The headache came on halfway back to Washington. He hadn’t had one for an entire week. Merrick pressed his fingers into his temples, the pain so severe he felt dizzy. He had taken a handful of prescription pain relievers, but it hadn’t touched the shooting pain. It was a good thing he was sitting down.
He was on his third bottle of Glen Moray, but all that was doing was making him see double on top of everything else. But he continued to drink until the plane landed.
Because he was too drunk to drive, he took a cab to his apartment in Washington. He collapsed once he got inside, and ten hours later woke up on the floor to the aftereffects of too much whiskey and the tail end of the worst headache he’d had since he’d been diagnosed five months ago with a brain tumor.
The first thing on his agenda when he picked himself up off the floor was to phone his doctor. Paul was a personal friend, as well as a damn good surgeon.
“Sorry, Adolf, you’re not going to want to hear this, but your time is up.”
“Can’t you give me something for a few more weeks? I’m in the middle of a—”
“You’re always in the middle of something, Adolf. You’ve stalled long enough. You’re gambling with your life and I can’t be a party to that any longer.”
“But—”
“I’m admitting you today.”
“Not today.”
“Then tomorrow.”
“Give me two days.”
“Two days, then. Get your affairs in order, Adolf. Then I’ll expect to see you in my office at nine o’clock Thursday morning. If you don’t show, I’m washing my hands of you. Those headaches are a warning. And they’ll keep getting worse. You said this one was bad, but it’ll seem like a walk in the park compared to the next and the next.”
Feeling worse was hard to imagine. “All right, Paul. Day after tomorrow. Nine o’clock, your office.”
When he hung up, he sat down and made a list of what had to be done before he admitted himself into the hospital. Sly was somewhere in the Greek Isles with Eva, and couldn’t be reached.
I’ll be found when I want to be found, Merrick. When there’s a good enough reason to come back.
For the time being there was no reason for Sly to return to Washington. Pierce was in Hungary and Ash in Mexico. That left Jacy. The half Blackfoot Indian was recuperating in the mountains in Montana. But while he was sitting on his ass drinking green tea there was no reason why he couldn’t become Bjorn’s controller.
His decision made, he headed for his office to see to the details, and by late afternoon, he was in the air again, his plane headed for Big Sky country.
“Are you sure that Jacy Madox is going to let us bring all this equipment into his house? I heard he’s kind of funny about people trespassing on his turf. Heard he was once in the Hells Angels or something like that.”
“They call it territorial,” said Vic Krandle, dusting a piece of lint off his dress pants. He was one of Onyxx’s top physical therapists, but he was also a connoisseur of fashion. “And up here they don’t call what he lives in a house. It’s a log cabin, right, Merrick? Most likely a twelve-by-twelve with an outhouse out back. Which brings up the question of how we’re going to fit all this equipment in such a small space.”
“You’ll have to make it fit” was Merrick’s answer.
“I heard he’s one of those loner types,” Tommy the technician said, pulling his stocking cap lower over his ears. “The kind of guy you don’t want to piss off or feed red dye number sixteen to.”
Merrick glanced over his shoulder to the two men he’d brought with him to transform Jacy Madox’s mountain cabin into a high-tech information center. Thirty minutes ago they had landed the plane at the nearest airstrip, then climbed into a helicopter.
Merrick was hopeful that this was going to work. Bjorn and Jacy were as close as brothers, and he intended to use that to his advantage. Even in a wheelchair Jacy was mentally up for the challenge. In fact it would be good for him—get him back into the swing of things.
The last mission had left Jacy with his knee blown to bits. Five surgeries later the prognosis wasn’t outstanding, but he still had his leg.
He’d called Jacy and told him he was flying in today to see him. He’d made it sound like it was a social call—his commander checking up on one of his rat fighters.
“There, sir. I see it. Down there, in the trees.”
They had just come over a mountain range of treetops covered in snow. Merrick saw Two Medicine Lake, the landmark Jacy had given him. The cabin was a hundred yards back from the frozen water. The area was surrounded by giant pine trees, and there was one lone road leading up to it. But it was the kind of road that only an all-terrain vehicle would be able to maneuver.
The cabin was bigger than he had envisioned. It wasn’t anything elaborate, but it wasn’t a one-room shack with a couch that converted into a bed, either. Merrick smiled over that—the six boxes were going to fit just fine. A coil of smoke drifted from a rock chimney and there was a black pickup parked not far from the back door. He motioned for the pilot to take the helicopter down—there had to be a flat piece of ground somewhere.
This is the middle of nowhere, sir,” Vic said.
“Just the way Jacy likes it” was Merrick’s reply. “How’s he going to take us dropping in?” Tommy asked.
“We’ll know soon enough.” Merrick noted the worried looks exchanged between the two men.
“Maybe you should call him and tell him not to shoot us before he knows who we are.”
“He knows I’m coming,” Merrick assured them.
“But what about us?” Tommy asked. “Did you mention us?”
Merrick grinned. “You’re part of my surprise. You and those six boxes of equipment.”
“Shit,” Tommy said.
“Double shit,” Vic Krandle muttered.
He might be an asshole, but Nadja was being a royal bitch, Bjorn thought. She had refused to tell him the exact location of Holic’s hideout—the one she claimed she could find in the dark, drunk—her excuse being that once he knew the particulars he wouldn’t need her anymore and he’d ditch her.
Not only had she refused to talk about Holic, but she had refused to talk to him altogether, saying that she was too exhausted at the moment to think clearly. That she hadn’t slept well the night before and could use a nap before they landed.
She was either playing a game with him, or she’d lied through her teeth about where they would find Holic. He couldn’t believe she would lie to get on this mission, but he would never underestimate a woman who carried a custom-made .45 under her skirt.
She had reclined her seat and closed her eyes soon after telling him he needed more patience. No, what he needed
