The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich

by Lars Emmerich

  “Balls,” Sam said. “Señor Rojas must have run out of patience.”

  Her mind raced. She grabbed the pilot by the lapel, whispered quickly into his ear, and released him just as Rojas entered the aircraft cabin.

  “Special Agent Jameson,” Rojas said, his chauffeur’s affectation now fully restored, “I’m afraid we really must be going. Will you and your associates please accompany me to our cars?”

  “Sure thing,” she said, then bent over as if to pick something up from behind the seat. She waved her left hand in the aisle. The pilot, now sitting back at the aircraft controls in the cockpit, took his cue.

  The aircraft went completely dark inside.

  There was a flurry of motion, a dull thud, the groan of air escaping a man’s lungs, and the heavy thunk of a body hitting the floor.

  Sam searched the now-comatose Rojas. Her hand shot inside his pocket, retrieved his DIS credentials, and liberated his service piece from his waist. She also removed a small revolver from the holster around his ankle. “Expect company,” she said to Dan. “Don’t kill them, please,” she added as she zip-tied Rojas’ wrists and ankles together.

  The aircraft shook as the first of the drivers made his way up the staircase. Dan ducked behind the first bulkhead, crouching low to hide his heft, his arms in a martial artist’s attack stance. Even in the darkness, Sam thought he looked a little ridiculous.

  The DIS agent stepped inside the aircraft doorway, service pistol drawn and held at low ready. Amateur, Sam thought. Who boards a plane full of hostiles alone these days?

  Dan instantly punished the mistake. His vise-like grip clamped down on the man’s shooting hand, and Dan’s free hand disassembled the pistol in one smooth motion. Gun parts clattered to the cabin floor, followed shortly thereafter by the crack of bone and a blood-curdling howl. Sam winced as she caught a glimpse of the man’s wrecked hand, fingers bent a grotesquely long way backwards.

  “Dan!” She yelled, stopping her deputy from delivering a lethal blow to the disabled man’s windpipe.

  “Sorry,” he said, opting instead to knock the man out with a meaty smash to the nose.

  “Can’t take you anywhere,” Sam quipped. “Where’s number two?”

  Brock’s voice came from the back of the cabin. “Crouched down behind his car, with his gun drawn.”

  “So much for a discreet exit.” She turned to the pilot. “Can you get us out of here?”

  “And go where?” he asked. “No fuel, no flight plan, and no through-flight inspection. Plus our wheels are chocked.”

  “I’m officially open to ideas,” Sam said.

  Dan lay on his stomach in the aircraft aisle, scooted toward the open door until he could train his weapon on the second driver crouched by the car below, and fired a single shot. The .45’s report was deafening in the confines of the aircraft cabin.

  “Hit,” Brock reported. “Got his shooting arm, looks like.”

  “Not at all what I had in mind,” Sam growled. “You get to fill out the paperwork.”

  “Agreed,” Dan said, then charged down the aircraft stairs with his weapon trained on the wounded Costa Rican agent. Sam drew her sidearm and provided cover for Dan from the top of the stairway. The wounded agent offered no further resistance.

  Sam and Dan worked quickly, and soon all three DIS men lay inside the US government jet, hands and feet bound.

  “Sorry we got off on the wrong foot,” Sam said to Juan Rojas, after slapping him in the face a few times to awaken him from her earlier blow to his temple. “Now I’m afraid we’ll need a little assistance from you.”

  All pretense of affability had left Rojas’ face, and he was demonstrably upset about the way the evening had turned. “Always the same, you people.”

  “That’s right,” Sam said. “Always trying to catch our own criminals without becoming victims in the process. How silly of us.”

  She waved his identification badge in front of his face. “This says DIS, but let’s be honest. You guys are the local branch of the CIA.”

  Rojas bristled, which told her that she’d struck a nerve. Nobody likes to be anybody’s bitch. “Did you get tonight’s assignment from the local Agency guy, or from a different asshole?”

