“Oh, I’m really not that worried about it. I’ll just have you hold onto them. There are plenty more where they came from. And it will give me an excuse to go back to Bangkok at some point.”
“Do you really believe this is finally over?” she asked in a hushed tone.
“For you? Absolutely. For me? I’m pretty sure my ordeal is finished, too. Arthur was the main driver of the push to get me. Whatever remains of his crew has their hands full trying to salvage whatever they can of the drug business. With the Chinese and Russians at their throats, I’m the least of their problems.”
She stared off into the near distance at a black and white photo of a prize bull. “At least the bastard is finally dead.”
“What about you? What’s your master plan?” Matt asked.
“I don’t have one. Just to get Hannah, and find someplace where we’ll be safe, and she can grow up healthy and happy.”
He nodded. “Any idea where?”
“You ever been to Mendoza?”
“Argentina? Really?”
“It’s pretty nice.”
“And a long way from anything.”
“That too,” she agreed.
“I’ll drink to that.”
They toasted, and Jet grew quiet. Eventually, she finished her glass and stared at it. “I just can’t believe he’s…gone. Alan.”
“I’m so sorry for that.”
“He was a very good man.”
There wasn’t more to add, so Matt stuck to finishing his beer and paying the bill.
They drove in silence back to the motel, and Matt walked her to her door, his key in his hand. He looked down at her, the light breeze stirring her hair. She looked so small, so vulnerable, if only for an instant.
Their lips met and they kissed for a long time, savoring the connection, both needing the other, if only to feel alive for a brief moment. Two damaged souls at the end of a tortuous journey, finally able to rest, their travel almost done.
Jet felt the same incredible energy as each time she’d kissed him before, and she inhaled his essence, the stubble of his face rough against hers. Inside her, a kernel of hope stirred. Maybe there was a tomorrow she could look forward to after all.
She stepped back, tears rolling down her face, and laughed nervously, wiping them away with her arm.
“I’m sorry, Matt. It’s just…it’s just too soon. But I could really use some company on my trip to Uruguay. If you’re not busy, that is.”
He gazed at her deeply, then deeper still until he fell into her emerald eyes, and then nodded and grinned.
“I’ve got all the time in the world.”
Chapter 44
The older man stared at the oversized flat screen, his head in his hands, as the black and white footage played on the monitor, the date and time stamp blinking in the right lower corner. A figure in black, sporting a backpack, hurried down the sidewalk from the direction of Peter’s home. A woman. For a brief moment, just after she pulled her ski mask off, her face was captured in the frame, and the operator stopped the playback, freezing her image, her white teeth gleaming in the dim light.
“There’s no question she killed your son,” the operator said. “The timing matches time of death, and there’s nobody else on the streets. So it has to be her, sir.”
The older man sighed and rubbed his chin, then reached for a plastic bottle of water. He carefully unscrewed the top and took a swig.
“Who is she?”
“We don’t know, sir.”
“Can we get any better resolution on the camera?”
“No. It’s a traffic camera. It’s zoomed to the max level. Any more and it gets even grainier.”
“Have we run it through the databases?”
“In process. NSA is helping with that.”
“When do you expect to have a report?”
“Within the next twenty-four hours, sir.”
“Let’s see it one more time.”
“Of course, sir.” This was the twelfth replay.
The footage reversed at hyper-speed, and then the silent film began anew.
“And the police are all over this?” the older man asked.
“Absolutely. They’ve circulated the photo of the suspect. It’s also all over the news.”
“Any hits yet?” His voice caught on the hopeful last word, the lie imbedded in the syllable a taunt.
“No. But they’re working on it, sir.”
“What about the ski mask?”
“They’re checking to see how many were sold in the last two weeks in the area, but if it’s older, or she got it out of state, or on the internet…there are a lot of variables, but they’re following up on all of them, sir.”
