Unacceptable Risk (3 page)

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.

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."

The house that actually contained reflections of his life, aside from his now-ruined mountain cabin, stood just across the street from the ocean. The mask he wore wouldn't fool anyone within ten feet into thinking it was natural skin and a real beard, but then he never stopped outside the garage and he had never met his neighbors. They had taken to peering out their windows in curiosity, but that was about it. He was in the place at most two or three nights a week, a function of traveling and the fact that there was a sleep room at the office. No one but his closest family members and Jill, his ex-lover and office manager, and the occasional maintenance man that she hired had ever been inside this house.

The condo known to Anna was tastefully decorated by a professional and it took some doing to make it appear lived in, but it really contained nothing of himself. Walking through, a person could learn only about the fictitious man the decorator had in mind. Sam felt slightly guilty that Anna had never seen his real home, though she knew his real name and had regularly been inside his offices—something few people had done. The current focal point of their relationship was his insistence on anonymity. Whenever they went someplace together in pubic, which was rare, he played the contract security man, an Anna Wade bodyguard, and seldom looked much like himself. The secrecy his work required was becoming a serious irritation for Anna, but Sam didn't have a ready solution.

At the heavy metal front door to his house Sam placed his finger on a small opaque window and his eyeball before another. It was the same security he had at the office. With a slight buzzing sound heavy bolts opened and he entered his house. When he was inside, he repeated the process to reset the alarm to the "stay" mode.

Indoors it was the usual 68 degrees Fahrenheit, cool enough to work out. He waved at Jill through the closed-circuit TV monitor in his living room, then turned it off. The place was comfortable but decidedly male. The furniture was soft leather with the exception of one embroidered rocker with a handwoven outdoor scene.

A stand with seven pipes stood on a small coffee table between two chairs and one cigar humidor. Once in a while he filled a pipe but usually preferred cigars.

A wooden case the size of two large refrigerators held photos, mostly of his late son, Bud. One showed Bud alive and athletic and triumphant on the face of a mountain of rock known as El Capitan in Yosemite; others were of him climbing at Castle Crags, parasailing in Mexico, and taking part in quieter activities, many with Sam. Most of Sam's past girlfriends were there, including Suzanne, now also dead, and Jill. The shots of Jill and him were hugging-and-giggling shots that told of a different day and a different relationship. But Jill was still important to him, so he left the photos in their place, figuring that they didn't need to go in a box until a permanent companion came along—an event that probably wasn't too far off. The tough decision would be whether to leave them in their place the first time he brought Anna Wade here.

But there were some photos that would definitely remain. They included photos of Chet, Jill's high-school boy, whose father was her ex and was now dead from alcoholism. Chet had suffered from a nerve disease, but aside from an impediment to running, the boy was all there. Chet was smart and an encyclopedia when it came to weapons. Sam wasn't much interested in guns except as an occupational necessity, but he was interested in the boy.

Sam picked up the portable phone and pushed memory.

"Hey, Chet, how's it goin'?"

"Sam."

"You haven't told anybody about me, have you?"

"You ask me that every time. Of course I haven't."

"I'm obsessed. You wanna go shooting on Christmas break?"

"Yeah. I wanna try the Desert Eagle Fifty caliber."

"Huh?"

"It's all in the grips. You said so yourself. I can do it."

"What are we gonna do? Tie you to a refrigerator?"

"It has ports to reduce the kick."

"My arms are an inch shorter since I shot that. You want arms an inch shorter?"

"I've already got short legs, might as well have arms to match."

Sam laughed.

"Okay. But if I go shooting, you gotta promise to go fish ing."

"Fishing? You mean it?"

"Absolutely. And we'll invite the girl next door."

"Oh no. That would be too embarrassing."

"Hey, I can't turn her down now. I already told her that your mom and I would take her fishing when I take you. Man, was she excited."

"Are you kidding me? You never talked to her. You wouldn't do that."

"Well, I looked about seventy years old at the time—with a beard. I'm your new god-grandfather for this trip. That's like a godfather, only old."

"Can I call you Sam so I don't forget like before?"

"You bet. Sam the god-grandfather. Absolutely."

"Sheees."

"How's the homework?"

"Good. Real good."

After a little more chit chat, Sam hung up, smiling at the boy's zest for life.

Off the living area was a hall to the two bedrooms and a large kitchen. Sam cooked slowly and with great deliberation. For him cooking was art and he liked to replicate things he'd seen in restaurants, but with his own twist. Cooking with a woman in this kitchen, for the first time, would be like making love on his bed.

Suzanne had been only the second woman he'd loved to the point of commitment, but they'd been together in France and the relationship had been cut short by her death. Rachel, his first and only wife, had long preceded Sam's purchase of this house. He sat down in his leather chair and called Anna on her cell. No answer. She was no doubt in the shower at his showplace condo. Sometimes she liked long showers.

Sam knew he was crazy and that most normal people came out of their inner shell in their late teens. He told his close friends that this terrible aloofness didn't worry him, although lately he was beginning to feel a bit like a middle-aged woman whose biological clock was ticking. From day to day his feelings seemed to change on the subject of fatherhood, and if Sam had a source of conflict that wasn't associated with the mess of his father's suicide, then this was it.

Built-in cherry bookcases contained Sam's personal book collection, weighted toward true-life exploration and adventures of all sorts, including the classics like Darwin's
The Voyage of the Beagle.
Sam liked reading about presidents. He didn't want the job but had plenty of books on the subject. His favorite topic was Indian history and that was evident both in the books and the storage cabinets on the other wall. Along that wall, also in cherry, were numerous drawers of the sort that one would use to store large nautical charts or maps that one wished to keep unfolded and flat In Sam's case they contained maps and parchments of historic and modern Native American villages and ceremonial sites along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to Mexico and inland throughout the western states. It was one of the best private collections in existence.

Everywhere hung Native American memorabilia. One of Grandfather's ceremonial headdresses hung in the corner. There was the Cherokee blessing on the wall and likewise the Tilok blessing. He had all manner of ceremonial peace pipes and pictures of famous Native American leaders, from Chief Seattle to Geronimo.

Near the coffee table lay Grandfather's favorite moccasins. Sam's mother, Keyatchker, aka Spring, teared up every time she saw them. Sam's regular and favorite chair was a big leather affair with an ottoman sitting under a massive lamp whose base was made of carved oak. Grandfather had carved it on one of his pilgrimages to the caverns in the mountains. Sam cherished it because so much of his grandfather was in the wood that had been held in his hands and molded by his knife. It was an eagle with its wings spread. Sam's Indian name was Kalok, which meant "eagle."

Sam sat in his chair and Harry promptly jumped in his lap and settled in. On the coffee table was a baseball mitt that had belonged to his son, Bud. Some days Sam would pick it up and put his hand in it. Today he studied the old leather mitt and noticed that it needed oil. There was still an ache in him that felt like it would split him open when he thought about Bud. It had been four years. Today he would not put on the glove and feel the leather that his son had touched. It seemed unholy to mix love with the rage he felt at Gaudet. Attachments were hard because the world carried no guarantees of their permanence. Bud was gone, Grandfather was gone, and Suzanne was gone—and now Paul as well, one of his best friends.

Sam also kept memorabilia from the period before he had learned that he was a Tilok. There were pictures of him with his father in Alaska, a long-ago life that ended with Sam's discovery at age twenty-one that he was half Tilok with a living mother he had never met. All his life he'd been told that his mother was a mestizo, a whore, a drunk, and dead.