  Rojas put the chauffeur’s sycophantic expression back on his face. “Special Agent Jameson, I am afraid that I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with exaggerated deference.

  Sam smiled with mock friendliness. “Let me clarify my question.” She drew her gun, cocked the hammer, pulled Rojas’ head back by his hair, and stuck the gun in Rojas’ mouth. “Local Agency asshole, or not?”

  Rojas kept his cool remarkably well, Sam thought, his eyes never wavering from hers. So she shoved the barrel of the weapon further down his throat, digging the front sight into the roof of his mouth. Rojas winced in pain and tried to jerk his head free, but Sam tightened her grip on his hair and gave the gun a mean-spirited nudge further down his throat. “I can do this for a long time, Señor Rojas.”

  He stopped struggling, scowled at her to save a little face, and said something unintelligible. Sam pulled the gun from his mouth and pointed it at his temple. “Not local,” Rojas said, still eyeballing Sam. “And not Agency.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” she said. It always helped to know the opposition’s affiliations. “We’ll talk some more about that in a second, but first, you have a phone call to make. I want my two agents delivered back here — untouched — within five minutes.”

  She pulled Rojas’ cell phone from his jacket pocket. “Tell me the number of your third driver. I’ll place the call for you.” Sam pointed her weapon at the face of the wounded driver, sitting next to Rojas. “What’s this guy’s name?” she asked Rojas.

  “Alejandro,” Rojas said.

  “No games, Señor Rojas, or you’ll be picking Alejandro’s brains out of your teeth.”

  The wiry DIS agent did as Sam instructed. Rojas called his third man at their pre-arranged time, when the cell phone jammers in their vehicles were to be momentarily switched off.

  Sam listened carefully to the conversation for any signs of subterfuge, such as any stilted grammar or out-of-place words that might indicate the use of a code word, but she didn’t detect any shenanigans. Rojas had apparently followed her instructions. It made her more nervous, for some reason.

  “Why is DIS interfering in a Homeland investigation?” she asked Rojas.

  “What makes you certain it’s DIS?” Rojas asked.

  “Are you moonlighting?”

  “Moonlighting?”

  “Working on the side. Using your official position to get unofficially paid.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  Sam snorted. “Actually, no. Maybe that makes me the last honest spook. Who’s paying you?”

  “I don’t know the source of the funds.”

  “I would have been surprised if you did. But you know who you’d shoot if the cash didn’t show up, don’t you.”

  “Of course.”

  “That name will suffice for now.”

  “Valdez,” Rojas said. “He works for the Gray One.”

  “The who?”

  “A foreigner. The Gray One. He has been in the game a long time. Longer than you have been alive, I think.”

  Which makes him an Agency stooge, Sam realized. Nobody survived in the underworld for that long without CIA blessing. At least, not in the Western Hemisphere.

  “Drugs, guns, or girls?” Sam asked. The three toxic offshore cash businesses favored by the Agency to bolster its budget.

  Rojas shrugged. “I wouldn’t say if I knew.”

  “I can respect that,” Sam said. “How much was your take tonight?”

  Rojas scoffed. “Much less than the difficulty demanded,” he said.

  “Tough times in this corner of the world? You must be running out of enemies.”

  Rojas chuckled. “Everywhere but in the National Assembly.”

  “Sounds like you cou
ld use a little extra cash. Care to make another phone call?”

  Rojas pondered Sam’s offer. It wasn’t as if the Gray One ran an especially tight ship in Costa Rica. There was probably little danger of blowback, particularly given the paltry sum he and his counterparts had collected for the evening’s escapade. “As long as you don’t try to pay me with that shit dollar of yours.”

  Sam laughed out loud. “Fair enough. We could use a friendly introduction at the local flight management office. Thirty seconds of your time.”

  They settled on a sum, payable in silver bullion, a healthy supply of which Sam had liberated from the Lost Man Lake Ranch’s underground storehouse before leaving Colorado several million years earlier in the week. Sam held the phone to Rojas’ ear again, and he made the call.