The older man coughed, a dry hack, and then gestured to the operator. “Again,” he ordered, glaring at the screen, wishing the mystery woman dead, as though he could reach out through sheer force of will and crush her with his mind.
“Yes, sir.”
The footage played, her gait easy as the mask rolled up her face, and the image of his son’s killer burned itself into his visual cortex, taunting him, making a mockery of his power and influence. He had the ability to create and destroy worlds, and yet with all that, he couldn’t keep his son alive for a moment longer. When all was said and done, he could move mountains, but he couldn’t ever talk to his boy again.
The operator let the footage run this time, and the woman’s face turned away from the camera, as though she sensed she was being filmed, and then she was just an indistinct shadow moving along the desolate street.
The operator started when the old man crushed the water bottle with a loud crack and threw the flattened container into the trash, a scowl etched into his features. His fingers worked at the plastic cap in his hand as he watched until the footage went dark and the screen became a jumble of static, and then he set it down carefully in front of him and leaned back in the executive chair, a small sound, a groan, escaping his lips. He looked up from the screen, his expression one of pure misery, and then waved a trembling right hand at the monitor, his eyes locking on the operator’s with the intensity of a reactor core.
“Again.”
<<<<>>>>
The Geronimo Breach excerpt
Chapter 1
Bullets peppered the dirt around Al and his partner. They instinctively returned fire, the barrels of their automatic rifles pulsing from burst after burst of armor-piercing slugs. Thick smoke belched from a crippled station wagon lying on its side by the mouth of the rural alley where they’d taken cover. The glow of burning fuel intermingled with the unmistakable stench of seared flesh, creating a nauseating haze. A slug ricocheted off the peeling wall, gouging a chunk of brick from the dilapidated surface.
A flickering of illumination from ancient streetlights succumbed to the gloom of late evening, casting otherworldly shadows over the rustic thoroughfare – now transformed into a killing zone.
White noise and static shrieked from their radios – not that they could distinguish anything in the cacophony of the firefight. The concussion of gunfire had devastated their hearing, and the ringing from tinnitus obliterated all sounds besides the percussive chatter of their guns.
Squinting down their sights at the blurs of motion on the rooftops of the bombed-out buildings across the street, they paused, turning to give each other a knowing glance before returning their attention to their assailants and squeezing off their last rounds. They weren’t going to make it. This was a deathtrap; they’d been boxed in with no hope of escape. Help was at least fifteen minutes out, assuming their base had received the solitary frantic distress call before the radio had been taken out. It didn’t look good.
The incoming fire escalated to a hail of screaming death. Rifle ammo depleted, they un-holstered their army-issue Beretta pistols and fired intermittently in the direction of their attackers, to no obvious effect. They exchanged panicked looks – this wasn’t supposed to happen; just a routine patrol in a secure area with no rea
son to expect hostiles, much less heavily-armed ones intent on slaughtering them. It was supposed to be a cakewalk.
Dave’s gun jerked as he reflexively squeezed the trigger, again and again, even after his magazine was spent. Al glanced at him with alarm and then elbowed him back into the fight. Dazed, Dave stared at the useless weapon in his hand, before dropping the Beretta and frantically fumbling for the scarred knife handle protruding from his belt. He almost had the serrated edge free from its sheath when his head exploded in a blast of bloody emulsion.
Al spat out the essence of his mutilated partner and expended his last rounds in a defiant salvo, squinting at the shadows in an effort to make each shot count. Cursing silently when his ammo ran dry, he tossed the handgun aside and bared his trusty blade for the final reckoning.
Shouts in an unfamiliar tongue drifted from beyond the dense smoke at the alley’s mouth. A bright flash momentarily blinded him as a flare bounced down the length of the cobblestone passage before coming to rest a few yards from his now trembling body.
