They were flying due east of Wichita now, over the interstate highway east to the Missouri border at the old Cavalry outpost, Fort Scott. Below, Bill knew, was the huge sprawling acreage of Spring Creek Ranch, owned by the Koch family, the principal employers in the state of Kansas — Koch Industries, of Wichita, the greatest privately owned oil-pipeline empire in the world.
Old Fred Koch and Tom Baldridge had been quite good friends back in the 1960s, but Fred died young, and Bill Baldridge knew a bunch of brothers owned the company now. The youngest, and, Jack always said, the nicest, and the cleverest, was Bill Koch, who won the America’s Cup off San Diego in 1992. Jack had gone out to watch as a guest of his fellow Kansan a couple of times while he was in port. Jack had been saying for several years that Bill Koch should run for governor.
They were finally descending, dropping down into Wichita Mid-Continent Airport, which coped on a daily basis with an armada of private jets bearing executives to the big oil and aircraft-building corporations.
Nonetheless, when Bill stepped out into the hot plains afternoon, the air, as ever, tasted better. Three times on his stroll to the baggage area he was interrupted by people who recognized him and wanted to offer their condolences. Lieutenant Commander Baldridge was gracious and polite to them all, and as he picked up his bag, he heard another familiar voice: “Hey, Billy, comin’ on up to Great Bend with me, there’s just three of us. They told me you’d probably show up.” Out here, matters like short-hop air flights were strictly routine. The big Kansan families never even bothered with tickets. A highly reasonable monthly bill just came in to the Baldridge spread, and the ranch office paid it.
And now Rick Varner, the pilot, picked up the Naval officer’s bag and began walking out to the Beechcraft. “I ran your ma out to Tribune yesterday,” he said. “There’s a little airstrip just to the southeast of the town. She wanted to visit poor old Jethro Carson. She said Zack’s death has broken the old boy apart. Hasn’t uttered but one word since he heard the admiral was gone. Apparently the whole of Greeley County is in mourning. Jethro was pretty old, but he was in great health till this. Your ma thinks it might finish him. She says you can get a broken heart at any age.”
“Guess so, Rick. I’m not feeling that great myself. Mom seem okay?”
“Stranger mighta thought she was. But I’ve known Mrs. Baldridge a lotta years. She was putting on a brave face. I never saw so many people so upset as they were last Tuesday when we heard about the carrier, and that Jack was on board. There were four of our office people in tears. My goddamned copilot was in tears. I was in tears. We did not see much of Jack recently — but it just seemed so real to all of us, you know, to have known someone for so long, and suddenly he was gone.”
“He’s gonna leave a huge gap in our family, that’s for sure.”
They rode in silence for the rest of the twenty-five-minute trip across the central plains before Rick finally dropped down and flew low over the huge bend in the wide, jade-colored Arkansas River. This is the famous swerve which gave birth to the city of Great Bend, right on the north bank, where the flow of the water switches from its northeast course to southeast across the low fertile plains to Wichita. After that it still runs wide and onward, almost due south into Oklahoma. The Arkansas is one of the great American rivers, flowing out of the Colorado Rockies for fifteen hundred miles across the western high plains of Kansas, then through the lush lowlands of southwest Kansas, right across the Oklahoma panhandle, into Arkansas. It hits the Mississippi fifty miles shy of the Louisiana border.
Despite its massive interstate journey, all Kansans thought of it as their private river and anything it did before or after leaving the state was regarded as strictly irrelevant. Bill Baldridge considered that river his home waters.
They put down at Great Bend’s small commercial airfield, where the lean, tanned figure of Ray Baldridge stood tall in a short-sleeved cotton shirt, light trousers, and a Stetson, waiting to welcome his younger brother home. “Good to see you, kid,” he smiled, but the loss of Jack was too overpowering and they walked out to the Cherokee pickup in silence.
Ray broke the ice. “Mom don’t seem too bad, but I guess she’s fighting it,” he said. “So’m I, really. I just can’t believe we’ll never see him again.”
“I don’t think I’m ever gonna get used to that.”
