Trader of Secrets: A Paul Madriani Novel

by Steve Martini

  Liquida dripped blood almost to the edge of the water from several different directions along three different trails so in case she got lost she could still find her way to the lake. If there was one thing that was certain, it was that Liquida wasn’t going back to those buildings or anywhere near the landing strip. He could hear explosions in the distance, not rifle fire or artillery. Whoever won was busy blowing the place up, carefully timed detonations. To Liquida this spelled one thing—the military hand of government. And he didn’t care which one. They were all bad.

  He stanched the bleeding from his shoulder with a handkerchief, then carried the rifle into the bushes and waited. Liquida checked the magazine. It was empty. He had one round left in the chamber. If he couldn’t kill her with that, then he shouldn’t be in business.

  * * *

  Sarah tried to keep her head, to recall everything Adin had taught her about the pistol and how it fired. The Glock had no external manual safety. She pressed the magazine release on the side and checked the clip. She had only six rounds left plus the one in the barrel itself.

  It was the problem with the small light handgun. It was so fast and easy to shoot that you could squeeze off fifteen rounds in a matter of seconds and not even know it. She slid the magazine back into the handle and pushed it home until it clicked into place.

  Bracing the gun in both hands, Sarah moved cautiously down the trail as she followed the drops of blood. She could hear explosions in the distance and began to wonder if she had made a mistake. It might have been wiser to go after Herman, tell him what had happened.

  Then Sarah steeled herself and said no. Liquida had killed both her girlfriend, Jenny, and now Adin. He had tried to murder her not once, but twice. Adin was an innocent victim. She knew he was dead only because he had been standing too close to her at the wrong time. She knew that if she didn’t find Liquida now, he would be gone.

  In her own mind, he had passed from the realm of the human to a lower form of life. Killing him was like flushing an amoeba. He was diseased in the way a rabid animal was and required killing for the same reason. She couldn’t believe she was having such thoughts, that she could harbor such hate. A year ago she had been in college, but so much had happened in that year. She shook off the thought and looked down the path.

  The jungle growth was low, the trail covered with overhanging brush. In places, Sarah had to stoop to get under it. Suddenly something snapped off to the right. She stopped, her eyes trying to penetrate the dense foliage. It was as if she could feel hands coming out of the brush at her. A noise to the right—she turned and fired, squeezing off two quick rounds. She listened and heard nothing except the pounding of her own heart. She could feel the surging blood at her temples.

  Sarah looked down the path and saw a continuous trail of blood. She began to wonder if she had wounded him more seriously than she thought.

  Again she heard the snapping of brush off to the right. She knew he was there. She turned with the pistol and aimed toward the sound, but this time she didn’t fire.

  * * *

  Liquida could hear her footsteps as she moved down the trail, snapping twigs and dry leaves under foot. She would never make it as an Indian scout. He sat on a rock and listened as she came closer.

  He tried to gauge how far back she was. Then he picked up another stone and tossed it back up the trail and across to the other side. A second later he heard two more shots. By now she must have been sweating blood.

  He sat calmly on the rock and listened as she crunched down the track toward the lake. He waited a few seconds and threw another stone. She fired again and then click.

  Liquida smiled. He checked the one remaining round in the rifle. It was time to go to work.

  * * *

  Sarah stood stone still on the trail and trained her eyes on the traces of blood to where they ended twenty feet ahead at the edge of the lake. It was as if someone had dripped it along the path using a paintbrush. She silently slipped the magazine with the two remaining rounds back into the handle of the pistol. The slide on the top had been held open after she had fired the single round in the chamber. She knew he would hear the empty click. He was somewhere off to the left. The last stone he threw nearly hit her.

  She steadied the pistol with both hands and kept her thumb on the slide release the same way Adin had shown her at the FBI range. As soon as she pressed it, the slide would spring forward and carry the first of the two rounds from the clip into the chamber. From there, in less than a second, if she could get a clear shot, she could pump the two rounds into him. She tried to envision the silhouette targets from the indoor range—center mass, chest high.

  * * *

  Liquida was about to step out onto the trail when he heard the thrashing in the brush behind him. He turned to look and before he could move, the Doberman was on him, flashing teeth and dog breath. The animal seized his arm, the sharp canines ripping into his flesh.

  Liquida tried to fling him from his arm. The dog hung on like a bear trap, growling and kicking up dust as he pulled with his hind legs. Somehow Bugsy had lost his leash running through the brush. Liquida got a grip on the rifle with his left hand, finger on the trigger; he tried to steady it but the dog was in too close. He couldn’t get the muzzle of the barrel on him. He kicked the animal in the stomach, and the dog bit down harder all the way to the bone.

  Chapter

  Sixty-Five

  Sarah heard growling and thrashing in the brush. She pointed the pistol toward the noise and waited.

  “Bugsy! Here, boy. Come here!” She knew from the sound, like a parent knows a child. She tried to coax him out, but he wouldn’t come.

