Savage Son

by Jack Carr

  Due in no small part to his friend’s refusal to provide any useful information to investigators and out of concern for the damage it could do if the facts of the case became public, Raife was eventually cleared of the accusation. The CIA protecting an insurgent responsible for blowing up members of the U.S. military, long-term penetration agent or not, would not play well in the court of public opinion. Wasn’t the job of SEALs to kill terrorists?

  Raife was removed from theater and assigned to the Naval Special Warfare Cold Weather Warfare Detachment on Kodiak Island in Alaska. There he put his ample outdoor skills to use training new SEALs to survive and thrive in the austere climate of the North. It was a perfect fit for the adopted son of Montana but, as an officer, he couldn’t stay in the job indefinitely. He had grown tired of watching men and women come home from endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan physically and emotionally broken; it was time to move on. When he received orders to move into a staff role down in Coronado, he dropped his papers and resigned his commission.

  He first took a job in finance, throwing himself into it with the same zeal with which he had attacked all of life’s challenges, but he felt suffocated by life in Manhattan. Raife was rushing to the office one day when he received a text message telling him that his old team chief at [Redacted] had shot himself in the heart. He’d left a suicide note apologizing to his wife and children and asking that his brain be used to study the effects of traumatic brain injury and PTSD. After two weeks in Virginia Beach assisting the family and attending the memorial and funeral, Raife decided it was time to go home.

  As Raife made the long drive from New York to western Montana, his mind went to work. He needed to find a way to help transition his former teammates into life beyond the fight, a bridge to the next chapter in life. You couldn’t just hand them a suit and help them write a resume; they needed to find purpose again.

  Raife also examined his own life. A natural loner who thrived in the solitude of the outdoors, Raife still knew something was missing.

  Annika Thornton had been his on-again, off-again girlfriend since high school. Their fathers were close friends and adjoining landowners in many of their real estate holdings. It had been Annika’s father, Tim, who had encouraged Jonathan Hastings to diversify his cattle earnings into Montana real estate; that move had proven to be vastly more lucrative than ranching. While Raife chose to attend the University of Montana in Missoula, Annika was accepted to Yale, and they drifted apart. When Raife was based in Virginia Beach and she was in graduate school at Wharton in Philadelphia, their relationship rekindled, and Raife had nearly proposed.

  When he received word that he’d earned a coveted slot at Green Team, his personal life was forced to the back burner. Annika took a job in San Francisco and, soon after that, 9/11 hit. Raife’s life was focused on his endless overseas deployments, and hers was spent making her own way in the business world. They kept in touch and reunited whenever their geographic paths crossed.

  When it came time for her father, Tim “Thorn” Thornton, to pull back on the reins of life and spend some time away from the business, he was finally able to convince Annika to return to Montana. She was serving as the chief operating officer of a Dallas-based energy firm and on a path to be the company’s first female CEO. She had proven to herself and everyone else that she could be successful on her own. No one would doubt her ability to serve as president of the family’s vast petroleum and real estate empire. The two childhood sweethearts were finally back in big-sky country.

  The wedding of Tim Thornton’s only daughter could have been a lavish affair, the formal joining of two families who were some of Montana’s largest and wealthiest landowners. Instead they opted for more subdued nuptials at Raife’s uncle’s hunting operation in Niassa Game Reserve, Mozambique.

  When the newlyweds returned from a three-week honeymoon that took them across South Africa from Cape Town to a private game reserve in the Sabi Sands, Raife went to work building the next chapter in his life. Both the Hastings and Thornton families had been leasing their land to hunting outfitters for years, and some had been more dedicated than others when it came to managing the natural resources. Raife built a plan that would sustainably manage the ranches’ wildlife while providing a path forward for his fellow special operations veterans.

  He consolidated all of the leases into a single outfitting business that handled everything from the booking of the clients to the processing and shipping of the meat. There were a surprising number of closet hunters among his associates in the world of New York finance and, thanks to his time spent on Wall Street, he rapidly built a steady stream of clients. Word spread quickly that Raife delivered a high-quality outdoor experience, and he soon had a waiting list.

  A hunting operation is only as good as its guides and that was an area where Raife was able to differentiate himself from the rest of the industry. He hired the best outdoorsmen he had served with in the military, including several of the instructors from Kodiak. They were hardworking, competent, reliable, and fun to be around; the clients loved them, and they delivered. The guides received a steady stream of income while finding time to take a breath and evaluate their priorities outside the world of special operations. Raife’s goal was to connect successful businessmen, entrepreneurs, and financiers with hardened operators. This created an informal network that became known as Warrior/Guardians. Those in the private sector connected to a community of talent that was unprecedented in modern society and that was often shrouded in secrecy. Both groups recognized the value in bridging the divide between those who did the fighting and those who paid for it, and more than a few internships, businesses, foundations, and fresh starts were born under the Montana skies. When the operation began hosting wounded veterans on hunts as part of a foundation funded by successful clients, the guides found even greater purpose. Bonding under the stars, these men and women, many of whom had been grievously injured by IEDs, began healing the emotional wounds of war.

