by Tara Janzen
“Warner wants to see you,” she said, her voice a lilting combination of accents and sibilant seduction, the complete opposite of the flat deadness of her eyes.
She was a machine. He believed it down to his own soul that she had none. She’d been made, pieced together somehow, like a Frankenstein, but the seams didn’t show.
She was standing there in front of him in a pair of lace-up boots, all golden-skinned with her long, silky black hair draped over her shoulder, her body encased in a pair of black pants and an olive green T-shirt, and it made his cold blood curdle.
She looked tactical, like she had a plan, like she was going somewhere. She had three knives he could see, and probably half a dozen he couldn’t.
“I’ll call him,” he said.
“No. He’s waiting out front. Let’s go.”
It was a voice of unmitigated command in five feet three inches of pure sadism. He hated her, and she knew it. No big deal. As far as he’d been able to tell, she hated him, too, just like she did everybody else on the planet, including Warner. Dax didn’t know what the German had on her, but it kept her in line. For all the murderous energy she expended on everyone else, she was never anything other than obsequious to Warner.
Which didn’t solve his current problem.
Paraguayan standoff in a dive-that’s what he had here, and the damnedest thing was, he knew he couldn’t take her, not unless he killed her, and that would be screwing the pooch. Old Warner wouldn’t be giving him anything if he killed the guy’s woman-and Dax was using the term “woman” lightly, very lightly.
So he was going to talk to Warner, give him a minute flat, before he headed up the Paraná to where it met the Tambo.
Zipping the duffel closed, he gave Shoko a short nod.
He closed and secured the door to his room as best he could and then followed the Blade Queen of Bangkok down the stairs and out onto the street to an armored Humvee.
Con keyed a code into the boat’s onboard computer, and the steel gate in the cliff wall swung slowly outward. The engine was in idle, and he could hear the waves lapping at the hull. The woman, Suzanna Toussi, was still out cold, stretched across a bench seat down the port side and wrapped in a light blanket to keep the wind off her.
He’d been careful not to hurt her, but he didn’t think she’d be waking up before early afternoon. He was exceedingly skilled in the pressure points of the body, and Ms. Toussi was down for the count.
Scout would take care of her once he got her inside.
When the gates finally came fully open, Con throttled up the engine and drove the boat into the cave that sat beneath the house. It didn’t take long to carry Suzanna Toussi up to a guest room, and once he was assured of her well-being, he clipped her fanny pack off from around her waist and took it with him into the living room.
Her pistol was locked and loaded, a serviceable 9mm. Her driver’s license and passport both had all the requisite authentications, but it was her phone that intrigued him.
She had only two names in her contact file, and five numbers dialed in her call log, which included both her contacts-which all said one thing to him: It wasn’t really her phone. It was a mission-specific phone, and it didn’t take him long to figure out who she was working for. He started at the bottom of her call log, and the man who answered only said one word-”Go.”
Con pressed the end key and went on to the second number on her call log. The phone was answered, but nothing was said, and then he heard a series of clicks. Sonuvabitch, the receiving phone was waiting for him to key in a code.
Sonuvabitch.
He couldn’t believe it.
She was the DIA agent. Her phone setup was pure covert ops.
And that meant Daniel Killian was his connection to Warner. The world was definitely going to hell in a handbasket when former Special Forces operators started running contraband for the likes of a scumbag like Erich Warner-but that was the world’s problem, not Con’s.
He only had one problem, and fortunately, he had a phone number for the man who could solve it-Daniel Killian.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Following Shoko down the stairs at the Posada, Dax felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He glanced at the phone’s screen, and thank God, Suzi’s name was at the top.
“Yes,” he said into the receiver, bringing the phone to his ear.
“Killian,” some guy said, and Dax’s heart plummeted. “My name is Conroy Farrel, and I’ve got two things I think you’re looking for-the Memphis Sphinx and Suzanna Toussi. For a price, you can have them both.”
