Unacceptable Risk Read online

  "My guy Paul thought he saw sun flash from a telescope. Did you stake the office?"

  "Mmm-hmm." He moaned again.

  "Where is this Girard from?"

  "More painkiller." Sam pushed in a little more. "France? Quatram?" The man seemed uncertain.

  "Why are you here?"

  "Waiting for the neighbors to shoot a guy called Sam. If they don't, we will." The man's words were guttural and barely comprehensible.

  "The neighbors?"

  "I don't understand it."

  "What's your next assignment after that? Anybody else to kill?"

  "Amazon. Find Bowden."

  "Bowden who? Who's Bowden?"

  Sam thought he recognized the name. It was right under his nose, but he couldn't place it. Something about Bowden and the jungle went together. It would come to him. He snapped back to the present.

  "I don't know! Help me."

  He gave the man a bigger dose of morphine.

  "Why Bowden? Why the Amazon?"

  "Medicine. I think. They don't tell us much. Pharmacy company."

  "Where in the Amazon?"

  "Peru? Maybe Brazil. The border."

  "How do you communicate with Girard?"

  "Computer."

  "Access address."

  "Pocket."

  Sam found a small black book. He flipped through it.

  "Where?"

  "Look under u."

  Sam looked under u and found uaeromtioneb.net// exchange. He recognized the name spelled backward. Cute. He stuck the book in his pocket.

  "What's the password to get into the site?"

  "More morphine."

  "The password."

  "It changes at least every ten days. It's too long. Can't remember."

  "Listen, my friend. I'm going to try hard, but you are probably going to die. Why not do the right thing while you're dying. Tell me how to stop this man who calls himself Girard." Sam gave him more morphine.

  "It's in my computer."

  Sam knew it was probably true and that the password would be very long and he took a guess about how it might be stored. He also figured that Gaudet only posted things for a very short window of time and then only when he had tipped off this man to look for something. Still it was worth a try. Maybe Grogg could break through the fire wall.

  "In an encoded document?"

  "Yeah."

  "What's the password to the document?"

  "Birthdate 12/24/61, then Independence Day 07/04, my Social Security number backward, plus the words: 'laughing out loud' run together."

  "In what file is the document?"

  "I don't know."

  "When you open your computer, where do you go to get to this password for Girard's site?"

  "My Documents."

  "You on a server?"

  "Yeah."

  "Homepage?"

  "Irishmanandleprechauns.com."

  "Do you have an ISDN line, DSL, or a cable connection to the Internet?"

  "ISDN."

  "You leave your computer on?"

  "Yes."

  Sam got on the sat phone. At last he may have found a weak link in Gaudet's fortifications. Gaudet was smart but had a dummy working for him. He got Jill, his number three in command, on the phone. Putting her in a management role had been a logical choice. She was smart, had the most experience next to Paul, was the most critical, and had the best instincts of anyone he knew. On the other hand, she had been his lover, never quite letting him forget it, and perhaps still loved him. He had a severe mental thing about risking her in any kind of a fight, which meant he did his best to keep her locked away in the office, and that was a source of contention. In her mind she was a soldier.

  "Jill, go to Irishmanandleprechauns.com." Then to the man, "What's your name and the password to your exchange server? We're going in right now."

  "Rollin and Rollinstrolley for the password." He spelled it slowly.

  Sam gave it to Jill. "Go to the C drive. My Documents. Find an encrypted document, password as follows." He read it to Jill, up to the Social Security number. "What's your Social Security number, Rollin?"

  He got it and told Jill to type it in backward, then type the words, "laughing out loud."

  "Tell Grogg to use everything he's got to get into a site called by the name Benoit Moreau dot net, but Benoit Moreau is spelled backward. Use the password in Rollin's Word document at Irishmanandleprechauns.com to get in." Sam rolled Rollin onto the travois and the pain of the movement caused the man to scream himself hoarse.

  As Rollin quieted, Sam heard something and jumped into a bunch of huckleberry. Quickly he circled with his .45 drawn. Whoever was coming was unskilled. Inside a minute he saw a man walking heavily through the brush. He appeared panicked by the way he moved. Sam hit him with the light.

