Black Scorpion (20 page)

Never again
, Michael promised himself,
never again
.

Strangely and inexplicably, he knew in his heart that battles like this and the challenges they bred would continue to define him. Who knew what the next ordeal might bear. He needed the kind of training that could prepare him for whatever it might entail.

Otherwise, the world he loved so much, the world constructed from his vision and passion, could be torn from his grasp. It wasn't enough to rely strictly on Alexander and the forces his money could employ. If the ruthless cunning that had helped Michael thrive in the world of money and power had taught him nothing else, it had taught him that the first and most important person any man could rely on was himself. All that money and power wouldn't be able to save him from a bullet or a blade.

“What else is it you want?” Alexander had asked him, after Michael had done his best to explain. “I've taught you weapons training, hand-to-hand combat—everything I know.”

“But not what you've experienced. And you haven't been tough enough on me. I need to know I can do it for real. I need to be trained by someone who doesn't give a shit who I am or whether I live or die.”

“You want the best. But the best is also the most dangerous.”

“Good. That's what we need.”

*   *   *

They flew to São Paulo, Brazil, aboard King Midas World's elegantly appointed Boeing, normally reserved for high rollers from all over the world. From there, they drove straight from the airport to an outdoor café in the center of the city, waiting two hours in the heat beneath a table shrouded by a canopy that didn't open all the way.

“What did you say this man's name is?” Michael asked, impatience starting to get the better of him.

“Paddy,” Alexander replied.

“Paddy
what
?”

“Just Paddy.”

“British SAS—you did say that.”

“You better fucking believe it,” a man said in a thick brogue, as he rose from the table immediately behind theirs, seeming to have appeared out of nowhere.

Michael stood, looking up at the strapping figure the man cut. Massive shoulders, rough-hewn skin darkened and leathery in patches. A thick handlebar mustache rose over his gleaming smile, and a scar sliced down the length of his left cheek all the way to his chin.

“Michael Tiranno,” Michael said, extending his hand.

The big man didn't take it. “Paddy. But you can call me Sergeant-Major.”

Michael looked on, waiting for him to continue.

“Hope that doesn't bother you, mate.”

“Not at all.”

“I don't give a shit whether it does or not anyway.” The big man cocked his gaze toward Alexander, the tilt of his eyes entirely different when regarding a perceived equal. “He know the rules?”

“I thought you'd prefer to tell him.”

Paddy looked back at Michael. “My rules, mate, each and every one. First time you break one, you get on home or I leave you for dead.”

“Leave me for dead where?”

“Did he just ask me a question?” Paddy posed to Alexander.

“He doesn't get the rules.”

“You don't get to ask any questions,” Paddy told Michael. “That's rule number one. Rule number two is it's just us from this point on. Rule number three is you do exactly what I say when I say it. You don't do that, I leave and you're on your own. You read me, mate?”

*   *   *

The Boeing was already warming on the tarmac at Guarulhos International Airport's private terminal when they arrived in an ancient Jeep. Michael watched as the big man carried three packs on board, two that matched. Plenty of supplies, at the very least.

“You ready, mate?” Paddy asked, as they strapped themselves into the plane's luxurious confines.

“Ready for what?”

Paddy smiled and looked around him, shaking his head. “To leave all this for bloody French Guiana.”

*   *   *

“Nobody'll bother us there” was all Paddy offered for an explanation once they were airborne, “that's for sure.” Then he slapped Michael's shoulder with a hand that felt like pressed steel. “Plenty of places for me to tuck your body, if you die when we drop. Trained there myself in my early days with the SAS, and your friend Alexander's Foreign Legion uses it to train their pups as well.”

“Hold on, you mean ‘drop' as in
parachute
?”

“You know another kind?”

“I've never
dropped
before.”

