EB WAS DISTURBED BY THE MESSAGE he’d intercepted from Lopez. He knew, even better than Sally did, that it wasn’t an idle threat. The drug lord, like his minions, was merciless. He’d had countless enemies neutralized, and he wouldn’t hesitate because Jessica was a woman. Just the month before his arrest, he’d had the leader of a drug-dealing gang disposed of for cheating him. It was chilling even for a professional soldier to know what depths a human being could sink to in the name of greed.
He and Dallas started planning for the certainty of an attack. The Johnson homeplace was isolated, but it had plenty of cover where men could hide. Eb intended having people in place long before Lopez’s hired goons could find a safe passage to the house to carry out the madman’s orders. Anything else would be impossible, since he knew Jessica would never sacrifice her informant’s life, even to save herself and her family.
“I think we can safely assume that these men aren’t professionals,” Dallas said quietly. “Their way will be to wade in shooting.”
Eb’s pale eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t bet the lives of two women and a child on that,” he replied. “Lopez knows I’m here, and that I have trained professionals working for me. He also knows that I’m why Jessica talked Sally into moving back here in the first place. He’s ruthless, but he isn’t stupid. When he comes after Jessica, he’ll send the best people he’s got.”
“Point taken,” Dallas said heavily. “I suppose it was wishful thinking.” He glanced worriedly at Eb. “We could bring all three of them over here.”
“Sure we could. But it would only postpone the inevitable. Lopez doesn’t quit. He’ll look on it as a setback and find another way to get to them. Besides, they can’t stay here indefinitely. Sally has a job and Stevie has to go to school.”
Dallas stared into the distance, quiet and thoughtful. “Stevie doesn’t like me,” he murmured. “He told his mother he was learning karate so that he could work me over.” He shot a half-amused glance in Eb’s direction. “Spunky kid.”
“Yes, he is,” Eb agreed. “Pity he has to grow up without a father. And before you fly at me,” he interrupted Dallas’s exclamation, “I know Jessica didn’t tell you whose child he was. But you know now.”
“I know,” Dallas muttered irritably, “for all the good it does me. She won’t even discuss it. The minute I walk in the door, she clams up and stays that way until I leave. I can barely get her to say hello and goodbye!”
“Then she cries herself to sleep at night because you hate her.”
The blond man’s dark eyes widened. “What?”
“That’s why Stevie wants to deck you,” Eb said simply. “He’s very protective of his mother.”
Dallas seemed to calm down a little. “Imagine that,” he mused. “Well, well. So she isn’t quite as disinterested as she pretends.” He stuck his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the wall. “No chance she’ll turn in the guy who ratted on Lopez, I gather?”
“Not one in a million.” He studied the other man for a moment. “You’re really worried.”
“Of course I am. I’ve seen the aftermath of Lopez’s vendettas,” Dallas said curtly. “What worries me most is that if someone’s willing to trade his life or his freedom to get you, he can. No protection is adequate against a determined killer.”
“Then ours will make history,” Eb promised him. “Let’s go over to Cy Parks’s place. I want to see if he’s got a way to contact that guy in Mexico who used to work as a mercenary with Dutch Van Meer and Diego Laremos back in the eighties. He went on to do work infiltrating drug cartels.”
“J.D. Brettman led that mercenary group,” Dallas recalled, grinning. “He’s a superior court judge in Chicago these days. Imagine that!”
“I heard that Van Meer lives with his wife and kids in the northwestern Rocky Mountains on a ranch. What about Laremos?” Eb asked.
“He and his family live in the Yucatán. He’s given up soldiering, too.” He shook his head. “Those guys were younger than us when they started and they made fortunes.”
“It was a different game back then. Times have changed. So have the rules. We’d never get away with some of the stunts those guys pulled.” Eb felt in his pocket for his truck keys. “All of us met them, but Cy and Diego Laremos got to know each other well several years back when Cy was doing a little job down around Cancún for a wealthy yachtsman. He may know the professional soldier who helped a friend of Laremos’s escape some nasty pothunters and a kidnapper.”
“Do I know this friend?” Dallas wanted to know as they headed out the door.
“You probably know of him—Canton Rourke.”
“Good Lord, Mr. Software?” Dallas exclaimed. “The guy who lost everything and then regrouped and now has a corporation in the Fortune 500?”
