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  Nobody who knew the truth of what really went on in the world could be carefree. And nobody knew that truth better than these shadow warriors.

  “So what are we supposed to do here?” Parker pressed.

  “Find the guy, grab the guy, hold on to him until somebody picks him up,” Ford replied with a shrug of his brawny shoulders. He had a little paunch he struggled with, but like the shorter, more slender Parker he was a very dangerous man in a fight.

  “Then he must be somebody important.”

  “Importance is in the eye of he who pays the bills.”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of putting on that cynical act?”

  “Who says it’s an act?” Ford smiled lazily. “Don’t look now, but there’s our pigeon.”

  Parker didn’t react other than to ask, “Where?”

  Smiling and nodding, Ford said, “Sixth floor balcony.” He counted the balconies from the corner of the building and matched it up with the floor plan he had studied. “Room 627.”

  “Very good.” Parker finished his drink. “What’s he doing up there?”

  Ford threw his head back and laughed as if his fellow agent had said something funny. That gave him a chance to look directly at the man who had ventured nervously out onto the balcony. The target was small, almost boyish looking with a mop of blond hair.

  “Just looking around, as far as I can tell. Watching these nubile young lovelies parade around the pool.”

  Parker ran a thumbnail along his jawline as he frowned. “So they knew he was in Corpus Christi and even knew what hotel he was staying at, but they couldn’t find out his room number?”

  “They wanted to leave something for us to do,” Ford drawled. “You know, so we’ll feel like we’re earning our wages.”

  “I feel like it every time the weather turns cold and those busted ribs of mine start aching.” Parker shook his head. “Something’s not right here, Fargo.”

  “Something’s always not right in this business. If everything was right, they wouldn’t need us, now would they?”

  “I suppose not.” Parker stood up. “There’s no point in wasting time. We might as well get started on this babysitting job.”

  Ford finished his drink and got to his feet as well. “Farewell, ladies,” he said to the girls around the pool, quietly enough so that none of them heard him.

  The two men strolled into the hotel, went to the bank of elevators, and Parker pushed the button. A family with several kids in tow came up behind them. As the bell rang to signal that the elevator was there, Ford glanced over his shoulder and stepped aside, motioning for the family to go ahead.

  “We’ll get the next one,” he said.

  “What did you do that for?” Parker asked when the door had slid closed.

  “I didn’t like the looks of that little boy. He looked like a farter to me. We didn’t want to be trapped in there with him for six floors.”

  “You’re always looking out for our safety, aren’t you, Fargo?”

  “Of course. It’s my job.”

  As a matter of fact, Ford had saved Parker’s life a couple of times in Pakistan. Neither of them was going to mention that, though. Like Ford said, it was just part of the job.

  They took the next elevator and got out at the sixth floor. Signs on the wall told them that Rooms 620 to 640 were to their right. They turned in that direction. The fourth door on the right would be 627.

  They had almost reached it when they heard the crash and the cry of pain from inside the room.

  CHAPTER 11

  Ford’s right hand went behind his back and plucked the gun from its concealed holster. At the same time, his left grasped the door handle and tried to twist it.

  Locked. The handle didn’t budge.

  The door had one of those card key locks. Parker had his gun out by now, too, and as he leveled it at the lock, he said, “Step back.”

  “That won’t work,” Ford said as another yelp came from inside the room, followed by what sounded like a chair being overturned. “You’ll just wind up with a smashed lock and a door that still won’t open.”

  Parker glanced at him. “How do you know that?”

  “Those guys on TV proved it. You know, the goofy one and the one with the beret.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  Somebody inside the room screamed, “Help!”

  Ford glanced both ways along the corridor. “You take 625, I’ll take 629. See if anybody will open up.”

  They went opposite directions along the hall. Ford pounded on the door of 629 while Parker did the same on 625. “Police!” Ford yelled. “Emergency!”

  The first part was a lie. The second part certainly wasn’t.

  Nobody answered his knock, but Parker shouted, “Fargo! Down here!”

  Moving fast for such a big man, Ford reached the open door of 625 in a couple of leaps. Parker was already in the room, heading for the sliding glass door that opened onto the balcony. Ford followed him, rushing past a fat, middle-aged man who looked terrified to have a couple of armed strangers running through his room.

  Parker threw the glass door aside and lunged out onto the balcony. Ford was right behind him.

  “You know this is crazy, don’t you?” Parker flung over his shoulder.

  “Fastest way in there,” Ford replied.

  As a matter of fact, adrenaline was thundering through his veins and he felt great. For a lot of his career with the Company, he had been a handler, not a field agent. That aspect of the job had its rewards, but it was nothing like being on the ground and feeling like you were actually accomplishing something.

  The gap between balconies was about eight feet, plenty wide enough to discourage anybody who might be crazy enough to try to jump from one to another.

  Parker barely slowed down, though, as he rested his free hand on the railing, vaulted up, slapped a foot down onto the top of the rail, and pushed off.

  With six stories worth of empty air beneath him, he sailed across the gap, clearing the railing on the other balcony by perhaps a foot. He went down to hands and knees when he landed but managed to hang on to the gun.

