The Hunters Read online

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Copyright © 2006 by W.E.B. Griffin

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  ISBN: 1-4295-3172-X

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  THE HUNTERS

  ALSO BY W.E.B. GRIFFIN

  HONOR BOUND

  HONOR BOUND

  BLOOD AND HONOR

  SECRET HONOR

  BROTHERHOOD OF WAR

  BOOK I: THE LIEUTENANTS

  BOOK II: THE CAPTAINS

  BOOK III: THE MAJORS

  BOOK IV: THE COLONELS

  BOOK V: THE BERETS

  BOOK VI: THE GENERALS

  BOOK VII: THE NEW BREED

  BOOK VIII: THE AVIATORS

  BOOK IX: SPECIAL OPS

  THE CORPS

  BOOK I: SEMPER FI

  BOOK II: CALL TO ARMS

  BOOK III: COUNTERATTACK

  BOOK IV: BATTLEGROUND

  BOOK V: LINE OF FIRE

  BOOK VI: CLOSE COMBAT

  BOOK VII: BEHIND THE LINES

  BOOK VIII: IN DANGER’S PATH

  BOOK IX: UNDER FIRE

  BOOK X: RETREAT, HELL!

  BADGE OF HONOR

  BOOK I: MEN IN BLUE

  BOOK II: SPECIAL OPERATIONS

  BOOK III: THE VICTIM

  BOOK IV: THE WITNESS

  BOOK V: THE ASSASSIN

  BOOK VI: THE MURDERERS

  BOOK VII: THE INVESTIGATORS

  BOOK VIII: FINAL JUSTICE

  MEN AT WAR

  BOOK I: THE LAST HEROES

  BOOK II: THE SECRET WARRIORS

  BOOK III: THE SOLDIER SPIES

  BOOK IV: THE FIGHTING AGENTS

  BOOK V: THE SABOTEURS (with William E. Butter worth IV)

  PRESIDENTIAL AGENT

  BOOK I: BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT

  BOOK II: THE HOSTAGE

  THE HUNTERS

  W.E.B. GRIFFIN

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  NEW YORK

  Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  * * *

  26 July 1777

  The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged.

  George Washington

  General and Commander in Chief

  The Continental Army

  * * *

  FOR THE LATE

  WILLIAM E. COLBY

  An OSS Jedburgh first lieutenant

  who became director of the Central Intelligence Agency

  AARON BANK

  An OSS Jedburgh first lieutenant

  who became a colonel and the father of Special Forces

  WILLIAM R. CORSON

  A legendary Marine intelligence officer

  whom the KGB hated more than any other U.S. intelligence officer— and not only because he wrote the definitive work on them

  FOR THE LIVING

  BILLY WAUGH

  A legendary Special Forces command sergeant major who retired and then went on to hunt down the infamous Carlos the Jackal. Billy could have terminated Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s but could not get permission to do so. After fifty years in the business, Billy is still going after the bad guys

  RENÉ J. DÉFOURNEAUX

  A U.S. Army OSS second lieutenant attached to the British SOE who jumped into Occupied France alone and later became a legendary U.S. Army counterintelligence officer

  JOHNNY REITZEL

  An Army special operations officer who could have terminated the head terrorist of the seized cruise ship Achille Lauro but could not get permission to do so

  RALPH PETERS

  An Army intelligence officer who has written the best analysis of our war against terrorists and of our enemy that I have ever seen

  AND FOR THE NEW BREED

  MARC L

  A senior intelligence officer despite his youth

  who reminds me of Bill Colby more and more each day

  FRANK L

  A legendary Defense Intelligence Agency officer who retired and now follows in Billy Waugh’s footsteps

  OUR NATION OWES ALL OF THESE PATRIOTS

  A DEBT BEYOND REPAYMENT

  I

  [ONE]

  Danubius Hotel Gellért

  Szent Gellért tér 1 Budapest, Hungary

  0035 1 August 2005

  When he heard the ping of the bell announcing the arrival of an elevator in the lobby of the Gellért, Sándor Tor, who was the director of security for the Budapester Neue Tages Zeitung, raised his eyes from a copy of the newspaper—so fresh from the presses that his fingers were stained with ink—to see who would be getting off.

  He was not at all surprised to see that it was Eric Kocian, managing director and editor in chief of the newspaper. The first stop of the first Tages Zeitung delivery truck to leave the plant was the Gellért.

  The old man must have been looking out his window again, Tor thought, waiting to see the truck arrive.

