Breaking point - By Tom Clancy & Steve Perry & Steve Pieczenik Page 0,45
ground-pounding in one of the never-ending eastern European wars, but he’d never gotten past master sergeant, and that only when he got tapped to serve in the unit quartermasters, where he spent his last two tours. Still, he knew the Army way as well as any decent NCO, had seen legitimate action—he had a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star—and he was very canny. It was true you couldn’t run an army without sergeants, and Smith knew the ropes well enough to organize a bunch of half-assed warrior-wannabes into a fair imitation of soldierly discipline. At the very least, they were good robbers, because that was chiefly how they raised their operating funds. So far, they had knocked over supermarkets, banks, a theater multiplex, an armored car, and a small Indian casino, all without being caught or losing a man, and without killing too many bystanders. Ventura knew their M.O., and he’d sort of halfway kept track. Smith’s boys had stolen somewhere in the range of six to seven million dollars in the last year alone, Ventura guessed.
You could buy a lot of Idaho backwoods and MREs for seven million dollars.
As Smith stepped forward to shake his hand, Ventura nodded crisply at the man, a choppy, military bow. “General.”
“Please, Luther, it’s ‘Bull.’ ”
Ventura suppressed a smile. Yeah, he thought it was bull, too. “I don’t want to break discipline in front of the men.”
“Understood,” Smith said.
Ventura didn’t know how much of the pure race crap Smith really believed, if any. The money and power were probably a lot more attractive, since Smith’s history, military and otherwise, didn’t show any particular contention with or hatred of any of the “mongrel” races until lately, but—you never knew. Pushing sixty, ole Bull here had been at this militia game for about ten years. He was living high on the hog, considering the location. Good food, good booze, women, toys, and the admiration and obedience of a couple hundred men, give or take. There were a lot worse ways to spend your time if you were an old ex-sergeant with no other skills.
Five years ago, when Ventura had still been in the assassination business, Smith had contacted him the usual roundabout way, and they had struck a deal. A certain influential politician in the Idaho statehouse—if that wasn’t an oxymoron—had been standing in the way of Smith’s acquisition of this very compound, something to do with land use, or butting up against state forestry property or some such. The politician, a state senator, knew what Bull and the boys were up to, and there was too much of that going on in Idaho already, the state was getting a real bad reputation. Tourists didn’t want to come and see the boys playing war games—at least, not the kind of tourists the state wanted. It was bad for business if little junior went out picking berries and got mowed down by a bunch of gun-happy paramilitary goons who mistook him for an enemy, or Bambi, as had happened at least once.
If he couldn’t stop it legally, there were some shadier ways to get things done, and the senator knew how to do them. This, of course, played right into Bull’s conspiracy fantasies.
So. The politician died in what the coroner said was an accident, and Smith got the property he wanted. And Bull was not a man to forget somebody who’d done him a service.
“General, I’d like to introduce Professor Morrison. The doctor here is doing some secret work for the Navy and Air Force, and naturally we don’t trust them to keep him safe for our mission.”
“Understood,” Smith said. He offered his hand to Morrison, who took it. “There are traitors everywhere.”
“Sad, but true,” Ventura said.
“I’ll have my adjutant show your people where to bivouac, and you and the professor can join me for dinner.”
“Excellent idea, General,” Ventura said.
When Smith was a few yards ahead of them, Morrison said, “How are you going to explain a Chinese agent coming here to see me?”
“What, a turncoat chink double-agent? We’re feeding false information to our gook enemies, Doctor, you know that. The general understands how espionage works. He keeps his ears open.” Ventura tapped his own ear, and hoped that the man would remember what he’d said about being watched and listened to.
Morrison remembered. “Ah. Yes, I see you’re right. A man in the general’s position would know these things.”
“Of course. Hell of a soldier, Bull Smith, and a credit to the Race.” He turned slightly so