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—
Click.
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.
God.
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.