  When the call ended, Sam looked at her watch. “One minute, Señor Rojas. Then I become unreasonably upset about my two missing agents.”

  11

  Sabot awoke to another viciously cold dousing from the infernal spigot above his head. He didn’t remember falling asleep.

  His right arm hurt like hell. It was chained to the wall above his head, the shackle furrowing into the flesh of his wrist. He couldn’t feel his hand. His head had lolled to the side during his slumber, and his neck ached with every movement.

  The events of the preceding few hours came crashing back in on his consciousness: the interlude with Marisela, the photographs, the picture of an anguished Angie viewing the photographic evidence of his betrayal. His heart pounded, and tears welled yet again.

  He rubbed his eyes with his left hand.

  His free left hand.

  What the hell? When he was last awake, his left arm had been chained to the wall, along with his right, and the blow-job-induced thrashing had torn both wrists to shreds.

  He inspected his left hand. Good as new. Absolutely no evidence that it had ever been chained to the wall. He turned his head upwards to the left, looking for an unused manacle dangling from the wall, but there wasn’t one. There was only one chain, the one that restrained his right hand.

  Was I hallucinating? It had felt so incredibly real, all of it — the orgasm had been incredibly intense, punctuated by the pain of the shackles on his wrists and the vaguely erotic helplessness of having both hands chained to the wall.

  And in the aftermath, when the reality of his betrayal and its effect on his beloved Angie came flooding in, the absolute despair was palpable, crushing, debilitating. It was goddamned real, as real as it ever got.

  And what happened to that table with the pictures on it? But for the two wooden chairs, the cell was entirely empty. Jesus. What the hell is going on here?

  Another thought struck. Marisela had left him naked below the waist when she walked out of his cell. He had felt the intense, stupefying coldness of that damn shower splashing down on his bare legs after she left. He was certain of it.

  He looked down. His pants were on, soaking wet, waistband digging uncomfortably into his midsection as he slumped on the chair.

  Am I losing my damned mind?

  His thoughts lost focus, and he once again got the feeling that he was an observer inside his own head.

  The voices started again, whispering as if they were just outside his cell door, then rising to a screaming, howling crescendo with a single refrain repeating over and over: You’re going to die in here! He found himself bellowing to drown out their viciousness.

  Then it felt as if he were observing himself, his consciousness floating above the small-looking Latino man who was chained to the wall and hollering like a madman.

  Another icy shower snapped him back to reality, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof, and he sputtered and cursed as the water splashed over him.

  More footsteps sounded in the hallway beyond the door, too many to count, moving with a purpose toward his cell. They all stopped at his cell door. Could he hear their breathing? Were they whispering to each other?

  Sabot stared at the latch in the dim light creeping through the jamb, anticipating their entrance at any moment. He listened, but heard only the ever-present drip of icy water rolling off of his body, and the occasional creaking of the little wooden chair beneath him.

  He watched the space between the door and the floor, searching for movement, shadows, any sign of the people who had clearly congregated just beyond the cell door.

  The door stayed inexorably, inscrutably, inexplicably closed. There was no sound. No voices, no breathing. No retreating footsteps, retracing their path down the long hallway outside the dungeon. No sign of anyone at all.

  The silence was interminable.

  It became unbearable. “Open the damned door!” Sabot’s voice sounded otherworldly in his ears, like the voice of a madman screaming in the semidarkness, bouncing rudely off of the hard walls, assaulting his eardrums long after he stopped his throat-splitting bellow. “Bastards!” he screeched.

  Was that laughter? Did he hear the faint, distant peals of children at play?

  Or was he hearing the echoes of the water dripping on the floor?

  I’m losing it. I have to get the hell out of here! He rose, stood on his chair, grabbed the chain with both hands, and yanked. His fingers slipped over the wet links. He stumbled backward, misplaced his foot, and fell to the floor, wrenching his leg as he landed awkwardly on the wet concrete.

  He climbed up and tried again, this time wrapping the chain around his hands, pulling with all of his might, ignoring the pain in his palms and fingers as the metal dug into his flesh.

