Wild Card

up, Nimec had been around enough airports and landing strips to immediately compare it to the rhythmic pulsations of a jet having its tanks refilled.

His problem with this was that feeder ships didn’t need fuel. Or shouldn’t need it. They didn’t have any means of onboard propulsion. Meaning no engines. Granted he was far from a maritime expert, but to his understanding it was why they were attached to tugboats. And say for argument’s sake he was mistaken… Nimec had never heard of a container vessel that could double as a tanker and carry fuel for ship-to-ship resupply.

He’d been anything but done pondering that apparent anomaly when a couple of closely related ones had started to crop up in a hurry minutes ago. As the unladen feeders disengaged from the box boat, they proceeded to move on past it rather than make a return trip to the harbor. And watching the water, carefully following their progress, Nimec had seen them go outside the effective range of his G4 lenses and disappear into the dark horizon.

But the tugboats hadn’t. To Nimec’s utter bafflement. On the contrary, they were growing larger in his binoculars at that very moment, plying through the channel, returning to port without the barges.

Try as he might, he couldn’t make sense of that. And the more he thought about it, the more it threw him.

Plain and simple, it defied logic.

Nimec frowned. Speaking of returning to port, he was sure Annie would be worried about him by now. He’d seen things here that had added all kinds of questions to those he’d had before, and knew it would absolutely pay to get some of them answered before he went ahead with his snooping.

Reluctant as he was to do so — or part of him was, anyway — he needed to call it a night.

Still frowning slightly, Nimec brought the binocs down from his eyes and climbed onto the Vespa, suspecting he’d have a great deal to occupy his thoughts on his way back to the villa.

* * *

Its bark-colored housing placed just below the crown of fanning leaves at treetop level, the thermal imaging camera that had picked up Nimec where he’d stood was one of a great many like it carefully hidden at outdoor and indoor locations throughout Rayos del Sol — under four ounces in weight and small enough to sit on a man’s palm, with a lens that could be covered by the fleshy part of his thumb. Its chip-based microbolometer sensor technology operated coolly, efficiently, and unnoticeably on an internal low-voltage power supply that required infrequent recharges and allowed it to transmit a continuous gray-scale digital feed across the island using a network of compact microwave amplifiers. From the central observation post where the video feed was initially received and processed, it could be relayed to both fixed and mobile secondary monitoring stations via secure wireless internet at a speed almost indistinguishable from real time — blink twice and it would measure the difference between a captured event and its detection by human observers.

While considerably more than a single pair of eyes had been watching Nimec watch the harbor, the key witness as he mounted his scooter now was seated over two miles north of him in the rear lounge of a Daimler stretch limousine parked outside the flamboyantly decorated and lighted Bonne Chance Casino. Here at the heart of the resort’s entertainment complex, this long-bodied vehicle was not ostentation but camouflage. The Bonne Chance’s wealthy amusement seekers could afford to toy with luck and saw no crime in putting their status and success on display. The Daimler, then, shone only like a diamond in cluster, blending into rather than standing out from the sparkling field of luxury cars in the valet lot.

Skilled at blending in under any and all conditions required of him, Tolland Eckers much preferred the comfortable back of a limo to hiding with his belly down in South American mud and weeds, or with his throat and eyes burned by the freezing cold in rocky Tora Bora, or with the Rhub’ al-Khali’s hot desert grit caking his nostrils. He had roughed it around the globe for almost two decades in service to the Agency; service to Jean Luc Morpaign was a less taxing and dangerous way to earn a living. And, really, it hadn’t compromised his patriotism. Eckers more or less accurately reported his income on his federal returns, paid state taxes on his two hundred-acre property in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, and voted Republican by absentee ballot in every election. To say he’d committed acts that were in betrayal of American interests would be to make naive assumptions about how business worked at the highest levels — Jean Luc was only pissing in a pond where other, bigger fish had already taken their turns.

“Alpha One, this is Gray Base,” a voice said in Eckers’s headset. “Do you want us to stay tight on our man?”

Eckers considered that a moment, studying the picture on his screen as the guest from San Jose mounted his Vespa.

“Let’s not ease up too much,” he said. “I want him covered till he’s returned to the nest.”

“Yes, sir. That’s the standing order.”

“I know the order, Gray Base.”

“Yes, sir…”

“I said make sure. Don’t get lazy about this or I’ll have your ass.”

“I’ll oversee the check myself, sir.”

“You do that,” Eckers said. “And report in to me afterward.”

“Yes, s—”

Eckers reached for his headset’s belt control and lowered the volume, needing to think without distraction. When Jean Luc had told him of Nimec’s impending visit weeks ago, he’d known he had a potentially serious problem on his hands. But he could strike the word “potentially” tonight. The situation had heated up sooner than expected — although so far as he was concerned, putting out flash fires was simply part of his job. The question for him was whether to contact Jean Luc right away or wait for the morning. Probably he’d hold off on a decision till it was confirmed that their Mr. Nimec had gone back to the villa and was finished poking around for now. Whatever he settled upon, however, Eckers knew it was six of one, half dozen of the other. Jean Luc’s options were narrow. Nimec was a top professional and would have access to a limitless variety of resources at UpLink. There was no telling how much he’d already added up, or who he could contact to help him figure it out. He wouldn’t waste time, though. He certainly hadn’t this far. And he’d seen enough of significance so Jean Luc would understand it was no use to just wait around hoping for the best.

Eckers sat there in silent contemplation, his face bathed in the IR monitor’s bluish-gray radiance, his eyes staring at the now-static image of the roadside opposite the harbor. He could call Jean Luc tonight, he could call him tomorrow morning, but either way was already planning beyond that. He’d dealt with fires before, doused every sort imaginable, and could tell this latest one would need to have water poured on it quickly if he was to keep it from spreading out of hand…

And if every last trace of it was going to be washed away, which was precisely what Eckers intended.

* * *

Jarvis Lenard cowered at the rear of the shallow cave, his head bent under the irregular furrows of its ceiling, his knees pulled up to his chest, his back flush against cold, damp stone. He scarcely dared move a muscle. The search team was close by; he could hear them through the screen of brush with which he’d covered his hideout’s entrance, their passage making a flurry of unaccustomed sounds in the forest. And minutes earlier, he had done more than hear them. Having left the cave to empty his bladder, Jarvis had caught a glimpse of them within a half dozen yards of where he’d stood watering the ground. It had cut off his flow midstream, but a small discomfort that had been compared to the unpitying hurts Jarvis was firmly convinced his hunters would dole out if he was captured. He’d been far more willing to tolerate the pressing fullness inside him — and if he couldn’t manage that, to foul himself from top to bottom, or suffer any other indignity his mind could conceive — than to have been cost dear by one extra moment out there.

It was the hack of machetes that had alerted him to their approach — and none too soon. Barefoot over the meager puddle he’d created, Jarvis had peered toward the noise and distinguished their outlines in the soft film of moonlight that had sifted its way down through the jungle’s leafy roof. He’d counted five of them in single file, black-clad, rifles at their hips, their curved blades slicing a path through the tangled, twisted masses of vines and branches hindering their progress. They wore goggles Jarvis knew would allow their eyes to see in pitch darkness, and the lead man had been holding what almost looked like a video camera in front of him — but camcorder Jarvis didn’t believe it was, oh no, at least not the type that someone would bring on a vacation to capture the smiling faces of his wife and children. Its handle was like the grip of a pistol, and its enormous lens about equaled the size