  The business was doing well and was financially viable, but Raife and his guide team quickly realized that they had a problem on their hands: many of their clients, successful individuals who led busy lives, couldn’t shoot very well. Wounding animals was unacceptable so, in typical Hastings fashion, Raife made a plan. He hired retiring instructors from the SEAL sniper school in Indiana to design and implement a hunter training program on one of Thorn’s properties outside Missoula. He made attendance a prerequisite for booking a hunt and client performance improved drastically. Once word got out, the school took on a life of its own and was soon making more money than the outfitting business. Ironically, government contracts with special operations units provided the school’s most reliable clients.

  The final piece fell into place when Raife was personally guiding a client who had drawn a once-in-a-lifetime Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep tag in the Missouri Breaks. After a tough stalk, the client’s expensive custom rifle went “click” when it should have gone “bang,” and the old ram that they’d been tracking for days gave them the slip. Working in the dark by headlamp back in camp that night, Raife diagnosed the problem. His discriminating eye noted several issues, all of which came as a shock to the client. The hunter asked Raife if he’d be willing to build him a dependable rifle and the former SEAL’s career as a custom gun maker was born.

  Reece pulled his Land Cruiser in front of the structure that served as the gun making shop and parked next to Raife’s Defender. He opened the metal shop door quietly; Raife’s eyes never lifted from his work as his friend entered his domain. The space was large but not excessively so and was filled with the various tools of the trade. Reece expected to see modern computer-controlled machinery but, instead, found himself among aging but well-maintained equipment with names like Bridgeport and Hardinge, relics of America’s industrial age. The cast iron hulks were painted a glossy gray and looked like something that one would encounter in the machine shop of a navy ship. There were rifles on a rack in various stages of complet
ion, numerous workbenches, and a hand-loading table stacked with the tools necessary for loading precision ammunition. A blue Dillon press for handgun rounds sat next to a heavy green single-stage used for rifle cartridges. Boxes of dies lined the cabinet above.

  Raife was wearing a jeweler’s magnified optivisor over the worn ball cap that he’d turned backward to accommodate the device. He stood over a waist-high bench vise, focused on the partially shaped blank of French walnut that was clamped inside its cork-covered jaws. He wore a heavy leather apron and his blackened hands held a small chisel.

  “There’s coffee,” Raife said, nodding his head toward a desk against the wall without moving his eyes from his work. “Sorry, no honey.”

  Reece chuckled as he poured the steaming liquid into an enameled mug painted with the Black Rifle Coffee Company’s logo. He took a seat on a stool a few feet away from Raife and watched as his friend coated a rifle’s action and barrel with a thin black sludge using a small paintbrush. He then lowered the steel into the inletting of the walnut stock and tapped it with a rawhide mallet. He lifted the barreled action and examined the inletting, taking note of where the black oil had marked the raw wood. A dozen chisels, gouges, and scrapers were strewn on the bench in front of him and he selected one. He made a series of small cuts with the razor-sharp tool before retrieving the barrel and repeating the process all over again. Reece always appreciated watching true artisans at their craft and he sat silently as Raife focused, gently inletting the metal work into the wooden stock so that the two became seamlessly joined.

  Finally satisfied, Raife turned off the lamp above his work and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “How long does it take?” Reece asked.

  “The inletting? A few hours.”

  “No, the whole rifle.”

  “I’ll probably have two hundred fifty hours in this one by the time it’s ready.”

  “That’s like two months.”

  “Six weeks, but you never were a numbers guy. Yeah, it’s a lot of work, which is why I don’t sell them cheap.”

  “What will that rifle run?”

  “About fifty grand.”

  “Rich kid shit.” Reece smiled.

  “That it is.”

  “Where’d you learn to build rifles?”

  “Back in Africa you had to be self-reliant to survive, so I learned from doing. I wanted to get the trade right, so I spent six months apprenticing with D’Arcy Echols in Utah.”

  “He built the .300 Win Mag my dad gave me.”

  “He’s the one; best there is. Jerry Fisher down in Big Fork put me in touch with him. For two months all he let me do was sweep the floor and polish metal; my rite of passage, I guess. Then he took me under his wing.”

  “He sure can build a tack driver. I need to track down that rifle. Not sure what happened to it when I skipped town.”

  “It’s in my vault.”

  “What? How’d you get it?”

  “Liz gave it to me. You left it in her plane along with some other gear. I hid it until you got pardoned so they couldn’t use it as evidence.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “Don’t mention it. Figured if you got killed or went to prison, I’d at least have a nice rifle.”

  Reece frowned. “By the way, I noticed an interesting article in a Petersen’s Hunting magazine in the cabin.”

  “Did you?” Raife asked.

  “Looked like one of the photos was taken right across my lake. Written by S. Rainsford. You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you?”

