GW10 Samurai Game Read online

  “I thought so too,” Melanie said with a small frown. “I used to watch her with him and she was totally into him. She never looked at other men unless he told her to flirt with them, which, just for the record, he did. I heard him once at a party. He said to ‘go make nice’ with another senator. He wanted her to make certain the other senator sided with him on some issue. She trotted off all smiling and had the other senator eating out of her hand.”

  Melanie clearly was the dominant in the relationship. Azami had studied Sheila Benet and had rarely seen her so animated with anyone. As a rule she was cool and aloof, rarely engaging even in small talk. She was Whitney’s main go-between, and Azami had hacked her computer and phone, had been in her posh apartment numerous times—even stood over her while she slept in the middle of the night.

  The woman had money, but she spent little of it on anything. She wanted to belong desperately, and she’d found that belonging and sense of purpose working for Whitney. But she clearly wasn’t working for Whitney solely for the money. She wanted to keep and solidify her connection to Melanie.

  Azami wondered idly how Sheila would react if she told her Melanie was already dead. There was no saving her now. Whitney and Sheila would have to recruit someone new to help murder an elite team of soldiers.

  She enjoyed the salad, ignoring Frankie’s threats. The man’s head was definitely spinning now. Most of the time he just propped it up with his hands and moaned. His groin was on fire, a relentless ache that wasn’t going away any time soon and would definitely slow him down when he tried to make his move on her. She considered kicking him hard under the table and walking off, but she needed to play the entire evening out. There were a dozen escorts in the room. She might be remembered, but no one would connect her with Melanie’s death. Most likely, no one would connect the evening with Melanie’s death.

  “Are you seeing anyone?” Sheila asked, her tone a little wistful.

  “Not regularly. I’m looking for the right man to hook up with, someone that will be of some use to Whitney, at least whatever information I can get from him, and he’s got to be damned good in bed.” Melanie laughed. “I’m selfish, Sheila. I don’t want to have to share my apartment and time with a man. I don’t want someone permanent, so if I invest more than a night or two, he’d better have something special to offer.”

  Sheila shook her head, spooning more chocolate. “Only you would say that out loud.” There was admiration in her voice.

  “Well, really, I don’t need anyone. Do you want someone telling you what you can and can’t do and always questioning you on where you’re going? You call and I don’t want to bring some man along to our dinners, but he’d want to horn in.” Melanie took the spoon from Sheila and licked the chocolate off it. “That’s just not going to happen.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of growing old alone?” Sheila asked.

  Melanie laughed again. “I’ve got you, silly. We’ll be old ladies together, maybe get a ton of cats and rocking chairs. When we feel like it, we’ll go on those cruises and eat ourselves silly and ogle all the young men.”

  Sheila nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

  Melanie held up her wineglass. “To our future as little old ladies.” She smirked as she clinked her glass against Sheila’s. “Rich old ladies. Stinking rich old ladies. Maybe we’ll get a few Italian boy toys and they can feed our little pussycats for us.” She laughed merrily at her innuendo.

  Azami kept the disgust from her face, sitting there with Frankie squeezing her thigh and the two women who had sent a team of soldiers to their death, toasting their own futures. She didn’t understand, especially Melanie, who saw the work the teams did all over the world, the lives they saved, how it was possible not to admire them and want to keep them safe.

  And Whitney. She could barely look at his double without her stomach lurching. She found it hell sitting in that room with all of them. Whitney’s supposed soldiers, men like Frankie, with no honor. Women like Melanie and Sheila, who took money and sent men to their death while they drank wine and ate chocolate. The realization came slowly to her: Thorn didn’t belong here. She was useless to Whitney. She needed to rejoice in that. She needed to be proud of herself that she wasn’t like those two women, or these men willing to do a monster’s bidding for his money and approval.

  What had she been thinking all these years? She had a father who had shown her the way to live with honor, two wonderful brothers who loved her, and Sam. Her Sam. She had a narrow escape when so many others suffered for years at Whitney’s hands. Why had she made him so big? So omnipotent? She’d allowed Whitney to color her judgment of herself for years. These people were those he considered worthy and she despised them.

