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Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night
Литагент HarperCollins


Lock the doors, draw the curtains, pull up the covers and be prepared for "Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night". Featuring the biggest names in fiction, "Thriller" is the first collection of pure thriller stories ever published. Offering heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are thirty of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business.









Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night

Various Authors







www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk/)




Introduction


This book is a trailblazer on two counts. It’s the first short-story anthology of thrillers ever done, and it’s the first publication of a new professional organization: International Thriller Writers, Inc.

By nature writers tend to be loners, happy with their work, their families and a few close friends. But we also yearn occasionally for collegiality. For years we’ve all said to one another, “Why don’t we organize?” Then in June 2004, Barbara Peters, of the legendary Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona, held the first-ever thriller conference in the United States. She invited six writers—Lee Child, Vince Flynn, Steve Hamilton, Gayle Lynds, David Morrell and Kathy Reichs—and one editor, Keith Kahla, of St. Martin’s Press, to give presentations about the various aspects of writing and publishing thrillers. Clive Cussler spoke at the luncheon.

With only two weeks to publicize the event, Barbara thought she’d be lucky if a hundred people registered. In the end some 125 attended and, to everyone’s surprise, not all were there to learn about writing. Many were readers who wanted to meet some of their favorite thriller authors. Here for the first time was concrete evidence of what most of us had long suspected: there was a demand among fans for a thriller writers’ organization, too. If we held conventions, readers would likely attend, as well as us. And if we awarded prizes—there have never been awards specifically for thriller books, stories and films in the English language—that interest would only grow.

On the last day of the conference, in the sunny restaurant at the Biltmore Hotel in Scottsdale, several of the attendees stood around talking. Gayle Lynds, a highly accomplished thriller writer, mentioned that she thought the conference indicated the time had come to create an association for thriller writers. Adrian Muller, a journalist and freelance conference organizer, pointed out that the association should not be limited to the United States. Barbara Peters said she’d be willing to hold another, larger convention. Realizing that she’d almost committed herself, Gayle quickly announced, “I can’t organize this alone, though.” Her husband, the incomparable Dennis Lynds, added, “She’s right. She can’t.” Barbara merely smiled and said, “Pull in David Morrell. He’s perfect.”

And that’s what happened.

Adrian Muller volunteered to send out e-mails to every thriller author he could find to see if there was enough interest among writers to form a group. A few days later, Gayle and David had a long telephone call, discussing their workloads and a potential thriller organization that would be international in scope. They agreed to jointly head the effort, and over the summer of 2004 Adrian, David and Gayle talked and exchanged e-mails. Adrian arranged with Al Navis, who was orchestrating Bouchercon 2004, the great congregation of mystery readers and writers, to assign a room in which the thriller authors could meet.

The response to Adrian’s e-mail was impressive. Author after author said that an association was a great idea. A meeting was held on October 9 in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and, after many discussions, International Thriller Writers, Inc. was born. In November 2004, members were solicited. That response was likewise incredible. Currently there are over four hundred members, with combined sales exceeding 1,600,000,000 books.

This is all quite astonishing, and fitting because thrillers provide such a rich literary feast. There are all kinds. The legal thriller, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, medical thriller, police thriller, romantic thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, religious thriller, high-tech thriller, military thriller. The list goes go on and on, with new variations constantly being invented. In fact, this openness to expansion is one of the genre’s most enduring characteristics. But what gives the variety of thrillers a common ground is the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness, all designed to generate that all-important thrill. By definition, if a thriller doesn’t thrill, it’s not doing its job.

Thrillers, though, are also known for their pace, and the force with which they hurtle the reader along. They’re an obstacle race in which an objective is achieved at some heroic cost. The goal can be personal (trying to save a spouse or a long-lost relative) or global (trying to avert a world war) but often it’s both. Perhaps there’s a time limit imposed, perhaps not. Sometimes they build rhythmically to rousing climaxes that peak with a cathartic, explosive ending. Other times they start at top speed and never ease off. At their best, thrillers use scrupulous research and accurate details to create environments in which meaningful characters teach us about our world. When readers finish a thriller, they should feel not only emotionally satisfied but also better informed—and hungry for the next riveting tale.

Henry James once wrote, “The house of fiction has many windows.” That observation certainly applies to thrillers, and this anthology is an excellent example. When Gayle Lynds suggested producing it, International Thriller Writers, Inc. sent out a call to its members for stories. Many replied, and thirty were ultimately selected for inclusion. I was contacted about acting as editor and readily agreed, while Steve Berry, another ITW member and thriller author, took on the responsibility of managing director. When the book proposal was finally shopped by agent Richard Pine, himself an ITW member, several publishers expressed interest and, after a bidding war, MIRA Books acquired the rights.

Generously, each of the contributors to this book donated his or her story. Only ITW will share in the royalties, the proceeds earned going into the corporate treasury to fund the expansion of this worthwhile organization. The theme of this anthology is simple. Each writer has used a familiar character or plotline from their body of work and crafted an original story. So you have something known, along with something new. As you’ll see, the variations are captivating, as the writers’ imaginations soared. Each story is prefaced by an introduction from me that sets up the writer, his or her work and the story. At the book’s end, there are short biographies of each contributor. What a pleasure it was to read the stories as they came in, and it’s my hope that you’ll likewise relish the tales.

So prepare to be thrilled.

And enjoy the experience.

—James Patterson

June 2006

P.S. More can be learned about ITW through its Web site at www.internationalthrillerwriters.com. Check it out.




Lee Child


Lee Child’s debut novel was Killing Floor, a first-person narrative introducing his series character Jack Reacher, and although clearly a fast-paced thriller it shared characteristics with the classic limited-universe Western. At the time Child was also an experienced media professional, aware that his second book had to be written before significant reaction to his first had even been received. To avoid stereotyping—which can affect a writer as much as any performer—Child determined to make his second book, Die Trying, as different as possible, albeit part of the same series. His plan was to stake out a wide “left field, right field” territorial span between books one and two, one in which the rest of the series could happily roam. Therefore Die Trying featured third-person narration and a classic high-stakes, multistrand thriller structure. But, in its first draft, that structure went one strand too far. There was a character—James Penney—who had an appealing introduction and backstory, but who clearly didn’t have any valid place to go. So Penney wasn’t featured in the completed novel. Instead, he languished on Child’s hard drive until a request came from an obscure British anthology for a short story. Child repackaged Penney’s narrative and added a prequel-style ending, featuring a brief glimpse of Jack Reacher’s early career. The story was published, but with limited distribution. Now it comes to life again, revised and renewed, in hopes of reaching a wider audience.




James Penney’s New Identity


The process that turned James Penney into a completely different person began thirteen years ago, at one in the afternoon on a Monday in the middle of June, in Laney, California. A hot time of day, at a hot time of year, in a hot part of the country. The town squats on the shoulder of the road from Mojave to L.A. Due west, the southern rump of the Coastal Range Mountains is visible. Due east, the Mojave Desert disappears into the haze. Very little happens in Laney. After that Monday in the middle of June thirteen years ago, even less ever did.

There was one industry in Laney. One factory. A big spread of a place. Weathered metal siding, built in the sixties. Office accommodations at the north end, in the shade. The first floor was low grade. Clerical functions took place there. Billing and accounting and telephone calling. The second story was high grade. Managers. The corner office on the right used to be the personnel manager’s place. Now it was the human resources manager’s place. Same guy, new title on his door.

Outside that door in the long second-floor corridor was a line of chairs. The human resources manager’s secretary had rustled them up and placed them there that Monday morning. The line of chairs was occupied by a line of men and women. They were silent. Every five minutes the person at the head of the line would be called into the office. The rest of them would shuffle up one place. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. They knew what was happening.

Just before one o’clock, James Penney shuffled up one space to the head of the line. He waited five long minutes and stood up when he was called. Stepped into the office. Closed the door behind him. The human resources manager was a guy called Odell. Odell hadn’t been long out of diapers when James Penney started work at the Laney plant.

“Mr. Penney,” Odell said.

Penney said nothing, but sat down and nodded in a guarded way.

“We need to share some information with you,” Odell said.

Penney shrugged at him. He knew what was coming. He heard things, same as anybody else.

“Just give me the short version, okay?” he said.

Odell nodded. “We’re laying you off.”

“For the summer?” Penney asked him.

Odell shook his head.

“For good,” he said.

Penney took a second to get over the sound of the words. He’d known they were coming, but they hit him like they were the last words he ever expected Odell to say.

“Why?” he asked.

Odell shrugged. He didn’t look as if he was enjoying this. But on the other hand, he didn’t look as if it was upsetting him much, either.

“Downsizing,” he said. “No option. Only way we can go.”

“Why?” Penney said again.

Odell leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. Started the speech he’d already made many times that day.

“We need to cut costs,” he said. “This is an expensive operation. Small margin. Shrinking market. You know that.”

Penney stared into space and listened to the silence breaking through from the factory floor. “So you’re closing the plant?”

Odell shook his head again. “We’re downsizing, is all. The plant will stay open. There’ll be some maintenance. Some repairs, overhauls. But not like it used to be.”

“The plant will stay open?” Penney said. “So how come you’re letting me go?”

Odell shifted in his chair. Pulled his hands from behind his head and folded his arms across his chest defensively. He had reached the tricky part of the interview.

“It’s a question of the skills mix,” he said. “We had to pick a team with the correct blend. We put a lot of work into the decision. And I’m afraid you didn’t make the cut.”

“What’s wrong with my skills?” Penney asked. “I got skills. I’ve worked here seventeen years. What’s wrong with my damn skills?”

“Nothing at all,” Odell said. “But other people are better. We have to look at the big picture. It’s going to be a skeleton crew, so we need the best skills, the fastest learners, good attendance records, you know how it is.”

“Attendance records?” Penney said. “What’s wrong with my attendance record? I’ve worked here seventeen years. You saying I’m not a reliable worker?”

Odell touched the brown file folder in front of him.

“You’ve had a lot of time out sick,” he said. “Absentee rate just above eight percent.”

Penney looked at him incredulously.

“Sick?” he said. “I wasn’t sick. I was post-traumatic. From Vietnam.”

Odell shook his head again. He was too young.

“Whatever,” he said. “That’s still a big absentee rate.”

James Penney just sat there, stunned. He felt like he’d been hit by a train.

“We looked for the correct blend,” Odell said again. “We put a lot of management time into the process. We’re confident we made the right decisions. You’re not being singled out. We’re losing eighty percent of our people.”

Penney stared across at him. “You staying?”

Odell nodded and tried to hide a smile but couldn’t.

“There’s still a business to run,” he said. “We still need management.”

There was silence in the corner office. Outside, the hot breeze stirred off the desert and blew a listless eddy over the metal building. Odell opened the brown folder and pulled out a blue envelope. Handed it across the desk.

“You’re paid up to the end of July,” he said. “Money went in the bank this morning. Good luck, Mr. Penney.”

The five-minute interview was over. Odell’s secretary appeared and opened the door to the corridor. Penney walked out. The secretary called the next man in. Penney walked past the long quiet row of people and made it to the parking lot. Slid into his car. It was a red Firebird, a year and a half old, and it wasn’t paid for yet. He started it up and drove the mile to his house. Eased to a stop in his driveway and sat there, thinking, in a daze, with the engine running.

He was imagining the repo men coming for his car. The only damn thing in his whole life he’d ever really wanted. He remembered the exquisite joy of buying it. After his divorce. Waking up and realizing he could just go to the dealer, sign the papers and have it. No discussions. No arguing. He’d gone down to the dealer and chopped in his old clunker and signed up for that Firebird and driven it home in a state of total joy. He’d washed it every week. He’d watched the infomercials and tried every miracle polish on the market. The car had sat every day outside the Laney factory like a bright red badge of achievement. Like a shiny consolation for the shit and the drudgery. Whatever else he didn’t have, he had a Firebird.

He felt a desperate fury building inside him. He got out of the car and ran to the garage and grabbed his spare can of gasoline. Ran back to the house. Opened the door. Emptied the can over the sofa. He couldn’t find a match, so he lit the gas stove in the kitchen and unwound a roll of paper towels. Put one end on the stove top and ran the rest through to the living room. When his makeshift fuse was well alight, he skipped out to his car and started it up. Turned north toward Mojave.

His neighbor noticed the fire when the flames started coming through the roof. She called the Laney fire department. The firefighters didn’t respond. It was a volunteer department, and all the volunteers were in line inside the factory, upstairs in the narrow corridor. Then the warm air moving off the Mojave Desert freshened up into a hot breeze, and by the time James Penney was thirty miles away the flames from his house had set fire to the dried scrub that had been his lawn. By the time he was in the town of Mojave itself, cashing his last paycheck at the bank, the flames had spread across his lawn and his neighbor’s and were licking at the base of her back porch.

Like any California boomtown, Laney had grown in a hurry. The factory had been thrown up around the start of Nixon’s first term. A hundred acres of orange groves had been bulldozed and five hundred frame houses had quadrupled the population in a year. There was nothing really wrong with the houses, but they’d seen rain less than a dozen times in the thirty-one years they’d been standing, and they were about as dry as houses can get. Their timbers had sat and baked in the sun and been scoured by the dry desert winds. There were no hydrants built into the streets. The houses were close together, and there were no windbreaks. But there had never been a serious fire in Laney. Not until that Monday in June.

James Penney’s neighbor called the fire department for the second time after her back porch disappeared in flames. The fire department was in disarray. The dispatcher advised her to get out of her house and just wait for their arrival. By the time the fire truck got there, her house was destroyed. And the next house in line was destroyed, too. The desert breeze had blown the fire on across the second narrow gap and sent the old couple living there scuttling into the street for safety. Then Laney called in the fire departments from Lancaster and Glendale and Bakersfield, and they arrived with proper equipment and saved the day. They hosed the scrub between the houses and the blaze went no farther. Just three houses destroyed, Penney’s and his two downwind neighbors. Within two hours the panic was over, and by the time Penney himself was fifty miles north of Mojave, Laney’s sheriff was working with the fire investigators to piece together what had happened.

They started with Penney’s place, which was the upwind house, and the first to burn, and therefore the coolest. It had just about burned down to the floor slab, but the layout was still clear. And the evidence was there to see. There was tremendous scorching on one side of where the living room had been. The Glendale investigator recognized it as something he’d seen many times before. It was what is left when a foam-filled sofa or armchair is doused with gasoline and set afire. As clear a case of arson as he had ever seen. The unfortunate wild cards had been the stiffening desert breeze and the proximity of the other houses.

Then the sheriff had gone looking for James Penney, to tell him somebody had burned his house down, and his neighbors’. He drove his black-and-white to the factory and walked upstairs, past the long line of people and into Odell’s corner office. Odell told him what had happened in the five-minute interview just after one o’clock. Then the sheriff had driven back to the Laney station house, steering with one hand and rubbing his chin with the other.

And by the time James Penney was driving along the towering eastern flank of Mount Whitney, a hundred and fifty miles from home, there was an all-points-bulletin out on him, suspicion of deliberate arson, which in the dry desert heat of southern California was a big, big deal.

The next morning’s sun woke James Penney by coming in through a hole in his motel-room blind and playing a bright beam across his face. He stirred and lay in the warmth of the rented bed, watching the dust motes dancing.

He was still in California, up near Yosemite, in a place just far enough from the park to be cheap. He had six weeks’ pay in his billfold, which was hidden under the center of his mattress. Six weeks’ pay, less a tank and a half of gas, a cheeseburger and twenty-seven-fifty for the room. Hidden under the mattress, because twenty-seven-fifty doesn’t get you a space in a top-notch place. His door was locked, but the desk guy would have a passkey, and he wouldn’t be the first desk guy in the world to rent out his passkey by the hour to somebody looking to make a little extra money during the night.

But nothing bad had happened. The mattress was so thin he could feel the billfold right there, under his kidney. Still there, still bulging. A good feeling. He lay watching the sunbeam, struggling with mental arithmetic, spreading six weeks’ pay out over the foreseeable future. With nothing to worry about except cheap food, cheap motels and the Firebird’s gas, he figured he had no problems at all. The Firebird had a modern engine, twenty-four valves, tuned for a blend of power and economy. He could get far away and have enough money left to take his time looking around.

After that, he wasn’t so sure. But there would be a call for something. He was sure of that. Even if it was menial. He was a worker. Maybe he’d find something outdoors, might be a refreshing thing. Might have some kind of dignity to it. Some kind of simple work, for simple honest folks, a lot different than slaving for that grinning weasel Odell.

He watched the sunbeam travel across the counterpane for a while. Then he flung the cover aside and swung himself out of bed. Used the john, rinsed his face and mouth at the sink and untangled his clothes from the pile he’d dropped them in. He’d need more clothes. He only had the things he stood up in. Everything else he’d burned along with his house. He shrugged and reran his calculations to allow for some new pants and work shirts. Maybe some heavy boots, if he was going to be laboring outside. The six weeks’ pay was going to have to stretch a little thinner. He decided to drive slow, to save gas and maybe eat less. Or maybe not less, just cheaper. He’d use truck stops, not tourist diners. More calories, less money.

He figured today he’d put in some serious miles before stopping for breakfast. He jingled the car keys in his pocket and opened his cabin door. Then he stopped. His heart thumped. The blacktop rectangle outside his cabin was empty. Just old oil stains staring up at him. He glanced desperately left and right along the row. No red Firebird. He staggered back into the room and sat down heavily on the bed. Just sat there in a daze, thinking about what to do.

He decided he wouldn’t bother with the desk guy. He was pretty certain the desk guy was responsible. He could just about see it. The guy had waited an hour and then called some buddies who had come over and hot-wired his car. Eased it out of the motel lot and away down the road. A conspiracy, feeding off unsuspecting motel traffic. Feeding off suckers dumb enough to pay twenty-seven-fifty for the privilege of getting their prize possession stolen. He was numb. Suspended somewhere between sick and raging. His red Firebird. Gone. Stolen. No repo men involved. Just thieves.

The nearest police station was two miles south. He had seen it the previous night, heading north past it. It was small but crowded. He stood in line behind five other people. There was an officer behind the counter, taking details, taking complaints, writing slow. Penney felt like every minute was vital. He felt like his Firebird was racing down to the border. Maybe this guy could radio ahead and get it stopped. He hopped from foot to foot in frustration. Gazed wildly around him. There were notices stuck on a board behind the officer’s head. Blurred Xeroxes of telexes and faxes. U.S. Marshal notices. A mass of stuff. His eyes flicked absently across it all.

Then they snapped back. His photograph was staring out at him. The photograph from his own driver’s license, Xeroxed in black and white, enlarged, grainy. His name underneath, in big printed letters. JAMES PENNEY. From Laney, California. A description of his car. Red Firebird. The plate number. James Penney. Wanted for arson and criminal damage. He stared at the bulletin. It grew larger and larger. It grew life-size. His face stared back at him like he was looking in a mirror. James Penney. Arson. Criminal damage. All-points-bulletin. The woman in front of him finished her business and he stepped forward to the head of the line. The desk sergeant looked up at him.

“Can I help you, sir?” he said.

Penney shook his head. Peeled off left and walked away. Stepped calmly outside into the bright morning sun and ran back north like a madman. He made about a hundred yards before the heat slowed him to a gasping walk. Then he did the instinctive thing, which was to duck off the blacktop and take cover in a wild-birch grove. He pushed through the brush until he was out of sight and collapsed into a sitting position, back against a thin rough trunk, legs splayed out straight, chest heaving, hands clamped against his head like he was trying to stop it from exploding.

Arson and criminal damage. He knew what the words meant. But he couldn’t square them with what he had actually done. It was his own damn house to burn. Like he was burning his trash. He was entitled. How could that be arson? And he could explain, anyway. He’d been upset. He sat slumped against the birch trunk and breathed easier. But only for a moment. Because then he started thinking about lawyers. He’d had personal experience. His divorce had cost him plenty in lawyer bills. He knew what lawyers were like. Lawyers were the problem. Even if it wasn’t arson, it was going to cost plenty in lawyer bills to start proving it. It was going to cost a steady torrent of dollars, pouring out for years. Dollars he didn’t have, and never would have again. He sat there on the hard, dry ground and realized that absolutely everything he had in the whole world was right then in direct contact with his body. One pair of shoes, one pair of socks, one pair of boxers, Levi’s, cotton shirt, leather jacket. And his billfold. He put his hand down and touched its bulk in his pocket. Six weeks’ pay, less yesterday’s spending.

He got to his feet in the clearing. His legs were weak from the unaccustomed running. His heart was thumping. He leaned up against a birch trunk and took a deep breath. Swallowed. He pushed back through the brush to the road. Turned north and started walking. He walked for a half hour, hands in his pockets, maybe a mile and three-quarters, and then his muscles eased off and his breathing calmed down. He began to see things clearly. He began to appreciate the power of labels. He was a realistic guy, and he always told himself the truth. He was an arsonist because they said he was. The angry phase was over. Now it was about making sensible decisions, one after the other. Clearing up the confusion was beyond his resources. So he had to stay out of their reach. That was his first decision. That was the starting point. That was the strategy. The other decisions would flow out of that. They were tactical.

He could be traced three ways. By his name, by his face, by his car. He ducked sideways off the road again into the trees. Pushed twenty yards into the woods. Kicked a shallow hole in the leaf mold and stripped out of his billfold everything with his name on. He buried it all in the hole and stamped the earth flat. Then he took his beloved Firebird keys from his pocket and hurled them far into the trees. He didn’t see where they fell.

The car itself was gone. Under the circumstances, that was good. But it had left a trail. It might have been seen in Mojave, outside the bank. It might have been seen at the gas stations where he filled it. And its plate number was on the motel form from last night. With his name. A trail, arrowing north through California in neat little increments.

He remembered his training from Vietnam. He remembered the tricks. If you wanted to move east from your foxhole, first you moved west. You moved west for a couple hundred yards, stepping on the occasional twig, brushing the occasional bush, until you had convinced Charlie you were moving west, as quietly as you could, but not quietly enough. Then you turned around and came back east, really quietly, doing it right, past your original starting point and away. He’d done it a dozen times. His original plan had been to head north for a spell, maybe into Oregon. He’d gotten a few hours into that plan. Therefore, the red Firebird had laid a modest trail north. So now he was going to turn south for a while and disappear. He walked back out of the woods, into the dust on the near side of the road, and started walking back the way he had come.

His face he couldn’t change. It was right there on all the posters. He remembered it staring out at him from the bulletin board in the police building. The neat side-parting, the sunken gray cheeks. He ran his hands through his hair, vigorously, backward and forward, until it stuck out every which way. No more neat side-parting. He ran his palms over twenty-four hours of stubble. Decided to grow a big beard. No option, really. He didn’t have a razor, and he wasn’t about to spend any money on one. He walked on through the dust, heading south, with Excelsior Mountain towering on his right. Then he came to the turn dodging west toward San Francisco, through Tioga Pass, before Mount Dana reared up even higher. He stopped in the dust on the side of the road and pondered. Keeping on south would take him nearly all the way back to Mojave. Too close to home. Way too close. He wasn’t comfortable about that. Not comfortable at all. So he figured a new move. He’d hitch a ride west, and then decide.

