Savage Recruit (Ryan Savage Thriller Series Book 8)

by Jack Hardin

  “Snitches get stitches,” Boomer said.

  “Yeah. Exactly. Snitches get stitches.”

  “But we’re here,” I said. “So I take it he learned something?”

  “Yeah, he did. Knows a guy who is willing to talk with you. Only thing is that he wants to get greased for his time.” Solon raised his hands off the table. “I don’t want anything, you understand that. I just want to help. But you gotta know that some people don’t have a good reason to help without the proper motivation.”

  “He’ll need to know that if he screws us, it won’t go well for him,” Boomer said.

  “Look, I know what Chachi does. I told them that you guys aren’t the kind of people he can take from like that. He’ll shoot you straight. If he doesn't, it’s on me.” Solon tapped his chest with a fist. “I’ll back him. If he says he knows something, then he knows.”

  “How do we get in touch with him?”

  “Here.” Solon reached into a pocket and came out with a crumpled piece of paper. He handed it across the table. I unfolded it. A line of coordinates was scribbled across it.

  “This is where he wants us to meet him?”

  “Yeah, it’s on the other side of the city. He likes to fish, so that’s the location on the water he’ll meet you at. That way no one can see him meet with you. He said to meet him at noon.”

  “What’s his name?” Boomer asked.

  Solon shook his head. “Athens is a good city to live in, but like anywhere it has its rough spots. This guy you’re gonna meet. He’s a rough dude connected to rough people. So no names. But like I said, he’ll shoot you straight. If not, you let me know.”

  Boomer extended his hand. “I appreciate your help, Solon.” They shook, and we all stood up.

  “Like I said, I hope you can find her. Somebody for sure knows what went down. I hope this guy can get you on the right path.”

  We said goodbye and hung back as Solon returned to his car and drove away.

  “I assume you have some grease somewhere?” I said.

  “There’s a small bundle of cash in the sedan’s trunk, under the flat tire. Just for times like this.”

  I started back to the car, but Boomer said, “Hang on.” He went off in the opposite direction, crossing the park and stopping at the edge of the cliff. The old man on the bench was gone. Before us, the bay shimmered like blue crystal in the clear morning sky. Far in the distance, the island of Salamina stood out of the water, its eastern cliffs running down the jagged coast like broken chalk.

  The wind coming up off the cliff face made it hard to hear. Boomer spoke up. “I’ve been to a lot of places, Savage, as I’m sure you have. Other than Jerusalem, there isn’t a place on the planet that holds sway over me like Greece.”

  “I felt that after I got off the plane yesterday.”

  “I mean, here we are, standing in the land of Achilleas, Odysseus, Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander the Great. Not too far north of here, Leonidas led his three hundred men at the pass of Thermopylae, and the Peloponnesian War was waged all over this peninsula. Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and Alexander Hamilton—what ideals they didn’t borrow from the Enlightenment, they borrowed from the Romans, who in turn stole them from the Greeks. This truly is the cradle of democracy. And it’s that freedom I fight for every single day of my life.”

  “Me too, Boomer. Me too.”

  We stared at the incredible scene for another minute until Boomer clapped me on the back. “Enough daydreaming, I guess. Let’s go find Kathleen.”

  Chapter Nine

  A closer look at the coordinates gave us a spot four miles off Artemida, on Greece’s eastern coast. Boomer drove back through the city and headed northeast while blaring a playlist that included Elvis, Jimmy Buffett, the Black Crowes, and REO Speedwagon.

  “My kind of sound,” I said.

  “Don’t you know it? I can’t deal with all the modern crap they call music. But give me just about anything before the advent of the internet, and I’m a happy man.”

  I could relate. My grandmother had always referred to me as an old soul. From a young age, I preferred the offerings of the past over just about anything the modern world had to offer. Every time, I would choose John Wayne over John Stamos, the Carpenters over Coldplay, and a fishing rod over a gaming controller. Not much has changed since.

  Nowadays, it seems like the world speeds up a little faster every year. You can’t seem to get through a single day without some new gadget or major headline vying for your complete attention. Politics continues to divide, and neighbors seem to grow more and more distrusting of each other while celebrities tell us how to live our lives. Thankfully, music still possesses that magical power of bringing people together regardless of race, religion, or creed.

  Two hours after finishing our conversation with Solon, Boomer turned into a crushed shell parking lot at the top of a low-lying hill overlooking a small marina. The Petalioi Gulf lay before us, its deep blue water spread out as far as the eye could see. Boomer pulled into a parking space and killed the engine. I stepped out into the sunlight and met him at the back of the car. He opened the trunk, pulled up the spare tire, and reached his hand into the space behind it, coming out with an envelope. He slipped it into his back pocket and slammed the trunk shut. We took a series of plank steps down the hill to the marina, where a small white hut sat beneath a cluster of palms.

  “I’ll meet you down at the docks,” Boomer said. “I’m going to call back to the team and check in.”

  I stepped up to the window and tapped on the glass with my finger. It slid back, and a cool stream of air rushed out. An old man offered a broad smile, his leathery face deeply seamed from decades spent in the sun.