  "Freeze."

  Holding an automatic weapon, the man whirled and shot, one of the bullets just grazing Sam's cheek. Before he could think about it, Sam fired back. A solid hit in the chest knocked the man off his feet, and as the man rolled, Sam realized his foe wore body armor. When he came up again, Sam blew off the side of his face with the second round.

  Sam paused for a moment, feeling his bleeding cheek and allowing himself to process the fact that he'd nearly lost his life. Then he tried the radio again.

  "Paul?"

  "Yo."

  "Where you been?"

  "Might ask the same of you. Don't you usually come when a man doesn't answer?"

  "I was getting around to it. You seen anybody?"

  "Killed two."

  "Just a minute."

  Sam went back to his patient, who had begun groaning again.

  "What's Girard look like?"

  "Different all the time."

  "Is he here tonight?"

  "Yes."

  "How many with you?"

  "I think five. I don't know. Please help me."

  Sam gave him more morphine, amazed at the fact that a giant stick up the bowel worked better than truth serum. Of course the finger on the morphine plunger was not to be underrated.

  Sam picked up the radio again. "At least two left."

  At that moment a massive explosion came from the direction of Sam's log house.

  "You know what I think that was?" Paul said.

  "Uh-huh. It means he's given up for the moment. Maybe Gaudet's losing his touch."

  A pause, then a click from Paul's radio.

  "I don't know, Sam. Someone seems to have a gun at my head."

  Sam felt tired. It was an uncommon reaction to a colleague's imminent demise.

  "I'm a dead man," Paul said before he was cut off.

  "Gaudet," Sam said.

  The response was garbled.

  The radio on Rollin's belt came to life, a barely audible voice saying something Sam couldn't quite hear.

  "Girard. Whoever. I can trade you Rollin for Paul. And I know you don't care about Rollin, but you might care about what he could say to the authorities."

  "No!" Rollin cried. "He'll kill me."

  "Just a minute." Sam turned off the radio. "Then you better help me figure how to trick the bastard."

  "There are seven of them," Rollin said. "Not five."

  "What else did you lie about?"

  "Nothing. They'll be coming here now. They knew my GPS coordinates. God, I need more morphine."

  Using all his strength, Sam dragged the stretcher up the side of the canyon a hundred feet and parked Rollin in a thicket. At the hilltops it was growing light. He placed two syringes full of morphine in the man's trembling hands and kept the last two. He rather doubted he would see the man alive again. As he turned away, he remembered one more thing he should ask.

  "Did you ever hear of a Frenchman named Georges Raval?"

  "Never."

  Sam ran along the canyon wall, and as it started to flatten near the house, he slowed down. They would be corning without lights so as not to make themselves sitting ducks. Paul had been halfway around the house;
Gaudet would send the others and stay with Paul, his ticket out.

  Sam went straight toward Paul's hiding spot, slowing when the GPS showed him within fifty yards.

  Then he realized the flaw in this approach. Gaudet always left when his plans went awry. That meant he would send his men to kill Rollin and then order them to leave because they had lost the element of surprise and their odds had worsened considerably.

  Damn. There was nothing he could do. He had to try to save Paul even if the chances were nil. With a sense of utter futility he continued on until he found Paul's dead body tied to a tree. The Kevlar vest was on the ground indicating he had probably been held at gunpoint. He had also been eviscerated, a method Gaudet had used once before on one of Sam's men. Gaudet's process was a shadow of one taken from medieval times where they went beyond merely piling intestines on the ground and actually cooked them in a fire while the victim lived. Sam forced himself to study his friend's body. The incision was unlike the one other similar job performed by Gaudet. This time the incision was high and long and began at a partially disguised hole in the sternum. Judging from the edges it was a bullet hole. A wave of relief went through Sam as he realized that the bullet had no doubt hit the heart or the aorta and would have caused near instant death or at least unconsciousness. So the evisceration was a brutal afterthought like a calling card or a cruel attempt to convince Sam that his friend's suffering had been without parallel. Paul was dead or unconscious when they did this.