Late in the afternoon he got out of some old hippie’s open Jeep on the southern edge of Sacramento. He stood by the side of the road and waved and watched the guy go. Then he looked around in the sudden silence and got his bearings. All the way up and down the drag he could see a forest of signs, bright colors, neon, advertising motels, air and pool and cable, burger places, eateries of every description, supermarkets, auto parts. Looked like the kind of place a guy could get lost in, no trouble at all. Big choice of motels, all side by side, all competing, all offering the lowest prices in town. He figured he’d hole up in one of them and plan ahead. After eating. He was hungry. He chose a burger chain he’d never used before and sat in the window, idly watching the traffic. The waitress came over and he ordered a cheeseburger and two Cokes. He was dry from the dust on the road.

The Laney sheriff opened a map. Thought hard. Penney wouldn’t be aiming to stay in California. He’d be moving on. Probably up to the wilds of Oregon or Washington State. Or Idaho or Montana. But not due north. Penney was a veteran. He knew how to feint. He would head west first. He would aim to get out through Sacramento. But Sacramento was a city with an ocean not too far away to the left, and high mountains to the right. Fundamentally six roads out, was all. So six roadblocks would do it, maybe on a ten-mile radius so the local commuters wouldn’t get snarled up. The sheriff nodded to himself and picked up the phone.

Penney walked north for an hour. It started raining at dusk. Steady, wetting rain. Northern California, near the mountains, very different from what Penney was used to. He was hunched in his jacket, head down, tired and demoralized and alone. And wet. And conspicuous. Nobody walked anywhere in California. He glanced over his shoulder at the traffic stream and saw a dull olive Chevrolet sedan slowing behind him. It came to a stop and a long arm stretched across and opened the passenger door. The dome light clicked on and shone out on the soaked roadway.

“Want a ride?” the driver called.

Penney ducked down and glanced inside. The driver was a very tall man, about thirty, muscular, built like a regular weight lifter. Short fair hair, rugged open face. Dressed in uniform. Army uniform. Penney read the insignia and registered: military police captain. He glanced at the dull olive paint on the car and saw a white serial number stenciled on the flank.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Get in out of the rain,” the driver said. “A vet like you knows better than to be walking in the rain.”

Penney slid inside. Closed the door.

“How do you know I’m a vet?” he asked.

“The way you walk,” the driver said. “And your age, and the way you look. Guy your age looking like you look and walking in the rain didn’t beat the draft for college, that’s for damn sure.”

Penney nodded.

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I did a jungle tour.”

“So let me give you a ride,” the driver said. “A favor, one soldier to another. Consider it a veteran’s benefit.”

“Okay,” Penney said.

“Where you headed?” the driver asked.

“I don’t know,” Penney said. “North, I guess.”

“Okay, north it is,” the driver said. “I’m Jack Reacher. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Penney said nothing.

“You got a name?” the guy called Reacher asked.

Penney hesitated.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Reacher put the car in drive and glanced over his shoulder. Eased back into the traffic stream. Clicked the switch and locked the doors.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“Do?” Penney repeated.

“You’re running,” Reacher said. “Heading out of town, walking in the rain, head down, no bag, don’t know what your name is. I’ve seen a lot of people running, and you’re one of them.”

“You going to turn me in?”

“I’m a military cop,” Reacher said. “You done anything to hurt the army?”

“The army?” Penney said. “No, I was a good soldier.”

“So why would I turn you in?”

Penney looked blank.

“What did you do to the civilians?” Reacher asked.

“You’re going to turn me in,” Penney said helplessly.

Reacher shrugged at the wheel. “That depends. What did you do?”

Penney said nothing. Reacher turned his head and looked straight at him. A powerful, silent stare, hypnotic intensity in his eyes, held for a hundred yards of road. Penney couldn’t look away. He took a breath.

“I burned my house,” he said. “Near Mojave. I worked seventeen years and got canned yesterday and I got all upset because they were going to take my car away so I burned my house. They’re calling it arson.”

“Near Mojave?” Reacher said. “They would. They don’t like fires down there.”

Penney nodded. “I was real mad. Seventeen years, and suddenly I’m shit on their shoe. And my car got stolen anyway, first night I’m away.”

“There are roadblocks all around here,” Reacher said. “I came through one south of the city.”

“For me?” Penney asked.

“Could be,” Reacher said. “They don’t like fires down there.”

“You going to turn me in?”

Reacher looked at him again, hard and silent. “Is that all you did?”

Penney nodded. “Yes, sir, that’s all I did.”

There was silence for a beat. Just the sound of the wet pavement under the tires.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” Reacher said. “A guy does a jungle tour, works seventeen years and gets canned, I guess he’s entitled to get a little mad.”

“So what should I do?”

“Start over, someplace else.”

“They’ll find me,” Penney said.

“You’re already thinking about changing your name,” Reacher said.

Penney nodded. “I junked all my ID. Buried it in the woods.”

“So get new paper. That’s all anybody cares about. Pieces of paper.”

“How?”

Reacher was quiet another beat, thinking hard. “Classic way is find some cemetery, find a kid who died as a child, get a copy of the birth certificate, start from there. Get a social security number, a passport, credit cards, and you’re a new person.”

Penney shrugged. “I can’t do all that. Too difficult. And I don’t have time. According to you, there’s a roadblock up ahead. How am I going to do all of that stuff before we get there?”

“There are other ways,” Reacher said.

“Like what?”

“Find some guy who’s already created false ID for himself, and take it away from him.”

Penney shook his head. “You’re crazy. How am I going to do that?”

“Maybe you don’t need to do that. Maybe I already did it for you.”

“You got false ID?”

“Not me,” Reacher said. “Guy I was looking for.”

“What guy?”

Reacher drove one-handed and pulled a sheaf of official paper from his inside jacket pocket.

“Arrest warrant,” he said. “Army liaison officer at a weapons plant outside of Fresno, peddling blueprints. Turns out to have three separate sets of ID, all perfect, all completely backed up with everything from elementary school onward. Which makes it likely they’re Soviet, which means they can’t be beat. I’m on my way back from talking to him right now. He was running, too, already on his second set of papers. I took them. They’re clean. They’re in the trunk of this car, in a wallet.”

Traffic was slowing ahead. There was red glare visible through the streaming windshield. Flashing blue lights. Yellow flashlight beams waving, side to side.

“Roadblock,” Reacher said.

“So can I use this guy’s ID?” Penney asked urgently.

“Sure you can,” Reacher said. “Hop out and get it. Bring the wallet from the jacket in the trunk.”

He slowed and stopped on the shoulder. Penney got out. Ducked away to the back of the car and lifted the trunk lid. Came back a long moment later, white in the face. Held up the wallet.

“It’s all in there,” Reacher said. “Everything anybody needs.”

Penney nodded.

“So put it in your pocket,” Reacher said.

Penney slipped the wallet into his inside jacket pocket. Reacher’s right hand came up. There was a gun in it. And a pair of handcuffs in his left.

“Now sit still,” he said quietly.

He leaned over and snapped the cuffs on Penney’s wrists, one handed. Put the car back into drive and crawled forward.

“What’s this for?” Penney asked.

“Be quiet,” Reacher said.

They were two cars away from the checkpoint. Three highway patrolmen in rain capes were directing traffic into a corral formed by parked cruisers. Their light bars were flashing bright in the shiny dark.

“What?” Penney said again.

Reacher said nothing. Just stopped where the cop told him and wound his window down. The night air blew in, cold and wet. The cop bent down. Reacher handed him his military ID. The cop played his flashlight over it and handed it back.

“Who’s your passenger?” he asked.

“My prisoner,” Reacher said. He handed over the arrest warrant.

“He got ID?” the cop asked.

Reacher leaned over and slipped the wallet out from inside Penney’s jacket, two-fingered like a pickpocket. Flipped it open and passed it through the window. A second cop stood in Reacher’s headlight beams and copied the plate number onto a clipboard. Stepped around the hood and joined the first guy.

“Captain Reacher of the military police,” the first cop said.

The second cop wrote it down.

“With a prisoner name of Edward Hendricks,” the first cop said.

The second cop wrote it down.

“Thank you, sir,” the first cop said. “You drive safe, now.”

Reacher eased out from between the cruisers. Accelerated away into the rain. A mile later, he stopped again on the shoulder. Leaned over and unlocked Penney’s handcuffs. Put them back in his pocket. Penney rubbed his wrists.

“I thought you were going to turn me in,” he said.

Reacher shook his head. “Looked better for me that way. I wanted a prisoner in the car for everybody to see.”

Reacher handed the wallet back.

“Keep it,” he said.

“Really?”

“Edward Hendricks,” Reacher said. “That’s who you are now. It’s clean ID, and it’ll work. Think of it like a veteran’s benefit. One soldier to another.”

Edward Hendricks looked at him and nodded and opened his door. Got out into the rain and turned up the collar of his leather jacket and started walking north. Reacher watched him until he was out of sight and then pulled away and took the next turn west. Turned north and stopped again where the road was lonely and ran close to the ocean. There was a wide gravel shoulder and a low barrier and a steep cliff with the Pacific tide boiling and foaming fifty feet below it.

He got out of the car and opened the trunk and grasped the lapels of the jacket he had told Penney about. Took a deep breath and heaved. The corpse was heavy. Reacher wrestled it up out of the trunk and jacked it onto his shoulder and staggered with it to the barrier. Bent his knees and dropped it over the edge. The rocky cliff caught it and it spun and the arms and legs flailed limply. Then it hit the surf with a faint splash and was gone.




James Grippando


It’s no accident that five of James Grippando’s ten thrillers are legal thrillers featuring Jack Swyteck, an explosive criminal defense lawyer. Grippando is a lawyer himself, though fortunately with far fewer demons than Jack. What’s it like to be Jack? Simply imagine that your father is Florida’s governor, your best friend was once on death row and your love life could fill an entire chapter in Cupid’s Rules of Love and War (Idiot’s Edition). Throw in an indictment for murder and a litany of lesser charges, and you’ll begin to get the picture.

Readers of the Swyteck series know that Jack is a self-described half-Cuban boy trapped in the body of a gringo. That’s a glib way of saying that Jack’s Cuban-born mother died in childbirth, and Jack was raised by his father and stepmother, with no link whatsoever to his Cuban heritage. Grippando is not Cuban, but he considers himself an “honorary Cuban” of sorts. His best friend since college was Cuban born and that family dubbed him their otro hijo, other son. Quite remarkable, considering that Grippando grew up in rural Illinois and spoke only “classroom” Spanish. When he first arrived in Florida, he had no idea that Cubans made better rice than the Chinese, or that a jolt of Cuban coffee was as much a part of midafternoon in Miami as thunderclouds over the Everglades. He’d yet to learn that if you ask a nice Cuban girl on a date, the entire family would be waiting at the front door to meet you when you picked her up. In short, Grippando—like Jack Swyteck—was the gringo who found himself immersed in Cuban culture.

In Hear No Evil, the fourth book in the Swyteck series, Jack Swyteck travels back to Cuba to discover his roots. Naturally, he runs into a mess of trouble, all stemming from a murder on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Grippando prides himself on his research, and threw himself into all things Cuban when researching the thriller. At the time it was impossible to speak to anyone about the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay without the problem of the detainees dominating the conversation. It was then that Grippando came across a forty-year-old plan—Operation Northwoods—which, in the hands of someone with an extremely devious mind, could cause a mountain of trouble.

So was born this story.

In Operation Northwoods, Jack and his colorful sidekick, Theo Knight, find themselves in the heat of a controversy after an explosion at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba—an explosion that rocks the world.




Operation Northwoods


6:20 a.m., Miami, Florida

Jack Swyteck swatted the alarm clock, but even the subtle green glow of liquid-crystal digits was an assault on his eyes. The ringing continued. He raked his hand across the nightstand, grabbed the telephone and answered in a voice that dripped with a hangover. It was Theo.

“Theo who?” said Jack.

“Theo Knight, moron.”

Jack’s brain was obviously still asleep. Theo was Jack’s best friend and “investigator,” for lack of a better term. Whatever Jack needed, Theo found, whether it was the last prop plane out of Africa or an explanation for a naked corpse in Jack’s bathtub. Jack never stopped wondering how Theo came up with these things. Sometimes he asked; more often, he simply didn’t want to know. Theirs was not exactly a textbook friendship, the Ivy League son of a governor meets the black high-school dropout from Liberty City. But they got on just fine for two guys who’d met on death row, Jack the lawyer and Theo the inmate. Jack’s persistence had delayed Theo’s date with the electric chair long enough for DNA evidence to come into vogue and prove him innocent. It wasn’t the original plan, but Jack ended up a part of Theo’s new life, sometimes going along for the ride, other times just watching with amazement as Theo made up for lost time.

“Dude, turn on your TV,” said Theo. “CNN.”

There was an urgency in Theo’s voice, and Jack was too disoriented to mount an argument. He found the remote and switched on the set, watching from the foot of his bed.

A grainy image filled the screen, like bad footage from one of those media helicopters covering a police car chase. It was an aerial shot of a compound of some sort. Scores of small dwellings and other, larger buildings dotted the windswept landscape. There were patches of green, but overall the terrain had an arid quality, perfect for iguanas and banana rats—except for all the fences. Jack noticed miles of them. One-and two-lane roads cut across the topography like tiny scars, and a slew of vehicles seemed to be moving at high speed, though they looked like matchbox cars from this vantage point. In the background, a huge, black plume of smoke was rising like a menacing funnel cloud.

“What’s going on?” he said into the phone.

“They’re at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay. It’s about your client.”

“My client? Which one?”

“The crazy one.”

“That doesn’t exactly narrow things down,” said Jack.

“You know, the Haitian saint,” said Theo.

Jack didn’t bother to tell him that he wasn’t actually a saint. “You mean Jean Saint Preux? What did he do?”

“What did he do?” said Theo, scoffing. “He set the fucking naval base on fire.”

6:35 a.m., Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Camp Delta was a huge, glowing ember on the horizon, like the second rising of the sun. The towering plume of black smoke rose ever higher, fed feverishly by the raging furnace below. A gentle breeze from the Windward Passage only seemed to worsen matters—too weak to clear the smoke, just strong enough to spread a gloomy haze across the entire southeastern corner of the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Major Frost Jorgenson was speeding due south in the passenger seat of a U.S. marine Humvee. Even with the windows shut tight, the seeping smoke was making his eyes water.

“Unbelievable,” he said as they drew closer to the camp.

“Yes, sir,” said his driver. “Biggest fire I’ve ever seen.”

Major Jorgenson was relatively new to “Gitmo,” part of the stepped-up presence of U.S. Marines that had come with the creation of a permanent detention facility at Camp Delta for “enemy combatants”—suspected terrorists who had never been charged formally with a crime. Jorgenson was a bruiser even by marine standards. Four years of college football at Grambling University had prepared him well for a life of discipline, and old habits die hard. Before sunrise, he’d already run two miles and peeled off two hundred sit-ups. He was stepping out of the shower, dripping wet, when the telephone call had come from Fire Station No. 1. An explosion at Camp Delta. Possible casualties. Fire/Rescue dispatched. No details as yet. Almost immediately, he was fielding calls from his senior officers, including the brigadier general in charge of the entire detainee program, all of whom were demanding a situation report, pronto.

A guard waved them through the Camp Delta checkpoint.

“Unbelievable.” The major was slightly embarrassed for having repeated himself, but it was involuntary, the only word that seemed to fit.

The Humvee stopped, and the soldiers rushed to strap on their gas masks as they jumped out of the vehicle. A wave of heat assaulted the major immediately, a stifling blow, as if he’d carelessly tossed a match onto a pile of oversoaked charcoal briquettes. Instinctively he brought a hand to his face, even though he was protected by the mask. After a few moments, the burning sensation subsided, but the visibility was only getting worse. Depending on the wind, it was like stepping into a foggy twilight, the low morning sun unable to penetrate the smoke. He grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment.

Major Jorgenson walked briskly, stepping over rock-hard fire hoses and fallen debris, eventually finding himself in the staging area for the firefighting team from Fire Station No. 2. Thick, noxious smoke made it impossible to see beyond the three nearest fire trucks, though he was sure there were more, somewhere in the darkness. At least he hoped there were more. Once again, the heat was on him like a blanket, but even more stifling was the noise all around him—radios crackling, sirens blaring, men shouting. Loudest of all was the inferno itself, an endless surge of flames emitting a noise that was peculiar to fires this overwhelming, a strange cross between a roaring tidal wave and a gigantic wet bedsheet flapping in the breeze.

“Watch it!”

Directly overhead, a stream of water arched from the turret of a massive, yellow truck. It was one of several three-thousand-gallon airport rescue and firefighting machines on the base, capable of dousing flames with 165 gallons of water per minute. It wasn’t even close to being enough.

“Coming through!” A team of stretcher bearers streaked past. Major Jorgenson caught a glimpse of the blackened shell of a man on the gurney, his arms and legs twisted and shriveled like melted plastic. On impulse, he ran alongside and then took up the rear position, relieving one of the stretcher bearers who seemed to be on the verge of collapse.

“Dear God,” he said. But his heart sank even further as the lead man guided the stretcher right past the ambulance to a line of human remains behind the emergency vehicles. The line was already too long to bear. They rolled the charred body onto the pavement.

“Major, in here!”

He turned and saw the fire chief waving him toward the side of the fire truck. An enlisted man stepped in to relieve his commanding officer of stretcher duty. The major commended him and then hurried over to join the chief inside the cab, pulling off his mask as the door closed behind him.

The fire chief was covered with soot, his expression incredulous. “With all due respect, sir, what are you doing out here?”

“Same as you,” said the major. “Is it as bad as it looks?”

“Maybe worse, sir.”

“How many casualties?”

“Six marines unaccounted for so far. Eleven injured.”

“What about detainees?”

“Easier to count survivors at this point.”

“How many?”

“So far, none.”

The major felt his gut tighten. None. No survivors. A horrible result—even worse when you had to explain it to the rest of the world.

The fire chief picked a flake of ash from his eye and said, “Sir, we’re doing our best to fight this monster. But any insight you can give me as to how this started could be a big help.”

“Plane crash,” the major reported. “That’s all we know now. Civilian craft. Cessna.”

Just then, a team of F-16s roared across the skies overhead. Navy fighter jets had been circling the base since the invasion of airspace.

“Civilian plane, huh? It may not be my place to ask, but how did that happen?”

“You’re right. It’s not your place to ask.”

“Yes, sir. But for the safety of my own men, I guess what I’m getting at is this: if there’s something inside this facility that we should know about…I mean something of an explosive or incendiary nature—”

“This is a detention facility. Nothing more.”

“One heck of a blaze for a small civilian aircraft that crashed into nothing more than a detention facility.”

The major took another look through the windshield. He couldn’t argue.

The chief said, “I may look like an old geezer, but I know a thing or two about fires. A little private plane crashing into a building doesn’t carry near enough fuel to start a fire like this. These bodies we’re pulling out of here, we’re not talking third-degree burns. Upward of eighty-five, ninety percent of them, it’s fourth- and even fifth-degree, some of them cooked right down to the bone. And that smell in the air, benzene all the way.”

“What is it you’re trying to tell me?”

“I know napalm when I see it.”

The major turned his gaze back toward the fire, then pulled his encrypted cellular phone from his pocket and dialed the naval station command suite.

7:02 a.m., Miami, Florida

Jack increased the volume to hear the rapid-fire cadence of an anchorwoman struggling to make sense of the image on the TV screen.

“You are looking at a live scene at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay,” said the newswoman. “We have no official confirmation, but CNN has obtained unofficial reports that, just after sunrise, there was an explosion on the base. A large and intense fire is still burning, but because both the United States and the Cuban military enforce a buffer zone around the base, we cannot send in our own camera crew for a closer look.

“Joining me now live by telephone is CNN military analyst David Polk, a retired naval officer who once served as base commander at Guantanamo. Mr. Polk, as you watch the television screen along with us, can you tell us anything that might help us better understand what we’re viewing?”

“As you can see, Deborah, the base is quite large, covering about forty-five square miles on the far southeastern tip of Cuba, about four hundred air miles from Miami. To give you a little history, the U.S. has controlled this territory since the Spanish American War, and the very existence of a military base there has been a source of friction in U.S./Cuba relations since Fidel Castro took power. There is no denying that this is Cuban soil. However, for strategic reasons, the U.S. has clung to this very valuable turf, relying on a seventy-year-old treaty that essentially allows the United States to stay as long as it wishes.”

“We’ve heard reports of an explosion. Has anything of this nature ever happened before at Guantanamo?”

“No. Tensions have certainly run high over the years, spiking in the early sixties with the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, and spiking again in 1994 when sixty-thousand Cuban and Haitian refugees were detained at Guantanamo. But never anything like this.”

“What might cause an explosion and fire like this at the base?”

“That would be pure speculation at this juncture. We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Can you pinpoint the location of the fire for me? What part of the base appears to be affected?”

“It’s the main base. What I mean by that is that Guantanamo is a bifurcated base. The airstrip is on the western or leeward side. The main base is to the east, across the two-and-a-half-mile stretch of water that is Guantanamo Bay. You can see part of the bay in the upper left-hand corner of your television screen.”

“What part of the main base is burning?”

“It’s the southern tip, which is known as Radio Range because of the towering radio antennae that you can see in your picture. Interestingly enough, the fire is concentrated in what appears to be Camp Delta, which is the new high-security detention facility.”

“Camp Delta was built to house suspected terrorists, am I right?”

“The official terminology is ‘enemy combatant.’ Originally, the only detainees there were the alleged members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network. In recent months, however, the United States has broadened the definition of ‘enemy combatant.’ As a result, Camp Delta now houses drug lords and rebels from South America, suspected war criminals from Chechnya, kidnappers and thugs from Cambodia and a host of others who meet the Defense Department’s definition of ‘enemy combatant’ in the ever-widening war on terrorism.”

“This whole issue of detainees—this has become quite an international sore spot for President Howe, has it not?”

“That’s an understatement. You have to remember that none of the detainees at this facility has ever been charged with a crime. This all goes back to what I said earlier—the base is on Cuban soil. The Department of Defense has successfully argued in the U.S. federal courts that the base is not ‘sovereign’ territory and that inmates therefore have no due-process rights under the U.S. Constitution. The White House has taken the position that the military can hold the prisoners indefinitely. But pressure has steadily risen in the international community to force the U.S. either to charge the detainees with specific crimes or release them.”