Four figures emerged from the gloom, cautiously approaching the soldier’s hiding place through the fog of burning oil, their rifles trained on his blood-spattered profile. Pointing at the ludicrously inadequate combat knife clutched in Al’s shaking hand, the tallest of the bearded, turbaned warriors barked a guttural cackle. He handed his firearm to the figure beside him and from beneath his filthy robe withdrew a gleaming, viciously curved blade as long as his arm. He sliced at the air with it, savoring Al’s horrified gaze as it whistled its grim tune. The turbaned warrior grinned maliciously and moved forward.
The angel of death had arrived, and it was time for Al to die.
He shielded his head with his arms, all thoughts of attacking with the knife now gone.
The bearded executioner smirked.
Sobbing, the last thing Al registered as the scimitar descended to sever his head was a bloodcurdling scream from his executioner; a victory yell as old as the god-forsaken hills of the foul dustbowl that had claimed his mortality.
Al bolted awake, the image of the flashing blade still vivid, even as the specter dissolved into a muddy, waking awareness.
What the hell?
His chest heaved from the adrenaline rush triggered by the brutal nightmare, his heart trip-hammering in his chest as he shook off the bitter remnants of the dream state. He sluggishly scanned his surroundings; dimly visible silhouettes of furniture offered a quiet reassurance he wasn’t anywhere near a gunfight in some non-specific shithole, or being decapitated by a malevolent mullah straight out of central casting. Damn, that had been realistic. He cleared his throat, wiping the sweat from his face with a damp hand.
A battered air conditioner wheezed from its position on the wall, barely denting the heat and humidity in the squalid room. The bed sheets beneath him exuded an odor of sour perspiration and years of marginal laundering. A car’s un-muffled exhaust roared down the street outside the window; the moth-eaten curtains providing slim insulation from the racket.
Still, it was better than being beheaded in a mud-hole.
Al tried to sit up but was sapped of energy. Pausing to muster his strength, he registered a tickling on the skin of his right leg, as though ghostly fingers were brushing at the hair just below his knee. He groped for the small bedside lamp on the table by his head and after several seconds found the power switch on the cord hanging down the side. A weak yellow light flickered on and he gingerly pulled the threadbare sheet off his naked lower body.
He froze.
Two claws gnashed at the air over the greenish black carapace of a highly agitated scorpion. The arched tail lashed at Al, its venomous stinger fully exposed. He went rigid, his skin instantly covered in a film of clammy sweat. The poisonous insect became more agitated by this physiological change and, enraged, it scurried up Al’s thigh and plunged its deadly barb into the soft, exposed flesh of his groin.
Al thrashed to full wakefulness, clutching his calf in agony, expunging the scorpion dream as he dealt with this all-too-real distress. The pain was blinding as the large muscle of his lower leg cramped into a rigid ball, taking his breath away as he pawed at it, trying to persuade it to release. His back shuddered with spasms from the effort of bending nearly double – he wasn’t exactly in prime shape for gymnastics, and the effort of stretching to loosen the knot had pinched his sciatica, compounding the excruciating discomfort from his traumatized lower leg.
Harsh experience had taught him to maintain a grip on his toes no matter what and exert steady pressure on the Achilles tendon, pulling and coaxing the contracted muscle until it relaxed. If he surrendered to his back’s protestations the cramp would worsen and the ordeal would go on seemingly forever – either way there would be pain, garnished with even more pain.
He groaned with anguish. What kind of fresh hell was this anyway? Why him?
A blurry flash of the prior evening’s debauchery intruded into his labored calisthenics. He vaguely recalled lurching up the stairs to his dingy apartment swigging the last of a cheap bottle of coconut rum after many hours of drunken gambling at the neighborhood watering hole, and the loud argument with the bartender about soccer, transvestites and how the Chinese were Satan’s henchmen, but the rest was a blank, with the exception of copious quantities of alcohol. The memory of the rotgut triggered his gag reflex, filling his mouth with bitter saliva as he choked down vomit.