  Melanie and Sheila rose to leave. Melanie looked right at Azami and pursed her lips to send her a kiss. Sheila laughed. “That’s so mean, Mel.” There was a slight nervous giggle in her voice, as if she really didn’t like what her friend had done but was afraid to call her on it.

  In all the time Azami had been following Sheila, no one had ever made her nervous. She’d seemed cold, without feelings and very little nerves, yet Melanie brought out her submissive nature.

  Melanie deliberately winked at Frank. “You really enjoy yourself now,” she told him.

  Azami realized Melanie knew she was making Sheila uncomfortable and wanted to prove she could do it. They had an interesting relationship. Sheila seemed dependent on Melanie. Once she was gone, what would happen?

  Frank tightened his hold on Azami’s wrist and stumbled to his feet, jerking her close. “I do intend to have a good time, little China girl. And you’d better make me very happy. You embarrassed me tonight and no one does that to me and gets away with it.”

  Azami let him yank her out of her seat. She caught up the small glittering bag, shoving it onto her wrist, allowing her hand free. Teetering on her heels, she took small, mincing steps as Frank dragged her toward him. The moment she was near the table where Melanie and Sheila had been seated, her fingers swept beneath the tabletop to acquire the tiny bug she’d planted earlier. Deftly she palmed it, allowing her purse to slide down her arm so she could shove it inside with a poke of her finger.

  Frank was going to learn a little lesson in how to treat a lady when they reached the back parking lot. She hoped they’d get there before his friend, so she would be long gone and his friend could escort him to the hospital.

  “Stop struggling or it will be worse for you,” Frank hissed, giving her a little shake as they approached the table where the Whitney double was standing to leave.

  “A little anticlimactic,” the Whitney double said to his bodyguard. “I don’t know what I expected, but the meal was good.” He gave a little laugh.

  She noted that the bodyguard ignored him. Whoever the man was, he was considered disposable. He’d been nothing but bait and no way were the bodyguards there to protect him. He would have been sacrificed in a heartbeat. Had she made her move on the Whitney double, the “bodyguards”’ sole purpose would have been to kill her, not save him.

  Out in the night air, Frank’s head cleared enough that he realized if anything happened to her, the waiters had seen his face. He didn’t care much if they identified him, the records would show he had died in South America two years prior, but still … He pulled Azami in close to him and walked her quickly toward the back parking lot.

  She went willingly across the asphalt, weaving through the few cars there toward the narrowing alley. A broken wooden fence partially hid the alley behind the parking lot. The gate, hanging by one bracket, was long gone, splintered and broken like much of the fence. Frank thrust her through it and paused to lean against the rickety wood, sweat breaking out on his face. Every step had to be painful with his groin so full and heat rushing through his body, elevating his temperature.

  Azami took the opportunity to step away from him, kicking off her heels as her heart sank. Not one but two men were already waiting, wearing evil grins. She was really growing tired
of the entire mess. Frank would present no problem to her. He could barely stand, but these two men were a different story.

  He grinned at the two men. “Ross, I see you brought a friend. The more the merrier.”

  Ross laughed. “Damn right.”

  Her phone buzzed in her purse. She pulled it out and looked down at the text.

  Team Two called out of the country.

  She sighed. There was no way that was a coincidence. If most of Team Two was away as Daiki indicated, that left both compounds vulnerable—and that left the babies at risk.

  “Gentlemen, I’m going to give you a chance here and just say, let’s call this a misunderstanding. Frank is in no shape to party and I’m not really up for it, so let’s just all go home while you still can.”

  The grins faded. She wasn’t running, screaming, or in the least bit scared. Frank made a grab for her and she slapped his hand away and slammed her foot into his groin. He shrieked and went down hard, the breath exploding out of him along with a sound much like an animal in pain. He lay writhing on the ground, holding his groin, the scream fading to moans.

