Three

The instructions, of course, hadn’t been necessary. Jack knew his way up to the big airy room at the top of the house. He stood outside the door, his hand on the handle, and took in a big breath, still amazed that he was here. With her.

The house was as beautiful as in his memories, only bare and unadorned. Before, there had been paintings on the walls, big pieces of old furniture, soft rugs, elaborate vases. As a boy, he’d had no idea how valuable they could be. All he knew was that he’d never seen rooms as full of beautiful things as Caroline’s home.

He was no expert, but he’d learned a lot over the years. Enough to know that there had been a fortune in paintings, rugs, sculptures, antiques. Most of which were now gone.

It didn’t make any difference. The mansion was still gorgeous, like a beautiful woman without makeup. Still, it pained his heart to think of Caroline selling off her inheritance, piece by piece. It must have hurt.

The room under the eaves was exactly the same as it had been twelve years ago, only shabbier and in need of a coat of paint. The furniture was the same, too, pleasant but unexceptional. Obviously, nothing in this room had been valuable enough to sell off. The room held a big four-poster bed with a huge green-and-white quilt, an armchair in need of reupholstering, a chest of drawers and a small desk on which sat a TV set and a radio.

More than enough to make for comfortable living, particularly for a man used to roughing it. He’d do just fine here, until he moved into Caroline’s bedroom, which he vowed would be just as soon as humanly possible.

The mechanics of that—getting from being a boarder to a lover—was something he’d have to work on. But he was good at strategy. Sooner or later it was going to happen. She was single, that much was clear, even though there was probably a boyfriend in the background. How could there not be? It was unthinkable that any man with a pulse and working equipment could be in the same room as Caroline and not want her.

The bathroom was the same as before, too. Large, with white fixtures and cream-and-green tiles on the walls. The sink was cracked, and a few wall tiles were missing, but for someone who’d been on shit-burning detail in Iraq, and who’d dug his own latrines in Afghanistan, it was superluxurious. As promised, there was a stack of white towels in a big white wooden cabinet. The towels were clean, but old and threadbare. Who the hell cared? In a second, his dirty, rumpled clothes were on the floor, and he was under the shower.

The shower stall was equipped with shampoo and soap in a holder. The water was only lukewarm, but it still felt good as he lathered up.

Both the soap and the shampoo were rose-scented. The smell went straight to the primitive part of his brain that associated roses with Caroline.

Damn! It was precisely the part of his brain that was connected to his cock, and had been for twelve years. Roses equaled Caroline equaled a hard-on.

Jack took his time washing up, getting rid of more than the dirt and sweat of a forty-eight-hour trip back from Africa. He was washing more than the grime of travel off—he was washing his old life out.

For twelve years, he’d been the Colonel’s to command. The man who’d found a starving, half-mad mongrel behind a trash can and taken him in had had his undying loyalty. Colonel Eugene Nicholas Prescott, man of honor, the father of his heart. If the Colonel hadn’t gotten ill and died, Jack wouldn’t be here. He’d still be helping the Colonel run ENP Security.

He’d never allowed himself more than the vaguest kinds of daydreams of an alternative life while the Colonel was alive. He’d been as loyal to him as any feudal knight to his king. But now, in the space of a week, Jack had buried his father, sold the company and the house and shut down the rogue Sierra Leone mission. All the ties with his old life were severed.

It was all over. He was starting a new life, right here in Caroline’s shower, smelling of roses.

Now his skin smelled like hers, though it sure as hell didn’t feel like hers. Hers was so pale, so smooth. Smooth and incredibly soft to the touch, too.

Jack remembered every second she’d spent in his arms in the car. It had taken every ounce of self-control not to tilt her head back and kiss her. He’d had to clench his teeth, hard, because what he’d wanted more than his next breath was to open her mouth with his and plunge inside.

Her mouth was made for kissing, soft and pink, a little honey trap he’d wanted to fall into so badly he’d ached. Only a lifetime of self-discipline had stopped him.

