by Glen Craney
Another wave formed in the distance, and he saw it wasn’t going to be a mere ankle-snapper. He leaned his weight into the oncoming momentum and angled his board toward the shore. Catching the break, he stood up and—
Two more surfers—in black bodysuits and sunglasses—came carving over the waves and hot-dogging next to him.
Okay, they wanna play games!
Cas executed a sharp cut-back, turning into the wave and taking on the full power of the line. He flipped his board and landed it on the crest, just above the two intruders. Now they couldn’t see him—but they were about to be introduced to the nose end of his sleigh. He timed his leap to land on the back tip of the nutter on the right.
Startled, the surfer on the left peeled into his partner. Both wave trespassers ate it hard, with a side order of fries. Seconds later, their heads bobbed up. They swam toward Cas, who was dragging his board to the beach, having suffered his fill of amateur chonners for one day.
“Hey!” shouted one of the surfers slogging after him. The bald gorilla peeled off his wetsuit, revealing a shaved strip across his broad hairy chest with a tattoo that read: Molotov cocktails served here. “You trying to kill us?”
Cas kept walking toward the dunes. “You’ll manage that on your own.”
“Hold up, Mr. Fielding!” said the second surfer, a crew-cut human bowling ball with two thumb holes for eyes. “We want to talk to you.”
Cas froze. He hadn’t heard anyone call him his real name in ten years, not since he had dropped out of sight and assumed a new identity in what the DIA called its burned operatives protection plan. Probably a private dick who had sidled up to one of his old drinking buddies with loose lips. He turned with fists balled at the scumbag who was trying to blow his cover. Maybe the day wouldn’t be a total waste, after all. He hadn’t enjoyed delivering a good ass-kicking since he had softened up that paparazzi who’d been taking photos of his pal McConaughey swimming nude out here a couple years ago.
“They warned us you were crazy,” the tattooed surfer said.
Cas swung at the smart-mouthed musclehead, but his blow was deftly deflected. The guy whipped Cas’s arm behind his back, bending it until the shoulder socket nearly popped. Cas nodded with a grimace, duly impressed. They didn’t teach that move in karate classes at the university.
“You gonna calm down now, Mr. Fielding?”
Ballooning red in the face, Cas tried to breathe enough blood back into his brain to come up with a guess who had sent these pro enforcers.
“Beautiful place,” the black belt twisting his arm said as he looked around to admire the mansions on the bluffs. “I could see retiring here myself.”
Finally released, Cas rubbed his aching shoulder. “Mind if I ask who—”
“Take a little walk with us.”
“I’m not leaving my board,” Cas grunted. “Those punks’ll steal it.”
The thug doing the all the talking took off his sunglasses and angled his head toward the parking lot above them. There, two men in black suits wearing wires in their ears stood next to a Mercedes with dark-tinted windows. The lead singer assured him, “Your board will be fine.”
The shark knife sheathed on the guy’s wading belt convinced Cas to accept his invitation to walk the beach. Suddenly, it dawned on him who these two bounty hunters were. “Look, I told the bank I’d have the payment next month. I’m only three months behind on the mortgage. And they send a hit squad? If you want the damn trailer, take it. You won’t get enough for it to pay for the gas you bought coming out here.”
“Times are tough, huh?”
“Who are you, anyway?” Cas snapped. “Doctor Phil?”
“I heard that off-the-books government pension they gave you doesn’t quite cover your bar tab. Maybe we can help.”
Cas stopped walking. “Help how?”
“Earl Jubal sent us.”
Cas backed away, realizing it wasn’t the bank stalking him. “Not interested.”
“Just hear us out.”
Cas spat a wad of briny saliva. “I told that warmongering psychopath years ago that I was done with CrossArrow Global.”
“He has another job for you.”
Cas snorted. “What’s he want me to do this time? Bury one of the new crown prince’s cousins to his neck and shave him with a lawn mower?”
“You infiltrated the dissident Ikhwan tribe of Utayba in the Seventies.”