“That’s him.” Eb nodded. “Turns out the new Mrs. Rourke’s parents are university professors who devote summers to Mayan digs in the Yucatán. It’s a long story, but this Mexican agent does a little freelance work. He’d be an asset in this sort of operation.”
“He might even have some contacts we could use?”
“That’s so.” Eb got in and started the truck. He glanced at Dallas. “Besides that, he’s done undercover work on narcotics smuggling for the Mexican government and lived to tell about it. That proves how good he is. A lot of undercover people get killed.”
“He’d be just what we need, if we can get him. I don’t imagine the DEA is going to tell us who their undercover guy is, or what he finds out.”
“Exactly. That’s where I hope Cy’s going to come in. He doesn’t like any of the old associations very much anymore, but considering the danger Lopez poses, he might be willing to help us.”
“Pity about his arm.”
Eb shot him a wry glance. “Yes, but it’s a lucky break it wasn’t the arm he uses.”
They drove over to Cy Parks’s ranch, and found him watching his young foreman, Harley, doctoring a sick bull yearling in the barn. He was lounging against one of the posts that supported the imposing structure, his hat low over his eyes, his arms folded over a broad chest, one booted foot resting on a rail of the gate that enclosed the stall where his man was busy.
He turned as Cy and Dallas strode down the neat chipped bark covered floor to join him.
“You two out sightseeing?” Cy drawled without smiling, his green eyes narrowed and curious.
“Not today. We need a name.”
“Whose?”
“The guy who worked with your friend Diego Laremos out near Chichén Itzá. I think he might be just what we need to infiltrate Lopez’s cartel.”
Cy’s eyebrows lifted. “Rodrigo? You must be out of your mind!” he said at once.
“Why?”
“Good God,” Cy burst out, “Diego says that he’s such a renegade, nobody will hire him anymore, not even for black ops!”
“What did he do?” Dallas asked, aware that the young man in the stall had perked up and was suddenly listening unashamedly.
“For a start, he crashed a Huey out in the Yucatán last year,” Cy said. “That didn’t endear him to a certain government agency which was running him. Then he blew up an entire boatload of powder cocaine off Cozumel that the authorities were trying to confiscate—millions’ worth. In between he wrecked a few hired cars in various chases, hijacked a plane, and broke into a government field office. He walked off with a couple of classified files and several thousand dollars’ worth of high-tech listening devices that you can’t even buy unless you’re in law enforcement. After that, he went berserk in a bar down in Panama and put two men in the hospital, just before he absconded with a suitcase full of unlaundered drug money that belonged to Manuel Lopez…”
“Are we talking about the same Rodrigo that the feds used to call ‘Mr. Cool’?” Eb asked with evident surprise.
“That isn’t what they call him these days,” Cy said flatly. “Mr. Liability would be more like it.”
“He was with Laremos and Van Meer in Africa back in the early eighties,” Eb recalled. “They left, but he signed on with another outfit and kept going.”
“That’s when he started working freelance for the feds,” Cy continued. “At least, that’s what Diego said,” he added for Harley’s benefit. He didn’t want his young employee to know about his past.
“Anybody know why Rodrigo went bananas in Panama?” Dallas asked.
Cy shrugged. “There are a lot of rumors—but nothing concrete.” He studied the other two with pursed lips. “If you want him for undercover work to indict Lopez, he’d probably pay you to hire him on. He hates Lopez.”
Eb glanced past Cy at Harley, whose mouth was hanging open.
“Don’t mind him,” Cy told his companions with a mocking smile. “He’s a mercenary, too,” he added dryly.
Harley scrambled to his feet. “Can’t I hire on?” he burst out. “Listen, I know those names—Van Meer and Brettman and Laremos. They were legends!”
“Put the top back on the medicine before you spill it,” Cy told the young man calmly. “As for the other, that’s up to Eb. It’s his party.”
Harley fumbled the lid back on the bottle. “Mr. Scott?” he asked, pleading.
“I guess we could find you something to do,” Eb said, amused. Then the smile faded, and his whole look was threatening. “But this is strictly on the QT. You breathe one word of it locally and you’re out on your ear. Got that?”
Harley nodded eagerly. “Sure!”