They’d been in real danger out there, and not just from the truck. All her tires were basically shot and if another one blew, with no other spare, they’d have been done for. There was no way they could have lasted out the blizzard in the car. So he’d been a real good boy and held her for comfort, just long enough to let her regain control of herself.

She’d trembled in his arms. His job had been to hold her until the worst of the trembling stopped, then get them both to a warm place as soon as possible.

His imagination had run riot. In his head, he got rid of his jacket, sweater, jeans, shorts, boots. Her thick coat, sweater, bra, panties, stockings. In his head they were naked—not in a chilly car in the middle of a blizzard, but on a sunny deserted beach. A place where they had all the time in the world for him to explore her body, touch all that luscious rosy ivory skin. Run his mouth along that long, pale neck, down to the breasts he’d seen outlined by the sweater.

The adrenaline of the close encounter with death had pooled in his cock, and he’d been as hard as a club. He’d wanted to mount her, enter her, fuck her, more than he wanted his next breath.

It was an enticing thought, but dangerous as hell. They weren’t on a sunny beach, they were in real danger of freezing to death.

So he’d dropped a kiss to the top of her head so light she couldn’t feel it, then let her go, to concentrate on getting them to Greenbriars safely.

But now…now that he was in a warm, wet cabin that smelled of Caroline, his mind went wild. He imagined licking his tongue into that beautiful mouth, his nose up against her skin, the scent of roses filling his head. Biting her lips, urging her closer, closer still. Sliding his hand along that long, white neck.

Jack looked down at himself and groaned at his enormous, painful boner, red and swollen, hard as a pike. Harder than in the car.

He knew why he had a hard-on that wouldn’t quit.

Part of it was that he hadn’t had sex in nearly six months. Afghanistan was as close to a no-sex zone as had ever existed on earth. After Afghanistan he’d spent the past month at his father’s bedside, then in Africa, cleaning up after Vince Deaver. True, six months was a long time for him to go without sex, but he’d done it before, on long missions.

Part of it was the male reaction to surviving danger. Or his, anyway. It happened every time he survived a firefight. His cock went up in celebration of life and thanksgiving that he wasn’t six feet under. When he could, after combat, Jack went out hunting for a woman for relief, and when he couldn’t, his fist worked just fine.

He and Caroline had been in as much danger as if they’d been on a mission in downtown Baghdad.

He hadn’t said anything—Caroline had been massively freaked as it was—but they’d nearly died out there on the road. While fighting the wheel of her car, the part of his mind that was always calm and thinking ahead to the next step no matter what the emergency had appreciated the irony.

Jack had survived the worst life could throw at him, time and again. He’d cheated death a thousand times while waiting for Caroline. Being crushed beneath the wheels of a truck half an hour after finding her again would definitely come under the category of “shit happens.”

But these reasons weren’t really why he had such a boner.

What had set him off was being in the same house as Caroline, having talked to her, touched her, held her in his arms—that’s what had his cock swollen and weeping. After so many years in which she’d haunted his dreams, he was finally with her, and it was scary as hell.

Do. Not. Fuck. This. Up, he told himself.

He couldn’t count the nights lying on a cold hard cot when her face swam before him. At first, he’d been ashamed to jerk off thinking of her, but it turned out that no matter how many women he had, she was the only one who could turn him on simply by thinking of her.

Jack liked women. He liked the way they smelled, the softness of their skin, their voices. He liked sex, too. He was courteous to his sex partners, even if it was a one-night stand, which most of his encounters were. A little foreplay, in for a while, then out, then get up and go. Oh, he had stamina, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was he couldn’t remember much about the woman after walking out the door.

He remembered everything about Caroline. Everything. How she looked with her hair in a ponytail, or loose around her shoulders. He remembered every item of clothing he’d ever seen her in and every expression she’d ever had. He remembered every single word she’d ever said to him. It was all seared into his mind, and it would probably take a shot to the head to get rid of it all.

So naturally, when he reached for his cock to unload some stress, a generic woman with, say, one head, two tits, four limbs and a pussy simply wouldn’t do. Caroline floated into his head in those moments and he’d long ago given up the fight to keep her out.