  Ford was right behind him, and as the bigger agent made the leap, reason overwhelmed adrenaline and reminded him of what a big, bloody mess he would make down there by the pool if he failed to reach the other balcony.

  It would ruin the rest of the afternoon for the beautiful people around the pool, that was for sure.

  Ford didn’t completely clear the railing, but he got a foot on it and leaned forward desperately, letting his weight and momentum carry him onto the balcony of 627, where he landed in an awkward heap and rolled across the cement floor, scraping and bruising himself in the process.

  He came up on a knee in time to see Parker charging into the room where a struggle was going on. The little blond guy who was their target appeared to be trying to fight off a couple of ugly bruisers who had hired killer written all over them. They must not have been all that good at their job, though, or else the kid would already be dead by now.

  Instead, the target had backed into a corner between the bed and the wall and was flailing away at one of the intruders with what was left of a broken chair. He wasn’t big enough to have broken it himself, so he must have grabbed it during the fight.

  “Get away from him!” Parker yelled as he leveled his gun at the two attackers. The one closest to him wheeled around suddenly and launched a spinning high kick that caught Parker on the wrist and knocked the weapon out of his hand.

  Parker didn’t let that stop him. He stepped forward swiftly while the guy was still off-balance and grabbed his leg, wrapping his right arm around it. He used his left fist to hammer a blow into the side of the man’s head and then heaved on the leg. The man wound up on his butt.

  Meanwhile, Ford had made it into the room, too. He pointed his gun at the second would-be assassin as that man grabbed the broken chair leg away from the kid and tried to jab the jagged end of it into his throat. The young
man twisted away just in time to avoid the thrust.

  Ford wasn’t going to give the guy a second chance. He fired across the bed, putting a round through the man’s forearm.

  The man howled in pain and dropped the chair leg. He whirled toward Ford, leaped onto the bed, and bounced off it like it was a trampoline, using it to send him into the air in a diving tackle. Ford pulled the trigger again but didn’t know if the shot hit the man. It certainly didn’t slow him down if it did. He crashed into Ford with the impact of a freight train.

  Ford went over backwards and the man landed on top of him, driving the air out of his lungs. Gasping for breath, Ford slapped around on the floor for the gun he had just dropped but failed to locate it. He grabbed the phone, though, which had been knocked off the table where it usually sat, and smashed it on the man’s head in an explosion of plastic and electronics.

  That stunned the man enough for Ford to throw him off. Ford rolled onto his side and dragged air into his lungs. He spotted his gun lying on the carpet and scooped it up just as the man he’d been fighting with pulled a big, ugly revolver from somewhere. Maybe the two men had been trying to eliminate the target quietly at first, with a minimum of fuss, but that ship was way out of the harbor by now.

  The hell with this, Fargo thought. He emptied the pistol into the man’s chest before the guy could pull the trigger.

  A bullet hitting a man’s body usually wouldn’t knock him down unless it was an extremely heavy caliber. That was something else those guys on TV had proven.

  But seven bullets, even of a smaller caliber, pounding into a guy’s chest in the space of three seconds would certainly make him stagger backwards, and that’s what happened now. With blood welling from the bullet holes, the man went back three steps through the open sliding glass door and then three more steps across the balcony. The backs of his thighs hit the railing, and inertia did the rest.

  The guy flipped right over it and plummeted toward the ground, screaming as he fell.

  Ford had time to mutter, “Look out below,” before a loud thud silenced the scream.

  He rolled over and reached in his pocket for a fresh magazine as he dumped the empty. On the other side of the room, Parker and the other killer were trading martial arts blows, their arms and legs moving almost too fast for Ford’s eyes to follow them.

  The blond kid who was the object of all this attention was making a beeline for the door into the corridor, taking off for the tall and uncut.

  Ford couldn’t really blame him for that, but he couldn’t afford to let the target get away, either. He scrambled to his feet and went after the kid, ramming home the fresh magazine as he did so.

  A shot blasted in the hall.

  By now there was a lot of yelling, cursing, and screaming going on all up and down the corridor, as the hotel guests thought—and rightfully so—that somebody was on a shooting rampage. As Ford stepped out into the hall, he saw the kid stumbling around and clutching a bloody arm. Another shot rang out, chipping wood and plaster from the wall near Ford. He saw the shooter, down in the alcove where the elevators were located, and returned the fire, forcing the man to duck back.

  Ford grabbed the target’s arm and slung him back into 627. “Stay there!” he bellowed.

  Then Ford went to a knee and traded fast shots with the gunman at the elevators.

  The kid scampered out of the room behind him and started running the other way along the hall, pushing past people who came out of their rooms to see what was going on. Ford glanced back and saw him fleeing, but there was nothing he could do except bite back a curse. He had his hands full with this firefight.

  Inside the room, Parker yelled, “Stop!”

  Ford looked back again, saw that his partner had managed to retrieve his gun. The other assassin didn’t want any part of it now that the target was gone. He turned and ran toward the balcony. Parker fired a warning shot, but the guy never slowed down.

  He bounded across the balcony, leaped onto the railing, and dived off.

