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  For Brad Thor, without whom this post-military chapter of my life would not be possible

  and,

  to those who run to the sound of the guns.

  Fortuna Favet Fortibus

  “There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.”

  —Ernest Hemingway

  PREFACE

  I WAS, AND REMAIN, a student of war and of the hunt. Experiences in combat and in the backcountry helped shape me into the citizen, husband, father, and writer I am today. The one has made me better at the other. I suspect it has always been this way. It is the feelings and emotions from those most primal of endeavors that form the foundation of Savage Son.

  I was first introduced to Richard Connell’s masterpiece, “The Most Dangerous Game,” in junior high school. Connell, a veteran of World War I, published his most celebrated short story in Collier’s Weekly in 1924. Upon that initial reading, I was determined to one day write a modern thriller that paid tribute to this classic tale, exploring the dynamic between hunter and hunted.

  Providing for and defending my family and country are hardwired into my DNA. Perhaps that is why “The Most Dangerous Game” resonated with me at such an early age, or maybe those primal impulses are in all of us, which is why Richard Connell’s narrative continues to endure almost a century after it was first published.

  Fast-forward thirty years. As I prepared to leave the SEAL Teams, I laid out all my ideas for what was to become my first novel, The Terminal List. The plot for Savage Son was among several of the story lines I was contemplating as I decided how to introduce the world to James Reece. For that first outing, I knew my protagonist was not yet ready for what I had in store. I needed to develop him through a journey, first of revenge and then of redemption, before I could explore the dark side of man through the medium of the modern political thriller. Is James Reece a warrior, a hunter, a killer? Perhaps all three?

  Hunting and war are inexorably mixed. They share a common father. Death begets life, and in defense of oneself, one’s family, one’s tribe, or one’s country, killing is often a part of the equation. Throughout most of human history, defeating an enemy in battle led to the survival of the tribe and the continuation of the bloodline. The same tools developed to defeat rivals in combat are analogous to those used in the quest for sustenance. Similar tactics are used to hunt both man and beast. Those who picked up a spear to defend the tribe were the same ones who used that spear to provide food for their families. The reason each and every one of us is alive today is the martial prowess and hunting abilities of our ancestors.

  Much as the hunter, deep in the backcountry, often thinks of his family by the hearth, so too the warrior on the distant battlefield longs for a homecoming. Similarly, when they return home, the hunter dreams of going back to the woods, just as the warrior yearns for battle. Is it the guilt of no longer being in the fight? Not standing shoulder to shoulder with brothers in arms? Or is it missing the sense of belonging that only comes from being part of a team that has spilt blood in war? Or is it something darker? Is it because of the kill? Is it because that is the only place one can truly feel alive? Martin Sheen’s line from Apocalypse Now, the movie my BUD/S class watched before going into Hell Week, rings true for those who have answered the call: “When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle.” Warriors can relate.

  On the battlefield, I witnessed the best and worst of humanity. I have been the hunter, building target packages and developing patterns of life on our targeted individuals, using disassociated human intelligence networks corroborated by technical means to ensure we were taking the right player off the board before launching on a mission to capture or kill them. And I have been the hunted, caught in an ambush in the Al-Rashid District of Baghdad at the height of the war.

  The Global War on Terror has ensured us ample practice, sharpening our skills in the hunting and killing of man. Direct action, special reconnaissance, counterinsurgency, unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, hostage rescue, counterterrorism, and counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction are all crucial special operations mission sets, but it is manhunting that has become a primary focus of our operators and intelligence agencies over the past thirty years: Manuel Noriega, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, Ramzi Yousef, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, to say nothing of the less well known HVIs targeted and killed or captured over the years. At the time of this writing, Ayman al-Zawahiri remains at large but rest assured there are teams of men and women actively hunting him down. It is a specialty in which we have become quite proficient.

  My time in combat was but one chapter in my life. I am now an author. Though I’ve passed the torch to the next generation, my time in uniform will always be a part of me; those memories, lessons, and reflections are now finding their way into the pages of my novels.

  One of the most intriguing passages in “The Most Dangerous Game” is this exchange between the protagonist, Sanger Rainsford, and the antagonist, General Zaroff, where the central theme of the narrative is revealed:

  “I wanted the ideal animal to hunt,” explained the general. “So I said, ‘What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?’ And the answer was, of course, ‘It must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason.’ ”

  “But no animal can reason,” objected Rainsford.

  “My dear fellow,” said the general, “there is one that can.”

  Savage Son explores the darkest impulses of the human psyche. Do they live in all of us, repressed by the comforts and technology of the day? Have we advanced beyond those more primal instincts and if so, who will provide for and defend the tribe? Civilized society tends to keep warriors at arm’s length, only turning to them in times of national emergency. Break glass in case of war.

