Sandpoint. Grey ran basic searches on each location, looking for something that would set it apart from the others. Nothing stood out. He stayed in his office until well after midnight, alone since Svetlana had finally left him just before eight. She brought him tea and cookies from the stash of goodies she kept in her filing cabinet. She picked up his suit coat from the back of a chair across from his desk, brushed it off with her hands, and hung it on the hook behind his office door.
“You work too hard, Oliver, you need to rest,” she said as she walked around the desk and stood over his shoulder. Her strong hands smoothed the fabric of his dress shirt across the top of his back. Grey stopped and inhaled her perfume, a scent that triggered dark memories of his childhood. Her touch stirred a warmth inside him, and he felt a rush of blood to an area he thought was devoid of feeling. Embarrassed, he began to shuffle the papers on his desk, stumbling over his words like a schoolboy. Svetlana leaned in close and whispered him a loving “good night” before walking away. Staring at the empty doorway, Grey sat for a moment in shock, his lifelong impotence shattered by the matronly touch of his assistant. Without bothering to lock his computer, he bolted for the restroom.
CHAPTER 15
Kumba Ranch, Montana
THEY RAN FOR AN hour on the twisting backcountry game trails that wandered through the maze of towering pines. The carpet of pine needles that littered the landscape cushioned their footfalls and was far kinder to their knees than asphalt or concrete. Each day Raife chose a longer route with a steeper grade, always pushing his friend a bit harder as his body strengthened.
Both men carried handguns on their grueling backcountry trail runs. When you’ve hunted terrorists for a living and were responsible for killing a Russian intelligence colonel in line to be the next president of Russia, going anywhere unarmed was not a smart option. Reece carried a compact Glock 29 short-frame 10mm he’d borrowed from Jonathan in a modern Kydex Outback chest harness made by Blackpoint Tactical, while Raife’s larger and far older handgun was stored in its leather holster inside a small pack.
“When are you going to trade in that BB gun for something more grown-up?” Raife chided between breaths.
“Maybe when you stop carrying antiques into the field. That thing probably needs to be field-stripped already. We’ve been running for almost a half hour; a speck of dust may cause a malfunction.”
Raife’s skills with a handgun met, or even exceeded, his prowess as an athlete. With phenomenal eyesight and exceptional hand-eye coordination, he fired his prized 1911, a pistol that had history in his family dating back to World War II, when his grandfather had carried it as a member of the Long Range Desert Group in North Africa, as if it were an extension of his body. Raife had always found shooting the Colt 1911 .45, customized by the talented South African gunsmith Dale Guthrie, to be a therapeutic escape from an otherwise chaotic world.
Cresting a hill to begin what he knew would turn into a sprint to the finish, Reece dodged a branch and between breaths asked, “Did I tell you I started shooting 1911s?”
“Really?” Raife asked, picking up the pace.
“Yeah, with my Glock.”
Raife stifled a laugh at the old joke as his friend found a final reserve of energy and they crossed the finish line neck and neck.
After catching their breath and grabbing some water, they moved to the shooting range behind Raife’s workshop for a timed course of fire with their chosen pistols.
“Ears,” Raife said, tossing his friend a set of electronic hearing protection. After all the explosions and gunfire they’d experienced throughout their time in uniform, both were sticklers about preserving the hearing they had left.
They moved into what they called a “Prevail Drill,” a twenty-round course of fire developed by one of their University of Montana professors who had been a Special Forces Project Delta sniper in Vietnam. The six stages varied from five to twelve yards and included standing, kneeling, single hand, and dual target engagements under a specified time tracked by a shot timer. Anything outside the “ten zone” meant failure and was intended to indicate they would have died in a real-world gunfight. Both operators put all twenty shots in the kill box.
As they topped off magazines, Raife caught Reece eyeing his recurve bow that hung