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

by Lars Emmerich

  He crept out of bed, dressed silently, and left, opting to let his wife of fifteen years get a few more hours of sleep rather than waking her for a goodbye kiss. It was going to be a short trip, less than a full day, and he planned to be back for dinner.

  Maurizio drove toward the shipyard, checking his phone as he rounded the corner. Sure enough, there was a text message.

  Maurizio didn’t much care for the man handling the details for this particular client. Maurizio never asked for his clients’ full names, and his clients never offered, so Maurizio knew the administrative man only as Bojan. Bojan had a buzz cut, and his lips seemed to be in a permanent snarl. Maurizio had instantly placed the man’s name and accent as Balkan, though he’d never bothered to learn how to distinguish between the various ethnic groups that had scattered like cockroaches when the wars broke out in the Nineties. Italy had soaked up far more refugees than her fragile economy could absorb, and things had never fully recovered. Maurizio had no real reason for the bitterness he harbored, as his cup had certainly run over, but he nonetheless looked down his nose at people like Bojan.

  And Bojan, with his imperiousness and air of thuggery, did nothing to endear Maurizio. Bojan’s text message said, “Hurry. We want to leave right away.”

  Maurizio was accustomed to indefinite scheduling. It came with the territory. Anonymity often demanded strange hours. But he was also accustomed to a little more courtesy. He let the wave of anger pass before he typed a suitably courteous and subservient response.

  It had the makings of a long day. But the pay would certainly put a smile on his face.

  3

  “Fall in Canada is like winter in Wisconsin,” Dan protested.

  “Pack warm,” Sam said. Despite Dan’s earlier attempt at humor, all roads did not, in fact, lead to Rome. A couple of them led to Banff, Canada, as that was the apparent origin of two of the important phone calls they’d recently traced. Sam thought it would be best to send someone up there to poke around in person.

  Sam was in a foul mood. Her request to allow Trojan access to the NSA’s data pipes in order to unleash another virus — this one designed to use its digital powers for good rather than evil — hadn’t made it past the Homeland Director’s office. McClane insisted he had represented Sam’s perspective to Director Blankenship as vigorously as possible, which in McClane’s case meant not very vigorously at all, Sam thought darkly, undoubtedly why the request was summarily denied.

  But she wasn’t surprised. It was a tall order under any circumstance, but it would have required a miracle for the NSA to agree to a second infiltration by the same crowd who, days earlier, had piggybacked on NSA’s snooping infrastructure to destroy the banking system. In fact, NSA was pushing for vigorous prosecution, staved off only by Homeland’s insistence that Archive and his group were cooperating fully in an ongoing investigation with enormous national security implications, and couldn’t be interfered with at the moment. The tenuous truce between DHS and NSA undoubtedly made Director Blankenship extremely reluctant to upset things with a difficult request, Sam figured.

  “Be sure to stop by Tourism before you leave,” Sam reminded Dan. “You’re not visiting our neighbors in an official capacity.” Homeland’s Travel Agency, or Tourism for short, made anonymized travel arrangements and provided false travel documents for Homeland agents whose investigations took them abroad under nonstandard and sometimes questionable circumstances. While Sam had visited Tourism’s office in the basement of the gigantic Homeland building on many occasions, the office didn’t officially exist.

  Brock spent the next three minutes convincing Sam to let him accompany her to Rome. She objected, citing the inherent danger and his wounded leg, but he pointed out that their home wasn’t entirely safe, either. He had been shot last weekend, he reminded her unnecessarily, in front of their bedroom door. “Statistically speaking,” Brock said, “our home is the most dangerous place I’ve ever been. Besides, I’m a grown man, and you can’t stop me from going to Rome if I damn well please. Plus, I want to have sex with you in Italy, which I have never done before.”

  “You’re so romantic,” she teased. But she ultimately relented, and after stopping at Tourism themselves, they made their way to the rooftop helipad.