“Some of these detainees are quite dangerous, I’m sure.”

“Even the president’s toughest antiterrorism experts are beginning to worry about the growing clamor over holding prisoners indefinitely without formal charges. On the other hand, you could probably make a pretty strong case that some of these guys are among the most dangerous men in the world. So Camp Delta is a bit of a steaming political hot potato.”

“Which has just burst into flames—literally.”

“I think this is on the verge of becoming one of the toughest issues President Howe will face in his second term—What should be done with all these enemy combatants that we’ve rounded up and put into detention without formal charges?”

“From the looks of things, someone may have come up with a solution.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that at all, but—”

“Mr. Polk, thank you for joining us. CNN will return with more live coverage of the fire at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after these commercial messages.”

Jack hit the mute button on the remote. “You still there?” he asked over the phone.

“Yeah,” said Theo. “Can you believe he did it?”

“Did what?”

“They said it was a Cessna. Wake up, dude. It’s Operation Northwoods.”

There was a pounding on the door. It had that certain thud of authority—law enforcement. “Open up. FBI!”

Jack gripped the phone. “Theo, I think this lawyer may need a lawyer.”

There was a crash at the front door, and it took Jack only a moment to realize that a SWAT team had breached his house. Jack could hear them coming down the hall, see them burst through the bedroom door. “Down, down, on the floor!” someone shouted, and Jack instinctively obeyed. He had never claimed to be the world’s smartest lawyer, but he was sharp enough to realize that when six guys come running into your bedroom in full SWAT regalia before dawn, generally they mean business. He decided to save the soapbox speech on civil liberties for another day, perhaps when his face wasn’t buried in the carpet and the automatic rifles weren’t aimed at the back of his skull.

“Where’s Jack Swyteck?” one of the men barked at him.

“I’m Jack Swyteck.”

There was silence, and it appeared that the team leader was checking a photograph to confirm Jack’s claim. The man said, “Let him up, boys.”

Jack rose and sat on the edge of the bed. He was wearing gym shorts and a Miami Dolphins jersey, his version of pajamas. The SWAT team backed away. The team leader pointed his gun at the floor and introduced himself as Agent Matta, FBI.

“Sorry about the entrance,” Matta said. “We got a tip that you were in danger.”

“A tip? From who?”

“Anonymous.”

Jack was somewhat skeptical. He was, after all, a criminal defense lawyer.

“We need to talk to you about your client, Jean Saint Preux. Did he act alone?”

“I don’t even know if he’s done anything yet.”

“Save it for the courtroom,” Matta said. “I need to know if there are more planes on the way.”

Jack suddenly understood the guns-drawn entrance. “What are you talking about?”

“Your client has been flying in the Windward Passage for some time now, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah. He’s Haitian. People are dying on the seas trying to flee the island. He’s been flying humanitarian missions to spot rafters lost at sea.”

“How well do you know him?”

“He’s just a client. Met him on a pro bono immigration case I did ten years ago. Look, you probably know more than I do. Are you sure it was him?”

“I think you can confirm that much for us with the air traffic control recordings.” He pulled a CD from inside his pocket, then said, “It’s been edited down to compress the time frame of the engagement, but it’s still highly informative.”

Jack was as curious as anyone to know if his client was involved—if he was alive or dead. “Let’s hear it,” he said.

Matta inserted the CD into the player on Jack’s credenza. There were several seconds of dead air. Finally a voice crackled over the speakers: “This is approach control, U.S. Naval Air Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Unidentified aircraft heading one-eight-five at one-five knots, identify yourself.”

Another stretch of silence followed. The control tower repeated its transmission. Finally, a man replied, his voice barely audible, but his Creole accent was still detectable. “Copy that.”

Jack said, “That’s Jean.”

The recorded voice of the controller continued, “You are entering unauthorized airspace. Please identify.”

No response.

“Fighter planes have been dispatched. Please identify.”

Jack moved closer to hear. It sounded as though his client was having trouble breathing.

The controller’s voice took on a certain urgency. “Unidentified aircraft, your transponder is emitting code seven-seven-hundred. Do you have an emergency?”

Again there was silence, and then a new voice emerged. “Yeah, Guantanamo, this is Mustang.”

Matta leaned across the desk and paused the CD just long enough to explain, “That’s the navy fighter pilot.”

The recording continued: “We have a visual. White Cessna one-eighty-two with blue stripes. N-number—November two six Golf Mike. One pilot aboard. No passengers.”

The controller said, “November two six Golf Mike, please confirm the code seven-seven-hundred. Are you in distress?”

“Affirmative.”

“Identify yourself.”

“Jean Saint Preux.”

“What is the nature of your distress?”

“I…I think I’m having a heart attack.”

The controller said, “Mustang, do you still have a visual?”

“Affirmative. The pilot appears to be slumped over the yoke. He’s flying on automatic.”

“November two six Golf Mike, you have entered unauthorized airspace. Do you read?”

He did not reply.

“This is Mustang. MiGs on the way. Got a pair of them approaching at two-hundred-forty degrees, west-northwest.”

Matta looked at Jack and said, “Those are the Cuban jets. They don’t take kindly to private craft in Cuban airspace.”

The recorded voice of the controller said, “November two six Golf Mike, do you request permission to land?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice straining. “Can’t go back.”

The next voice was in Spanish, and the words gave Jack chills. “Attention. You have breached the sovereign airspace of the Republic of Cuba. This will be your only warning. Reverse course immediately, or you will be fired upon as hostile aircraft.”

The controller said, “November two six Golf Mike, you must alter course to two-twenty, south-southwest. Exit Cuban airspace and enter the U.S. corridor. Do you read?”

Matta paused the recording and said, “There’s a narrow corridor that U.S. planes can use to come and go from the base. He’s trying to get Saint Preux into the safety zone.”

The recording continued, “November two six Golf Mike, do you read?”

Before Saint Preux could reply, the Cubans issued another warning in Spanish. “Reverse course immediately, or you will be fired upon as hostile aircraft.”

“November two six Golf Mike, do you read?”

“He’s hand signaling,” said Mustang. “I think he’s unable to talk.”

The controller said, “November two six Golf Mike, steer two-twenty, south-southwest. Align yourself with the lead navy F-16 and you will be escorted to landing. Permission to land at Guantanamo Bay has been granted.”

Jack’s gaze drifted off toward the window, the drama in the Cuban skies playing out in his mind.

“Mustang, what’s your status?” asked the controller.

“We’re in the corridor. Target is back on automatic pilot.”

“Do you have the craft in sight?”

“Yes. I’m on his wing now. That maneuver away from the MiGs really took it out of him. Pilot looks to be barely conscious. Dangerous situation here.”

“November two six Golf Mike, please hand signal our pilot if you are conscious and able to hear this transmission.”

After a long stretch of silence, Mustang said, “Got it. He just signaled.”

The controller said, “Permission has been granted to land on runway one. You are surrounded by four F-16s, and they are authorized to fire immediately upon any deviation from the proper course. Do you read?”

There was silence, then a response from Mustang. “He’s got it.”

“Roger. Mustang, lead the way.”

After thirty seconds of dead air, the controller returned. “Mustang, what’s your unaided visibility?”

“Our friend should be seeing fine. Approaching the south end of the main base.”

Matta used another stretch of silence to explain, saying, “The main base is to the east of the landing strip. They have to pass over the main base, and then fly across the bay in order to land.”

“Whoa!” shouted Mustang. “Target is in a nosedive!”

“November two six Golf Mike, pull up!”

“Still in a nosedive,” shouted Mustang, his voice racing.

“Pull up immediately!”

“No change,” said Mustang.

“November two six Golf Mike, final warning. Regain control of your craft or you will be fired upon.”

“He’s headed straight for Camp Delta.”

“Fire at will!”

A shrill, screeching noise came over the speakers. Then silence.

Matta hit the STOP button. “That’s it,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. Slowly, he walked around the desk and returned to his seat in the wing chair.

Jack was stone silent. He wasn’t particularly close to Saint Preux, but it was still unnerving to think of what had just happened to him.

Matta said, “Did Mr. Saint Preux have heart trouble?”

“Not to my knowledge. But he had pancreatic cancer. The doctors gave him only a few months to live.”

“Did he ever talk of suicide?”

“Not to me.”

“Was he depressed, angry?”

“Who wouldn’t be? The guy was only sixty-three years old. But that doesn’t mean he deliberately crashed his plane into Camp Delta.”

Matta said, “Do you know of any reason he might have to hate the U.S. government?”

Jack hesitated.

Matta said, “Look, I understand that you’re his lawyer and you have confidentiality issues. But your client’s dead, and so are six U.S. Marines, not to mention scores of detainees. We need to understand what happened.”

“All I can tell you is that he wasn’t happy about the way the government treats refugees from Haiti. Thinks we have a double standard for people of color. I’m not trying to slap a Jesse Jackson rhyme on you, but as the saying goes—If you’re black, you go back.”

“Was he unhappy enough to blow up a naval base?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do know,” said Matta, his voice taking on an edge. He was suddenly invading Jack’s space, getting right in his face. “I believe that the heart attack was a ruse. I think this was a planned and deliberate suicide attack by a man who had less than six months to live. And I suspect the logistical support and financial backing for an organization that only you can help us identify.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Jack.

“Are you going to sit there and pretend that he didn’t mention any plans to you, any organizations?”

Jack was about to tell him that he couldn’t answer that even if he’d wanted to, that conversations with his client—even a dead client—were privileged and confidential. But one thing did come to mind, and it wasn’t privileged. Jean had said it in front of Jack, in front of Theo and in front of about a half-dozen other drunks at Theo’s tavern. Jack could share it freely.

“He mentioned something called Operation Northwoods.”

Matta went ash-white. He turned, walked into the next room, and was immediately talking on his encrypted cell phone.

7:40 p.m., Two Weeks Later

Sparky’s Tavern was on U.S. 1 south of Homestead, one of the last watering holes before a landscape that still bore the scars of a direct hit from Hurricane Andrew in 1992 gave way to the splendor of the Florida Keys. It was a converted old gas station with floors so stained from tipped drinks that not even the Environmental Protection Agency could have determined if more flammable liquids had spilled before or after the conversion. The grease pit was gone but the garage doors were still in place. There was a long, wooden bar, a TV permanently tuned to ESPN, and a never-ending stack of quarters on the pool table. Beer was served in cans, and the empties were crushed in true Sparky’s style at the old tire vise that still sat on the workbench. It was the kind of dive that Jack would have visited if it were in his own neighborhood, but he made the forty-minute trip for one reason only: the bartender was Theo Knight.

“Another one, buddy?”

He was serving Jack shots of tequila. “No thanks,” said Jack.

“Come on. Try just one without training wheels,” he said as he cleared the lemons and saltshaker from the bar top.

Jack’s thoughts were elsewhere. “I met with a former military guy today,” said Jack. “Says he knows all about Operation Northwoods.”

“Does he also know all about the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny?”

“He worked in the Pentagon under the Kennedy administration.”

Theo poured another shot, but Jack didn’t touch it. “Talk to me,” said Theo.

“He showed me a memo that was top secret for years. It was declassified a few years ago, but somehow it never got much press, even though it was titled ‘Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba.’ The Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted it to the Defense Department a few months after the Bay of Pigs invasion. No one denies that the memo existed, though former Secretary of Defense McNamara has gone on record saying he never saw it. Anyway, it outlines a plan called Operation Northwoods.”

“So there really was an Operation Northwoods? Pope Paul wasn’t just high on painkillers?”

“His name was Saint Preux, moron. And it was just a memo, not an actual operation. The idea was for the U.S. military to stage terrorist activities at Guantanamo and blame them on Cuba, which would draw the United States into war with Cuba.”

“Get out.”

“Seriously. The first wave was to have friendly Cubans dressed in Cuban military uniforms start riots at the base, blow up ammunition at the base, start fires, burn aircraft, sabotage a ship in the harbor and sink a ship near the harbor entrance.”

“Sounds like a plot for a bad movie.”

“It gets better—or worse, depending on your perspective. They talked about having a ‘Remember the Maine’ incident where the U.S. would blow up one of its own ships in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.”

“But how could they do that without hurting their own men?”

“They couldn’t. And this was actually in the memo—I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It said, ‘Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a healthy wave of national indignation.’”

Theo winced, but it might have been the tequila. “They didn’t actually do any of this shit, did they?”

“Nah. Somebody in the Pentagon came to their senses. But still, it makes you wonder if Jean was trying to tell us something about a twenty-first-century Operation Northwoods.”

Theo nodded, seeming to follow his logic. “A plane crash on the base, a few U.S. casualties, and voilà! The burning question of what to do with six hundred terrorists is finally resolved. Could never happen, right?”

“Nah. Could never—” Jack stopped himself. President Lincoln Howe was on television. “Turn that up, buddy.”

Theo climbed atop a bar stool and adjusted the volume. On screen, President Lincoln Howe was delivering a prime-time message with his broad shoulders squared to the microphone, his forceful tone conveying the full weight of his office. The world could only admire the presidential resolve of a former general in the United States Army.

“The FBI and Justice Department have worked tirelessly and swiftly on this investigation,” said the president. “It is our very firm conclusion that Mr. Saint Preux acted alone. He filled a civilian aircraft with highly explosive materials to create the equivalent of a flying eight-hundred-pound napalm bomb. Through means of deception, which included a fake medical emergency, he gained permission to land at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Guantanamo. In accordance with his premeditated scheme, the plane exploded and created a rain of fire over Camp Delta, killing six U.S. Marines and over six hundred detainees, and injuring many others.

“Naturally, our prayers and sympathies go out to the victims and their families. But I wish to emphasize that the speed with which we addressed this incident demonstrates that we will pursue terrorists and terrorist groups in whatever criminal guise they take, irrespective of whether they target American soldiers, innocent civilians or even foreign enemy combatants whom the United States has lawfully detained and taken into custody.”

The president paused, as if giving his sound bite time to gel, then narrowed his eyes for a final comment. “Make no mistake about it. Although most of the victims were detained enemy combatants, this attack at Guantanamo was an attack on democracy and the United States of America. With Mr. Saint Preux’s death, however, justice has been done. Good night, thank you, and may God bless America.”

Jack remained glued to the television as the president stepped away from the podium. Reporters sprang from their seats and started firing questions, but the president simply waved and turned away. The network commentators jumped in with their recap and analysis, but Jack’s mind was awhirl with his own thoughts. Was Operation Northwoods for real? Did Jack’s client do this as a favor to the U.S. government? Or did he do it to embarrass the Howe administration, as a way to make the world think that the president had put him up to this? None of those questions had been answered.

Or maybe they had.

Theo switched off the television. “Guess that settles it,” he said, laying on a little more than his usual sarcasm. “Just another pissed-off Haitian crashing his airplane into a naval base to protest U.S. immigration policy.”

Jack lifted his shot glass of tequila. “I’m ready.”

“For what?”

He glanced at the lemon and saltshaker, then stiffened his resolve. “I’m losing the training wheels.”




J.A. Konrath


J. A. Konrath is relatively new to the thriller scene. The Lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels series features a forty-something Chicago cop who chases serial killers. Konrath’s debut, Whiskey Sour, was a unique combination of creepy chills and laugh-out-loud moments. Bloody Mary and Rusty Nail used the same giggle-then-cringe formula—likable heroes in scary situations. Konrath believes that a lot of the fun in writing a thriller series comes from the supporting characters. People are defined by the company they keep. Jack has a handful of sidekicks who both help and hinder her murder investigations.

Phineas Troutt is one of the helpful ones.

Introduced in Whiskey Sour, Phin operates outside the law as a problem solver—someone who takes illegal jobs for big paydays. Jack is never quite sure what Phin does to earn a living. Konrath himself didn’t know, but thought it would be fun to find out.

Forsaking the cannibals, necrophiles, snuff filmers and serial killers of his Jack Daniels books, Epitaph revolves around a more familiar and accessible evil—street gangs. The result is something grittier, darker and more intimately violent than the series that spawned Phin. No tongue in cheek here. No goofy one-liners. Konrath has always enjoyed exploring where shadows hide when the sun goes down, but this time there’s no humorous safety net. What motivates a man to drop out of society and kill for money? Is there a tie between morality and dignity? And most important of all, what is Phin loading into the shells of that modified Mossberg shotgun?

Let the body count begin.




Epitaph


There’s an art to getting your ass kicked.

Guys on either side held my arms, stretching me out crucifixion style. The joker who worked me over swung wildly, without planting his feet or putting his body into it. He spent most of his energy swearing and screaming when he should have been focusing on inflicting maximum damage.

Amateur.

Not that I was complaining. What he lacked in professionalism, he made up for in mean.

He moved in and rabbit-punched me in the side. I flexed my abs and tried to shift to take the blow in the center of my stomach, rather than the more vulnerable kidneys.

I exhaled hard when his fist landed. Saw stars.

He stepped away to pop me in the face. Rather than tense up, I relaxed, trying to absorb the contact by letting my neck snap back.

It still hurt like hell.

I tasted blood, wasn’t sure if it came from my nose or my mouth. Probably both. My left eye had already swollen shut.

“Hijo calvo de una perra!”

You bald son of a bitch. Real original. His breath was ragged now, shoulders slumping, face glowing with sweat.

Gangbangers these days aren’t in very good shape. I blame TV and junk food.

One final punch—a halfhearted smack to my broken nose—and then I was released.

I collapsed face-first in a puddle that smelled like urine. The three Latin Kings each took the time to spit on me. Then they strolled out of the alley, laughing and giving each other high fives.

When they got a good distance away, I crawled over to a Dumpster and pulled myself to my feet. The alley was dark, quiet. I felt something scurry over my foot.

Rats, licking up my dripping blood.

Nice neighborhood.

I hurt a lot, but pain and I were old acquaintances. I took a deep breath, let it out slow, did some poking and prodding. Nothing seemed seriously damaged.

I’d been lucky.

I spat. The bloody saliva clung to my swollen lower lip and dribbled onto my T-shirt. I tried a few steps forward, managed to keep my balance, and continued to walk out of the alley, onto the sidewalk, and to the corner bus stop.

I sat.

The Kings took my wallet, which had no ID or credit cards, but did have a few hundred in cash. I kept an emergency fiver in my shoe. The bus arrived, and the portly driver raised an eyebrow at my appearance.

“Do you need a doctor, buddy?”

“I’ve got plenty of doctors.”

He shrugged and took my money.

On the ride back, my fellow passengers made heroic efforts to avoid looking at me. I leaned forward, so the blood pooled between my feet rather than stained my clothing any further. These were my good jeans.

When my stop came up, I gave everyone a cheery wave goodbye and stumbled out of the bus.

The corner of State and Cermak was all lit up, twinkling in both English and Chinese. Unlike NYC and L.A., each of which had sprawling Chinatowns, Chicago has more of a Chinablock. Blink while you’re driving west on Twenty-second and you’ll miss it.

Though Caucasian, I found a kind of peace in Chinatown that I didn’t find among the Anglos. Since my diagnosis, I’ve pretty much disowned society. Living here was like living in a foreign country—or a least a square block of a foreign country.

I kept a room at the Lucky Lucky Hotel, tucked between a crumbling apartment building and a Chinese butcher shop, on State and Twenty-fifth. The hotel did most of its business at an hourly rate, though I couldn’t think of a more repulsive place to take a woman, even if you were renting her as well as the room. The halls stank like mildew and worse, the plaster snowed on you when you climbed the stairs, obscene graffiti lined the halls and the whole building leaned slightly to the right.

I got a decent rent: free—as long as I kept out the drug dealers. Which I did, except for the ones who dealt to me.

I nodded at the proprietor, Kenny-Jen-Bang-Ko, and asked for my key. Kenny was three times my age, clean-shaven save for several black moles on his cheeks that sprouted long, white hairs. He tugged at these hairs while contemplating me.

“How is other guy?” Kenny asked.

“Drinking a forty of malt liquor that he bought with my money.”

He nodded, as if that was the answer he’d been expecting. “You want pizza?”

Kenny gestured to a box on the counter. The slices were so old and shrunken they looked like Doritos.

“I thought the Chinese hated fast food.”

“Pizza not fast. Took thirty minutes. Anchovy and red pepper.”

I declined.

My room was one squeaky stair flight up. I unlocked the door and lumbered over to the bathroom, looking into the cracked mirror above the sink.

Ouch.

My left eye had completely closed, and the surrounding tissue bulged out like a peach. Purple bruising competed with angry red swelling along my cheeks and forehead. My nose was a glob of strawberry jelly, and blood had crusted black along my lips and down my neck.

It looked like Jackson Pollock had kicked my ass.

I stripped off the T-shirt, peeled off my shoes and jeans, and turned the shower up to scald.

It hurt but got most of the crap off.

After the shower I popped five Tylenol, chased them with a shot of tequila and spent ten minutes in front of the mirror, tears streaming down my face, forcing my nose back into place.

I had some coke, but wouldn’t be able to sniff anything with my sniffer all clotted up, and I was too exhausted to shoot any. I made do with the tequila, thinking that tomorrow I’d have that codeine prescription refilled.

Since the pain wouldn’t let me sleep, I decided to do a little work.

Using a dirty fork, I pried up the floorboards near the radiator and took out a plastic bag full of what appeared to be little gray stones. The granules were the size and consistency of aquarium gravel.

I placed the bag on the floor, then removed the Lee Load-All, the scale, a container of gunpowder, some wads and a box of empty 12-gauge shells.

Everything went over to my kitchen table. I snapped on a fresh pair of latex gloves, clamped the loader onto my countertop and spent an hour carefully filling ten shells. When I finished, I loaded five of them into my Mossberg 935, the barrel and stock of which had been cut down for easier concealment.

I liked shotguns—you had more leeway when aiming, the cops couldn’t trace them like they could trace bullets, and nothing put the fear of God into a guy like the sound of racking a shell into the chamber.

For this job, I didn’t have a choice.

By the time I was done, my nose had taken the gold medal in throbbing, with my eye coming close with the silver. I swallowed five more Tylenol and four shots of tequila, then lay down on my cot and fell asleep.

With sleep came the dream.

It happened every night, so vivid I could smell Donna’s perfume. We were still together, living in the suburbs. She was smiling at me, running her fingers through my hair.

“Phin, the caterer wants to know if we’re going with the split-pea or the wedding-ball soup.”

“Explain the wedding-ball soup to me again.”

“It’s a chicken stock with tiny veal meatballs in it.”

“That sounds good to you?”

“It’s very good. I’ve had it before.”

“Then let’s go with that.”

She kissed me; playful, loving.

I woke up drenched in sweat.

If someone had told me that happy memories would one day be a source of incredible pain, I wouldn’t have believed it.

Things change.