  Gaudet had left him a one-word note: ventouse. As best as he could recall from his times in France, the word meant "sucker."

  Sam moved away, his movements stiff as he processed the horror. He could not hide from the agony of losing Paul by pushing it from his mind. Such things needed to run their course or they would return in unexpected ways. He allowed the feelings of deepest disappointment and despair, followed by incredible, careless rage. Like all such feelings they would pass in time and give way to determination. Pure and simple he had to kill Gaudet.

  In what he knew would be a vain effort, he ran back to the hillside where he had left Rollin. Even at a distance the man looked like a corpse. Sam felt unsettled and knew not to ignore his instincts. It would be a mistake to assume Gaudet was gone, even though that fit his pattern.

  He made his way up the hill with great caution. The duff was sodden and dense and a little like mulch, making for quiet footsteps. Then he heard someone coming fast, charging through the brush rather than coming around it. It wouldn't be the Tilok rescue team, not yet, and not that noisy. Sam squatted and raised the M4, flicking the switch into the automatic fire position.

  A hat became visible and, amazingly, he recognized it. It was quite distinctive, festooned with fishing flies that in the predawn light looked like blurred dots. The hat belonged to Matt, his neighbor and friend down the road, a naturalist sort of a fellow, big into the outdoors. He killed a deer now and then for meat, gathered a lot of edibles from the forest, and smoked his fish the old Indian way. He was a good man, helpful with his neighbors on the mountain, and personally rugged. In this situation Matt could be a real asset, although Sam knew he wasn't a soldier. But Sam also remembered Rollin's strange remark about neighbors. Sam kept low in the event Rollin was right or in case Gaudet's men remained in the vicinity. As he waited, he scanned Matt with the starlight scope on his rifle.

  Matt's expression was unusual, his mouth in a flat line, tense and determined. Perhaps he'd already had an unpleasant run-in with Gaudet's men. Or maybe he was a murderer in the making. Indeed, he carried a rifle of his own. When Matt was perhaps fifty feet distant, Sam heard a second person also moving fast.

  Apparently, Matt heard the same footfalls and stopped moving up the hill, dropped to one knee, and assumed a firing position. He made no attempt to find cover. He raised his Ml4, looking prepared to shoot whatever emerged.

  A bald head appeared, moving in and out of the trees and cover. It was another neighbor, James, also a good man, although Sam didn't know him as well. He lived a few miles away. James also carried an automatic weapon, which was stranger still, since James was strictly a fisherman and not a gun enthusiast. James carrying a combat rifle seemed more than suspicious.

  Matt aimed at James as he emerged from the brush, finger on the trigger.

  What the hell?

  "Matt!" Sam shouted. Matt whirled and fired from the hip, peppering the tree that served as Sam's shield. A couple of the bullets made it through the edges of the trunk, causing Sam to pull in his elbows and squat. More shots came from below.

  "It's me! Sam!" The bullets came faster and closer. Both men were shooting, but the bullets had stopped slapping the tree. Sam risked a peek around the tree only to find Matt and James shooting at each other. James was down and wounded, but still firing, and trying to crawl up the hill. Matt had found cover behind a black oak.

  "Stop it," Sam shouted. "Let's talk."

  Immediately they redirected their fire at Sam.

  Bad idea. As they advanced on his position, Sam ran straight through a patch of huckleberry and behind another tree—lucky he hadn't caught a bullet. He ran back up the hill, figuring he would outrun them.

  Passing Rollin, he saw that someone had shoved the stick all the way into his innards and shot him in the head.

  Sam moved on and climbed to a small bench where large rock formations offered better cover. There he waited to see if his neighbors would follow. In minutes they were a hundred feet below him. Once again he turned and ran, moving farther up the hill, knowing he could get away but wondering what the men would do if left alone together. They were acting like men possessed. Sam couldn't imagine restraining or capturing them in this unnatural mind-set.

