Devlin's Defiance: Book Two of the Devlin Quatrology (46 page)

“
You?”

“
Oh, with
her help and your okay, of course. I'm learning a lot from her.”

“
You sure
are.”

“
I can't
believe what a prude I was before last summer.”

“
Yup.
You've come a long way.”

“
And in a
lot of different ways.”

Gordy chuckled.
“Y'got that right.”

“
At least
I wasn't as bad as – oh, what was her name? The woman in the
Hat Squad.”

“
Oh,
right. Alice.”

“
Alice;
right. D'you know she's younger than I am? Don't think
she's
even hit 70 yet.”

“
But she
looks like 85.”

“
Maybe
86.”

“
Mostly
attitude, I think. I know you're looking younger now than last fall;
you don't look a day over 68.”

“
Oh,
aren't you sweet, sonny?” Rosemary said with a cackle in her
voice, chuckling and leaning down to nuzzle his neck.

“
Oh, I
think I know where this is going, Ro.”

“
Y'got
that right, sonny. Roll over.”

- 120 -

April
4, 2013
11:46
a.m. local time

Northwest of Eureka,
Montana, USA

Pushing the
thick branches and limbs apart, the Cowgirl came up with two other
possibilities: that the target had been somehow flung from his
horse, which had then either bolted off or slowed to a stop
and
was grazing nearby, or that the horse and its rider had been somehow
halted by one or more of the trees or some other blockage. She gave
that a higher probability, but still kept her options open.

She dismounted,
flipped Shacody's reins around a low-hanging branch and began a grid
search on foot, walking 50 feet to the right from where the target
had entered the woods, then ten feet deeper and returning and going
another 50 feet to the left.

On her fourth
pass, her quest came to a sudden end. In front of her, impaled on a
broken limb like a butterfly pinned to a specimen board, the lifeless
body of her target hung, broken and bloodied, while below him, his
horse lay on its side, also lifeless, its head an equally broken and
bloody mess.

“
Well,
well, well,” she said as she took a multitude of flash photos
of the dangling corpse and its stilled mount, “don't think
you'll be spiking any more trees.”

Before
returning to and re-mounting Shacody, she backtracked the target's
path and saw traces she had overlooked earlier and made a
determination that she would have to give herself some serious
retraining in tracking. Now, in hindsight, the signs were obvious,
but she did not beat herself up about it.

“
Remember,
hindsight is 20/20, they say, but to us, it's mostly
masochistic,
so only take what you can learn from it and move on,” she
remembered one of the instructors telling her class, oh so many
years
before.

Once she and
Shacody were clear of the forest, she pulled out her satellite phone
and dialed. “Authentication 5489043, encryption on. Target
terminated, but by accidental causes, not by me personally. I'll
send proof of death photos as soon as I've cleared the area.”

Despite an
exhaustive ten-day search, no trace of the missing man and horse was
found, but ten years later, a hunting dog brought a skeletal forearm
and hand out of the forest to its mistress, who alerted authorities,
who subsequently determined that the body, if it could still be
called that, had been dismembered and scattered over at least
hundreds of acres by the carnivores of the deep woods.

A thumb bone
discovered in an abandoned pizza oven in suburban Eureka that had
become a lair for a family of gray wolves, but had just been sold for
scrap by the town's fledgling yet ardent redevelopment authority,
thus evicting the wolves and forcing the youngest pups to learn to
forage in the wild, rather than through commercial dumpsters, for
their sustenance, a change which caused four of the five to suffer
from explosive diarrhea (perhaps the other one enjoyed it) and
occasional nausea (the politically correct term for vomiting, barfing
or puking, as some would call it), was determined by DNA testing to
be from a clumsy local butcher, not the missing eco-terrorist.

Nonetheless,
organizations of tree-huggers, flower-fondlers and
animal
rights groupies included autopsy photos of the martyred thumb bone in
their fund-raising letters for two years, until they were forced by a
lawsuit accusing them of false advertising to reveal that it was not
what they claimed it to be.

(Author's note:
No actual animals were harmed or killed in the writing of this
chapter.)

- 121 -

April 9, 2013

5:44 p.m. local time

Aboard
Defiance

In the Gulf of Oman

“
All
packed, Pam? We're docking day after tomorrow.”

“
Almost.
We don't have to go through Customs, right?”