  The Homeland chopper deposited them on the private tarmac at Reagan International, which was conveniently located adjacent to long-term airport parking. They exited the helicopter, nodded to the bovine TSA agent barely sustaining consciousness in the guard shack at the ramp’s exit, walked across the parking lot, and caught the shuttle bus to the airport’s passenger entrance. Taking the government jet to Italy was out of the question — it was simply too high profile for what she had in mind — so they gritted their teeth and stood in the security line.

  Their fake passports wouldn’t fool anyone with access to the ubiquitous facial recognition software run by all but the world’s dinkiest governments. But the false documents would add a layer of obfuscation that might come in handy.

  The airport wasn’t crowded. The airline industry was still taking a beating as a result of the currency meltdown. Domestic flights now cost an outrageous number of dollars, and relatively few Americans had any other form of money in sufficient abundance to be spending it on air travel. And most people were worried about food, water, and shelter at the moment.

  It wasn’t difficult to spot their tails. There were three of them. Sam knew what to look for, and while their practiced nonchalance might have fooled someone with less experience, Sam immediately noticed the way they intensely ignored her. And they couldn’t hide the hardness in their eyes.

  She’d lost track of the number of times she’d spotted a tail in the Reagan airport. It was almost a joke by now. But she wondered who might be interested enough in her and Brock to go to the trouble of having them watched.

  And she wondered what else they might have in mind.

  There was a tall Asian man in baggy jeans, a concert tee, and a loose-fitting rain jacket; his apparel said ‘computer geek,’ but his eyes said something different entirely. She also saw a dumpy-looking middle-aged guy in a ridiculously oversized sport coat pretending to flip through a magazine outside a book store just inside the security screening area. The third tail was an athletic-looking guy with a short haircut and a decidedly crooked nose who seemed overly interested in the talk show playing on the television in the restaurant across the way.

  She grabbed Brock and gave him a long, wet kiss, after which she whispered in his ear: “Heads up. We have three watchers.” He started to look around, but she brought her hands up to his face to restrain him. She kissed him again, then said, “Play it cool, please.” He nodded.

  After security, they moseyed toward their gate. Sam used the reflection off the plastic information kiosk to check behind them as she and Brock walked slowly past the shops lining the walkway. They were definitely being followed.

  “Let’s overpay for shitty pre-fab food,” Sam said as they passed a restaurant. “I’m starving.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten a proper meal.

  The airport meal they endured was anything but proper, but it was nourishment, and sitting down at the restaurant afforded her the chance to see the way the three goons deployed to watch her and Brock as they ate.

  They finished their food and continued toward their gate. Sam tried on a pair of sunglasses at a kiosk, using the mirror to watch the nearest tail. It was the big guy in the frumpy suit. He’d do just fine.

  Sam reached into her purse, felt for the ceramic blade hidden in the side of the bag, and casually slipped the knife into her front pocket. She led them past a men’s room. Five paces later, she stopped abruptly and whirled around.

  The guy in the frumpy suit was caught off-guard. A real pro would have continued walking past, but this guy ducked into the men’s room. Sam smiled. “Be right back,” she told Brock.

  She waited a few seconds, then charged into the men’s room. The guy was standing at a urinal,
dick in hand, trying to make it look as if he really was just a random guy in need of a pit stop.

  She strode up behind him, grabbed his non-pissing hand, and wrenched it behind his back. He groaned, and tried to whirl to relieve the torque on his arm, but Sam pinned him up against the urinal divider. “No sudden movements,” she said. “You’ll spoil your aim.”

  She wrapped her free arm around his neck, twisted harder on his wrist, and pulled him into the handicapped stall. She locked the door behind her.

  The man had stopped urinating, but his junk was still exposed. Sam let go of his arm, grabbed the ceramic blade from her pocket, and placed the knife against the man’s stubby penis. “Good behavior is in your best interest,” she said. “You don’t want this thing getting any shorter.”

