From the opening-day ceremonies, when the Olympic flame had been lit, through today, the games had been wonderfully managed and run, as if the entire national soul and strength of Australia had been devoted to one task—as America had once decided to go to the moon. Everything was superbly organized, and that was further proof that his presence here was a total waste of time. Security hadn’t had even a hint of a problem. The Aussie cops were friendly, competent, and numerous, and the Australian SAS backing them up were nearly as good as his own troopers, well supported and advised by the Global Security people who’d gotten them the same tactical radios that Rainbow used. That company looked like a good vendor to use, and he thought he might recommend that John talk to them along those lines. It never hurt to have an outside opinion.
About the only bad news was the weather, which had been sultry-hot for the entire Olympiad. That had kept the medics busy at their heatstroke kiosks. Nobody had died yet, but about a hundred people had been hospitalized, and thirty times that many treated and released by the firemen paramedics and Australian army medical orderlies. That didn’t count the people who just sat down on the curb and tried to cool off without getting any proper medical assistance. He didn’t mind the heat all that much—Chavez had never been afraid of sweat—but he also paced himself, and, like everyone else in the Olympic stadium, was grateful for that fogging system. The TV guys had even done a story about it, which was good news for the American company that had designed and installed it. They were even talking about a version for golf courses in Texas and elsewhere, where it got about this hot. Traveling from ninety-five degrees to an apparent temperature of eighty or so was a pleasant sensation indeed, not unlike a shower, and the concourses were often crowded with people in the afternoons, escaping from the blazing sunshine.
Chavez’s last thought of the night was that he would not have minded having the sunblock concession. There were signs everywhere telling people to be mindful of the hole in the ozone layer, and he knew that sun-caused skin cancer wasn’t a pleasant death. So, Chavez and his men liberally slathered the stuff on every morning just like everyone else. Well, a few more days and they’d go back to Britain, where their tans would be noted by the pasty-pale Englishmen, and the weather would be a good twenty degrees cooler on what the Brits called a “hot” day. Anything over seventy-five over there and people started dropping dead in the street—which made Ding wonder about the old song that claimed only “mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.” They must have been a lot tougher back then, Chavez thought, falling off to sleep.
Popov saddled Buttermilk at about six that evening. The sun wasn’t setting yet, but that was less than an hour away, and his horse, having rested and eaten all day, was not the least bit averse to his attention—besides, he’d given Buttermilk another apple, and the mare seemed to relish them as a man might enjoy his first glass of beer after a long working day.
Jeremiah, Hunnicutt’s horse, was smaller than Buttermilk, but appeared more powerful. An odd-looking animal, his light gray coat was covered from hindquarters to neck with an almost perfectly square matlike mark of deep charcoal, hence the name “blanket Appaloosa,” the Russian imagined. Foster Hunnicutt showed up, hoisting his large Western-style saddle on his shoulder, and tossing it atop the blanket, then reaching under to cinch the straps in. His last act, Popov saw, was to strap on his Colt pistol. Then he slid his left foot into the left-side stirrup and climbed aboard. Jeremiah, the stallion, must have liked to be ridden. It was as though the animal transformed himself with this new weight on his back. The head came up proudly, and the ears swiveled around, waiting for the command of its rider. That was a clucking sound, and the stallion moved out into the corral alongside Popov and Buttermilk.
“He is a fine horse, Foster.”
“Best I’ve ever had,” the hunter agreed. “The App’s a great all-around critter. They come from the Nez Percé Indian tribe. The Nez Percé captured the original Western horses—they were the ones who escaped from the Spanish conquistadors, and bred out in the wild. Well, the Nez Percé learned how to breed them back to the Arabian roots of the Spanish breed, and came out with these.” Hunnicutt reached down to pat his horse’s neck with rough affection, which the animal seemed to like. “The Appaloosa’s the best horse there is, if you ask me. Smart, steady, healthy breed, not dizzy like the Arabians are, and damned pretty, I think. They aren’t the best at any one thing, but they’re damned good in all things. Great all-around mount. Jeremiah here’s a great hunting and tracking horse. We’ve spent a lot of time in the high country after elk. He even found my gold for me.”
