HardWind (22 page)

shoved it through his hair. “Anyone could have extracted you at any time under those

conditions.”

“Mick Harrelson might have disagreed with you,” Jackson said.

“What were you two doing in Iran?”

Jackson fumbled with the bed controls until Dáire reached out and took the box

from him and raised the head of the bed. He helped his friend to get more comfortable.

“We were assigned to bring a guy out who reportedly had intel on those

infamous—and I still believe non-existent—weapons of mass destruction good old

Sadaam supposedly stockpiled over there.”

“What ‘guy’ is this?”

“Some turban head named Zahak Hussein, a cousin of our cheerful sadist.” Jackson

winced and motioned to the pitcher of water at his bedside. As Dáire poured him a cup,

Jackson gave him a brief rundown of how they’d found Hussein.

“That sounds too easy as well,” Dáire commented as he held the cup to Jackson’s

mouth.

Jackson drained the cup then laid back. He thought about it for a moment. “Well,

yeah, it does.”

“Did you find him?”

Jackson shook his head. “No, and we didn’t find no stinking weapons of mass

destruction either. What we found was an ambush. To give Mick his due, he did a real

hero number before all was said and done.”

“How’d he buy it?”

“A single bullet right between the eyes as soon as we were taken down,” Jackson

replied. “Me, they kept around to play with.”

Dáire walked back to the window where the rain was cascading down it in sheets.

The lightning was going off like the flashbulbs of the paparazzi. “Mick was lead, right?”

he asked as he stared at the vicious flares of light.

“Get away from there before you’re French fried,” Jackson grumbled.

“Mick was lead,” Dáire said again.

“Yeah, of course. You think Gentry trusts me not to run with sharp objects clutched

in my sweaty little hand?”

“They had to have known he was lead,” Dáire said. “Wouldn’t you think it would

be you they ventilated instead of Mick?”

“Oh that’s a pleasant thought,” Jackson complained. “You sorry I’m still here, Dairy

Crow?”

“Think about it,” Dáire said. “It was just too fucking easy.”

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“Where were you, anyway?” Jackson asked. “Did Gentry just give you a holiday or

what?”

Dáire went over to a chair and pulled it close to Jackson’s bed. “Star and I have a

daughter, Jackson,” he said as he sat down.

“You’re shitting me,” Jackson said. “How?”

“Well, you slip the tube steak into the—”

Jackson actually growled. “You know what I’m asking!”

“As Star said, birth control pills don’t work one hundred percent of the time. She

wasn’t trying to get pregnant.”

Jackson stared at him. “You with a kid. God, that is scary.” He shook his head. “You

reproducing.”

“She has Down’s syndrome,” Dáire said quietly. “And leukemia.”

Jackson’s face turned pale. “Oh, God, Dáire! I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

Dáire waved away his apology. “Gentry knew about her. When I was in Borneo,

she went to see Star in the hospital.” He hunched forward, webbing his fingers together

and dropping his hands between his spread knees. “She did her usual Wicked Witch of

the West routine.”

“No surprise there,” Jackson said.

“Looking back on my capture in Borneo,” Dáire said quietly, his head down. “You

thought it was a little too easy too, didn’t you?”

He and Jackson had discussed that assignment many times, and it had been Jackson

who had first brought up the notion that Dáire’s captors had been lying in wait for him.

They’d ignored Jackson, allowing him to get away without so much as firing a shot at

him. Before Jackson could call in reinforcements, Dáire was gone.

“Are you saying you think Gentry was behind that?” Jackson asked.

“Do you remember how furious she was with me for trying to get in touch with

Star before we left New York?” Dáire questioned.

“I remember you had the bad taste to screw the hag,” Jackson reminded him.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

Dáire looked up. Jackson had never asked about that last night in New York harbor

onboard the
HardWind
. “I had no idea why I slept with her until now.” At Jackson’s

raised eyebrow, Dáire explained about the drug he’d been given that night.