  Sam would climb the mountain, then circle back, find the Tiloks, and determine what to do next. With a group of clever trackers they might trap and disarm the men before they hurt somebody. For just a moment he listened to make sure they were following, but now there was silence. He waited for minutes, but nothing moved.

  Perhaps it was a trap. He made a gradual arc, descending the hill until he came opposite from the spot he had last heard his neighbors. Slowly he crept forward on his belly over slimy leaves, moving inches every minute. He knew to be patient. It took him half an hour before he caught a glimpse of the spotty camo of Matt's hunting clothes. Matt was on the ground, on his back. Sam crawled closer. Open-mouthed, the man shook in convulsions. Quickly Sam approached and found blood seeping from the corner of Matt's mouth and his body still convulsing. Sam checked his pulse: racing. Then it slowed and the convulsions ceased. Matt continued to breathe on his own, so Sam secured his hands together, left him, and found James several hundred feet down the hill. He'd been shot multiple times and crawled until he'd died—a great waste of a good man.

  Chapter 2

  Beware a gift of winter meat in spring.

  —Tilok proverb

  Sam climbed out of the Blue Hades, his rebuilt and enhanced Corvette, stretched his legs, and walked Harry across the warehouse and into a beige Ford Taurus. Harry sat on the floor of the passenger's side, having long ago learned the drill. On the passenger's seat lay a black leather bag that had originally belonged to Sam's son. Sam reached inside and removed something that looked vaguely like a Halloween mask but much more sophisticated. He pulled it on, smoothed it, used makeup around the edges, and brushed up the silver gray hair on top of his plastic pate. Then he donned an old hat with a broad brim and heavy black glasses.

  "How do I look?"

  The dog whined.

  Sam pulled out of the warehouse, checked the sky for helicopters, and drove a twisty route through the commercial area, constantly checking for tails. It had been a week since they tried to kill him at the cabin. There was evidence that Gaudet had gone to Mexico and on a long shot Sam had tried to catch him.

  He picked up the phone and called Jill.

  "I'm back."

  "How was Baja?"

  "Big. Are we set to travel?"


  "Grady's on the research. The arrangements are made. But you gotta rest, Sam."

  "I would if I could, believe me. The way to find Gaudet is to beat him to Michael Bowden."

  "We lost Paul. You're shaken. We all are. The only way to get your edge back is to rest, reflect, all that."

  "A mental-health discussion in the middle of a war?"

  "Maybe more than one."

  "Where's Anna?"

  "You have good instincts."

  "Is she there? I hope she did the whole procedure for tails."

  "She's not here."

  "Where?"

  "The show condo."

  "Why is she there?"

  "That's where she thinks you live, Sam. And she's very proud of her sleuthing. She wants to comfort you. It's normal after what has happened."

  Sam said nothing while he considered his options.

  "Your mother and I think you should come clean. Let Anna in, for God's sake."

  "Go get her, if you can. If she'll go, take her out for lunch and—"

  "Sam."

  "I'll sort it out and call you right back."

  There was a long pause, followed by a sigh that meant "yes."

  He hung up. Jill would think of something truthful to say while he decided how he wanted to handle it. Anna Wade was his girlfriend and a mega-movie star. His anonymous life and her celebrity caused them nothing but grief. He wondered if Anna could ever be happy with him. All she knew of him really was the outer layer, the tough anti-terrorist expert, the man of the shadows. Sometimes he asked himself how someone with her fame and wealth could be happy with a more or less ordinary person. A half Indian person. He had never uttered his concerns to Anna and he doubted that he would. For the moment, he shoved it out of his mind.

  He'd taken the transmitter off Blue Hades several days ago and had his mechanic check for others. It would be like Gaudet to install two of them—the second one much less conspicuous. After making sure that nobody was following him, he proceeded down along the waterfront to a two-story house. This was a terrible time to have his situation with Anna come to a head. The nature of the problem was that she didn't know where he lived but thought she did. Actually, it was slightly more complicated than that. She knew the place he lived now and then, the place he had taken her when they wanted to go to "his place."