by Brad Taylor
I had one ace in my pocket. A single, tattered card against their royal flush. I said, “One more time, we had a deal.”
My radio came alive again, “I found my father! He was tied up under a blanket in the back! I have him!”
Darius saw my face betray something and stalked forward. He found the earpiece and the wire running down my back under the shirt. He ripped it off of me, looked at the cheap plastic toy walkie-talkie, and laughed. He said, “Quite the operation you have here. This thing goes what, fifty meters? Who are you talking to? That idiot Eduardo? I’ll see him soon.”
I remained quiet. He said, “You have to realize this is over. You have nothing left.”
All I wanted to do now was drag out the meeting as long as possible to give Eduardo time to escape into the jungle. I couldn’t let Darius know we’d succeeded.
I said, “You give me the father, and I’ll give you Leopold. It’s that simple.”
He waited a beat, then took off his sunglasses. I saw his eyes and knew he was crazy. He didn’t care about Leopold. He was one of many men I’d met who professed to work for an overarching goal but really enjoyed the blood. He was no better than any terrorist I’d ever killed.
“Where is Leopold?”
“Where is the father?”
He said, “So be it,” and drew his weapon. Time slowed. He brought it forward, the barrel as large as a drainage pipe, the death coming.
I raised my arm.
He looked at me curiously, then said, “Last chance,” and I felt the overwhelming urge to attack. I had to physically restrain myself, because my actions would prevent my ace from a clean shot. I needed him stationary to succeed against the others.
He cocked the hammer, placed the barrel against my skull, and my moment to alter the outcome was gone. I’d bet on Jennifer, and I’d lost. I felt heartbreak. Jennifer had told me she couldn’t take a life, and she’d meant it. In so doing, she was going to take mine. Heather appeared in my mind’s eye, a small consolation, because I’d finally get to see her again. I closed my eyes, waiting on the inevitable.
I was slapped in the face with what felt like a sponge soaked in warm water. My eyes snapped open just as the crack of the round reached my ears. Darius’s head had exploded, and he fell like a sack of meat with the skeleton ripped away.
The policemen sprang back in shock. I had no such reaction. I turned to the nearest one, grabbed his weapon in my hands, and rotated underneath his arm, twisting it like I was wringing water out of a rag. He flipped in the air and hammered hard on his back, and I turned the weapon to his chest and pulled the trigger twice.
The other policeman with the drawn weapon fired once, twice, missing both times. I dove onto the ground, rolled, and raised my weapon. He shuddered like he’d been hit in the back with a baseball bat, then fell forward. Another crack filled the air.
The third policeman drew his weapon, and I drilled him in the head before he could bring it to bear. The fourth raised his hands, not touching his holster. I lined up my weapon on his skull and waved him to the ground. I heard a shout behind me and whirled.
Leopold came out of the temple holding the weapon I’d hidden, shouting incoherently, leaving me with one threat to my front and one to my back. I rotated to the policeman and saw he’d drawn his pistol. I realized I was masking my sniper from the threat to the rear, dropped flat to the ground, rolled over, and fired at the cop, hitting him in the shoulder hard enough to fling him off the steps.
Two rounds smacked the stone near my head, cutting my face with spall. Leopold advanced, squeezing the trigger in a spastic effort, and I heard a final crack. I rolled over and saw him sagging against the wall, his chest sprouting blood.
I rose, kicked the weapon out of his hand, and watched him collapse to the ground.
He looked at me, then looked at his life-force running freely from his body, a fountain of blood nothing could stem. He coughed and said, “This isn’t fair.”
I said, “You mean life? I agree. Just ask Eduardo.”
His eyes turned to glass and his head lolled to the side, his tongue out, a string of bloody drool reaching the stone. I found my radio on the ground and said, “Eduardo, Eduardo, you there?”
He came on, breathless, “Pike! Are you alive?”
“No. It’s my ghost talking to you. Is your father okay?”
“He’s beat-up. They really worked him over, but he can walk.”
“Can you talk to Jennifer?”
“I think so. I ran straight toward her. I’m halfway to Temple Four.”
I heard him call, then respond, without hearing Jennifer’s transmission. He came back, saying, “Yes. I have her.”
“Tell her to come down. I’ll meet you both at Temple Four. Tell her I was wrong about Lara Croft. Someone can shoot better than her.”
Chapter 21
I continued unpacking my bags, storing everything in the new closet of my office in Mount Pleasant, studiously ignoring Jennifer. She was doing the same across the room, but she knew something was up.
It was time.
We’d escaped Tikal with ease—which was to be expected, since everyone who was a threat was dead—leaving all the bodies where they lay. Jennifer had been extremely upset at what she’d been forced to do, but it was really just her letting off emotion. I’d seen the same thing in soldiers after their first taste of combat, with the only difference being they knew what was expected of them—had actively signed up to accomplish it—and she had not. The emotion was the same, though. Taking a life is not easy, and each has to come to grips with why it happened.
In her case, she was relieved to learn that the “police” were nothing more than hired thugs who had probably killed many, many innocent people. And she had, in fact, saved my life, along with the lives of both Eduardo and his father, something that held considerable weight in the balance of right and wrong.
