took several steps back, then pulled the whip from his belt, and unrolled it.
He raised and snapped it, the crack soft in the dense forest. The rawhide whip caught the bundle, ruined a few, but had a good hold. He yanked. It tore free and dropped to the ground.
“Like roping a calf,” he muttered, crossing to the cluster and ripping off a banana.
He peeled and ate, then checked his GPS. A couple more miles to the meet, he figured, then glanced the way he’d come, pulling the shotgun over his shoulder to aim with one hand. “Come on, Max, show yourself.”
“Don’t shoot, my mom will be pissed at you.” Max Renfield strolled into the open, splashed through the stream. A slung Uzi bounced against his side, and he stopped a few feet from him.
“Go away.”
“You like pissing off all of us at once?”
“I don’t need backup.”
“Yeah, sure, and if I was someone else?”
“You’d have a hole in your head. I could hear you a mile back. You tromp like my dad’s prize bull.”
Max shrugged, not the least bit ashamed that he lacked the quintessential silent-and-deadly skills. “I’m not Recon, just the go-to guy.”
“Then go-to somewhere else.”
Max’s lips tightened. “You need me, two heads are better.”
“Like we have a clue where the bastard is, or the diamonds?” Sam offered a banana.
“He’s here, we know that much.” Max squatted, removed his pack, and fished in his gear. “And the next buyer.” Max pulled out a small packet, tore it open, and squeezed peanut butter onto the banana.
Sam shook his head, amused. All former military, Dragon One was a retrieval team for hire, and Max was logistics and supply. A damn good mechanic, he could find food and equipment where no one else would look, and amazingly, knew where he was without a compass. A GPS had nothing on him.
Max shoved a wad of banana and peanut butter in his mouth and Sam thought, the guy’s a bottomless pit, never without some chow.
“You were right. Happy?”
Sam sat, his back against a tree. “That I missed the jet? No. Rohki’d be dead if I’d found him.” He was the only one close enough to have shot Riley at that range.
Yet word was out that the diamonds were for sale and the Sri Lankan government’s threat—that anyone dealing with the Tigers or anyone else for the stones would end up in a cell in Welikada Prison—wasn’t much of a deterrent. Just the image of that hellhole should be, but there was enough intel traffic in the Congo, Sierra Leone, and Angola to know that more than one terrorist group has stones mined on the backs of babies.
Evidently, someone had found a large geode and was hot to sell.
Sam would get the stones back and find their intended purpose. He had a sneaking suspicion it was Turkish missiles, made in the USA. Buying the stones off the market was still an option. Well, they hadn’t planned to actually buy them in the first place. Confiscate was a better word. If all else failed, then they’d fork over the cash. Riley had developed a plan to intercept the cash too. It made no sense to take the stones off the black market and give the assholes the money they needed to buy weapons.
But the dam break destroyed that and everything else in its path. Which meant they had to start from scratch.
“If Rohki had washed up in the debris from the flood, this still wouldn’t be over. Pisses me off they got in the air so fast.” He arrived in time to see the small jet cross the sky.
“We had other priorities.”
They were both quiet for a moment, Sam thinking of Riley hooked up to tubes, and a machine helping him stay alive.
Max broke the silence. “Someone paid to get the jet off the ground ASAP. No customs search, and no manifest. Who’s got that kind of pull? Never mind, forget I said that,” he added at Sam’s sarcastic look.
“Aside from the fact that the stones are worth millions, and those were just the ones we tracked, Al Qaeda has cells all over the place.” Add the Thai mafia, the Chinese–Thai Chiu Chow mafia, gunrunners, drug cartels, prostitution, and human trafficking. “There’s plenty to choose from around here.”
“We go nosing in their business, it’s going to get really hairy.”
Sam waved that off. “We find Rohki, we find the stones and the weapons,” he said, climbing to his feet.
“You plan on beating it out of him?”
“For starters.” He wanted Rohki to pay—so bad he could taste it.
Max stuffed the leftover bananas in his pack and stood. “Your confidence overwhelms me.”
“Nowhere to go but up.”
And the climb would be tough. This meeting was the easy way to Rohki. And risky. Jumping in bed with the Thai mafia gangs would get him inside fast. Finding the jet, the manifest, anything on the dealers from the locals was…hell, it’d be easier to open a can with a fork. Behind him, Max adjusted his pack and knew Sam was taking this far too personal. A damn good reason to be close. Sam had a tendency to seek the quickest and most deadly route into a situation. “Lead the way, I got your back.”
Sam stopped, let out a sigh, and after a moment said, “Thanks, Max. For showing up.”
Max smiled widely. “Man, bet that had to hurt.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re welcome. One of us has to be smart. And for a flyboy, you weren’t easy to trace.”
“Yeah, but you were.” Sam walked, hacking through the jungle. “Let’s find this snitch.”
Max withdrew his machete, spied a palm, then cut a thick frond. He drank the sweet liquid from the stalk as they walked.
“Quit eating the damn flora,” Sam said. “You’re leaving a trail.”
The southbound train from Udon Thani wasn’t the fastest way to the next stop in Ayutthaya, but it was certainly colorful. Viva cradled the box, watching the scenery roll by. The river paralleled the trains, another line, a bit more modern on the opposite side. They ran so often it was more productive to have both in each direction. Her side was more scenic, like a throwback in time. Rural, vast stretches of jungle between cities so modern, they put the US to shame. Yet here, clusters of villages lined the river and jungle, wood homes on stilts half on the water. Children played despite the threat of crocs, snakes, and the really gross water monitor lizards.
At the dig, she’d had one crawl into her bed during the night and settle warmly against her back, till she rolled over and squashed it. She cringed at the memory, and braced her feet on the empty seat across from hers. To say the express train was the no-frills version was an understatement. Another train with all the comforts ran later, and as much as she’d have enjoyed air-conditioning, this felt adventurous. Warm wind poured through the open