“Where are they?” He didn’t miss a step, despite the jolt that went through him. Conroy Farrel-he would not be forgetting that name. Whatever the guy had, he definitely had Suzi’s phone.
“Costa del Rey Ten kilometers up the Paraná to where the Tambo comes in. Then another four kilometers up the Tambo. You’ll see my place on the north shore. I hope you’re already moving, because you’re running out of time.”
“What’s the price?” There was always a price, and it would inevitably be something big and hard to get that was going to cost Dax something big and hard to hold on to, like maybe his life. He had plenty of enemies for the things he’d done-more than he could count.
“Erich Warner, bring him to me. I know he wants the Sphinx, and you can guarantee him he’ll have it before tomorrow night, before moonrise.”
Sometimes when a guy least expected it, when every damn thing except his sex life had been going wrong all damn day, he got a break.
“We’ll be there.” He hung up the phone, and Shoko took it out of his hand. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. She was fast enough to surprise him and strong enough to get her way.
She could have asked, but he would have said “Fuck you,” and she probably knew that.
She hit a couple of keys and looked at the screen.
“Su-zee,” she said, a satisfied smile curving her lips. “I knew there was a woman. Who is she, this Su-zee?”
“A dealer out of New York who was at Beranger’s gallery earlier. She says she’s got the Sphinx, and she wants to make a deal.”
Those dead black eyes slid over him, and he had to consciously check himself to keep from striking out and snapping her neck. Rumbling with the Blade Queen was not going to get him what he wanted most, which was his girl back.
Farrel wanted Warner in exchange for Suzi? Dax could deliver.
“Where is she, this Su-zee with the Sphinx?” She made the name “Suzi” sound like something she was going to be scraping off the bottom of her shoes.
Over his dead body, he thought, and he wasn’t planning on checking out anytime soon.
“That information is for Warner,” he said. “When I see him, I’ll tell him.”
Her lips curled, and she practically hissed at him-bitch. She could hiss all she wanted. He only had one shot at doing this. He reached out and took his phone back. Yeah, he was pretty fast, too, and pretty damn strong.
When they reached the street, he was unceremoniously relegated to the front seat of the Humvee, shotgun, which was fine with him. On this job, he was working for Warner.
He glanced over at the driver, a young guy, sharply dressed in a spic-and-span black T-shirt with camouflage pants, who looked like he took himself and his job very seriously. Fine with Dax, he liked serious guys. He was kind of a serious guy himself. But it would be damn nice to know whose Humvee he was riding in, and even better to know where they were going. Regardless, he figured his “minute flat” with Warner was hell and gone.
He let out a heavy sigh and relaxed back into his seat.
“Caray! La mujer está loca, sabes?” he said, shaking his head. Cripes, the woman is crazy, you know?
The young driver kept his eyes on the road and didn’t say anything, but Dax saw the small grin he couldn’t control.
That’s all he needed, a little something to work with, and by the time they pulled up to a walled compound an hour out of Ciudad del Este, Dax and Pedro were on a
first-name basis, and Dax knew exactly where they were-Joaquin Vargas’s estate, and he knew Pedro’s life story and Vargas’s business.
Drugs and guns-that’s what made the world go around, especially on the Paraguayan frontier.
They drove past Vargas’s elaborate villa and came to a stop half a mile down the drive, under a smaller house’s portico. There were guards everywhere, all over the grounds, all of them armed. Dax was told to stay in the car until Pedro drove around to the garage entrance of the house.
That’s right. He was the hired help, and he very much wanted to keep it that way-low-key, important but not equal, not worthy of too much notice.
Pedro led him inside, all business again, down a long marble-floored hall to a large library, where he was directed to wait.
He’d been slumming it in the market and at the Posada Plaza for three days, and been in muck up to his knees for half of today, and this place was stunning, like a museum, everything pristine and expensive from the floor-to-ceiling bookcases and rich wool carpets to the huge mahogany desk commanding attention on the far side of the room. There was a fireplace on the near wall, flanked with leather chairs and a couch, and various exquisitely inlaid tables.
