The Prisoner's Gold (The Hunters 3) (16 page)

Surprisingly, Garcia was the first one to draw a line in the sand. ‘Sorry, sir. I’m not going on this mission without Jack.’

Sarah smiled. ‘That might be the first thing you’ve said that I completely agree with.’

McNutt nodded at Garcia, then turned his focus to Papineau. ‘You heard the team. None of us are going anywhere without the chief.’

Papineau stepped around the others and started up the stairs.

‘Where are you going?’ Sarah demanded.

‘I’m tired of these little mutinies,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘In addition to finding a new team leader, it appears I need a new hacker, weapons expert, and thief.’

San Diego, California

Jerry Westbrook was running for his life.

But he didn’t know why.

He had first spotted the tail as he left the airport on Thursday. The black SUV with the tinted windows had followed him for several miles, careful to never get too close. When it disappeared thirty minutes later, Westbrook had begun to wonder if he had only been imagining things. For all he knew, Jean-Marc Papineau was nothing more than an unscrupulous businessman. Surely nothing in his investigation would warrant this type of attention.

His opinion had changed earlier that night.

That’s when the same SUV had reappeared.

Westbrook had driven all around the city for hours trying to lose them; but each time he’d been successful at slipping a tail, a new follow vehicle would appear. With each new tail, he was able to eliminate another possibility. Amateurs wouldn’t be so coordinated. Gangsters, mobsters, and other unsavory types would have been more brazen and reckless. A military or government agency could have taken him anytime, anywhere – they didn’t need to fool around with car chases.

He couldn’t say who they were, but he definitely knew the type.

They were private contractors and extremely well funded.

With his sedan running low on gas, Westbrook made a last-ditch gambit. He sped up, putting some distance between himself and the nearest car, and headed toward the San Diego Zoo: one of the largest wildlife parks in the world. The main entrance was barricaded with wooden sawhorses painted in cheerful orange and white stripes, but he had no problem smashing through them with his car.

He shot across the empty parking lot and hastily parked in the row nearest the grounds. From the glove box he grabbed the vehicle’s registration card and his proof of insurance – papers that listed both his name and current address. He stuffed them in his pocket as he leaped out and sprinted for the closest point of access. After scaling a wall and dropping to the ground beyond, he crept off into the zoo.

He could hear the squeal of tires behind him as his pursuers gave chase.

Westbrook had been to the zoo dozens of times but never when it was deserted. Without the steady murmur of the usual crowds, the sound of his shoes slapping on the asphalt pathways rang out like gunshots in his ears. To limit the noise, he slipped off the track and onto the sandy soil at the side of it. He darted between trees, vaulted over obstacles, and ducked under low-hanging branches. He deliberately careened through the landscaping off the beaten trail, hoping the others wouldn’t be able to follow.

Out of breath, he stopped and took cover behind a huge bush. The shrub easily concealed his frame, giving him a moment to consider his predicament. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked around, peering intently at the dark shadows pooling between the far-too-distant street lamps that lit the trails. One thing was clear: the zoo had not been designed for a nighttime audience.

The heat of the night was stifling. He wondered if it was just unseasonably warm or whether he was badly out of shape. In either case, the random scents of animals – both those free to wander their paddocks and those caged in more confining containers – filled the night air like the cologne of the damned. It was a rich, meaty stink. Westbrook had never experienced allergies before, but now he found it difficult to breathe in the stench.

After a minute of silence, he pushed deeper into the park. There were exits at each end, and exits meant roads. With any luck he could flag someone down and hitch a ride. He rehearsed a convincing story as he ran, but he never had a chance to use it.

The six-seat golf cart, used to transport employees and customers around the park, bore down on him like a runaway train. The powerful electric motor propelled the vehicle silently on its collision course until it made contact with the unsuspecting jogger. The first thing Westbrook heard was the sound of the cart hitting him.

The hit wasn’t lethal, but it was hard enough to send him flying through the air. He barely had time to see the darkened world flutter past him in slow motion before time sped up and his body slammed into the ground. He rolled a few times, and then started to get up, marveling that the only injuries he noticed were small patches of road rash on his wrists and palms.

Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come.

Suddenly rough hands were grabbing him and dragging him to his feet. He could hear questions, but the voices sounded blurred, like adults in a Charlie Brown special.

Despite the dull throbbing in his head, Westbrook opened his eyes as his three assailants tossed him up against a fence. They slapped him across the face a few times to ensure that they had his full attention. As his senses returned, Westbrook realized that only one man was talking.

‘Who paid you?’ the man demanded. He wore a dark suit, and his head seemed to shimmer in the moonlight.

As Westbrook’s vision adjusted to the darkness, he could see that his interrogator was not simply bald, he was completely hairless.

‘Hey man, relax.’ Westbrook’s own voice sounded strange to him; it was thick and slurring. He realized something was wrong with his ear when he touched it and felt blood. ‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know. The money wasn’t that good.’

The man moved uncomfortably close to Westbrook. Without lashes, his jet-black eyes took on a hollow, vacant stare. Instead of eyebrows, he had only the thick, bony protrusions of his orbital ridge. He looked like a skeletal ghoul, wrapped in barely enough flesh to pass for human.

His face wasn’t just menacing, it was haunting.

‘Give me a name,’ the demon demanded.

Westbrook sensed this was a man who plowed through every obstacle in life, rather than using finesse. ‘Harry Reynolds … I think he’s English or something.’ Westbrook started to wobble on his feet. His balance suddenly gone, the world started spinning upward and to his left. ‘I think … I think I might need some help.’

‘Give him a hand,’ the man said as he turned and walked away. The other two men, similarly dressed and shorn with military-style crew cuts, stepped forward at his command. One grabbed Westbrook’s arms, the other Westbrook’s legs, and with a single easy motion they tossed him over the fence.

His body hit a grassy slope and slid down sideways until he landed in a shallow pool. He sputtered and thrashed in the water for a moment until he realized that the pool wasn’t deep. He stood up and then immediately fell down again. His balance was shot.

Vertigo was making his stomach queasy.

Then, even through his shattered eardrum, he registered the roar.

The bass of it reverberated in his sternum. The hair on his arms stood on end, his body reacting with primal fear to the new life-threatening menace. He turned slowly in the water to see the approaching behemoth.

Jerry Westbrook screamed long and loud.

He was still screaming when the polar bear began to eat him.

Sunday, March
30

McNutt rested his leg on a pile of pillows at the end of his chaise longue. He was wearing pajama pants to cover his bandages, but his shirt was off and his sunglasses were on as he sipped a can of beer next to the pool. He had told the rest of the team what had really happened in China, but Cobb had asked him to keep Papineau guessing for a while. The Cheshire-cat grin on McNutt’s face was the giveaway that he was truly enjoying his task.

‘Oh, be reasonable,’ Papineau said, his voice close to pleading.

‘Not a chance,’ Sarah replied. ‘There was nothing in our original contract that said we needed to share our research with you in the event that you decided to sack us.’

After Papineau’s threat the previous day, Garcia had conveniently ‘lost’ the passwords to the mainframe computer. Though they had tried all night, Papineau and his people couldn’t get back into the system. While Sarah and Garcia had threatened to leave, McNutt had insisted on moving in as part of his injury settlement. He remained armed at all times and dared Papineau to remove him from the compound. Meanwhile, Maggie allowed Papineau to confiscate her handwritten notes, but she refused to translate her personal shorthand or Chinese scrawl for him.

Dressed in a linen suit, Papineau stood fuming by the pool. The thin veneer of civility that he wore like a badge of honor was finally cracking. ‘Miss Ellis, the Rustichello document is not yours to withhold. I urge you to return it at once.’

Sarah looked up at him from the water. Her red bikini matched the color of Papineau’s flustered face. ‘
Urge?
Did you say
urge
? What did you mean by that? Is that a threat?’

‘Sounded like a threat to me,’ McNutt called out as he patted his Glock. ‘And I should know, I threaten people all the time.’

‘No,’ Papineau assured her, ‘it wasn’t a threat of bodily harm. I wouldn’t stoop that low – unlike some of you. It was merely to let you know that you’re crossing a boundary. Your recent behavior will forever taint our professional relationship.’

