Retribution (3 page)

“Good. Now, as I was saying . . . Nemesis involved the insertion of a freelance agent into North Korea. A missile engineer was working on a project that would have given them an intercontinental ballistic missile that was going to take out our Pacific GPS satellites.”

“Was he a North Korean?” Arnault asked, eyebrows raised.

“No. In fact, he was a Marine.”

“Korean American?”

“No. Anglo as you and me. Someone they brought out of the reserves.”

“Really? Why—”

“Have you ever heard of Cardinal Mezzofanti?” asked Tranthan.

“Yes, sir,” Arnault said. “Learned about him at Monterey.”

Arnault also spoke Russian after being sent to DLIFLC for a year. The Defense Language Institute in Monterey was a special opportunity for any young officer.

“Spoke thirty or more languages, right?”

Tranthan nodded. “Not only spoke them, but spoke them with the exact inflections and dialect of someone who'd spoken them all his life. He'd hear the language once, and that's it: he'd be perfectly fluent.”

“So this Marine was a—” began Arnault.

“
Is
, Ben. He's a Mezzofanti—Korean, Arabic, you name it. I need to get to him immediately.”

“Yes, sir. How, sir?”

“Start with Scott, the guy who ran Nemesis. He can get to the man we need. Get
him
, and we can get somewhere with this bombing. I want to know who was behind it.” Tranthan looked his aide directly in the eyes. “I want to know who hurt Maggie.”

CHAPTER 4

 

T
he pickup truck turned off the paved highway onto the dirt road, plunging into the absolute darkness of the predawn countryside. Although the leaves of fall had started turning to orange and yellow, the trees still managed to blanket out any hint of the quarter moon. A cold front had dropped the temperature down.

“How far now?” Michael Hendley had come straight from the graveyard shift of the credit card–processing company. He should have been exhausted. He leaned back in the seat, put his Red Wing hunting boots up on the dashboard, and pulled his John Deere cap down.

“Get your damn boots off my truck.”

Mike Hendley smiled and dropped his feet. His cousin's Silverado had cost him a year's worth of pay in brush guards, running boards, and winches alone. A gentle level of harassment was common between the cousins, and it went both ways.

Not only was Hendley not feeling the expected fatigue, but also he hadn't been this charged up in months. Unlike his father, Hendley used his past military experience with computers to become “white-collar labor,” as he liked to call it. He made sure that the machines kept churning throughout the night as they received data from credit card users around the world, but he was still caged in a cubicle with walls he could touch with extended fingertips. It paid well and, as with his cousin, it kept him in fairly new trucks, but the clock moved slowly on the graveyard shift. Deer hunting season, however, woke him up. Even the remote promise of a record buck turned the adrenaline on. Sleep was a low priority this time of year.

“Almost there,” said the cousin, referring to the end of the road, not their final destination. After parking the truck, they'd hike at least another three miles.

Mike knew that his cousin wouldn't have even told him about this hunt except that a hike out of the woods with a two-hundred-pound trophy buck would have been too much for one man.

He also guessed that wherever they were going, they would be trespassing. But it really didn't matter. A trophy deer with a point score over 170 was a five-figure deer. A hunting show had paid $25,000 just to display a record Boone and Crockett buck last year at its show. In Mike's world, $25,000 would buy a new four-wheeler, a Winchester with a scope, and a letter from the tax man six months later reminding him of the government's share.

At the end of the road it was so dark that Hendley only sensed his cousin's presence by the sound of his movement as he came around the truck.

“We bringing the deer stands?” Mike asked. The hunter, to pull himself up into a tree to gain elevation and a clear line of sight, used the camouflaged aluminum cage with a seat.

“No, this place is sweeter than that. Just wait and see.”

The cousin turned on his small LED light, which only illuminated the trail directly in front of him. Mike followed closely behind except for the occasional limb that slapped him in the face. With their rifles slung over their shoulders, the pair cut deeper into the woods, their breath billowing up in the light as it bobbed up and down on the trail.