Ninety minutes into the flight, the sky dark now, Paddy stripped open two of the three packs he'd brought on board and yanked parachutes out from each of them. “So you'll learn. You don't learn, you die. That's what this is all about, teaching you how to die so you can live safer. Get it, mate?”

“No.”

Paddy grinned. “You will.”

Michael knew French Guiana was a territory of France located on the North Atlantic Coast of South America, bordering Brazil to the east and south and Suriname to the west. He also knew it was one of the least densely populated areas on the continent, with only three inhabitants per kilometer with the bulk of these living in the city of Cayenne.

Known for its rain forests, French Guiana remained truly pristine, even primitive, in its flora-rich appearance that was home to thousands of species of plants, mammals, amphibians, and fish. Some of these could be found nowhere else on Earth, rendering them severely endangered, rare to the point where the region in recent years had become popular for poachers, as well as kidnappers who victimized environmentalists prone to worrying about wildlife more than their own safety.

“We go in five,” Paddy said.

“I can't see a damn thing. It's dark.”

“That's what happens at night, mate.”

“What about supplies?”

“We eat what we hunt or we bloody starve. How's that sit with you?”

“Just remember that I've never jumped in my life.”

Paddy slapped him on the back again. “Gonna be a lot of firsts on this trip, mate,” he continued, wedging an earpiece into and over Michael's left ear. “Stay close and follow me. I'll talk you through everything you need to know. Now, let's get you strapped in.…”

*   *   *

The parachute worn tight over his shoulders was surprisingly light, but bulky. The Boeing had been outfitted with a rear cargo door, useful for jumping out since it allowed for a clear field beneath them.

“See you on the ground,” Paddy told him, five thousand feet over splotches of land and water below. “You don't follow me out, this ends here, and we'll never see each other again. So what say we find out how serious you really are?”

 

FORTY-EIGHT

F
RENCH
G
UIANA, FIVE YEARS AGO

Michael did follow him outside into the air of the dark sky, waiting the instructed five-count after Paddy had dropped, and following a very brief tutorial on the perils of landing wrong or ending up in a tree. Paddy told Michael all the things he shouldn't do, but none of the things he should.

Survival. That's what this was about now.

Paddy had actually guided Michael down in the direction of a clearing that he overshot slightly, dropping into the shallows of a lake and ending up drenched in cool waters pumped from underground streams. His first thought was how badly he needed to change his clothes, his second that he wasn't alone. The water rippled, the currents bobbing up against him just after he heard one
plop
and then another. He turned toward the shoreline just in time to glimpse a third crocodile lurch into the water, and scrambled to shore before any of them could reach him.

“Get yourself dry, mate,” Paddy said, folded-up parachute tucked under his arm, as he checked the night sky. “Let's make camp. We get started in the morning.”

*   *   *

Michael would be wearing these same clothes for the next six weeks. His work started with what Paddy called “agility” training. Michael hoisted a severed log over his shoulders and ran along a path carved ages before through the forest.

“Where do I go?” Michael asked him.

“Just follow the path.”

“But to where?”

“Same answer.”

And he did, never daring to shed the log no matter how much his shoulders ached, and never stopping no matter how much his lungs burned. The trek brought him, surprisingly, through a camp of archaeologists nestled in the thickest part of the jungle where a young woman was lecturing even younger college-age students on the process of recognizing and identifying various sediments in the ground down here. Their eyes met, their gazes lingering, nearly tripping Michael up.

“You'd already be dead if that was combat, mate,” Paddy warned when Michael reached him at the point where the path ended in a steep drop-off toward rushing rapids below. “Bet you didn't even see the bloody snake you almost stepped on while you were eyeing that piece of arse. Don't know how you missed it, given the thing's the size of a fire hose.”

“I get the point.”

“Missing the point means getting yourself killed. You get that?”

“It won't happen again,” Michael managed, shedding the log and finding himself unable to lift his arms even to his waist.

“Don't apologize to me 'cause I don't give a shit.”