We’d dropped off Eduardo and his father at their village, and the family wanted to have a damn fiesta over his return. I’d impressed on Eduardo that the best thing for all concerned was to pretend like it had never happened. His father had never been kidnapped, and we had nothing to do with the events at Tikal. In truth, we had annihilated some powerful forces, and if there were any inkling of who was to blame, a hurricane would be coming.
Darius had paid off the Tikal park rangers, of that I was sure, but they had no idea why, or who the opposing force was. They certainly weren’t going to own up to being bribed, so I didn’t think they’d offer much in the way of evidence. I had no doubt there would be a shit storm coming from the death of Leopold, but if Eduardo and his family kept their mouths shut, it would work out. I mean, who would think those farmers could cause such a thing?
Eventually, he seemed to understand that fact, but I wasn’t going to guarantee it. And I wasn’t coming back to save his ass a second time.
We’d gone back to our original hotel—the one with hot water—and Jennifer had been withdrawn and distant. I understood.
There had been no witty banter. I’d spent the night being a sounding board for her, but I’ll admit, I probably wasn’t the best therapist, because I was ecstatic about her shooting. It was really something else. She’d hit a head-size target from more than four hundred meters away, then hit two others on the move.
She didn’t want the accolades, because the trophy was coated in blood, but she got them anyway. In the end, she seemed to recognize that she’d done the right thing but still didn’t like it.
I understood the feelings. I’d had them before, which made me better than any therapist. The best part? I got to sleep in the bed next to her. She wanted contact. Wanted the touch of another human. We didn’t do anything but spoon, but it was enough. More than enough. Groundbreaking. For the first time since we’d met, I was helping her through an emotional trauma vice her helping me crawl out of the abyss I’d been
in since my family had been murdered.
When morning had broken, we were on a different plane. Maybe even a real relationship. It was forged in blood, which was unfortunate, but I would take what I could get. She had crossed into my world, and she wanted to know what that was.
And now, back in Charleston, I was going to tell her. I knew she’d fight it, but I also knew, instinctively, that deep inside that plant-eater exterior was a meat eater. She liked my world, even if she wouldn’t admit it.
She came into my room on the right of our office and said, “You’re still unpacking? What’s taking so long?”
Sitting in a utilitarian folding chair, I said, “I just want to make sure I haven’t lost anything.”
She took a look at my closet, strewn haphazardly with my kit, and said, “You’re going to put this stuff away, right? In some sort of order?”
“Uhh . . . sure. You don’t think this is orderly?”
“No. It looks like someone kicked over a garbage can.”
I said, “Okay, okay. I’ll clean it up.”
She hung in the door for a moment, staring at me. I said, “What?”
“Why did Kurt call?”
And it was time.
Kurt Hale was the commander of the Taskforce, and the one I’d been relentlessly needling with a request that was borderline insane. On the phone, his first words to me were, “So tell me you weren’t involved in the mass murder of a mining magnate and his security force?”
“No, sir. All we did was find that temple. We’re a real company now. A real cover that can penetrate anywhere on earth.”
After leaving Eduardo, we’d gone to the CONAP asshole who’d said we didn’t have permission to search and had slapped the statue we’d found on his desk. He’d immediately blustered that it proved nothing, but, not being stupid, we’d already contacted the Ministry of Culture—the one that had approved our exploration—and alerted them to the location. Within hours, it had hit the news wires. Within a day, we were giving interviews—studiously avoiding any mention of our actions to find the temple’s location.
We were now on the covers of a bunch of journals that nobody but archeologists cared about—but that was enough to make us real.
He said, “So my little investment is paying off.”
I said, “Yes, sir, it sure is, but to really exploit it, I need Jennifer.”
He said, “Pike, I can’t do that. It’s crazy. She’s a civilian. She’s never even been in the military.”
“Sir, you know and I know that’s irrelevant. You should trust my judgment on talent. You always have in the past. Being a female is a plus. It helps the cover, but she needs the skills.”
I knew he was intrigued with my idea and only fighting it because it would be an enormous headache for him. He liked Jennifer and had seen her capabilities in Bosnia.
He finally said, “Okay, I’ll give you conditional permission, provided you can prove to me she meets the prerequisites.”
Meaning I had to train her. Something I knew I’d have to do anyway. It was why I’d been taking her to the range for “fun.”
Fun that had just saved my life.
I shoved something into my bag, not sure how to broach the subject. Jennifer said, “Pike? What did Kurt say to you? We have this new business, and now he calls. Are you planning on returning to the Taskforce? Is that what the call was about?”
And I realized she was afraid I was going to ditch our company to go back to hunting terrorists. Not realizing that the reason I’d created the company was to hunt terrorists.
This is going to be awkward.
I sighed and set the bag on the floor. I saw a smidgen of alarm on her face. She said, “That’s it, isn’t it?”
“No. Well, not exactly. You remember when Knuckles showed up here? With that communications gear?”
Suspicious, she said, “Yeah?”