Cas glanced down the shoreline to make sure no beachcombers were around to overhear. “That operation was classified.”
“The Ikhawan were the radicals who seized the holy sanctuary in Mecca.”
“Are you trying to blackmail me?”
The CrossArrow messenger turned toward the bluffs, as if to block anyone with a telescope who might be trying to read his lips. “Two days ago, the Black Stone was stolen from the Kaaba shrine.”
Cas hesitated, not certain he had heard correctly. “Impossible! What’s left of that old slingshot rock is glued into a metal casing and surrounded by the toughest security on the planet.”
The mercenary didn’t break his glare. “There was a stampede in Mecca two days ago. Not long after the Saudi guards and police restored order, they discovered the Stone missing. Somebody stole it while the police were trying to quell the riot.”
“A distraction,” Cas said, thinking aloud. “The thieves probably started the fight as a cover. Oldest trick of the oldest profession.” “You think it was the Saudi dissidents again?”
Cas shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. Maybe, or somebody they hired. Someone the Saudis would never expect. Honestly, can’t say that I care.”
“The royal family doesn’t trust its own secret police, so DOD farmed this recovery mission out to us. All off the books. The Saudis are keeping the Kaaba under wraps for now, but they’ll have to uncover it before the Hajj pilgrimage in a week. If the Stone isn’t returned by then—
“I know my Muslim calendar, pal.” Cas made a blowing sound to mimic an explosion. “That’s just the straw that particular camel’s back needs. The Saudi regime is so damn rotten, even Fabreze couldn’t make its stink go away. But, hey, thanks for the heads up. I’ll tune into Al Jazeera in a week, if it doesn’t conflict with Duck Dynasty”
“You’ll be paid two million dollars when you deliver the Stone to us.”
Cas’s jaw fell open. He stared at the guy, trying to gauge his seriousness. “What makes you think that I can get the damn rock back?”
“You’re the only American alive who knows the Ikhwans. For some reason, they trust you. And your wife—”
“You looking to decouple that brain bucket from your neck?”
The CrossArrow messenger dropped his gaze, as if trying to defuse the situation, but his voice dripped sarcasm. “I’m sorry for what happened to her.”
Cas, overcome by a sick feeling, loaded up a punch. Yet this time he held back, having learned from the many last-call bar brawls he’d started over the years that he would only feel worse in the end.
“I can’t imagine the guilt you feel.”
Cas got into his face. “Guilt? Are you serious, man? Guilt?”
The operative backed off. “Easy, soldier. Just scuttlebutt, is all.”
Cas stared at the insolent rent-a-thug, wondering what he could possibly know about his Top Secret TDY. Sure, fifteen years ago he had infiltrated and lived among some of the world’s most fanatic jihadis. He was only doing his job, and he’d been one of the best in the business, too. But he’d never counted on falling in love with the daughter of one of the tribe’s leaders.
“Mr. Fielding …” The operative tried to rouse him from his dark thoughts.
Cas was already spiraling back to that awful time in the desert, when he had become fluent in Arabic and had mastered the differences between the Shia, Sunni, and Wahabi. But now everyone from Ring C in the Pentagon to Mossad in Tel Aviv to MI6 in London knew he had sworn off his old life because of what had happened. He wanted to scream in the
man’s face that his wife and son had never been jihadis! Just because they’d lived with the tribe didn’t mean they believed in all that radical bullshit! From his first day stationed in Saudi Arabia, he had promised himself that he wouldn’t so much as peek under the abaya of any local talent. Sure, he had bedded Arab women, but that was before he had met …
God had laughed at him, for damn sure, giving him Shada and Farid.
He dug his nails into his palms. Five years of the best intel the Pentagon had ever gotten out of the Middle East. And he had nothing to show for it. Not even a promotion. His reward? Losing his family.
Thank you, Uncle Sam and your various and sundry bastards.