“Holy shit, are you kidding me? She slipped you a date-rape drug?”

“Something far worse than Rohypnol,” Dáire told him. “This stuff makes heroin

and morphine look like a walk in the park and a hundred times more addictive if you

can believe anything Gentry says.”

Jackson shuddered. “Man, that’s sick.”

“Gentry knew Jillian needed a bone marrow transplant. My guess is she knows

everything about Star and Jillian. That day she sent you off, she told me to get my act

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together and either work it out with Star or break it off. When I found out about Jilly’s

illness, Star and I went over to Pensacola where she was in the hospital.”

“Is she all right now?”

“Gentry says she is, but I don’t know for sure. She had her men snatch me from the

hospital the night after the transplant and I wound up on Sinavar.”

“Shit,” Jackson whispered. “Why?”

“So Gentry could punish me for annoying her,” Dáire admitted. “The more I think

about it, the more inclined I am to believe it was a setup all along. She’s had this

planned for days, if not weeks.”

“Son of a bitch,” Jackson said.

“What I didn’t tell you about that last night on the
HardWind
before we left for

Tokyo,” Dáire said, “was that Gentry told me she loved me. She asked me to marry

her.”

Jackson’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. His mouth opened and closed but no

sound came out. He finally snapped his jaw shut with a loud click of his teeth.

“She said she could give me anything I wanted and, with her as my wife, I could go

as high within The Cumberland Group as any man could want. All I had to do was say

yes.”

Still staring at his friend, Jackson was beyond words. He looked a little green

around the gills at the mere mention of Dáire doing something so self-destructive.

“You can imagine how she took it when I said no.”

Jackson nodded, but still couldn’t bring himself to speak.

Dáire took a deep breath before continuing then let it out raggedly. “She told me if I

didn’t agree to marry her, she’d make my life miserable. She said she’d come after me

with everything she had and I’d regret not taking her up on her offer to make me a kept

man.”

Jackson swallowed. “She called you that? A kept man?”

Dáire shook his head. “No, but that’s what it would have amounted to.”

The men were silent for a long while then Jackson cleared his throat, drawing

Dáire’s attention. “You think she set you up and all that shit you went through in

Borneo was to teach you not to fuck with her?”

Dáire shrugged. “I didn’t at the time, but I do now. After what she did to me at

Sinavar, she’s capable of doing anything.”

Tears filled Jackson’s faded gray eyes. “I’m sorry, Dairy Crow,” he whispered.

“For what?”

“She knows we’re close. She used me to hurt you.”

“You’ll be the last person she ever uses to hurt me,” Dáire said.

Jackson’s brows drew together. “What do you mean? What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to bring her down.”

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“I don’t think that’s possible,” Jackson told him. “At least I don’t think you’re

capable of doing it.”

An evil smile tugged at the corners of Dáire’s mouth. “You don’t want to know

what I’m capable of doing, Jack Off.”

“Dáire, look—”

“I might not be able to prove it, but she got me locked up for nearly a year in that

hellhole in Borneo. I could barely walk when you and your men took me out of there.

Do you remember that?”

“All too well,” Jackson said. “Just like I feel right now.”

“I spent all those weeks here recuperating and in all that time I never saw her ugly

face once, but as soon as I got back to the States, she’s sitting off the coast of Florida in

her fancy yacht, summoning me like the vassal she considers me.”

“Can’t argue with you there.”

“She gives me an ultimatum, but she knows already which way I’m going to jump.

She knows about Jillian. She knows my baby girl needs my help even before Star knew

it. She sets me up. She sets you up, puts you over there in danger, then tries to keep me

from donating bone marrow to my daughter. Only this time, I don’t answer her phone

call. I pitch my cell phone in the toilet and try like hell to avoid her.”

“Well, that was a bad idea,” Jackson reminded him.

“And you suffered because of it,” Dáire said. “Jackson, I am really sorry, man. I—”

“Forget it and don’t mention it again,” Jackson said. “Go on.”

