Janus pounded a fist into the side of the lab wall. Well, I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve and I intend to use them all before this is over. Two can play at the betrayal game.
Janus opened the sat-phone and dialed 411. When the operator answered, Janus asked for the office number of a congressman named Michael O’Donnell. He’d been a thorn in Blackman’s side for over a year now and Janus intended to make sure he became even more so in the not too distant future.
In fact, if Janus had anything to say about it, Blackman just might come down with a fatal dose of the congressman.
Whether it was the stress of the dangerous game he was playing with Blade, or whether it was the long journey through the jungle with very little sleep, he never knew, but Bear did something he’d never before done in all his years in service and as a mercenary — he fell asleep while on guard duty.
In his dreams, Bear, or Bobby Eddleman as he was known back in the real world, was standing before the casket containing his older brother, Virgil Eddleman, called Virg by his friends. Bobby had his arm around his nephew, Virgil’s son, who was named Victor.
His brother, a veteran of Vietnam as well as Afghanistan, had been killed in a firefight with rebels in the mountains on the Pakistani border. For his heroism, he’d been awarded the Silver and Bronze Stars but they’d done little to lessen the grief felt by Virgil’s wife, Patricia, and his son Johnny.
God, Bobby thought in his dream, is there anything more sad than a military funeral?
After the funeral, he walked with Pat and Victor to the long, black Cadillac limousine for the ride back to the funeral home.
Pat ushered Victor into the backseat and then stepped back, saying, “I’ve got to talk to Uncle Bobby for a minute, sweetie. I’ll just be a second.”
She shut the door and turned to face Bobby. “I heard from your commanding officer about the dishonorable discharge, Bobby.”
Bobby felt his face flare red. How the hell had she found out so soon? The discharge papers had come through less than a week ago. “Uh, I can explain that, Pat…”
She put her hand on his chest to stop him. “Bob, don’t bother.” She took a deep breath and continued, her eyes cast down at the pavement at her feet. “I know you loved Virgil more than life itself, and I suspect you feel the same way about little Victor…”
He nodded his head, his throat too choked up to talk, for he feared he knew what was coming.
“But, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you not to see or contact Victor again. I won’t have a man with a dishonorable discharge in his life, not after the sacrifice his father made for all of us.”
“But…”
“I’m sorry, Bob, but maybe when he’s older… when he can better understand the circumstances…”
Bobby didn’t let her finish. He just turned on his heel and walked away, toward the setting sun…
“Agghhh!” Bear cried, waking up from the dream to the steamy humidity of a southern Mexico dawn.
Though Bear hadn’t seen or talked to his nephew Victor or his sister-in-law Patricia since that day, one third of everything he’d earned as a mercenary had gone into a trust account to be used for Victor’s education or for whatever the boy wanted when he came of age.
Sometimes, when the going got rough, he gauged his actions on what he thought would make his brother Virgil or his nephew Victor proud of him, trying to do right in a world where the principles of right and wrong were subjective at best.
He rubbed sleep out of his eyes and peered down at the house through his binoculars. That’s strange, he thought. It’s almost dawn and there are no lights in the house and no sign of anyone moving around. Up to now, the two doctors had always been up just before dawn and on the trail at first light.
He doubted they’d been able to get up and get packed and not wake him up, because his years of combat had taught him to sleep very lightly and to awaken at the least sound out of the ordinary.
Still, his gut was telling him something about this just wasn’t right. He eased to his feet, drew his Glock, and made his way through the lightening sky down the hill to the house.
He moved around the corner to the rear and peeked in the window, seeing the same two sleeping forms in the bed that Jinx had.
He eased the door open and tiptoed over to the bed and put the barrel against one of the rounded lumps under the covers.
“Goddammit,” he exclaimed, throwing the covers back and revealing the two rolled-up blankets that had been used to trick them.
He whirled around and ran at full speed back up the trail to his camp. While shouting at the team to get their asses up, he rummaged in his pack until he found the GPS tracker and turned it on. He’d made another serious mistake, gotten complacent, and turned the damn thing off when they tracked the couple to the village.
While the tracker warmed up, he told the men how he’d gotten suspicious when the couple didn’t show up at dawn and how he’d discovered they weren’t in their house.
As the tracker finally came to life, he saw immediately that the device showed a faint blip almost five miles away moving through the jungle back toward the camp at the dig site.
Jinx yawned and looked over his shoulder. “Well, that was close, boss. Good thing you thought to check on them or they’d of been out of range ’fore we could track them.”
Psycho grinned around yellow, blackened teeth. “Yeah, won’t be no time at all ’fore we can catch up to ’em in the brush and take care of business.”
“Wait a minute. This doesn’t make sense.”
“What, boss?” Blade asked, trying his best to get back in Bear’s good graces.
“No man alive could sneak past me when I’m on sentry duty and especially not two civilians with no military training.”
“But what about the tracker, boss?” Jinx asked.
“It’s got to be a trick,” Bear said. He looked around and added, “Get geared up and get the camp broken down fast. I’m gonna take another look at the village and see what I can find out before we go off half-cocked running through the jungle.”
He turned and trotted back down the trail while his men hustled to get ready to go wherever they had to in order to catch the two doctors.
Bear circled the village and came up to the rear of the house the couple had slept in. He eased through the door and made sure none of their gear was still there. The cabin was bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.
He slipped out of the rear door and saw the trail heading down to the river. He decided to follow it.
When he got to the riverbank where the village boats were docked, he found every boat had been sabotaged. They all had gaping holes in their hulls.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, not caring if every person in the village heard him.
Chapter 33
The trip down through the rapids was so harrowing that Lauren screamed several times when huge boulders rushed at the prow of the boat only to slip just off the side at the last moment — usually more from luck than skill as Motzi and Mason paddled frantically, trying their best to control a craft that acted more like a wild beast than a riverboat.
Finally, when they reached calmer water, Mason called to Motzi, “Pull over there to the bank. I’ve got to rest and make a call.”
They eased the prow of the boat up onto the grassy shore and Lauren climbed out, shivering from the dowsing with river water she’d endured. Luckily, the sun was so hot that within minutes the water in her clothes was steaming as it evaporated off her.
Mason and Motzi followed her, pulling the boat far enough up on shore so the current wouldn’t rip it away from them.
Motzi grinned at Lauren, looking about five years old in his enthusiasm. “Mucho fun, eh, Doctor Lady?”