Popov saddled Buttermilk at about six that evening. The sun wasn’t setting yet, but that was less than an hour away, and his horse, having rested and eaten all day, was not the least bit averse to his attention-besides, he’d given Buttermilk another apple, and the mare seemed to relish them as a man might enjoy his first glass of beer after a long working day.
Jeremiah, Hunnicutt’s horse, was smaller than Buttermilk, but appeared more powerful. An odd-looking animal, his light gray coat was covered from hindquarters to neck with an almost perfectly square matlike mark of deep charcoal, hence the name “blanket Appaloosa,”the Russian imagined. Foster Hunnicutt showed up, hoisting his large Western-style saddle on his shoulder, and tossing it atop the blanket, then reaching under to cinch the straps in. His last act, Popov saw, was to strap on his Colt pistol. Then he slid his left foot into the left-side stirrup and climbed aboard. Jeremiah, the stallion, must have liked to be ridden. It was as though the animal transformed himself with this new weight on his back. The head came up proudly, and the ears swiveled around, waiting for the command of its rider. That was a clucking sound, and the stallion moved out into the corral alongside Popov and Buttermilk.
“He is a fine horse, Foster.”
“Best I’ve ever had,” the hunter agreed. “The App’s a great all around critter. They come from the Nez Perce Indian tribe. The Nez Perce captured the original Western horses-they were the ones who escaped from the Spanish conquistadors, and bred out in the wild. Well, the Nez Perce learned how to breed them back to the Arabian roots of the Spanish breed, and came out with these.” Hunnicutt reached down to pat his horse’s neck with rough affection, which the animal seemed to like. “The Appaloosa’s the best horse there is, if you ask me. Smart, steady, healthy breed, not dizzy like the Arabians are, and damned pretty, I think. They aren’t the best at any one thing, but they’re damned good in all things. Great all around mount. Jeremiah here’s a great hunting and tracking horse. We’ve spent a lot of time in the high country after elk. He even found my gold for me.”
“Excuse me? Gold?”
Hunnicutt laughed. “My spread up in Montana. It used to be part of a cattle ranch, but the mountains are too steep for the cows. Anyway, there’s a stream coming down from the mountain. I was letting Jeremiah drink one afternoon, and I saw something shiny, okay?” Hunnicutt stretched. “It was gold, a big hunk of gold and quartz-that’s the best geological formation for gold, Dmitriy. Anyway, I figure I got a fair-sized deposit on my land. How big? There’s no tellin’, and it doesn’t matter much anyway.”
“Not matter?” Popov turned in the saddle to look at his companion. “Foster, for the last ten thousand years men have killed one another over gold.”
“Not anymore, Dmitriy. That’s going to end-forever, probably.”
“But how? Why?” Popov demanded.
“Don’t you know about the Project?”
“A little, but not enough to understand what you just said.”
What the hell, the hunter thought. “Dmitriy, human life on the planet is going to come to a screeching halt, boy.”
“But ”
“They didn’t tell you?”
“No, Foster, not that part. Can you tell me?”
What the hell, Hunnicutt thought again. The Olympics were almost over. Why not? This Russkie understood about Nature, knew about riding, and he damned sure worked for John Brightling in a very sensitive capacity.
“It’s called Shiva,” he began, and went on for several minutes.
For Popov it was a time to put his professional face back on. His emotions were neutralized while he listened. He even managed a smile which masked his inner horror.
“But how do you distribute it?”
“Well, you see, John has a company that also works for him. Global Security-the boss man’s a guy named Henriksen.”
“Ah, yes, I know him. He was in your FBI.”
“Oh? I knew he was a cop, but not a fed. Anyway, they got the consulting contract withthe Aussies for the Olympics, and one of Bill’s people will be spreading the Shiva. Something to do with the air-conditioning system at the stadium, they tell me. They’re going to spread it on the last day, see, and the closing ceremonies. The next day everyone flies home, and then, like, thousands of people all take the bug home with them.”
“But what protects us?”
“You got a shot when you came here, right?”
“Yes, Killgore said it was a booster for something.”
