by Gayle Lynds
Gun in hand, she followed. Suddenly a gunshot sounded from the driveway, and a second responded.
“Don’t think about it,” he ordered. “The best thing we can do is get the hell away so Ben and Houri can, too.”
She nodded, and they ran toward the garages.
36
The noontime sun pulsed over Ben Kuhnert’s compound. The air smelled combustible, of dust and promised heat. In quick succession, two more bullets slammed into the stone corner of the cottage where Ben hunched, Houri behind him. He ducked as shards of stone exploded. By allowing his attackers to think they had him pinned, he had figured out where they were, and how many—six.
One was at the corner of the main house near the kitchen. One was positioned between two sycamores on the driveway just before it entered the woods, to stop anyone’s leaving. One darted along the driveway’s low hedge, trying to close up on the far corner of the cottage where Ben was. Two were across the drive, nearly opposite him, at either side of that cottage. And the last was also across the drive, skirting the trees toward the main house where his office was located.
“That should be enough time,” Ben muttered to himself.
He reached behind and patted the dog, then he made his hand into a fist and rotated his wrist, telling her they were shifting to signals. She butted the fist with her nose in acknowledgment. He pointed and closed his thumb and forefinger, indicating which plan they would follow, although he knew she already realized it from the way he had loaded her harness.
He dropped flat and rolled out around the cottage and rose up a few inches. He squeezed off two bullets in quick succession at the man who was the greatest threat to Jay and Elaine.
The man stopped in his tracks and arched. “I’ve been shot!” he yelled, and staggered forward.
“Hold on, Hank!” an authoritative voice bellowed. “Close in, boys!”
Automatic gunfire strafed Ben’s cottage. The noise was deafening.
As the hail of bullets started back again, lower this time, chewing up the grass, Ben jumped up and used every ounce of strength in a death-defying sprint toward the woods. Houri raced beside him, panting.
“That was Jerry’s voice!” Elaine said as she and Jay ran toward the two stone garages. The Jaguar was parked inside the closest.
Two more gunshots detonated, followed by shouts ringing from the distant drive. A fusillade of fire sounded. This time from an automatic rifle.
Elaine and Jay did not look at each other as they continued their headlong rush. Framed in stone, the rear wall of the first garage was wood and faced down a grassy slope to the palisade of woodlands that encircled the glen.
As the lethal gunfire continued, Jay plummeted down the hill.
The wind on her hot face, Elaine jammed Ben’s key into a hole in the wall and pulled open a book-size door. Inside was a keypad. She tapped in Ben’s code and looked for Jay. He was hurrying along the trees, studying them. Ben had warned that the gate might be hard to locate—it was veiled in wild growth.
Watching all around, Elaine waited impatiently as the wall groaned and swung open at the center like wings. She jumped into the Jag and put her key into the ignition.
Ben paused just inside the woods. The storm of bullets had stopped. The cottage he had used for protection was set at an angle and closer to the trees than any of his other buildings and blocked him from the view of the shooters. He took off Houri’s coat and with a quick gesture sent her into action. Her tail beat swiftly once in nervous excitement. She lowered her head and hurtled onto a footpath that led deep into the forest.
As the trees enveloped her, Ben turned and crouched. Within seconds bullets slashed past. Leaves shredded and flew. He jumped up.
“There he is!”
As planned, they would know exactly where he was going.
“Get that bastard!” the voice thundered.
Smiling grimly to himself, Ben bolted onto the trailhead, following Houri. The cut on his arm did not hurt. His age did not matter. Everything was working perfectly.
Abruptly his shoulder scorched with pain. He lurched forward. Grabbed the shoulder. Blood oozed between his fingers and flowed down his arm and chest. He had taken a bullet. Another round of gunshots sliced through the timber.
With a silent curse, he moved, ordering his feet to hurry. Not thinking. Just hurrying. Feet behind hammering. Getting closer. He passed the familiar looming boulder. Then the pair of young maples. He spotted the sunglasses exactly where they should be—Houri had left them by pulling the slipknot open with her teeth. The running feet behind him were too close.