  We’ve been hunters and warriors for the majority of our existence. Only recently have we evolved, or possibly regressed, into beings with no connection to the land or the wild animals that inhabit it, while also outsourcing our duty to defend our families and our country. Whether this is a “progression” for our species remains to be seen.

  Will there come a day when our survival depends on those primordial abilities? I suspect so. It might not be tomorrow or the day after, but then again, it might.

  In either case, we would be wise to be ready, but right now, it’s time to turn the page and hunt.

  Jack Carr

  August 22, 2019

  Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia

  A NOTE ON DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE REDACTIONS

  IN CERTAIN SECTIONS OF Savage Son, you will notice words and sentences blacked out. Just as with The Terminal List and True Believer, I submitted the manuscript to the Department of Defense Office of Pre-Publication and Security Review. What the government censors have redacted in my novels is surprising in that almost every word and sentence can be found in publicly available government documents and is part of the national discourse.

  Select information should remain classified, yet the current review process is inefficient and ineffective, wasting time and resources to redact information that is in no way harmful
to national security. At issue is freedom. The First Amendment is at the core of our Bill of Rights. It is “The First” for a reason. It is a natural right. It is not a right “given” by government and therefore it cannot be “taken” away. The review process is all about control. As I wrote in the preface to The Terminal List: “The consolidation of power at the federal level in the guise of public safety is a national trend and should be guarded against at all costs. This erosion of rights, however incremental, is the slow death of freedom.”

  Enjoy your time in the pages of Savage Son. Try to ignore the blacked-out sections, or better yet, try to decipher what the government deems so secret. If you read closely, I bet you can figure it out.

  Jack Carr

  February 10, 2020

  Park City, Utah

  PROLOGUE

  Medny Island, Bering Sea, Russia

  SHE WAS A STRONG one. Most humans would have given up by now, the deep snow quickly exhausting even the fittest among them. His snowshoes weren’t exactly sporting, but no one said this was supposed to be fair. His heart rate increased, and he had to take a break to catch his breath due to the steep incline. She had taken the toughest route on the island, directly toward the highest peak. This was a first. A feisty one.

  Still, the tracking was painfully easy in the waist-deep snow. He didn’t speed after her; instead he relished the chase the way one would slowly enjoy a magnificent meal. No, that wasn’t the correct comparison. This was more than that; this was carnal.

  The winds howled as he crested the first of a spine of ridges that ran toward the summit. His quarry’s trail had crossed to the windward side where the gale had already begun to erase her tracks with blowing snow.

  Feisty and crafty.

  The winds had shifted and cold, moist air was now blowing down from the Bering Sea. He looked toward the rapidly disappearing trail and watched the white wall of fog envelop the high ground before him, feeling the elation of finally matching wits with a worthy adversary.

  * * *

  Her jeans were soaked from the snow and her feet were numb inside her boots. She was post-holing through the deep white drifts, each and every step a physical challenge. She knew that to stop would mean death: death from hypothermia, death from those who hunted her. The pursuit had to be their game. Why else would they have let her go?

  She was on an island or at least a peninsula; she could see water on both sides of the treeless landscape. Down to the shore would be the easy route, but that’s what they would expect. The coastline was a death trap. She pushed herself up as her leg muscles screamed from the exertion of high-stepping through the powder. An accomplished endurance athlete, she was used to pain. She was comfortable being uncomfortable. A native of Montana, she was also used to being cold and wet.

  God, I wish my brother were here. He’d know what to do, she thought, remembering their epic trail runs and how they’d cheer one another on at the jiu-jitsu academy.

  The desolate tundra landscape meant she was somewhere in the far north; Scandinavia or Alaska maybe. More likely, somewhere in Russia. The men who took her rarely spoke, but they stank of Turkish tobacco. Her father’s carpenter was an immigrant from Belarus; the odor of burnt leaf and sweat was one she remembered. If that was true, they’d flown her east. Whatever drugs they’d given her had worn off, and she had been fed surprisingly well. They must have wanted her strong. She looked to the sky and saw that weather was blowing in; fresh snow would cover her tracks and the dense fog would give her camouflage. She scrambled across the ridgeline toward the wind; she would make herself disappear.

  * * *

  The whiteout lasted nearly two hours. The hunter made his way back to the base camp to wait it out by the crackling fireplace with a leather-bound copy of Meditations, by the great Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Sergei offered him a brandy but he passed, opting instead for hot tea. There would be plenty of time for celebration later; he wanted nothing in his veins that would dull the pleasure of what was to come. He savored the flavor of a tea smuggled in from China. He had acquired a taste for it on one of his postings, intrigued by the ritual, history, and a classification system to rival French wines in complexity.