Sun peeked in through my dirty window, making me squint. I stretched, wincing because my whole body hurt—my whole body except for my left side, where a team of doctors had severed the nerves during an operation called a chordotomy. The surgery had been purely palliative. The area felt dead, even though the cancer still thrived inside my pancreas. And elsewhere, by now.

The chordotomy offered enough pain relief to allow me to function, and tequila, cocaine and codeine made up for the remainder.

I dressed in some baggy sweatpants, my bloody gym shoes (with a new five-dollar bill in the sole) and a clean white T-shirt. I strapped my leather shotgun sling under my armpits and placed the Mossberg in the holster. It hung directly between my shoulder blades, barrel up, and could be freed by reaching my right hand behind me at waist level.

A baggy black trench coat went on over the rig, concealing the shotgun and the leather straps that held it in place.

I pocketed the five extra shells, the bag of gray granules, a Glock 21 with two extra clips of .45 rounds and a six-inch butterfly knife. Then I hung an iron crowbar on an extra strap sewn into the lining of my coat, and headed out to greet the morning.

Chinatown smelled like a combination of soy sauce and garbage. It was worse in the summer, when stenches seemed to settle in and stick to your clothes. Though not yet seven in the morning, the temperature already hovered in the low nineties. The sun made my face hurt.

I walked up State, past Cermak, and headed east. The Sing Lung Bakery had opened for business an hour earlier. The manager, a squat Mandarin Chinese named Ti, did a double take when I entered.

“Phin! Your face is horrible!” He rushed around the counter to meet me, hands and shirt dusty with flour.

“My mom liked it okay.”

Ti’s features twisted in concern. “Was it them? The ones who butchered my daughter?”

I gave him a brief nod.

Ti hung his head. “I am sorry to bring this suffering upon you. They are very bad men.”

I shrugged, which hurt. “It was my fault. I got careless.”

That was an understatement. After combing Chicago for almost a week, I’d discovered the bangers had gone underground. I got one guy to talk, and after a bit of friendly persuasion he gladly offered some vital info; Sunny’s killers were due to appear in court on an unrelated charge.

I’d gone to the Daly Center, where the prelim hearing was being held, and watched from the sidelines. After matching their names to faces, I followed them back to their hidey-hole.

My mistake had been to stick around. A white guy in a Hispanic neighborhood tends to stand out. Having just been to court, which required walking through a metal detector, I had no weapons on me.

Stupid. Ti and Sunny deserved someone smarter.

Ti had found me through the grapevine, where I got most of my business. Phineas Troutt, Problem Solver. No job too dirty, no fee too high.

I’d met him in a parking lot across the street, and he laid out the whole sad, sick story of what these animals had done to his little girl.

“Cops do nothing. Sunny’s friend too scared to press charges.”

Sunny’s friend had managed to escape with only ten missing teeth, six stab wounds and a torn rectum. Sunny hadn’t been as lucky.

Ti agreed to my price without question. Not too many people haggled with paid killers.

“You finish job today?” Ti asked, reaching into his glass display counter for a pastry.

“Yeah.”

“In the way we talk about?”

“In the way we talked about.”

Ti bowed and thanked me. Then he stuffed two pastries into a bag and held them out.

“Duck egg moon cake, and red bean ball with sesame. Please take.”

I took.

“Tell me when you find them.”

“I’ll be back later today. Keep an eye on the news. You might see something you’ll like.”

I left the bakery and headed for the bus. Ti had paid me enough to afford a cab, or even a limo, but cabs and limos kept records. Besides, I preferred to save my money for more important things, like drugs and hookers. I try to live every day as if it’s my last.

After all, it very well might be.

The bus arrived, and again everyone took great pains not to stare. The trip was short, only about two miles, taking me to a neighborhood known as Pilsen, on Racine and Eighteenth.

I left my duck egg moon cake and my red bean ball on the bus for some other lucky passenger to enjoy, then stepped out into Little Mexico.

It smelled like a combination of salsa and garbage.

There weren’t many people out—too early for shoppers and commuters. The stores had Spanish signs, not bothering with English translations: zapatos, ropa, restaurante, tiendas de comestibles, bancos, teléfonos de la célula. I passed the alley where I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me, kept heading north, and located the apartment building where my three amigos were staying. I tried the front door.

They hadn’t left it open for me.

Though the gray paint was faded and peeling, the door was heavy aluminum and the lock solid. But the jamb, as I’d remembered from yesterday’s visit, was old wood. I removed the crowbar from my jacket lining, gave a discreet look in either direction and pried open the door in less time than it took to open it with a key, the frame splintering and cracking.

The Kings occupied the basement apartment to the left of the entrance, facing the street. Last night I’d counted seven—five men and two women—including my three targets. Of course, there may be other people inside that I’d missed.

This was going to be interesting.

Unlike the front door, their apartment door was a joke. They apparently thought being gang members meant they didn’t need decent security.

They thought wrong.

I took out my Glock and tried to stop hyperventilating. Breaking into someone’s place is scary as hell. It always is.

One hard kick and the door burst inward.

A guy on the couch, sleeping in front of the TV. Not one of my marks. He woke up and stared at me. It took a millisecond to register the gang tattoo, a five-pointed crown, on the back of his hand.

I shot him in his forehead.

If the busted door didn’t wake everyone up, the .45 did, sounding like thunder in the small room.

Movement to my right. A woman in the kitchen, in panties and a Dago-T, too much makeup and baby fat.

“Te vayas!” I hissed at her.

She took the message and ran out the door.

A man stumbled into the hall, tripping and falling to the thin carpet. One of mine, the guy who’d pinned my right arm while I’d been worked over. He clutched a stiletto. I was on him in two quick steps, putting one in his elbow and one through the back of his knee when he fell.

He screamed falsetto.

I walked down the hall in a crouch, and a bullet zinged over my head and buried itself in the ceiling. I kissed the floor, looked left, and saw the shooter in the bathroom; the guy who had held my other arm and laughed every time I got smacked.

I stuck the Glock in my jeans and reached behind me, unslinging the Mossberg.

He fired again, missed, and I aimed the shotgun and peppered his face.

Unlike lead shot, the gray granules didn’t have deep penetrating power. Instead of blowing his head off, they peeled off his lips, cheeks and eyes.

He ate linoleum, blind and choking on blood.

Movement behind me. I fell sideways and rolled onto my back. A kid, about thirteen, stood in the hall a few feet away. He wore Latin Kings colors; black to represent death, gold to represent life.

His hand ended in a pistol.

I racked the shotgun, aimed low.

If the kid was old enough to be sexually active, he wasn’t anymore.

He dropped to his knees, still holding the gun.

I was on him in two steps, driving a knee into his nose. He went down and out.

Three more guys burst out of the bedroom.

Apparently I’d counted wrong.

Two were young, muscular, brandishing knives. The third was the guy who’d worked me over the night before. The one who’d called me a bald son of a bitch.

They were on me before I could rack the shotgun again.

The first one slashed at me with his pig-sticker, and I parried with the barrel of the Mossberg. He jabbed again, slicing me across the knuckles of my right hand.

I threw the shotgun at his face and went for my Glock.

He was fast.

I was faster.

Bang bang and he was a paycheck for the coroner. I spun left, aimed at the second guy. He was already in midjump, launching himself at me with a battle cry and switchblades in both hands.

One gun beats two knives.

He took three in the chest and two in the neck before he dropped.

The last guy, the guy who’d broken my nose, grabbed my shotgun and dived behind the couch.

Chck chck. He ejected the shell and racked another into the chamber. I pulled the Glock’s magazine and slammed a fresh one home.

“Hijo calvo de una perra!”

Again with the bald son of a bitch taunt. I worked through my hurt feelings and crawled to an end table, tipping it over and getting behind it.

The shotgun boomed. Had it been loaded with shot, it would have torn through the cheap particleboard and turned me into ground beef. Or ground hijo calvo de una perra. But at that distance, the granules didn’t do much more than make a loud noise.

The banger apparently didn’t learn from experience, because he tried twice more with similar results, and then the shotgun was empty.

I stood up from behind the table, my heart a lump in my throat and my hands shaking with adrenaline.

The King turned and ran.

His back was an easy target.

I took a quick look around, making sure everyone was down or out, and then went to retrieve my shotgun. I loaded five more shells and approached the downed leader, who was sucking carpet and whimpering. The wounds in his back were ugly, but he still made a feeble effort to crawl away.

I bent down, turned him over and shoved the barrel of the Mossberg between his bloody lips.

“You remember Sunny Lung,” I said, and fired.

It wasn’t pretty. It also wasn’t fatal. The granules blew out his cheeks and tore into his throat, but somehow the guy managed to keep breathing.

I gave him one more, jamming the gun farther down the wreck of his face.

That did the trick.

The second perp, the one I’d blinded, had passed out on the bathroom floor. His face didn’t look like a face anymore, and blood bubbles were coming out of the hole where his mouth would have been.

“Sunny Lung sends her regards,” I said.

This time I pushed the gun in deep, and the first shot did the trick, blowing through his throat.

The last guy, the one who made like Pavarotti when I took out his knee, left a blood smear from the hall into the kitchen. He cowered in the corner, a dishrag pressed to his leg.

“Don’t kill me, man! Don’t kill me!”

“I bet Sunny Lung said the same thing.”

The Mossberg thundered twice; once to the chest, and once to the head.

It wasn’t enough. What was left alive gasped for air.

I removed the bag of granules from my pocket, took out a handful and shoved them down his throat until he stopped breathing.

Then I went to the bathroom and threw up in the sink.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Time to go. I washed my hands, and then rinsed off the barrel of the Mossberg, holstering it in my rig.

In the hallway, the kid I emasculated was clutching himself between the legs, sobbing.

“There’s always the priesthood,” I told him, and got out of there.

My nose was still clogged, but I managed to get enough coke up there to damper the pain. Before closing time I stopped by the bakery, and Ti greeted me with a somber nod.

“Saw the news. They said it was a massacre.”

“Wasn’t pretty.”

“You did as we said?”

“I did, Ti. Your daughter got her revenge. She’s the one that killed them. All three.”

I fished out the bag of granules and handed it to her father. Sunny’s cremated remains.

“Xie xie,” Ti said, thanking me in Mandarin. He held out an envelope filled with cash.

He looked uncomfortable, and I had drugs to buy, so I took the money and left without another word.

An hour later I’d filled my codeine prescription, picked up two bottles of tequila and a skinny hooker with track marks on her arms, and had a party back at my place. I popped and drank and screwed and snorted, trying to blot out the memory of the last two days. And of the last six months.

That’s when I’d been diagnosed. A week before my wedding day. My gift to my bride-to-be was running away so she wouldn’t have to watch me die of cancer.

Those Latin Kings this morning, they got off easy. They didn’t see it coming.

Seeing it coming is so much worse.




Heather Graham


Heather Graham has spent her life in the Miami area and frequently uses her home arena as the setting in her novels. She sometimes considers that it’s quite a bit like living in a theater of the absurd. Where else can you mix such a cosmopolitan, big-city venue with traces of a distant past? The place has it all. Snowbirds blending with the Old South. The Everglades, where proud tribes of Native Americans still live. And the sultry “river of grass,” which affords deadly opportunities for the drug trade and convenient hiding spots for bodies that may never surface again.

Graham loves her hometown, the water, boating, and one of her main passions, scuba diving. She says that loving Miami is like loving a child. You have to accept it for the good and bad. Graham is known for creating locations that live and breathe—becoming as much a character in her books as the people who propel them. A multi-award-winning author, continually reaching New York Times and USA TODAY lists, she’s glad to work in several venues, including vampire, historical, ghost and suspense. Whatever time or place she’s dealing in, Graham loves to keep her readers on edge. With The Face in the Window she takes characters from her thriller, The Island, and sets them in the midst of an unexpected storm with unexpected consequences.




The Face In The Window


Lightning flashed.

Thunder cracked.

It might have been the end of the world.

And there, cast eerily in the window, pressed against it, was a face. The eyes were red; they seemed to glow, like demon eyes. There was a split second when it seemed the storm had cast up the very devil to come for her.

Startled, Beth Henson let out a scream, backing away from the image, almost tripping over the coffee table behind her. The brilliant illumination created by the lightning faded to black, and along with it, the image of the face.

Beyond the window, darkness reigned again.

A lantern burned on the table, a muted glow against the shadowed darkness of night. The storm had long since blown out the electricity as it should have removed other inhabitants from the area. The wind railed with the sharpness of a banshee’s shriek, even though the hurricane had wound down to tropical-storm strength before descending upon the lower Florida Keys.

Instinctive terror reigned in Beth’s heart for several long seconds, then compassion overrode it. Someone was out there, drenched and frightened in the storm. She had gone to the window to see if she could find any sign of Keith. He had left her when their last phone communication with the sheriff had warned them that Mrs. Peterson—one of the few full-time residents of the tiny key—had failed to evacuate. She wouldn’t leave for a shelter, not when the shelters wouldn’t allow her to bring Cocoa, her tiny Yorkie. Okay, so Cocoa could be a pain, but she and Keith could understand the elderly woman’s love for her pup and companion, and Beth had convinced Keith they could listen to a bit of barking.

The appearance of the face in the window was followed by a banging on the door. Beth jumped again, startled. For a moment, she froze. What if it was a serial killer? Normally, she would never just open a door to anyone.

But the pounding continued, along with a cry for help. She sprang into action, chiding herself. Someone was out there who needed shelter from the storm. Some idiot tourist without the sense to evacuate when told to. And if that someone died because she was too frightened to give aid in an emergency…

And how ridiculous. Sure, the world had proven to be a rough place, with heinous and conniving criminals. But to assume a serial killer was running around in the midst of what might have been a killer storm was just ludicrous.

She hurried forward, hand firmly on the door as she opened it against the power of the wind. Again, compassion surged through her as the soaked and bedraggled man came staggering in, desperately gasping for breath. He was a thin man with dark, wet hair that clung to his face and the back of his neck. When he looked at Beth, his eyes were wide and terrified. He offered her a faltering smile. “God bless you! You really must be an angel!” he cried.

Beth drew the quilted throw from the sofa and wrapped it around the man’s shoulders, demanding, “What were you doing out there? How could you not have heard the evacuation orders issued for all tourists?”

He looked at her sheepishly. “Please, don’t throw me back out,” he told her. “I admit, I was on a bender in Key West.” He staggered to his feet. “When I realized we were told to go, I started out, but my car was literally blown off the road. Then I saw light. Faint light—your place. God must look after fools. I mean…if you don’t throw me out.” He was tall and wiry, perhaps about thirty. She realized, when not totally bedraggled, he was surely a striking young fellow, with his brilliant blue eyes and dark hair.

“I’m not going to throw you out,” she told him.

He offered her a hand suddenly. “I’m Mark Egan. A musician. Maybe you’ve heard of my group? We’re called Ultra C. Our first CD just hit the stores, and we were playing the bars down in Key West. You haven’t heard of me—or us?” he said, disappointed.

“No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”

“That’s okay, I guess most of the world hasn’t,” he said.

“Maybe my husband will have heard of you. He’s in Key West often and he really loves to listen to local groups.”

He offered her his engaging grin once again. “It doesn’t matter—you’re still wonderful. You’re an angel—wow, gorgeous, too.”

“Thanks. I can give you something dry to put on. My husband is somewhat larger than you are, but I’m sure you can make do.”

“Your husband? Is he here?”

She felt a moment’s unease. “Yes, of course. He’s just…battening down a few things. He’s around, close,” she said.

“I hope he doesn’t stay out too long. It’s brutal. Hey, you guys don’t keep a car here?” he asked.

An innocent question? she wondered.

“Yes, we have a car,” she said, determined not to explain further. “I’m Beth Henson,” she said, and offered him a hand. They shook. His grip was more powerful than what she had expected. “Hang on, I’ll get you those clothes,” she said.

She picked up one of the flashlights and headed for the bedroom. She couldn’t help looking over her shoulder, afraid that he had followed her. He hadn’t. She went to the closet and decided on an old pair of Keith’s jeans and a T-shirt. Best she could do. She brought them back out and handed them to the dripping man. “Bathroom is the first door on the left, and here’s a flashlight.”

“Thanks. Truly, you are an angel!” he said, and walked down the hall.

Keith’s friends liked to make fun of him for the Hummer. Hell, Beth liked to rib him about it, shaking her head with bemused tolerance as she did so. It was a gas guzzler. Not at all ecofriendly. It was a testosterone thing, a macho thing he felt he had to have. He mused he could now knock it all back in their faces—the Hummer was heavy enough to make it through the wind, tough enough to crawl through the flooding.

So there, guys. Testosterone? Maybe. But Beth had been the one who had been worried sick about Mrs. Peterson. She had been worried sick again when he had left to retrieve Mrs. Peterson and the dog. She’d wanted to come; he’d convinced her that if she was home, he wouldn’t be worried about her in the storm as well.

He fiddled with the knob on the radio again, trying to get something to come in. At last, he did. He expected the news stations in the south of the state to be carrying nothing but storm coverage—even if the storm had lost momentum.

“…serial killer on the loose. Authorities suspect that he headed south just before evacuation notices went into effect…” Static, damn! Then, “Parker managed to disappear, ‘as if into thin air,’ according to Lieutenant Abner Gretsky, prison guard. Downed poles and electrical failures have made pursuit and apprehension difficult. John Parker was found guilty in the slaying of Patricia Reeves of Miramar last year. He is suspected of the murders of at least seven other women in the southeastern states. He is a man of approximately—”

Keith couldn’t believe it when another earful of static slammed him instead of statistics on the man. Headed south?

Not this far south. Only a suicidal maniac would have attempted to drive down into the dark and treacherous keys when a storm of any magnitude was in gear. Still, it felt as if icy fingers slid down his throat to his heart.

Beth was alone at the house.

He was tempted to turn back instantly. But Mrs. Peterson’s trailer was just ahead now. All he had to do was grab the old woman, hop back in the Hummer and turn around.

The first thing he noted was that her old Plymouth wasn’t in the drive.

He hesitated, then reached in the glove compartment for the .38 Smith & Wesson he was licensed to carry. He exited the car, swearing against the savage pelting of the rain.

“Mrs. Peterson!” he roared, approaching the trailer. Damn, the woman was lucky the thing hadn’t blown over yet. He could hear the dog barking. Yappy little creature, but hell, it was everything in the world to the elderly widow.

“Mrs. Peterson!” He pounded on the door. There was no response. He hesitated, then tried the knob. The door was open.

He walked in. Mrs. Peterson’s purse was on the coffee table. Cocoa could be heard but not seen. “Mrs. Peterson?”

The trailer was small. There was nowhere to hide in the living room or kitchen. He tried her sewing room, and then, not sure why, he hesitated at the door to her bedroom. He slipped the Smith & Wesson from his waistband, took a stance and threw open the door.

Nothing. No one. He breathed a sigh of relief, then spun around at a flurry of sound. Cocoa came flying out from beneath the bed.

The small dog managed to jump into his arms, terrified. As Keith clutched the animal, he heard a noise from the front, and headed back out.

A drenched man in what was surely supposed to be a waterproof jacket stood just inside the doorway. “Aunt Dot?” he called.

The fellow was about thirty years old. Dark hair was plastered to his head. He stood about six feet even. He saw Keith standing with the gun and cried out, stunned and frightened.

“Who are you?” Keith demanded.

“Joe. I’m Joe Peterson. Dot Peterson’s nephew,” he explained.

“How did you get here?”

“Walked.” The fellow swallowed. “My car broke down. Um…where’s my aunt?” he inquired.

“You tell me,” Keith demanded warily.

“I…I don’t know. I was on my way down here…the car gave out. Man, I went through some deep flooding…walked the rest of the way here. Um, who are you and why are you aiming a gun at me?” There was definite fear in his voice. “Wait, no, never mind. I don’t want to know your name. Hey, if you’re taking anything, go ahead. I’ll just walk back out into the storm. I’ll look for my aunt.”

“We’ll look for her together,” Keith said.

He indicated that Joe should walk back out. The fellow hesitated uneasily and then voiced an anxious question. “Aunt Dottie…she’s really not here?”

Keith shook his head. “Move.”

Joe moved toward the door. “Back out into the storm?” he demanded.

Keith nodded grimly. Outside, he put the dog in the car, stuck the gun in his waistband and opened the driver’s side. “Get in,” he shouted to Joe Peterson.

“Maybe I should wait here,” Peterson shouted back.

“Maybe we should look for your aunt!”

They both got into the car. Cocoa scampered to the back seat, whimpering. Keith eased the Hummer out of the drive. “Search the sides of the road, see if she drove off somehow!” Keith commanded.

“Search the side of the road?” Peterson repeated. He looked at Keith so abruptly that water droplets flew from his face and hood. “I can’t see a damn road! It’s all gray.”

“Look for a darker gray blob in the middle of the gray then,” Keith said.

The windshield wipers were working hard, doing little.

But then he saw it. Something just barely visible. Peering forward more closely, he saw the Plymouth. It had gone off the road heading south.

Keith stared at Peterson, drew out the gun and warned the man, “Sit still.”

“Right, yeah, right!” Peterson said nervously, staring at the gun.

Keith stepped from the car. He sloshed through the flooded road to the mucky embankment. He looked in the front and saw nothing. Why would the old lady, who always held tight to her handbag, have left the purse on the table when she was taking off in her own car?

Fighting against the wind, he opened the front doors and the back. No sign of a struggle, of a person, of…anything.

Then he noted the trunk. It was ajar. He lifted the lid.

And found Mrs. Peterson.

“So…you live out here, year-round?”

“No. This is just a vacation home.”

“Lonely place,” he said.

Beth shrugged. “We live in Coconut Grove, but actually spend a lot of time down here. My husband is a diver.”

“A professional diver?”

Beth could have explained that Keith’s work went much further than simple diving, that his contracts often had to do with the government or law enforcement, but she didn’t want to explain—she wasn’t sure why. Her uninvited guest had changed his clothing. He was warm and dry. She had given him a brandy, and he had been nothing but polite and entirely circumspect. The unease of having let someone into her house hadn’t abated, although she didn’t know why. This guy seemed to be as benign as a hibiscus bush.

“Um, yes. He’s a professional diver,” she agreed.

“Great,” he said, grinning. He pointed a finger at her. “Didn’t you get that original evacuation notice?”

“We got it, but this place was built in the mid-1800s. It’s weathered many a storm. The evacuation wasn’t mandatory for residents—only visitors.” She was pleased to hear a sudden burst of static and she leaped to her feet. “The radio! I don’t know why, my batteries are new, but I wasn’t getting anything on it. And the cell phones right now are a total joke.” She offered him a rueful smile and went running through the hall for the kitchen, at the back of the house.

“…be on the lookout…extremely dangerous…”

She nearly skidded to a stop as she heard the words come from the radio on the dining table.