‘You mean the relationship that ended last night when you fired us?’ She paused briefly to slick back her blond hair, which seemed to glow in the sun. ‘Why don’t you just get another copy from the Ulster Archives? Isn’t that where it’s being stored?’

Papineau had tried that already, but Petr Ulster claimed he had temporarily misplaced the original. ‘Be reasonable, Ms Ellis. I’ve paid you fairly for the work you’ve performed. I’ve even offered to pay you for the time you’ve put in on this aborted mission. Now kindly return the digital copy of the Rustichello manuscript, and we shall part on friendly terms.’

‘I’m sorry to say I don’t have a digital copy of the manuscript anymore. None of us do. Hector kept all of the copies for security purposes. He’s inside right now trying to find them.’

‘And you expect me to believe that?’

Sarah smiled at him. ‘Why would I lie?’

In addition to the truth about his injured leg, McNutt had also passed along a request from Cobb: he needed the team to buy him some time. He was fine, and he planned to return to Florida soon, but he hoped to talk to some of his sources in Asia before he left. He needed to figure out who had tried to kill them on their rekky.

The decision to lock out Papineau was actually Sarah’s. She knew it would infuriate the man, but she felt he deserved it after he had threatened to fire the entire team even though Cobb and McNutt had just risked their lives in China. Ultimately, she knew that Papineau had the resources to replace the team, but she figured he wouldn’t do it if he didn’t have access to their work.

Papineau sensed he wasn’t getting anywhere with Sarah, so he turned his attention to Maggie, who was sitting quietly in the shade of a palm tree. ‘Ms Liu, please be reasonable.’

Maggie simply shook her head. Despite the nervous tension she felt inside, her face was calm. This had been a dream job for her, and although she wanted to show solidarity with her team members, she really wanted Cobb to return so the mission could continue.

‘But why?’ Papineau asked.

‘Because
you
put Jack in charge of the team, and he wouldn’t want me to.’

McNutt laughed. ‘Woman has a point, Papi. You did hire Jack.’

Papineau cursed in French and wheeled back toward Sarah. ‘This is all your fault! You have turned them against me. And what did I ever do to you? I paid you a fortune for two simple jobs and asked you to do a third job for an equal fortune. And you treat me like this?’

Just then a man walked out of the trees on the far side of the patio. He held a small backpack in one hand while he strolled casually across the concrete. When he spoke, his voice was soft and level, and it doused the fire in everyone like a bucket of ice water.

‘Jean-Marc,’ Cobb said calmly, ‘you can stand here yelling at my team all day, or we can go inside and get to work. Obviously I’d prefer the latter.’

* * *

Maggie was the first one to follow Cobb into the house and down to the War Room. She wanted to speak to Cobb before the others started bombarding him with questions.

‘Mister Cobb,’ she said softly as she caught up with him on the stairs that led to the War Room. ‘I wanted to apologize for the events in Loulan. If I had known the security guards at the mine would be that aggressive, I would have warned you not to go.’

He smiled at her. ‘Relax, Maggie. It wasn’t your fault. Even the local guide was surprised by the attention we received. That’s one of the reasons that I like to take these rekkys. We get all the bad surprises out of the way early to make it safer for the team when we’re in country.’

‘So you’re not mad at me? Sarah implied you would be furious.’

Cobb laughed as he continued down the stairs. ‘Rookie hazing. That’s her way of welcoming you to the team.’

Maggie breathed a sigh of relief and followed him into the room below. Cobb nodded at Garcia, who had suddenly ‘found’ the passwords to the computer system and was getting everything ready for the briefing. Cobb took a seat next to him as Maggie sat across from them. Sarah entered the room next and sat beside Maggie. The two exchanged a quick laugh about the hazing incident, which made Maggie feel even more welcomed.

Somehow McNutt had made it to the stairs before Papineau, and it was clear to the team that he was going slower than he needed to. He even took extra time at the doorway to fumble with his crutch and shoot Sarah a wink before ambling toward the table.

The moment Papineau entered the room, he started speaking. ‘Where have you been, Jack?’