‘“I want to hire you,” I told him. “Everyone I have spoken to tells me you are the best personal protection guy out there.”
‘He just sat there looking at me. I’m sure you all know the Zeb look.’
A loud shout of assent in the hall.
Matthew takes a sip of water.
‘I got him to talk somehow, or rather, he got me to talk and laid down the rules for working with him. Yes, me, Hollywood superstar, toeing his line. It was galling, I tell you, but my agent said I had no choice. Not if I was going to take those threats seriously.
‘Zeb was my personal protector for three years, travelled with me all over the world, and saved me from a katana-wielding stalker in Tokyo, who just pounced on us when I was having dinner with my cast. That was some weird shit. Here we were having dinner in Tokyo’s finest, the restaurant empty save for the cast, and then this guy bursts in through the door, yelling and shouting, waving a giant sword, nearly taking the director’s head off. The guy jumped on my table, and then Zeb showed up, there was a blur, and next thing I know, the guy was hog-tied and Zeb was calmly sampling my dinner.’
His voice chokes.
‘That was Zeb. He could slow time down. He taught me not to take myself seriously. That the world would not be permanently misshapen just because I was no longer in it.
‘I have dined with presidents, met the Pope, romanced the most beautiful women in the world, but I have, I had, only one brother. Major Zebadiah Carter.’
A pin-drop silence and then a roar of applause washes over all of them. Connor notices that there is hardly a dry eye in the room, including his.
Much later, when they have sampled the hors d’oeuvres and Rory has spent time with Broker, Roger and Bwana, they make their way toward Cassandra, who is holding court in front of a long table.
The table has his ribbons and medals laid out: Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, a Medal of Honor — the stories behind the medals; a silver tankard, which Broker tells him is the Wimbledon Cup for long-range rifle shooting; and various commendations and certificates. At the other end of the table are a few photographs, Anne and Lauren gravitating toward them.
Mark, Connor and Rory look over the awards, reading the stories behind them, and move slowly to the photographs. He notices a curious stillness in the women, breaks off from the medals, and joins them.
There aren’t many photographs. Just a few faded ones of Zeb when he was serving, a couple of them in either Afghanistan or Iraq or some dusty, sun-bathed land.
What has captured the women is a photograph in the center.
A clean-shaven, dark-haired handsome man, smiling, holds a beautiful woman in his arms, both of them clasping a young boy — one of those pictures that arrests anyone by its vitality and grace.
Cassandra, her voice sounding far away, explains, ‘He didn’t tell anyone. Even here, less than a handful know — Broker, Bear, Chloe, one or two others, but no one else. He and his family were captured by terrorists when he was between assignments. His wife and son were tortured and killed in front of him. He couldn’t do anything to help them.’
Chapter 20
He places the walnut stock of the M40 against his cheek, feels its familiarity settle in his hands, and sights down the rifle. The closed window of the apartment in a towering block opposite the street jumps out at him through his Leupold scope.
Broker and he have come to Rio hunting for Quink Jones, the last of the Rogue Six. He hasn’t been that easy to locate.
Broker was able to trace him fleeing to Europe when Zeb took down Mendes, first touchdown at Amsterdam and then in Zurich, and after that the trail went cold. He had cajoled his databases, hacked into the most secure NSA systems, Interpol, everything that he could hack into, and still no sign of Jones. It was clear that Jones had realized the Rogue Six had a short shelf life and had decided to put some distance between Holt and himself.
However, no one could disappear like that, and his vanishing act gnawed away at Broker. Over a drink with Roger and Bwana, Bwana had joked, ‘It’s as if the critter has a new life,’ and Broker had stared at him.
‘Of course, that’s it. The one thing Switzerland has, other than banks, is cosmetic surgeons. Jones has a new face and new identity.’
After that it wasn’t that difficult for Broker.
Cosmetic surgeons in Switzerland who provided this service to terrorists, dictators, and assassins were not exactly thick on the ground. Armed with a reference from Clare, who was more than happy to make the hunt an agency one, the three of them had visited six clinics in Switzerland and at the last one had picked up the trail again.
Jones, with a new face and identity, had been renting an apartment in Copacabana, on Rua Paula Freitas, in a high-rise, the last few months. He had been leading a paranoid’s life, seldom venturing from his apartment, and when he did, he moved erratically, seemingly without any plan — deliberately.
Broker and Bwana had spent a couple of weeks surveilling him and had then rented the apartment in the opposite high-rise, a little higher than Jones’s but having a great view of his window.
The long gun was the easiest to get.
Broker’s contacts in Rio had delivered an M40, with a sleek, warm walnut finish that felt as if it belonged in Bwana’s hands. A few days shooting and zeroing and they were good to go.
He has one shot at Jones, a window of opportunity of a minute at the most, when the target wakes up in the morning, pulls wide the curtains of his glass window overlooking the street twenty floors below, and spends exactly fifty seconds surveying the street.
This is the one thing he does regularly as clockwork every day in the otherwise unpredictable life he leads.
That window of opportunity is enough.
Bwana has taken more difficult shots than this, in more hostile environments than Rio de Janeiro. There was the one in Iraq where he had to take out a Taliban insurgent and had less than thirty seconds when the insurgent rolled down the window of his car to get some fresh air.
Zeb had been with him in Iraq.
The rifle is mounted on a tripod on a flatbed, well inside the apartment so that the muzzle flash will be undetectable from the outside or opposite.
He stops his mind from wandering, the clock running down in his head. He breathes deeply, slowing down his pulse, slows down his breathing, and makes life fade.
At exactly ten to eight in the morning, the curtains opposite and below are pulled open, and Jones’s skinny frame fills the window and his scope.
Bwana waits two seconds to reconfirm the identity, and on the third second he sends the 7.62X51mm NATO round on its mission and sees Jones’s head taken apart a couple of seconds later. As the body staggers back, he sends another two rounds through the center mass just to be sure.
He disassembles the rifle swiftly, yet unhurriedly, places it in a custom-made guitar case, wipes out all traces of his existence in the empty apartment, locks it behind him, and takes the elevator down.
At street level, he becomes one with the early morning rush, many heading to the beach, even at this hour.
Broker is smoking a cheroot, watching Brazilian ass go by, smartly dressed as usual, leaning against an anonymous saloon, when Bwana walks up to him.
‘Grade A,’ he says, waving the cheroot, and Bwana knows he isn’t referring to the cheroot.
Bwana grins, nods at Broker’s unasked question, stows the guitar case away in the trunk, and they set off.