Now there was something more, something unexpected. Turned out the Caroline he’d mooned over for twelve years was long gone, vanished with the years. The beautiful girl had been replaced by an even more beautiful woman, mature and stunning, intelligent and classy, a woman who wore sadness like a shroud, utterly irresistible.

The girl had been very pretty, like a million other upper-class girls, with a sunny smile showing off ten thousand dollars of orthodontics, wearing a thousand dollars’ worth of clothes. She bathed regularly and had someone to wash and iron her clothes for her. Lots of girls in those conditions look pretty.

The woman she’d turned into, though, knocked the breath right out of him. She was like some sad princess longing for her lost kingdom.

Jack remembered every second she’d been in his arms as he reached down for himself, gave one, long experimental stroke.

The hard-on had to go, right now. There was no way he could go down to dinner in this condition, she’d kick him right out. Please God, he thought, let me get through the evening without embarrassing myself.

To be really sure his dick would stay down, he should park himself in the shower under cold water and jerk off a couple of times, just to get rid of the fierce, itchy arousal he felt. His skin prickled with the desire to touch her again, only not for comfort this time and not dressed for cold weather with layers of clothes between his skin and hers.

No, he wanted to touch her and see whether he could make that smooth ivory skin turn pink with desire. He wanted to watch it happen, watch the flush cover her breasts, while he kissed them. He wanted to touch her sex, feel himself making her wet, ready for him.

Caroline was downstairs, right now. Waiting for him. She wasn’t a memory, a photograph, an image in his head. She was a flesh-and-blood woman, more beautiful even than in his dreams and she was downstairs cooking a meal for him.

He’d see her every day, as much as he wanted. It was impossible to think that he wouldn’t get her in his bed. His cock swelled even more at the thought.

His fist was working hard now, pumping, as the images of a naked Caroline spread out on a bed just for him filled his head. He wanted to know what sounds she made when she was turned on, feel her heels and nails digging into his back, feel her cunt pulling at him as he stroked inside her…

It was all so much more intense now that he’d seen her again, felt her, smelled her. Now that he had so much more sensory input as he imagined fucking her, hard. For hours.

If she were here right now, he’d take her in the shower, kissing her all over first in the steamy heat, making her ready. Entering her with his fingers first, oh so gently. He was big, and she had to be ready for him. He wanted her wet and soft and open for him. When his hand told him she was ready, he’d lift her, hold her legs apart, start pushing inside her…

Sometimes it took Jack a long time to climax but he’d been semiaroused since he’d seen her, and when he imagined entering her, parting her tissues with his cock, he groaned.

The image filled his head with unbearable heat—the two of them in the rose-scented cabin under the pounding water, as he pounded into her. He could see them, could almost feel her softness against him, and it set him off.

Red-hot needles pricked down his spine, and he started spurting violently, hips jerking in time with his fist. He came and came, leaning one-handed against the shower stall, until his knees were weak and it felt like he’d emptied himself of every ounce of moisture in his body.

He watched himself, the red, hugely swollen head of his cock emerging from his fist, coming in huge spurts against the glass cabin, disappearing instantly in the water streaming down the sides. His lungs ached, his skin felt too tight, his head was a balloon that could burst any moment.

For a moment, the climax wiped out all thoughts from his mind as he was reduced to his animal senses. After coming, he was usually relaxed and refreshed—a little like going for a good, sweaty run. Sex was nice physical exercise with a nice little payoff at the end.

Nothing like this. This felt like dying—as if everything he was came shooting out of his cock, leaving him weak and disoriented.

As strong as the orgasm was, though, it wasn’t quite enough. When Jack’s knees could support him again and he walked out of the shower stall, he was still semierect, still wanting her. Every cell in his body was turned on, damn it, attuned to the woman downstairs. He looked down at himself in disgust, big flag waving at half-mast.

His dick was so sensitized, the cooler air of the bathroom outside the shower stall felt icy cold on his skin. It missed the warmth, the fantasy that his fist was Caroline’s cunt.

At that thought, his dick went straight back up into a full erection.

Fuck.

