“It’s clean,” Carpenter said.
Yeah, okay, he thought.
The waiter returned with the drinks, placed them on the table, and after asking if they wanted a menu and receiving a curt “no” from Carpenter, stepped out and shut the door behind him.
Shaw took a sip of the whisky, savoring the heat of the rye and the mellow caramel finish, and nodded in approval. He returned the glass to the table and turned his full attention to Carpenter, who cut right to the chase.
“Miles isn’t playing around. He wants Hayes.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Shaw said.
“Okay, he knows about the deal, knows you gave him six months to make a decision.”
Shit. How?
“Not relevant,” Carpenter said, reading his mind. “What is relevant is that right now you are in the way.”
“So, Miles sent you here thinking I’d tell you where Hayes was for old times’ sake? C’mon, Mike, you know me better than that.”
“Listen, Levi, I get it,” Carpenter said, leaning across the table, his eyes deadly serious. “Hell, part of me even respects what you did, but it’s time to pick a side. Not tonight, not tomorrow, but right now.”
Dammit.
If it had been any of the other directors who ruled the CIA from the seventh floor sitting before him, Shaw would have told them to fuck off and never lost a wink of sleep. But Mike Carpenter hadn’t risen to the number two man at the Agency because he was a bureaucrat. No, the only papers he’d ever pushed were the toe tags he’d handed out wholesale during the past twenty years of the war on terror.
“He won’t come in easy.”
“Why do you think I’m here?” Carpenter asked, leaning back in his chair.
Fuck.
“When is his next check-in?” Carpenter asked.
“Twenty-four hours,” Shaw lied.
“Fine. If he’s not back stateside in forty-eight, it’s game over, understood?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Good,” Carpenter said, getting to his feet.
He dropped a few bills on the table and started for the door, pausing just short of the knob. He turned back to the table.
“And Levi, one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t go anywhere.”
13
MOGADOR
Hayes knew the moment he launched himself from the dock that he’d shorted the jump. Knew that instead of landing gracefully onto the deck, he was going to hit the side.
Shit.
His chest slammed into the hull, the impact blasting the air from his lungs and tearing the pistol from his hand. The STI went cartwheeling through the air and Hayes reached up for the gunwale, kicking his legs, desperate to find a toehold.
But the hull was slick, and he couldn’t get a grip. He was falling, grip weakening, boots sliding closer toward the dishwater-gray surface of the sea.
Get your ass up there, the voice ordered.
Summoning the last of his strength, Hayes managed to hoist his armpits over the edge, relieving the pressure on his slipping grip and, once secure, kicking his leg over the edge. Hooking the lip with his toe, he hoisted himself up and over.
He crashed onto the deck, rolled onto his back, and was trying to catch his breath when there was an angry shout from the pilothouse.
“Who the fuck is that?”
Hayes staggered to his feet, spied the STI wedged underneath a crate on the far side of the deck. But before he had a chance to recover it, four angry sailors were blocking his path.
Can this day get any worse?
“Captain, it’s him,” one of the men shouted in Arabic. “The one they are looking for.”
“Kill him,” came the reply.
“Guys, can we talk about this?” Hayes asked.
“Afraid not,” the man said, pulling a wicked-looking blade from the small of his back.
The rest of the sailors were quick to arm themselves with whatever was lying around on the deck—junkyard weapons—a lead pipe, a length of chair, and something that looked like a small harpoon.
“Look, I’ve got this anger thing that I’m working on,” Hayes said, hands open in front of him, “and I’m really trying to make it through the rest of the day without killing anyone else . . .”
But the man with the knife wasn’t interested in talking and slashed at his head, forcing Hayes to where the man with the section of lead pipe stood waiting.
Well, I tried.
While Hayes was fully capable of killing with a knife or a garrote, he’d been trained to avoid getting too close to his target. Putting himself into a position where he could be identified—or worse, shot. In his world, a fair fight was to be avoided at all cost. Which was why Hayes spent so much time and energy stalking his prey—analyzing his target’s every move.
Always waiting. Always watching.
Until it was time to take that one perfect shot.
But a street fight was an entirely different story and, outnumbered four to one, Hayes knew that the only way he was going to survive was by inflicting the maximum amount of damage in the minimum amount of time.
The man with the knife tried to stick him in the side, but Hayes landed a hard ridge hand to his throat that dropped him to his knees. Before the man with the harpoon had a chance to strike, Hayes rolled across the deck, snatching the STI from beneath the crate.
He came up in a crouch, snapped the pistol onto target, and just like a day on the range, engaged the targets from left to right.
By the time the last expended shell hit the deck, the men were all dead.
“So, what do you say there, Cap’n?” he said, turning the pistol on the openmouthed man standing in the pilothouse. “Feel like a swim?”
* * *
—
An hour later Hayes cut the engines, grabbed his bag, and stepped out onto the deck. To say the meeting with Luca had not gone according to plan was the understatement of the year. Hayes might have come out on top, but he hadn’t walked away unscathed.
He was wet, tired, and generally beat to shit—and definitely not looking forward to swimming to shore.
Hayes had ditched the bodies at sea—weighed them down with lengths of chain—and would have piloted the boat all the way to shore if it hadn’t been for the quarter ton of raw hash he’d found in the hold.
Still screwing me, aren’t ya, Luca?