“Oh, it was, Dmitriy. It’s a booster, all right. It’s the vaccine that protects you against Shiva. I got it, too. That’s the `B’ vaccine, pal. There’s another one, they tell me, the `A’ vaccine, but that one’s not the one you want to get.” Hunnicutt explained on.
“How do you know all this?” Popov asked.
“Well, you see, in case people figure this out, I’m one of the guys who helped set up the perimeter security System here. So, they told me why the Project needs perimeter security. It’s pretty serious shit, man. If anyone were to find out about what was done, hell, they might even nuke us, y’know?” Foster pointed out with a grin. “Not many people really understand about saving the planet. I mean, we do this now, or in about twenty years, hell, everything and everybody dies. Not just the people. The animals, too. We can’t let that happen, can we?”
“I see your point. Yes, that does make sense,” Dmitriy Arkadeyevich agreed, without choking on his words.
Hunnicutt nodded with some satisfaction. “I figured you’d get it, man. So, those terrorist things you got started, well, they were very pretty important. Without getting everybody all hot and bothered about international terrorism, Bill Hendriksen might not have got his people in place to do their little job. So,” Hunnicutt said as he fished a cigar out of his pocket, “thanks, Dmitriy. You were really an important part for this here Project.”
“Thank you, Foster,” Popov responded. Is this possible? he wondered. “How certain are you that this will work?”
“It oughta work. I asked that question, too. They let me in on some of the planning, ‘cuz I’m a scientist-I was a pretty good geologist once, trust me. I know a lot of stuff. The disease is a real mother. The real key to that was the genetic engineering done on the original Ebola. Hell, you remember how scary that was a year and a half ago, right?”Popov nodded. “Oh, yes. I was in Russia then, and it was very frightening indeed.” Even more frightening had been the response American president, he reminded himself.
“Well, they-the real Project scientists-learned a lot from that. The key to this is the `A’ vaccine. The original outbreak may kill a few million people, but that’s mainly psychological. The vaccine that Horizon’s going to market is a live-virus vaccine, like the Sabin polio vaccine. But they’ve tuned it, like. It doesn’t stop Shiva, man. It spreads Shiva. Takes a month to six weeks for the symptoms to show. They proved that in the lab.”
“How?”
“Well, Kirk was part of that. He kidnapped some folks off the street, and they tested the Shiva and the vaccines on them. Everything worked, even the first-phase delivery system that’s set up to use in Sydney.”
“It is a big thing, to change the face of the world.” Popov thought aloud, looking north to where the interstate highway was.
“Gotta be done, man. If we don’t-well, you can kiss all this good-bye, Dmitriy. I can’t let that happen.”
“It’s a terrible thing to do, but I seethe logic of your position. Brightling is a genius, to see this, to find a way, of solving the problem, and then to have the courage to act.” Popov hoped his voice wasn’t too patronizing, but this man Hunnicutt was a technocrat, not one who understood people.
“Yep,” Hunnicutt said around the cigar, as he lit it with a kitchen match. He blew the match out, then held it until it was cold before letting it fall to the ground, lest it start a prairie fire. “Brilliant scientist, and he gets it, you know? Thank God, he has the resources to make all this happen. Setting all this up must have cost near onto a billion dollars-hell, just this place, not counting the one in Brazil.”
“Brazil?”
“There’s a smaller version of the complex down there, somewhere west of Manaus, I think. I never been there. The rain forest doesn’t interest me that much. I’m an open country sort of guy,” Hunnicutt explained. “Now, the African veldt, the plains there, that’s something else. Well, I guess I’ll get to see it, and hunt it.”
“Yes, I would like to see that, to see the wildlife, how it lives and thrives in the sun,” Popov agreed, coming to his own decision.”Yep. Gonna get me a lion or two there with my H&H .375.” Hunnicutt clucked and got Jeremiah to go faster, an easy canter that Popov tried to duplicate. He’d done this pace before, but now he found that he had trouble synchronizing with Buttermilk’s rather easy motions. He had to switch his mind back into his body to make that happen, but he managed it, catching up with the hunter.