Jack worked to keep his expression blank. John Garrett was part of Lewis’s current operation. “Which is?”
“The man he’s been meeting with over the course of six months is a high-class escort. Deputy Secretary Garrett thinks he’s in love. He’s actually being rather professionally seduced into giving inside information on upcoming changes in Australia’s maritime security measures. The escort is working for Natport, a rather unimpressive import company.”
It made sense. If Natport got hold of the new schedules and plans, they could easily circumvent them for any number of nefarious reasons.
“An escort?” Jack frowned. “That man has been under surveillance for nearly two months. We have yet to make a definite identification on him.”
“I’m not surprised, Jack. The man isn’t from here. He’s technically a Spanish citizen, but generally works out of South Africa. He’s more spy than prostitute. His fee rivals my own. Maybe if I were prettier I could branch out.”
Silently warning Ethan off that path, Jack said, “You seem to know a lot about him. Got a name?”
“I have a name. Antonio Amado. I doubt it’s his real name.”
Jack snorted. “Me too. Isn’t ‘amado’ Spanish for ‘love’?”
“‘Beloved,’ actually. It is a trend amongst the community, after all.”
“Yeah. Blade.”
“I will take whatever advantage I can get. Will this information be enough to prove my good faith?”
Jack stood. “We’ll have to check it out first. As soon as I know, I’ll be back.”
“I look forward to it.”
At the door, Jack turned. “Don’t eat the fudge all at once. The food here is pretty grim.”
Ethan smiled. “Good advice. Thank you, Jack.”
The intercom buzzed. “Please go to the wall opposite the door. Spread your legs and put your hands to the wall.”
Complying, Ethan gave Jack a parting wink.
The door swished open.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Jack couldn’t help but say as he stepped out.
The door shut on Ethan’s laugh.
Along with the remains of the steaks and potatoes, there were protein bars, dried apples, and hydro-lyte. Jack munched on a bar while divesting the dead of their weapons. He’d taken a moment before entering the camp to put his concerns regarding Blade’s actions—both ethical and psychological—into a drawer in the filing cabinet in the back of his mind. The poor thing was filling up fast these days. Compartmentalisation was essential to surviving war, and Jack had always been good at it. It was the decompressing afterwards he sucked at.
As if understanding Jack’s feelings on the matter, Blade kept his distance. He rummaged through the cargo in the buggy, tossing aside equipment he had no need for, lightening the load. He looked like a kid on Christmas who’d received everything on his wish list. If Jack hadn’t witnessed the cool, methodical killing of three men, he would have been amused by Blade’s gleeful mutterings. He had to keep reminding himself it was an act he couldn’t fall for.
Jack found a variety of handguns, knives, and two rifles. He stacked them all by the buggy, assuming Blade would want them. Amongst them was a single Glock 17. Not his preferred weapon, but he was more comfortable with it than the Eagle. Still, the Eagle would be staying with him until Blade asked for it directly.
Dawn was flirting with the horizon when Blade was satisfied with the buggy. The weapons were loaded in the back, along with an esky holding the food. While Blade fussed under the bonnet, Jack got behind the wheel. When he adjusted the seat for his long legs, the knife wound pulled sharply.
Jack sucked in a deep breath, the pain sudden and eye-watering. There was a burst of heat around the wound. Damn it! Bleeding again.
“What are you doing?”
Blade’s unexpected voice made Jack jump, stretching the wound. The pain shot inwards, spearing his kidney and drilling into his spine.
“What the hell does it look like I’m doing?” Jack snapped.
“Getting ready to drive my vehicle.”
There was no hostility in Blade’s tone, but Jack was in such pain the words alone were goad enough to not regret a dose of “fuck you,” even considering whom he was giving it to.
“Why is it your vehicle?” He growled the words out between the pulsing throbs in his side. It hadn’t been lost on him the real reason these men died was for the buggy. He’d be damned if he’d let Blade be rewarded for the unnecessary kills.
“I did all the work for it.”
“Work? How much do you get paid for killing six men just doing their job?”