“…serial killer…”

Like a stick figure, she moved over to the table, staring at the radio. It had gone to static again. She picked it up and shook it, feeling dizzy, ill.

“…suspected to be running south, into the keys…”

“Turn it off!”

Beth looked up. Her guest had followed her from the living room to the kitchen. He stood in the doorway, hands tightly gripping the wood frame as he stared at her. His eyes were wild, red-rimmed…

Like they had appeared when she’d first seen his face in the window.

And there was a serial killer loose in the keys…

Mrs. Peterson was trussed up like a fresh kill, wrists and ankles bound, a gag around her mouth. There was no blood, and though her linen pants and shirt were muddied and soaked, there were no signs of violence on her. Keith checked for any sign of life. Her body was so cold.

But she was alive. He felt a faint pulse and snapped open the blade on the Swiss Army knife attached to his key chain. He cut the tight gag from her mouth and then the ropes binding her.

He didn’t know if she had broken bones or internal injuries. She could wind up with pneumonia or worse, but this wasn’t the kind of situation that left him much choice. He hoisted her fragile body from the trunk and returned to the car, staggering against the wind. He shouted for Joe Peterson to help, but there was no response. He managed to wrench open the rear door of the vehicle on his own.

Cocoa yapped.

Keith swore.

“Dammit! Why didn’t you help?” he demanded of his passenger, depositing his human burden as best he could.

There was no answer, other than Cocoa’s excited woofs.

His passenger had disappeared.

“You’re right!” Beth managed to say, forcing her frozen mind into action. “The storm is rough enough. Let’s not listen to bad news!”

She turned the radio off.

“Hey, I have a Sterno pot, if you’re hungry. I can whip up something.”

He shook his head, not moving, staring at her with his red-rimmed eyes. You’ve been through worse than this! she reminded herself.

Worse?

Yes! When she had met Keith, when there had been a skull in the sand, when she had become far too curious…

Toughen up! she chastised herself. You’ve come through before!

“I think I’ll make myself something.” Stay calm. Appear confident. How did one deal with a serial killer? She tried to remember all the sage things that had been said, recommendations from the psychiatrists who had spent endless hours talking with killers that had been incarcerated. Talk. Yes. Just keep talking…

Then she remembered her husband’s own words of caution. If you ever pull out a gun, intend to use it. If you find that you have to shoot, shoot to kill.

She didn’t have a gun.

But then again, there was another question.

What if he wasn’t the serial killer? Just because she had found herself alone with this man and heard that there was a killer on the loose, did that mean this man was the one?

Weapon! She needed some kind of weapon.

And would it be the same? If you ever pull out a gun, intend to use it. Would that work with, if you ever pull out a frying pan, intend to use it?

She reached into one of the shelves for a can of Sterno and matches, trying to pretend the man who now looked like a psycho and stood in the door frame—still just staring at her—wasn’t doing so. She forced herself to hum as she lit the Sterno, and then reached for the frying pan. She held it as she rummaged through the cabinet.

Then she felt him coming nearer…

Her back was to him, he was making no sound. The air around her seemed to be the only hint of his stealth.

She pretended to keep staring at the objects in the cabinet.

She turned.

God!

He was next to her, before her, staring at her, starting to smile…

She swung the frying pan around with all of her might. She caught him on the side of his skull, and the pan seemed to reverberate in her hands. He was still there, still standing, just staring at her.

And then…

He reached out.

She screamed as his hands fell upon her shoulders.

The flooding had grown worse. Still, Keith had no choice but to trust in his knowledge of the area and his instincts. He took the turn-off, then said a silent prayer of relief as the tires found the gravel and rock of his driveway.

The man calling himself Joe Peterson was missing. He had run from the car. Leaving his aunt. There was only one house in the area—his. And Beth was in it.

Something streaked out of the windblown brush and pines that lined the drive.

Someone ahead of him, making his way to the house.

Mark Egan’s hands fell upon Beth’s shoulders. His eyes met hers.

They held a dazed and questioning look.

He sank slowly to the floor in front of her, trying to catch hold of her to prevent his fall. She stepped back, then turned to flee.

His hand, his grip still incredibly strong, wound around her ankle. She fell, stunned. She still had her frying pan.

Never pull out a frying pan unless you intend to use it!

She raised it to strike again. She didn’t need to. The vise of his fingers around her ankle eased. She scurried to the far side of the kitchen floor, staring at him. Was he dead? She inched ever so slightly closer on her knees, frying pan raised to strike.

He didn’t move.

She remained still, desperately thinking. She loathed a movie wherein the victim had the attacker down—then just ran, eschewing the idea that a killer might rise again. She lifted the pan to strike again, then gritted her teeth in agony.

What if she was wrong? What if he was just a drugged-out musician?

She looked around the kitchen, desperate to find something. She saw what she needed. A bottom cabinet was just slightly ajar. She saw an extension cord. The good thing about spending her life around the water and boats was that she could tie one sturdy knot.

She scrambled for the extension cord and turned back to tie up her victim. To her astonishment, he had risen.

He was staring at her again.

His eyes were no longer dazed.

They were deadly.

The elements were still raging. The area in front of the house looked like a lake. Keith knew if he left the old lady in the car, he might well be signing her death certificate. He fought the temptation to leave her, to rush out in a panic, thinking only of his wife.

The dog was yapping.

“Cocoa, if you don’t shut up…!” Keith warned.

To his astonishment, the Yorkie sat still, staring at him gravely. Keith opened the door, reached into the back, picked up his human burden. Cocoa barked once—just reminding Keith he was there. “Come on, then!” he said, and Cocoa jumped up, landing on the old woman’s stomach. Keith hurried toward the house. Was the man in the trailer really just the old woman’s nephew—who had run because of him? Or was he a killer? What if he were in the house, if he had come upon Beth…?

Keith made his way to the front door.

Run. There was no other option.

The rear door was at the back of the kitchen. She ran; he was right behind her.

When she opened the door, the wind rushed in with a rage. She had been ready. He hadn’t. The door slammed shut in his face.

Beth ran out into the storm.

Keith burst into the house, Mrs. Peterson in his arms, Cocoa on top of her.

“Beth?”

To his astonishment, a man staggered out of the kitchen. Wearing his clothes. The fellow stared at him like an escapee from the nearest mental institute.

He was unarmed.

Keith quickly strode to the sofa to deposit Mrs. Peterson. Cocoa stayed on her stomach—growling.

Keith pulled his gun from his waistband.

“Whoa!” the man said.

“Where’s my wife?” Keith barked.

“She hit me with a frying pan and ran out!” the man said. “Oh my God, I’ve been rescued by loonies!” he wailed. “She hits me—now you’re going to shoot me?”

“Who the hell are you?” Keith barked.

“Mark Egan.” He sighed, rubbing his hand. “I’m a musician. What is the matter with you people?”

Holding his gun on the intruder, loath to take his eyes from him, Keith draped a throw, tossed on the back of the rocker, over Mrs. Peterson. “Get in there,” he ordered, indicating the guest room. “Now!”

“I’m going!” the man said, lifting a hand. He sidled against the wall, heading for the room. The lantern caused ominous shadows to invade the house.

“You know, you’re crazy,” he said softly. “You’re both crazy!”

“If you’ve hurt her, I’m going to take you apart piece by piece.”

“She attacked me!” the fellow protested.

“Get in there!”

It was then they both heard the scream, long and sharp, rising above the lashing sound of wind and rain.

The shed had seemed to offer the only escape from the violent elements, and she could arm herself there. Their shed held scuba equipment; she could grab a diving knife.

She couldn’t get the door to open at first because of the wind. At last, it gave.

An ebony darkness greeted her.

She slipped inside, reaching in her pocket for the matches with which she had lit the Sterno. Her hands were shaking, wet and cold.

Her first attempt was futile. She was wet; she had to stop dripping on the matches.

At last, she got a match lit.

There, in the brief illumination of flame, was a face.

Eyes red-rimmed.

Flesh pasty white.

Hand gripping a diver’s knife.

“Don’t scream!” she heard.

Too late.

She screamed.

Keith sped out of the house.

He was forced to pause, slightly disoriented. The wind and rain were loud, skewing sounds around him. Then he realized that the scream had to have come from the shed, and he raced in that direction, his gun drawn. He wrenched the door open.

There was darkness within.

“Beth!”

“Put the gun down!” came a throaty, masculine reply.

Beth appeared. Soaked, hair plastered around her beautiful face. There was a man behind her. The fellow who had claimed to be Joe Peterson. He had a knife, and it was against Beth’s throat as he emerged.

“Put the gun down!” Peterson raged again.

“Let go of my wife,” Keith commanded, forcing himself to be calm.

“You’ll kill me. He’s not sane at all, did you know that?” the man demanded of Beth.

She stared hard at Keith, eyes wide on his. He frowned. She seemed to be trying to tell him she was all right. Insane, yes, it was all insane, there was a knife against her throat.

“We’re all getting soaked out here. Let’s go back to the house. Keith, did you know we had another visitor?” she asked, as if there wasn’t honed steel pressing her flesh.

“I’ve seen him.”

“Where’s Mrs. Peterson?” she asked.

“He tried to kill her—stuffed her into the trunk of her car,” Keith said. “She’s on our sofa now. And, uh, your guest is in the house. I imagine.”

“I did not try to kill Aunt Dot! You had to be the one!” Peterson protested, the knife twitching in his hand.

“Let’s get to the house,” Beth said again. “Mr. Peterson, I’ll walk ahead of you, and Keith will walk ahead of us.”

Keith frowned fiercely at her.

“Yeah, all right, go!” Peterson said.

Keith started forward uneasily. There was one man in the house, and another behind him with a knife to Beth’s throat. There was no doubt one of them was a murderer.

He entered the house. The door had been left open. Rain had blown in.

He was followed by Beth.

And the man with the knife.

Mrs. Peterson remained as a lump on the sofa; nothing more than a dark blob in the shadows. Cocoa, however, was no longer with her. He had run to the far side of the room, and wasn’t even yapping. He hugged the wall, near the guest-room door, whining pathetically as they entered.

“There was another fellow with us, too, a musician. Plays for a group called Ultra C,” Beth said to Peterson. She swallowed carefully before looking at Keith again. “What happened to him? He was, uh, in the house when I left.”

“Gone—I hope!”

They heard a sound of distress. It was Joe Peterson. He was staring at the lump on the sofa.

“Mr. Peterson,” Keith said softly. “I’m not going to shoot you. But you are going to get that knife away from my wife’s throat this instant.”

Beth pushed Peterson’s arm, stepping away from him. Peterson barely reacted. He stared at the sofa. “God! Is she dead?” he asked.

Cocoa whined. Beth stared at Keith, shaking but relieved. “Cocoa,” she said softly. “Well, I could have been wrong, but if this man had attacked Mrs. Peterson, the dog would be barking right now.”

“Aunt Dot!” Peterson said numbly.

“She isn’t dead—wasn’t dead,” Keith said. He looked at Beth. “So it’s your musician.”

“You realized it, too…But—”

“He’s out there somewhere. And we’ll have that to deal with. But for the moment…we’ve got to try to keep Mrs. Peterson alive.”

“Keith, would you get me some brandy and the ammonia from the kitchen?” Beth asked. “We’ll see if we can rouse her. Then we can try to make it to the hospital.” She grimaced. “With the Hummer.”

Keith walked to the kitchen, then stopped, pausing to pick up the frying pan that lay on the floor. He froze in his tracks as he heard a startled scream rise above the pounding of the rain. He turned to race back to the living room, then came to a dead stop.

Their living room had been pitched into absolute darkness.

Terror struck deep into Beth’s heart. She had pulled back the blanket, anxious to be there first, to assure herself that the woman hadn’t died.

A hand snaked out for her from beneath the cover, dragging her down with a ferocity that was astounding. Fingers wound around her throat and she was tossed about as if she weighed nothing.

Egan. Mark Egan. Drugged-out musician. No. Psychotic killer.

She saw his deranged grin right before he doused the lantern, holding her in the vise of his one hand like a rag doll.

“What ya gonna do, big man?” a throaty voice called out in the darkness, next to her ear. “Shoot me—you might kill her. Don’t come after me, or she’s dead.”

Beth tensed every muscle. She didn’t know if the man had a weapon or not, anything more than the hideous strength of his hands.

She could hear nothing other than the wind and rain. Stars began to burst into the darkness as his grip choked her. There was no sound of voice. No sound of movement.

Not even Cocoa let out a whine.

Then there was a muffled groan. Not Keith, the sound had not come from Keith! It was Peterson who had groaned. So…where was Keith?

“That’s right,” Egan—or whoever he was—said. “You stay right where you are. The missus and I are going to take the car. Your car. We’ll go for a little ride. Will she be all right? Who knows? But try to stop me now, and you’ll probably kill her yourself.”

He began to drag her toward the door. He chuckled softly. “I don’t see too badly in the dark. I like the dark.”

They were nearly there; she could sense it. He threw open the door. Her heart was thundering so that she didn’t hear the whoosh of motion at first.

She gasped, the air knocked from her as the whoosh became an impetus of muscle and movement. Keith. He flew into them from the porch side, taking both her and Egan by storm and surprise. She twisted. Egan’s grip had been loosened by the fall. She bit into his wrist. The man howled, then went rolling away as he and Keith became engaged in a fierce physical battle.

Cocoa began to bark excitedly. She felt the little dog run over her hand and begin to growl. Egan cried out in pain again. She could hear Cocoa wrenching and tearing at something—Egan. In pain or not, Egan was still wrestling on the floor with vehemence. Rain washed in from the open doorway. The faintest light showed through, glittering on something…

The frying pan.

She picked it up, and in the darkness, desperately tried to ascertain her husband’s form from that of the killer. She saw a head rise—

She nearly struck.

Keith!

The other head was on the ground. There was a hand around Keith’s throat, fingers tightening…

Blindly, she slammed the frying pan down toward the floor. A scream was emitted…

She struck again. And again.

And then arms reached out for her.

“It’s all right now. It’s all right.”

The lantern was lit. Good old Cocoa was in the bedroom, standing guard over Mrs. Peterson who—despite having been dumped unceremoniously on the floor—was still alive and breathing. Her nephew, Joe Peterson, was tending to her.

Keith hadn’t moved the form on the floor yet. Beth didn’t know if he was dead or alive, but he wouldn’t be blithely getting up this time.

She’d seen his face. Before Keith had covered it with the throw.

“Is it…him? The serial killer?” she said.

“I think so,” Keith murmured, slipping an arm tightly around her shoulders.

“But you knew it wasn’t Peterson when I did.”

He turned to her, a pained and rueful smile just curving his lips. “Because anyone who spends any time in Key West knows that Ultra C is an all-girl band,” he said softly.

“I told him you knew music,” she said.

They both jumped, hearing the sudden loud blare of a horn. A second later there was a pounding on the door.

Keith, still gripping his gun, strode to it, pulling it open. Andy Fairmont, from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, was there.

“Jesus!” Andy shouted. “There’s a serial killer on the loose! Have you heard?”

Keith looked at Beth. She shrugged, and turned to Andy. “Never pull out a frying pan unless you intend to use it,” she said gravely.

“What?”

“You’d better come in, Andy,” Keith said, and he set his arm around his wife’s shoulders again, pulling her close.




James Siegel


James Siegel says the most common question he’s asked by readers is, Where do you get your ideas? His standard answer is, I don’t know—do you have any? The real answer, of course, is, Everywhere. Siegel tends to write about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. Being a self-described “ordinary person,” Siegel doesn’t find it hard to place himself in the protagonist’s shoes. Riding the Long Island railroad for instance—where attractive women would sometimes occupy the seat beside him—sent Siegel into reveries of what if? That ended up as Derailed—the story of an ordinary ad guy whose life goes awry when he meets a woman on the train. Adopting kids in Colombia gave him the notion for Detour, where an adoption goes terribly, murderously wrong. And then there was the day he was lying in a massage room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. The masseuse touched his neck and said, What’s bothering you? Siegel’s response: How do you know something’s bothering me? And she said, Because I’m an empath.

Siegel was puzzled.

An empath? What’s that?




Empathy


I sit in a dark motel room.

It’s pitch-black outside, but I’ve pulled the shades down tight anyway, so she won’t see me when she walks in. So she’ll be sure to turn away from me to switch on the light.

I don’t like the dark.

I live on Scotch and Ambien so I never have to stare at it, because sooner or later it becomes the dark of the confessional and I’m eight years old again. I can smell the garlic on his breath and hear the rustle of his clothing. For a moment, I’m a shy, sweet-natured, baseball-crazy boy again, and I physically shrink away from what’s coming.

Then everything turns red and the world’s on fire.

I look back in anger, because anger is what I’ve become—a fist of a man.

Anger is what cost me my home, and anger is what put me into court-ordered therapy, and anger is what finally kicked me off the LAPD and into hotel security, where I can be angry without killing anyone.

Not yet.

You’ve heard of the hotel I work in. It’s considered top-shelf and is patronized by various Hollywood wannabes and occasional bona fide celebrities. As downward spirals go, mine hasn’t sucked me to the bottom yet, only to Beverly and Doheny.

I get to wear a suit and earpiece, something like a Secret Service man. I get to stand around and look semi-important and even give orders to the hotel employees who don’t get to wear suits.

She was a masseuse in the hotel spa.

Kelly.

She was known for her deep-tissue and hot stone. I first talked to her in the basement alcove where I went to be alone—but I’d noticed her before that. I’d heard the music seeping out of her room on my way to the back elevators, and when she entered the basement to grab a smoke, I complimented her on her taste. Most of the hotel masseuses were partial to Enya, to Eastern sitar or the monotonous sound of waves lapping sand. Not her. She played the Joneses—Rickie Lee and Nora and Quincy, too, on occasion.

“Do your customers like it?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Most of them are just trying to not get a hard-on.”

“Occupational hazard, I guess?”

“Oh, yeah.”

She was pretty, certainly. But there was something else, a palpable aura that made it feel humid even in full-blast air-conditioning.

I believe she noticed the ugly swelling on the knuckles of my right hand, and the place in the wall where I’d dented it.

“Bad day?”

“No. Pretty ordinary.”

She reached out and touched my face, fanning her fingers across my right cheek. Which is more or less when she told me she was an empath.

I won’t lie and tell you that I knew what an empath was.

A look had come over her when she touched my face—as if she’d felt that part of me which I rarely touch myself, and then only in the dark before the Johnny Walker has worked its magic.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“For whatever did this to you.”

This is what an empath can do—their special gift. Or curse, depending on the day.

I learned all about empaths from her over the next few weeks. As we talked in the basement, or bumped into each other on the way into the hotel, or grabbed smokes outside on the corner.

Empaths touch and know. They feel skin and bone but they touch soul. They see through their hands. Everything—the good, the bad and the truly ugly.

She saw more ugly than she wanted to.

The ugliness had begun to get to her, to send her into a very dark place.

It was one of her customers, she explained.

“Mostly I just see emotions,” she confided, “you know, happiness, sadness, fear—longing—all that. But sometimes…sometimes I see more…I know who they are, understand?”

“No. Not really.”

“This guy—he’s a regular. The first time I touched him, I had to pull my hands away. It was that strong.”

“What?”

“The sense of evil. Like touching—I don’t know…a black hole.”

“What kind of evil are we talking about?”

“The worst.”

Later, she told me more. We were sitting in a bar on Sunset having drinks. Our first date, I guess.

“He hurts kids,” she said.

I felt that special nausea. The kind that used to subsume me back in the confessional, when he would come for me, that dark wraith of hurt. The nausea that came when my little brother dutifully followed me into altar-boyhood and I kept my mouth zipped tight like a secret pocket. Don’t tell…don’t tell. There’s a price for not telling. It was paid years later, on the afternoon I found my sweet, sad brother hanging from a belt in our childhood bedroom. Over his teenage years, he’d furiously sought solace in various narcotics, but they could only do so much.

“How do you know?” I asked Kelly.

“I know. He’s going to do something. He’s done it before.”

When I told her she might want to report him to the police, she shot me the look you give to intellectually challenged children.

“Tell them I’m an empath? That I feel one of my clients is a pedophile? That’ll go over well.”

She was right, of course. They’d laugh her out of the station.

It was maybe a week later, after this customer had come and gone from his regular appointment and Kelly was looking particularly miserable, that I volunteered to keep an eye on him.

“How?”

We were lying in my bed, having taken our relationship to the next level as they say, both of us using sex as a kind of opiate, I think—a way to forget things.

“His next appointment?” I asked her. “When is it?”

“Tuesday at two.”

“Okay, then.”

I waited outside the pool area where the clients saunter out looking sleepy and satiated. He looked frazzled and anxious. She’d slipped out of the room while he undressed to tell me what he was wearing that day. She needn’t have bothered—I would’ve known him anyway.

He carried his burden like a heavy bag.

When he got into the Volvo brought out from the hotel-parking garage, I was already waiting in my car.

I followed him onto the 101, then into the valley. We exited onto a wide boulevard and stayed on it for about five miles, finally making a turn at the School Crossing sign.

He parked by the playground and sat there in his car.

It came back.

The paralytic sickness that made me want to crawl into a ball.

I stayed in the front seat and watched as he exited the car and sidled up to the fence. As he took his glasses off and wiped them on the pocket of his pants. As he scoped out the crowd of elementary-school kids flowing out the front gate. As his attention seemed to fixate on one particular boy—a fourth-grader maybe, a sweet-looking kid who reminded me of someone. As he began to follow this boy down the street, edging closer and closer the way lions separate calves from the herd. I watched and felt every bit as powerless and inert as I did back when my brother bounded down the steps of our house on the way to his first communion.

I couldn’t move.

He stepped up behind the boy and began conversing with him. I didn’t have to see the boy’s face to know what it looked like. The man reached out and grabbed the boy by the arm and I still sat there in the front seat of my car.

It was only when the boy broke away, when he turned and ran, when the man took a few halting steps toward him and then slumped, gave up—that I actually moved.

Anger was my enemy. Anger was my long-lost friend. It came in one red-hot surge, sending the sickness scurrying away in terror, propelling me out of the car, ready to finally protect him.

Joseph, I whispered.

My brother’s name.

The man slipped back into his car and drove away. I stood there with my heart colliding against my ribs.

That night, I told Kelly what I was going to do.

We lay in bed covered in sweat, and I told her that I needed to do this. The anger had come back and claimed me, wrapped me in its comforting bosom and said, You’re home.

I waited at the school the next afternoon, and the one after that. I waited all week.

He came the next Monday—parking his Volvo directly across from the playground.

When he got out, I was standing there to ask him if he could point me toward Fourth Street. When he turned and motioned over there, I placed the gun up against his back.

“If you make a sound, you’re dead.”

He promptly wilted. He mumbled something about just taking his money, and I told him to shut up.

He entered my car as docile as a lamb.

A mother stared at us as we drove away.