  The man twisted in her grip, as if to break free. She clamped down on his windpipe with one hand, and dug the blade a few millimeters across the man’s penis with the other, drawing blood. His pained howl didn’t make it past Sam’s choke hold. “I’m not screwing around,” she said. “I will not hesitate to slice your dick off.” She felt his body tense, and she tightened her grip on his neck. “I’m going to ask you a couple of questions. I’m going to loosen my grip on your throat to let you answer. If you yell one time, or try anything stupid, you’ll be fishing your tiny little soldier out of the toilet.”

  The man nodded. Sam felt his body relax. “Who hired you?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Wrong answer.” She dug the blade into his johnson a bit deeper to express her displeasure.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “I’m local. This guy was an out-of-towner, Chicago or something. Cash up front kind of thing.”

  “What’d he hire you for?”

  He shook his head. “You’re not going to like the answer.”

  “Will you like your new life as a eunuch?”

  “Capture or kill,” the man said.

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  This just got real.

  Again.

  “Why?” she asked.

  The man shook his head again. “Lady, I really don’t know.”

  “Who’s running your little team here today? Is it you, or the tall Asian guy, or the guy with the messed-up nose?”

  The man hesitated. He was clearly surprised that she’d found all three of them.

  “I’m going to figure it out one way or another,” Sam said. “The question you need to ask yourself is whether you still want to have your gonads attached to your body when I do.”

  “The Asian guy.”

  “Thanks,” Sam said. “You’ve been very helpful.” She moved the crux of her elbow in front of the man’s windpipe, then applied pressure on both sides of his neck. This particular choke hold cut off the flow of blood through his carotid artery, which induced a much faster loss of consciousness than achieved by constricting a person’s windpipe.

  He was comatose in seconds. She released her grip. She didn’t want to fill out the paperwork that accompanied a fresh corpse on American turf.

  She twisted his slack body as gravity took over, plopping him on the toilet seat. She pulled off his jacket, took the cell phone and car keys from his pockets, then used the jacket’s arms to tie the man’s hands to the plumbing behind his back. Ladies and gentlemen, amateur number one.

  Sam picked up her ceramic blade, rinsed it off in the sink, straightened herself out in the mirror, and smiled at the dumbstruck older man who had just wandered in to use the facilities.

  Then she strolled back out onto the concourse and took Brock’s hand. “What was that all about?” he asked.

  “Nothing big,” she said, chuckling at her own joke. “Let’s get an ice cream cone.”

  They walked into the ice cream shop and ordered, then sat at a table. Sam enjoyed a few licks as she waited for the other two goons to catch up. She didn’t have to wait long, as the guy with the crooked nose took up a position next to the sunglasses kiosk, and the Asian guy sat down at the restaurant across the concourse.

  Sam pulled out the cell phone she’d taken from the guy in the bathroom. She checked the phone’s history, highlighted the most recent phone number, and pushed the call button.

  Then she watched the Asian guy fish the vibrating phone out of his pocket and answer. “Where the hell did you go?” the Asian man asked.

  “Hi sweetie,” Sam said. “Your guy had a small problem in the restroom.” The Asian man’s eyes snapped to hers. She waved and smiled. “You should really hire better talent,” she said, getting to her feet. “Have the guy with the funny nose join us at your table.” She hung up.

  She motioned for Brock to accompany her as she walked slowly across the concourse to the restaurant where the Asian man sat. Then she dialed 911, asked for the airport security people, and identified herself to the airport security operator. “I’m at the pizza restaurant in the International terminal. I need you to send a security team right away.”

  She smiled and waved as she and Brock entered the restaurant. The Asian man rose from his chair, but Sam put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down into his seat. “Please, don’t get up on my account,” she said.

  She brushed up against him as she sat down next to him. “Is this your first day on the job?” she asked sweetly. “Because you guys are really not very good.”