Eyes narrowed, Blade regarded him with a level of intensity that challenged Jack’s anger. The fact the assassin’s hands were empty meant nothing. With or without weapons, the man was deadly.
Blade made a soft, derisive noise in the back of his throat. “And how much did they pay you to kill soldiers in Afghanistan? Weren’t they just doing their job?”
“Oh, no you don’t. You don’t get to compare honest soldiers with yourself. At least we were killing for a good cause.”
“Honest? Good cause? Do you really believe that, or are you just being an obedient little sheep and repeating what your COs told you to get you to jump out of the plane behind enemy lines?”
“Holy shit. When did you turn into my sister? I got enough of her bleeding-heart rhetoric back when she used to talk to me! I don’t need it from some heartless fucking monster, as well.”
The silence that followed was as cold as the night had been. A shiver crawled down Jack’s spine, contrasting with the sweat beading on his forehead. The roiling anger, the doubt about everything that had happened in the last thirty-six hours, boiled his blood. Facing off against Ethan Blade was insanity. Yet, here he was for the second time inside an hour. Not a great life-plan on anyone’s measuring stick.
As the quiet stretched out, Jack’s fiery anger gave way to the growing ache in his side. It seemed to be burrowing in, like a nesting mouse.
What had he done? Pissed off an unstable professional killer while he wasn’t in fighting trim. Sore and hampered by a splint, Jack stood less than a snowflake’s chance. He dropped a hand from the steering wheel, hoping like shit he could pull a gun before Blade moved.
But Blade didn’t advance. Jaw tight, eyes narrowed, he dragged his gaze off Jack with all the effort of crowbarring open a sealed lead box. Fingers flexing, he rolled his shoulders and said, “At least I get to pick my targets,” so quietly Jack barely heard it. Then he walked around the back of the buggy and climbed into the passenger seat.
Jack eyed him as he buckled up his harness. What was this? Reprieve due to lack of interest? Or had Blade filled his vehicle-related quota for the day?
God. Why was he worrying about this? If Blade wanted him dead, he’d be dead. It was just that Jack had no idea why he was still alive.
“What were you doing under the bonnet?” Jack asked tersely.
“Disabling the GPS tracker.”
“Okay.”
There was no key for the buggy, just an ignition button. Jack jammed it into the console so hard it stuck. The engine started with a hiccup and then settled into a low, level rumble.
“Well?” Blade asked when they didn’t go anywhere.
Hands gripping the steering wheel, Jack swallowed the lump of anger and sour doubt lodged in his throat. “Where are we going?” It bit hard to have to ask.
Blade snorted. “North, for now. Follow the ridgeline.”
“Right.”
Jack stomped on the accelerator and the buggy jerked forwards, tyres kicking up arcs of dust and rocks before catching traction. Jack slewed the vehicle around, then pointed them northward and depressed the pedal even further. The buggy bounced across the rough ground, engine whining as Jack abused it out of a sense of misplaced anger.
Mouthing off at Blade was not healthy. Men had died for the sake of this stupid dune buggy. Sure, there was a high probability they would have
tried to kill Jack had they found him, but that wasn’t a certainty until it actually happened. They were dead before they’d had the chance to make a move either way, all because they had this buggy—and Blade had wanted it.
The slowly brightening landscape blurred past in a streak of unrelenting brown, red, and grey. A small mob of kangaroos scattered in a chaotic burst of high bounds. The buggy jounced over rocks and skipped across holes and ditches, its suspension tested to its limits, and the engine strained until the whole frame of the buggy was shaking.
Blade had killed them without remorse or a second thought. For this buggy.
The sun rose over the horizon, and waves of heat rolled across the land, folding up the open expanse of the night until walls of hot, hard air towered over Jack and the narrow beam of the buggy’s trajectory.
Blade put on his sunglasses and leaned slightly to the side. The wind caught his dark hair, flinging sweat-greasy locks back from his pale face. He slouched in the bucket seat, legs splayed in the footwell. A small smile played across his lips.
Fine for him to be happy. He had his fucking buggy and six more confirmed kills.