“Excuse me? Gold?”
Hunnicutt laughed. “My spread up in Montana. It used to be part of a cattle ranch, but the mountains are too steep for the cows. Anyway, there’s a stream coming down from the mountain. I was letting Jeremiah drink one afternoon, and I saw something shiny, okay?” Hunnicutt stretched. “It was gold, a big hunk of gold and quartz—that’s the best geological formation for gold, Dmitriy. Anyway, I figure I got a fair-sized deposit on my land. How big? There’s no tellin’, and it doesn’t matter much anyway.”
“Not matter?” Popov turned in the saddle to look at his companion. “Foster, for the last ten thousand years men have killed one another over gold.”
“Not anymore, Dmitriy. That’s going to end—forever, probably.”
“But how? Why?” Popov demanded.
“Don’t you know about the Project?”
“A little, but not enough to understand what you just said.”
What the hell, the hunter thought. “Dmitriy, human life on the planet is going to come to a screeching halt, boy.”
“But—”
“They didn’t tell you?”
“No, Foster, not that part. Can you tell me?”
What the hell, Hunnicutt thought again. The Olympics were almost over. Why not? This Russkie understood about Nature, knew about riding, and he damned sure worked for John Brightling in a very sensitive capacity.
“It’s called Shiva,” he began, and went on for several minutes.
For Popov it was a time to put his professional face back on. His emotions were neutralized while he listened. He even managed a smile which masked his inner horror.
“But how do you distribute it?”
“Well, you see, John has a company that also works for him. Global Security—the boss man’s a guy named Henriksen.”
“Ah, yes, I know him. He was in your FBI.”
“Oh? I knew he was a cop, but not a fed. Anyway, they got the consulting contract with the Aussies for the Olympics, and one of Bill’s people will be spreading the Shiva. Something to do with the air-conditioning system at the stadium, they tell me. They’re going to spread it on the last day, see, and the closing ceremonies. The next day everyone flies home, and then, like, thousands of people all take the bug home with them.”
“But what protects us?”
“You got a shot when you came here, right?”
“Yes, Killgore said it was a booster for something.”
“Oh, it was, Dmitriy. It’s a booster, all right. It’s the vaccine that protects you against Shiva. I got it, too. That’s the ‘B’ vaccine, pal. There’s another one, they tell me, the ‘A’ vaccine, but that one’s not the one you want to get.” Hunnicutt explained on.
“How do you know all this?” Popov asked.
“Well, you see, in case people figure this out, I’m one of the guys who helped set up the perimeter security system here. So, they told me why the Project needs perimeter security. It’s pretty serious shit, man. If anyone were to find out about what was done, hell, they might even nuke us, y’know?” Foster pointed out with a grin. “Not many people really understand about saving the planet. I mean, we do this now, or in about twenty years, hell, everything and everybody dies. Not just the people. The animals, too. We can’t let that happen, can we?”
“I see your point. Yes, that does make sense,” Dmitriy Arkadeyevi
ch agreed, without choking on his words.
Hunnicutt nodded with some satisfaction. “I figured you’d get it, man. So, those terrorist things you got started, well, they were very pretty important. Without getting everybody all hot and bothered about international terrorism, Bill Hendriksen might not have got his people in place to do their little job. So,” Hunnicutt said as he fished a cigar out of his pocket, “thanks, Dmitriy. You were really an important part for this here Project.”
“Thank you, Foster,” Popov responded. Is this possible? he wondered. “How certain are you that this will work?”
“It oughta work. I asked that question, too. They let me in on some of the planning, ’cuz I’m a scientist—I was a pretty good geologist once, trust me. I know a lot of stuff. The disease is a real mother. The real key to that was the genetic engineering done on the original Ebola. Hell, you remember how scary that was a year and a half ago, right?”
Popov nodded. “Oh, yes. I was in Russia then, and it was very frightening indeed.” Even more frightening had been the response of the American president, he reminded himself.
