Riders of the Pale Horse (3 page)

Rogue Robards described himself as a product of the Florida property boom. His daddy had been a swamp creature lured from the Everglades by Gulf Coast developers, who feared rolling out their blueprints on a log that suddenly grew fangs and a tail and showed a marked desire to eat them, Ray-Ban specs and all. His momma had been a washed-out woman decked in shades of gray, whose days had been filled with the drudgery of hard work and the happy sounds of a drunk husband beating the living daylights out of their only boy. Thankfully, the boy had grown up fast enough to keep his pappy from inflicting permanent damage, and left home at the ripe old age of fourteen, after landing a punch that drove his father through the front wall of their two-ply home.

Next had come three years of roaming the drier reaches of Texas and marking time in a variety of oil fields and other places too remote to feel the nosy influence of social workers and child-labor investigators. Then Rogue Robards had come into town one evening with a paycheck burning a hole in his Levi's, and the next morning he had sought refuge from a monumental hangover in a Marine recruiting office. The spit-and-polish NCOs had taken one look at his strapping physique, ignored his somewhat off-center list and the way he shaded his eyes from the glare of their fluorescent overheads, and practically begged him to sign on the dotted line.

Vietnam had swallowed up Robards, chewed him up, and spat him out. He was left scarred down deep, pitted with wounds that stubbornly refused to heal. He had then taken the only step he saw as both open and sensible, given the circumstances.

Rogue Robards had become a mercenary.

Sunlight hit him like metal striking an anvil as Robards
emerged from the hangar and sauntered toward the rank of taxis. Rank was definitely the right word here—the newest car in the lineup was a DeSoto of late fifties vintage with more rust than paint. But Robards liked the look of that vehicle and its driver, who had parked his car beneath the lot's single sheltering palm. The man leaned silently against his car and watched while his compatriots started a raunchy chorus of pleas for Robards' business. The man's only reaction to Robards' approach was a slight stiffening of his spine.

Robards dropped his satchel at the man's feet. “Hot day.”

“I await a fare,” the man replied in oddly formal English.

“Your fare's just arrived,” Robards said.

The man inspected him frankly. “You are representing the Siemens Company?”

“If that's what it takes to get a ride.”

“Why me? You can see, twenty other cars are here, and they are all eager to take you anywhere you want to go.”

Robards stayed put. “Where did you learn your English?”

The driver inspected him for a long moment, then replied, “I worked for an American base on the Turkish side of the border. A sergeant at the post, he had a multitude of books. I read them all.”

“Impressive. Might have been that we knew the same man.”

The driver was clearly skeptical. “And yours—he had a love affair with his bunk?”

“And a crew cut gone gray, and eyes filled with unlived passions. He lived for his books and cultivated a belly more like a cauldron than a pot.” Robards wiped at sweat. “Shakespeare and Tolstoy in battered paperbacks. Wooden packing crates filled with everything from Dickens to Harold Robbins.”

“It might have been the same man,” the driver conceded.

“Or maybe just a kindred spirit. The Marines breed a lot of strange characters in the seasons between wars.”

The driver smirked. “So you were one of those few good men.”

“At least until I enlisted. Afterward they called me something
else.” Robards reached down and tossed his satchel into the car's backseat. “What is your name?”

“Anatoly. And you?”

“Barton Robards. My friends call me Rogue.”

“You can afford to pay a driver?”

“Pay him well now and promise more later.”

“Later does not often arrive in this country, in this time.”

“If it doesn't for me, you'll hear about it soon enough,” Robards assured him. “My generosity increases in pace with my wealth. It is my greatest failing.”

“Not to me.” Anatoly gave Robards' face a closer examination. “A hotel, you need?”

“With more charm than glitz,” Robards agreed. “I have no need of newness, and too much air conditioning gives me the hives.”

“A taste of the old world, perhaps.”

“Clean would be a plus. And fresh sheets.”

“Food without gristle,” Anatoly said, walking around the car and climbing in. “I comprehend.”

“Also a minimum of flies and other winged creatures,” Robards said, joining him in the front seat. “I've grown attached to my own blood.”

The ancient auto groaned and creaked but ambled forward in a rocking good humor. The slender driver handled the vast steering wheel and its chrome-plated horn with ease. “What brings you to our formerly fair land?”

“I heard rumors of several small wars.”

“No war is small for the ones involved.”

“True. But so long as foreign powers are not involved, it cannot be called large.”

“Also true. You seek small wars? It sounds like a risky life.”