“
Right;
we're taking one of the jets.”

“
Good.
I'd hate to have those big photos and all that other stuff get
confiscated.”

“
No
worries about that.”

“
To say
nothing of all those files on my seventh-floor guy.”

“
I just
hope the jet has enough thrust to manage those.”

“
Oh,
Jake,” she said, chuckling and lightly punching his upper arm.

“
Oh,
Pam,” he replied, not punching her at all, just smiling.

“
Captain
Zander all set?”

“
Yup,
everything's secured. The sheik will never know about the printer,
the brig or any of the weapons systems.”

“
Unless
they need to use 'em.”

“
He's
just taking 'er down to the Seychelles and back, nowhere near either
Somalia or Yemen. So he probably won't need 'em.”

“
Hope he
doesn't even find out about 'em. He's a greedy SOB, from what I've
heard about him. Might try to hijack the yacht himself.”

“
Doubt
that. He knows what that would bring down on him.”

“
But does
he connect the boat with you or your reputation?”

“
No,
nobody can. Other than you, the captain and three of the
senior
crew. And they're all in the inner circle and have done many, many
jobs for us, each of 'em. I trust 'em all implicitly.”

“
And me?”

“
Of
course.”

“
Good. I
don't want to get shot in the butt … or the head.”

“
Oh, Pam,
you know those were just flights of 'what ifs,' filters-off stuff.”

“
Yeah.
And I remember how much fun you had trying to get all that Amish
stuff right.”

“
Yeah, I
kept cracking up trying to say all those th's and 'thou's
and
'thee's and 'shalt's and all the rest of it.”

“
And it
cracked me up when you were practicing. Sometimes you even did it in
your sleep.”

“
Really?
You never told me.”

“
I didn't
want to; I got a kick out of it.”

“
Dinnair
eez ready,” Jean-Claude's voice came over the intercom.

“
Oh,
good. Wonder what marvels he's got tonight.,” Pam said.

“
I
haven't checked, but I'm sure we'll love it. He's discovered he can
use the 3D printer with that nutrient goop to make all kinds of tasty
delicacies.”

“
Really?”

“
Yup;
finally getting some use out of that pointless beast.”

“
Cool.”

“
And
tomorrow night is the farewell party.”

“
I'm
looking forward to that. But after dinner tonight, Jake, I've got a
few surprises for you.”

“
Does it
involve anything diaphanous?”

“
Maybe,
maybe not. But you'll find out in about an hour.”

- 122 -

April
10, 2013
11:26
a.m. local time

Bonita Springs, Florida

He did not see
the assassin coming until it was too late. Nor did he see the little
drone that had spotted him at a table in the courtyard of the Marabou
Motel on Bonita Beach Road, although he was aware of a slight buzzing
sound far above him and the other motel guests at nearby tables or in
the pool.

When the
assassin smiled at him and sat down at his table, he had no idea that
the cover identity that had kept him safe for seven years had been
compromised. Moving every month from one quiet little town or city
to another, always by train or bus, where no ID was required, had
gradually lulled him into an illusory complacency.

But when the
assassin pulled out a photo and studied his face
closely,
that complacency was shattered, and his fight-or-flight instinct
triggered him to throw his ashtray at the assassin's face, then leap
up from his chair and run, the assassin following a short distance
behind, having been slowed down by ducking away from the ashtray,
which led to some awkwardness in getting up from the chair.

Unmindful of
the shocked faces of the onlookers, he ran for his life through the
courtyard, ducking under the overhanging bushes and other greenery
which made the area a delightfully secluded spot in a generally quiet
small city.

As he ran under
a blooming bougainvillea, his toupee snagged on one of its thorny
branches and was ripped from his shaved, tattooed head, hanging there
for four or five seconds before the assassin behind him reached up
and grabbed it, with no reduction in speed.

He ran past the
pool gate on his left and a large table on his right, where a
birthday party for a teenaged girl was in full swing, paying no
attention to their open mouths, pointing fingers and
shocked screams.

When he got to
the open archway at the north end, he turned to the right and
stopped, his back to the wall, his arm ready to deliver a blow to the
assassin's windpipe to ensure his escape.

As the assassin
came through the archway, he delivered the blow
with
perfection. The assassin went down in a heap, clutching at her
throat and –