The spasm in his leg eventually loosened and he cautiously slid his legs off the bed and stood up. So far, so good. He kicked an empty bottle out of his path and leaned against the wall, stretching his hamstring while he massaged his back with his free hand. Hopeful the worst was over, Al limped to the coffee table in the studio apartment’s sitting area and collapsed onto the sofa, dimly aware of something wet adhering to the side of his head. He reached up and peeled off the offending item; a slab of congealed lard and dough.
Pepperoni.
Nice.
How did this get any worse?
His head swam through the waves of dizziness that assaulted him and bile seeped out of his nose. What time had he gotten in? That he’d passed out was a given – meaning today had to be either Friday, Saturday or Sunday. He had a strict rule, or at least a semi-strict rule, against getting obliterated on weeknights so it had to be one of those. He was pretty sure it wasn’t a Monday. He desperately hoped it was the weekend – there was no way he could make it in to work in this condition.
The luminescent wall clock above the TV read 5:30. Probably a.m. given the dearth of daylight. So maybe he’d gotten three hours of sleep. The nightmares were no doubt a result of plummeting blood sugar and dehydration.
He really had to stop overdoing it.
Soon.
After he got through the present, that is. Right now he was in no shape to make rash decisions.
He groped through the accumulated trash on the scarred table surface until he found what felt like a cigarette packet.
Empty. Of course. It would be, wouldn’t it?
Rooting around in the accumulated refuse, his hand bumped a cold metal ashtray reeking of a rancid blend of carbon, alcohol and nicotine. He fished around among the butts, trying to find something only half smoked.
Great. They were all soaked.
The stink caused him to retch again. Now he could add vomiting on himself to his pre-dawn party tricks. Gagging, Al struggled upright and staggered toward the dim outline of the bathroom door, hands fumbling for support. He switched on the light and was transfixed by his reflection in the hazy mirror.
Even for him, this was a new low.
Red, bleary eyes had the bleak thousand-yard stare of a chain-gang prisoner. Tomato paste crusted around his right temple created the impression he’d been in a collision, as did the now hardened mozzarella flecking his cheek. What was left of his hair was matted into a greasy clump. He resembled nothing so much as a puffer fish that had been hit in the face with a brick. Several times.
At least he still
had his health.
Al crumpled onto the floor in front of the toilet and grabbed the cracked rim for support before explosively spewing the night’s excesses into the grimy bowl. He was afraid to look too closely.
He smelled blood.
The cramp threatened to revisit his leg as he heaved and it was all he could do to keep from crying in frustration at the accumulated misery of a body that had completely betrayed him. The spell passed. His hand reached for toilet paper to blot his mouth and instead found the coarse cardboard of an empty roll.
Perfect.
He dried his face with the filthy bath mat, absently wondering whether it would wash clean, and depressed the toilet lever, anxious to flush the toxic soup from the prior night’s episode down the pipe. He heard a snap rather than the satisfying flushing sound he’d hoped for. The rusty rod in the tank had broken again; his temporary fix with fishing line and super glue having obviously proved inadequate.
A glance at his watch confirmed it was Friday the 29th. Dammit. He had to make it into the office. There was no choice. He was already in deep weeds due to chronic absenteeism.
There’d better still be some emergency vodka stashed in the freezer, or he’d never make it.
He regarded his bloated, ravaged countenance in the mirror. A network of ruptured capillaries lent him the flushed glow of a seasoned vagrant, with yellowish skin that was disturbing, at best. To say he looked like shit was pejorative to excrement.
He was a complete mess.
Al flicked a speck of vomit from the corner of his mouth and splashed some lukewarm water on his face, knocking his toothbrush into the noxious toilet in the process.
Superb. Thank you, universe.
He considered his reflection once more. This had to stop. He’d never seen anything looking so bad that was still breathing. It couldn’t continue. And then he grinned, a lopsided smirk devoid of humor.
Albert Ross, proud member of the U.S. Diplomatic Corps in shit-swamp Panama, Central America, at your service.
Jet 04: Reckoning Page 29