main galley and delivered via a dumbwaiter. Juan had reminded the chefs not to display too much of their culinary skill so that John Smith wouldn’t suspect any of his surroundings. It wouldn’t do for a five-star meal to come out of a two-roach kitchen.
Crew members, dressed like engineers, deckhands, and a couple of officers filled the spartan room but gave Cabrillo a table for himself, Lawless, Smith, Max Hanley, and Linda Ross. Linda was going to be the fourth on this mission. She was more than capable of handling herself, and she spoke some Thai, which might come in handy.
Smith was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with matte-black combat boots on his feet. His disposition was little improved from the first meeting in Singapore. His dark eyes remained hooded and were in constant motion, scanning each face at the table and occasionally sweeping the room. When they’d entered prior to a meal of baked lasagna and richly buttered garlic toast, Cabrillo had allowed Smith to choose his own seat at the round table. Not surprisingly, he took one so his back was to a wall.
When he was told that Linda Ross would be joining the team searching for Soleil Croissard, a small, contemptuous sneer played at the corners of his mouth before his expression returned to a blank mask.
“As you wish, Mr. Cabrillo.”
“Juan will be fine.”
“Tell me, Mr. Smith,” Linda said, “your name is English, but your accent is something else.”
“It is the name I chose when I joined the Legion. As I recall, there were about eight of us in my basic training class.”
“And where are you from?” she persisted.
“That is a question you never ask a Legionnaire. In fact, you never ask about his past at all.” He sipped from his glass of ice water.
Max asked, “You’re sure that Soleil hasn’t tried to contact her father since that last communication just before we met?”
“Correct. He’s tried her phone numerous times, but there is no answer.”
“So our starting point,” Juan said, “will be the GPS coordinates we got off that last call.”
“I noticed there is something next to the helicopter, covered with a tarp. A boat, I assume?”
“Yes,” Cabrillo replied to Smith’s question. “Even stripped as she is, our chopper doesn’t have the range to reach Soleil’s last known location. We’ll use it to airlift a boat into the country and track her from the water.”
“A good plan, I think,” Smith admitted. “By boat is about the only way one can travel in the jungle. I recall my training days in French Guiana. The Legion guards the European Space Agency’s launching facility there. They would drop us into the jungle with a canteen and a machete and then time how long it took us to get back to base. It was so thick, the best of us averaged a mile a day.”
“We’ve all been there,” MacD Lawless said. “I’d match the Georgia swamps to any jungle in South America.”
“Ranger?” Smith asked, recognizing that the Ranger training school was at Fort Benning, Georgia.
“Yup.”
“And you, Miss Ross, what is your background?”
Linda threw him a cocky grin that told him she could give as well as take. “You never ask a lady about her past.”
Smith actually smiled. “Touche.”
Juan unrolled a map he’d brought to the mess and anchored the corners with a coffee cup and a plate laden with what remained of a blueberry cobbler that he was relieved Smith hadn’t tried because it was about the best he’d ever tasted.
“Okay, we’re going to bring the
“Is your pilot qualified?”
“We grabbed him away from the 160th SOAR,” Juan replied, referring to the U.S. Army’s elite special operations aviation regiment.
“So he’s qualified.”
“More than. From there, we’ll motor upstream. These maps are terrible, but as near as we can tell the river will take us to within a couple of miles from where Soleil and her companion were last heard from. Now, as you can see from these two plotted positions, she hadn’t wandered too far from when she’d made her last scheduled check- in with her father.”
“Is that significant?” Smith asked.
“Don’t know,” Cabrillo replied. “Maybe. It all depends on what’s in that particular patch of jungle. In her last call, she said she was close to something but that someone else was even closer.”
“If I may venture a guess,” Linda said, and continued when the men were looking at her. “From what I’ve read about her, Soleil Croissard is a daredevil, but she really doesn’t publicize her adventures. She’s not into seeing her name splashed across the tabloids. She just sets herself insane goals and then checks them off her list when she’s done. Car racing, check. World’s tallest mountains, check. Scuba dive with great whites, check. My guess is that whatever she’s looking for isn’t something she’s going to tell the world about. She’s after something for herself.”
“It would be a hell of a feat to cross Burma on foot,” Max said. “It’s not just the terrain, but you’ve got opium smugglers, and one of the most repressive governments in the world that would like nothing more than to capture her for a show trial.”
“Could it be that simple?” Juan asked Smith.
“I do not know. She never told Monsieur Croissard why she was doing this.”
“If that were the case,” MacD said, “why hasn’t she moved more than ten miles in almost two weeks?” To that, there was no answer. “What if she sees herself as a real-life Lara Croft? Are there any ancient temples or anything in that jungle?”
“Possibly,” Juan said. “The Khmer empire stretched pretty far. There might have been other significant civilizations before or since. I really don’t know this history as well as I should.”
“I do not see what it matters why she is there,” Smith interjected. “Getting her out should be our only interest.”
Cabrillo could see that Smith had a follower’s mind-set. He took orders, executed them, and moved on without giving them the slightest thought. It showed that he lacked imagination, unlike MacD Lawless, who could see the benefits of understanding Soleil Croissard’s motivations. Why she was there was an important factor in how they would get her out.
What if she’d gone in to make a major opium buy? Cabrillo doubted that was the case, but if it were true, it would alter how he would want to approach the situation. Dope peddlers don’t like being interrupted in the middle of a deal. What if she’d gone to meet some escaped human rights activist who had an entire army chasing after him? Speculating about her presence there now might save lives later.
He didn’t expect someone like Smith to understand that. He recalled his first impression at the Sands resort in Singapore. The guy was just hired muscle, a thug who Croissard had polished up a little so he fit into decent society and could do the financier’s dirty work.
“Since time is of the essence,” Juan said with a nod in Smith’s direction, “we’ll let that rest for now. Since none of us could pass as a native, there’s no sense trying to blend in in terms of the weapons we bring. John, what’s your preference?”
“MP5 and a Glock 19.”
“Okay. Tomorrow morning at oh-eight-hundred, I’ll meet you at the fantail with one of each. You can test them as much as you’d like. MacD, do you want the Barrett REC7 like we had in Afghanistan?” Cabrillo asked it in such a way as to make Smith think Lawless had been with the Corporation for a while.
“Saved our butts quite well, as I recall. And a Beretta 92, just like the one Uncle Sam gave me.”
