Unacceptable Risk (2 page)

He quickly belly-crawled to within several feet of the man. A glance at the man surprised Sam. He seemed to be sitting on a stick or small tree stump and slumping against the larger tree from which he'd fallen. Sam got hold of a rock about the size of an egg and threw it hard at the figure. The thump of its impact sounded promising, but nothing moved.

Sam knew it could be a trap, although few men could sit still and take that kind of punishment. The body's position still seemed strange, almost like an animal shot in the gut. He took down the flashlight and drew closer. On the side of the man's jaw there was a nasty bruise. It was a mixture of luck and skill that the rubber bullet had struck him in the head, rendering him unconscious. Sam shone the light downward: indeed, the man appeared to be sitting on a narrow tree stump.

The man's head lolled to the side and then straightened and he let out a moan. Suddenly the man screamed and at the same time sounded as if he were being strangled. His screaming became more robust, then took on the tenor of someone crying. Confused, Sam shone the light down again, illuminating the man's buttocks. Blood ran freely from the seat of his pants. As Sam moved closer, he could see that the small sapling's trunk, perhaps the diameter of a quarter, disappeared up and into the immediate vicinity of the man's anus.

He was impaled.

Sam broke out in a sweat as he realized what had happened. On the ground lay a machete. Obviously, the man had whacked off the sapling to build a platform or blind in the larger tree. That had left a sharp, angled surface. When knocked from the tree above, the unfortunate soul had landed ass first, with the entire weight of his body driving the tree deep into his rectum.

With two quick strokes of the machete Sam cut off the offending trunk and laid the man on his side. From his pack he took a syringe with morphine and gave the man a quarter of a dose.

"I'm going to try to save you."

"Help me. Help me!" The man sounded nearly incoherent with pain.

Sam guessed that there was more than a foot of tree trunk inside him, perhaps two feet, if it followed his spine behind his vitals.

"I am going to build a stretcher as fast as I can."

Sam moved quickly to his pack, pulled out a satellite phone and his GPS. He called the sheriff, gave the latitude and longitude coordinates off the GPS, and let the sheriff call the chopper from Mercy Medical Center in Redding. The police put him on hold, then returned to tell him that they could not arrive anytime soon and that the helicopter was already en route to an accident. Sam called the reservation, his mother's sister. A rescue party would arrive within hours. He told them to bring guns and to be extremely careful and to move slowly, expecting an ambush. It bothered Sam to ask for their help because he knew Gaudet and his capabilities. Sam dismantled his pack and used the heavy synthetic material and a swatch of fabric, designed for this purpose, to build a travois.

"Who do you work for?" Sam asked.

"Oh God, I'm dying. It hurts. Do something."

Sam worked on the stretcher while he waited for the initial dose of morphine to kick in. "Who do you work for?"

"Girard."

"Does he have another name?"

"I don't know. I only know Girard."

"I found the tracking device on my car. Did you follow in cars or what?"

"Cars and a helicopter. Ahhhh, it hurts. I knew it was too easy."

"More morphine?" Sam said, then inquired, "Where did you find my car?"

"Followed it from your office."

"My guy Paul thought he saw sun flash from a telescope. Did you stake the office?"

"Mmm-hmm." He moaned again.

"Where is this Girard from?"

"More painkiller." Sam pushed in a little more. "France? Quatram?" The man seemed uncertain.

"Why are you here?"

"Waiting for the neighbors to shoot a guy called Sam. If they don't, we will." The man's words were guttural and barely comprehensible.

"The neighbors?"

"I don't understand it."

"What's your next assignment after that? Anybody else to kill?"

"Amazon. Find Bowden."

"Bowden who? Who's Bowden?"

Sam thought he recognized the name. It was right under his nose, but he couldn't place it. Something about Bowden and the jungle went together. It would come to him. He snapped back to the present.

"I don't know! Help me."

He gave the man a bigger dose of morphine.

"Why Bowden? Why the Amazon?"

"Medicine. I think. They don't tell us much. Pharmacy company."

"Where in the Amazon?"

"Peru? Maybe Brazil. The border."

"How do you communicate with Girard?"

"Computer."

"Access address."

"Pocket."

Sam found a small black book. He flipped through it.

"Where?"

"Look under
u."

Sam looked under
u
and found uaeromtioneb.net// exchange. He recognized the name spelled backward. Cute. He stuck the book in his pocket.

"What's the password to get into the site?"

"More morphine."

"The password."

"It changes at least every ten days. It's too long. Can't remember."

"Listen, my friend. I'm going to try hard, but you are probably going to die. Why not do the right thing while you're dying. Tell me how to stop this man who calls himself Girard." Sam gave him more morphine.

"It's in my computer."

Sam knew it was probably true and that the password would be very long and he took a guess about how it might be stored. He also figured that Gaudet only posted things for a very short window of time and then only when he had tipped off this man to look for something. Still it was worth a try. Maybe Grogg could break through the fire wall.