Dax took up a position slightly off to one side of the fireplace, where he could see the whole room, and he kept a good hold on his duffel bag, and tried not to think too much about the phone burning a hole in his pocket, or about the last call he’d gotten.
He needed to stay cool, to play it as it lay, and somehow, without anybody knowing it, get exactly what he needed here tonight.
“Have you failed me, Mr. Killian? Or does this Suzi have what I want?” The tone was bored rather than strident, but Dax could instantly see the strain on Erich Warner’s face when the man walked into the room.
Good. For what Dax needed him to do, strain was the perfect motivation.
He also saw the iguana draped on Warner’s shoulder, a young one, not very big, with a jeweled collar and a linked-chain leash, an odd accoutrement for somebody who looked more like a fresh-faced German schoolboy than anyone over eighteen should. Warner’s hair was very blond, thick, and bluntly cut, his features straight out of the Aryan handbook, which Dax knew was a tremendous source of pride for the man.
Dax also knew he was into some pretty strange stuff on the side, genetic research or some such, which under the best of circumstances he didn’t believe belonged in the hands of an underworld kingpin. But he’d heard things about drugs and procedures, and the truth of it, in Dax’s opinion, was the walking advertisement for strangeness that was always at his side.
Shoko, gliding in behind him, was neither bored nor strained. She always just was-oddly present in the moment and dangerously ready. Even considering the size of the room, he was well inside her “reach out and touch you before you can blink” perimeter again-and her boss was unhappy with him.
Sometimes he thought he needed a new job.
“I haven’t failed,” he said with the utmost confidence. “Do you have the information?”
No information, and Dax would kill the bastard himself.
In answer, Warner pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket. “A terrorist cell, the names you need, just as we agreed. You sounded so sure of yourself when we spoke earlier,” the German said, stepping over to the front of the desk and pouring himself a short shot in a highball glass. He downed it in one swallow and poured himself another. The envelope went back into the inside pocket on his jacket.
Nerves. Yeah, Dax understood. The night was wearing on his nerves, too. The same way the whole damn day had worn on his nerves.
“When we spoke earlier, I was headed into a meeting with one of the dealers from Beranger’s. I made it clear that I was willing to beat anybody’s offer on the Sphinx, and was told to wait for a phone call. The phone call came shortly after Ms. Shoko arrived.” He nodded in the bitch’s direction. He was a good liar, so he didn’t have many qualms about Warner not buying his line.
“And Beranger is now dead, you said?”
“Yes.” And probably still lying on the floor in his gallery.
Warner downed his second shot and set the glass back down.
“It makes more sense, really,” he said, “him being dead, than it ever made that this unknown little Frenchman in Paraguay had acquired the Memphis Sphinx.”
Dax agreed. He’d been running in the art world for a few years now, and while it wasn’t unusual for some rare and wonderful thing to show up in a dump every now and then, the Memphis Sphinx was not merely a rare and wonderful artifact. It was a legend. The name of Howard Carter, its finder, attached instant cachet. That the piece had never been formally or academically displayed had created a mystery that had remained unsolved for nearly a hundred years.
“And this phone call? This Suzi, the dealer, did she give you the location of the Sphinx?” Warner’s tone sounded a little frayed, and he glanced toward the Blade Queen, looking, Dax supposed, for some kind of reassurance, and for a moment Dax wished that he’d been spending a little more time at the range. Marksmanship was a frangible skill, and if that woman made any kind of a move whatsoever, his skill in that area was going to be put to the test.
“Suzi gave me the first mark. I’m to call her when I reach it, and she’ll give me the second.”
“And the first mark is?”
“Five kilometers up the Paraná. I was just heading out when Ms. Shoko arrived at the Posada.” Mostly true. He’d cut the distance in half, not wanting to give too much away, but needing them headed in the right direction.