“Well, they—the real Project scientists—learned a lot from that. The key to this is the ‘A’ vaccine. The original outbreak may kill a few million people, but that’s mainly psychological. The vaccine that Horizon’s going to market is a live-virus vaccine, like the Sabin polio vaccine. But they’ve tuned it, like. It doesn’t stop Shiva, man. It spreads Shiva. Takes a month to six weeks for the symptoms to show. They proved that in the lab.”
“How?”
“Well, Kirk was part of that. He kidnapped some folks off the street, and they tested the Shiva and the vaccines on them. Everything worked, even the first-phase delivery system that’s set up to use in Sydney.”
“It is a big thing, to change the face of the world,” Popov thought aloud, looking north to where the interstate highway was.
“Gotta be done, man. If we don’t—well, you can kiss all this good-bye, Dmitriy. I can’t let that happen.”
“It’s a terrible thing to do, but I see the logic of your position. Brightling is a genius, to see this, to find a way of solving the problem, and then to have the courage to act.” Popov hoped his voice wasn’t too patronizing, but this man Hunnicutt was a technocrat, not one who understood people.
“Yep,” Hunnicutt said around the cigar, as he lit it with a kitchen match. He blew the match out, then held it until it was cold before letting it fall to the ground, lest it start a prairie fire. “Brilliant scientist, and he gets it, you know? Thank God, he has the resources to make all this happen. Setting all this up must have cost near onto a billion dollars—hell, just this place, not counting the one in Brazil.”
“Brazil?”
“There’s a smaller version of the complex down there, somewhere west of Manaus, I think. I never been there. The rain forest doesn’t interest me that much. I’m an open-country sort of guy,” Hunnicutt explained. “Now, the African veldt, the plains there, that’s something else. Well, I guess I’ll get to see it, and hunt it.”
“Yes, I would like to see that, to see the wildlife, how it lives and thrives in the sun,” Popov agreed, coming to his own decision.
“Yep. Gonna get me a lion or two there with my H&H .375.” Hunnicutt clucked and got Jeremiah to go faster, an easy canter that Popov tried to duplicate. He’d done this pace before, but now he found that he had trouble synchronizing with Buttermilk’s rather easy motions. He had to switch his mind back into his body to make that happen, but he managed it, catching up with the hunter.
“So, you will transform this country to the Old West, eh?” The interstate was about two miles off. The trucks were passing by swiftly, their trailers lit in amber lights. There would be intercity buses, too, similarly lit, he hoped.
“That’s one of the things we’re going to do.”
“And you’ll carry your pistol everywhere?”
“Revolver, Dmitriy,” Foster corrected. “But, yeah. I’ll be like the guys I’ve read about, living out here in harmony with nature. Maybe find me a woman who thinks like I do, maybe build me a nice cabin in the mountains, like Jeremiah Johnson did—but no Crow Indians to worry me there,” he added with a chuckle.
“Foster?”
He turned. “Yeah?”
“Your pistol, may I hold it?” the Russian asked, praying for the correct response.
He got it. “Sure.” He drew it and passed it across, muzzle up for safety.
Popov felt the weight and the balance. “It is loaded?”
“Nothing much more useless than a handgun that ain’t loaded. Hell, you want to shoot it? Just cock the hammer back and let go, but you want to make sure your horse is reined in tight, okay? Jeremiah here’s used to the noise. That mare might not be.”
“I see.” Popov took the reins in his left hand to keep Buttermilk in check. Next he extended his right hand and cocked the hammer on the Colt, heard the distinctive triple click of this particular type of revolver, and took aim at a wooden surveyor’s stake and pulled the trigger. It broke cleanly at about five pounds.
Buttermilk jumped slightly with the noise, so close to her sensitive ears, but the horse didn’t react all that badly. And the bullet, Popov saw, grazed the two-inch stake, six meters or so away. So, he still knew how to shoot.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Hunnicutt asked. “If you ask me, the Single-Action Army’s got the best balance of any handgun ever made.”
