Product Description
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Like the young mule deer in his rifle scope, Viktor Mialkovsky was a patient creature who preferred to spend a great deal of time monitoring his surroundings before making a decisive move.
But unlike that timid mammal -- who now sat trembling in fear approximately two hundred yards from his high-point position overlooking the rocky clearing below -- Mialkovsky was the furthest thing imaginable from harmless.
Thanks to a considerable amount of progressively intense training and experience, all paid for by the United States government, Viktor Mialkovsky was perfectly capable of killing human and wildlife alike with a wide range of lethal weapons that specifically included his bare hands. As a result of that same training and experience, he was also considered an expert hunter, tracker, and survivalist by the small number of peers and supervisors who were personally aware of his skills. On the summary sheet in his personnel jacket, the words "mission-oriented" and "emotionally detached" had been highlighted and underlined for emphasis.
Had Mialkovsky possessed a similar degree of camaraderie, and respect for teamwork and authority, he would have been the ideal government hunter-killer: an infinitely adaptable human weapon to be judiciously applied to the most difficult tactical problems. That was certainly the plan, as far as the succession of people responsible for his training and duty assignments had been concerned.
But it hadn't taken each of these veteran supervisors long to conclude that their supposedly ideal hunter-killer was indifferent to authority and regulations in general, to the rules of engagement in particular, and to the other men and women attached to his missions without exception. Most of them were convinced that Mialkovsky's heralded "emotional detachment" had far less to do with his ability to control his emotions than with a general lack thereof.
These were serious flaws that should have terminated Viktor Mialkovsky's government career long before his skill set became unmanageable; and certainly would have, had he not also possessed from early childhood an almost feral ability to conceal himself -- both his mind and his body -- within the organizational structure of his environment.
No aptitude or personality test ever confirmed the suspicions of his supervisors, none of his questionable actions had ever been documented, and no eyewitnesses had ever stepped forward to report what they had heard or seen.
In effect, to his supervisors and to his external world at large, Mialkovsky remained irrefutably who and what he chose to be at any particular moment.
And that, in addition to his formidable skill set, made him extremely dangerous to anyone or anything that happened to cross his path.
Thus the fact that Mialkovsky and the young mule deer had chosen to conceal themselves on adjacent sets of narrow rocky mesas overlooking this particular high-mountain clearing on this particular night certainly bode nothing good for the animal. But the presence of the terrified deer seemed only to amuse the supposedly emotionless hunter-killer, who had briefly held the deer's head in his crosshairs before methodically shifting his view to the next sector.
It was a casual decision that would have undoubtedly intrigued the legion of government psychiatrists who had diligently probed Viktor Mialkovsky's psyche over the years with their batteries of standardized but ultimately unrevealing tests.
This particular decision by Mialkovsky was revealing, because it would have taken the hunter-killer only a fraction of a second to send one of his modified 7.62x51 NATO hollow-pointed bullets through the deer's exposed head. In doing so, he would have confirmed the functionality of his primary weapon, acquired some extra meat for his freezer, and reduced the number of unpredictable factors at the scene by one; all positive results achieved at minimal risk to his intended task.
Very "mission-oriented," indeed.
And, in fact, during that brief and thoughtful moment, he had considered squeezing the trigger of his silenced bolt-action rifle, for the simple purpose of double-checking the accuracy of the 80mm-wide-aperture ATN 4-12X80 day-night telescopic sight...and to make the next few hours a bit more interesting.
But, ultimately, he chose not to do so, for five very specific reasons.
First of all, he'd come here to hunt a different species.
And he'd already sighted in the scope after he'd parked and concealed the dune buggy back down the trail.
And he really didn't need another deer for his freezer, because he didn't have a freezer; at least not in this state.
And he didn't consider the animal a significant issue in terms of the overall scene.
But more to the point, Viktor Mialkovsky really wasn't interested in the concept of mercy killing, one way or the other. He viewed that as a job for the other predators in the area -- the cougars and coyotes -- who would eventually hone in on the deer.
No need to upset Mother Nature's balance. At least not any more than was absolutely necessary for his purposes here tonight.