Another ten feet, and there was the sheet of granite that spread into the trees. He turned onto it, warning himself not to slide. He was growing dizzy. Three steps later he slipped and fell anyway. Breathing shallowly, he rolled and crawled under a bush.
Elaine sat behind the wheel of the Jag, slamming the steering wheel with her fist. Jay had still not found the gate. He was moving slowly now, rechecking the treeline.
At last he gave a wide wave of his arm.
She threw the gear into neutral. The Jaguar’s four thousand pounds rolled down the angled floor and onto the grassy slope. The tires were a hushed whine over the thick grass. Because the Jag had an automatic transmission, and the engine was not turned on, she had little ability to guide it, but that seemed the least of their problems. If she had to, she could fire up the motor at the last minute—but the noise would notify the killers of their escape, which Ben was risking his life to protect.
Gunfire resumed. Each shot pierced her. Elaine glanced in her rearview mirror in time to see the garage doors automatically shut. Ahead, Jay hauled open a black iron gate. A maze of vines and creeping plants dripped from it, the tendrils bouncing.
The hill was graded to create a shallow, flat-bottomed, W-shaped trough so that once a car’s wheels were in place, the vehicle theoretically should hurtle straight through the gate’s opening and into the woods. But the grass was thick and tall, and the depressions were purposefully hard to see. Worse, she was not able to control the Jag’s direction.
Jerry Angelides wiped his hand across his sweaty forehead and stared down at the sunglasses lying half open on the shady footpath. Three of his men stopped beside him. He had left the other two behind, the injured one where Kuhnert’s driveway entered the clearing, and the other to investigate the house.
“Goddammit!” He picked up the sunglasses. “Where’s he gone?”
“I shot him,” Rink said. “I know I shot him!”
“Well, he ain’t here. And I don’t see any blood.”
“We should check around.” Derek peered into the growth. “These are his woods. He could’ve gone off trail onto some secret path.”
“You’re right,” Jerry decided. “Dammit, you’re right. Derek, you go that way—”
Suddenly noisy beeps sounded ahead. Jerry bolted, his men following. The beeps stopped just as he spotted a pager lying in the dirt. He snagged it and examined it quickly.
“Someone called Kuhnert,” he told them. “No message. No phone number. It just says ‘wireless caller.’ ”
“Guess he’s still on the trail,” Rink observed.
No one spoke. They ran again. Trees reached toward them, tearing at their clothes.
“Look at that!” Rink said. “Look!”
They paused over a blood-soaked handkerchief lying on the trail.
Rink held it up by a dry corner. “See! I told you. Blood! I got him for sure!”
“Looks like you’re right,” Jerry decided. He breathed hard. All of the men were breathing hard. “Okay, let’s go. If he’s losing blood, he’s not gonna get far.”
They ran again, deeper into the forest’s dark shadows.
The branches over Ben’s head swayed in a light wind, making a breathy, disquieting sound. He returned his cell phone to his pocket and stumbled on. He had dialed the pager, knowing the beeps would be loud enough for the men to hear. With luck, it would persua
de all of them to push ahead.
There was no trail here, but the forest was as familiar to him as an old friend. This was his home, where he had grown up. Sweat coated him. It stung his eyes. The world seemed off-kilter. His balance was chancy, and the pain in his shoulder burned like a volcano. He had no idea how much time had passed. Ordinarily, this part of the plan should have been executed in minutes.
When he finally found the towering boulder that time and erosion had shaped into the face of a sharp-beaked bird, he rolled under a sheltering lip on the far side. He had never considered himself a top-flight operative, which had made him more careful than most. He always had several escape routes. He closed his eyes and was drifting into a black, dreamless world when he was yanked back suddenly by a wet tongue on his cheek. He looked. Houri.
“Good girl.” He smiled and fell asleep.
Elaine held her breath and dragged the steering wheel to the right. The Jag was going to miss the gate. As it gathered speed, she saw Jay’s eyebrows rise. He backed away.