“And you’ll work for him only after you do your chores here,” Cy said firmly. “I run cattle, not commandos.”
“Yes, sir!”
Cy exchanged a complicated glance with Eb. “I’ve got the last number I had for Rodrigo in my office. I’ll go get it.”
He left the other three men in the barn. Harley was almost dancing with excitement.
“I’ll be an asset, sir, honestly,” he told Eb. “I can shoot anything that has bullets, and use a knife, and I know a little martial arts…!”
Eb chuckled. “Son, we don’t need an assassin. We’re collecting intelligence.”
The boy’s face fell. “Oh.”
“Running gun battles aren’t a big part of the business,” Dallas said without cracking a smile. “You shoot anybody these days, even a criminal, and you could find yourself behind bars.”
Harley looked shocked. “But…but I read about it all the time; those exciting battles in Africa…”
“Exciting?” Eb’s eyes were steady and quiet.
“Why, sure!” Harley’s eyes lit up. “You know, testing your courage under fire.”
The boy’s eyes were gleaming with excitement, and Eb knew then for certain that he’d never seen anyone shot. Probably the closest he’d come to it was listening to an instructor—probably a retired mercenary—talking about combat.
Harley noticed his employer coming out of the house and he grimaced. “I hope Mr. Parks meant what he said. He’s not much on adventure, you see. He’s sort of sarcastic when I mention where I went on my vacation, out in the field in Central America with a group of mercenaries. It was great!”
“Cy wasn’t enthusiastic, I gather?” Eb probed.
“Naw,” Harley said heavily. “He’s just a rancher. Even if he knows Mr. Laremos, he sure doesn’t know what it’s like to really be a soldier of fortune. But we do, don’t we?” he asked the other two with a grin.
Eb and Dallas glanced at each other and managed not to laugh. Quite obviously, Harley believed that Cy’s information about Rodrigo was secondhand and had no idea what Cy did before he became a rancher.
Cy joined them, presenting a slip of paper with a number on it to Eb. “That’s the last number I have, but they’ll relay it, I’m sure.”
“You still hear from Laremos?” Eb asked his friend.
“Every year, at Christmas,” Cy told him. “They’ve got three kids now and the eldest is in high school.” He shook his head. “I’m getting old.”
“Not you,” Eb chuckled.
“We’d better go,” Dallas said, checking his watch.
“So we had.”
“What about me?” Harley asked excitedly.
“We’ll be in touch, when the time comes,” Eb promised him, and, oddly, it sounded more like a threat.
Cy saw them off and came back to take one last look at the bull. “Good job, Harley,” he said, approving the treatment. “You’ll make a rancher yet.”
Harley closed the bull in his stall and latched the gate. “How do you know Mr. Laremos, sir?” he asked curiously.
“Oh, we had a mutual acquaintance,” he said without meeting the other man’s eyes. “Diego still keeps in touch with the old group, so he knows what’s going on in the intelligence field,” he added deliberately.
“I see. I thought it was probably something like that,” Harley said absently and went to work on the calf with scours in the next stall, reaching for the pills that were commonly called “eggs” to dose it with.
Cy looked after the smug younger man with amusement. Harley had his boss pegged as a retiring, staid rancher with no backbone and only an outsider’s familiarity with the world of covert operations. He’d think that Cy had gotten all that information from Laremos, and, for the present, it suited Cy very well to let him think so. But if Harley had in mind an adventure with Eb and the others, he was in for a real shock. In the company of those men, he was going to be more uncomfortable than he dreamed right now. Some lessons, he told himself, were better learned through experience.
* * *
WHEN THEY GOT BACK TO THE ranch, Eb phoned the number Cy had given him. There was a long pause and then a quick, deep voice giving instructions. Eb was to leave his name and number and hang up immediately. He did. Seconds later, his phone rang.
“You run that strategy and tactics school in Texas,” the deep voice said evenly.
“Yes.”
“I read about it in one of the intelligence sitreps,” he returned, shortening the name for situation reports. “I thought you were one of those vacation mercs who sat at a desk all week and liked to play at war a couple of weeks a year, until I spoke to Laremos. He remembers you, along with another Jacobsville resident named Parks.”
“Cy and I used to work together, with Dallas Kirk and Micah Steele,” Eb replied quietly.