  Suddenly there was the sound of a shot, close, no more than twenty feet away. The dog screeched.

  Sarah saw red. She held the point of the pistol chest high and fired into the brush. With the second shot, she heard a deep groan and suddenly everything went quiet.

  She stood there on the trail looking at the bushes and listening. She waited a few seconds. “Come on, Bugs. Come on out.” But the dog didn’t come. There was no sound, no movement in the brush.

  She waited, what seemed like forever, and then slowly began to inch her way down the trail toward the lake. She called the dog again but heard nothing.

  She reached the edge of the mud, the soft shore, with her back to the water. She held the gun out, even though she had no more bullets. She wanted to close the slide but couldn’t remember how. She pressed the slide return on the side, but it didn’t work. If Liquida stepped out now and saw the slide was back, he would know that the gun was empty.

  Sarah remembered the snub-nosed revolver strapped to Adin’s ankle, but it was too late. A second later Liquida crashed through the brush with the butt of the rifle over his head. He came at her swinging it like a club.

  She saw the mass of blood on his left side as the rifle came down on her shoulder. It drove her to the ground as she dropped the pistol in the dirt.

  Liquida pounded on her back with the butt of the rifle as if driving a post into the ground. He dropped the gun, descended on her, and pulled out the stiletto. He straddled her back and pushed her face in the dirt. Taking the handle of the blade in both hands, he raised it above his head like an Aztec priest in a ritual sacrifice.

  Harry was forty feet away when he saw the flashing blade in the air just as Paul, like a heat-seeking missile, hit Liquida from the side. Madriani drove his shoulder through the Mexican’s upper body, sending both of them skidding into the mud at the edge of the lake.

  They lay crumpled in the muck, both dazed by the blow for several seconds before Liquida rose to his knees. When he stood, Harry could see that the knife was still in his hand.

  Before Paul could get to his feet, Liquida was on him, the slashing tip of the blade searching for its target. The glistening point buried itself in Madriani’s right arm as Liquida drove him back to his knees. With his foot he kicked Paul in the stomach and pushed the lawyer over backward into the w
ater. Liquida landed like a panther on Paul’s back and tried to drown him, all the while cutting and slashing with the blade.

  Somehow under the water Madriani found the Mexican’s feet and pulled. Suddenly Liquida found himself upended, thrashing about on his back in the shallows. He slashed out with the knife and missed. Madriani backhanded him hard across the face, the bones of his knuckles ripping the flesh under the Mexican’s right eye. Before Liquida could recover, Paul’s hand came back the other way as a closed fist and caught him on the cheek on the other side.

  The blow rattled Liquida’s brain but not before he sliced the front of Madriani’s shirt open, drawing a line of blood across his stomach and chest.

  The two of them engaged in a death match as Joselyn reached Sarah lying in the dirt at the end of the trail. The speargun that Harry had clutched all afternoon, now that they needed it, was left in the car.

  Paul and Liquida fought in a slow death spiral, dancing for position in the water. Madriani had come to a knife fight empty-handed, and Liquida intended to make the most of it. He smiled as he watched the rivulets of blood flowing from the shallow slash across the lawyer’s chest. What he didn’t see were the two hooded bumps on a log floating just at the surface of the lake as it drifted in behind him.

  Madriani stood motionless, his back to the shore. Suddenly a flash of white water erupted behind Liquida. Before he could even flinch, the jaws of death bearing a hundred razor-sharp teeth slapped shut around the Mexican’s hips. The crocodile and his bloodied prey twisted and thrashed.

  Liquida screamed and slashed out with his knife. The thin sharp point snapped as it struck the armor-hard scales on the back of the beast. The crocodile rose up and rolled over, taking Liquida beneath the waves. As the roiling surface settled, all that could be seen were bloody bubbles of air as they burst forth from the surface of the lake’s dark waters.

  Chapter

  Sixty-Six

  Four and a half hours after the final shots were fired in the jungle near Coba, a single errant asteroid somehow slipped undetected into the inner solar system. It had happened before, close calls with potential impactors, but this one was far nearer and more dangerous than most.

  News accounts of the mysterious fire in the sky over the southern United States received sparse coverage in the world’s media. Less than two inches appeared on one of the inside pages of the only major daily in Phoenix, Arizona.

  Scientists at NASA were still gathering data and analyzing the potential for disaster. A few members of Congress renewed their calls for more funding to scan the skies, the first step toward avoiding any future catastrophic event.

  But most leaders, including those in the White House, assured the public that there was no real reason for concern. There was, after all, a far greater chance of winning the lottery than being killed by an asteroid.

  Near disasters were always something that government leaders sought to downplay, especially if their own incompetence and possible corruption were contributing factors. It was one of the time-tested reasons for classifying otherwise public information. People in positions of power always had to survive; otherwise the world might turn upside down. Doctors merely buried their mistakes. Presidents shoveled them by the ton into the constantly sucking and massive dark hole of national security.