“No. It's not the war I seek but the opportunity. And yes, it's a risky life.”

“And you call such wars an opportunity. Interesting.”

“A war often makes holes. Or windows. Or cracks in the woodwork, whatever you like to call them. Places for an agile man to slip through.”

“I prefer to join with surer things these days. Life alone has more risks than I care to take.”

“The war hasn't been kind to you?”

“War and kindness are words that mingle like oil and water.” Anatoly drove with as much pressure on the horn as the gas pedal. He swerved deftly around an overloaded ox cart.

“I've heard that these wars have left certain people in great need of certain items.”

“That too I have heard.”

“Put out the word,” Robards insisted. “Speak of a man you have known for ages—”

“Minutes, even,” Anatoly corrected.

“—long enough to trust,” Robards continued smoothly, “who has interest in helping resolve the problem.”

“Which one?”

“Whichever has been left undone. Whichever pays. Delivering the odd container. Finding the lost. Rescuing the captured. Healing the rift. Righting the wrong, or if not, wreaking havoc upon the wrongdoers.”

Anatoly was silent for a long moment, then mused aloud, “There is something.”

“There usually is.”

“It is, of course, quite dangerous.”

“Of course.”

“And not entirely legal,” Anatoly continued. Robards merely shrugged.

Anatoly slowed at an intersection manned by troops stationed by an armored personnel carrier. Once safely through, he asked, “Would you consider working for a church?”

Robards tried to mask his shock. “It would make for a certain change.”

Anatoly pulled up in front of a decidedly third-rate hotel,
honked his horn, and said to Robards, “Then see to your bath and meal and rest while I return for my sweating passenger. I shall then speak with the church people and see if perhaps they are ready to meet with the likes of you.”

Rogue Robards lay drifting in and out of sleep in standard jet-lag dozes. Through his window drifted the cacophony of a third-world city—revving motors and blaring horns and shouting voices and strange music played through speakers shattered by the constant load. To Robards the din played itself out like a familiar lullaby.

The tentative knock came as a welcome relief. He rolled from the bed, crossed the room, and opened his door. The young man who faced him looked so much like a fish out of water that Rogue could not help but grin.

“Mr. Robards?”

“The one and only. What can I do for you?”

The young man seemed uncomfortable with his own skin. “Your taxi driver? Anatoly? He said you might be able to help us with a problem we have?”

Robards crossed bulky arms across his chest. “Do you make a habit of turning every sentence into a question?”

“Only when I'm nervous.” The young man scratched his cheek, caught his hand, and brought it back down under control.

“Which must be most of the time around here.”

“It's not much different here than any other place,” the young man replied.

“Watch it, now,” Robards said. “Keep that up and I might decide underneath that mild-mannered exterior lurks what'd pass for a sense of humor.”

Brown eyes drifted up long enough to inspect Robards' face for derision. Finding none, they settled back on the floor. “My name is Wade Waters.”

A grin stretched the leathery skin of his face. “Yeah, I'd
say you had a pretty good reason for skipping town. You from the States?”

“Illinois. But now I work at the clinic of a local mission.”

“Mission as in religious?”

“Is there a problem with that?”

“Not from my end,” Robards said evenly. “But not many of you people want to have much to do with the likes of me.”

Wade Waters started to say something, then stopped and asked, “Would you mind coming and having a talk with our director?”

Robards reached to the bedside table for shades, keys, money clip, and knife and pocketed it all in practiced motions. “Lead on, Sanchez.”

“Who?”

Robards showed genuine surprise. “Don't tell me you've never heard of Don Quixote.”

“Oh. Sure.” The young man rattled down two flights of rickety stairs, crossed the scuffed lobby floor, and entered the bright afternoon sunlight. “I might even prefer it to Wade.”

“Watch it there,” Robards said, slipping on mirror shades. “You gotta learn to trap that humor, keep it outta sight.”

In the lowlands around Grozny, the capital of Russia's Chechen-Ingush region, autumn held on long and surrendered only after a hard and dusty struggle. The Caucasus foothills were a world unto themselves; even nature seemed to accept that no normal rules applied here. When winter finally did arrive, it landed with a ferocity so sudden that every year a few people were caught unawares and left frozen to an iron-hard ground. But this year autumn had fought a more valiant battle than usual, with temperatures remaining in the eighties for long after the first snow normally would have fallen. The locals responded with customary pessimism and predicted that the snows when they came would be heavy enough to bury houses.