by Tom Clancy
The Modesto offices of Golden Triangle Computer Services occupied the entire top floor of a four-year-old medium-rise office building overlooking the downtown arch at 9th and I Streets. Behind the receptionist’s and security stations were large double doors with a sky blue satin-finish metal skin and the name of the concern plated across them in liquidy gray- and blue-toned prismatic lettering. This reproduced the decor of Golden Triangle’s original headquarters hundreds of miles to the south outside La Jolla, where Enrique Quiros had once run his narco empire surrounded by the sleek, stylish trappings of modern corporate respectability.
Lathrop took a stride or two out of the elevator toward the pretty young secretary sitting near the double doors, gave her a little smile, and waited. Their eyes met in brief, unacknowledged recognition as a dark-suited guard came around from his station, passed a metal detector wand over Lathrop, and then nodded at the secretary. She punched a button on her switchboard, spoke quietly into her headset’s mouthpiece, and the doors swung open, another guard appearing in the entrance to motion Lathrop past him into the carpeted hallway beyond.
The second man conducted Lathrop through several turns of the office-lined corridor, walking slightly ahead as if to guide him along, but that was just a formality. Lathrop knew his way around and it was no secret to the guards, the woman at the reception desk, or anyone else he passed approaching the main executive suite.
Juan Quiros was waiting for him inside, his elbows resting on his desk, his thick hands folded in front of him.
A stocky, bull-necked man with heavy features and an olive complexion, he seemed as constricted and ill at ease in a beige Italian designer suit as his predecessor Enrique had been sleek and loose, as out of place in an office setting as Enrique had been harmoniously compatible. Since his rise to ultimate power in the clan, Juan had acquired an overmanicured look from evident and increasingly frequent visits to the salon. His curly black hair had been treated with relaxers and imparted with a sprayed-on plastic gloss. His needle-sharp mustache might have been drawn with the fine point of a pencil. The eyebrows that had formed a solid bristly line above his nose before being reshaped by a series of waxings and tweezings were now neatly separated on his wide forehead, their high, thin arches giving him an appearance of perpetual surprise. But there was something in his eyes, something baleful and wolfish, the soft touch salon cosmeticians couldn’t lift away or mask.
“I thought about having you kicked the hell out of the building,” Juan said.
Lathrop glanced at the door to make sure it had been shut behind him by the departing guard.
“Always ready with a pleasant greeting,” he said to Juan.
“Pleasant doesn’t interest me,” Juan said. “I’m not sure you do, either.”
Lathrop looked at him.
“That wasn’t your attitude when I called,” Lathrop said. “You’ve changed your mind, tell me.”
Juan didn’t move or answer.
“Go on, tell me,” Lathrop said. “I’ll walk.”
Juan watched him closely, his fingers still linked together.
“What do you want?” he said.
“I hear that question a lot from people,” Lathrop said. “The smart ones have learned to ask what I’ve got, and I figured you were one of them.”
Juan’s smile showed nothing.
“Okay,” he said. “You have edge for me, talk.”
“Edge costs,” Lathrop said. “Figured you’d know that, too.”
Juan’s gaze was as empty as his smile. “I don’t spend money on thin air,” he said sullenly.
“How about on finding out who killed your cousin Armand?” Lathrop said. “And why.”
Juan regarded him without visible reaction for a moment.
“Tell you what,” he said. “The trade we’re in, we make enemies, and Armand was good at that. Maybe I got my own ideas about who would’ve killed him and am dealing with it.”
“Maybe,” Lathrop said. “Or maybe you don’t have a clue who sent that masked white man came blasting his way into that garage in Devoción. And maybe you’d better for your own health.”
Juan took a breath, his full lips parting over rows of white capped teeth. Then he slowly reclined and pulled apart his stubby hands. There were kinks of hair on their backs and on his knuckles that had escaped, or been ignored by the cosmeticians.
Lathrop waited.
“Give it to me,” Juan said at last.