I went to a place in the valley that I’d used before, when the redness came and made me do certain things to suspects with big mouths and awful résumés. Things that got me tossed off the force and into mandated anger management where the class applauded when I said I’d learned to count to ten and avoid my triggers. Triggers were the things that set me off—there was an entire canon of them.

Men in collar and vestment. That was trigger number one.

We had to walk over a quarter of a mile to the sandpit. They’d turned it into a dumping ground filled with water the color of mud.

“Why?” he said to me when I made him stand there at the lip of the pit.

Because when I was eight years old, I was turned inside out. Because I killed my brother as surely as if I’d tied that belt around his neck and kicked away the chair. That’s why.

His body flew into the subterranean tangle of junk and disappeared.

Because you deserve it.

When I showed up at work the next day, she wasn’t there. I wanted to let her know; I wanted to ease her burden. When I called her cell—she didn’t answer.

I asked hotel personnel for her address—we’d always slept at my place because she had a roommate. Two days later I went to her second-floor flat in Ventura and knocked on the door.

No answer.

I found the landlord puttering around the backyard, mostly crabgrass, dandelions and dirt.

“Have you seen Kelly?” I asked him.

“She’s gone,” he said without really looking up.

“Gone? Gone where? Gone to the store?”

“No. Gone. Not here anymore.”

“What are you talking about? Where’d she go?”

He shrugged. “She didn’t leave an address. Her and the kid just left.”

“What kid?”

He finally looked up.

“Her kid. Her son. Who are you, exactly?”

“A friend.”

“Okay, Kelly’s friend. She took the kid and left. That lowlife of a boyfriend picked them up. End of story.”

I will tell you that I still did not understand what happened.

I will tell you that I went back to the hotel and calmly contemplated the situation. That when another masseuse walked out of her room—Trudy, one of the girls Kelly used to talk to—I said tell me about Kelly. She’s an empath, I said.

“A what?”

“An empath. She touches people and knows things about them.”

“Yeah. That they’re horny and out of shape.”

“She knows what they’re feeling—what kind of people they are.”

“Ha. Who told you that? Kelly?”

I still didn’t understand.

Even with Trudy staring at me as if I’d arrived from a distant galaxy. Even then, I refused to grasp what was right there.

“Kelly has a son,” I said.

“Uh-huh. Nice kid, too. No thanks to her. Okay, that’s not fair. She just needs to develop better taste in men.”

“You mean the father?”

“No. I mean the boyfriend. She’s got a dope problem—she’s always doing it, and she’s always doing them. Dopes.”

“What about the father?”

“Nah, he’s kind of nice actually. A real job and everything. She dumped him naturally. He’s fighting her for custody.”

“Why?”

“Maybe he doesn’t think junkies are the best company for an eight-year-old. And she’s always trying to poison the kid against him. It’s a fucking shame. You should’ve heard them going at it in the Tranquillity Room last week.”

“Last week…when? What day?”

“I don’t know. He comes by to drop off money for the kid. Tuesday, I think.”

Now it was coming. And it wouldn’t stop coming.

“What time Tuesday?”

“I don’t know. After lunch. Why?”

Look at it. It wants you to look at it.

Tuesday, I think. After lunch.

“What does he look like, Trudy?”

“Geez…I don’t know. About your height, I guess. Glasses. He didn’t look too fucking terrific after seeing her. She told him she was going to take the kid and disappear if he didn’t drop the whole custody thing. You know what I think? Her boyfriend wants that child support.”

About your height. Glasses.

Don’t look. Do not look.

Tuesday. After lunch.

When he argued with her in the meditation room, and then walked out looking anxious and upset.

Tuesday.

When he drove to his son’s school.

Tuesday.

When he tried to tell him that he was fighting for him and to please not believe the things his mother said about him. When he reached out to make the boy listen, but his son pulled away because all that poison had done its work.

“The boy,” I said. “He has brown hair. Cut real short—like a crew. He’s sweet looking.”

“Yeah. That’s him.”

I’m an empath, she said. I’m touching this bad man, this sexual predator, and what can I do about it—nothing, because the police won’t believe an empath like me. He’s coming Tuesday at two, but what can I do? Nothing.

How?

How did she pick me?

How?

Because.

Because she’d made me open that secret pocket.

Because one day they’d pointed me out to her—one of the masseuses—oh him, stay away, an ex-cop who used to beat people half to death.

But she didn’t stay away—she came down to the basement room where I punched holes in the wall. She talked to me. And then I ripped that pocket wide open for her and spilled my dreadful secrets all across the bed.

My brother. My guilt. My anger.

My trinity.

A kind of religion with one acolyte, and one commandment.

Vengeance is yours.

He’s a bad man, she said. He’s coming Tuesday at two. Tuesday. At two.

This man who loved his son. Who was simply trying to protect him.

From her.

Why, he said, standing at the top of that sandpit. Why?

Because anger is as blind as love, and she gave me both.

I will tell you that a drought took hold of L.A. and turned the brush in the Malibu hills to kindling. That twenty-million-dollar homes went up in smoke. That the drought dried up half the Salton Sea and sucked the water right out of that dump, and that a man disposing of his GE washing machine saw the body wrapped around an old engine casing.

I will tell you that he was ID’d and the bullet in his heart identified as a Walther .45—the kind security guards are partial to, and that a mother came forward and said she’d seen him being coerced into a car near her son’s school by another man.

I will tell you that the wheels of justice were grinding and turning and rolling inexorably toward me.

I will tell you that I am not liked much by the police officers I once worked with, but there is a code that is sometimes thick as blood. That makes an ex-partner whom you almost took down with you get hold of bank records so you might know where a Kelly Marcel has been using her VISA card.

I will tell you that there’s a motel somewhat south of La Jolla where the down-and-out pay by the week.

I will tell you that I drove there.

That I saw her drop the boy at his grandmother’s, who lived in a trailer park by the sea.

That the boyfriend took off for parts unknown.

That it’s down to her.

I will tell you that I sit in a dark motel room.

That I’ve pulled the shades down tight so she won’t see me when she walks in. So she’ll be sure to turn away from me to switch on the light.

I will tell you that I hear her now, the slam of her car door, the crunch of gravel leading up to her door.

I will tell you that my Walther .45 has two bullets in it. Two.

I will tell you the door is opening.

I will tell you that finally and at last the dark no longer scares me, that there is a peace more comforting than anger.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Who do I say this to?

This I won’t tell you.

I won’t.




James Rollins


James Rollins’s Sandstorm (2003) and Map of Bones (2004), were departures from his usual work. His prior thrillers were all stand-alones, with a separate cast of characters. But in these two, Rollins introduced his first series with recurring characters. He pursued that course based on input from his readers and from personal desire. For years, fans had contacted him and asked questions about various cast members from his earlier thrillers. What became of Ashley and Ben’s baby after Subterranean (1999)? What is the next port of call for the crew of the Deep Fathom (2001)?

Eventually, Rollins came to realize that he wanted to know those answers, too. So he challenged himself to construct a series—something unique and distinct. He wanted to build a landscape of three-dimensional characters and create his own mythology of these people, to watch them grow over the course of the series, balancing personal lives and professional, some succeeding, some failing. Yet at the same time, Rollins refused to let go of his roots. Trained as a biologist with a degree in veterinary medicine, his new series, like his previous thrillers, folded scientific intrigue into stories of historical mystery. His new characters belong to Sigma Force, an elite team of ex-Special Forces soldiers retrained in scientific disciplines (what Rollins jokingly describes as “killer scientists who operate outside the rule of law”). Finally, from his background as a veterinarian, the occasional strange or exotic animal often plays a significant role in the plot.

And this short story is no exception.

Here, Rollins links his past to the present. He brings forward a minor character, one of his personal favorites, from his earlier stand-alone thriller Ice Hunt (2003). Joe Kowalski, a naval seaman, is best described as someone with the heart of a hero but lacking the brainpower to go with it. So how does Seaman Joe Kowalski end up being recruited by such an illustrious team as Sigma Force?

As they say…dumb luck is better than no luck at all.




Kowalski’s in Love


He wasn’t much to look at…even swinging upside down from a hog snare. Pug-nosed, razor-clipped muddy hair, a six-foot slab of beef hooked and hanging naked except for a pair of wet gray boxer shorts. His chest was crisscrossed with old scars, along with one jagged bloody scratch from collarbone to groin. His eyes shone wide and wild.

And with good reason.

Two minutes before, as Dr. Shay Rosauro unhitched her glidechute on the nearby beach, she had heard his cries in the jungle and come to investigate. She had approached in secret, moving silently, spying from a short distance away, cloaked in shadow and foliage.

“Back off, you furry bastard…!”

The man’s curses never stopped, a continual flow tinged with a growled Bronx accent. Plainly he was American. Like herself.

She checked her watch.

8:33 a.m.

The island would explode in twenty-seven minutes.

The man would die sooner.

The more immediate threat came from the island’s other inhabitants, drawn by the man’s shouts. The average adult mandrill baboon weighed over a hundred pounds, most of that muscle and teeth. They were usually found in Africa. Never on a jungle island off the coast of Brazil. The yellow radio collars suggested the pack were once the research subjects belonging to Professor Salazar, shipped to this remote island for his experimental trials. Mandrillus sphinx were also considered frugivorous, meaning their diet consisted of fruits and nuts.

But not always.

They were also known to be opportunistic carnivores.

One of the baboons stalked around the trapped man: a charcoal-furred male of the species with a broad red snout bordered on both sides by ridges of blue. Such coloration indicated the fellow was the dominant male of the group. Females and subordinate males, all a duller brown, had settled to rumps or hung from neighboring branches. One bystander yawned, exposing a set of three-inch-long eyeteeth and a muzzle full of ripping incisors.

The male sniffed at the prisoner. A meaty fist swung at the inquisitive baboon, missed, and whished through empty air.

The male baboon reared on its hind legs and howled, lips peeling back from its muzzle to expose the full length of its yellow fangs. An impressive and horrifying display. The other baboons edged closer.

Shay stepped into the clearing, drawing all eyes. She lifted her hand and pressed the button on her sonic device, nicknamed a shrieker. The siren blast from the device had the desired effect.

Baboons fled into the forest. The male leader bounded up, caught a low branch and swung into the cloaking darkness of the jungle.

The man, still spinning on the line, spotted her. “Hey…how about…?”

Shay already had a machete in her other hand. She jumped atop a boulder and severed the hemp rope with one swipe of her weapon.

The man fell hard, striking the soft loam and rolling to the side. Amid a new string of curses, he struggled with the snare around his ankle. He finally freed the knotted rope.

“Goddamn apes!”

“Baboons,” Shay corrected.

“What?”

“They’re baboons, not apes. They have stubby tails.”

“Whatever. All I saw were their big, goddamn teeth.”

As the man stood and brushed off his knees, Shay spotted a U.S. Navy anchor tattooed on his right bicep. Ex-military? Maybe he could prove handy. Shay checked the time.

8:35 a.m.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“My boat broke down.” His gaze traveled up and down her lithe form.

She was not unaccustomed to such attention from the male of her own species…even now, when she was unflatteringly dressed in green camouflage fatigues and sturdy boots. Her shoulder-length black hair had been efficiently bound behind her ears with a black bandanna, and in the tropical swelter, her skin glowed a dark mocha.

Caught staring, he glanced back toward the beach. “I swam here after my boat sank.”

“Your boat sank?”

“Okay, it blew up.”

She stared at him for further explanation.

“There was a gas leak. I dropped my cigar—”

She waved away the rest of his words with her machete. Her pickup was scheduled at the northern peninsula in under a half hour. On that timetable, she had to reach the compound, break into the safe and obtain the vials of antidote. She set off into the jungle, noting a trail. The man followed, dragged along in her wake.

“Whoa…where are we going?”

She freed a rolled-up poncho from her daypack and passed it to him.

He struggled into it as he followed. “Name’s Kowalski,” he said. He got the poncho on backward and fought to work it around. “Do you have a boat? A way off this friggin’ island?”

She didn’t have time for subtlety. “In twenty-three minutes, the Brazilian navy is going to firebomb this atoll.”

“What?” He checked his own wrist. He had no watch.

She continued, “An evac is scheduled for wheels up at 8:55 a.m. on the northern peninsula. But first I have to retrieve something from the island.”

“Wait. Back up. Who’s going to firebomb this shithole?”

“The Brazilian navy. In twenty-three minutes.”

“Of course they are.” He shook his head. “Of all the goddamn islands, I had to shag my ass onto one that’s going to blow up.”

Shay tuned out his diatribe. At least he kept moving. She had to give him that. He was either very brave or very dumb.

“Oh, look…a mango.” He reached for the yellow fruit.

“Don’t touch that.”

“But I haven’t eaten in—?”

“All the vegetation on this island has been aerial sprayed with a transgenic rhabdovirus.”

He lowered his hand.

“Once ingested, it stimulates the sensory centers of the brain, heightening a victim’s senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“The process also corrupts the reticular apparatus of the cerebral cortex. Triggering manic rages.”

A growling yowl echoed through the jungle behind them. It was answered by coughing grunts and howls from either flank.

“The apes…?”

“Baboons. Yes, they’re surely infected. Experimental subjects.”

“Great. The Island of Rabid Baboons.”

Ignoring him, she pointed toward a whitewashed hacienda sprawled atop the next hill, seen through a break in the foliage. “We need to reach that compound.”

The terra-cotta-tiled structure had been leased by Professor Salazar for his research, funded by a shadowy organization of terrorist cells. Here on the isolated island, he had conducted the final stages of perfecting his bioweapon. Then two days ago, Sigma Force—a covert U.S. science team specializing in global threats—had captured the doctor in the heart of the Brazilian rain forest, but not before he had infected an entire Indian village outside of Manaus, including an international children’s relief hospital.

The disease was already in its early stages, requiring the prompt quarantine of the village by the Brazilian army. The only hope was to obtain Professor Salazar’s antidote, locked in the doctor’s safe.

Or at least the vials might be there.

Salazar claimed to have destroyed his supply.

Upon this assertion, the Brazilian government had decided to take no chances. A storm was due to strike at dusk with hurricane-force winds. They feared the storm surge might carry the virus from the island to the mainland’s coastal rain forest. It would take only a single infected leaf to risk the entire equatorial rain forest. So the plan was to firebomb the small island, to burn its vegetation to the bedrock. The assault was set for zero nine hundred. The government could not be convinced that the remote possibility of a cure was worth the risk of a delay. Total annihilation was their plan. That included the Brazilian village. Acceptable losses.

Anger surged through her as she pictured Manuel Garrison, her partner. He had tried to evacuate the children’s hospital, but he’d become trapped and subsequently infected. Along with all the children.

Acceptable losses were not in her vocabulary.

Not today.

So Shay had proceeded with her solo op. Parachuting from a high-altitude drop, she had radioed her plans while plummeting in free fall. Sigma command had agreed to send an emergency evac helicopter to the northern end of the island. It would touch down for one minute. Either she was on the chopper at that time…or she was dead.

The odds were fine with her.

But now she wasn’t alone.

The side of beef tromped loudly behind her. Whistling. He was whistling. She turned to him. “Mr. Kowalski, do you remember my description of how the virus heightens a victim’s sense of hearing?” Her quiet words crackled with irritation.

“Sorry.” He glanced at the trail behind him.

“Careful of that tiger trap,” she said, stepping around the crudely camouflaged hole.

“What—?” His left foot fell squarely on the trapdoor of woven reeds. His weight shattered through it.

Shay shoulder-blocked the man to the side and landed atop him. It felt like falling on a pile of bricks. Only, bricks were smarter.

She pushed up. “After being snared, you’d think you’d watch where you were stepping! The whole place is one big booby trap.”

She stood, straightened her pack and edged around the spike-lined pit. “Stay behind me. Step where I step.”

In her anger, she missed the trip cord.

The only warning was a small thwang.

She jumped to the side but was too late. A tethered log swung from the forest and struck her knee. She heard the snap of her tibia, then went flying through the air—right toward the open maw of the tiger trap.

She twisted to avoid the pit’s iron spikes. There was no hope.

Then she hit…bricks again.

Kowalski had lunged and blocked the hole with his own bulk. She rolled off him. Agony flared up her leg, through her hip, and exploded along her spine. Her vision narrowed to a pinprick, but not enough to miss the angled twist below her knee.

Kowalski gained her side. “Oh, man…oh, man…”

“Leg’s broken,” she said, biting back the pain.

“We can splint it.”

She checked her watch.

8:39 a.m.

Twenty-one minutes left.

He noted her attention. “I can carry you. We can still make it to the evac site.”

She recalculated in her head. She pictured Manuel’s shit-eating grin…and the many faces of the children. Pain worse than any broken bone coursed through her. She could not fail.

The man read her intent. “You’ll never make it to that house,” he said.

“I don’t have any other choice.”

“Then let me do it,” he blurted out. His words seemed to surprise him as much as it did her, but he didn’t retract them. “You make for the beach. I’ll get whatever you want out of the goddamn hacienda.”

She turned and stared the stranger full in the face. She searched for something to give her hope. Some hidden strength, some underlying fortitude. She found nothing. But she had no other choice.

“There’ll be other traps.”

“I’ll keep my eyes peeled this time.”

“And the office safe…I can’t teach you to crack it in time.”

“Do you have an extra radio?”

She nodded.

“So talk me through it once I get there.”

She hesitated—but there was no time for even that. She swung her pack around. “Lean down.”

She reached to a side pocket of her pack and stripped out two self-adhesive patches. She attached one behind the man’s ear and the other over his Adam’s apple. “Microreceiver and a subvocal transmitter.”

She quickly tested the radio while explaining the stakes involved.

“So much for my relaxing vacation under the sun,” he mumbled.

“One more thing,” she said. She pulled out three sections of a weapon from her pack. “A VK rifle. Variable Kinetic.” She quickly snapped the pieces together and shoved a fat cylindrical cartridge into place on its underside. It looked like a stubby assault rifle, except the barrel was wider and flattened horizontally.

“Safety release is here.” She pointed the weapon at a nearby bush and squeezed the trigger. There was only a tiny whirring cough. A projectile flashed out the barrel and buzzed through the bush, severing leaves and branches. “One-inch razor-disks. You can set the weapon for single shot or automatic strafe.” She demonstrated. “Two hundred shots per magazine.”

He whistled again and accepted the weapon. “Maybe you should keep this weed whacker. With your bum leg, you’re going to drag ass at a snail’s pace.” He nodded to the jungle. “And the damn apes are still out there.”

“They’re baboons…and I still have my handheld shrieker. Now get going.” She checked her watch. She had given Kowalski a second timepiece, calibrated to match. “Nineteen minutes.”

He nodded. “I’ll see you soon.” He moved off the trail, vanishing almost instantly into the dense foliage.

“Where are you going?” she called after him. “The trail—”

“Screw the trail,” he responded through the radio. “I’ll take my chances in the raw jungle. Fewer traps. Plus, I’ve got this baby to carve a straight path to the mad doctor’s house.”

Shay hoped he was right. There would be no time for backtracking or second chances. She quickly dosed herself with a morphine injector and used a broken tree branch for a crutch. As she set off for the beach, she heard the ravenous hunting calls of the baboons.

She hoped Kowalski could outsmart them.

The thought drew a groan that had nothing to do with her broken leg.

Luckily Kowalski had a knife now.

He hung upside down…for the second time that day. He bent at the waist, grabbed his trapped ankle and sawed through the snare’s rope. It snapped with a pop. He fell, clenched in a ball, and crashed to the jungle floor with a loud oof.

“What was that?” Dr. Rosauro asked over the radio.

He straightened his limbs and lay on his back for a breath. “Nothing,” he growled. “Just tripped on a rock.” He scowled at the swinging rope overhead. He was not about to tell the beautiful woman doctor that he had been strung up again. He did have some pride left.

“Goddamn snare,” he mumbled under his breath.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He had forgotten about the sensitivity of the subvocal transmitter.

“Snare? You snared yourself again, didn’t you?”

He kept silent. His momma once said, It is better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you’re a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

“You need to watch where you’re going,” the woman scolded.

Kowalski bit back a retort. He heard the pain in her voice…and her fear. So instead, he hauled back to his feet and retrieved his gun.

“Seventeen minutes,” Dr. Rosauro reminded him.

“I’m just reaching the compound now.”

The sun-bleached hacienda appeared like a calm oasis of civilization in a sea of nature’s raw exuberance. It was straight lines and sterile order versus wild overgrowth and tangled fecundity. Three buildings sat on manicured acres, separated by breezeways, and nestled around a small garden courtyard. A threetiered Spanish fountain stood in the center, ornate with blue and red glass tiles. No water splashed through its basins.

Kowalski studied the compound, stretching a kink out of his back. The only movement across the cultivated grounds was the swaying fronds of some coconut palms. The winds were already rising with the approaching storm. Clouds stacked on the southern horizon.

“The office is on the main floor, near the back,” Rosauro said in his ear. “Careful of the electric perimeter fence. The power may still be on.”

He studied the chain-link fencing, almost eight feet tall, topped by a spiral of concertina wire and separated from the jungle by a burned swath about ten yards wide. No-man’s-land.

Or rather no-ape’s-land.

He picked up a broken branch and approached the fence. Wincing, he stretched one end toward the chain links. He was mindful of his bare feet. Shouldn’t I be grounded for this? He had no idea.

As the tip of his club struck the fence, a strident wail erupted. He jumped back, then realized the noise was not coming from the fence. It wailed off to his left, toward the water.

Dr. Rosauro’s shrieker.

“Are you all right?” Kowalski called into his transmitter.

A long stretch of silence had him holding his breath—then whispered words reached him. “The baboons must sense my injury. They’re converging on my location. Just get going.”

Kowalski poked his stick at the fence a few more times, like a child with a dead rat, making sure it was truly dead. Once satisfied, he snapped the concertina wire with clippers supplied by Dr. Rosauro and scurried over the fence, certain the power was just waiting to surge back with electric-blue death.

He dropped with a relieved sigh onto the mowed lawn, as bright and perfect as any golf course.

“You don’t have much time,” the doctor stressed needlessly. “If you’re successful, the rear gardens lead all the way to the beach. The northern headlands stretch out from there.”

Kowalski set out, aiming for the main building. A shift in wind brought the damp waft of rain…along with the stench of death, the ripeness of meat left out in the sun. He spotted the body on the far side of the fountain.

He circled the man’s form. The guy’s face had been gnawed to the bone, clothes shredded, belly slashed open, bloated intestines strung across the ground like festive streamers. It seemed the apes had been having their own party since the good doctor took off.

As he circled, he noted the black pistol clutched in the corpse’s hand. The slide had popped open. No more bullets. Not enough firepower to hold off a whole pack of the furry carnivores. Kowalski raised his own weapon to his shoulder. He searched the shadowed corners for any hidden apes. There were not even any bodies. The shooter must either be a poor marksman, or the ruby-assed monkeys had hauled off their brethren’s bodies, perhaps to eat later, like so much baboon takeout.