  Leaning back in the comfortable leather chair, he took in his surroundings. Above the fireplace hung an impressive Anatolian stag he’d taken in Turkey, a testament to both luck and perseverance. Next to it, a Tin Shan Argali sheep stared at him with lifeless eyes, a hard-won ram taken in the extreme altitudes of Tajikistan. The stone hearth was framed by a thick pair of Botswanan elephant tusks, each of which weighed in just under the mythical hundred-pound mark; he’d walked at least that many miles in pursuit of them. Though he looked upon these trophies fondly, he saw them as relics of a past life similar to the medallions he’d won in sports as a child. He had since moved on to more challenging and satisfying pursuits.

  He pulled a Dunhill from the pocket of his wool shirt and lit it with the gold S. T. Dupont lighter that had been a gift from his father. He slid his thumb across the engraved double-headed imperial eagle emblem of the SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service; some vestiges of the czar had survived even communism. What to do about his father? Not now. Later.

  He sipped his tea and visualized his stalk. He had several hours of daylight left, and it was imperative that he find her before dark. She would never survive the night in these conditions. Steam rose from his boots as the wet snow evaporated from the heat of the fire. The weather would soon turn. This snow would have wiped clean her trail, especially since she was clever enough to have used the wind to her advantage. He called to Sergei to ready the dogs. He was about to teach her a lesson in fear.

  * * *

  She had run out of elevation and was quickly running out of island. Her path had led beyond the exposed rolling tundra and into a set of jagged cliffs above the icy sea. The cold was all-consuming now and was beginning to sap her will to run, to survive. She was soaked from head to toe in a mixture of snow and sweat and was numb from the waist down. The agony in her feet had subsided, indicating that frostbite had set in. She rubbed her frozen hands together under her fleece jacket in a vain attempt to warm them. The biting wind was killing her so she moved to the lee side of the island and began to pick her way slowly down onto the sheer cliffs. She lost her footing once and slid fifty feet before she was able to arrest her fall on a small boulder. Part of her wanted to keep falling, to end it and deprive her pursuers the satisfaction of taking her life, but that was not in her constitution. That was not how she was raised.

  As she hung desperately from the gray cliff, her eyes found it, a small space under a rocky outcropping that would conceal her from prying eyes and protect her from the deadly wind. She slid the toe of her boot until it found a hold, her hand searching for anything that would give her purchase. Her fingers slipped into a rocky crease, and she began working her way across the cliff face toward her destination. Inch by inch, step by precarious step, she made it. The spot was scarcely large enough to hold her but it was better than being exposed. She pulled her knees to her chest and pulled her arms inside her jacket, working her head down inside the fleece. She was suddenly aware of her thirst, her exhaustion, her fear. For the first time in ages, she allowed herself to weep, her tears and sobbing transitioning into an animalistic roar as she recognized her crying for what it was; she was mourning her own death.

  * * *

  The cloud ceiling rose, and the snow slowed to a light dust in the breeze. The man drove the snowmobile to the spot where he’d left her tracks and signaled to Sergei to unload the hounds from the back of the six-wheel drive KAMAZ troop transport. Sergei looked longingly at the traditional bow of his people before leaving it in place and obeying his employer. Though the Koryak blood in his veins had been diluted over centuries by Cossack intervention, forced migration, and war, he still felt the pull of his native lands to the north.

  The two bearlike Caucasian shepherds leapt down from the vehicle’s
cargo hold and began to test the air for the scent of their prey. Sergei had let them fill their nostrils with the scent from the woman’s scarf; there were almost no foreign scents here to confuse them. Each animal weighed over 150 pounds and stood almost thirty inches at the shoulder. These particular animals, both of the mountain breed variety, had been born of a fierce military bloodline that went back to the early days of the Soviet Union. They had been chosen for their determination, ferocity, and their taste for human flesh.

  He nodded to Sergei, who gave the dogs a whispered command. Their pissing, sniffing, and meandering ceased, and they took off up the grade with both men following on snowshoes. The beasts picked up the woman’s scent quickly and charged up the snowy incline, nearly pulling the hulking figure of Sergei along behind them. The animals led them near the summit of the island’s highest peak before turning downhill and out of the wind. He admired her desire to survive. This was his prescription for the ennui that had plagued him as long as he could remember. His hand moved subconsciously to the crossbow strapped across his back to confirm that it was still there; they were getting close.

  * * *

  Protected from the wind, it occurred to her how quiet it was. Her tears had lasted only a few minutes; it had felt good to get them out. Keep your nerve, little one, she remembered her father saying, his accent thick with the echoes of Rhodesia. That, she would. It was time to fight.

  She grabbed handfuls of the spongy dark soil and rubbed her clothing until it was the color of her surroundings. Digging into the tundra, her hand found something hard and smooth. She scraped furiously, and she ran her fingers across its length to find the edge. Then, using a small rock as a spade, she unearthed what turned out to be a bone, likely a piece of seal rib brought to this perch by a scavenging bird. It was ten inches long, curved, and had a jagged sharp edge where it had split from the rest of its length. She turned it in her hand; now she was armed.