Hot Ice (3 page)

Jason climbed out of the cab while the driver was still yelling at the stopped car in front and making those obscene gestures that are part of every Italian male’s vocabulary. He looked at the meter, retrieved his single bag, the one he wasn’t going to need, from the trunk, and peeled off several euros. He checked his watch as he walked toward the single-story structure that was the terminal building.

07:58. Right on time.

He looked around. His guess was that he would be contacted before he entered the chaos inside that made the disorder outside look like a military drill by comparison. Italians tend to all speak at once. When several hundred are confined in a single large room, all clamoring for tickets, flight information, or simply directions to the nearest restroom (always out of order at the Naples airport in Jason’s experience), the decibel level becomes ear-shattering.

He was almost to the entrance when a man in a
Polizia
uniform detached himself from a group of his fellows whose sole function appeared to be the inspection and critique of the dimensions of female passengers, a favorite pastime if not the national sport.

“
Signore
Peters?”

Jason nodded, instantly alert. He was searching the shifting mob for anyone who might show interest in the encounter.

“This way, please.”

Jason followed the man to a small white Alfa Romeo with the blue markings common to Italian police cars. Before he tossed his bag into the backseat and climbed into the front, he gave the crowd a final look. If there were an observer, it would be pure luck if he spotted him in the mass of seething humanity.

The Alfa drove around the edge of the terminal and out onto the tarmac. Ahead, on a deserted concrete slab, was a Gulfstream G4, There was no corporate logo, nothing to distinguish it from other private aircraft other than the United States N-number and the fact its clamshell door was slowly swinging open. The car stopped at the bottom of the stairs built into the door. Jason got out and grabbed his bag. Before he could say anything to his driver, the police car was gone.

He looked up at the plane. He could hear the whine of its engines at low rpm, and the distortion of its exhaust rippled the air behind it. Clearly the occupants intended to keep the aircraft’s systems functioning.

At the top of the stairs, he blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust from the blinding sunlight to the dim interior.

“Hullo, Jason. Come give Momma a hug.”

He didn’t have a chance. Before he could respond, he was smothered between breasts that would make a silicone-enhanced Hollywood starlet look anemic while being crushed by arms the girth of telephone poles. He smelled the familiar odors of flowers, charcoal, and sweat, the odors of the woman’s native Haiti.

When she finally pushed him away to look at him, he saw a huge black woman, perhaps three hundred or more pounds, swaddled in a flowing caftan with a bright African print. She was the president and sole shareholder of Narcom, Inc.

She shook a gigantic head wrapped in a turban that matched the other print. “My, my! Ain’t seen you in forever! You ain’ ’zactly stayed in touch with Momma. How you doin’?”

Jason suspected she showed the same affection for all of her “boys,” although he couldn’t be sure. By the nature of its business, Narcom was strictly compartmentalized. Other than this woman he knew only as Momma and a few of the permanent staff in Chevy Chase just outside Washington, he had met few of the company’s “contractors,” as they were euphemistically called. He was aware that Momma had fled her native land with the fall of the Duvalier regime and the subsequent abolition of the Tonton Macoute, Haiti’s secret police, whose brutality would have shocked Stalin’s NKVD. Momma had been the second in command.

Peering around her, Jason saw an office setup: desk and two chairs. He eased into one of them.

“I’ve been OK.” He arched an eyebrow. “Retirement agrees with me.”

She waved a dismissive hand the size of a football. “I figure you bored.”

He started to disagree, tell her he simply was no longer available. He didn’t. Hell, he
was
bored.

How had she known? He wasn’t willing to even consider the supernatural possibilities of the voodoo she claimed as a religion. More likely he’d been under surveillance before her call. Professional surveillance, or he would have noticed. He found the thought both annoying and mildly intriguing.

He shrugged nonchalantly. “What makes you think that?”

The Gulfstream’s door whispered shut and Jason became aware that there were no windows. No Plexiglas panes to vibrate with voices to be picked up by long-range listening devices.

“That gal o’ yours, she been gone awhile.”