“I don’t know them, but I know Parks. If you’re looking for someone to do black ops, I’m not available,” he said curtly, with only a trace of an accent. “I don’t do overseas work anymore, either. There’s a fairly large price on my head in certain Latin American circles.”
“It isn’t a foreign job. I want someone to go undercover here in Texas and relay intelligence from a drug cartel,” Eb said flatly.
There was a long pause. “I’d find someone with a terminal illness for that sort of work,” Rodrigo replied. “It’s usually fatal.”
“Cy Parks told me you’d probably jump at the chance to do this job.”
“Oh, that’s rich. And what job would that be?”
“The drug lord I want intelligence on is Manuel Lopez. I’m trying to put him back in prison permanently.”
The intake of breath on the other end was audible, followed by a description of Lopez that questioned his ancestry, his paternity, his morals, and various other facets of his life in both Spanish and English.
“That’s the very Lopez I’m talking about,” Eb replied dryly. “Interested?”
“In killing him, yes. Putting him back in prison… well, he can still run the cartel from there.”
“While he’s in there, his organization could be successfully infiltrated and destroyed from within,” Eb suggested, dangling the idea like a carrot on a string. “In fact, the reason we’re under the gun in Jacobsville right now is because a friend of our group is protecting the identity of an intimate of Lopez who sold him out to the DEA.”
“Keep talking,” Rodrigo said at once.
“Lopez is trying to kill a former government agent who coaxed one of his intimate friends to help her get the hard evidence to put him in prison. He’s only out on a legal technicality and he’s apparently using his temporary freedom to dispose of her and her informant.”
“What about the so-called hard evidence?” Rodrigo asked.
“My guess is that it’ll disappear before the retrial. If he manages to get rid of the witnesses and destroy the evidence, he’ll never go back to prison. In fact, he’s already skipped bond.”
“Don’t tell me. They set bail at a million dollars and he paid it out of petty cash,” came the sarcastic reply.
“Exactly.”
There was a brief hesitation and a sigh. “Well, in that case, I suppose I’m working for you.”
Eb smiled. “I’ll put you on the payroll.”
“Fine, but you can forget about retirement benefits if I go undercover.”
Eb chuckled softly. “There’s just one thing. We’ve heard that you and Lopez had a common interest at one time,” he said, putting it as delicately as he could. “Does he know what you look like?”
There was another pause and when the voice came back, it was strained. “No, you can be sure of that.”
“This won’t be easy,” Eb told him. “Be sure you’re willing to take the risk before you agree.”
“I’m quite sure. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The line went dead.
* * *
EB TOOK SALLY OUT TO DINNER that night, driving the sleek new black Jaguar S that he liked to use when he went to town.
“We’ll go to Houston, if that suits you?”
She agreed. He looked devastating in a dinner jacket, and she was shy and uneasy with him, after what she’d learned about his fiancée. In fact, she’d told herself she wasn’t going to be alone with him ever again. Yet here she sat. Resolve was hard when emotions were involved. His feelings for the woman he’d planned to marry were unmistakable in his voice when he talked about her, and now that she was free, he might have a second chance. Knowing that part of him had never gotten over his fiancée’s defection, Sally was reluctant to risk her heart on him again. She kept a smiling, pleasant, but determined distance between them.
Eb noticed the reticence, but didn’t understand its purpose. He could hardly take his eyes off her tonight. His green eyes kept returning to linger on her pretty black cocktail dress under the long red-lined black velvet coat she wore with it. Her hair was in a neat chignon at her nape, and she looked lovely.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Sally asked him. “I know Dallas will take care of Jess and Stevie, but it seems risky to go out at night with Lopez and his men around.”
“He’s a vicious devil,” he replied, “but he is absolutely predictable. He’ll give Jessica until exactly midnight Saturday. He won’t do one thing until the deadline. At one minute past midnight,” he added curtly, “there will be an assault.”
Sally wrapped her arms closer around her body. “How do we end up with people like that in the world?”
“We forget that all lives are interconnected in some way, and that selfishness and greed are not desirable traits.”
“What good will it do Lopez to kill Jessica and us?” she asked curiously. “I know he’s angry at her, but if she’s dead, she can’t tell him anything!”