“Yes,” Popov agreed, “it is very nice.” Then he turned. Foster Hunnicutt was seated on his stallion, Jeremiah, not three meters away. That made it easy. The former KGB officer cocked the hammer again, turned and aimed right at the center of his chest, and pulled the trigger before the hunter could even be surprised by the action. His target’s eyes widened, either from his unbelieving recognition of the impossible thing that was happening or from the impact of the heavy bullet, but what it was didn’t matter. The bullet went straight through his heart. The body of the hunter stayed erect in the saddle for a few seconds, the eyes still wide with shock, then it fell lifelessly backward away from Popov and onto the grassland.
Dmitriy dismounted and took the three steps to the body to make sure that Hunnicutt was dead. Then he unsaddled Jeremiah, who took the death of his owner phlegmatically, and removed the bridle, too, surprised that the animal didn’t bite him for what he’d just done, but a horse wasn’t a dog. With that done, he smacked the stallion heavily on the rump, and it trotted off for fifty meters or so, then stopped and started grazing.
Popov remounted Buttermilk and clucked her to a northerly direction. He looked back, saw the lit windows of the Project building complex, and wondered if he or Hunnicutt would be missed. Probably not, he judged, as the interstate highway grew closer. There was supposed to be that little village to the west, but he decided that his best chance was the bus stop hut, or perhaps thumbing a ride on a car or truck. What he’d do after that, he wasn’t sure, but he knew he had to get the hell away from this place, just as fast and as far as he could manage. Popov was not a man who believed in God. His education and his upbringing had not aimed him in that direction, and so for him “god” was only the first part of “goddamned.” But he’d learned something important today. He might never know if there was a God, but there were surely devils—and he had worked for them, and the horror of that was like nothing he’d ever known as a young colonel of the KGB.
CHAPTER 36
FLIGHTS OF NECESSITY
The fear was as bad as the horror. Popov had never experienced a really frightening time as a field-intelligence officer. There had always been tension, especially at the beginning of his career, but he’d quickly grown confident in his fieldcraft, and the skills had become for him a kind of security blanket, whose warm folds had always made his soul comfortable. But not today.
Now he was in a foreign place. Not merely a foreign land, for he was a man of cities. In any such place he knew how to disappear in minutes, to vanish so completely that scarc
ely any police force in the world could find him. But this wasn’t a city. He dismounted Buttermilk a hundred meters from the bus hut, and again he took the time to remove the saddle and bridle, because a saddled, riderless horse was sure to attract notice, but a horse merely walking about on its own probably would not, not here, where many people kept such animals for their pleasure. Then it was just a matter of easing his way through the barbed-wire fence and walking to the bus hut, which, he found, was empty. There was no schedule on the blank, white-painted walls. It was the simplest of structures, seemingly made of poured concrete, with a thick roof to stand up against the heavy winter snows, and perhaps survive the tornadoes that he’d heard about but never experienced. The bench was also made of concrete, and he sat on it briefly to work on making his shakes go away. He’d never felt like this in his life. The fear—if these people were willing to kill millions—billions—of people, surely they would not hesitate as long as a blink to end his solitary life. He had to get away.
Ten minutes after arriving at the hut, he checked his watch and wondered if there were any buses at this hour. If not, well, there were cars and trucks, and perhaps—
He walked to the shoulder and held up his hand. Cars were passing by at over a hundred thirty kilometers per hour, which left them little time to see him in the darkness, much less brake to stop. But after fifteen minutes, a cream-colored Ford pickup truck eased over to the side of the road.
“Where you headin’, buddy?” the driver asked. He looked to be a farmer, perhaps sixty years of age, his face and neck scored by lines from too many afternoon suns.
“The airport in the next town. Can you take me there?” Dmitriy said, getting in. The driver wasn’t wearing a seat belt, which was probably against the law, but, then, so was cold-blooded murder, and for that reason alone he had to get the hell away from this place.
“Sure, I have to get off at that exit anyway. What’s your name?”
“Joe—Joseph,” Popov said.