As the sun got higher, so did the temperature. There was only so much cooling speeding through the burning air could accomplish, which lessened the longer they barrelled across the barren land. The heat seemed to be crawling up through the tyres, into the chassis, and through the seat to claw at Jack’s back. Sweat soaked his shirt. His hair was plastered to his scalp and neck in black curls. Despite drinking the hydro-lyte, his head throbbed and his spine ached from the constant jarring. Yet he didn’t slow down. Couldn’t stop. Those men had died, and it had to be for something other than Blade’s madness.
“We should stop soon,” Blade said, voice raised over the buzz of the engine. “It’s getting too hot.”
“Thought you had somewhere to be.”
“We’ve already made up for the delay this morning. What good will the buggy do us if you burn out the engine?”
Right. That was all Blade cared about.
Jack tried to let it go. Lingering over the events of pre-dawn wasn’t helping him at all.
His amazing compartmentalisation skills seemed to be failing. The filing cabinet was overfull, bursting at the riveted seams with fifteen months of witnessing the operations of a high-stakes mobster. But it had been more than just watching. Jack had done his fair share of contributing, with a smile and a “thank you, Mr. Valadian” at every opportunity. Raids on other illegal operations and military establishments. Guarding business transactions that funded the whole campaign, standing in on meetings between The Man and his associates. Hauling away associates Mr. Valadian no longer had a use for. The longer Jack did these things, the more he was trusted and the more things he was asked to do. Bigger things, worse things. Things like shooting Link Rindone through the head. All the while thinking he should be on the other side of the equation. His tolerance and patience wearing down over time, until it was hard to remember why he was going along with it all, why it was important he not pull a gun and just start shooting them all.
And here he was, with a man who seemed to have never understood why it was important to not pull a gun and just start shooting.
What was worse? Blade’s lack of a conscience? Or the fact Jack had been feeling more and more detached from his?
“Jack?”
Jack shook his head, focusing on the landscape ahead of him. Nothing had changed. Empty and dry, life bleeding away under a sun that aimed to kill. Assassin in the seat beside him. Fifteen months of hard, terrible work made worthless if they didn’t catch Valadian.
“Fine,” Jack muttered and let the buggy slow down.
They stopped by a large patch of scrub bush and strung the canvas up between buggy and vegetation. The space it shaded was big enough for one of the dual-purpose sleeping bags from the search team kit. Blade spread it out, cool side up.
“Would you like to sleep?” he asked Jack. “I’ll take first watch.”
Preparing the little camp had reignited the knife wound, and it throbbed like a fresh brand, burning through layers of flesh to sear the muscles beneath. Jack gritted his teeth against the pain. “I’m fine. I’ll take the watch.”
“As you wish.” Blade settled on top of the sleeping bag, sighing as the cooled, padded material moulded around him. “I’ll sleep for a couple of hours. Then we’ll switch.”
“Whatever.” Jack rummaged in the esky and pulled out a bottle of hydro-lyte. Raspberry flavour, not his favourite, but he suddenly felt too weary to look for another one. Maybe he should have taken second watch.
He settled into the buggy, facing outwards. The vinyl was hot under his arse, but not as hot as the ground would be. He drank, wanting some relief. Any relief. After a while, he pulled his shirt off. It didn’t help with the heat, just exposed more skin to the searing air. He fanned himself with his shirt, then tied it around his head, a desperate measure to keep the sweat from blurring his eyesight. Gingerly, he touched the dressing on the wound. It was hot and damp, but what wasn’t right then?
He took another sip, realised his bottle was empty. Tossed it into the back compartment.
The sun had settled directly overhead, burning the air with white-hot rays. Jack got another of the sleeping bags and wrapped it around his shoulders, cooling side in. The touch of the material on his heated skin was better than anything he’d ever experienced. Better even than all the accumulated sensations of all the blowjobs he’d ever received. How long had it been? More than fifteen months, that’s for sure. The last one had been after the wind-up of his last operation, in New Zealand. The Maori with long hair he could curl around his fists, skin a deep, glistening brown. Jack had lost himself in the contrasting shades of skin, his half-Indian and the full-blooded Polynesian tones. The dark fingers curling around his hip, gripping his dick so he couldn’t thrust too deep into the man’s accommodating mouth. Not the best technique, but the visuals had been more than enough to tip Jack over quick enough to disappoint his helpful friend. He’d had better blowjobs, but it was the most recent, so it was right up there.
