To The Lions - 02 (4 page)

“It
pops when I open it,” Amando said, his lip quivering.

“Well,
I apologize for my temper.”

Amando
seemed surprised but pleased.
 
“Thank
you, señor.”

Xavier
retrieved the envelope and handed it to Amando.

“Is
there anything else, señor?”

Cocking
his eyebrow, Xavier asked, “The lady with you, she is your second wife?”

“Sí,
señor.”

“What
happened to your first wife?”

“We
divorced, señor.”

“Ah,”
Xavier said with a nod.
 
“It just didn’t
work out?”

Amando
narrowed his eyes.
 
“Sí, señor, something
like that.”

“I’d
advise you not to lie when I ask you this.”
 
Xavier waited with an open face until Amando nodded.
 
“That woman out there, your current wife…did
you have sexual relations with her
while
you were still married to your first wife?”
 
Xavier quickly spiked a finger into the air.
 
“Don’t lie, Amando, because I will know, and
there
will
be further retribution.”

Seeming
aghast at the line of questioning, Amando nodded.

“Very
good, Amando,” Xavier said.
 
“Well, since
you failed me, since I didn’t get what I wanted and, since I compensated you
and, since…well, I’m just in the mood, I’d like you to step out there and tell
your adulterous wife that I intend to make love to her.”

Amando’s
lips parted but no sound emerged.

“I
want her today.
 
Now
.”

“But…”

“Tell
her that I want her to be naked,” Xavier pointed to a decorative chaise covered
in wine velvet, “on that couch, right there, in precisely ten minutes.”
 
Xavier tilted his chin upward and studied the
small man.

“Señor,
are you…are you serious?” Amando asked, attempting to smile.

“I
never joke about making love.”

“But…but
she’s my wife.
 
I love her and how could
I ever explain such—”

Xavier
moved toe-to-toe, glaring down at the executive.
 
“The same way you convinced me you would get
me Navarro’s exact position, you little
gusano
.
 
The same way you convinced your first
wife that there was no one else until you left her high and dry for that woman
out there.”
 
Xavier’s voice had risen but
now he brought it back down.
 
“You’ve taken
twelve thousand euro from me, for shit, and the very least you can do is open
your wife to me, so I can regain some measure of satisfaction.”

Amando
trembled for a moment before whirling and vomiting in the same planter he’d
used to extinguish his cigarette.
 
Gripping the heavy edges of the gilded planter, he turned, a string of
saliva hanging from his pink lower lip.

Xavier
clicked his Breitling.
 
“You now have
exactly nine minutes to make your impassioned pitch.
 
And, when my timer runs out, she’d better be
on that couch, naked and willing.”
 

Motioning
Amando up, Xavier said, “C’mon, Amando, that blue suit is actually quite nice
and you’re getting puke on it.”
 
Once
Amando was standing, wavering, Xavier glanced at his watch.
 
“You’ve already pissed away thirty more seconds.
 
Oh, and if you start getting ideas that this
is some silly fool’s errand, and that I might forgive you if you fail to
convince her, you’d be wrong.
 
Along with
your home on that pathetic little hill at Pedralbes, I know about your son, the
cerebrito
, zit-faced mathematician
wannabe at Zaragoza…and your daughter, pre-med and promiscuous…in the event you
didn’t know…studying at the charming Universidad d’Oviedo.”
 
Xavier menacingly flashed his teeth.
 
“If you do not come through, they’ll be
getting visits from me.
 
And the
daughter’s visit with me will be lengthy, Amando, if you know what I mean.”

Amando’s
expression couldn’t have been more horrified if he was ordered to slice his own
throat with a razor.
 
With a glance at
his watch, Xavier coolly pronounced that seven minutes remained.
 
He called out to Amando when he reached the
double doors.
 
“Amando!
 
When she’s on the couch, I don’t want her
demurely covering herself.”
 
He lowered
his chin.
 
“
Ready
—and—
willing
.”

With
a resigned nod and tears on his cheeks, Amando disappeared.

* * *

Raeford,
North Carolina

At
that same moment, 4,232 miles away, Gage Hartline, hungry again, tore into a
late breakfast.
 
Having already doused it
with hot sauce, he forked an egg white omelet, briefly regretting his decision
to go with the healthier version of the incredible, edible egg.
 
Gage had flown in on the earliest flight out
of Dallas/Fort Worth and arrived in Raleigh ninety minutes before.
 
With only a tiny bag of salted peanuts in his
stomach, he sped straight to the Fort Bragg area without eating.

The
restaurant Colonel Hunter had suggested they meet at was known as PK’s Grill
& Pub.
 
The small restaurant was
unique because it was situated at the Raeford Parachute Center, one of the
busiest skydiving drop zones in the world.
 
Nestled a few miles from sprawling Fort Bragg, Raeford is a training center,
and recreation spot, for many of the world’s elite covert operatives.
 
Gage had spent many, many days training
here.
 
Back during Gage’s military
training, Raeford Parachute Center had been owned by the venerable Gene Paul
Thacker, a skydiving pioneer and legend who had recently passed away.

The
world was less interesting without good ol’ Gene Paul.

Despite
all the military, anyone could visit Raeford and enjoy themselves by watching the
bevy of skydivers.
 
And one would never
guess that a number of the jumpers are members of the Special Forces, Delta
Force, and all manner of shadowy operations that have hatched from the world’s
nest to special operations.