I tossed a headlamp into my bag and gave up, just blurting out the truth. “That’s Taskforce kit. So we can talk to them securely without a trace.”
“Why would the Taskforce want to call us? And what do you mean ‘we’?”
She doesn’t get it.
“Ummm . . .”
Her eyes closed down to slits. I held my hands up and said, “Look, the actual investor of our excursion to Guatemala was, in fact, the Taskforce. They paid for our entire trip.”
“What? Why?”
“Well, because they thought our company would be a good way to penetrate denied areas.”
“And you agreed to that? They get to use our company for whatever they want, without our say? We’ll end up in some Iran-Contra fiasco.”
I jumped up, seeing this wasn’t going the way I wanted. I said, “No, no. They can’t use our company without our say, because we’ll both be vetted members.”
“What’s that mean? You’re no longer in the military, and I’m not vetted for anything.”
Here we go.
“Yeah, I know. Kurt likes the fact that I’m retired. It gives the company legitimacy, but we have to do something about you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared, saying, “What’s that mean?”
I sat back into the chair, looked her in the eye, and said, “It means you have to successfully pass Taskforce Assessment and Selection.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brad Taylor is the author of the New York Times bestselling Pike Logan series. He served for more than twenty years in the US Army, including eight years in 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta, commonly known as Delta Force. He retired as a Special Forces lieutenant colonel and now lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
Turn the page for an excerpt from Brad Taylor’s
DAUGHTER OF WAR
Available from Dutton
Chapter 1
The man sat placidly in a utilitarian metal chair, staring straight ahead at a barren wall of cinder block. His arms were in his lap, but they showed no tension. No indication of what he knew was to come.
Positioned in the center of the room, he and his chair were the sole occupiers of the space. No desks, no bookshelves, and certainly no decorations on the rough concrete that surrounded him. Just him. The only break was a stainless steel pipe that hung above his head, with what looked like a shower nozzle on the end.
Behind a thick pane of glass on the left wall, three men stared at him intently, waiting on the inevitable.
Standing behind the two seated men, Dr. Chin Mae-jung watched the soul inside the room, and wondered, What goes through a man’s mind when death is near, and stalking? That was imprecise, and not fitting of his scientific background. Not stalking. Coming in for the payment in full with the certitude of an avalanche. Not the death of a teenager in a car crash, or a soldier in a gunfight, where both felt invincible right up until the windshield shattered or the bullet tore through the body, ripping the soul free in the span of a heartbeat. No, a death where one knew it was coming. Staring you in the face. An inexorable slide to the abyss that one can’t stop. What goes through a man’s head? Did he think about his family? His life? A favorite memory? How could he sit there so patiently, knowing he was going to die?
The inside of the room was cold, with condensation seeping through the walls. The same cold Dr. Chin Mae-jung had dealt with his entire professional life, but he certainly hadn’t expected to test his child on a living, breathing human being. He had enjoyed the scientific research he’d accomplished within these walls, but honestly, given a choice, he thought the manner of death he was about to impose as a result of his research to be grotesque.
But that might not matter in an hour, because he would be forced to prove he’d succeeded. And would most likely die just like the man in the chair. He wondered if he’d go out with the same placid expression on his face. The same calm.
The man in the chair wasn’t c
hained to it. There was nothing keeping him in place. He was free to run around like a rat attempting to avoid a snake, shouting and yelling at the injustice, and yet he did not. The only thing keeping him in the chair was his own shame.
Once the chief scientist for North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, he had overseen a test that had collapsed the mountain that contained it with the force of a magnitude seven earthquake, crushing hundreds, shattering years of developmental technology, and setting back Kim Jongun’s quest to be a nuclear power.
It wasn’t his fault. He’d told the command the risks when they wanted to test a hydrogen bomb. But that mattered little now.
The world debated why North Korea had paused its nuclear tests. Was it sanctions, the threat of violence on behalf of the United States, or was North Korea playing some level of 3D chess? The answer was more mundane: They simply couldn’t. Which made the Supreme Leader angry, leading to the application of blame.
Leading to the man in the chair.
This execution served a dual purpose, as it was testing a new form of nerve agent, one that became inert after an hour of exposure to the atmosphere. Something Kim Jongun wanted very badly.
Talking heads across the world theorized about North Korea’s nuclear ambition, but they consistently missed the point of why Jongun was working to achieve it. Nuclear weapons were a boogeyman only to the West, as there were plenty of ways to provide the same or greater deaths, and North Korea worked hard to achieve those goals as well. The world just didn’t seem to care about that.
North Korea had upward of five thousand tons of chemical and biological munitions—enough to ensure more deaths than any number of nuclear bombs could accomplish—but their use came at a cost, as, once fired, they made the terrain uninhabitable, just like nuclear weapons. Kim Jongun looked at the problem holistically, and wanted a solution. The nuclear program was designed to keep the United States from conducting a preemptive attack, something the chemical and biological weapons had inexplicably failed to do, but his end goal was a reunified Korean peninsula under his command. To do that, he needed to kill a great many people, breaking the back of the despised South Korean regime, but not in such a way that he couldn’t occupy the terrain afterward.