“There’s more in the package and I don’t break it up,” Lathrop said. “You pay for all or nothing.”
Juan nodded, his eyes suddenly narrow and gleaming.
“We’ve done business before,” he said,. “I know how it goes.”
“A minute ago you acted like you didn’t.”
Juan kept staring at him.
“Give it to me,” he said again. “Everything.”
Lathrop grinned, waited another moment. Then he stepped closer to the desk and took the seat in front of it.
“The man who killed Armand was hired by Esteban Vasquez to find out where you’re keeping his daughter and bring her back to him,” he said. “You make it worth my while, I’ll arrange to bring you that gringo’s head on a stake instead.”
Tom Ricci was in the bedroom of his rental condominium zipping the HK G36 into its case when he heard the doorbell. The sound took a moment to sink in, as if it was something new to him. He listened, thinking maybe there had been a mistake. Not many people came to call lately. And to his surprise the bell rang again.
Ricci finished packing away the carbine, propped it in a corner, left the room, and pulled the door shut behind him, listening for the solid click of the latch. Then he went into his entry hall and looked out the peephole.
He straightened up, doubly surprised now. But this time he reacted with a jolt.
He’d recognized Julia Gordian at once.
Ricci stared at the door as confusion took hold of him. His first thought was to turn back around without answering—he had no use for company, and what would she be doing here? They’d only met once or twice before that day in Big Sur and hadn’t seen each other after. It didn’t make sense and could only mean problems for him.
Ricci stared at the door, not reaching for its knob. She’d have seen his Jetta out front but that didn’t mean anything. Let her decide he was asleep, or out for a walk, or whatever. He didn’t want or need company, especially this morning. He just wanted her to leave.
He waited.
Another ring. A soft knock on her side of the door.
Ricci swore under his breath. His hand grasped the doorknob, turned it, and pulled the door half-open.
He looked at her for several seconds.
“Hi, Tom,” Julia said from the front step. She nodded toward her station wagon in the driveway. “I happened to be driving past your neighborhood this morning and figured I’d stop and say hello.”
Ricci was quiet. Julia had her black hair pulled into a loose ponytail that was kind of twisted up and clasped to the back of her head and seemed to be almost but not quite coming apart. There were three small gold rings in her left ear and two in her right and she was wearing black capri pants and flip-flop sandals and a lilac-colored sleeveless blouse with a lot of small yellow polka dots on it. In her hand, the one that hadn’t just dropped from the buzzer, was a waxed white paper bag.
Ricci kept the door partially closed between them.
“I never told you where I live,” he said.
Julia shrugged. “Are you sure?” she said.
“I’m sure,” he said.
“Guess I must have found out from somebody else, then,” she said with a smile. “Because I remembered the address while I was passing by. And since you’re you, and you’re here, and this looks like a home, the evidence shows I got it right.”
Ricci studied her, his eyes adjusting to the sunlight flooding over the small plot of lawn neatly maintained by the condo development’s service staff.
“Look,”
he said, “I’m kind of busy.”
Julia stood there on the front step, shrugging again, her smile becoming a little sheepish.
“I don’t want to bother you,” she said softly, and held up her bag. “But I brought coffee and muffins . . . and, well, I haven’t had a chance . . . that is, much as it’s kind of late, I really want to thank you for saving my life.”
Ricci regarded her through the entryway awhile longer, hesitated. Then he grunted and pulled open the door.
“I’ll need to get going soon,” he said.
Julia nodded.
“Actually, that’s perfect,” she said. “I have a bunch of stuff ahead of me today, too.”
She entered, paused inside the door, and glanced around. The living room was medium sized with a pale gray carpet, a small sofa, a plump bustle-backed wing chair, and a television/satellite box setup on a plain black stand. It gave way to an open sort of hallway that led in turn to a combination kitchen and dining area. Everything seemed clean and orderly and comfortable enough in a sterile, impersonal way that reminded Julia of a motel room on check-in.