Sweat beaded up on her forehead. She kept up the pressure on the steering wheel. Finally, like a great sailing ship, the car yawed. With a burst of relief, she felt the wheels drop into the W’s ruts. The Jag corrected itself and swept down the emerald carpet and through the opening and into the deep, dark quiet of the timber.
She braked while Jay closed the gate. He was in the seat beside her within seconds.
He dropped his backpack. “Let’s go.”
She let the car glide downward again, crushing flowers and grasses and ferns as it continued its descent on the primitive road. When the Jag reached the bottom of the long hill, about a half mile from the main house, Elaine turned on the engine. Its throaty hum was music. She punched the accelerator, and the car sailed up the next hill. Treetops twined together overhead.
They were silent, worried with their own thoughts. When they neared the end of Ben’s road, Jay hurried out and opened another pipe gate hidden by the forest’s growth. She drove through. She could see the highway.
Jay jumped back inside. “Let’s go find Raina.”
Part Four
There’s something about a secret that’s addicting.
—J. EDGAR HOOVER
former director of the FBI
What we really exist for is stealing secrets.
—R. JAMES WOOLSEY
former director of the CIA
37
Montgomery County, Maryland
The long private road looped through the heart of hunt country, past bushy verges and green pastures and woodlots. Tiberius DeLoreto’s large farm spread along both sides. Studying the area, Frank Mesa parked on a grassy shoulder. Across from him, a high white stucco wall extended to the horizon in both directions, protecting the death merchant’s sprawling modern house.
Frank locked his weapons in his trunk. Between his memory of DeLoreto and efficient research, he had come prepared. He picked up a brown grocery sack and walked purposefully toward the kiosk that guarded the entrance.
The lone sentry had stepped outside, watching. In his early thirties, he wore tan cords and a brown work shirt. His shoulder holster held a Heckler & Koch pistol. He said nothing, his dark eyes cool, appraising.
“I’m here to see Mr. DeLoreto. My name is Jonathan Smith. From the old days.” Frank pointed to the sack. “Tell him I’ve brought fresh orecchiette.”
The guard stepped inside and repeated the information into an intercom.
There was a long pause, then a disembodied voice announced, “He wants to know where Smith got the orecchiette.”
“Tell him my brother’s wife made it this morning. She’s from Puglia, too.”
Again the sentry relayed the message.
There was another pause. “Frisk him, then send him in,” the voice ordered.
After searching Frank, the guard returned to his post, and a pedestrian door in the white wall swung open. Frank walked through into Tiberius DeLoreto’s expensive world. Arabian horses ambled across verdant pastures, tails switching. Crews cleaned and trimmed. Armed guards stood sentry across the expanse and into the woods.
When Frank reached the porch of the big house, a man strolled around from the rear. It was DeLoreto himself. About Frank’s age, mid-sixties, he wore a straw hat and battered jeans and a new Pendleton shirt.
“You say I know you?” DeLoreto moved slowly, showing his arthritis. He had knobby hands and dead blue eyes.
“Buongiorno, Don Tiberius. It was a long time ago. I used to be CIA.”
The arms trafficker’s gray eyebrows arched. “Is that the pasta?” Frank opened the sack, and DeLoreto peered inside. “Haven’t had good orecchiette since ‘94. Kitchen’s in back.”
DeLoreto led him around the house and into a large stainless-steel kitchen. A chef in a white hat was setting a copper boiling pot on the stove. He turned and bowed.
DeLoreto glanced at him. “Leave us.”
The chef vanished while an outside guard carrying an M-4 assault rifle alertly checked in through a bay window and moved on. Frank surveyed the room. The Washington Post lay open on a wide table covered by a heavy linen cloth. A half-dozen wineglasses waited to be washed by one of the sinks. A big walk-in freezer was nearby.
DeLoreto fired up the gas burner under the boiling pot. “You got to have plenty of water and salt to cook orecchiette. My mother taught me, God bless her and keep her safe in heaven.” He poured salt onto his palm and dumped it into the water. “You don’t talk much, do you? I like that. Or did you already know?”
“I knew.” Frank opened the sack and removed a covered plastic container, set it on the counter, and peeled off the lid. Shaped like small human ears, the pasta was symbolic of Puglia but little-known outside Italy.