“I didn't apologize. I said it won't happen again and I meant it.”

“Good, because you die down here, I won't give it as much as a second thought. But there is a bright side to the story.”

“What's that?”

Paddy yanked a twelve-inch hunting knife from the sheath on his belt and handed it to Michael. “You get to catch dinner tonight.”

“How about a gun instead?”

“Now there's a good idea, mate. Except I didn't bring any along, not a one. Just blades on this trip to make things more interesting. Now, let's go catch us a wild boar. Real tasty pork, take it from me.”

*   *   *

Paddy must've already spotted the animal's trail, and used the opportunity to teach Michael how to track. Hunched low while smoothing the ground, finding the impressions of hoof prints and learning how to discern their freshness from feel.

Hunting through the brush, listening to Paddy expound on the most vital elements of tracking, reminded Michael of the expedition that had caught Assassino for the Daring Sea. How he'd jumped into the water to save a sailor who'd been washed overboard and for a moment, just a moment, was eye-to-eye with the great white in his own element. Assassino seemed to look at him differently that day, though he couldn't say exactly how.

“Now,” Paddy said, as they crouched together over what Michael had already identified as fresh prints, “that's interesting.”

“What?”

“Trail stops here. Whatcha make of that, mate?”

“I have no idea, Sergeant-Major.”

“Well, I do. Wild boars are about the only creatures on the planet that'll hunt a man, sometimes even doubling back on him. I'd check behind you, if I were you.”

Michael canted his head around and saw a pair of huge hooded eyes and big tusks poking out from the brush back along the trail.

“Have at it, mate,” Paddy said, grinning.

He stood up and backpedaled, then slipped into the brush for cover, leaving Michael alone with his knife. And the boar that charged at him as soon as Paddy was gone.

Michael had no time to react, had time only to turn sideways to reduce his target and ready his knife before him. He was bending his knees to better balance his weight when the boar leaped headlong through the air, its massive rear legs extended straight out behind him. Michael heard its roar, smelled its musky stench, then felt its hot breath when the animal was over him, its battle-marred tusks coming up just short of impaling him with their broken tips.

He remembered jerking his twelve-inch killing knife forward and up, felt the blade tear into something first hard, then soft. Warm blood that felt like bathwater drenched him, as he went down beneath the still snarling, snapping animal. But Michael maintained the presence of mind to keep stabbing at it, more flesh and fur torn with each thrust and more warm, thick blood splashing against him.

“Easy there,” Paddy cautioned, as he emerged from the brush to get a closer look at Michael's handiwork. “There's a lot of meals in that meat, unless you go shredding it all.”

Michael shoved the creature off him, its tusks close enough to tear his shirt in the process.

*   *   *

The next morning found him in waist-deep black water, slogging through the mud-rich bottom and weed-encrusted shallows.

“Watch out for the crocs, mate,” Paddy warned him from shore.

“How am I supposed to watch for them when I can't see shit through all this muck?”

“Like this, mate,” Paddy said, and proceeded to smack a croc Michael hadn't even noticed on the snout, startling the creature enough to make it swing back toward shore. “Look for motion. Follow the ripples in the water. If they see you before you see those, start reading yourself last rites, because down here nobody's gonna do that for you.”

Or anything else for that matter.

They ate only what Michael caught, first under Paddy's tutelage and then, after a few days, on his own. Utilizing a makeshift fishing line with worms dug from the ground as bait. Or laying in wait for small rodent-like game to happen past and be speared by a tightly layered branch filed to a tip.

Conditioning drills, building up both his upper and lower body, took place during the day. By night they trained with the assortment of knives Paddy had brought along.

“Did you know most firefights happen at night, mate?”

“Then why aren't we practicing with guns instead?”

“Because I don't want you getting dependent on bullets. You want a shooter's mindset, join a gun club; you want a soldier's, you listen up to me. I don't teach people how to shoot, I teach 'em how to survive.”