How could he go down in this condition? Well, only one thing to do—wear a chastity belt. Or his tightest black jeans, which was the same thing. A hard-on would have no place to go in those jeans, he knew from painful experience. If he started swelling, his cock would meet stiff denim, and the pain would make it go down again. That was the plan, anyway. He hoped it would work.

He couldn’t stay in the shower forever, jerking off until there was nothing left in him. It would take all night and probably all day tomorrow.

Jack unlocked the padlock on his bag and dumped all his clothes out. There weren’t many clothes, because he’d had to travel light. The only clean clothes he had left were a pair of sweats, the black jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. He hadn’t even thought to pack an extra pair of shoes, so the boots would have to do. Monday, he’d buy some clothes.

He dumped the last of the items in the bag on the bed. Fifty thousand dollars in ten bricks of $5,000 each. His toolkit. Another Glock with five magazines of ammo, and a cloth bag. Luckily, he still had his security pass, so he’d been able to check his weapons at the airport.

He took a small screwdriver out of the toolkit and checked the baseboard until he found an air vent close to the chest of drawers. Bending, he checked it out. Perfect. Tiny flakes of rust spotted the four screws holding the vent grate to the metal plate in the wall. The grate hadn’t been removed for years to judge from the buildup of soot and rust. Unscrewing the vent took time and some muscle, but eventually he had the screws lined up on the floor and the grate removed.

He checked his watch as he put the items from the bag far enough back in the vent so they wouldn’t show even if you were looking for something. He had no idea who cleaned the rooms, whether it was Caroline or a cleaning lady, but he didn’t want them stumbling onto the Glock, or the ammo, or—Jesus! — the contents of the cloth bag. They should be safe enough in the steel tube. It would only be until Monday.

Monday he was going to open a bank account, deposit the cash and the cashier’s check for eight million dollars and register for a safe-deposit box for the contents of the cloth bag.

He checked his watch—7:25. He’d be on time for dinner.

One last thing. Crouching, he opened the cloth bag and emptied its contents onto the hardwood floor, the dull, irregular rocks rattling as they spilled out in a stream.

Jack studied the jagged mound. Except for the odd glitter as the light caught a natural facet, the rocks could have been pebbles from a riverbed.

Instead, he was looking at at least $20 million in uncut diamonds.

He knew he was looking at rocks that represented human suffering on an unimaginable scale. They’d been mined by slave labor—men and boys who toiled under the tropical sun from first to last light on a cup of rice, immediately shot in the back of the head when they grew too weak to work. An entire country was tearing itself apart because of dull rocks just like these—over eighty thousand people killed over the past year in Sierra Leone. Countless others had had their hands, lips and ears chopped off by the drugged-up baby soldiers fighting in the Revolutionary Army.

Vince Deaver and his men had been willing to massacre an entire village of women and children for them.

No wonder they called them blood diamonds.

It was a miracle that no blood oozed from the stones. But no—they were as neutral as they were inert—just rocks, for fuck’s sake. Just rocks.

Jack looked down at the mound people were willing to kill and to die for and made a small noise of disgust before putting them back in the bag. Twenty million dollars of pain and suffering and misery. Murder, rape, dismemberment—that’s what the diamonds represented.

He’d taken them simply because there was no one left in the village alive to give them to, and he’d have died himself rather than let Deaver have them.

Jack put the bag behind the money, the Glock and the ammo, then carefully screwed the grate back onto its plate, thinking how crazy people were to be willing to kill and die for a bag full of rocks.

He rose and made his way swiftly down two flights of stairs toward something warm and living and beautiful. Something definitely worth killing or dying for.

Encampment of the United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone near Obuja, Sierra Leone

Christmas Eve

4:58 P.M.

His name was Axel and he was Vince Deaver’s new best friend.

Axel was Finnish, loved computers, American jazz, missed his fianc'ee Maja back in Helsinki and hated Africa and everything connected to it. Best of all, he was blond, five-ten, weighed about 170 pounds, just like me, Deaver thought in satisfaction.

Axel always stopped by to see him in the small detention center of the UNOMSIL when he got off guard duty at 1700 hours. At 1703, Deaver could count on good old Axel stopping by, regular as clockwork.