  Committing suicide because he had failed in his mission? Ford didn’t think so. Parker comfirmed that when he ran onto the balcony, looked down, and said, “Son of a bitch! Right into the pool!”

  It took either a lunatic or somebody who was damned good to dive six stories into a hotel swimming pool and survive. This man must have fallen into one of those categories, although at this point, Ford didn’t know if he had actually survived.

  The shooting in the hall stopped. Ford heard a door slam open and then closed. There was a stairwell beside the elevators. From the sound of it, the third man was fleeing, too.

  Ford was leery of a trap, but he came to his feet and advanced toward the elevator alcove, staying close to the wall and holding his gun ready. He went around the corner in a hurry and tracked the weapon from side to side.

  Nobody. The guy was gone, all right. Ford went to the stairwell door, jerked it open, and listened. He could hear hurrying footsteps echoing up from below.

  For a second he thought about grabbing one of the elevators and trying to beat the guy to the ground, but he discarded the idea. There was no guarantee the man would go all the way to the first floor. He could leave the stairwell at any of the other floors and blend into the confused crowd that was growing larger all the time as word of the shooting on six spread through the hotel.

  “Fargo, you all right?” Parker asked as he trotted down the hall.

  “Yeah, you?”

  Parker jerked his head in a nod. “The target?”

  “In the wind.” The words tasted bitter in Ford’s mouth.

  Parker grimaced and said, “I saw a laptop in there.”

  “Grab it and let’s go.”

  Parker nodded again, disappeared into 627, and came out with a laptop computer tucked under his arm. “How are we going to get out of here with all this uproar going on?”

  “Did that other guy dive into the pool?”

  “He did. He climbed out and got away, too.” Parker stared at Ford and shook his head. “Fargo, you’re not thinking about—”

  “Do I look insane to you? There’s a walkway from the eighth floor to the top level of the parking garage. Come on.”

  CHAPTER 12

  With the skill of experienced agents, the two men made it out of the hotel, retrieving their SUV from the parking garage, and driving away just before the police arrived in response to the dozens of 911 calls about a shooting and a man falling from a sixth-floor balcony.

  Parker was at the wheel. He drove over the towering Nueces Bay bridge and then over Indian Point Bridge into neighboring Portland. He pulled into a nondescript chain motel where he and Ford had rented a room the day before.

  Once they were in the room, Ford set the small laptop on the table and opened it. It was already on and in sleep mode. Ford woke it and pointed at the pornographic desktop that appeared.

  “What a sleaze.”

  “Never mind that,” Parker said as he leaned over the chair where Ford sat. “How much power is left?”

  “Lemme see … fifty-four percent.”

  “Hang on, I think I’ve got an AC power cord that’ll fit it.”

  Parker fetched the cord from one of his bags and plugged the computer into a wall outlet.

  “Now we won’t run out of juice,” Ford said as he started to work. His big, blunt fingers weren’t particularly well-suited for the small keyboard, so he was careful not to push anything he didn’t mean to.

  He started exploring the files, taking a quick glance through the directory, then opening the e-mail client. The in-box was almost empty.

  “Nothing here but spam,” Ford muttered. “He must save all his important e-mail on a flash drive and then delete it from the computer.”

  “It might still be recoverable,” Parker said.

  “Yeah, but not by me. We ought to send it back to Langley.”

  “Poke around in there some more first.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  F
ord went back to exploring the various files. After a few minutes, he muttered, “Looks like this guy didn’t use the computer for anything except downloading music and porn and games.”

  “What’s in that folder?” Parker asked. “The one named CDD?”

  “Let’s see.” Ford clicked on it, only to have a dialogue box pop up. “Password protected. You got any idea what his password might be?”

  “I don’t even know who he is,” Parker said. He shook his head in disgust. “I’m sure the tech guys can crack it, but I was hoping we could get some clue to what’s going on.”

  “Yeah, me—” Ford began, then stopped short as the lights in the motel room and the screen on the computer suddenly lit up brighter than usual, then abruptly went dark. The overhead lights came back on after a second. The laptop’s screen flickered a couple of times, but otherwise remained dark. “Damn!”

  “What happened?”

  “Power surge.” Ford pulled the AC cord loose and flipped the laptop over. His finger pushed the battery release, popping it loose. He held the battery in his hand as seconds dragged by. “Sometimes this works.”

  The two men waited grimly for about a minute. Then Ford reinserted the battery, hooked up the power cord, and tried to turn the computer on. The lights indicating that it had power going to it came on, but that was all.

  “Damn it,” Ford said again. “I’d be willing to bet that it’s totally fried in there.”

  “Maybe the data retrieval guys can take it in the clean room and reconstruct what was on the hard drive.”

  “Maybe, but it’ll take a while, and meantime we’re still in the dark, with no clue where to start looking for our target.”

  “Yeah …”

  Parker wheeled around and ran to the door, throwing it open and hurrying out into the motel parking lot. Ford ran after him. He didn’t know what had occurred to his partner, but he trusted Parker’s instincts.

  Parker looked at the power lines leading into the hotel, then followed them with his eyes down the street to a pole with a transformer on it.