Ricci closed the door and led her toward the dining room. As she passed the wing chair, Julia noticed a big, packed sporting duffel—or hunting duffel, she guessed, since it had a woodland camouflage pattern—pushed against one of its arms.
“Planning to visit the great outdoors?” she asked, and nodded at the duffel. “I like to go camping myself a couple of times a year . . . y’know, just to clear my mind.”
Ricci’s glance went to the chair. He seemed a little thrown by her question, as if he hadn’t realized what was on it. Then he looked at her.
“Don’t need to clear my mind,” he said.
His chill tone, coupled with the stony expression on his features, caught Julia unprepared. She momentarily wondered if she’d done the smart thing coming to see him, then decided his reaction was proof enough that she had. Or at least that was how she was determined to take it.
She followed him to the table and set her bag down.
“I brought chocolate chip and macadamia nut muffins, my pick of the month,” she said, opening it. “Ever try them?”
Ricci’s head moved from side to side in the negative. “They’re from that bakery practically around the corner from here, Michael’s Morning Toaster,” she said. “Good luck to anybody who tries finding them in Pescadero, which is why I drove all this way to relieve my sicko addiction.”
Ricci turned to her.
“We going to need dishes?” he said.
She flapped a hand in the air.
“C’mon, we can rough it,” Julia said, and patted the tabletop. “We’ve got paper cups, napkins, paper plates . . . the bakery guy even tossed in plastic knives and forks. That’s, God forbid, in case you’re the type who’d actually use them to eat a muffin instead of your bare fingers and teeth.”
Ricci stood stock still, quietly watching her. She had reached into the bag and begun to empty it, laying out its contents on the table, carefully peeling the lids off the coffee cups, setting the muffins onto the paper plates.
“You don’t need to thank me,” he said.
Julia stopped what she was doing and looked up at him, her face abruptly serious.
“Would you prefer I didn’t? Or can’t I be the one to decide that?”
“I’m saying you don’t need to,” Ricci said. “I was doing what I got paid to do.”
Julia stood there holding a muffin halfway out of the bag in its waxed tissue wrapper.
“All right,” she said. “Want to hear my stroke of genius?”
Ricci’s piercing blue eyes went to hers. He held them there for a full thirty seconds, and then nodded.
“Let’s just enjoy a nice breakfast before we go about our busy days,” she said. “I won’t spout on to you about my feelings of gratitude, and you won’t talk about why you’ve dropped off the face of the earth when it comes to your friends. And we’ll consider it a fair bargain.”
A silence. Their gazes held together across the little dining area as the aroma of the hot fresh coffee rose in wafts of steam to permeate it.
Then, slowly, Ricci gave Julia another nod, and approached the table, and pulled out the chair opposite her.
“How’s Vivian?” he said after another long spell of silence. “She come around okay from those gunshot wounds?”
Julia reached for her muffin and raised it to her mouth. “Viv goes jogging with me every other morning,” she said. “Rain or shine, like it or not.”
Ricci’s face took on an expression she interpreted as pleased.
“Great dog,” he said.
Julia glanced at him, about to take a bite of the muffin.
“Yeah,” she said, and smiled. “She sure is.”
And with that they got started on their food.
SIX
BOCA DEL SIERPE, TERRITORIAL TRINIDAD
APRIL 2006
“GOOD ON YA, LUV. TAKE HOLD A’ ME HAND’ere and I’ll getcha right up.”
His shoulder-length golden mane sweeping around his tanned face in the onshore breeze, Blake the Bronze leaned over from the pontoon boat Annie had reserved and extended a sculpted arm toward the pier. He wore a pookah shell choker, a yellow tank top, paisley swim trunks with a lot of bright pink and blue in the print, root-beer-colored wraparound Oakley sunglasses with reddish-pink lenses, and flip-flops.
Annie reached out from where she and Nimec stood on the floating gangplank and let him help her onto the boat’s flat fiberglass stern platform.