  Raife offered a rare half smile.

  “Good catch. I do some outdoor writing under that pen name. Most don’t get the reference today. Just trying to avoid the stigma of being another SEAL author. Let’s go get you your rifle, eh?”

  Reece briefly wondered if his urge to hold the rifle again was because it was one of the few tangible links left to his father or perhaps something darker. The last time he’d pressed its trigger he’d sent a bullet through the brain of one of the men who had masterminded the death of his wife and child. He’d made the killing look like a hunting accident in order to buy the time he needed to cross the remaining names off his terminal list.

  * * *

  Later that night, Reece sat alone by a fire at the water’s edge, the Echols Legend across his lap. He alternated his gaze between the empty chair to his right and the mountains across the lake, a wilderness he’d never explore with his wife, daughter, or unborn son. He remained unmoving but for his finger slowly caressing the outside edge of the trigger guard, the fire dying to embers, glowing only when the wind picked up off the lake.

  As the sun rose the following morning, Reece’s finger continued to stroke the trigger guard, his only companions the memories of the dead.

  CHAPTER 10

  Saint Petersburg, Russia

  IVAN ZHARKOV PUT DOWN the newspaper and took a sip of his tea. He sat in a leather armchair in his bedroom, unable to sleep. His late wife would have chastised him for taking caffeine this late, but it didn’t make any difference. It wasn’t the powerful stimulant, nor was it the demands of his position as one of Russia’s most powerful figures in organized crime that robbed him of his rest: it was Aleksandr.

  His eldest son’s birth had been a difficult one for Katrina, and the depression that followed had been even worse. Ivan was too busy to notice but, in hindsight, she and the child never formed the crucial bond between mother and child. Katrina would stare out the window as the child cried, attending to his physical needs when necessary but never nurturing his emotional ones. She became cold, distant, unattached. When she took her life with a .25 ACP Korovin TK pistol, it was a young Aleksandr who found her, lying in bed after just having finished the last page of Sofia Petrovna. When Ivan entered the room and grabbed his young child to shield him from the grisly sight of his dead mother, he thought the boy was in shock. He didn’t accept until years later that it wasn’t shock; it was curiosity.

  Aleksandr remained a mystery to the elder Zharkov. The boy was bright and handsome and, from the outside, was everything a father could want. Inside, though, there was a darkness. Aleksandr could be cruel to his younger brothers, even when they were quite young; their nannies had to protect them from him. His actions weren’t out of anger or jealousy; rather, they were for amusement.

  On their first hunt, north of Moscow in the ancient forests of the Yaroslavl District, Ivan’s worst fears were confirmed. They had taken the train together and ten-year-old Aleksandr had watched the country pass by the large windows in silence. It was a beautiful October day when the father and son ventured out from their cabin. This was a traditional European driven hunt, meaning the hunters were assigned stands or positions and the animals were pushed in their direction using hounds. Ivan’s peg was a hundred or so yards away from Aleksandr’s, far enough away to give the boy some independence but close enough to keep an eye on him. To commemorate the hunt, Ivan had given his son a custom 8x57mm Mauser sporting rifle that Ivan’s father had brought back from the Great Patriotic War, no doubt looted from a German officer. The rifle was deeply engraved in the Germanic style and had been fitted with set triggers and a Zeiss scope in claw mounts, a testament to the proud tradition of Teutonic gun making. Aleksandr had long admired the rifle in his father’s cabinet and was delighted to now call it his own. Since so few things seemed to bring him joy, it warmed Ivan’s heart to see his son’s eyes brighten.

  The distant bark of the hounds grew louder as the game was driven before them. A boar sped toward Ivan and pitched forward as he made a perfect running shot. The sound ringing in his ears in the stillness of the morning, Ivan saw a brown blur to his right. Moose! A second later, he heard the report of Aleksandr’s rifle and the unmistakable sound of a bullet striking flesh. There was silence and then a crash, no doubt the sound of the moose collapsing. It was a break of protocol to leave one’s stand before the drive was finished but Ivan wanted to be by his son’s side. He jogged toward the sound of
the crash, his eyes searching for a sign of either hunter or prey.

  He saw the moose first, crippled with a spine shot and struggling in vain to drag itself away from its tormentor. The large mammal dwarfed young Aleksandr, and Ivan was afraid that the moose would stomp the youngster or bludgeon him with his palmated spread of antler. But, as he approached, his concern turned to disgust; Aleksandr stood without fear, watching the animal writhe in agony. He was smiling. Ivan ran to the front of the animal to give himself a safe shot and fired a round into the bull’s chest, dropping him to the ground and putting an end to his suffering.

  Turning to face his son, Ivan slowly took possession of the Mauser, chilled by the hatred he saw burning in his child’s eyes. That hatred directed toward Ivan for ending the animal’s agony prematurely would haunt the mafia boss for the remainder of his days.

  CHAPTER 11

  Petersburg Petroleum Company, Saint Petersburg, Russia