  “How may I help you?”

  “I would like to rent a boat.”

  “Then you have come to the right place.” He produced a laminated page that outlined detailed options for rentals: deck boats, pontoons, jet skis, and sailboats.

  “You are here on vacation?” he asked.

  “Yes. A buddy of mine is with me. We thought we would get in some time on the water before we head back home.”

  “And where is home?” he asked.

  “Florida,” I said. “Key Largo.”

  “Ah.” His face lit up. “I have been there. Many years ago. The climate here—it is like your Florida Keys. Do you want to fish?”

  The temptation was real. I could almost hear the fish calling to me. “Not today. Let me get whatever deck boat you’ve got.”

  “Certainly. I have a nineteen-foot Northstar. Two hundred horsepower Yamaha engine. Is that okay?”

  “Does it have GPS?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’ll take it.” He nodded and handed me a form to fill out.

  “How long would you like it? Two, four, or six hours?”

  I didn’t expect we would need more than four, but I told him six to be safe. After filling out the form, I handed it back and gave him a credit card. “Do you own the marina?”

  “I do. My father made his living from the waters of the Aegean Sea.” He swiped the card down the side of the reader and handed it back. “And his father before him. And even his father before him. But I had to open up this marina almost twenty years ago. The fish—they are not what they used to be. Half of the species that remain are threatened by overfishing. They say that many of them will be completely gone in the next ten years. It is a very hard thing to believe.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Me too. Fishing has always been my life. Even now. But it does not pay the bills anymore.” He handed me a set of keys. “Slip number eighteen. On the second row.”

  I thanked him and then found the slip with the Northstar. The boat wasn’t anything to write home about, but all we needed was something to get out on the water and safely back. I stepped aboard and had just finished entering the coordinates into the GPS when Boomer showed up.

  “Everything good?” I asked.

&nb
sp; “Langley is running down a list of all Adonis Galatas’s known associates and looking into their recent correspondence and activities. Other than that, everyone is pretty much holding their breath.” He stepped aboard and tossed off the lines as I started the engine.

  I backed out of the slip and eased the throttle forward, idling through the no wake zone. Once we hit the marker, I opened up, getting us on plane before shoving the throttle to the stops. The wind rushed by, and I happily soaked in the smell of saltwater and the feeling of the sun on my face. Something about being at the helm of any boat has a way of making me come alive. A boat on the open water is the perfect marriage of technology and nature.

  We arrived on location with ten minutes to spare. Boomer tossed the anchor, and I backed down on it, setting it into the sandy bottom thirty feet down before cutting the engine. The water lapped quietly at the hull, and a steady breeze rolled over the boat. Other than a sailboat on the eastern horizon, we were completely alone.

  We waited the full ten minutes, and then another twenty. He still hadn’t shown. Boomer raised the bimini and got us under some shade. “I’ll give him another five minutes before I call Chachi,” he said. “I’m not in the mood to be jerked around.”

  I wasn’t either, and with every passing minute, a small knot in my stomach grew increasingly larger. This was the only thread we had to follow. If this guy didn’t show, or if he did but didn’t have anything worth pursuing, then we were back to square one. Which was absolutely nowhere.

  Ten minutes crawled by, and both of us grew more agitated. Finally, Boomer reached for his phone. “Hold on,” I said.

  I listened and heard it again. A faint drone to the east. Boomer put his phone down. The drone slowly grew louder until we could make out a center console bearing toward us, and finally the rushing sound of water displacing across its hull.

  Drawing near, the pilot throttled down until he was at idle speed. He raised a hand to us and tossed two fenders over his port side. The boat drifted over. I reached out, grabbed his gunwale, and pulled as Boomer tied our lines across both stern cleats. The man cut his engine and stepped out of the helm. He was of middle age and wore shorts and a white T-shirt. His eyes were hidden behind polarized sunglasses, and a light blue fedora sat atop his head.

  “You’re late,” I said.

  “I am here.”

  “What do you have for us?” Boomer asked.

  He looked away and shrugged.

  Boomer reached around to his back pocket, slipped out the envelope, and extended it to the man. The man plucked it out of Boomer’s hand, pulled open the flap, and peered inside. He nodded to himself and shoved the envelope into his front pocket.

  “You are from the United States?”

  Boomer nodded. “Yep.”

  “You are FBI?”

  “Kinda,” Boomer said. “But we’re a lot cooler and the whole world is our stage. And we have a lot more leeway to kick someone’s ass to get what we want. So what do you have for us?”

  “The word is that The Recruit is responsible for the kidnapping of your agent.”

  “The Recruit?” Boomer glanced at me. I shook my head. “Who’s that?”

  “I only know him by that name. He is a very powerful man. That is why we are meeting out here. If it becomes known that I even told you of him, I will end up at the bottom of this ocean.”

  “So who is he?”

  “You might call him a broker. He learns of jobs that important people need done—murder, kidnappings, theft—and then discreetly hires people who are willing to take the job.”

  “So he’s a middle man,” I said.

  “Yes. His clients come to him with the request and then he pays others to complete the work.”