“Okeydoke, mate, you’re next!” Blake shouted over the side at Nimec. “Or don’t you need an assist now?”
“Think I can manage on my own,” Nimec said.
He grabbed the boat’s rail, climbed aboard, and a moment later was standing next to Annie under the twenty-footer’s sun canopy. Both were wearing swimsuits and windbreakers, their snorkeling equipment in mesh totes on the deck. Nimec, in addition, had a pair of standard rangefinder binoculars on a strap around his neck. All around them a diversity of pleasure boats were making their way to and from the busy marina, one of them a double-deck cruiser booming hip-hop music from its cabin as it left a nearby slip.
Nimec pulled a face. “Loud,” he muttered.
Annie rolled her shoulders to the beat.
“Paa-aarty!” she said with a grin, playfully bumping her hip against his.
Nimec looked at her and, before he knew it, had a wet kiss planted on the tip of his nose—an instant frown-killer despite everything on his mind. He had deliberately failed to tell her what he’d hashed over with Vince earlier, and when she asked about it had just offered a few general words about them having to look into some things. No sense getting Annie disturbed over what were really just questions at this stage of the game. It was possible that by the time he and Vince consulted again, Vince might have cleared them up.
He put his arm around her waist and moved toward the middle of the boat, walking easily on the wide, well-balanced deck mounted atop its pontoon hull. Blake, meanwhile, had reeled in the aft mooring line, then started forward to do the same at the bow.
“It’s really great of you to take us out,” Annie said, turning to him. “I wouldn’t have even asked if I’d known we’d be imposing on your day off.”
Blake smiled as he unfastened the bowline from its support.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “The reefs’re in a favorite spot a’ mine, and it’s a joy sharin’ it with a lovely couple like yourselves.” He neatly wound the line in his hands and set it down. “Gem of an afternoon like this, it’s fair odds I would’ve gotten my bathers on and headed out to relax on me own.”
The Aussie went into the helm station, slid in behind its console, and adjusted the tilt wheel.
“Another bit an’ we’re off ’n’ away, won’t be more’n a half hour’s ride,” he said, and then tipped his head toward the plush lounge chairs to his left. “Settle back if you’d like, friends; the seats’re comfy’s
can be an’ you’ve got acres a’ room. And if you lift the top a’ that ottoman there in front a’ your legs, it’ll open into a cooler full up with drinks ’n’ sandwiches, though I’d wait on the food till after your dive—cramps, y’know.”
Nimec sat with Annie on the cushioned chair, listened to the engine throttle up, and gazed out at the water.
He was thinking he might have enjoyed being a spectator to the aquatic goings-on at a coral reef under different circumstances.
Right now, though, he would rather have been headed out to get a closer look at those feeder ships he’d seen last night.
Wherever on the deep blue sea they might have gone.
“I believe I’ve covered it all,” Tolland Eckers said, and slid his GPS pocket navigator into the pouch on his belt. “If any of you still have questions, or need something clarified, let’s hear it before we get moving.”
None of the other three men assembled on the beach spoke. They were in a sandy little cove formed between two lumpish masses of black igneous rock, wearing skintight neoprene wetsuits with short trunks, and ankle-high zippered booties. Behind them, at the surfline, their semi-rigid inflatable strike boat sat where it had been delivered ashore, its scalloped Kevlar-reinforced hull painted bright yellow, a custom touch added to give it the appearance of a sport racer. And while the Steyr 9mm TMP compact submachine guns stowed in compartments near the speedcraft’s straddle seats could hardly be considered standard sporting equipment, Eckers had stressed that they were only to be used in an extreme pinch.
It was what had been loaded in with them that would be the unlikely weapons of choice.
Eckers looked from one face to the other. This was a team of skilled professionals, men who knew what they were doing. Having already made his critical points, he ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered to hammer on them again. But he also would not have led the group out himself under ordinary circumstances. The job they were about to launch was of greater consequence than most, and he decided it could do no harm for them to have a quick final review before kickoff.