He had never mentioned Maria. Annoyance at having his privacy invaded was quickly overcoming curiosity. “She’ll be back when she’s finished what she’s doing.”

“But while she’s gone …” Momma sat at the desk, the chair groaning with her weight. “Mebbe you want to look at these.”

She handed him three black-and-white photographs. The grainy quality told Jason they had been shot at a distance and the subject was probably unaware they had been taken. As he studied the face, he felt as though he had magically been transported to the Arctic. The chill made him wince and his hand shook with pure rage.

“Al Mohammed Moustaph! Where did you find him?”

Momma shrugged. “We didn’; CIA did.”

“So, why didn’t they … ?”

Momma reached out a massive hand to take the pictures back. “Time they had someone in place, he gone.”

Jason’s voice had become nearly a growl. “You didn’t bring me here to tell me the son of a bitch escaped.”

Momma waved a hand as though to calm a small child. “They didn’t get him, no. But they know where he’ll be in five days.”

Jason stood, making no effort to conceal his eagerness. “Where? I’ll take that bastard out for free.”

Momma leaned back in her chair. “Knowin’ the special feelin’s you got for him, I thought of you the minute the business came our way, figured you’d be interested. But ain’ nobody gonna kill him, least not yet.”

“But …”

Again, the wave of the hand. She smiled, her teeth a crescent of white. “Jason, you always impatient. Just sit ’n’ listen to Momma a minute. Job pay a flat million, your share th’ reward, put in the same Liechtenstein bank. ’Course, you want to stay retired …”

Since its fees were paid by the US government, Narcom’s only customer, freedom from taxes had always been part of the bargain. As administrations changed, however, promises were sometimes forgotten, and the jobs too risky or too dirty for official action by Washington could stir periodic outrage by the increasing number of voters who believed America could prevail against Muslim fanatics with rules more applicable to the playground than the real world. Narcom gave the government the shield of plausible deniability and numbered bank accounts were a bulwark against climates that changed, the quicksand of public opinion, politicians who routinely reneged, and the IRS who was … well, the IRS.

Jason forced himself to be calm. “OK. What’s the catch? Even the most bleeding-heart American can see the need to get rid of Moustaph. Why can’t the government do the job itself?”

Momma handed Jason another photograph, this one of a black man in a coat and tie and obviously posed. “Because this is the man you take out.”

Jason recognized the face. “Bugunda? I admit few people would mourn his passing, but, far as I know, the US has no interest in his country other than wringing its diplomatic hands like everyone else over what he’s done to the poor bastards living under his regime.”

Momma leaned forward, a shift of so much weight so suddenly that Jason imagined he could feel the floor quiver. “Five days from now Moustaph will be visiting Bugunda, who’s supposed to give a speech welcoming his fellow opponent of Western tyranny, oppression, et cetera. The United States can’t afford to be caught meddling in African politics; enough people hate us there already. So, we get the job. We got men in place, Bugunda’s guard, ready to snatch Moustaph. What we need is a diversion. You the best marksman I got.”

“
Used
to got,” Jason corrected.

Momma shrugged and Jason thought of Vesuvius shifting its axis. “We don’ get the confusion, we don’t get Moustaph.”

“Why not just shoot him instead of Bugunda?”

“Bugunda’s got no information we want.”

Jason was silent for a moment. Despite the current political sympathy for terrorists, if Moustaph were taken prisoner, it was unlikely he would be brought to the United States and questioned politely in an air-conditioned room and served coffee and doughnuts with his court-appointed lawyer present to frustrate the investigation.

In the hands of Narcom, the Muslim terrorist would be taken someplace where human rights were of little concern. They might not kill him, but after a couple of days in the company of Narcom interrogators, Moustaph would wish he were dead. And not just because of the number of virgins allotted in paradise to such brave martyrs with the blood of children, women, and innocents on their hands.

