Black Scorpion (21 page)

“And if I can survive your teachings, I guess I can survive anything,” Michael said, more sarcastically than he'd meant.

“Keep taking that tone with me, and I just might forget to be as nice as I've been.”

*   *   *

A few days later, Paddy set up yet another of his target-laden courses for Michael through the jungle. Always a new one, the same course and targets never repeated. Some he was meant to stab or lash. Others he was meant to kill by throwing this knife. Just a flick of the wrist was all it took, a deceptively simple motion to send death winging in blinding fashion through the air. Each night, the targets got smaller and harder to spot. If he missed any, and was thus killed, Paddy wouldn't let him eat his next meal, because dead men didn't need to eat.

“I'm not eating either, mate, so if you don't want me pissed at you, I suggest you make it through the night intact.”

One night, when Michael's path took him close once more to the archaeological camp, the brush rustled at his rear. Michael spun, ducking to avoid a branch swung his way that shattered on impact with the tree behind which he'd taken cover. Not to be denied, the woman he recognized as the young archaeologist struck at him with what little of the branch she still held, managing to smack him a few times before Michael seized control of the branch and used it to pin her against the same tree.

“If you're a poacher,” she snapped, “you better kill me now or I'll shove whatever you're carrying in that pouch down your throat.”

“I'm not a poacher,” Michael said, still holding her.

“Oh, yeah? Then what are you—Tarzan?”

“Nobody—that's who I am.”

Because out here in the middle of nowhere, that's exactly what he felt like.

“I'm guessing you're far from that. Since ‘nobodies' don't normally last long in this jungle.”

“I'm different.”

“I guess so.” Her eyes left his for her own arms he was still holding in place. “You going to let go of me?”

Michael did. “Sorry.”

And she immediately socked him in the face with a fist, stinging his cheek.

“Makes us even for you slamming my skull against the tree,” she told him.

“You attacked me, remember?”

“You're lucky I missed.”

“What's your name?” Michael asked her.

“Fuck you.”

*   *   *

“Scarlett Swan,” she followed with, a moment later.

“No, really.”

“That's my name.”

“As in
Gone With—
”

“Yes, goddamnit. And, if it matters, I love my name.”

“I love it, too.”

“Frankly, my dear—”

“You don't give a damn,” Michael completed.

“And my brother's name is Rhett.”

“You're kidding.”

“Nope. Blame my mother.”

Scarlett went on to explain she was down here on a dig funded by the French government in conjunction with Brown University, where she was working on her masters degree in Archaeology and Anthropology.

“I didn't know there was anything valuable in these parts,” Michael said.

“There isn't,” Scarlett told him, looking away and sounding evasive. “It's historical value I'm after. Money isn't everything.”

“But it's plenty important if you want your digs funded.”

“Carrying the money for my next one in your pants?”

Michael looked down at his ripped pockets. “Not anymore.”

*   *   *

It turned out her archaeological team was here under the auspices of INRAP, or
Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques Préventives
of France. Comprising twenty or so college students, accompanied by six professional archaeologists and two armed guards supplied by French Guiana. They were here studying tribes indigenous to this rain forest thousands of years ago and had unearthed a wealth of pottery, funeral “boxes,” and other evidence of how their civilization had functioned.

“They should've learned from what happened to the other bloody teams that came down here,” Paddy lamented.

“What's that?” Michael asked him.

“None of our concern, mate. Back to work now.”

Learning skill sets was one thing; the real purpose of the training he was about to endure was to survive by making them instinctive. True to Paddy's teachings Michael began to feel things before he could see or hear them. Paddy made him strip to his boxers one night to make him especially vulnerable to insect bites that first stung, then itched, then stung again.

“You been too comfortable for too long, mate,” Paddy explained disdainfully. “I want you to be uncomfortable and learn how to fight while you are.”

Spoken just as a mosquito the size of a dragonfly bit him on the back of the neck, Michael's hand coming away streaked with blood when he crushed it.

“Men die just as easy when you know how to kill them,” Paddy winked.

During this kind of hand-to-hand practice, Paddy was fond of going all out and pummeling Michael to submission, until one morning Michael thought he'd finally bested the bloke. Turning from a beaten Paddy and walking away, only to drop straight into a trap hole Paddy had dug.

“Means no breakfast for you, mate.”

Instead, Michael was down at the river when the gunmen came.

 

FORTY-NINE

H
EATHROW
A
IRPORT,
E
NGLAND

And, true to form, Michael hadn't seen or heard from Paddy ever since.

Until now, five years later. According to plan, they'd be transferring onto this much smaller Citation jet arranged by Paddy that Alexander and Michael would pilot themselves for the remainder of the trip to hide any connection to Michael, Tyrant Global, or King Midas World once they left London. And that precaution would be supplemented by the fake IDs, passports, and visas Paddy had brought along for them to use once in Romania. The last five years had seen him become associated with GS-Ultra, the world's largest private security company, further enhancing his ability to produce trained personnel for private high-level security needs, weaponry, and documents—all strictly first rate and at first-rate prices.

“You look good, mate,” Paddy said, taking the seat on the Citation across the aisle from Michael, after tucking an envelope stuffed with large bills given to him by Alexander into his pocket. He drew a finger along the scar that ran down his left cheek as if it were the blade that had left the wound originally. “Been keeping up with your lessons, I take it.”

“What have you got for us?”

“My man found no trace anywhere of your archaeological team. Scene had been sanitized.”

“Sanitized?”

“I don't suspect any of those folks'll be home for the holidays. Let's leave it there.”