  Tor was a burly fifty-two-year-old with a full head of curly black hair and a full mustache. He wore a dark blue single-breasted suit carefully tailored to conceal the Swiss SIGARMS P228 9mm semiautomatic pistol he carried in a high-ride hip holster.

  He looked like a successful businessman with a very good tailor, but he paled beside Eric Kocian, who stepped off the elevator into the Gellért lobby wearing an off-white linen suit with a white shirt, a white tie held to the collar with a discreet gold pin, soft white leather slip-on shoes, a white panama hat—the wide brim rakishly up on the right and down on the left—and carrying a sturdy knurled cane with a b
rass handle in the shape of a well-bosomed female.

  Kocian was accompanied by a large dog. The dog was shaped like a boxer, but he was at least a time and a half—perhaps twice—as large as a big boxer, and his coat was grayish black and tightly curled.

  Kocian walked to a table in the center of the lobby where a stack of the Tages Zeitung had been placed, picked up a copy carefully—so as not to soil his well-manicured fingers—and examined the front page.

  Then he folded the newspaper and extended it to the dog.

  “You hold it awhile, Max,” he said. “Your tongue is already black.”

  Then he turned and, resting both hands on the cane, carefully surveyed the lobby.

  He found what he was looking for—Sándor Tor—sitting in an armchair in a dark corner of the lobby. Kocian pointed his cane at arm’s length at Tor, not unlike a cavalry officer leading a charge, and walked quickly toward him. The dog, newspaper in his mouth, never left Kocian’s side.

  Six feet from Tor, Kocian stopped and, without lowering the cane, said, “Sándor, I distinctly remember telling you that I would not require your services anymore today and to go home.”

  A lesser man would have been cowed. Sándor Tor did not. As a young man, he had done a hitch in the French Foreign Legion and subsequently had never been cowed by anyone or anything.

  He pushed himself far enough out of the armchair to reach the dog’s head, scratched his ears, and said, “How goes it, Max?” Then he looked up at Kocian and said, “You have been known to change your mind, Úr Kocian.”

  “This is not one of those rare occasions,” Kocian said. He let that sink in and then added: “But since you are already here, you might as well take us—on your way home—to the Franz Joséf Bridge.”

  With that, Kocian turned on his heel and walked quickly to the entrance. Max trotted to keep up with him.

  Tor got out of his chair as quickly as he could and started after him.

  My God, he’s eighty-two!

  As he walked, Tor took a cellular telephone from his shirt pocket, pushed an autodial button, and held the telephone to his ear.

  “He’s on the way to the car,” he said without preliminary greeting. “He wants me to drop him at the Szabadság híd. Pick him up on the other side.”

  The Szabadság híd, the Freedom Bridge, across the Danube River was are-creation of the original 1899 bridge that had been destroyed—as had all the other bridges over the Danube—in the bitter fighting of World War II. It had been named after Franz Joséf, then king and emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was the first to be rebuilt, as close to the original as possible, and, when completed in 1946, had been renamed the Freedom Bridge.

  Eric Kocian simply refused to accept the name change.

  “If the communists were happy with that Freedom name, there’s obviously something wrong with it,” he had said more than once. “Franz Joséf may have been a sonofabitch, but, compared to the communists, he was a saint.”

  There was a silver Mercedes-Benz S500 sitting just outside the door of the Gellért.

  For a moment, Sándor Tor was afraid that the old man had grown impatient and decided to walk. Then there came a long blast on the horn.

  Tor quickly trotted around the front of the car and got behind the wheel. Kocian was in the front passenger’s seat. Max, still with the newspaper in his mouth, was sitting up in the backseat.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Kocian demanded.

  “I had to take a leak.”

  “You should have taken care of that earlier,” Kocian said.

  It wasn’t far at all from the door of the Gellért to the bridge, but if Kocian had elected to walk he would have had to cross the road paralleling the Danube, down which traffic often flew.

  The old man wasn’t concerned for himself, Tor knew, but for the dog. One of Max’s predecessors—there had been several, all the same breed, Bouvier des Flandres, all named Max—had been run over and killed on that highway.

  It was a standard joke around the Gellért and the Budapester Tages Zeitung that the only thing the old man loved was his goddamned dog and that the only living thing that could possibly love the old man was his goddamned dog.

  Sándor Tor knew better. Once, Tor had heard a pressman parrot the joke and had grabbed him by the neck, forced his head close to the gears of the running press, and promised the next time he heard him running his mouth he’d feed him to the press.

  “Turn on the flashers when you stop,” Kocian ordered as the Mercedes approached the bridge, “and I’ll open the doors for Max and myself, thank you very much.”