Kowalski made one complete circle. Nothing.

He crossed toward the main building. Something nagged at the edge of his awareness. He scratched his skull in an attempt to dislodge it—but failed.

He climbed atop the full-length wooden porch and tried the door handle. Latched but unlocked. He shoved the door open with one foot, weapon raised, ready for a full-frontal ape assault.

The door swung wide, rebounded, and bounced back closed in his face.

Snorting in irritation, he grabbed the handle again. It wouldn’t budge. He tugged harder.

Locked.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

The collision must have jiggled some bolt into place.

“Are you inside yet?” Rosauro asked.

“Just about,” he grumbled.

“What’s the holdup?”

“Well…what happened was…” He tried sheepishness, but it fit him as well as fleece on a rhino. “I guess someone locked it.”

“Try a window.”

Kowalski glanced to the large windows that framed either side of the barred doorway. He stepped to the right and peered through. Inside was a rustic kitchen with oak tables, a farmer’s sink and old enamel appliances. Good enough. Maybe they even had a bottle of beer in the fridge. A man could dream. But first there was work to do.

He stepped back, pointed his weapon and fired a single round. The silver razor-disk shattered through the pane as easily as any bullet. Fractures spattered out from the hole.

He grinned. Happy again.

He retreated another step, careful of the porch edge. He thumbed the switch to automatic fire and strafed out the remaining panes.

He poked his head through the hole. “Anyone home?”

That’s when he saw the exposed wire snapping and spitting around a silver disk imbedded in the wall plaster. It had nicked through the electric cord. More disks were impaled across the far wall…including one that had punctured the gas line to the stove.

He didn’t bother cursing.

He twisted and leaped as the explosion blasted behind him. A wall of superheated air shoved him out of the way, blowing his poncho over his head. He hit the ground rolling as a fireball swirled overhead, across the courtyard. Tangled in his poncho, he tumbled—right into the eviscerated corpse. Limbs fought, heat burned, and scrambling fingers found only a gelid belly wound and things that squished.

Gagging, Kowalski fought his way free and shoved the poncho off his body. He stood, shaking like a wet dog, swiping gore from his arms in disgust. He stared toward the main building.

Flames danced behind the kitchen window. Smoke choked out the shattered pane.

“What happened?” the doctor gasped in his ear.

He only shook his head. Flames spread, flowing out the broken window and lapping at the porch.

“Kowalski?”

“Booby trap. I’m fine.”

He collected his weapon from his discarded poncho. Resting it on his shoulder, he intended to circle to the back. According to Dr. Rosauro, the main office was in the rear.

If he worked quickly—

He checked his watch.

8:45 a.m.

It was hero time.

He stepped toward the north side of the hacienda. His bare heel slipped on a loop of intestine, slick as any banana peel. His leg twisted out from under him. He tumbled face-first, striking hard, the weapon slamming to the packed dirt, his finger jamming the trigger.

Silver disks flashed out and struck the figure lumbering into the courtyard, one arm on fire. It howled—not in agony, but in feral rage. The figure wore the tatters of a butler’s attire. His eyes were fever bright but mucked with pasty matter. Froth speckled and drooled from lips rippled in a snarl. Blood stained the lower half of his face and drenched the front of his once-starched white shirt.

In a flash of insight—a rarity—Kowalski realized what had been nagging him before. The lack of monkey corpses here. He’d assumed the monkeys had been cannibalized—if so, then why leave a perfectly good chunk of meat out here?

The answer: no apes had attacked here.

It seemed the beasts were not the only ones infected on the island.

Nor the only cannibals.

The butler, still on fire, lunged toward Kowalski. The first impacts of the silver disks had struck shoulder and neck. Blood sprayed. Not enough to stop the determined maniac.

Kowalski squeezed the trigger, aiming low.

An arc of razored death sliced across the space at knee height.

Tendons snapped, bones shattered. The butler collapsed and fell toward Kowalski, landing almost nose to nose with him. A clawed hand grabbed his throat, nails digging into his flesh. Kowalski raised the muzzle of his VK rifle.

“Sorry, buddy.”

Kowalski aimed for the open mouth and pulled the trigger, closing his eyes at the last second.

A gargling yowl erupted—then went immediately silent. His throat was released.

Kowalski opened his eyes to see the butler collapse face-first.

Dead.

Kowalski rolled to the side and gained his legs. He searched around for any other attackers, then ran toward the back of the hacienda. He glanced in each window as he passed: a locker room, a lab with steel animal cages, a billiard room.

Fire roared on the structure’s far side, fanned by the growing winds. Smoke churned up into the darkening skies.

Through the next window, Kowalski spotted a room with a massive wooden desk and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

It had to be the professor’s study.

“Dr. Rosauro,” Kowalski whispered.

No answer.

“Dr. Rosauro…” he tried a little louder.

He grabbed his throat. His transmitter was gone, ripped away in his scuffle with the butler. He glanced back toward the courtyard. Flames lapped the sky.

He was on his own.

He turned back to the study. A rear door opened into the room. It stood ajar.

Why did that not sit well with him?

With time strangling, Kowalski edged cautiously forward, gun raised. He used the tip of his weapon to nudge the door wider.

He was ready for anything.

Rabid baboons, raving butlers.

But not for the young woman in a skintight charcoal wet suit.

She was crouched before an open floor safe and rose smoothly with the creak of the door, a pack slung over one shoulder. Her hair, loose and damp, flowed as dark as a raven’s wing, her skin burnt honey. Eyes, the smoky hue of dark caramel, met his.

Over a silver 9mm Sig-Sauer held in one fist.

Kowalski ducked to the side of the doorway, keeping his weapon pointed inside. “Who the hell are you?”

“My name, señor, is Condeza Gabriella Salazar. You are trespassing on my husband’s property.”

Kowalski scowled. The professor’s wife. Why did all the pretty ones go for the smart guys?

“What are you doing here?” he called out.

“You are American, sí? Sigma Force, no doubt.” This last was said with a sneer. “I’ve come to collect my husband’s cure. I will use it to barter for my marido’s freedom. You will not stop me.”

A blast of her gun chewed a hole through the door. Splinters chased him back.

Something about the easy way she had handled her pistol suggested more than competence. Plus, if she’d married a professor, she probably had a few IQ points on him.

Brains and a body like that…

Life was not fair.

Kowalski backed away, covering the side door.

A window shattered by his ear. A bullet seared past the back of his neck. He dropped and pressed against the adobe wall.

The bitch had moved out of the office and was stalking him from inside the house.

Body, brains, and she knew the lay of the land.

No wonder she’d been able to avoid the monsters here.

Distantly a noise intruded. The whump-whump of an approaching helicopter. It was their evac chopper. He glanced to his watch. Of course their ride was early.

“You should run for your friends,” the woman called from inside. “While you still have time!”

Kowalski stared at the manicured lawn that spread all the way to the beach. There was no cover. The bitch would surely drop him within a few steps.

It came down to do or die.

He bunched his legs under him, took a deep breath, then sprang up. He crashed back-first through the bullet-weakened window. He kept his rifle tucked to his belly. He landed hard and shoulder-rolled, ignoring the shards of glass cutting him.

He gained a crouched position, rifle up, swiveling.

The room was empty.

Gone again.

So it was to be a cat-and-mouse hunt through the house.

He moved to the doorway that led deeper into the structure. Smoke flowed in rivers across the ceiling. The temperature inside was furnace hot. He pictured the pack over the woman’s shoulder. She had already emptied the safe. She would make for one of the exits.

He edged to the next room.

A sunroom. A wall of windows overlooked the expanse of gardens and lawn. Rattan furniture and floor screens offered a handful of hiding places. He would have to lure her out somehow. Outthink her.

Yeah, right.

He edged into the room, keeping close to the back wall.

He crossed the room. There was no attack.

He reached the far archway. It led to a back foyer.

And an open door.

He cursed inwardly. As he made his entrance, she must have made her exit. She was probably halfway to Honduras by now. He rushed the door and out to the back porch. He searched the grounds.

Gone.

So much for outthinking her.

The press of the hot barrel against the back of his skull punctuated how thick that skull actually was. As he had concluded earlier, she must have realized a sprint across open ground was too risky. So she had waited to ambush him.

She didn’t even hesitate for any witty repartee…not that he’d be a good sparring partner anyway. Only a single word of consolation was offered. “Adiós.”

The blast of the gun was drowned by a sudden siren’s wail.

Both of them jumped at the shrieking burst.

Luckily, he jumped to the left, she to the right.

The round tore through Kowalski’s right ear with a lance of fire.

He spun, pulling the trigger on his weapon. He didn’t aim, just clenched the trigger and strafed at waist level. He lost his balance at the edge of the porch, tumbling back.

Another bullet ripped through the air past the tip of his nose.

He hit the cobbled path, and his skull struck with a distinct ring. The rifle was knocked from his fingers.

He searched up and saw the woman step to the edge of the porch.

She pointed her Sig-Sauer at him.

Her other arm clutched her stomach. It failed to act as a dam. Abdominal contents spilled from her split belly, pouring out in a flow of dark blood. She lifted her gun, arm trembling—her eyes met his, oddly surprised. Then the gun slipped from her fingers, and she toppled toward him.

Kowalski rolled out of the way in time.

She landed with a wet slap on the stone path.

The bell-beat of the helicopter wafted louder as the winds changed direction. The storm was rolling in fast. He saw the chopper circle the beach once, like a dog settling for a place to sleep, then lower toward the flat rocky expanse.

Kowalski returned to Gabriella Salazar’s body and hauled off her pack. He began to sprint for the beach. Then stopped, went back, and retrieved his VK rifle. He wasn’t leaving it behind.

As he ran, he realized two things.

One. The siren blast from the neighboring jungle had gone silent. And two. He had heard not a single word from Dr. Rosauro. He checked the taped receiver behind his ear. Still in place.

Why had she gone silent?

The helicopter—a Sikorsky S-76—touched down ahead of him. Sand swirled in the rotorwash. A gunman in military fatigues pointed a rifle at him and bellowed over the roar of the blades.

“Stand down! Now!”

Kowalski stopped. He lowered his rifle but lifted the pack. “I have the goddamn antidote.”

He searched the surrounding beach for Dr. Rosauro, but she was nowhere in sight.

“I’m Seaman Joe Kowalski! U.S. Navy! I’m helping Dr. Rosauro!”

After a moment of consultation with someone inside the chopper, the gunman waved him forward. Ducking under the rotors, Kowalski held out the satchel. A shadowy figure accepted the pack and searched inside. Something was exchanged by radio.

“Where’s Dr. Rosauro?” the stranger asked, clearly the one in charge here. Hard blue eyes studied him.

Kowalski shook his head.

“Commander Crowe,” the pilot called back. “We must leave now. The Brazilian navy had just ordered the bombardment.”

“Get inside,” the man ordered Kowalski, the tone unequivocal.

Kowalski stepped toward the open door.

A shrieking wail stopped him. A single short burst. It came from beyond the beach.

In the jungle.

Dr. Shay Rosauro clung to the tangle of branches halfway up the broad-leafed cocoa tree. Baboons gibbered below. She had sustained a deep bite to her calf, lost her radio and her pack.

Minutes ago, after being chased into the tree, she had found that her perch offered a bird’s-eye view of the hacienda, good enough to observe Kowalski being led out at gunpoint. Unable to help, she had used the only weapon still at hand—her sonic shrieker.

Unfortunately, the blast had panicked the baboons below her, their sudden flight jostling her branch. She’d lost her balance…and the shrieker. As she’d regained her balance, she’d heard two gunshots.

Hope died inside her.

Below, one of the baboons, the dominant male of the pack, had recovered her sonic device and discovered the siren button. The blast momentarily scattered the pack. But only momentarily. The deterrent was becoming progressively less effective—only making them angrier.

Shay hugged the tree trunk.

She checked her watch, then closed her eyes.

She pictured the children’s faces…her partner’s…

A noise drew her attention upward. The double whump of a passing helicopter. The leaves whipped around her. She lifted an arm—then lowered it.

Too late.

The chopper lifted away. The Brazilian assault would commence in a matter of seconds. Shay let her club, her only remaining weapon, drop from her fingers. What was the use? It tumbled below, doing nothing but drawing the attention of the baboons. The pack renewed its assault, climbing the lowest branches.

She could only watch.

Then a familiar voice intruded.

“Die, you dirty, rabid, motherfucking apes!”

A large figure appeared below, blazing out with a VK rifle.

Baboons screamed. Fur flew. Blood splattered.

Kowalski strode into the fray, back to nothing but his boxers.

And his weapon.

He strafed and fired, spinning, turning, twisting, dropping.

Baboons fled now.

Except for their leader. The male rose up and howled as loudly as Kowalski, baring long fangs. Kowalski matched his expression, showing as many teeth.

“Shut the hell up!”

Kowalski punctuated his declaration with a continuous burst of firepower, turning monkey into mulch. Once finished, he shouldered his rifle and strode forward. Leaning on the trunk, he stared up.

“Ready to come down, Doctor?”

Relieved, Shay half fell out of the tree. Kowalski caught her.

“The antidote…?” she asked.

“In safe hands,” he assured her. “On its way to the coast with Commander Crowe. He wanted me to come along, but well…I…I guess I owed you.”

He supported her under one shoulder. They hobbled quickly out of the jungle to the open beach.

“How are we going to get off—?”

“I’ve got that covered. Seems a nice lady left us a going-away present.” He pointed down the strand to a beached Jet Ski. “Lucky for us, Gabriella Salazar loved her husband enough to come out here.”

As they hurried to the watercraft’s side, he gently helped her on board, then climbed in front.

She circled her arms around his waist. She noted his bloody ear and weeping lacerations across his back. More scars to add to his collection. She closed her eyes and leaned her cheek against his bare back. Grateful and exhausted.

“And speaking of the love of one’s life,” he said, igniting the watercraft’s engine and throttling it up. He glanced back. “I may be falling in love, too…”

She lifted her head, startled, then leaned back down.

Relieved.

Kowalski was just staring at his shouldered rifle.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “This baby’s a real keeper.”




Gayle Lynds


Gayle Lynds did not intend to start a series. When she wrote her first book, Masquerade, in the mid-1990s, she was simply creating a modern espionage thriller. But in those early post-Iron Curtain days, not only was there serious discussion in Congress about dissolving the CIA, the New York Times eliminated its regular review column titled, “Spies & Thrillers.” Within book publishing, the spy novel was declared as dead as the cold war.

Still, Masquerade became a New York Times bestseller. A great adventure story, it was infused with fascinating doses of history and psychology. In an odd way, Sarah Walker, the heroine, was Lynds. Both were magazine journalists, but Sarah had the misfortune to have an uncle who was a notorious assassin called the Carnivore, although she did not know this. In the novel, Asher Flores, the hero, is a CIA man of the fascinating ilk—charming, terribly smart, with the soul of a rogue. Together, Sarah and Asher must unearth the Carnivore.

Lynds went on to publish two more stand-alone thrillers, Mesmerized and Mosaic, and collaborated with Robert Ludlum to create the Covert-One series. Through it all, she continued to receive mail from fans who wanted her to bring back Sarah, Asher and the Carnivore. So The Coil, a novel about the Carnivore’s only child, Liz Sansborough, was born. A former CIA operative, Liz had played a pivotal role in Masquerade, just as Sarah and Asher would play pivotal roles in The Coil.

Liz and Sarah are two matched flames, not only in appearance but in spirit, with quick wit and the sort of personal courage that is both admirable and sometimes daunting. Costarring with Liz in The Coil is Simon Childs of MI6. For him, the “M” means maverick. Hotheaded and coolly charming, Simon reflects Lynds’s endless fascination with politics—he’s a penetration agent in the antiglobalization movement.

Lynds’s latest espionage thriller is The Last Spymaster, and will be followed by another book in the Carnivore series. The Hunt for Dmitri is part of that continuum.

It’s a Liz Sansborough story.

Which means the Carnivore must appear, too.




The Hunt for Dmitri


The French never got enough credit. The Germans never got enough control. The Romanians had a guilt complex. And the Americans hadn’t a clue. As the good-natured slanders continued, Liz Sansborough, Ph.D., peered around the Faculty Club for her close friend and colleague Arkady Albam. He was late.

The dimly lit bar was packed, every table filled. The rich aromas of wine and liquor were intense. As glasses clinked, a world atlas of languages electrified the air. Academics all, they were celebrating the conclusion of a highly successful international conference on cold war political fallout, post-9/11, which she had helped to organize. Still, there was no sign of Arkady.

The economist from the University of London grinned pointedly at Liz—the only American in their group. “I hear Russia’s economy is so rotten that the Kremlin has had to sack dozens of its American moles.”

“Only because we don’t sell ourselves cheap.” She grinned back at him. “Moscow can afford to keep your MI6 turncoats on the payroll forever.”

As laughter erupted, the sociologist from the Sorbonne nodded at the empty bar stool beside Liz and asked in French, “Where’s Arkady? He isn’t here to defend his country!”

“I’ve been wondering, too.” Liz’s gaze swept the lounge once more.

Arkady was a visiting scholar in Russian history, on campus here at the University of California at Santa Barbara since January. They had met soon after he arrived, when he sat beside her at a mass faculty meeting, peered at the empty seat on his other side, then introduced himself to her. “I’m the new kid,” he said simply. They discovered a shared European sensibility, a love of movies, and that each had pasts neither would discuss. In her mind, she could see his kindly wrinkled face, feel the touch of his fingertips on her forearm as he leaned toward her with an impish smile to impart some piece of wisdom or gossip.

The problem was, he was elderly—almost seventy years old—and so unwell the past week that he had missed all of Monday’s events, including his own seminar. He had phoned to tell her, but stubbornly refused to see a doctor.

As the lighthearted banter continued, and more people arrived, there was still no Arkady. He was never late. Liz speeddialed his number on her cell phone. No answer again. Instead of leaving another message, she toasted her colleagues farewell and wound through the throngs to the door. His apartment was only minutes away. She might as well look in on him.

The night sky was dull black, the stars pinpricks, remote. Liz hurried to her car, threw her shoulder bag across the front seat, turned on the ignition and peeled out, speeding along streets fringed with towering palms until at last she parked in front of Arkady’s building. He lived in 2C. In a rare admission, he had joked once that he preferred this “C” to the one that referred to the Cellar, Soviet intelligence’s name for the basement in the Lubyanka complex where the KGB executed dissidents and spies and those who crossed them. He barely escaped, he had told her, then refused to say more, his profile pinched with bad memories.

Liz ran upstairs and knocked. There was no answer. His drapes were closed, but a line of light showed in a center gap. She knocked again then tried the knob. It turned, and she cracked open the door. Just inside, magazines were strewn in piles. A lamp lay on its side, its ceramic base shattered. Her chest tightened.

“Arkady? Are you here?”

The only sound was the ticking of the wall clock. Liz opened the door wider. Books lay where they had been yanked from shelves, spines twisted. She peered around the door—and saw Arkady. His brown eyes were wide and frightened, and he seemed small, shriveled, although he was muscular and broad-chested for his age. He was sitting in his usual armchair, drenched in the light of his tall, cast-iron floor lamp.

She drank in the sight of him. “Are you all right?”

Arkady sighed. “This is what greeted me after the last seminar.” He spoke English with an American accent. “It’s a mess, isn’t it?” He still wore his battered tweed jacket, his gray tie firmly knotted against his throat. His left hand held a blue envelope, while the other was tucked inside his jacket as if clutching at his heart. He was a man of expressive Rus disposition and ascetic Mongol habits and was usually vibrant and talkative.

She frowned. “Yes, but you didn’t answer my question. Are you hurt?”

When he shook his head, experience sent her outside to the balcony again. A gust of wind rustled the leaves of a pepper tree, cooling her hot face. As she inspected the street and parked cars, then the other apartment buildings, uneasy memories surged through her, transporting her back to the days she had been a CIA NOC—nonofficial cover operative—on roving assignment from Paris to Moscow. No one at the university knew she had been CIA.

Seeing nothing unusual, she slipped back inside and locked the door. Arkady had not moved. In the lamplight, his thick hair and heavy eyebrows were the muted color of iron shavings.

“What happened, Arkady? Who did this? Is anything missing?”

He shrugged, his expression miserable.

Liz walked through the kitchen, bedroom and office. Nothing else seemed out of place. She returned to the living room.

Arkady rallied. “Sit with me, dear Liz. You’re such a comfort. If I’d been blessed with a daughter, I’d want her to be you.”

His words touched her. As a psychologist, she was aware of her desire for this older man’s attention, that he had become a surrogate father, a deep bond. Her real father was her most closely guarded secret: He was an international assassin with a code name to match his reputation—the Carnivore. She hated what he had done, what he was. That his blood flowed through her veins haunted her—except when she was with Arkady.

She sank into her usual armchair, where only the low reading table separated them. “Have you phoned the sheriff’s department?”

He shrugged. “There’s no point.”

“I’ll call for you.”

Arkady gave his head a rough shake. “Too dangerous. He’ll be back.”

She stared. “Too dangerous? Who’ll be back?”

Arkady handed her the blue envelope he had been holding. She turned it over. The postmark was Los Angeles.

“Ignore that,” he told her. “The letter was sent originally from Moscow to New York in a larger envelope. A friend there opened it and put the letter into another big envelope and mailed it to Los Angeles. That’s where my address was added.”

Liz pulled out folded stationery. Inside were three tiny dried sunflowers. In Russia, an odd number of blooms was considered good luck. The writing was not only different, it was in the Cyrillic alphabet—Russian.

“Dearest,” it began. She peered up at him.

“It’s from my wife, Nina.” He looked past her to another time, another life. “She wouldn’t escape with me. We’d never had children, and she knew I could take care of myself. She said she’d rather have me alive far away than dead in some Moscow grave.” He paused. “I suspect she knew I’d have a better chance alone.”

Liz took a long breath. With the stationery in one hand, and the sunflowers on the palm of the other, she bent her head and read. The letter recounted the ordinary life of an ordinary woman living on a small pension in a tiny Moscow flat. “I’ve enclosed three pressed sunflowers, my love,” the letter finished, “to remind you of our happy times together. You are in my arms forever.”

Liz gazed a moment longer at the dried blossoms, now the color of desert sand. She folded the letter and slid the flowers back inside.

Arkady looked at her alertly, as if hoping she would say something that would rectify whatever had happened, what he feared might happen.

“It’s obvious Nina loves you a lot,” she told him. “Surely she can join you now.”