Skydiving
is an open, friendly community.
 
At
Raeford, it isn’t at all uncommon to find a group skydive populated by
civilians and military alike, their common bond being the hair-raising sport
they all share.

Inside
of three minutes, Gage finished his omelet and plain wheat toast, gulping down
his water as Colonel Hunter ambled back over.
 
Hunter had eaten before Gage had arrived and, just as Gage had sat down,
Hunter was summoned to a quiet corner of the restaurant by a
distinguished-looking older gentleman Gage didn’t know.

“Know
who that was?” Hunter asked, sitting back down and using a toothpick on his
teeth.

Gage
reached across the table, pointing to Colonel Hunter’s two uneaten pieces of
toast.

“Take
‘em.”

“Who
is he?” Gage asked before devouring the first piece of toast.

“Name’s
Harwood.
 
Was in Fifth Group in
‘Nam.
 
Had a helluva career.
 
Back when I was tabbed to assemble our team, Harwood
was in the running for the job.
 
We’d
jumped together before, out here actually, and also gone to a few schools
together.”
 
Colonel Hunter stared out the
window as a student flared high under canopy, tumbling to earth and performing
a nice parachute-landing-fall.
 
Hunter’s
voice became distant.
 
“Man, I thought
Harwood was gonna knife me the next time I saw him, judging by the way he
looked at me.”

“Jealous?”

“Bah,”
Hunter said, dismissing it.
 
“You know
how competitive it all was.
 
Soon after,
we got shipped off post, he went to the Pentagon, and that was the last I saw
of him.”

“And?”
Gage said, searching the table but finding no more food.

“Got
himself three stars up in D.C.
 
He was
just telling me about the paper war that went on after Crete.”

Gage
pulled in a breath through his nose at the mention of Crete.
 
He’d been a member of a special team,
commanded by Colonel Hunter, that had been designed to perform the blackest of
missions.
 
Once chosen, the members of
the team had assumed new identities and could not be officially traced back to
the United States.
 
For a number of years
the team had performed as designed—defusing potentially deadly situations
around the world.
 
It was not uncommon
for them to kidnap, to destroy and to kill, all in the interest of the United
States.

But
one blazingly hot day in June, on the rocky island of Crete, changed all
that.
 
Two children had died that day, and
with them died Colonel Hunter’s team.
 
The entire affair had been a regrettable accident, and truly not the
team’s fault.

But,
as usual when politicians are involved, someone had to take the fall.
 

Although
the government kept the team’s existence quiet, the team was scuttled and each
of its men censured.
 
Colonel Hunter was
ungraciously sent to his retirement.
 
Gage, like most of the others on the team, floundered.
 
Special operations were all he knew, and now
he practiced his skill privately.

“You
okay?” Hunter asked.

“Yeah,”
Gage said, shaking the memories of Crete from his head.
 
After years of torturing himself, he’d
learned to put it behind him.

“Anyway,
Harwood fought like hell for us up there in D.C.”

“You
believe him?”

“Yeah,
I do.
 
He’s a leathery old pecker…but,
then again, so am I.”

The
two men shared a smile.

Colonel
Hunter still looked like he could lead a platoon up a well-defended hill.
 
In his early sixties now, he was tall and
continued to wear his steely-gray hair well inside Army regulation
standards.
 
Hunter’s icy blue eyes and Oklahoman
accent fit perfectly with the man who men naturally wanted to follow.
 
He’d been toying with a salt shaker before
smacking it on the table.

“Get
enough to eat?”

“I
might have another omelet,” Gage said.
 
“While
I decide, want to tell me about this job?”

Colonel
Hunter glanced around.
 
Several members
of the Army’s precision skydiving team, the Golden Knights, were reviewing a
jump video in the corner.
 
A few
students, easily denoted by their hideous billowy jumpsuits, were up at the bar
buying Gatorade.
 
Otherwise, everyone
else was outside enjoying the mild late spring morning, jumping, preparing to
jump or watching the skydivers.

“Ever
heard of Los Soldados?” Hunter asked Gage.

“The
Soldiers?”

“It’s
a huge crime syndicate in Spain.”

“No.”

“Well…their
boss wants to hire you.”

Gage
tilted his head.
 
“Sir…”

“I
know,” Colonel Hunter said.
 
“But, from
what I was told by a person I trust implicitly, this fellow isn’t
all
bad.
 
And though I have no idea what he’s wanting you to do, he’s willing to
pay you ten grand, plus expenses, just to come
listen
to him.”

“Wow,”
Gage said, leaning back.

“Yeah.”

“In
Spain?”

“Yeah,
Catalonia.
 
That’s the state Barcelona’s
in.
 
Don’t know where you’ll meet, though.
 
They were cagey about that but they did
mention the Costa Brava.”

“And
this is all because you owe someone a favor?”

“Don’t
let that influence you.
 
I simply said
you were my best contact.
 
The decision’s
yours and it won’t bother me a bit if you don’t go.”

“Ten
grand,” Gage murmured.
 
“No catches?”

“Nope.
 
You can take his cash and walk if you want.”

“Northeast
Spain in May,” Gage said, glancing outside.

How
could Gage say no?

They
discussed the proposal for a half hour, with Gage learning little else than he’d
already been told.
 
They walked outside
just as Raeford’s Super Twin Otter roared into the warm air with a full load.