“Get in the goddamn kitchen,” he shouted. “Not you,” he added quickly into the phone. “All you should be worried about is finding out where that damn plane went.”
The tiger roared. Meltzer cursed and bounced the phone off the tiger’s head. It jerked back, blinked and scrambled into the kitchen. Meltzer quickly pulled the door shut and wedged what was left of the chair under it.
He stared at the door for a moment and then tried to smooth his hair down. He cinched his tie and took a breath. Calm blue ocean, he thought. Calm blue ocean, soft sand, happy place. Hugo, go to your happy place.
His happy place was getting harder and harder to find, the longer he worked for Byron Cloud. Cloud was an immature psychopath, as rich as Croesus, with all the common sense of a particularly stupid and self-indulgent child. Meltzer was certain that working for Cloud was causing him to go prematurely gray, not to mention giving him an ulcer. He’d chased after Cloud for five years and considered shooting him at least twice a week. But the money was good and Cloud was generous when he remembered that actual humans were working for him. Which wasn’t often.
So, when Meltzer had heard that Byron’s big mouth had finally gotten him into the sort of trouble you didn’t get out of, limbs intact, he’d known it was time to renegotiate his contract. It had seemed simple. Grab Cloud and turn him over to the highest bidder.
Only somebody else had had the same idea. He looked around, taking in the bullet holes and spent grenade canisters. Whoever the guy was, he knew how to party. He’d played it sneaky right up to the penthouse when he’d gone straight to savage. Bodies were stacked in the corridor outside and the carpet was soaked in blood, which was a shame because it had been expensive.
He caught sight of a bullet-torn painting and winced. He covered his eyes and turned away. He’d spent weeks finding that painting. It really tied the whole room together. It even matched the damn tiger. He looked up at the ceiling. “I’m being punished, aren’t I? I’m in Hell right now, because that’s the only way I can explain this.”
Meltzer kicked a broken table, sending the pieces clattering across the tiles.
The day wasn’t going well. Then, his career hadn’t exactly turned out the way he’d hoped. He’d bounced from the military to the private sector fast enough to give him whiplash, and the one wasn’t turning out any better than the other. “I should have been a dentist,” he muttered.
He’d sent some of his best men—well, they were capable, at least—to grab Cloud from the airfield. There were only so many places a helicopter could land without attracting attention, and given the way the kidnapper had torn through the place, Meltzer had been fairly certain he wasn’t intending to fly commercial. Cloud also had a tracking chip inside a false tooth. It was more of that spy bullshit Cloud liked to play with, but it was coming in handy now.
Meltzer patted his coat pocket. The miniature GPS unit was about the size of a mobile phone. As long as Cloud was somewhere in the immediate hemisphere, they could find him.
He was tempted to dig it out, but he already knew what it would tell him—Cloud was in the air, heading God alone knew where. And all thanks to one asshole in black fatigues.
There was no telling who their visitor had been, or who he was working for, but the helicopter’s destination put up a few red flags. Were the Feds renting out that airfield to some other concern? The guy, whoever he’d been, was nasty enough to work for any number of groups. They’d caught him on several security cameras, but Meltzer hadn’t watched the footage yet. From what he’d been told, their visitor went through the unlucky bastards on duty like a buzz saw on two legs.
Meltzer wanted a cigarette. He’d given them up when he’d started working for Cloud, and the cravings hadn’t gotten any easier. He was looking forward to that first cigarette almost as much as the expression on Cloud’s face when he turned him over to whoever paid up first.
There was a raft of eager bidders. When word filtered up through the back channels that Cloud was about to experience an extraordinary rendition, thanks to that deal with the Nigerians, Meltzer had decided to seize the moment. He’d contacted a dozen of Cloud’s regular clients, all of whom were anonymous—their identities hidden behind encrypted lines and voice scramblers—and made his pitch, which had essentially boiled down to “Give me money, and I give you Cloud. Don’t give me money, and I let the Americans have him.” They had quickly made a counteroffer: “Give us Cloud, and we’ll pay you. Don’t, and we kill you.”
In retrospect, it hadn’t been his smartest play.
Glass crunched behind him and he turned. A group of men who’d been the elite of Cloud’s security forces, up until about three hours ago, had come into the apartment. All were armed. “Is the little shit dead?” one of the men, a scar-faced ex-marine named Horowitz, asked. He sounded hopeful. “Did they get him?”
Horowitz was a meathead and a troublemaker with attitude issues that probably should have been dealt with when he’d been a kid. He was a constant pain in Meltzer’s posterior and had been since he’d been hired.
“No such luck.” Sippo grunted. An older, gray-headed thug, Sippo had a Ph.D. The book smarts hadn’t stopped him from stuffing enough cocaine up his nose to kill an elephant and they sure hadn’t helped when he’d turned to armed robbery to finance said cocaine habit. Now he was a rent-a-thug with a bald spot and a face like a strip of jerky.
“No,” Meltzer said. “They got him on a plane. He’s gone.”
“How?” Horowitz demanded. “You sent a truckload of our guys over there!”
“Oh, they got a flat tire,” Meltzer said. He rolled his eyes. “How do you think? Somebody shot them. All of them. The same somebody who busted in here and did this.” He waved a hand at the room around him.
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know, he didn’t exactly introduce himself,” Meltzer said. “He’s a damn sight more effective than us, I’ll say that for him.” He surrendered to a moment of grudging admiration for the kidnapper. Whoever he was, the man had accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. It wouldn’t stop him from shooting the guy, if he ever got the chance, but Meltzer could give credit where it was due.
“Oh, damn it,” Horowitz said. He threw up his hands in exasperation. “What do we do now? Huh?” Horowitz had never been the patient sort.
Meltzer turned the bullet-riddled couch back over and flopped down onto it. “Give me a minute. I need to think.”
“Man, we don’t have time to think,” Horowitz said. “We need to go. The jihadists ain’t going to be happy with us. Or any of the others, for that matter. And who do you think they’re going to take that unhappiness out on, huh?” He gestured sharply. “Us, that’s who.” He looked around and heads nodded sagely in agreement, Sippo included. “We’ve got to do something. Maybe we can bargain with them. Buy our way out of the situation.”
Meltzer shivered slightly, as if the temperature in the room had dropped. He looked around, seeing hard faces and pitiless eyes. If it came down to it, Horowitz, Sippo and the others would turn him over to Cloud’s angry clients if they thought it would buy them a few more days. He couldn’t blame them, but all the same, he wasn’t looking forward to it.
He let his hand drift to the weapon holstered under his arm. It was his burden; a Mauser C-96. The pistol had been a gift from Cloud, though
