In the Company of Killers, Bryan Christy [love story books to read .txt] 📗

work. Work with our allies to make his life difficult, but unofficially, he’s got what you might call spousal privilege. He’s outside of scope, son. I’m sorry.”

Klay felt his stomach turn. “Outside of scope” was what he’d said to Bernard. Part of his “I’m no safari ant” speech. He’d been wrong to say that, wrong to stand by, wrong to not speak out about Congo and so many things he’d seen, even if his voice was unlikely to be heard. He’d been wrong for so long, confining himself to the page, the deadline, the script.

Hungry said he was afraid to take on the unwinnable case, and he had laughed. He was a mortician’s son, he said. They were all unwinnable cases. Life was an unwinnable case. But now he realized the unwinnable was the only thing worth fighting for.

His father had stood up to Nicky Scalise—and the cost had been immeasurable. But the cost to stand by—to not enter the fight, regardless of the odds—was to let darkness win. Taking a risk to help someone—knowing you might lose—was not folly; it was the test of a man. Without sacrifice, all the world was darkness. His father’s voice: You are a light, Tom.

“Your focus needs to be Vance Eady,” Barrow continued. “He’s a flight risk and he’s a suicide risk. We’re counting on you to keep him alive for us. He won’t make any decisions until he finds out what you know. So we need you to string him along a bit. Not long.”

“And then?” Klay asked.

Barrow shrugged.

Klay looked at Barrow. “I want to talk to my father.”

Barrow sighed deeply. He pressed the call button.

Klay reclined his seat and closed his eyes. An hour later Barrow woke him and handed him a phone. Barrow walked to the back of the plane, a symbolic gesture of privacy. The call would certainly be monitored and recorded. Klay and his father spoke for ten minutes. When he was through, Klay set the phone down on the table and waited for Barrow to return to his seat.

“I want him out of prison.”

“Can’t do it,” Barrow said.

“You lost your daughter. I lost my mother. He lost his wife. What would you do to have your daughter back? To protect her from that day? My father did what it took to protect his children.”

The two men evaluated each other. A father and a son. Mist and rock.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Barrow said. “After you deliver.”

“Fair enough,” Klay said. He would keep Eady alive until Barrow’s men arrived.

As the plane made its descent into Schiphol, Barrow went over it all again. “Eady can’t feel threatened. But don’t be a pushover. You’re angry. Get angry. Channel your anger in a way that makes sense to him.”

“I got it,” Klay said.

“You’ll have the Tenchant funeral and then—”

“I got it,” Klay said.

MISCHIEF REEF

Dangerous Ground

South China Sea

Terry Krieger stood in the stern of the Raptor, a mile off Mischief Reef in the South China Sea, an area aptly known as Dangerous Ground. The area is poorly charted. Accurate information on ocean currents is not available for Dangerous Ground. Charted depths are unreliable, soundings give no warning, radar is of little value. Low islands, sheer drops, and sunken reefs abound in these blue-green waters. The US military’s chief geospatial intelligence agency, which offers guidance to Navy vessels, minces no words when it comes to the area: “Vessels in Dangerous Ground must rely heavily on seaman’s eye navigation and should not normally enter the area other than in daylight. Avoidance of Dangerous Ground is the mariner’s only assurance of safety.”

A brisk morning breeze blew Krieger’s hair. He wore a blue Perseus Group windbreaker and khakis. Beside him, a wall of five flat-screen computer monitors had been set up, served by a single brushed-aluminum keyboard on a white table, all of it secured against the area’s sudden winds and unpredictable currents.

Standing before Krieger was Vice Admiral Meng Jingchen of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, commander of China’s South Fleet, accompanied by his two most trusted men. The three officers wore their service dress whites.

When he described the capability he intended to offer China’s military, President Ho had replied simply, “Convince Meng.”

If he failed to get Meng to think outside the box this morning, Krieger knew he would suffer more than just the loss of a business deal. He’d be gored. Yurchenko would see to it.

“A small gift,” Krieger said. Using both hands, he presented Meng with a book. Mapes, fluent in Mandarin, acted as his interpreter. Meng nodded curtly and accepted the gift. The book was The Sovereign Field Guide to Hawks of North America.

Meng smiled. “Raptor!” he said, and nodded to indicate the yacht, which brought light laughter from his team. Meng admired the book’s cover and turned the first few pages, lingering over the author’s signature and Krieger’s inscription: “Tempus fugit, memento mori. —Terry Krieger.” He turned at random and lingered over a photograph of a bird power-diving. Meng did not look at the bird’s description. “Falco peregrinus,” he said, and told his men it was the world’s fastest raptor. Mapes translated for Krieger.

“Yes,” Krieger said. “Not everyone approaches the world’s challenges in the same way. After this morning, I hope that you and your country will join me in looking at the world from a raptor’s perspective.

“Admiral Meng, before our demonstration, I’d like to recount a story,” Krieger said. “It is a story you are no doubt familiar with, but it will take us to a place from which we might all become raptors. In 1996, the US Navy announced it would develop a new, technologically superior battleship designed to ensure American naval dominance into the twenty-first century. It called the program Smart Ship. Instead of reconceiving the idea of a warship, however, the Navy hired Griffon Industries to backfit an old one. Griffon retrofitted the Yorktown with a new bridge, automated her navigation and propulsion systems, fused her SAMs and torpedoes to operate