  Nothing. No movement whatsoever. He thrashed with irrational fury, snapping the chain back and forth to shake it loose from the concrete, barely registering the pain as the links chewed through his fingers. “Bastards!” he howled. “Let me out of here!”

  The echoes of his voice receded into the darkness, and the pain in his hands rose to prominence in his consciousness. He released the chain, stepped off of the chair, and sat once again on the hard seat, rubbing his palms together to restore feeling. They felt warm and greasy. Were they bleeding? He couldn’t tell in the dim light seeping in from beneath the cell door.

  “Domingo.”

  Had someone said his name? Or had he imagined it?

  “Domingo Mondragon.”

  The disembodied voice sounded deep, gravelly, familiar. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, emanating from the far corners of the chamber and bouncing through his skull.

  “Domingo,” the voice repeated.

  “What the hell do you want?” Sabot howled.

  Pipes rattled. More cold water. “You sonuvabitch!” It was equal parts scream and sob.

  “You know what we want.” The voice was calm, controlled. Maybe even amused.

  Sabot slouched in his chair and buried his face in his bloody hands. Exhaustion and panic pounded against what remained of his will.

  Yes, he did know what they wanted.

  The words sounded small, weak, pathetic, disappearing into the darkness almost as soon they left his mouth: “Then come and take it.”

  12

  The old man looked tired, Protégé noted. Archive’s trademark arrowhead goatee, normally the picture of perfect symmetry, was off kilter. His white mane was more unruly than Protégé ever remembered having seen it, and the normal sparkle was absent from his eyes. “A little sleep wouldn’t kill anyone,” Protégé said.

  Archive smiled, nodded, but didn’t turn away from the wall of monitors in the bunker’s computer room. He had been watching representative video feeds, categorized and sorted by Vaneesh’s entropy algorithm, and filling pages in his notebook with notes and outlines, for the better part of twelve hours. “I’m expecting a call from General Williamson in a few minutes,” he said.

  “NORTHCOM?”

  Archive nodded. He and the commander of the United States Northern Command, whose area of responsibility included the northern hemisphere of the Americas, were thick as thieves. In fact, Archive had noted sourly while viewing a p
articularly discouraging episode of violence somewhere in Los Angeles, the two of them might very well hang together. Incumbent powers tended to view radical destabilization dimly, and they tended to use weighty words like “treason” to power the subsequent legal proceedings. Archive’s keen interest in society’s direction was fueled in no small part by the specter of an unpleasant death at the hands of the government atop the country he loved dearly. And he was no more eager to die than any other average billionaire.

  As if on cue, the small red phone rang. Protégé chuckled inwardly at the red phone metaphor — long symbolic of the US president’s 24/7 grip on the nuclear enterprise, now ringing in the lair of the eccentric billionaire who might have succeeded in overthrowing The Establishment.

  “General, my friend,” Archive said with more cheer than he felt. “What’s the good word? I’ve got you on speaker. Our friend Protégé is here.”

  “Hi, Jack.” Sonorous bass tones exuded confidence and authority. “Robert, I trust you’re making the old man take care of himself?”

  “I’m afraid I’m failing at that task,” Protégé said with a smile. “He’s overdue for a nap.”

  “I won’t keep him long, in that case,” Williamson said. “As you know, the president’s martial law order went into effect twelve hours ago.”

  “And you expected some implementation trouble,” Archive said.

  “Which has played out about as we expected. A mysteriously high percentage of our Guardsmen seem to be away from their phones at the moment. My notification staff has left a ton of voicemails, and fielded very few return phone calls.”

  “Nobody’s anxious to leave their families in the middle of the chaos in order to report for duty,” Protégé observed.

  “Right. That’s working to our advantage,” NORTHCOM said. “The numbers are slightly higher among police and emergency workers, but I’d estimate that only about a third of them are on duty. The rest are probably trying to keep their homes and neighborhoods buttoned down.”

  “Or they’re looting,” Archive noted grimly.