“I guess she could have had me picked up at any time, but she allowed me to give

Jilly what she needed, yet that night she had her goons come to the hospital and drag

me out of there unconscious.”

“And you wound up at Sinavar.”

Dáire nodded. “Where she proceeded to get me hooked on this drug of hers.”

“Hooked?” There was shock on Jackson’s face.

“She says I’ll have to have it every day for the rest of my life, but I can’t believe

that’s true. I’ll shake it,” Dáire said. “I have to. What if Jilly needs another bone marrow

transplant? What if Star or you need a kidney?”

Jackson grinned. “I don’t want none of your used pieces-parts, Dairy Crow. You’re

just as likely to sell me a lemon as not.”

“I’ve got real problems, Jackson. What if Gentry tries to hurt Star like she hurt

you?”

“Don’t even go there.”

Dáire was beginning to feel itchy, twitchy, and he realized the drug was starting to

wear off. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since he’d had his last injection and the

restlessness was building. If he were going to function at top efficiency, he’d have to

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give in to the call of the narcotic. He reached into the pocket of his black field jacket and

withdrew a long, slender leather case inside which was a syringe and a bottle of tenerse.

“Right now, this is the worst of my problems,” he said, opening the case to show

Jackson the contents.

“Man,” Jackson said, his eyes troubled. “That’s not a problem. That’s a nightmare.”

“I’ll shake it, Jackson,” Dáire swore as he took out the syringe. “I’m going to shake

the addiction to the drug then, one way or another, I’m going to rid us all of Gentry!”

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Chapter Thirteen

Star was trembling uncontrollably. Sitting on the sloping embankment of Interstate

10, she was watching her car going up in flames. Shaken by her narrow escape from

death, she didn’t even notice the Florida Highway Patrolman’s approach. She didn’t

hear him speaking to her, asking her if she was all right, if anyone else had been in the

car. Numbly she perched there with her knees drawn up, a wicked gash along the left

side of her mouth where flying glass had hit her beneath the canopy of the head airbag.

Cars had stopped on both sides of the interstate—drivers doing nothing but

gawking at the burning car. A semi had pulled around the wreck of the BMW and

parked on the shoulder headed east, jumping out and running back to help Star only

moments after the wreck. They had only gone twenty feet or so before the car exploded

into flames, the stench of burning rubber and plastic sickening, knocking both of them

to the ground.

Now the truck driver was sitting beside Star, answering the patrolman’s questions

for it was obvious the beautiful woman from the car was in shock.

“I was just cresting the hill back there when I saw this black Hummer come tearing

across the median. He just T-boned the lady,” the trucker told the trooper. “He

slammed into her and pushed her sideways into the guardrail.”

The trooper looked around them. He could see fresh gouges in the grass of the

median, skidmarks on the roadway, broken glass but no other vehicle. “Where’s the

Hummer?”

“Took off like a bat out of hell right after he hit her,” the trucker replied. “Man, it

looked to me like he was waiting for her to come by and just shot across the median

right at her.”

“He was on the side of the road?”

The trucker nodded. “Yes, sir. He took off from a dead stop and headed right for

her. I don’t think she saw him until it was too late.”

“Did you get a license number?”

“No, sir,” the trucker answered. “I came barreling toward them. I saw the driver

door of the Hummer open, but then, next thing I knew, the driver was tearing out of

here. I was too worried about helping the lady out of her car to pay attention to a tag.

Both doors were caved in but the back window was broken, completely gone, so I

crawled through the window and pulled her out.” He looked down at the torn, bloody

knees of his blue jeans. “My old lady is gonna kill me. These were brand new.”

In the distance the sounds of sirens began. Emergency lights were flashing along

both directions of the super slab.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

There were several people milling about, but when the trooper asked if anyone had

seen the Hummer, apparently no one had. Most had stopped when they’d seen the fire