Thomas Prescott Superpack (69 page)

The clothes did not come off fast.

Her body was petite, but curvy, a body that was a gift to shadows. She took me in her mouth, kissing, and licking. I took her in mine. We probed, caressed, touched, and tasted each other’s flesh. No words were spoken. None needed.

When I finally slipped inside her, her body trembled, her teeth clamped down on her palm.

The sun woke me up. I peeled the arm from around my waist and found my clothes. As I was leaving, I gazed back at the bed. Her light green eyes were open. She smiled. The sun reflected off the jewel set in one of her front teeth. A small diamond.

“I never got your name,” I said, opening the door to leave.

She laughed lightly and said, “I’m Rikki.”

SUITE 312

9:55 p.m.

Rikki Drough set down the book she’d found lying on the bed,
Fifty Shades of Grey
, and took a deep breath. Her back was starting to hurt and she thought about slipping out from her hiding spot and stretching a bit, but then again, why risk it? She didn’t have to go to the bathroom yet. And she was enjoying the book. At least the sex scenes. She could hold out for another couple hours.

How long had she been hiding for anyways?

It felt like ten or twelve hours, but it couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. She’d been in the maid’s cart for at least three hours before coming here, and she’d been here for at least four. Plus, it’d taken her thirty minutes to find the hiding spot behind the TV. And now that she was here, how long would she have to hide for?

She thought about her attacker.

She wasn’t sure who, but
somebody
had found her. How had they connected her to him? She’d never even met him. Their only connection was the money. But she never asked for it. She’d never asked for so much as a dime. Every so often he’d put a million dollars in her account. Was she supposed to
not
take it? Just let it sit there? She wasn’t like her brothers and sisters—who probably didn’t even know she existed—she had ambition.

She’d been forced to grow up early. More a mother to her mother than her mother ever was to her. When Rikki was eight, her mother had been stoned beyond comprehension—one of the many times Rikki was certain her mother would die from the drugs—and had purged the story of her father as if she’d gotten her hands on some bad Thai. Wanda Drough had been working at a small diner in London when he’d strolled in. He’d had an aura about him. Money and power. They’d had sex in the bathroom and nine months later, Rikki was the result.

Looking back, it all made sense. 20 million dollars is 20 million dollars. Her mother had tried fervently to hide behind the hush money, tried to be the socialite, but she couldn’t shake the husk of the ignorant waitress. Rikki had never asked where the money came from. She didn’t much care. Anything she’d wanted, she’d had. That is, until the money dried up; disappearing into a series of bad investments, aka, her many father figures, three to be exact, and the rest up her mother’s nostrils.

When she was 14, Rikki had kissed her mother’s pale, almost lifeless cheek, and set out on her own. She found a little restaurant in Scotland that hired her to wait tables, making enough to rent a room from the restaurant owner. She lived at the library. She soaked up everything she could get her hands on; Dickens, Voltaire, Machiavelli, Hemingway, anything and everything.

She still remembered the day it happened. It was three days after her sixteenth birthday. She’d gone to make her weekly deposit into her checking account, always exactly half of what she made that week, and had read her balance. She still remembered the number, $1,006,392.43.

Somehow she knew. He had found her. Maybe her mother had gone back to the well for more money. Maybe blackmailed him even. It didn’t matter to Rikki. Either way, he’d found her. And it’s not like it would have been difficult. She paid taxes. Her mother could have found her. If she’d wanted to. Why not a multi-billionaire? It would be a cinch.

Rikki spent the next few years trying to put a dent in her account, but it continued to rise. She’d spend twenty thousand dollars on clothes, another ten thousand on rare books, only to find her account had risen by a million dollars.

But she vowed not to waste it. She transferred the funds to interest bearing accounts, she had an accountant, and she had a portfolio. She was going to do something with that money someday. But, everyday wasn’t someday. It was that day. And she’d spend, spend,
spend. But never frivolously, always on something amazing. She vowed to visit every country on the globe. By the time she was 21, she’d been to nearly half.

She’d compiled some of the best works of fiction. Originals. She’d lost her virginity to a man in Brazil, danced on top of the Empire State building, hiked Mount Kilimanjaro, walked the halls of the Louvre, cheered at the Iditarod, watched a Bengal tiger run through the Indian jungle, and snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef. She did it all.

Now at 23, she was ready to put her stamp on the world. Take the seven million she’d compiled over the years and put it to work. She’d already bought the restaurant she used to work at and she had ideas of her own. Her vision was for a restaurant that was also a rare book dealer.
Rare.
That’s what she’d call it. It would be grand. Big couches. Dark cherry wood. Books for menus. From there she would start her own clothing line. Maybe even write a book.

But she needed one last hurrah. A palate cleanser. Get it all out of her system. Put a check mark next to a couple more countries. A random person had sent her a link to the
Afrikaans
website on Facebook. It was the perfect cruise. It would stop at seven different countries. Seven check marks. It sounded wonderful.

And it had been. Until that man had attacked her.

After she’d kicked the guy in the balls, she’d run into the hallway. There had been a door open and Rikki had stuck her head in. There had been two maid carts and a dirty laundry cart in the room. She’d jerked the door closed, transferred all the sheets from one of the carts into the trash bag of the second cart and slipped into the small opening.

Five minutes after she’d hidden, the screaming had begun.

The yelling was followed by a stampeding of feet, as if everyone on the floor had been herded past her door. The footsteps trailed away and there hadn’t been a peep for over an hour. Then light footsteps. A single person. She could hear as the door to the room next to her was opened. They were searching. For her. And then it happened. The door to the closet opened. She’d bit her cheek for a long second, but after three breaths, the door closed.