  Fortunately the asteroid merely skimmed the earth’s upper atmosphere before skipping out into space, a close call, but no harm—colorful fireworks that illuminated the evening sky over the American Southwest.

  What the newspapers and even the American government didn’t know was that Lawrence Leffort’s attempt to peddle secrets to a foreign power, and to test the deadly results in the desert of Arizona, was doomed from the inception.

  Even without the failed rocket mounts, the iron asteroid that Leffort and his colleagues had so carefully harvested and sequestered behind the moon never had a chance of reaching Earth. The reason was that the final targeting software from the flash drive in Raji Fareed’s jacket had been intentionally scuttled by the man himself.

  Fareed was an Israeli agent, a longtime sleeper in the space-age catacombs of the American empire. He had been sending information to Tel Aviv for years. It was how Israeli intelligence became aware of Project Thor. And they were not alone.

  For decades America’s technologic crown jewels had been plundered by government and industrial spies and peddled by presidents who pocketed million-dollar speaking fees after they’d left office. The entire concept of a global economy embraced by both major parties was a naked excuse by political leaders and their Wall Street buddies to hollow out entire American industries and sell them abroad. American workers were left behind to squabble over the crumbs from diminishing social programs.

  Of the few items of value in Fareed’s Paris hotel room, the only one that counted was the curious pair of spectacles with the wireless flash drive, the ones that Bruno’s men left on Raji’s body when they dumped him in the alley. Along with Raji’s notes, the glasses contained the accurate targeting software. It was the reason Fareed wanted so desperately to get online, so that he could transmit the data to his handlers in Tel Aviv.

  As it turned out, the information never left America. The spectacles rested in the bottom of Joselyn’s purse and there they stayed until one afternoon when she crushed them under the wheel of her car. She smashed the flash drive with a hammer in the garage of the house she shared with Paul in Coronado, San Diego. It was bad enough knowing that NASA and the American Defense Department possessed the secret for bombing the earth with missiles from space. Joselyn had no intention of making it easy for the information to propagate.

  And oh yes! Minutes after the croc tasted Liquida, while he was still deciding which parts were appetizers and which were entrées, the dog Bugsy crawled from the brush into Sarah’s lap. He had been shot in the side by the Mexicutioner but only grazed. He cried and whimpered but survived. Now he lives in the house with Sarah. This spring he sired three pups. Sarah kept the pick of the litter. She named him Adin.

  Acknowledgments

  Many people, both family and friends, provided encouragement and support in the writing of this book.

  Most of all I wish to thank my assistant Marianne Dargitz, who for years has provided not only her energy and unflagging support for my work but also her encouragement to guide me during difficult periods. Without her constant efforts none of this would have been possible.

  I also wish to thank Josh Davis of Tech Help in Bellingham, Washington, for particular assistance on the technical aspects of this book, especially for his expertise on matters relating to computers and advice on the application of flash drives and Bluetooth technology.

  Among others to be thanked are my publisher William Morrow and all the people at HarperCollins without whose unstinting care and love of publishing nothing would be possible. Most of all I wish to thank my editor, David Highfill, who has been a friend and constant source of encouragement and patience; editorial assistants Gabe Robinson and Jessica Williams, who fielded my phone calls and handled so many technical aspects during the transition from paper to digital editing; my agent, Esther Newberg of International Creative Management; and my New York lawyers, Mike Rudell and Eric Brown of Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo, for their constant attention and guidance to the business aspects of my publishing career.

  Finally, and not least, for their caring interest, love, and constant encouragement, I thank Al and Laura Parmisano, who have been there for me always during good times and bad; my friends Jan Draut, John Garrison, Mike Padilla, and Jim Bryan; and for her constant and unconditional love, my intelligent, beautiful, and wonderful daughter, Megan Martini, who for me makes all things possible.

  About the Author

  Steve Martini is the author of numerous New York Times bestsellers, including The Rule of Nine, Guardian of Lies, Shadow of Power, and others featuring defense attorney Paul Madriani. Martini has practiced law in California in both state and federal courts, and has se
rved as an administrative law judge and supervising hearing officer. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Also by Steve Martini

  The Rule of Nine

  Guardian of Lies

  Shadow of Power

  Double Tap

  The Arraignment

  The Jury

  The Attorney

  Critical Mass

  The List

  The Judge

  Undue Influence

  Prime Witness

  Compelling Evidence

  The Simeon Chamber

  Credits

  JACKET DESIGN AND PHOTOGRAPH COLLAGE BY MJCDESIGN.COM

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. The events described are imaginary, and the characters are fictitious and not intended to represent specific living persons. Even when settings are referred to by their true names, the incidents portrayed as taking place there are entirely fictitious; the reader should not infer that the events set there ever happened.

  TRADER OF SECRETS. Copyright © 2011 by Paul Madriani, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.