“Well, the ranch is running fine. Making a ton of money this year, profits still going into the trust Dad set up. I’m just hop in’ you’ll leave the Navy soon and come out here and take it all over. I’m fine running the herds, overseeing the breeding, hiring and firing the guys, making it all happen. But I guess we all thought Jack’d take over the heavy-duty stuff, buying and selling land, budgeting for repairs, investing in new herds, watching the markets, deciding when to sell and all. Ain’t no one can do that for us really, ’cept for a member of the family. We got accountants to look like they’re doing it but not like it was you or Dad or Jack. I just wanna pure-bred Baldridge out here in charge.”
“Yeah, Ray. I know. I just have one last job I’m gonna do in the Navy, then I’m resigning, mainly because I’m not going to be promoted any higher. I’d rather get out than stay a lieutenant commander for the rest of my career. I’d planned on coming home anyway this year or next. But, shit, I wasn’t really counting on taking over the whole operation. That’s one hell of a commitment. That’s a lifetime.”
“You got it, Billy. But it’s your lifetime…and mine.”
By this time, they had crossed the Pawnee County line, driving westward across the old Indian lands along a flat, near-deserted prairie road as straight as a gun barrel. To the left and to the right the landscape was identical, miles and miles of uncluttered farmland, sometimes wheat, less often ripening corn, and, much more often, great swathes of prairie, endless grass, waving in the ever-present whisper of the south wind.
This was the Big Country, the land of Wyatt Earp, the Dalton Brothers, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hickok, the Comanches, the Pawnee and the native Kanza, the plains Indians, who once rode out here behind herds of buffalo twenty-five miles long.
The Baldridge Ranch, with its distinctive B/B brand, set in wrought iron on the high gateway to the house, was actually across the Pawnee border in Hodgeman County, built in a rich alluvial plain in the fork where the Pawnee River and Buckner Creek finally converge before meandering on down to the broad Arkansas. But the Baldridge land begins before the border, straddling two counties, and Bill could see part of the white-faced family herds of Herefords long before they came in sight of his mother’s house.
He cast an expert eye over them. “Looking good, Ray,” he said. “A real credit to you. Like always.”
“Thanks, little brother. We’ve been pretty lucky this year. Lotta rain in the late spring, brought the grass on — you know the story, the better the pasture, the less they wander, and the more weight they put on.”
“Yup,” said Bill. But then he fell silent again. And once more the vision of the sinister black Russian Kilo stood stark before his mind’s eye, as it had done just about every two hours for the past five days. He knew exactly what it looked like, just as he knew the minutest detail of the conformation of a Hereford steer. Right now he seemed to occupy two worlds, each one several million light-years from the other — the soft winds and homely cattle out here, grazing on what a Kansan poet once described as the Lawns of God. And far away, the villainous, menacing, malevolent arena of international, militarized terrorism, into the black heart of which he must journey before the next week was done.
Ray drove the Cherokee up to the door of the big white clapboard house, with its long Doric columns, surrounded by great maple trees planted by generations of Baldridges.
Inside, across the high-timbered hall and through the arched doorway to the sunlit living room, sat the tall, white-haired matriarch of the family, Emily Baldridge, aged seventy-five. She was nursing a cup of English tea, a copy of the state magazine,
She rose as he walked through the door, smiled and hugged her youngest son. “And how’s my Navy officer today?” she said, holding him appreciatively at arm’s length.
“Pretty good, Mom,” he said, secretly marveling at her control, so soon after the shocking death of the male head of the family. “My own news is varied. I’ve been appointed to an investigation into the accident on the carrier, and I’ve pretty well made up my mind I’m resigning from the Navy right after it’s over.
“Ray and I had a chat on the way out here. I’m coming home within the year.”
“Oh, bless you, Billy. I so hoped you would. It’s too much for Ray and me. I was always worried it may have been years before Jack could come back but now he’s not coming back and I was beginning to consider reducing the land and livestock. It’s too big for us.”
“I’d say it’s a good thing neither Dad nor Jack heard you say that, both of ’em hated selling anything. I don’t like it much either, so let’s not do anything. And, Mom, you were right. It would have been a long time before Jack