She’d waited another hour. Then she’d made her move. She peeked out the door then darted into the hall. She didn’t want to hide in a room on her own floor, so she went to the winding stairs and listened. She crept up the stairs, ready to bolt back down, but she heard nothing. She made it up to Deck 6, ran down the corridor, and scurried into the first room with the door open.

The room was smaller than hers—she’d had a balcony suite—and the TVs were set into the walls. But the TVs were flat screens and there was plenty of space behind them. They must have had normal TVs sitting in the space before they’d upgraded to the flat screens.

She’d grabbed a bag of nuts and a Pepsi out of the mini-fridge, snagged the book off the bed, and climbed over the television.

Rikki let out a long exhale, cracked her neck, quietly ripped the bag of macadamia nuts open, and flipped the page.

≈

Ganju Thapa hadn’t spent much time in Pretoria, preferring to eat his meals in his room, but he had eaten there on occasion. The food was always excellent, but each time someone would sit down next to him and strike up a conversation, Thapa found he didn’t have much in common with these people. They were all rich. Rich beyond his wildest dreams.

Without him asking, they would tell of their travels, of their boats, their cars, and their many homes. He could not believe some of these people had three, four, or even more homes.

Thapa didn’t want to hate these people. But he could not help it. Was it jealousy? Possibly. He hoped that isn’t why he detested these people. Maybe it was because that when they asked where he was from and he told them Nepal, they would look at him and say, “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

Thapa wanted to tell them to stay away. Nepal was poor. And life was a struggle. They in fact did
not
want to go there.

Thapa looked around. Pretoria was the single largest room aboard the
Afrikaans
and took up more than a third of Deck 2. Two large chandeliers illuminated the considerable room. The many round tables were clad in white tablecloths with corners of white linens poking from wineglasses and complimented by an array of dazzling silver. The chairs were cherry and sat on rustic brown carpet.

Usually, the room was filled with the clink and clatter of fork and knife hitting spoon, the
white noise of a hundred different conversations, and the rhythmic sounds of whatever music softly resonated from speakers overhead. Waiters and waitresses, dressed in red vests and black pants, would zoom in and out of the kitchen, delivering Chef Michael’s daily delicacies.

But not today.

Situated around the tables were more than a hundred men, including nearly the entire crew. He found Joe sitting at a table. Even from a hundred feet away, Thapa could see the dark bruising around his Adam’s apple. As for all the women, they were lined up against the far wall, their backs to the many windows that ran the length of the ship on both sides of the restaurant.

Thapa looked at the four African pirates. He watched as one of them pulled down the shirt of one of the women passengers, revealing her small red nipple. The woman tried to cover herself up, but the black man pulled her arms away. Thapa wasn’t sure what was going on, but he knew it was related to what he seen at the Bridge earlier with Ben or
Kimal.
They were obviously looking for a woman. But why? He’d been told this was about helping the poor South Africans with their AIDS epidemic. Thapa could relate to these people. That was his rationale in taking the money.

Thapa watched as the woman began to cry.

No, nothing good could come of this. Eight people were dead. The captain, his officers, and, of course, Stoves. Thapa had blood on his hands. He had taken a man’s life. He was one of them. And for what? For money? So he could be more like these Americans. So he could become what he despised. But he was not a pirate. Or a killer. He was neither. He was something altogether his own. He’d once been a Gurkha. That is how he’d defined himself. Now he was something else. Something that did not sit well with him. He was a mercenary.

He shook his head and left.

WASHINGTON D.C.

4:50
p.m.

After 20 years, Roger Garret still wasn’t comfortable behind a desk. He preferred being part of the action, but at the age of 63, he knew
being part of the action
now equated to
picking up the telephone
.

Garret’s last active role had been in 1990, when he had participated in Operation Provide Comfort in Northern Iraq as commanding officer of the 24
th
Marine Expeditionary Unit. The first time he’d found himself behind a desk, a neat, utilitarian wooden desk—the only desk that seemed logical to the uber-analytical Garret—was when he was advanced to brigadier general, J-3, U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

Returning to the United States, Garret was advanced to the rank of Major General and was assigned as Commanding General, 2
nd
Marine Division, Marine Forces Atlantic, MCB Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

As the titles grew longer, the desks grew bigger. Over the next decade, Garret carried such titles as Director, Expeditionary Warfare Division; Office of the Chief of Naval Operations; Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans, Policies, and Operations; and now he was Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and his desk, situated in his office in the West Wing of White House, was the size of a regulation pool table.

He remembered the first time he’d stepped foot into his new office, five years earlier, his eyes immediately drawn to the massive, over-the-top, cherry desk. He’d found himself nearing hysterics. Why would anyone ever need a desk so large? It baffled him, but at the same time, it impressed upon him how important his job had become. The larger the desk, the greater the responsibility.

Today, that responsibility was 400 lives.

Had the e-mail not been sent to him directly, the responsibility would still have fallen into his lap. Anything that was remotely related to terrorism—where U.S. lives were at stake—domestic or abroad, fell under the political umbrella of National Security Advisor. These days, ninety-nine percent of his focus was on the Middle East—as was just about everyone’s in the national security community, trying fervently to squelch the next 9/11 before it came to fruition—but every so often something from Africa would hit the radar. Nine out of ten, it had something to do with Liberia or Somalia. However, there had been enough upheaval and infighting in South Africa which surprised no one. Least of all him.