The detention center itself was a joke. Deaver could have escaped at any time over the past three days. His grandmother could have escaped using her dentures and a hairpin. The UN peacekeeping force was not in the prisoner business, and it showed.

Deaver needed more than a way to break out of the detention center—he needed to get out of the encampment and out of Sierra Leone if he wanted his diamonds back. Good old Axel was his ticket out.

It was dark inside the detention center. Electricity was intermittent, the air-conditioning worked sporadically, so the shutters and the door were kept closed against the blistering heat of the tropical sun, intense even in December.

Deaver made sure the lights were turned off during the day, even when the shutters kept the room in semidarkness. Axel had to be used to a darkened room.

Deaver checked his watch. The luminescent dial showed 1700 hours, on the dot.

Axel would be punctual. Deaver had studied him the way an entomologist studied bugs. He knew how Axel reacted to stimuli, and he had his plan worked out down to the finest detail. The Army had trained him well.

17:01.

Deaver jumped up and down to make sure nothing rattled or clinked and patted himself down. There would be a moment when he would have to move fast and silently. More than one soldier had died because a knife clinked against a belt buckle and gave away a position.

He checked his pockets, his boots and flexed his arms. He’d been cooped up for three days now and his muscles were stiff. He was used to hard workouts, and confinement didn’t suit him.

Neither did the thought of being extradited back home for a trial for mass murder.

When Deaver finally caught up with Jack Prescott, he was not only going to get his diamonds back but he’d make the fucker very very sorry he’d interfered, before blasting his fucking head off. Deaver had spent a couple of pleasant hours last night imagining Jack tied to a chair while he used his knife.

Deaver was very good with his knife.

17:02.

He checked his plan again, ran through it for the thousandth time. About 90 percent of good soldiering was planning and preparation. The plan was good, and he was prepared.

He turned his back to the door.

17:03.

The door opened wide, and Axel walked in, good Finnish soldier from his head to his toes. His fatigues were clean and freshly pressed. The baby blue UN helmet that was such an attraction, practically a beacon, to snipers the world over firmly on his head, boots spit-shined.

“Hello, Mr. Deaver,” Axel said. His English was excellent. “How are you today?”

The light from the open door filled the room. Since his back was to the door, Deaver’s eyes were able to accommodate quickly to the light pouring into the room from behind his back. Going from darkness to tropical light could blind a man for minutes.

“Hi, Axel. Close that door, will you?”

“Certainly.” Deaver heard the snick of the door closing and turned around. By now, Axel had become used to what he considered Deaver’s fetish for darkness.

Floor-to-ceiling bars divided the shack in half. Deaver considered his cell a personal affront. The bars were loosely planted in the wooden planks and fixed by screws to the stucco ceiling. The lock was a joke—it would fall apart if you blew on it too hard. How the fuck did they think a cell like that could hold a man like him?

The problem wasn’t getting out, the problem was what to do afterwards. They were about twenty miles from the Sele River. Even if he could make it through the jungle to the river, he’d need to steal a boat and motor his way down to Freetown. It would take three days, at least. Everyone knew there was only one place to escape to, and that was Freetown.

By the time he made it to the capital, Freetown and, worse, Lungi Airport would be crawling with UN troops with his photograph in their hands, itching to capture the American renegade.

So he needed to make sure no one would be looking for him. He needed a body that looked like Vincent Deaver they could bury.

Axel was sympathetic to him, he’d made that clear. Axel loved America and his tidy Finnish soul had been horrified at what he’d seen in his two-year tour of duty in central Africa. “Hell on earth,” he called it.

Axel had made it plain more than once that he thought it a ridiculous waste of time and effort to keep Deaver in detention.

He was right, of course. This part of the world had been on a rampage for fifteen years, tribe against tribe, with brutally ferocious massacres on a daily basis. On the Revolutionary Army scale, what Deaver’d done was the equivalent of a slap in the face.

So Axel was definitely on his side. Deaver had even thought about bribing him for travel documents. Might have worked, but he needed something else from Axel, besides documents.

His body.

