hard to tell the rock from the dark furze and heather. The secretary squints through 10X pixel-aug binos. I’m straining with the naked eye.
“See the stag?”
I can barely make out a darkish blotch, perhaps three hundred yards below the outcrop, in a vale that must contain a spring or a burn, as the Scots call a creek. The blotch could be one animal or several. I can’t see the first lady.
“Here, Colonel.” Echevarria passes me his glasses. They’re beauties: Special Forces optical-enhanced binos that deconstruct visible light and IR/UV into digital elements, then recombine and enhance these signals electronically. With the tap of a button, a full-color representation zooms into focus. I can see a guide, prone among rocks, and Maggie Cole on one knee beside him (apparently she needs the extra height to get a clear shot, given the down angle) with her rifle sling-braced around her left upper arm and forearm. She looks like a Marine on a rifle range.
“Why doesn’t she shoot?” asks the secretary. The guide shooshes him. He snatches the glasses back. Maggie wants the trophy, the guide says, meaning she must go for a heart shot. She’s waiting for the stag to turn his chest toward her.
I find myself calming my own breath and stilling my heart. This is serious shooting Mrs. Cole is doing. A deer rifle weighs twice asmuch as an M4–40 carbine and it only gives you one shot. The first lady must put a single round inside a circle no bigger than a fist at three hundred yards. If she fails and only wounds the stag, both our parties will be out here on foot in the dark tracking the poor creature to put him out of his agony.
The secretary peers through the binos. I see him react and, a second later, hear the report of the rifle. It’s too dark now to see without glasses. “He’s down!” cries the secretary.
“Bloody hell!” The guide slaps his thigh in celebration. We stand. The valley echoes with the rolling peal of the gunshot. Our escort hands me his own glasses; through them, I can see Maggie’s guide stand. She herself has not moved, except to work her arm and shoulder free of the sling and to elevate the smoking barrel of her rifle.
My SAS driver is supposed to pull me out as soon as I deliver the briefcase. But by the time the motorcade of Land Rovers has delivered the hunting parties back to the manor house in the bone-rattling dark, Mrs. Cole won’t let me go. She is still high from her trophy shot. She downs three sherries like water, though the cold may have something to do with that; when a serving man brings single malt in a decanter for the group, she signs for two fingers, then changes it to four. The gathering—whose numbers have swollen to nearly two dozen, counting the hunters, their assistants, and their aides—breaks up for an interval so that its members can bathe and change for dinner. There is no cold on earth like Scottish cold, and it’s worse after dark in a drafty, vaulted, stone-founded hall. Not even a pair of walk-in fireplaces roaring with timber can take the edge off. “Now you see, Colonel,” says Echevarria, setting a hand on my shoulder, “the evolution of 90-proof malt whisky.”
The secretary is a bit of a bully. In front of his aides and the first members of the party returning from their tubs, he tries to provokeme. “Clearly our bearded ‘nephew’ is a soldier for hire and, judging by the scorches on his neck and brow has come to us straight from the fight. But which fight and for what purpose? What’s in the briefcase? Something to do with petroleum, that’s certain.”
A part of me would love to pop the Secy right in his beautiful capped front teeth. But my orders are to exercise discretion. Then too, Echevarria—I know from his history—is a stand-up hombre. When he reaches stiff armed for a cigar offered by a serving man, I remember news photos of the suicide car bomb that killed his wife and daughter six years earlier in a motorcade in Oran; the
“See the stag?”
I can barely make out a darkish blotch, perhaps three hundred yards below the outcrop, in a vale that must contain a spring or a burn, as the Scots call a creek. The blotch could be one animal or several. I can’t see the first lady.
“Here, Colonel.” Echevarria passes me his glasses. They’re beauties: Special Forces optical-enhanced binos that deconstruct visible light and IR/UV into digital elements, then recombine and enhance these signals electronically. With the tap of a button, a full-color representation zooms into focus. I can see a guide, prone among rocks, and Maggie Cole on one knee beside him (apparently she needs the extra height to get a clear shot, given the down angle) with her rifle sling-braced around her left upper arm and forearm. She looks like a Marine on a rifle range.
“Why doesn’t she shoot?” asks the secretary. The guide shooshes him. He snatches the glasses back. Maggie wants the trophy, the guide says, meaning she must go for a heart shot. She’s waiting for the stag to turn his chest toward her.
I find myself calming my own breath and stilling my heart. This is serious shooting Mrs. Cole is doing. A deer rifle weighs twice asmuch as an M4–40 carbine and it only gives you one shot. The first lady must put a single round inside a circle no bigger than a fist at three hundred yards. If she fails and only wounds the stag, both our parties will be out here on foot in the dark tracking the poor creature to put him out of his agony.
The secretary peers through the binos. I see him react and, a second later, hear the report of the rifle. It’s too dark now to see without glasses. “He’s down!” cries the secretary.
“Bloody hell!” The guide slaps his thigh in celebration. We stand. The valley echoes with the rolling peal of the gunshot. Our escort hands me his own glasses; through them, I can see Maggie’s guide stand. She herself has not moved, except to work her arm and shoulder free of the sling and to elevate the smoking barrel of her rifle.
My SAS driver is supposed to pull me out as soon as I deliver the briefcase. But by the time the motorcade of Land Rovers has delivered the hunting parties back to the manor house in the bone-rattling dark, Mrs. Cole won’t let me go. She is still high from her trophy shot. She downs three sherries like water, though the cold may have something to do with that; when a serving man brings single malt in a decanter for the group, she signs for two fingers, then changes it to four. The gathering—whose numbers have swollen to nearly two dozen, counting the hunters, their assistants, and their aides—breaks up for an interval so that its members can bathe and change for dinner. There is no cold on earth like Scottish cold, and it’s worse after dark in a drafty, vaulted, stone-founded hall. Not even a pair of walk-in fireplaces roaring with timber can take the edge off. “Now you see, Colonel,” says Echevarria, setting a hand on my shoulder, “the evolution of 90-proof malt whisky.”
The secretary is a bit of a bully. In front of his aides and the first members of the party returning from their tubs, he tries to provokeme. “Clearly our bearded ‘nephew’ is a soldier for hire and, judging by the scorches on his neck and brow has come to us straight from the fight. But which fight and for what purpose? What’s in the briefcase? Something to do with petroleum, that’s certain.”
A part of me would love to pop the Secy right in his beautiful capped front teeth. But my orders are to exercise discretion. Then too, Echevarria—I know from his history—is a stand-up hombre. When he reaches stiff armed for a cigar offered by a serving man, I remember news photos of the suicide car bomb that killed his wife and daughter six years earlier in a motorcade in Oran; the
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