  The two men separated, Ross pulling a gun, the other a knife.

  “You bitch. I’m going to fuck you up so bad no one will ever want to look at you again,” the one with the knife said.

  “Like I haven’t heard that before,” Azami said.

  “Don’t you move,” Ross warned. “I’ll gut shoot you and we’ll still fuck your brains out before you die. You’ll just die hard.”

  Frank staggered to his feet behind her. She could hear his continual cursing directly behind her. She took three steps toward the gunmen and then put on a burst of speed, angling toward the man with the knife just as the gun went off.

  Frank folded in half, screaming, a crimson stain spreading across his groin. She slapped the knife hand away as she went in, the tiny one-inch blade a ridiculous contrast to his ten-inch blade, but razor sharp, it went into the side of his neck easily. She turned the blade as she withdrew it, twisting behind the man as the gunman fired again at her. His second shot hit his buddy in the chest.

  Azami kept moving, coming up behind Ross while he was still firing shots at the spot behind his falling buddy.

  “Oh, no, oh, no,” he chanted over and over, but continued firing as if his finger was stuck on the trigger.

  She took him from behind, slicing his throat and stepping back quickly, moving out of his sight so that the shots wouldn’t have a chance of hitting her.

  She waited until the last shot had been fired and all three men lay still on the ground before she collected her heels and went over the fence to walk calmly away. She walked several blocks until she found a dark doorway. Quickly she shimmied out of the dress and pulled off the wig, sweeping her hair back in a ponytail. She wore a spaghetti tank under the dress. From her small bag she took out a pair of trousers rolled tight. The dress was rolled and put in her bag, the wig shoved in it as deeply as possibly. Scrubbing her face clean with the wipes, she pulled out her phone to text her brother.

  On my way.

  She came out of the doorway looking like any teenager out to meet friends.

  CHAPTER 18

  Kadan glanced at his watch. It was 02:30. “Suit up. Check your oxygen. We’re thirty minutes out. Double-check each other’s gear.” He did the same and waited for Sam to nod that he’d made certain Kadan’s gear was good to go.

  At 02:50 Kadan signaled the men. “Make final in-oxygen check. We’ll depressurize in five minutes.”

  Sam nudged Jonas with his foot. “Wake up there, circus man. Your snoring has been keeping me awake.”

  Jonas opened one sleepy eye and glared at Sam.

  “In-oxygen check,” Sam said. “Get on it.”

  “On it,” Jonas conceded.

  Kadan said, “02:55. Depressurizing mask up.”

  Sam kept his eye on Jonas. He appeared to be asleep again, but he obediently put his mask in place.

  At 02:59 Kadan was on his feet. “One minute … thirty seconds. First jumper in the door.”

  Sam took a breath and looked out into the night. It was a damn dark, moonless night. The engines roared as the wind clawed at him, trying to jerk him out of the plane. Adrenaline poured into his body along with that familiar tug of fear. The cold bit at him, the temperature at that elevation was about minus fifteen. He could smell the jet fuel and felt the sting of the wind on his face. The aircraft was traveling around a hundred and fifty knots and he was about to fling himself into that night sky.

  “Go!”

  At the command, he dove, and in a flash everything changed. The wind hit him hard, buffeting him, pulling at him, and he fought for control. He was carrying two hundred pounds of gear. His rucksack hung between his legs, straining his movements. Then, just like that, there it was. He realized the roar of the engines was gone and he was soaring through the sky, freefalling, the feeling euphoric, his heart racing with the love of the jump.

  Sam pulled his chute and abruptly went from one hundred and twenty miles an hour to about twenty. The opening shock hit his body and then he was flying, the wind rushing by, his helmet muffling the sound so that he was flying in a peaceful, surreal world. For a few moments there was freedom and absolute peace as he dropped through darkness in silence. He was very aware he was suspended by a sheet of silk in a commercial air traffic space, and the thought of splattering on the window of a passing jet was there in the back of his mind.