“One of them got away and contacted me.”

“I bet it's a woman.”

“Nice guess.”

Paddy grinned. “You taking your arse halfway across the world about her?”

“In part.”

Paddy smiled broadly at that, coming up just short of a laugh. “When it comes to bloody women, there's no such thing.” He thought for a moment. “And another archaeologist yet.”

“Not another.”

The big man narrowed his gaze, features tightening to make his scar look more pronounced. “I don't like what I see in your eyes, mate.”

“You put some of it there, Sergeant-Major.”

“Not what I'm looking at right now, I didn't. Kind of look you got right now belongs to a man who could let things get away from him. That's the opposite of what I taught you.”

“I've got Alexander with me this time,” Michael said, glancing his way.

“Even he's not enough for what you're going up against, mate. What little is known about Black Scorpion is all in here,” Paddy said, handing Michael a thin manila envelope. “Let me give you the quick version: Drugs, gambling, murder, blackmail, gunrunning, prostitution, loan sharking, street crime, and they've cornered the market on human trafficking all over the world, including the United States. Black Scorpion has its bloody fucking hand in everything the underworld has to offer. Might even say, they've
become
the underworld.”

“If you know that, it stands to reason law enforcement worldwide does as well.”

“Most law enforcement entities worldwide, according to this report, don't believe Black Scorpion even exists, the man or the organization. They believe they're both legends, myths. After all, you can't arrest what you can't identify or even find. This is an organization that has insulated itself on all levels, clinging to the dark and avoiding the light at all costs. Those who go looking don't normally come back.”

“In countries like Romania,” Michael said, nodding, understanding, “where the authorities can be easily bought or persuaded to look the other way.”

“According to my sources, Black Scorpion is thought to have powerful friends in legitimate branches of government all across the world, many of which were bought and paid for from the time they were candidates. Forget bullets. The greatest weapon wielded by an organization like this is corruption. They know to exploit that. And any official they can't bribe they extort, often going as far as to manufacture the very incident that becomes the source of their blackmail.”

Paddy's assertions left Michael shaking his head. “And you're telling me the authorities worldwide, including Interpol, have done nothing to stop them?”

“Stop
who
exactly? That's the blasted problem, mate. In spite of everything I just told you, authorities internationally can't point to a single person and tell you he's part of Black Scorpion. And its leader is a shadow, protected by the Romanian government and the country's military officials because he keeps them and their families very well fed. No one knows his name, his nationality. What he looks like or how he takes his tea. There's nothing about him in these pages at all,” Paddy said, flapping the file's contents lightly. “The man's a bloody ghost.”

“There's not a single photo of him
anywhere
?”

“Google
Black Scorpion
and all you get is the insect. My sources say this is an organization with a reach that stretches across the globe to groups with similar interests on every continent, in every country.”

“And we're talking about
criminal
interests.”

Paddy nodded. “With huge resources and manpower scattered all over the world and with good reason. Human trafficking alone is a forty-two-billion-dollar-a-year industry and Black Scorpion has basically cornered the market on it. I've seen a lot of bloody
shite
in the world, mate, so much that I've learned not to use the word
evil
lightly. But I make an exception in the case of Black Scorpion.”

“Your sources have any idea what their interest could possibly be in an archaeological dig?”

“Not a clue. I'd say because nothing happens in the Transylvanian region without their knowledge and approval, so maybe they were pissed at you for something, like not paying them off. Of course…”

“Of course
what
?”

Paddy tightened his gaze even more. “Maybe there's something about that dig site that's important to them, maybe they're sending some kind of message. All the more reason, if you don't mind me saying, why you got no business going up against them.”

“This isn't about
business
.”

“Take such things seriously now, do you?”

“When it involves somebody I care about, you're damn right, Paddy.”

“Tell you what else is right: That it's for real this time. That you should leave such things to the experts like Alexander and me,” Paddy finished. “Say the word, put up the cash, a lot of it, and I'll make it happen.”

“There's no time.”

Paddy snickered. “Oh, nearly forgot. This blasted woman … Smart man'd walk away while he's still got his legs under him.”

“Is that what you trained me for? To walk away from someone I care about very much, leave her in the hands of these fucking slave traders?”

“I get it, mate, but I trained you to survive, not die. You getting killed's not about to free her.”

“And I get that, Paddy, but there are lines that can't be crossed. I can't help the code I live by.”

“Bollocks, mate. Right now the only code that matters is the one that gives you maybe another twenty-four to forty-eight hours before this woman is off the map for good, something you'd best keep in mind. Remember, I trained you to know where the snakes were so they couldn't kill you, not so they could. Black Scorpion's like the snakes that pop down out of the trees. You can't see 'em until they've already bit you.”

*   *   *

The small man in the rumpled suit watched the Citation arch toward the sky from behind the terminal window, twirling his Mont Blanc pen. He wedged the pen back in his pocket and pressed a preprogrammed number on his phone.

 

P
ART
F
OUR

BLACK SCORPION

 

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

Seneca

 

FIFTY

H
OIA-
B
ACIU
F
OREST,
R
OMANIA

Vladimir Dracu's convoy headed along the narrow road through the Hoia-Baciu Forest. He felt the brush, extra thick in the warmer months, whipping against the Range Rover in which he rode. Occasionally a stray branch thwacked against the windshield, though at this low speed no damage resulted.

Dracu kept looking out through the SUV's tinted rear window, checking to make sure the bus was able to negotiate the difficult terrain of this route that had been literally carved out of the forest. And with each glance back, he thought of the blond girl with the green eyes.