The cousin stopped at the top of a hill, fully out of breath, and shined his light on the metal sign that said
POSTED—NO TRESPASSING.
He turned off the flashlight for a brief moment. They stood still while their eyes readjusted to the dark. What were the chances anyone was nearby? Even in the deep woods of Georgia, it was rare to not see a light well off in the distance or hear a truck grinding through gears on some highway. Here, they both stood in absolute darkness and silence.

The hunters followed the ridgeline as it skirted around a small, deep valley below. Again, they began to climb up, over an outcrop of rock that led to a ledge. After passing through a stand of hundred-year-old pine trees, they had come to a forest of hardwood trees, oak and hickory, which now stood below them. Hendley knew that the oak and hickories would pull in the deer. The shelter of the hardwoods and the constant supply of acorns created the perfect chemistry for a record-setting buck.

“This is sweet.”

“You haven't seen anything yet.” The cousin lay down on the grassy ledge.

The grass soaked Mike instantly as he lay prone with his rifle. The damp, chilling wet grass from the early morning dew quickly passed through his sweatshirt, but the excitement of the hunt overcame any discomfort.

They lay side by side in complete silence. He could only hear his heartbeat as both hunters waited for the sun to rise. Their vantage point well above the valley robbed the deer of one of its primary defenses: smell. They knew, as the sun began to turn the darkness into a pink-and-orange-tinted gray, that the first hour was critical. It was then that the big buck would move, searching for food. They could not budge during that critical time, as the slightest hint of their movement or even a faint whiff of their scent would cause the game to dart back into the deep woods. One mistake and the day would be a waste.

The cousin saw the buck first. He tapped Mike on his arm and pointed. It came out of a thicket well to the left of the field. It was a full buck, with a huge rack, eighteen separate points that he could count from this distance. The deer had to have survived several years to have gained that size and shape. Boone and Crockett dimensions, easy.

The deer moved slowly, stopping often to search and scan the surroundings. His head turned like a natural radar. Without the deer's movement, it would have been virtually invisible. But the movement was to the hunter's benefit. It gave the animal away.

“Biggest I ever seen,” Mike whispered.

The cousin shushed him with a gesture, then pulled the front stock of the Remington 700 rifle under his forearm, steadying the weapon on the brace of his elbow. The Leupold scope amplified the dawn's light, allowing him to see much farther than the human eye. The deer moved again, only a short step. It was a long shot, but with a calm hand he could make it.

Mike watched as his cousin drew in a breath. Slowly, the shooter would let it out and squeeze. Then—

The sound of a safety being released on a weapon. A rifle. Every hunter ever born knew what it meant. But it wasn't his cousin's rifle and it wasn't Mike's. The sound had come from behind them.

They both lowered their rifles.

“What are you doing?” The cousin was pissed.

“That wasn't me.”

“Fellows, you need to slowly pull back the bolts.” The voice came from behind and above them. Close. Very close.

Mike turned to see the oak tree above the ledge. He couldn't make out anything. His eyes followed the shape of the tree from its gnarled, barked base up to the first branches. Still, nothing. The voice was too close for it to be from farther away.

His cousin was still pissed. Without looking the cousin called back, “You ain't got no right to tell us what to do. We got the landowner's permission.”

Mike waited for the man's response.

“I
am
the landowner. Now turn around and get up.”

Mike turned over on his side, and as he did, the sleeve of his hunting shirt pulled up just enough to reveal a part of a tattoo on his forearm, an anchor and a globe.

“Where'd you serve?” the man said. His voice came from somewhere near the base of the tree, but Mike still couldn't see him.

“Artillery at the Twelfth Marines,” Mike said proudly.

“Who was the Twenty-fourth MEU commander?”

Was it Mike's imagination, or had the voice warmed a degree or two?

“Colonel Jordan.”

“Bucky Jordan?”

“Yes, sir. That's what they called him.”

The voice paused for a moment. “You two come back another day. Same exact place. Just one day. If that buck comes on this field, you can take him. But only once. And only one deer. Agreed?”

“Yes, sir,” said the cousin.

Hendley repeated it. “Yes,
sir
.”