  He went in and out of the clouds, a bad fog, and then he could see the ground rushing at him. The jungle appeared nothing more than a green sea spreading out in front of him. Jumping without a strobe was always a tricky business. He could tell the difference between trees and grass by the shades of green. Thirty feet out he flared his chute, slowing him down.

  He landed with a light jolt, much like jumping off a single step, reeling in his chute fast. He had the same reaction he often did—thankful to be in one piece, and ready to go again. He glanced at his watch. 03:02. Everyone should be down.

  Kadan was a few feet from him. Nico a meter away. Jonas had his back to Sam and was pulling in his chute as fast as possible.

  “Get coms up, Jonas; bury the chutes, Sam; and, Nico, you’re on security,” Kadan said.

  “Chutes are good, Bishop,” Sam replied to Kadan.

  “Okay,” Kadan said. “Let’s get the hell out of this clearing. GPS has us thirteen klicks southeast of Kinshasa. This will be our RP if we get separated.”

  The rally point was a good one—plenty of cover but easily found should they need it.

  Jonas spoke into the radio. “Valhalla … Valhalla, this is Reaper One. Do you copy? … Over.”

  Fort Bragg command answered immediately. “This is Valhalla, Reaper One. We have you five by five, over.” A five by five was a signal report, telling the team how well they could be heard on a scale of one to five of strength and one to five of clarity.

  Jonas responded. “Valhalla, Reaper One. We are up and on the hunt. Reaper One out.”

  “Let’s recon,” Kadan said. “We’ll make a four-leaf clover pattern working counterclockwise. Be back here in fifteen minutes. If one of us doesn’t make it back in fifteen, the others will wait five. If they’re still not back and we can’t make radio contact, we’ll start looking for you. I have 03:30. Any questions?” When they all shook their heads, Kadan gave the go signal.

  The jungle was hot and oppressive. The forest was made up of several layers, trees bursting toward the sky—the emergent level—anywhere from seventy to two hundred and fifty feet high. The canopy was sixty to ninety feet above him. If necessary, Sam could go up and run along those twisted branches that formed a highway far above the forest floor. Most of the birds and wildlife resided in the canopy. Flowers wound their way up the tree trunks toward the light, and moss and lichen crawled up the bark and over branches as well. Great ropes of tough vines dropped like snakes from above and hung in tangled twists and turns of grooves and crevices and elab
orate loops.

  A large snake wrapped around a branch above his head moved slightly to take a look at him. Monkeys clung to the branches and watched him in silence as he passed by. The air was heavy with moisture and rang with the steady drone of crickets and cicadas. Mosses and vines hung heavily over ribbons of water. Tangled ferns grew almost as tall as small trees, and on the floor thousands of insects moved rotting leaves and vegetation. The understory was an impenetrable, inky blackness. Tree frogs called to one another, hundreds of different sounds as various species vied for space on the airwaves.

  Sam mapped out his assigned area in his mind, keeping an eye on the time. He made it back to the designated spot to find Kadan emerging from tall ferns. Nico was already waiting, but there was no sign of Jonas.

  “There’s a slight depression about twenty meters to the southeast, but other than that, it’s all the same, trees, bugs, monkeys, and snakes,” Sam reported.

  “I’ve got the same shit,” Nico said.

  Kadan looked around him, clearly concerned that Jonas wasn’t there. “It’s the same to the north. There are a couple of small hills, that’s it. We’ll see what Jonas found and go from there, but from what I see on the map, I think that the depression would make a good hide site. We can use it for our patrol base. It’s 03:50.” He looked around again, and swore under his breath. “Where the hell is Jonas?”

  Sam’s heart dropped when only silence answered the question.

  “Jonas, Jonas, this is Bishop, you copy? Jonas, do you copy?” Kadan spoke into the com.

  This isn’t good, Sam said, already starting to thread his way back through the jumble of downed trees and hanging vines. Anything could happen in that absolute darkness, surrounded by hostiles, and switching from speech to telepathy seemed a much better idea.