“You do understand the time constraint we’re dealing with here, don’t you, Mr. Killian?” A more frazzled edge definitely crept into Warner’s voice with the question.
Of course he did. Time was the whole raison d’être of the quest. Warner was looking for immortality, actually thinking he was going to get it off a hunk of granite in the moonlight.
“Yes, sir. I do. My plan was to get up there tonight, make the deal and call for a funds transfer, just as we’d planned, and have the Sphinx back here by tomorrow afternoon, in plenty of time for the…uh, ceremony.” He didn’t know what else to call this unlikely transfer of immortality that had Erich Warner’s boxers all in a wad. All he knew was that he’d hoped to be long gone before that moment arrived.
“That seems a bit risky now, doesn’t it?” the man said, lifting the iguana off his shoulder and setting the reptile on the desk. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and wiped at his brow.
“Not if I leave immediately. The dealer I’m meeting, Suzi, she knows the time constraints as well as we do. She knows her price drops through the floor after moonrise tomorrow night. Trust me, she is ready to sell.”
Dax needed Erich to push him, not back off, but he was playing it cool, watching the man fret and hoping for the best.
“The timing will be closer than either of us anticipated or wanted, that’s true,” Dax continued, “but we have to try. I need to leave immediately.” He meant that with all his heart. Again, he wasn’t selling a lie. Geezus, Suzi was up there.
Warner tilted his head to one side, giving him a very discerning look, as if he’d come to a decision-and he had, the absolute correct decision. “You’ve had your try, Mr. Killian, and you’ve taken us up to the final countdown, and still don’t have the Sphinx. From here on out, I’m taking over the operation, and far more drastic measures than you’ve been able to bring to bear must now be employed.”
He could hear Warner swear under his breath before he poured himself another shot and finished it off in one swallow.
Normally, Dax was fairly wary of drastic anything, but in this case Warner was right, and the sooner they all got on board with “drastic measures,” the better-not that Warner needed to hear that from him.
“Well, sir, normally I would agree, but I feel I still have a chance to pull this thing off, and the quicker I can get up there, the more quickly I can get back. If we can cut this meeting short, I
-”
“Short?” Warner interrupted. “This meeting is going to go on all the way to the first mark, and then the next, until I have the Memphis Sphinx in my hand. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Warner snapped his fingers, and one of Vargas’s men strode forward into the room.
“Tell Señor Vargas I need a boat with twenty armed men, immediately.”
The man agreed with a nod and turned on his heel.
“You have forced the issue with your incompetence,” Warner said, shifting his attention back to Dax. “We have no choice now but to go with you. I can’t take the risk of not being with the Sphinx by tomorrow night.”
Perfect.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Costa del Rey
Suzi woke in the night to the sound of a river running. Lying calmly in a lavender-scented bed, she slowly opened her eyes.
She didn’t know where she was, but the sheets on the bed were white, and the pillows were soft. A stone fireplace on the far wall crackled and glowed, casting a soft, flickering light over the room.
The door to the outside was open, leading onto a moonlight-washed deck, and beyond the deck was the river she heard-a rippling chorus of running water, eddies, and the deeper pull of the river’s flow.
She’d been kidnapped in her underwear.
She could feel the soft organic undies perfectly in place, the same with Dax’s polo shirt.
She looked down at herself and felt a moment’s relief. She’d been kidnapped, rendered unconscious, and hauled off somewhere, but not molested, and nobody knew better than her what a miracle that was.
It had all happened unbelievably fast. One second, she’d been sitting at the table in the Posada Plaza, and in the next second, she’d been scooped and swooped. The last thing she remembered was being on the balcony at the hotel, being held very close against a rock-hard chest. She’d looked up, still holding her dinner fork, and… and something had happened.
She’d gasped.
She remembered now. Looking over the balcony railing, five floors up from the street, and suddenly realizing that they were going over the side-all of this in the space of a second or two. There had been that first initial sensation of being in free fall, and then nothing, until now.