“He’s going to be setting an example,” he said. “Of course, he probably thinks she’ll give up the name to save her child.” He glanced at Sally. “Would you?”
“I wouldn’t have a hard time choosing between my child and someone who’s already turned against his own people,” she admitted.
“Jessica says there are extenuating circumstances,” he told her.
She stared at her fingers. “I know. She won’t even tell me who the person was.” She glanced at him. “She’s probably covering all her bases. If I knew who it was…”
He made a sound deep in his throat. “You’d turn the person over to Lopez?”
She shifted restlessly. “I might.”
“Cows might fly.”
He knew her too well. She laughed softly. “I wish there was another way out of this, that’s all. I don’t want Stevie hurt.”
“He won’t be.” He reached across to clasp her cool hand gently in hers and press it. “I’m putting together a network. Lopez isn’t going to be able to move without being in someone’s line of sight from now on.”
“I wish…” she began.
“Don’t wish your life away. You have to take the bad with the good—that’s what life is. Good times don’t make us strong.”
She grimaced. “No. I guess they don’t.” She leaned her head back against the headrest and drank in the smell of the leather. “I love the way new cars smell,” she said conversationally. “And this one is just super.”
“It has a few minor modifications,” he said absently.
She turned her head toward him with a wicked grin. “Don’t tell me—the headlights retract and become machine gun ports, the tailpipe leaves oil slicks, and the passenger seat is really an ejectable projectile!”
He laughed. “Not quite.”
“Spoilsport.”
“You need to stop watching old James Bond movies,” he pointed out. “The world has changed since the sixties.”
Her eyes studied his profile quietly. He was still handsome well into his thirties, and he glorified evening clothes. She knew that she couldn’t look forward to anything permanent with him, but sometimes just looking at him was almost enough. He was devastating.
He caught that scrutiny and glanced at her, enjoying the shy admiration in her gray eyes. “Can you dance?” he asked.
“I’m not in the class with Matt Caldwell on a dance floor,” she teased, “but I can hold my own, I suppose. Are we going dancing?”
“We’re going to a supper club where they have an orchestra and a dance floor,” he said. “A sophisticated place with a few carefully placed friends of mine.”
“I should have known.”
“You’ll like it,” he promised. “You’ll never spot them. They blend in.”
“You don’t blend,” she murmured dryly.
He chuckled. “If that’s a compliment, thank you,” he said.
“It was.”
“You won’t blend, either,” he said in a low, soft tone.
She clutched her small bag tightly in her lap, feeling the softness right through her body. It made her giddy to think of being held in his arms on a dance floor. It was something she’d dreamed about in her senior year of high school, but it had never happened. As if it would have. She couldn’t really picture Eb at a high school prom.
“You’re sure Jess and Stevie will be okay?” she asked as he pulled off the main highway and onto a Houston city street.
“I’m sure. Dallas is inside and I have a few people outside. But I meant what I said,” he added solemnly. “Lopez won’t do a thing until midnight tomorrow.”
She supposed that was a sort of knowledge of the enemy that came from long experience in a dangerous profession. But she couldn’t help worrying about her family. If anything happened while she was away, she’d never forgive herself.
* * *
THE CLUB WAS JUST OFF A MAIN thoroughfare, and so discreet that it wouldn’t have drawn attention to itself. The luxury cars in the parking lot were an intimation of what was inside.
Inside, the sounds of music came from a room off the main hallway. There was a bar and a small coffee shop, apart from the restaurant. Inside, an employee in a dinner jacket led them into the restaurant, which ringed a central dance floor, where a small jazz ensemble played lazy blues tunes for several couples who were dancing.
“This is really spectacular,” she told Eb when they were seated near a small indoor waterfall with tropical plants blooming around it.
“It is, isn’t it?” he asked, leaning back to study her with a warm smile. “I have to admit, it’s one of my favorite haunts when I’m in Houston.”
“I can see why.” She searched his eyes in a long, tense silence.
He didn’t smile. His eyes narrowed as they locked into hers. She could almost hear her own heart beating, beating, beating…!
“Why, Eb!” came a soft voice from behind Sally. “What a coincidence to find you here, at one of our favorite night spots.”
Without another word being spoken, Sally knew the identity of the newcomer. It couldn’t be anyone except Eb’s ex-fiancée.