over the ruin. The massive dark oval blotted the dead zone, tricking the eye for a moment, making the land look the way it did when the ambassador had been a boy. He could feel his father at his side for an instant, looking out over the Scar with him. Pulling on his reins with force, he turned his mare away from the view, pointing her back toward the deep forest.
"They're not going to take the ranch, Dad," the ambassador promised. Then, glancing down to his side, he saw his faithful retriever staring up at him with a mournful look.
"And I'm not spending my last years on a frozen dust-ball, living in an elevator shaft. No way, Dizzy." He nudged his heels against the horse's sides, snapping the reins at the same time.
"I'm staying here," he told himself with almost vicious defiance as he rode away. "Right here."
DISRAELI RACED PAST THE BARN WHERE HAWKES stopped, heading back to bark at the 4 X 4. As Hawkes handed his mare off to one of his ranch hands, he could hear Keller cursing the dog. The ambassador walked on, sighing. As he neared the barn, he called to the retriever, asking, "Dizzy, for God's sake, boy, what's got into you?"
The black Labrador kept barking, however, not coming out of the barn. Hawkes went in, wondering just what had caught the big dog's attention. Before he had gone riding he had simply thought the animal's carrying on had been enthusiasm.
As he stood next to the still-barking dog, the ambassador decided it had to be something else. "It's happened before, you know."
"You think maybe a chipmunk or something's climbed up inside the damn framework?" asked Keller.
"Maybe we should just let it get out on its own," offered Stine, seeming somewhat uncomfortable at the thought of confronting a wild animal.
"Oh, don't be such a baby," said Keller. He had grown a bit tired of the city-bred aide during their repair session. If there was an excuse to put down tools and keep away from grease, the old man was sure Stine knew it.
"Well, there's obviously something down there that's got his nose going," agreed Hawkes. Getting down on his hands and knees, the ambassador crawled forward, saying, "And if we want to shut him up, I guess I'm going to have to see what it is."
As soon as Hawkes began to move for the truck, Disraeli dropped down onto his belly and scrambled forward under the 4 X 4's front axle. The ambassador frowned, then shoved himself forward, pushing himself along the ground on his back. Disraeli stayed calm as his master approached. Out of the corner of his eye, Hawkes could see that the dog was staring upward, his muzzle pointed straight at the section of undercarriage beneath the driver's seat.
"You see anything?" called Keller.
"Yes," came Hawkes voice. "I certainly do."
The ambassador began wiggling his way back out from under the 4 X 4. Disraeli simply went forward, coming out from beneath the front bumper. Keller and Stine both met Hawkes on his side of the truck. The foreman asked, "So, what had that damn mutt so geared up, anyway?"
Hawkes held up a thin, round disk, smaller than a slice of bread. It was made out of a dull black metal, unpainted, with no markings of any kind.
"What the hell is that?" asked Keller, taking it from the ambassador's outstretched hand.
"They didn't have them when I was in the service, but I've seen them over the past few years." Reaching down to scratch Disraeli's head, he said, "It's a bomb, Ed. A very sophisticated one."
While the foreman turned the slim device over and over in his hands, Hawkes told the retriever, "Good dog, Dizzy. Good dog."
"Yeah," muttered Keller, still turning the bomb over and over in his hands. "Damn good dog."
6
HAWKES TURNED THE EXPLOSIVE OVER ONE LAST TIME, then put it aside, setting it down on his nightstand. He had studied the device—rolled it over and over in his hands, just plain stared at it—long enough. Maybe it was time to let it be for a while, time to get out of his dirty clothes, steam himself off, and get some sleep.
Sure, sleep. Ought to be easy to sleep tonight.
Like the ambassador, almost everyone on the ranch was too excited—or too nervous—to sleep. Discovery of the bomb had unleashed an excited tidal wave of curiosity among Hawkes's workers. All of his people—wranglers, field hands, the cooks, gardeners, housekeepers—had wanted to see it, wanted to know where it came from.
He thought back over the pertinent questions that had poured out of them. Was it planted recently? Had it been there for years and no one knew? How powerful was it? Was it set to go off? Did it have a timer release? Electronic detonation? Pressure? Altitude? Who did it?
Accusations had followed the questions. It was the Deutchers. Payback time. No—Clean Mountain. With Hawkes dead, they could get the ranch easily. Hah—it was the damn government. The ambassador was making them look bad by refusing to go to Mars. That's this damn government's way. Doubt it—probably the damn Martians. They don't want the boss up there. They just want to keep bleeding the taxpayers dry so they can go on playing space cadet. Big picture, ya, monkey—it's all of 'em . . . Deutcher probably financed it, CME provided the men, Mars the bomb, and the damn Senate approved it.
That's just crazy. You're nuts.
Am I? It's a Martian bomb, ain't it?
The field hand who had come up with the last theory, former corporal Anthony Celdosso, had been right about that much, anyway—the bomb did come from a Martian factory. He had been discharged only a year earlier and was up on what was current in the national arsenal. Hawkes liked to hire ex-soldiers. He got along well with servicemen and-women. They worked hard, knew how to follow orders, and kept their distance from their commander. Benton Hawkes did not like people getting too close.
Bet you wished you had a few more friends now, eh?
The ambassador reached down next to his chair to stroke Disraeli's head. As a reaction
to the voice within his head, he told the dog, "Good boy. Good old, bomb-sniffing wonder dog. Was your steak big enough tonight?"
Understanding enough of Hawkes's tone, the dog licked his master's hand. Starting to come up off the floor, the ambassador pushed at him gently, discouraging him from rising. Disraeli was a loyal dog, but an old one. It had been an exciting day and by rights the retriever should have been asleep hours ago. Hawkes rubbed the loose fold of skin at the back of the dog's neck, telling him, "No, no . . . good boy. Go to sleep. Go on, go to sleep." His eyes drifted back to the bomb, and he added softly, "One of us should get some."
Reaching over, he picked the small disk up again and brought it back to eye level for one more inspection. Tony had explained what it was exactly, and how it worked. Officially named the Graamler 10SA-11, it was affectionately known to those whose used it in the field as "li'l kick in the head."
A Graamler could be set off by fixed timer, electronic signal, altitude, even voice command. It had been set to detonate anytime the 4 X 4 descended to 1,500 feet above sea level—which meant the next time Hawkes left his property for anywhere at all.
And that detonation would have been the end of things.
The device had the power to incinerate the entire truck and anyone in it. It would have left a crater in the road approximately three feet deep and twelve feet in diameter. Everything present within the circumference of its aggravation range would have been incinerated—almost atomized.
Tony could tell that the device had not been present for long. It was too clean, for one thing. For another, it was a new type of toy—barely out of prototype development when the corporal had been discharged.
"So," mused Hawkes softly, not wanting to disturb the quietly snoring Disraeli, "someone wants me dead. The first question: Who? The second: Why?"
In his mind he ran through the list of suspects suggested by his hands after the Graamler had been discovered. Deutcher? Mars? Could it be CME? Could it? Or even someone within his own government? Possibly Carri, running some end game tied to a personal agenda to which Hawkes had no clue?
Man O' War Page 5