God Almighty, Shada had been beautiful. Long, luxuriant black hair and big brown eyes like chocolate drops. He had never revealed his real identity to her. Truth was, she had been murdered without ever knowing anything truthful about him, except his feelings for her and Farid. He had witnessed enough executions to know the terror she must have endured as she knelt in Riyadh plaza with her neck exposed. Nine in the morning, as always. While hundreds of spectators watched, the swordsman in his white dishdasha and red-checkered headcloth would have strutted around her like a rooster ready to pounce. One step back, flashing his curved steel in the sun …
And now, just when the pain of those memories was starting to ease, Earl Jubal and his goons had to come along now to stir them all up again.
Cas angled his eyes toward the sun to dry a tear. He had been away on a mission near Bahrain when the Saudis snared Shada and Farid in one of their periodic dragnets for radical scapegoats to distract the populace from the regime’s human rights abuses. Before he could rush back to Riyadh to save them, the Pentagon had sent Jubal and his gang of mercenaries to swoop into the desert and extract the U.S. government’s most valuable agent in Arabia.
He could still feel the cuffs on his wrists from that night. While he was being whisked back to the States against his will, his son, only twelve at the time, had been hauled off to Ruwais prison, where no one ever walked out. He knew precious little about Farid, but Shada had told him that the boy, born left-handed, was being trained to use his right hand as the dominant one because of tribal customs. It was one of the few things they had argued about. Stupidly, he had harbored a secret hope of one day teaching Farid to play baseball, and a left-handed hitter had a better chance to make it to—
“Hey-uhh.” The CrossArrow messenger cleared his throat.
Cas had all but forgotten about the goons. “What?”
“Half the money can be wired into your account by the end of business today. The remainder will be transferred on delivery of the Stone.”
“Yeah, and how much is your boss making on this?”
“That’s confidential.”
Cas returned to his board and balanced it on his head as he walked back toward the surf. “Tell Jubal if I ever see him again, I’ll purée his nuts through his helicopter blades.”
The operative turned and nodded to his comrades on the bluffs. A satellite antenna rose from the roof of the Mercedes and unfolded. The operative pulled a cell phone from his waterproof pouch and dialed a number. “Mr. Fielding!” He called out, jogging after Cas. “There’s a call for you!”
In the water, Cas stopped paddling and turned his board back toward the beach. “Tell Jubal the number he just dialed is permanently disconnected.”
“You should take this call.”
Now really pissed, Cas paddled to shore and marched back toward the guy. He grabbed the phone and shouted into it, “Hey asshole! Leave me alone!”
A gentle voice on the other end asked, “Abba?”
Cas nearly buckled. Only one person in the world would call him that name. Speaking into the phone again, he asked skeptically, “Farid?”
“Abba, where are you?”
Tears of confusion stung Cas’s eyes. Had the Saudis allowed Farid to survive all these years? Had they told the boy that he was his father? Why would they do that? He tried to calm the tremors in his voice, “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Praise be to Allah!”
Cas swallowed hard, fearing the boy had been raised in one of those brainwashing radical madrasas. “Farid, I have to tell you something—”
The phone beeped, and went silent.
The CrossArrow messenger nodded to his colleague on the bluffs, and the satellite antenna on the sedan slowly retracted.
Cas frantically pressed keys to redial the last number. No connection. He yelled at the thug, “Get him back.”
“You get him back.” The hired soldier walked with Cas a few steps closer to the water. “In addition to the two million cash, the Saudis have agreed to release your son.”
Cas felt his first frisson of hope in ten years. “I’ll go get him—
The guy shook his head. “After you get the Black Stone for us.”
“And if I don’t?”
The CrossArrow mercenary took a step back, just in case Cas went ballistic. “I don’t think I need to tell you what the Saudis do with political prisoners who aren’t of some use.”