Pity, because he liked the guy. But what can you do?

“Merry Christmas, Axel.” Axel’s head swiveled to follow the source of his voice. Deaver sat on his cot, legs spread, forearms on knees, hands clasped. Utterly, totally nonthreatening.

Axel’s eyes would slowly be adjusting to the dark shed after the bright tropical light outside.

Deaver’s body was a still statue slowly taking shape, like a film in the developing pan.

“Merry Christmas, Vince. I came to say good-bye.” Axel walked toward Deaver and wrapped his hands around the bars.

Deaver let his gusty sigh fill the room. He lifted his head. Axel would be able to make out his movements by now. “Man, oh man, I’m going to miss you. Miss our talks. I’m just happy you’ll be out of this shithole and with Maja.”

“Oh, yeah.” Predictably, Axel’s face creased in a smile at the mention of his girlfriend. Axel was slated to leave this afternoon for a two-month rotation back to Finland. He hadn’t even tried to hide how glad he’d be to get out of Africa and back to his computer, snow and Maja, probably in that order.

Axel pulled up a stool and pulled out a little magnetized travel chess set. They had spent the past three days playing through the bars. Deaver had been letting him win two games out of three.

“Hey,” Deaver said, putting on a shy, abashed expression. “You’ve been really good to me, here, you know?” He put a little folksiness into his voice, just two guys chewing the fat on a lazy afternoon. “And I was thinking, what with you going back home for a while and all, that I’d like to give you something. I really owe you, man. I have something for you to give Maja. You know, as a Christmas present. I bet you didn’t get anything for her.”

Bingo. Axel hung his head. There wasn’t much but jungle within a hundred-mile radius. Jungle and soldiers and blood and misery. Nothing a Finnish woman would want.

Deaver stood and walked toward the bars, crooking his finger to bring Axel closer. Curious, Axel stood against the bars. Though they were separated by the bars, they were close enough to feel each other’s breath.

“I’ve got something real special for Maja. Something she’ll like…a lot.” He allowed himself a smile. “Something sparkly. Something all women like.” He shrugged and winked, man to man. “Won’t do me much good in here. You might as well get some use out of it, know what I mean?”

Axel nodded eagerly.

Deaver knew that everyone in the UNOMSIL encampment assumed he had the diamonds. Or rather, since he’d been frisked, knew where the diamonds were.

If only. It was a fucking fortune. Enough money to keep him happy for the rest of his life, wherever he wanted to settle down.

Away from Africa, away from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and all the fucking ’Stans. Away from Iraq, away from all the shithole places with kids blowing themselves up just for the pleasure of gutting you while they did it and women who hid grenades under their burqas and men willing to shoot you for your fillings.

No more.

No more twelve-year-olds high on ganja or palm wine carting around AK-47s they could barely lift, with access to unlimited ammo and just itching to bag a white man. No more roadside IEDs, no more leeches or scorpions or lice, no more MREs, no more rough sleeping.

He’d earned that money. It was fucking his. He’d been dreaming of a big hit for years, and when he’d heard the rumors of a village whose men had all gone off to war and with millions of dollars in conflict diamonds hidden in the ground, he’d instantly known that this was It. His big chance.

He’d never have to soldier again, or ever have to work at anything, ever again. Never take orders again, never do anything but what he damned well pleased.

No more jungles, no more deserts. No more bivouacking in primitive encampments on stony ground.

Deaver planned on living in luxury for the rest of his natural life. Buy a mansion somewhere nice, somewhere sunny, somewhere OUTCONUS. In the Bahamas maybe. Or maybe Monte Carlo.

Why not? Buy a big house with a pool and servants and lots and lots of women. Not that many beautiful women wanted to fuck a soldier, but they sure as hell lined up ten deep to fuck rich men.

He could taste it, smell it, feel it, this new life.

And it was all gone. All his dreams for his future, a future he’d sweated and taken bullets for, wiped out in a second by Jack Prescott.