“It’s impossible.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Nina and I decided before I left that if either of us ever suspected our mail was being read, we’d write that we were enclosing three sunflowers. Some snooper must’ve thought they’d fallen out, so he covered himself by adding them. The mistake confirms what Nina surmised, and it fits with this.” He gestured at the damage around them. “I thought I was being followed yesterday and today. The vandalism proves he’s here. And it’s a message that he can have someone in Moscow scrub Nina to punish me if I try to escape now. He knows I know that.”

Liz remembered an official statement during the Communist show trial of Boris Arsov, a Bulgarian defector: The hand of justice is longer than the legs of the traitor. A few months later, Arsov was found dead in his prison cell. The Kremlin had been relentless about liquidating anyone who escaped. Even today, some former operatives prowled the globe for those they felt had betrayed the old Soviet Union.

“You expect him to kill you,” she said woodenly.

“You must go, Liz. I accept my fate.”

“Who is this man?”

“A KGB assassin called Oleg Olenkov. He’s a master of impersonation and recruiting the unsuspecting. Even after the Soviet Union dissolved, he hunted me. So I decided to become Arkady Albam—I thought he’d never look for me in academia. But for him, eliminating me is personal.” He peered at her. “My name is actually Dmitri Garnitsky. I was a dissident. Those were desperate times. Do you really want to hear?”

“Tell me.” Liz’s eyes traveled from window to door and back again. “Quickly.” As her gaze returned to Arkady, a small, strange smile vanished from his face. A smile she had never seen. For an uncomfortable instant, she was suspicious.

Day after day in the bitter winter of 1983, Moscow’s gray sky bled snow through the few hours of light into the black well of night. From their flat, Dmitri and Nina Garnitsky could hear the caged wolves in the zoo howl. Across the city, vodka poured until bottles were empty. Meanwhile in Europe, Washington was deploying Pershing missiles aimed at the Soviet Union. A sense of helpless desolation shrouded Moscow, escalating the usual paranoia. The Kremlin became so convinced of a surprise nuclear attack that it not only secretly ordered the KGB to plan a campaign of letter bombs against Western leaders but also to immediately erase Moscow’s dissident movement.

Dmitri was the city’s ringleader. Still, he managed to evade surveillance and disappear for a week to print anti-Soviet pamphlets on an old press hidden in a tunnel beneath the sprawling metropolis. Nina was with him in the early hours before sunrise of that last day, making fresh cups of strong black tea to keep them awake.

Suddenly Sasha Penofsky hurtled in, snow flying off his muskrat shapka hat and short wool coat. “The KGB has surrounded our building!”

“Tell us.” Dmitri pulled Nina close. She trembled in his arms.

“That KGB animal, Oleg Olenkov, is under specific orders to get you, Dmitri. When he couldn’t find you, he decided to go ahead and arrest our people. They took everyone to Lubyanka.” He swallowed hard. “And there’s more. The KGB wants you so much that they brought in a specialist to wipe you. He’s an assassin with a reputation for never failing. They call him the Carnivore.”

Nina stared at Dmitri, her face white. “You can’t wait. You have to leave now.”

“She’s right, Dmitri!” Sasha turned on his heel and ran. He had his own escape plans. No one knew them, just as no one knew Dmitri’s. It was safer that way.

“I’ll tell them where your cell met, darling.” Nina’s voice broke. “I’ll be fine.” They would interrogate and release her in hopes they could find him through her. But if they believed she was also a subversive, her life would be at risk, too.

His heart breaking, they rushed down the tunnel. He shoved up a manhole cover, and she climbed out. His last sight of her was her worn galoshes hurrying away through the alley’s fresh snow.

Dmitri paced the tunnel five minutes. Then he accelerated off through the bleak dawn, too, carrying a lunch pail like any good worker. The cold pierced to his marrow. Little Zhigulis and Moskvich cars roared past, a stream of bloodred taillights. He watched nervously. He knew Olenkov by sight but had never heard of the Carnivore.

On the other side of Kalininsky Bridge, he was running down steps toward a pedestrian underpass when the skin on the back of his neck suddenly puckered. He glanced back. Walking behind were a young couple, an older man with a briefcase and two more men alone, each carrying lunch pails like his. One had a mustache; the other was clean-shaven. All were strangers.

When an evergreen hedge appeared on his right, he yanked open a wooden gate and slipped into a small park beside an apartment building for the privileged nomenklatura. The skeletal branches of a giant linden tree spread overhead like anemic veins. He grabbed a snow-covered lawn chair, carried it to the trunk and jumped onto the chair. Reaching up to a hole in the trunk, he pawed through icy layers of leaves until he found his waterproof bundle. In it were rubles, rare U.S. greenbacks and a good fake passport.

But as he pulled it out, Dmitri heard the quiet click of the gate. He stiffened. Turned awkwardly—and looked at a pistol with a sound suppressor aimed steadily at him. Pulse hammering, he raised his gaze, saw the mustache. The gunman was one of the workers behind him in the underpass.

“You are Dmitri Garnitsky.” The man spoke Russian with a slight accent and stood with feet planted apart for balance, knees slightly bent. About six feet tall, he was muscular but not heavy, with a bland, expressionless face and nearly colorless eyes. There was something predatory about him that had nothing to do with his weapon.

Dmitri tried to think. “Nyet. I don’t know—”

Abruptly, the gate swung open again. The gunman tensed, and his head moved fractionally, watching as the notorious Olenkov marched in, impressive in his mink shapka hat and black cashmere overcoat. He was taller and broader—and smiling. He unbuttoned his coat and removed a pistol, which he, too, pointed at Dmitri.

“Very good,” he told the first man. “You’ve found him.” Then to Dmitri: “Come along, Comrade Garnitsky.” He held up handcuffs. “We’ll make a good show of it. A lesson for others who would harm our Soviet.”

Dmitri climbed off the chair and tucked the packet under his arm. “Why bother with handcuffs? You want me dead to scare the others into recanting publicly before you send them to the gulags. You’ll kill me here anyway.”

“That’s almost true,” Olenkov said easily. “But I see no reason to make myself sweat carrying you. And my specialist was not hired to lug corpses. No, it makes much more sense to shoot you at the van where there’ll be witnesses that you resisted.”

The other man’s head whipped around. Expressionless, he studied Olenkov.

Dmitri’s rib cage clenched. Olenkov’s words thundered in his mind “—my specialist was not hired.” The other man must be the Carnivore.

“What about my wife?” Dmitri demanded.

“I’ll deal with her later.” Olenkov gestured with his weapon and ordered the other man, “Bring him!”

The Carnivore did not move. “A man in my business must be careful.” His tones were quiet, commanding. “You’re the only one who was to know who I am, yet you had me followed.”

“So?” Olenkov asked impatiently.

“I never do wet work in public.” His eyelids blinked slowly as he considered the KGB officer. “Never on the street. Never where there are witnesses who can identify me. My security rules are absolute. You knew what they were.” It seemed almost as if he was giving Olenkov a chance to come to his senses. “I work alone.”

But the muscles in Olenkov’s jaw bunched. His face tightened. “Not this time!” he snapped. “The chief’s in a hurry for Garnitsky’s corpse. Get him!”

Disgust flashed across the Carnivore’s face. His silenced pistol lashed around in a single smooth motion. He fired. Pop. The bullet slammed into Olenkov’s overcoat, burning a hole blacker than the black cashmere. Blood and tissue exploded, spraying the gray air pink.

Rage twisted Olenkov’s features. As he staggered sideways, he swung his pistol around to aim at the assassin. The Carnivore took two nimble steps and slammed a foot into Olenkov’s knee.

The KGB man grunted and toppled onto his back, a black Rorschach blot against the white snow. His pistol fell. He stretched for it. The Carnivore smashed a foot down onto the arm, scooped up the gun, and pocketed it, watching as Olenkov struggled to free himself, to sit up, to fight back. But his face drained of color. His eyes closed. Finally, he lay motionless. Air gusted from his lungs.

Dmitri fought nausea and terror. He waited to be shot, too.

The Carnivore glanced at him, showing no emotion. “The contract on you is canceled.” He opened the gate and was gone.

For a long moment, Liz said nothing, suffocated by the past. During the cold war, government officials and private individuals on both sides of the Iron Curtain had alternately used the Carnivore and tried to eliminate him. He was ruthless, a legend. Allegedly, he had only one loyalty—to money. He always worked in disguise, so no one knew what he really looked like, much less his true identity. All of the protocols in the story were accurate.

Still, his appearance in it was too much of a coincidence. Ignoring Arkady’s gaze, she lifted the blue envelope, examining it closely against the bright light of the floor lamp. There was no hint of a covert French opening—slitting one end of the envelope then gluing it back together. No sign of a roll-out—Soviet tradecraft using two knitting needles on the flap. And no indication of steam or one of the new chemical compounds.

Breathing shallowly, she lowered the letter. She remembered Arkady’s strange smile before he told her the story. “You know the Carnivore is my father, don’t you?” she asked.

“How did you figure that out?”

Liz did not respond. Instead, she peered pointedly across the low table to the bulge in his jacket where his right hand remained near his heart. She had to know.

Acknowledging her unspoken question, he used the other hand to push aside the lapel.

Shocked, she stared. As she feared, he held a pistol trained on her. What she had not guessed was that it was hers—her Glock, which had been locked in her bedroom safe. She looked up into the face of the kindly man who was a close friend. A better father. His sweetness had vanished, a mask. Raw hatred burned from his dark eyes.

A fundamental of survival was to adapt. Liz erased emotion from her face. She had to find a way to take him or escape.

“It was the envelope,” she told him. “No one opened it before you received it.”

He inclined his head once. “Where is the Carnivore?”

“If you know he’s my father, then you know he’s dead.” That was a lie. It was possible he was still alive. When she was CIA, she had discovered his real work when she spotted him in the middle of a wet job in Lisbon. She stopped it, and he promised to let her take him in. But before that could happen, he was apparently killed—yet his body was never found. “Was there any truth in your story?”

“There was a Dmitri and Nina Garnitsky, an Oleg Olenkov and a Carnivore. Olenkov was shot, and Dmitri Garnitsky escaped.”

She thought swiftly, trying to understand. Then she remembered his words—Oleg Olenkov…a master of impersonation and recruiting the unsuspecting—and everything made a crazed kind of sense: last January, it had been no accident that “Arkady Albam” sat beside her at the faculty meeting. That was the beginning of his campaign to cultivate her, make her vulnerable to him. At some point, he wrote the “Nina” letter, and on Monday, when he claimed to be sick, he drove down to Los Angeles to mail it to himself. Tonight he set her up so she would worry and come to check on him. That was why he had been waiting, with her Glock hidden under his jacket, pointed at the chair where she always sat.

“You’re Olenkov!”

His thin lips curved in a smile, pleased with his ruse. Chilled, Liz listened as footsteps sounded faintly, climbing the outside staircase. He had created the envelope and story to distract her, keep her from causing trouble as long as possible because someone else really was coming—but not to terminate him.

She kept her voice calm. “Dmitri Garnitsky, I assume.”

Olenkov pulled a 9mm Smith & Wesson from between his back and the chair. Neither it nor her Glock was equipped with a sound suppressor, which told her he had no intention of trying to hide what he planned.

“You think you’ll walk away from this,” she realized. “I’ll bet the sheriff’s department will find my place was tossed, too, so you can tell them that I was carrying my Glock for protection. That I’d found out somehow that Oleg Olenkov was hunting me because he couldn’t get revenge on my father.” She was beginning to have a sense the envelope and story were a test of her, too.

He chuckled, pleased with the results of his operation. “You have given me my answer—the daughter is confirmed as a worthy substitute for the father. Naturally you must defend yourself. In the end, sadly, you and Dmitri will have wiped each other. I’ll be very convincing when I talk to the authorities.”

A trickle of sweat slid down her spine. “But what you’re angry about happened long ago. No one cares anymore!”

“I care! I nearly died. I spent two years in hospital! Then when I was finally able to go back to work, they demoted me because of Garnitsky’s escape. My career was over. My life was ruined. They laughed at me!”

The most powerful psychological cause of violent behavior was the feeling of being slighted, rejected, insulted, humiliated—any of which could convey the ultimate provocation: the person was inferior, insignificant, a nobody. Olenkov was a venomous and volatile man, probably with an inferiority complex, who could easily act irrationally and against his own interests—including relating tonight’s tale, in which he appeared to be both arrogant and incompetent.

“You have no reason to feel ashamed,” Liz tried.

“I did nothing wrong. It was all your goddamn father’s—”

There was a knock on the door. It sounded like a jackhammer in the small apartment.

Olenkov rose lithely and walked sideways away, never moving the aim of the Glock from her. He lowered the S&W and unlocked the door, then retraced his steps. He sat again, pointing the S&W at her now, while he trained the Glock on the doorway.

“Come in!” he called.

The door opened, and fresh salt-tinged air gusted inside. A man stood on the threshold, the drab night sky and distant stars framing him.

“Liz Sansborough?” He had a Russian accent. “I got a note to come—” He saw the pistols. His soft blue eyes darkened with fear. His boxy shoulders twitched as if he was preparing to bolt.

Liz recognized him. He was a historian from the University of Iowa, not using the name Dmitri Garnitsky. He had a flat, tired face and large hands. Dressed in chinos and a tan corduroy sports jacket, he was probably in his late forties.

“Don’t try it,” Olenkov warned. “I’ll shoot before you finish your first step away. Come in and close the door.”

Dmitri hesitated, then moved warily inside. Gazing at Olenkov, he shoved the door shut with the heel of a tennis shoe. For a moment, puzzlement replaced his fear.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Dmitri peered quickly at Liz.

“You don’t recognize me?” Olenkov asked.

“Your voice maybe.”

Olenkov laughed loudly. “I didn’t recognize you either until I saw you walk. It’s a rule—never forget how a person moves.” He looked him over carefully. “The CIA has taken good care of you. I had plastic surgery, too.”

Olenkov’s reaction was a classic example of the compelling nature of deep shame. It not only inflamed, it consumed. He was engrossed in Dmitri, hanging on every word, milking pleasure from every shock, every surprise—which was the distraction she needed. She gazed swiftly around, searching for a weapon, a way to disarm him. She checked the cast-iron floor lamp just behind the little table between Olenkov and her.

Dmitri seemed to shrink. “Oleg Olenkov.” His voice rose. “You bastard. Where’s Nina? You’ve done nothing to Nina!”

Olenkov laughed again. “I have something more important for you—this is the Carnivore’s daughter, Liz Sansborough. You remember the Carnivore—your savior?”

Liz leaned toward the tall lamp, hoping Dmitri would recognize what she had in mind. She rested her right elbow on the arm of her chair. From here, she would be able to reach up and back with both hands and pull the lamp’s heavy pole down onto Olenkov’s skull.

But Dmitri gave no indication he understood. He returned his focus to Olenkov and announced, “The Carnivore didn’t save me. Your stupidness did!”

Everything happened in seconds. Olenkov jerked erect as if someone had just stretched his spine. Without a word, he glanced at each of them and leveled the guns.

As Liz’s hands shot up and yanked down the lamp, Olenkov saw her. He ducked and squeezed the triggers. The noise was explosive, rocking the walls. The iron pole struck the left side of his head hard. Blood streamed down his cheek as the lampshade cartwheeled and the pole landed and bounced.

Liz’s side erupted in pain. She had been hit. As the assassin shook his head once, clearing it, she snatched the closer gun. And hesitated, dizzy. She collapsed back against the other arm of the chair, taking deep breaths.

Across the room, Dmitri slumped against the wall. A red tide spread across his tan jacket from a bloody shoulder wound. His eyes were large and overbright, strangely excited, as if he had awakened from a long nightmare. Swearing a long stream of Russian oaths, he peeled away and hurled himself at Olenkov.

But Olenkov raised the Glock again. Liz kicked, ramming her foot into his fingers. The pistol flew. His arm swung wide.

Dmitri slammed the heels of both hands into Olenkov’s shoulders. The chair crashed backward. As they fell with it, Dmitri dropped his knees onto Olenkov’s chest, pinning him. Like a vise, his big hands snapped shut around Olenkov’s neck.

Olenkov swung up a fist, but Dmitri dodged and squeezed harder. Olenkov clawed at the hands that crushed his throat. He gasped. He flushed pink, then red. Sweat popped out on his face.

Liz exhaled, fighting the pain in her side. With effort, she focused on Dmitri, a man fueled by years of rage and fear, by terror for Nina’s safety. His mouth twisting, he glared down into Olenkov’s eyes, cursing him loudly again, his iron grip tightening. He shook the throat, and Olenkov’s head rocked. He laughed as Olenkov’s eyes bulged.

Liz forced herself up. Resting the pistol on her chair’s arm, she pointed it at Dmitri’s temple. “Stop! Let him go. He can’t hurt us now!”

Dmitri gave no sign he heard. He continued to strangle Olenkov, while Olenkov’s chest heaved.

“Dammit, stop, Dmitri! The sheriff’s department will arrest him. You’ll be able to fly to Moscow. You can be with Nina!”

At Nina’s name, Dmitri went rigid. His curses turned to mutters. Still, his hands remained locked around the assassin’s neck, and his knees crushed the man’s chest. Olenkov’s eyes were closed, but his raw rasps told her he was alive. The awful sound of approaching death filled her mind. Her husband, her mother and many of her colleagues had died violently. She wondered how she managed to survive. Maybe she was the one in the nightmare.

She clasped her wound and worked to strip the anger and pain from her voice. “You and Nina have a real chance. I’d give a lot to have the chance you have.”

At last, Dmitri’s shoulders relaxed. As he stood and walked away from the unconscious Olenkov, his upper lip rose with distaste. He did not look at Olenkov.

Sickened by Olenkov, disgusted by her misjudgment, she turned away from Olenkov, too.

In the distance, sirens screeched. Dmitri lifted his chin, listening as they drew near. “When Nina was born, I was in hiding. My wife’s parents raised her. She is twenty-three now.” He paused. “My fault. I wanted to know about her so bad that I finally wrote her last year. That is probably how he traced me.”

Liz’s breath caught in her throat. “So Nina is—?”

“My daughter.” Dmitri smiled a brilliant smile. “Thank you.”

He headed for the door and opened it. Behind him, the night sky that had seemed so drab now shone like ebony. The once-distant stars sparkled brightly.

Gingerly, he touched his wound. “Not bad. How are you?”

“I’ll live. Olenkov told me Nina was your wife.”

His hand fell from his shoulder. Pain torqued his flat features. “Her name was Natalia. Olenkov terminated her.”

“How horrible. I’m sorry.” So Olenkov had lied about that, too. “Are you sure my father didn’t do it?”

He shook his head. “As soon as the Carnivore found us, Olenkov scrubbed my wife. That pissed off the Carnivore. He said he was hired for wet jobs on criminals—not dissidents. So when the bastard tried to scrub me, too, the Carnivore shot him.”

Liz stared. Her father had saved Dmitri? She felt a strange kind of awe. She had always accepted the government’s version of the Carnivore’s career as an assassin. But then, he had never said anything to make her think otherwise. What else had she missed?

“He sneaked me out of the Soviet Union,” Dmitri continued. “We almost got caught twice. We walked three days across terrible ice and snow into Finland.” He swallowed and looked away. “They say he was a killer, but he was very good to me.”

As if it were yesterday, pieces of her childhood returned. Liz remembered holding her father’s hand as they laughed and he led her in a race across the Embankment. Their long conversations as they sat cozily alone to drink tea. The gentle way he brushed away her hair to kiss her cheek. She might have been wrong about him. What else had she missed? For her, the hunt had just begun.




Michael Palmer & Daniel Palmer


In 1982, Michael Palmer, then a practicing E.R. physician on Cape Cod, exploded on the literary scene with his first thriller, The Sisterhood, which made the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into thirty-three languages. Since then, he has written nine more thrillers of medical suspense. Palmer attended Wesleyan University with Robin Cook, and the two of them performed their residencies at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital at the same time. Later, Michael Crichton’s work and Cook’s success with Coma inspired Palmer to write and, between the three writers, the genre of medical suspense became firmly established.

Palmer sees the thriller as distinct from classic detective stories. Two of his favorites are William Goldman’s Marathon Man and James Grady’s Six Days of the Condor. In Palmer’s thrillers, his protagonists are drawn into the story because of something they do professionally. They are not detectives and are not out to solve mysteries. Rather, their goals are simply to be the best physicians they can be. They’re usually pulled into the story against their wills and eventually must defeat the forces impinging on their lives, or be destroyed in the process. Of course, along the way, a catharsis occurs, but what also distinguishes Palmer’s work is a frightening aspect that leaves readers wondering if such a thing could actually happen to them.

Palmer has never before collaborated with another writer on a project, but Disfigured is coauthored with Daniel James Palmer, the middle of his three sons. Daniel is a professional songwriter, musician and software manager. Disfigured was actually Daniel’s brainchild. And although Maura, the protagonist, is not a physician, the theme is medical, and like most of Michael Palmer’s main characters, she’s drawn unwillingly into the story.




Disfigured


We have your son. The picture enclosed is not a fake, this is not a hoax, and we cannot be bought. If you want to see your son alive again you will read this letter carefully and follow our instructions precisely.

At 4:00 p.m., on June 23, you have face-lift surgery scheduled on your patient, Audra Meadows, of 144 Glenn Cherry Lane, Bel-Air. During the procedure, you will inject 5cc of isopropyl alcohol around the facial nerve on both sides of her face. The resulting paralysis of her facial muscles must be complete and irreversible. If you fail, if she can lift even the corner of her mouth, you will never see your son again.

A copy of this note and photo has been placed on David’s bed for your wife to find. Do not alert the authorities or anyone else. Choose to do so and you have sealed David’s fate.

Dr. George Hill, the plastic surgeon to the stars, slumped down onto the cool marble of his foyer, his heart pounding. Just minutes before, the persistent ringing of the doorbell had awoken him. The manila envelope was propped against the front door.

Hill pushed himself up and studied the photo of his son. David’s hair was shorter than when he saw him last. Was it two months ago? Certainly no more than three. His eyes, always bright and intelligent, were blindfolded. He was sitting on a metal folding chair holding a sign that read:

June 22

2:00 a.m.

2:00 a.m.—just three hours ago. Shakily, Hill made it to the phone in his entertainment center and called his office manager.

“Hi, it’s me,” he said.

“Gee, even without checking my caller ID I guessed right,” Joyce Baker replied. “I suppose 5:00 a.m. gave it away.”

Odd hours and interruptions during her limited personal time were her curse for running George Hill’s medical practice for fifteen years. He was at the top of the heap of plastic surgeons in southern California, if not the country, and he was determined to remain there.

“Have you given anyone in our office access to the new appointment scheduling program?”

“No,” she replied. “I’m the only one with a log-on password.”

“Has anyone asked you about any client’s appointment? Anyone at all?”

“Absolutely not,” Joyce said. “What’s this all about? Which client?”




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