* * *
CHAPTER FIVE
Dallas, Texas
BRIDGET WHELAN—GOTH GODDESS OF LUBBOCK—was feeling pretty damn potent that morning. Her conjuring spells had finally manifested something useful. After three long years of unemployment, she had actually snagged a gig. She had gotten a master’s degree in biotech and materials technology from Texas Tech because everybody told her those two fields were perfect for a young, single mom needing a steady local job. But the bad economy was still ravaging the state, and the university had been laying off dozens of grad assistants. So, she had finally decided to pull up stakes and come to the big city.
Giddy up, cowboys. There’s a new witch in Big D.
The ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education had been for a technician with a degree in molecular engineering and nanotechnology. She had written her master’s thesis on failure analysis, the science of putting different materials under stress and analyzing what caused them to break, but she had also taken a few classes on the side in mechosynthesis and molecular-scale devicing.
So what if she stretched her resume a little? You try keeping a two-year-old in diapers and pay for day care on a stipend that could barely buy a Happy Meal.
She looked down at the address in her notebook again. Wiping the dust from the bus window, that soaring sense of anticipation vanished. One morose street after another passed by. Her new employer, she now realized, was headquartered in an industrial park. So much for the pleasant work environment that she’d been envisioning in her Transcendental Meditation sessions.
She pulled the stop cable, stood up, and heaved her backpack off the bus. She stood on the curb and looked around for a sign. There it was in black-and-white lettering, inconspicuous and indiscreet, the same as every other bland building sign in the area:
Lightgiver Technologies LLC.
She sighed, tugging her backpack higher up on her shoulder, and headed for the entrance. The money would be a salvation, at least, and the company’s health insurance was baby-friendly. But what had really caught her interest in the ad was the mention that the position would involve working with geological specimens and igneous formations.
She loved rocks.
The townies back in Lubbock considered her a little loony, but they were mostly Jesus-Is-Coming types who understood her as much as she understood serial killers. To help cover her tuition, she had opened a small crystal-and-gem store in a section of her mother’s grocery. What was it about these Bible thumpers that made them think the Earth began six thousand years ago, when she'd worked with rocks that were millions of years old? Seriously, who was loony here? And so what if she gave the stones names and talked to them from time to time? The mineral world was friendlier—and a lot smarter—than those right-wing blowhards who gossiped about her and tried to exorcise demons from her brain by drawing crucifixes on her windows with purple lipstick.
A
fter scores of employment rejections, she finally had to admit she might not be helping her cause by flaunting her Gothnicity so flamboyantly. Even a Priestess of Doom had to pay rent, and so that morning she had toned down the mascara. She would compromise and look “normal” for her first day, if that’s what it took to infiltrate the world of the walking dead.
The entire hiring process for this job had been done by phone, which probably explained why she got it. In person, she had a gift for putting people off. Hey, it wasn’t her fault if these rednecks couldn’t handle her fem-killer aura. The confidentiality agreement and non-compete clause that these Lightgiver suits had faxed to her at FedEx-Kinko’s was pretty scary. The documents even said that her new employer could leech onto her bank account if she mentioned even a word about what she was doing for the company.
Whatever. No biggie. Good luck sucking anything out of that black hole.
Most of the pedestrians around here looked like zombie businessmen and secretaries. Feeling a little nervous, she reached into her purse to caress her favorite green aventurine for reassurance. Quartz always enhanced prosperity and career success, at least that’s what the book said. Drawing strength from its polished surface, she could feel her blood rushing through her veins toward the aventurine’s magnetism, cleansing her chakras of toxins and negativity.
She was feeling calmer already.
With a deep yoga breath, she opened the door to the Lightgiver Technologies office and walked into a gloomy lobby stocked with rental furniture. Interesting vibe, to say the least. A desk where she had expected to see a receptionist sat empty. Peeking around the corner and down a dark hall, she called out, “Hello?” Now that was just plain ironic. No lights at Lightgiver. There’s a creepy start. She was all for the whole green-movement thing, but companies that pinched pennies to save a few bucks on electricity seemed like a canary in the bankruptcy coal mine. She tiptoed down the dim corridor and searched for someone, anyone, in any of the mostly unfurnished offices.