 

 

William Parker stepped away from the oak, dressed head-to-toe in the camouflage that perfectly matched the hardwood tree. The coat, gloves, hat, and pants all bore the same camouflage pattern, making him indistinguishable from the same shape and colors of the bark and limbs. He remembered the tag. It quoted Webster:
Incapable of being apprehended by the mind or the senses
. It was 5.11 Tactical gear, named for the difficulty of a mountain climb. Like the gear's namesake, Parker had undertaken a 5.11d climb once. It had been called the Unfinished Symphony, a brutal two-day trek. But the 5.11 gear had handled it. And he could tell now by the confusion in the young man's eyes that their camouflage worked equally well.

Parker smiled as he shouldered his Woodsmaster rifle, a boyhood gift from his father. He hoped he hadn't scared the pair more than necessary. It wasn't so much that they had trespassed, invading his lonely, quiet perch above the field. No, it was the intrusion into this particular time of day, the only hour that seemed lately to offer Parker the brief, few minutes that he could sleep. The morning twilight worked like a powerful drug, enabling his mind to stop and body to rest. And all the better when he did it outdoors.

It was ironic that now, in his currently quiet life, that Parker felt more sleepless than ever before. It seemed as if life had suddenly become
too
simple. He no longer worked as a district attorney, galvanized by his duty to the murder victim's family or the challenge of beating his opponent. He no longer had to worry about cross-examining the drug dealer's alibi witness or the toxicologist from the University of Chicago. He no longer had to worry about picking the right jury or pleasing the temperamental judge.

Instead, Parker's world had become a condition of continual boredom. The Korean mission had brought reward money, tons of it, and with the millions of dollars came the ability to buy the land that his father had only dreamed about. But Korea had also cost him the D.A.'s job. He simply could not go off for several months on a secret mission and still be the district attorney. He had no interest in representing criminal defendants, and he didn't have the patience to learn how to be a civil lawyer. So as a consequence, he had too much time on his hands. His life had become ordinary, and he couldn't stand it.

Most days he headed out as early as three in the morning. The woods were a friend. But this day's opportunity for rest had passed. The sun was climbing high already, revealing a brilliantly clear and perfectly cloudless blue sky. A singular streak of white cut across like a chalk line over a light blue blackboard. The contrails of a passenger jet pointed to the east. Parker saw a flash of light bounce off the aircraft as the morning sun's reflection aligned itself briefly with the steel skin of the airplane and Parker on the ground. He thought of the passengers in another airplane.

The thought made him sick.

Pan Am Flight 103 had only been in the air a short time when, over Scotland, the bomb had torn through its forward cargo hold. Seats 3A and 3B were held by the Parkers, coming back from a rare pre-Christmas holiday trip to London. Their son was finishing up exams in college. Only hours before, Parker's mother had called him from Gatwick. It was one of those “too little said” conversations that he would regret for the remainder of his life. It was only a few hours after that conversation that he had heard the news bulletin. It was one of those moments that he remembered exactly where he was, exactly what he was doing, and exactly the bitter chill of the day.

The explosion in the thin air at thirty-one thousand feet immediately sucked out several of the passengers, whom the experts later theorized were instantly pulled into the engines that continued to spin at full speed and were shredded by the turbines and then effectively cremated by the jet blast. His mother must have been one of them. There was no trace that she ever even existed. The woman who held him close, who stayed up with him when he was sick, who stood much shorter when she reached up to hug him, was gone.

Parker began the hike back to his cabin, in the opposite direction of the hunters, to the west side of his land. The cabin—more of a lodge situated on a small plateau—looked out over the river on the far west border. A dark blue Toyota Camry, newly parked, awaited his arrival. The car was familiar, but this was an unusual time for her to come here. She'd left for work hours ago and should not have been home until dark.

Parker came in the back door and set down the rifle, its chamber clear. Clark's shoes were next to the door. She was in the kitchen fiddling with the coffeemaker, a stainless-steel machine that ground up the beans. He couldn't have cared less, but she liked it.

“What's going on?”

Clark looked up with those deep green eyes, but her face was etched with concern. “Someone from the Agency is looking for you.”