He snorted. Like Blade and his cars.
Damn, it was hot. He shrugged off the sleeping bag, shoving it away from his sweltering skin. Sweat rolled down his face and chest. He hadn’t sweated like this since . . . Cambodia. That godawful trek through the Cardamom Mountains. Rainforest, wet season, hot, humid, and a gang of human traffickers. Still, better than the other goddamned forest they’d been sent to. Jack shivered.
When had it gotten so bloody cold? Jack ripped his shirt off his head, pulled it on. Scrounged until he found his jacket and put that on as well. Still cold. He reversed the sleeping bag and curled it around him. His skin was damp, his clothes clammy. Just as they had been during that whole fucking job in India.
The Chota Nagpur plateau in Jharkhand, eastern India, in the wet season, and even in the rare moments it wasn’t raining, everything was still soaking wet, including the SAS squad trying to move silently through the trees. The trees, nothing but trees all around them and Nigel’s constant cursing of a clear line of sight.
“Can’t see anything for the fucking trees.”
Jack uttered a quiet, bitter laugh. He’d been happy to finally get to India, to confront those who’d torn his life apart. Hunting and eliminating Maoist insurgents was the ultimate goal of his service career. He’d waited so long for this moment, and now it was here, he hated it. Hated the near-constant rain, closed-mouth locals, and intelligence that had grossly underestimated their enemy’s abilities. The insurgents were too bloody good at hiding, at striking out from cover and fading away before they could be caught.
Except . . . this wasn’t right. This wasn’t Jharkhand. It wasn’t a spongy trunk at his back, and it wasn’t clogging soil sucking at his boots. It was rock and sand and a heat so dry it felt as if it came straight off a blast furnace.
This wasn’t India, wasn’t the worst mission of his entire career. It was .
. . somewhere else. Something else . . . so why was Nigel right there, shouting at Jack to dive for cover when the ground exploded right beside him?
Jack hurled himself sideways. “Down!” He rolled and came up on his knees, Austeyr rifle at the ready. Figures appeared out of the trees . . . out of the scrub . . . all around him. Instantly he opened fire, his squad a bare second behind him . . . but they didn’t. It was just him against the enemy . . . just him against . . .
“Jack!”
This was wrong. It was a whole band of Maoists, not just one man. A whole group of insurgents who had opened up on his squad, scattering them into the trees where the bastards had waited to spring a dozen little ambushes. Not just a single guy approaching slowly with his hands raised. No. Not just one man, because one person Jack could have dealt with, rather than gathering the remains of his squad and running into the soggy forest . . .
. . . but it was dry. Everything dry and cracked and dead. This wasn’t India. This wasn’t . . .
“This isn’t what intel said to expect,” Nigel hissed.
“I know,” Jack snapped back, but did he? He thought he knew what had happened in Jharkhand, but this wasn’t it, wasn’t what he . . . remembered . . . what he was remembering. This wasn’t India. It was the desert, and he was . . . lost, burning up, shivering. India had been a nightmare, and this was . . . was . . . was this the nightmare?
Jack sank to the burning ground. Drew his knees up and rested his arms across them. Christ, he was tired. Sore and aching and his head hurt. So over this shit. What was the point of any of it? Had anything he’d done had the desired effect? There was still fighting in the Middle East, still civil war in India; Valadian was still running free. Had he managed to change anything at all? What was the point of anything he’d done over the past fifteen months . . . fifteen years . . . if nothing had bloody well changed?
The satisfying weight of a gun settled into his hand. Glock 17. Full mag. Enough to find Valadian and . . .
Glock?
Where Death Meets the Devil Page 11