"In an encoded document?"

"Yeah."

"What's the password to the document?"

"Birthdate 12/24/61, then Independence Day 07/04, my Social Security number backward, plus the words: 'laughing out loud' run together."

"In what file is the document?"

"I don't know."

"When you open your computer, where do you go to get to this password for Girard's site?"

"My Documents."

"You on a server?"

"Yeah."

"Homepage?"

"Irishmanandleprechauns.com."

"Do you have an ISDN line, DSL, or a cable connection to the Internet?"

"ISDN."

"You leave your computer on?"

"Yes."

Sam got on the sat phone. At last he may have found a weak link in Gaudet's fortifications. Gaudet was smart but had a dummy working for him. He got Jill, his number three in command, on the phone. Putting her in a management role had been a logical choice. She was smart, had the most experience next to Paul, was the most critical, and had the best instincts of anyone he knew. On the other hand, she had been his lover, never quite letting him forget it, and perhaps still loved him. He had a severe mental thing about risking her in any kind of a fight, which meant he did his best to keep her locked away in the office, and that was a source of contention. In her mind she was a soldier.

"Jill, go to Irishmanandleprechauns.com." Then to the man, "What's your name and the password to your exchange server? We're going in right now."

"Rollin and Rollinstrolley for the password." He spelled it slowly.

Sam gave it to Jill. "Go to the C drive. My Documents. Find an encrypted document, password as follows." He read it to Jill, up to the Social Security number. "What's your Social Security number, Rollin?"

He got it and told Jill to type it in backward, then type the words, "laughing out loud."

"Tell Grogg to use everything he's got to get into a site called by the name Benoit Moreau dot net, but Benoit Moreau is spelled backward. Use the password in Rollin's Word document at Irishmanandleprechauns.com to get in." Sam rolled Rollin onto the travois and the pain of the movement caused the man to scream himself hoarse.

As Rollin quieted, Sam heard something and jumped into a bunch of huckleberry. Quickly he circled with his .45 drawn. Whoever was coming was unskilled. Inside a minute he saw a man walking heavily through the brush. He appeared panicked by the way he moved. Sam hit him with the light.

"Freeze."

Holding an automatic weapon, the man whirled and shot, one of the bullets just grazing Sam's cheek. Before he could think about it, Sam fired back. A solid hit in the chest knocked the man off his feet, and as the man rolled, Sam realized his foe wore body armor. When he came up again, Sam blew off the side of his face with the second round.

Sam paused for a moment, feeling his bleeding cheek and allowing himself to process the fact that he'd nearly lost his life. Then he tried the radio again.

"Paul?"

"Yo."

"Where you been?"

"Might ask the same of you. Don't you usually come when a man doesn't answer?"

"I was getting around to it. You seen anybody?"

"Killed two."

"Just a minute."

Sam went back to his patient, who had begun groaning again.

"What's Girard look like?"

"Different all the time."

"Is he here tonight?"

"Yes."

"How many with you?"

"I think five. I don't know. Please help me."

Sam gave him more morphine, amazed at the fact that a giant stick up the bowel worked better than truth serum. Of course the finger on the morphine plunger was not to be underrated.

Sam picked up the radio again. "At least two left."

At that moment a massive explosion came from the direction of Sam's log house.

"You know what I think that was?" Paul said.

"Uh-huh. It means he's given up for the moment. Maybe Gaudet's losing his touch."

A pause, then a click from Paul's radio.

"I don't know, Sam. Someone seems to have a gun at my head."

Sam felt tired. It was an uncommon reaction to a colleague's imminent demise.

"I'm a dead man," Paul said before he was cut off.

"Gaudet," Sam said.

The response was garbled.

The radio on Rollin's belt came to life, a barely audible voice saying something Sam couldn't quite hear.

"Girard. Whoever. I can trade you Rollin for Paul. And I know you don't care about Rollin, but you might care about what he could say to the authorities."

"No!" Rollin cried. "He'll kill me."

"Just a minute." Sam turned off the radio. "Then you better help me figure how to trick the bastard."

"There are seven of them," Rollin said. "Not five."

"What else did you lie about?"

"Nothing. They'll be coming here now. They knew my GPS coordinates. God, I need more morphine."

Using all his strength, Sam dragged the stretcher up the side of the canyon a hundred feet and parked Rollin in a thicket. At the hilltops it was growing light. He placed two syringes full of morphine in the man's trembling hands and kept the last two. He rather doubted he would see the man alive again. As he turned away, he remembered one more thing he should ask.

"Did you ever hear of a Frenchman named Georges Raval?"

"Never."

Sam ran along the canyon wall, and as it started to flatten near the house, he slowed down. They would be corning without lights so as not to make themselves sitting ducks. Paul had been halfway around the house; Gaudet would send the others and stay with Paul, his ticket out.