Gambit, David Hagberg [most life changing books .TXT] 📗

is, he not only knows his business, he also knows how to hide his tracks. He’s the invisible man.”

“The only way we’ll find him is when he comes here and takes his shot,” Pete added.

FORTY-ONE

Li managed to sleep on and off during the long flight from Geneva to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, but they were not traveling first class, and Taio was too uncomfortable even to doze off. He’d always been a self-assured man, but never to the point of arrogance. Yet he was seriously looking forward to going head-to-head with McGarvey, though Li had cautioned against it, and his better sense told him that she was probably right.

The American had to know or suspect that someone else would be coming after them. Just before they’d left the Geneva Holiday Inn Express for the airport, Tarasov had called on their encrypted cell phone to let them know that McGarvey and his wife had left Washington and were at their beach house on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

“I have a pretty good idea that they’re expecting company and have hunkered down till you show up,” he’d said.

“Then we’ll wait them out. Hammond gave us the job but with no timetable.”

“I want this done as soon as possible.”

“You may be our expediter, but you’re not our paymaster,” Taio said. “We’re not going to rush; mistakes can be made.”

“There are other considerations.”

“No.”

Tarasov was obviously angry, but he’d kept his tone even. “I’ll pay you a $5 million bonus.”

“Each,” Taio said without thinking, and almost immediately he regretted it and was about to say so, but the Russian was first.

“Agreed.”

“How soon?”

“Rent a car in Atlanta and drive to Florida. It should take you around six hours. I want it done and the two of you on the road back to Atlanta within twenty-four hours later.”

“We’ll need to sleep at some point.”

“Sleep on the flight over. And then on the flight back to wherever you’re headed next.”

He had shared the sped-up timetable and the extra money with Li, and although she’d been skeptical, she’d bowed to his decision as she almost always did. She’d never been a pushover, but she was a good soldier and knew how to take orders if she trusted the lead officer.

The point of the matter, Taio thought as the plane began its long descent into Atlanta, was that he and Li had also discussed retiring at some point. When this operation had paid out, they would have plenty of money.

But the problem was twofold, something he’d not yet discussed with Li, although he had a fair idea which way she would lean. First, there’d always been the issue of failure—which, in their business, very often led to death or imprisonment. But secondly, he wondered if they would miss the thrill of the hunt and the sharp adrenaline rush at the time of the kill. So sharp sometimes that it was almost sexual.

The military psychiatrists at officers’ school had discussed the issue with both of them—and at the time, they’d both thought that meant they would not be accepted for training. But the shrinks had assured them they were exactly the kind of people best suited for this line of work.

“Professional assassins don’t do the job merely for love of country or even love of money when they go freelance, which I predict you will,” their shrink said, “but for the thrill of it.”

McGarvey would be their most formidable target to date, and Taio wondered whether they could retire or if they would be driven to find even tougher assignments.

What would they do with themselves, day after day?

But then he put his mind back to work on the operation at hand. Li’s suggestion that McGarvey’s wife would be a key to the kill was intriguing, except for the fact it might mean that he and Li would have to separate.

Thirty minutes later, Taio got online with his iPhone and booked them a room for three nights at the Marriott Courtyard near the Sarasota Airport, found the name and location of a gun shop in Bradenton, a city just north of the airport, and a boat rental place in Venice just south of Casey Key. When he was finished, he booked two round-trip first-class tickets to New York’s LaGuardia from the Sarasota Airport for three days later.

They were on the hunt, and the old familiar feelings were starting to build inside him that made him think that when they were finished here, they would take a long vacation somewhere but never get out of the business.

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson was like every other large airport in the world, a place of many corridors busy with scurrying people. It was nearly nine in the evening, local, when they made it through customs and immigration, some of the money divided between them, the remainder along with their Schilling passports hidden in the linings of the suitcases, and headed with their small carry-on bags to the car rental agencies, where they booked a nondescript Toyota Camry at the Hertz counter. And it was thirty minutes later before they were on the ring road that led to I-75 south, Li driving.

“You didn’t get much sleep, did you?” she said.

“Enough.”

“No, I can see it in your eyes. And tired people make mistakes.”

“Amateurs make mistakes; we don’t,” Taio said a little too sharply. “You can drive while I tell you my plan, and then I’ll get a couple of hours’ sleep if you’re good to drive all the way.”

Li glanced at him. “Do you think that we can accomplish this in the twenty-four hours we were given?”

“I think so, but even if we miss the deadline, we’ll still collect the second half of our fee, and we didn’t have to pay Buerger.”

“We would lose our expediter.”

“If we remain in the business, there are others.”

“That makes sense,” Li said after a moment. “Our freedom means more than money.”

“Or our lives, because let’s not forget who we’re going up against this time.”

“Tell me again how,” Li said.

He did, and when he was