  I thought of Adonis Galatas and the two bullets parked in his forehead. “Does he have a habit of killing those who actually do the work he assigns?”

  He frowned. “I do not think so. But perhaps. A friend of mine did a job for him last month. Another kidnapping. He was not killed afterward.”

  “What makes you think this Recruit guy took our agent?” Boomer asked. “And not someone else?”

  “Because it is how he works. Your agent is high profile. He does jobs like that. Last month my friend kidnapped a billionaire's daughter visiting from Dubai. Before that, he had a Saudi prince murdered on his yacht off the coast of Santorini. That job was also paid out by The Recruit.”

  I watched the guy in the other boat, trying to get a read on him. But with the glare of the sun and his sunglasses, it was nearly impossible. “We’re working with some of the best intelligence agencies in the world,” I said. “This is the first time his name has come up.”

  “And yet here you are meeting with a man you do not know in the middle of the ocean, paying him for more intelligence.”

  He had a point.

  “The Recruit keeps a low profile by paying well and expecting those he pays not to use his name. The only reason I know about him is because, as I said, my friend did a job for him. He told me about it over too many beers one night.”

  “So we need to talk to your friend then,” Boomer said. “And get him to tell us how to find this Recruit fella. What’s your friend’s name?”

  “His name...” He hesitated. “It is—look, you cannot tell him it was me. If you even describe me to him, he will know. And then it will be over for me.”

  “We won’t say how we got to him,” Boomer said. “But either you give me his name or give me that envelope back. Then I get the answer out of you anyway and you go back home with nothing.”

  That seemed to loosen his tongue. “Emmanuel Samaras. That is his name. He lives in Euonymeia. In the south side of the city.”

  Boomer repeated it back. “Euonymeia. Did I say that right? Man, that’s a mouthful. Biggest tongue twister we’ve got back in Georgia is Dahlonega. Maybe Alpharetta.”

  “Is that all you need?” the man asked nervously.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’re done here.” I untied our lines from his stern cleats, and he flipped back the fenders and keyed his motor.

  “What do you think?” Boomer asked, watching the boat drive away.

  I brought up the anchor and left the bimini up as I got us under way. “I think I’m getting tired of small answers from everyone,” I said. “What do you say we pull out all the stops with Mr. Samaras?”

  “Now you’re talkin’ my language. It’s been a while since I’ve given someone a wup for. I’m gettin’ antsy.”

  “Why don’t you put Granger on finding out what he can about Samaras? And have him dig around for anyone calling himself The Recruit. The guy can’t be that hard to find. Some international agency must have something on him.”

  “Will do.” He brought out his phone and typed out a text.

  My instincts were telling me we were getting closer to Kathleen. I didn’t know if this new information was going to pan out, but I was going to wring it for everything it was worth. With a solid grip on the wheel, I turned it slightly to starboard and shoved the throttle to the stops.

  Chapter Ten

  A key scratched in the lock of the arched door across the room. Kathleen heard the bolt disengage and watched as the door swung open. Her captor stepped in, shut the door, and locked it behind him. He placed the key in his pocket and crossed the room, glancing at the food tray before placing a bottle of Benadryl beside it.

  “You still have not eaten,” he noted.

  “I’ve somehow lost my appetite.”

  He returned to the oversized chair beside the bed, crossed a leg over another, and placed his hands on the armrests. “Kathleen, I have been patient in allowing you to consider if you are willing to give me what I need. All of this, it can be over as soon as you tell me.”

  Kathleen understood his approach. For now, he was the gentleman, a charming Mephistopheles with a kind smile to cover the darkness in his heart. But that wouldn’t last long.
When he realized she wouldn’t willingly oblige, he would resort to the only thing he had left. The threat of violence.

  Kathleen huffed through a smirk. “I’m not sure what line of work you typically find yourself in, but your good cop persona isn’t going to work on me.”

  “I’m sorry. Good cop persona?”

  “Your gentle manner, the nice room, the display of food is designed to make me think I am in the parlor of a king and not in the lair of a wolf. You’ve kidnapped a prominent member of a United States federal security agency. I’ve seen your face. You cannot honestly expect me to believe that I am going to give you what you want only to wake up an hour later on the threshold of my local embassy.”

  He opened his mouth to reply, but she stopped him.

  “You would have done as well chaining me in a dungeon with rats skittering past my heels, John. At least we both would be clear enough without any need for this facade.”

  “I do not like putting people through unnecessary aggravations. On that basis, I was hoping we could come to an understanding and avoid any of the unpleasantness.”

  “You were hoping that these little pleasantries would grease my tongue and”—she snapped her fingers—“just like that, I’ll give you what you want. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything to you, but the concept of honor, of trust—it means something to me. So no, John. No, I will not give you Simon’s location. He is a friend, and he trusted me. I won’t betray that.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Something in his tone, perhaps the quiet, confident way in which he said it, nearly gave her pause. But she stuck with her answer, nonetheless. “I am.”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “I thought you might say that.” He clasped his hands and weaved his fingers together, set them in his lap. “Then I have two options in front of me.”