Deaver’s fists clenched as he remembered in a white-hot rage that moment when his future was snatched away from him. He and his men had opened fire on the village, softening it up. A knife against the throat of the daughter of one of the women, and he had the location of the diamonds. He’d run into the hut, found the bag and was running toward his men, who were eliminating the villagers—no sense in leaving witnesses behind—when all of a sudden, four spaced shots rang out, followed by sudden silence.

A sniper, picking off his men, one by one.

In his scramble to get to safety, the bag slipped from Deaver’s fingers as he ran to the nearest hut, leaping over the dead bodies in the central clearing. He slid into the opening and turned around, rifle to shoulder, and saw a big man disappear into the jungle with his diamonds.

He knew it was useless trying to follow. If Jack Prescott didn’t want to be found, he could disappear like smoke.

Deaver had spent the next few hours ransacking the village, turning over bodies, in the hope that there was another stash of diamonds, but by the time he’d come to the conclusion that there was nothing left, UN soldiers had surrounded the village and taken him into custody.

For a moment the heat of rage swept through him, wiping out every other thought except that of hunting down that fucker Jack Prescott, getting his diamonds back and killing Prescott with a knife, taking a couple of days to do it.

None of this showed on his face. He bent his head forward and dropped his voice to a murmur. “Come in here, Axel. And I’ll give you something that will make Maja drop to her knees in gratitude.”

“Okay, Vince.” Though there was no one else in the hut, Axel dropped his voice, too. As if they were about to exchange confidences.

Deacon stood up and backed away slowly. “Come inside.” His voice was still low. “I’ll show you what I’ve got for you. For her.”

Axel didn’t even hesitate. Deacon knew Axel thought of him as someone much like himself. Nice white boy caught up in the craziness that was West Africa.

Axel unlocked the cell door and walked inside, following Deacon, who’d reached his cot and pulled something out from under the hard mattress. A cloth bag with smooth round objects that rattled.

Axel’s excited breathing was loud in the darkened room.

Deacon smiled. “Maja’s going to love these. Come over and look.” Deacon reached over the cot to suddenly open the shutters, flooding the room with harsh light. Axel was temporarily blinded and would remain blind for about a minute and a half. More than enough time.

Deacon had closed his eyes and turned his back to the window, and he could see just fine.

His hand dropped to his boot, where he quickly and quietly pulled out a long thin dagger with a folding handle the UN troops hadn’t even noticed. He’d been briskly frisked for arms before being shut up in the detention center, but no one had thought to check his boots. Or his belt buckle with the minirevolver or the garotte wire along the inside of his belt.

The garotte was out of the question. Deaver needed Axel’s clothes intact. A slow choking death would loosen his bowels and bladder. And a bullet wouldn’t do—it would stain his uniform with blood.

There was only one way to do it.

Deaver dropped the bag into Axel’s hands. The bag opened under Axel’s eager, fumbling fingers. When the bag was open, he poured the contents in his hand. It took him a few seconds to realize that he held not diamonds but stones. His head lifted.

“What—” he began. It was his last word on this earth. Deaver hooked his left arm around Axel’s chest and with his right he slipped the stiletto he kept as sharp as a scalpel straight into the brain stem. It immediately stopped all bodily functions. Axel went from sentient being to stone in a tenth of a second. He slumped into Deaver’s arms, an instant corpse.

Deaver worked fast.

In five minutes he’d exchanged clothes and shoes. Axel kept his passport and airline ticket on his person at all times. He’d told Deaver he had an unholy fear of the cleaning staff stealing them. The UN peacekeeping mission had been too much for him. Well, good old Axel was getting out of Africa, in a manner of speaking. Permanently.

Deaver hitched Axel up in a fireman’s lift and made for the door. He opened it slightly and waited for a moment in which no one was visible. It was 17:20, close to dinnertime, and the encampment was deserted. When Deaver was sure no one could see, he slipped out the door and made his way around the back.

The detention center backed onto the jungle. In the steamy heat, Deaver made his way carefully, disappearing immediately into the dense foliage, leaving barely anything to track. He was lucky. If he’d had to carry a man in the high deserts of Afghanistan, the sand would have kept his footprints for weeks. In the jungle, his tracks would be covered within the hour.