Amnesty International, the ACLU, the World Court, and others that were not charged with fighting terrorism or that were simply closed-minded might decry torture as a means of retrieving information from an uncooperative subject. Their mantra assures the civilized world that inducing pain rarely produces the desired result. Jason’s experience pointed to the contrary. Every person has a breaking point, a state in which the information withheld is no longer worth the agony of physical abuse, lack of sleep, or sensory deprivation. The mind and body can take only so much before the strongest will break. Some take longer than others but, in the end, all talk. Or die in the process.

The thought of Moustaph’s less-than-bright future made Jason smile. There was no torture, no agony, that would adequately repay the debt the Arab owed him.

And a million dollars wasn’t exactly chump change either.

“OK, Momma, you got yourself a shooter.”

A trickle of hot sweat burned Jason’s right eye. Blinking was the only movement he allowed himself. He tried to concentrate on the activity in the center of the village.

Peering through the rifle’s scope, he estimated the distance to the platform under construction. It would have been helpful if he’d had the opportunity to visit the earthen square, mark the precise location with the GPS, and compare it with his present position. There were as many armed soldiers milling around the project as there were workers. A rough calculation would have to do.

Besides, the distance was, what, only two and a half football fields? Almost a gimme in his trade.

Slowly, he moved his head to make sure someone had not wandered into his area. Certain he was alone, he adjusted the scope to 250 yards. Now he was thankful for the suffocating stillness around him. The slightest breeze could cause a millimeter or so of deviation, which, at this distance, could turn a kill into a miss.

He tried not to fret about the ammunition. Ordinarily, he loaded his own, weighing both projectile and powder carefully to ensure uniformity with practice rounds and to be careful the brass casing was perfectly crimped. The tiniest of cracks in the seal around the lead could diminish muzzle velocity and arbitrarily increase the parabola that is the path of all bullets. There had been no time for self-loading or practice.

He almost succeeded in comforting himself that for once a kill was not imperative.

But why shoot Bugunda at all?

Though certainly villainous, he posed no threat to Jason or the United States. Jason had been trained on the basic level of all military—a step-by-step suspension of morality inculcated since birth: Kill the other guy before he kills you, the basic credo of the combat soldier. From there it was a short transition to kill before your opponent
has the chance
to kill you. Not exactly a major step. Next came the leap of killing the enemy simply because he
is
the enemy, not because he poses an immediate threat, the moral justification of the long-range killers, artillery, bombs, missiles, the snipers. Anyone who kills at a range beyond his sight. Then the final abrogation of civilized society’s normal mores: letting others’ decisions determine who is, in fact, the enemy and therefore subject to extermination. Once that process is complete, the soul’s aversion to the slaughter of one’s fellow human beings is suspended and those who make a profession of it feel a high, a sense of Olympus-dwelling superiority that dwarfs mere drugs.

That is why killing can become addictive.

Jason had realized all of this but his retirement from the military had been motivated not by a sense of what might or might not be moral but by the opportunity to spend his time in other pursuits, time with Laurin, painting. But 9/11 had changed all that. The rage he had felt at the loss of his wife, followed within days of contact by Momma and her shadowy organization, had been a perfect channel for his feeling of impotence to protect the woman he had loved. The chance for some measure of revenge too sweet to bypass. The money—lots of money—was a distant second in motivation. Once he had participated in the assassination or capture of half a dozen Islamic terrorists, the line between them and their allies blurred. You were either against the extreme Muslim world or part of it. Had Maria and her aversion to any form of violence not come into his life, he supposed he would have been a Narcom “contractor” until his palsied hands could no longer hold a rifle steady.

Before he could linger on the thought, a van pulled into the square scattering children and raising a cloud of dust. The dish on top signaled its purpose as a TV truck. He watched a crew of four unload equipment and set up cameras and klieg lights as finishing touches were applied to the platform.

He was so intent on observing the television crew, he almost missed it: a light impact with the ground nearby, felt more than heard.

Jason froze, reducing his breathing to short, shallow gulps of the humid air. He was thankful he had taken the time to complete filling in the sniper’s blanket, his only defense. With it over him, he was indistinguishable from the ground around him.