  “Go to hell,” he hissed.

  “I think not,” Sam said. She saw the security team approaching, radios held to their ears. “Over here, guys,” she said, waving her arm.

  The uniformed officers approached. “I saw this guy put some sort of a knife in his pocket,” she said.

  “That’s a lie!” the Asian man said, his face contorting with anger.

  But then he put his hand in his pocket and felt the knife she had planted on him. A knowing look settled on his face. “You bitch,” he said quietly, submitting to the police frisking. Sam watched, a small smile on her face.

  She showed her Homeland badge to the policemen, and announced her intention to take part in the interrogation. They agreed without hesitation.

  “Won’t we miss our flight?” Brock asked as they made their way to the detainment center, walking behind the two policemen and the slack-jawed Asian guy in the cops’ custody.

  “We will,” Sam said. “But that’s a good thing. Someone’s obviously onto us. Best not to stick to our itinerary.”

  They entered the interrogation room. Sam watched as the policemen strip-searched the Asian man. He glared at her, uncomfortable with his nakedness in front of her. “Nothing I haven’t seen before, buddy,” she said.

  The search produced a wallet, a cell phone, a slip of paper, and Sam’s knife. She didn’t bother to mention to the uniformed officers that the knife belonged to her, and that she’d planted it in the Asian man’s pocket as she sat down at his table. The detainee accused her of as much, but his accusations fell on deaf ears. What good was the truth, when your opposition wielded a badge?

  Sam examined the wallet. The driver’s license said Henry Feng, of Alexandria, Virginia. The wallet had several hundred dollars in cash. “Going to a strip club later?” Sam asked. Feng didn’t answer.

  “And what kind of a two-bit amateur brings his wallet on the job with him?” Sam asked, shaking her head.

  Feng glared at her, but said nothing.

  She looked at the slip of paper from Feng’s pocket. It was a receipt. Wu’s Dry Cleaning and Alterations, located in the underground mall at Pentagon City. “Henry, is this your guy?” she asked Feng.

  He didn’t answer, but his eyes betrayed him.

  “Come on, love,” she said to Brock. “I think we need to change our plans a bit.”

  4

  The door to the computer center beneath the Lost Man Lake Ranch house slid open. Vaneesh looked up from his screens and smiled. “Holy shit, we thought you were a goner!”

  Trojan laughed as he stepped into the room. “You’re not the only one. It
felt like we were in deep kimchi.”

  “So you won’t be returning to Costa Rica in the near future, eh?”

  “Never might be too soon,” the skinny hacker said as he plopped down next to Vaneesh. “How are things?”

  Vaneesh shook his head. “Not good. People were calming down, but there are some people posing as US soldiers who are shooting civilians. Shit’s about to hit the fan.”

  Vaneesh also filled him in on his efforts to stop the spread of the Bitcoin theft virus that was infecting people’s personal devices and using hijacked computing power to break into Bitcoin accounts.

  “I would think it would be pretty easy to shut the script down,” Trojan surmised.

  Vaneesh nodded his agreement. “But then the thieves know it’s happening,” he said. “I don’t want them to change tactics on us right away. I’d like them to think things are still going well.”

  “Much more difficult,” Trojan said. “Are you thinking of going after the laundering script?” Bitcoin transactions didn’t take place without a computer and a “wallet,” or an application that issued Bitcoin transfers to other accounts, so the thieves’ technique of keeping the digital currency in continuous movement to new, randomly generated accounts was dependent on several computers operating around the clock to generate the new accounts and transfer orders.

  “I’d like to shanghai the laundering script,” Vaneesh said. “But I don’t want to shut it down completely, for the same reason. The thieves will know they’ve been squashed.”

  “But you’ll have won,” Trojan said. If the money ever stopped moving, it could be traced to the accounts in which it rested, which was why the thieves kept it in constant flux. “We’ll be able to find them and steal it all back from them.”