So he remained in his high-lookout position here in Nevada's Desert National Wildlife Range, methodically searching the sectors of his three-hundred-and-sixty-degree perimeter for any sign of the individuals who could easily show up on a random basis, but who more likely were not going to be out patrolling a remote and desolate stretch of high desert on a Friday evening when they could be enjoying dinner with friends or family.
The weatherman had been predicting a big storm coming in from the north, so who in their right minds would be out hunting on a night like this?
Only the truly dedicated hunters, Mialkovsky thought, smiling to himself.
As the sun began to settle in the western sky, he observed what appeared to be a group of outlaw bikers -- eight grubby-looking figures, barely discernible in the scope, six on motorcycles and two others in a battered and dirty jeep -- come about halfway up the dirt road, turn off on a small side road, and proceed to set up a crude off-road campsite. He monitored their activities with the rifle scope for a half hour or so; but they were a considerable distance from his position, and seemed intent on fiddling with their motorcycles, lounge chairs, cigars, and whatever was in the big ice chest, so he canceled them out of his calculations.
When the sun finally set down over the high ridge of the Sheep Range, he removed the daytime eyepiece from the rear of the telescopic sight that cost five times as much as the rifle it was mounted on, and replaced it with the larger night-vision eyepiece that provided a clear and sharp field-of-view in shades of bright green. Then he went back to the routine and boring but absolutely critical task of monitoring his surroundings.
If the dedicated federal wildlife refuge officers, or their plainclothed special agent counterparts, who worked this area were going to conduct a surprise patrol in their ongoing effort to keep poachers from killing the prized Desert Bighorns that thrived on the high ridges of the Sheep Range, Mialkovsky figured this was when they'd probably show up. So he continued to maintain his sector searches as the slivered moon arced high overhead and grew brighter.
But there was no sign of activity from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife's Corn Creek Field Station -- the official entrance to the range some six miles to the west of his location -- or from the intersecting dirt and gravel roads that wound their way south to that ultimate bright-light emitter: Las Vegas. And the biker group camped out on the distant side road had built themselves a small rock-ringed fire, and -- apart from a couple of apparent motorcycle joyrides in the nearby sand-filled gullies -- showed no signs of going anywhere.
Maybe we'll have a peaceful night up here, all to ourselves, Mialkovsky thought, an idea that was unlikely at best. In his experience, things never worked out as planned. There was always a need to adapt to the some unexpected event, and that was perfectly fine as far as he was concerned.
In truth, he enjoyed the adapting part far more than the hunt...or even the kill.
The scopes and sensors he had brought with him on this particular night were state-of-the-art, so it was especially ironic that Mialkovsky was first alerted to the approaching SUV when the mule deer's ears suddenly cupped and swung around to focus on the distant new sound.
Six minutes later, Mialkovsky's far-less-sensitive ears finally detected the noise of the Escalade's muscular engine. But he'd had the bouncing and swerving off-road vehicle in his night-vision-enhanced telescopic sights for five of those minutes, and was now chuckling to himself as he watched the driver hit the ruts and bumps that would have been a lot easier to see -- and avoid -- with the headlights on.
"Back off it, you idiot," Mialkovsky muttered irritably. The last thing he needed on this particular evening was an unplanned accident with unpredictable consequences.
But the heavyset driver of the Escalade showed no indication of halting his aggressive, high-speed ascent of the narrow dirt road, in spite of the fact that he was completely dependent on his front-seat passenger -- a broad-shouldered man who appeared to be using a pair of night-vision-equipped binoculars -- to guide them along the otherwise pitch-black roadway. On three separate occasions, the wildly driven four-wheel-drive vehicle missed careening off the road and tumbling down the mountain by mere inches.
Mialkovsky shook his head in amazement.
Some people just can't help doing things the hard way; it's their nature, he reminded himself as he watched the dark-painted Escalade finally come to a sand-and-dirt-and-gravel-spewing stop behind a mass of boulders down near the base of the trail.
Moments later, in a chorus of slamming doors, clanks, curses, and general stumbling, intermixed with audible hissings to "be quiet," the two men began working their way u...