  “Yes, Úr Kocian.”

  “And don’t hang around to see if Max and I can make it across the bridge without your assistance. Go home.”

  “Yes, Úr Kocian.”

  “And in the morning, be on time for once.”

  “I will try, Úr Kocian.”

  “Good night, Sándor. Sleep well.”

  “Thank you, Úr Kocian.”

  Tor watched in the right side rearview mirror as Kocian and the dog started across the bridge. Tor already had his cellular in his hand. He pressed the autodial button again.

  Across the river, Ervin Rákosi’s cellular vibrated in his pocket, causing the wireless speaker bud in his ear to ring. He pushed one of the phone’s buttons—it did not matter which since he had programmed the device to answer calls whenever any part of the keypad was depressed—and heard Tor’s voice come through the earbud:

  “They’re on the bridge.”

  “Got him, Sándor.”

  “He’ll be watching me, so I’ll have to go up the Vámház körút as far as Pipa before I can turn.”

  “I told you I have him, Sándor.”

  “Just do what I tell you to do. I’ll pick him up when he passes Sóház.”

  “Any idea where he’s going?”

  “Absolutely none.”

  It was Eric Kocian’s custom to take Max for a walk before retiring, which usually meant they left the Gellért around half past eleven. Almost always, they walked across the bridge, and, almost always, they stopped in a café, bar, or restaurant for a little sustenance. Lately, they’d been going to the Képíró, a narrow restaurant/bar which offered good jazz, Jack Daniel’s Black Label bourbon, and a menu pleasing to Max, who was fond of hard sausage.

  But that was no guarantee they’d be going there tonight, and if Sándor Tor had asked the old man where he was going the old man would either have told him it was none of his goddamned business or lied.

  In fact, it was Sándor Tor’s business to know where the old man was and where he was going, and to keep him from harm. His orders to protect Eric Kocian—“Cost be damned, and, for God’s sake, don’t let the old man know he’s being protected”—had come from Generaldirektor Otto Görner of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., the German holding company that owned, among a good deal else, half a dozen newspapers, including the Budapester Neue Tages Zeitung.

  When he came off the bridge, Tor saw Ervin Rákosi’s dark green Chrysler Grand Caravan at the first intersection in a position from which Rákosi could see just about all of the bridge. He continued up the Vámház körút for two blocks and then made a right turn onto Pipa. He circled the block, on toward Sóház U, pulled to the curb behind a panel truck half a block from Vámház körút, and turned off the headlights.

  Tor’s cellular buzzed.

  “He’s almost at Sóház U,” Rákosi reported.

  “I’m fifty meters from the intersection,” Tor’s voice said in Rákosi’s earbud.

  Thirty seconds later, Eric Kocian and Max appeared, walking briskly up the steep incline.

  One of these days, Tor thought, he’s going to do that and have a heart attack.

  Tor reported: “He just went past. Follow him and see where he goes.”

  Thirty seconds after that, the Chrysler came slowly up Vámház körút.

  Sixty seconds after that, Rákosi reported, “He’s turned onto
Királyi Pál. It looks as if he is going to the Képíró.”

  “Don’t follow him. Drive around the block and then down Képíró U.”

  Tor backed away from the panel truck and then drove onto Vámház körút and turned right. When he drove past Királyi Pál, he saw Eric Kocian turning onto Képíró.

  A moment later, Rákosi reported: “He went in.”

  “Okay,” Tor ordered, “you find someplace to park where you can catch him when he comes out. I’ll park, and see if I can look into the restaurant.”

  “Got it,” Rákosi said.

  Tor found the darkened doorway—he had used it before—from which he could see into the Képíró restaurant.

  Kocian was sitting at a small table between the bar and the door. A jazz quartet was set up between his table and the bar. There was a bottle of whiskey on the table and a bottle of soda water, and, as Tor watched, a waiter delivered a plate of food.

  Sausage for the both of them, Tor knew. Kielbasa for the old man and some kind of hard sausage for Max. Kocian cut a slice of the kielbasa for himself and put it in his mouth. Max laid a paw on the old man’s leg. Kocian sawed at the hard sausage until there was a thumb-sized piece on his fork. He extended the fork to Max, who delicately pulled off the treat. Kocian patted the dog’s head.

  A procession of people—including three hookers, one at a time—entering and leaving the restaurant paused by Kocian’s chair and shook his hand or allowed him to kiss theirs. The more courageous of them patted Max’s head. Kocian always rose to his feet to accept the greetings of the hookers, but as long as Tor had been guarding him he had never taken one back to the Gellért with him.