DeLoreto gazed at it then at Frank. “You’re old to be CIA.”
“As I said, I’m retired.”
“You got some wine there, too, I saw. Salice Salentino.”
Frank took out the bottle of fine red wine plus a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil, tins of anchovies, and two jars of sweet black olives.
“Hey, that’s good,” DeLoreto said. “Everything’s from Puglia.”
Frank nodded. Last he removed a second covered plastic container identical to the first but three times as deep. He pried up the lid and pretended to check inside. He let the lid fall. “This is more orecchiette for some other time. She says you should cook it before it gets old. You want me to make a sauce for you? That’s why I brought the wine and olives and anchovies.”
DeLoreto looked up at the ceiling and smiled. “He cooks, too.” Then the smile vanished, and his dead eyes probed Frank. “You come unarmed so my men don’t have to embarrass you by pointing out you should’ve known better. You show respect by bringing gifts that matter to me. You greet me politely—and in Italian. You let me talk or not, whatever I want. And now you offer to cook. All right, ex-CIA man, what do you want?”
Frank leaned his hip against the counter and crossed his arms so that his left hand was under his right elbow, near the deeper container of orecchiette. He noted the same guard was peering in through the window again.
“There’s a big shipment changing hands somewhere around here today,” Frank told him. “One of the people on the buying end is a terrorist named Faisal al-Hadi. The dealer’s known as Mr. G. He’s been in business awhile. I’d like everything you know about it and him.”
“For some homemade pasta? That only gets you in the door.” DeLoreto’s voice was as hard as Carrara marble. “You seem to know me. So you should know I don’t give out information about my colleagues.”
“I know.” In a swift motion, Frank’s hand shot into the pasta dish and pulled out a small Colt and aimed it at the gun merchant’s heart. “Get over to the freezer.”
DeLoreto looked at the weapon and frowned, unafraid and annoyed.
Frank did not have time to argue. “Move.” Watching the window, he kicked DeLoreto hard toward the walk-in freezer. DeLoreto stumbled
and opened his mouth to yell. Frank kicked him again, harder. As DeLoreto fell, Frank ran around and opened the freezer door. He grabbed the gun dealer by the back of his jeans and threw him inside and closed the door. Their exhalations were white clouds in the icy chill.
Cursing loudly, DeLoreto picked himself up, his face thick with anger.
“I also know the first commandment in your business is ‘Fuck thy neighbor,’ ” Frank told him. “Now’s your chance.”
“Fuck you, you lousy scheming CIA animale! You’ll never get out of here alive!” He raised his fist and shook it.
Frank aimed and squeezed the trigger. The explosive noise reverberated. The bullet shattered DeLoreto’s right knee. The air was so frigid that pieces of flesh and bone sailed through the air almost slowly enough for Frank to watch. DeLoreto screamed and crumpled. His blood froze crimson red on his jeans and on a side of pink beef hanging next to him.
“I can phone in my report from here,” Frank explained calmly. “That means I don’t give a holy shit whether I get out alive. Tell me about Mr. G.”
For the first time, fear showed on DeLoreto’s wrinkled face. He glanced wildly around. “And if I do?”
“I leave. You live. This is your last chance.”
When DeLoreto took time to consider, Frank snapped, “Your other knee’s next. Then your elbows. Then I scrub you.”
“It’s Martin Ghranditti’s deal.” The trafficker talked so fast his words tumbled into one another. “That slime turd Ghranditti’s come out of retirement. That’s your answer. You want that sick fucker Ghranditti!” His lower lip quivered. “What are you—?”
Frank had what he needed. He backed out of the freezer and locked it. He ran to the stove, pushed the pot aside, and turned all of the burners to MEDIUM. He dropped the Post onto the stove and threw the tablecloth on top. Smoke seeped out around the edges. He hurried to the counter and crashed the neck of the unopened bottle of Salice Salentino hard against it. Broken glass sprayed. Grabbing a wineglass from the sink, he poured into it as he ran to the door. Behind him, the fire suddenly crackled.