He walked until his instincts told him he was beyond the natural patrol point and put Axel down. Deaver looked at him, stretched out on his back. He looked peaceful, as if he were taking a nap.

You should thank me, buddy, Deaver thought. I just gave you a great death. The best.

It was the one thing soldiers feared above all else—a bad death. Long, lingering, painful. The RA rebels specialized in hacking deaths, where it takes a man maybe an hour to die after having his hands, then his arms, then his feet and finally his head chopped off. Sometimes it took the child-soldiers, wielding axes half their size, ten tries to separate the head from the body.

Deaver had seen men taking hours of agony to die after having been gut-shot or having their insides ripped open by a land mine. Two employees of ENP had been hacked to death by a ragtag squadron of RA thugs. It was after looking down at their bodies that Deacon vowed to get himself some real money and finally get out of the business.

That was when he heard about the diamonds.

Axel had had his own fears. Four UN peacekeepers—a Norwegian, a Pakistani, a Brazilian and a Brit—had been found tortured to death last month, their bodies having been dumped into the UN encampment during the night as a warning not to cross RA troops.

The medical examiner said they’d been raped repeatedly “with something big and wooden,” then skinned alive. Axel had told him this with a shudder, and Deaver realized it was his worst fear.

It would never happen to Axel, now. He’d gone out like a light being switched off. One moment he was happy in the knowledge that he was going to give diamonds to Maja, then bam! Lights out.

Lucky guy.

Deaver was going to have to mutilate the body, but Axel was already dead. It wouldn’t make any difference to him.

When a patrol finally found him, they had to think it was Deaver’s body, fallen into the hands of the RA. Deaver looked down, studying the body. Hacking off limbs is harder than it looks, unless you have a tree stump and a big axe, which most of the assholes in the RA did.

All Deaver had was his Kobun Tanto, but he kept it as sharp as a scalpel. He’d dressed enough deer growing up in Arkansas to know how to go about doing what he had to do. He bent, inserting the knife point between the tendons on the inside wrist, and quickly severed Axel’s right hand. He picked it up and flung it far into the jungle. He could hear the small thud as it fell. In five minutes, the second hand was severed and flung in the opposite direction, the unclotted blood forming a red arc as it flew through the air. The hands would be eaten before nightfall.

Now came the distasteful part. Deaver bent down, knife point on the throat and in one quick, hard movement, slashed Axel open from sternum to pubic bone. There was very little bleeding, but Axel’s bowels bulged out through the opening. With several more slashes, the skin on Axel’s face hung in tatters.

The Revolutionary Army was known for its stoned thugs who loved torturing and mutilating their victims. There would be no doubt in anyone’s mind what had happened. The story of the diamonds was well-known. RA soldiers broke into the encampment, kidnapped Deaver, tortured him for the diamonds, and left his body to rot in the jungle.

While Axel left for Finland and Maja.

Deaver straightened and stepped back to admire his handiwork. The predators of the jungle would come across the body as soon as he left. No matter when a UN patrol found the body, what would be left would be Deaver’s clothes, wallet, passport, ENP Security ID and very little else. With no hands and no face, the only thing that could identify Deaver was DNA, which would have to be analyzed back in Paris, if anyone cared enough to want a positive ID.

By the time the DNA analysis results were back, Deaver would be long gone, back in the States, tracking down Prescott to get his diamonds back.

He knew just where that fucker Prescott would go. Deaver knew from the moment he set eyes on Prescott, that he was trouble. He made it his business to find out his weak spots. The fucker didn’t have any. He didn’t drink, he didn’t do dope and he couldn’t be bought. The only weakness Deaver could find was a woman. A girl. Prescott kept a photograph and a press clipping about her, hidden in a secret compartment in his rucksack. Deaver had managed to make photocopies once, while Prescott was away. He’d watched Prescott take the photo out and stare at it, endlessly.

So he knew where that fuck was going. Back to that bitch he’d mooned over forever, the one he jacked off to.

Deaver’d find him, oh yeah. He’d find them both and the diamonds, too. It would be a real pleasure killing them before he disappeared again, forever.