Hit Hard. Amy J. Fetzer

had that look lately.”

      She made a sour face. “Darn, I thought I was hiding it so well this time.”

      “You have been on five digs with me since you were in college. It is not hard to recognize. You stop chattering constantly.”

      “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

      Smiling, he pressed the box into her hands. “Take it to him, see the city while he makes his findings. Then perhaps you will come back and enjoy yourself.”

      She doubted it. Viva knew herself well, and her biggest flaw, her indecision, her complete and utter incapability to stick with one thing for longer than a year—no, wait, six months—was embarrassing. At her age, she should have a real paying career in something.

      She looked at the small wood box, then up at Dr. Nagada, and thought, Oh, goody, Bangkok. Great hotels, a decent shower, food, and some real girl clothes were just too wonderful to turn down. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’ll make you some babaganoush when I get back.”

      He grinned. “I am already missing you. In the morning?”

      “It will take me that long to scrape off the dust. Get all dolled up.” She turned away, still talking. “And look fashionably cute for the train ride.”

      He frowned. “A plane ride, Xaviera.”

      “Is boring. On, up, down, off. What fun is that? At least with the train I get to commune with the locals, see more of this country.” She walked backwards, smiling.

      “And the dangers.”

      “Well, you know what they say?”

      “No, what?”

      “You’re the expert on old stuff, figure it out.”

      “Tree!” he shouted and she turned, smacking into it.

      “I meant to do that.” Rubbing her forehead, she kept going to her tent, and Salih thought, she’d be lucky to survive the trek.

      Twelve hours later

       West of Chao Phraya River

       Thailand

      Sam parked his ass on a mossy rock at the river’s edge, pulled off his hat, then scooped up some water. He poured it over his head, but wasn’t dumb enough to drink the bacteria-infested stuff. To make the point, a lizard slid into the stream a couple feet away. Instead, he pulled the tube from his Camelbak water supply and drank fresh. Texas heat had nothing on Thailand, he thought. On so many levels. The air hung, and in the darkened jungle it dripped with humidity. Damn beautiful, though. Kingfisher birds darted overhead, as if warning him of their presence, then dove into the water for food. Hornbills, the bullies of the bird pack with thick, colorful faces and long, hawkish bills strong enough to chop a finger clean off, weighted branches overhead. And then there were the monkeys. Food for the local hill tribes and an annoyance. They threw stuff, mostly their own shit.

      Sam fell back, then noticed banana trees a couple yards away, bright yellow fruit in the blanket of green. He shouldered off his pack and stared up at the trees, contemplating how to get up there. The locals could do it in a heartbeat, kids shimming up the trees and cutting down bundles. He stood, took several steps back, then pulled the whip from his belt, and unrolled it.

      He raised and snapped it, the crack soft in the dense forest. The rawhide whip caught the bundle, ruined a few, but had a good hold. He yanked. It tore free and dropped to the ground.

      “Like roping a calf,” he muttered, crossing to the cluster and ripping off a banana.

      He peeled and ate, then checked his GPS. A couple more miles to the meet, he figured, then glanced the way he’d come, pulling the shotgun over his shoulder to aim with one hand. “Come on, Max, show yourself.”

      “Don’t shoot, my mom will be pissed at you.” Max Renfield strolled into the open, splashed through the stream. A slung Uzi bounced against his side, and he stopped a few feet from him.

      “Go away.”

      “You like pissing off all of us at once?”

      “I don’t need backup.”

      “Yeah, sure, and if I was someone else?”

      “You’d have a hole in your head. I could hear you a mile back. You tromp like my dad’s prize bull.”

      Max shrugged, not the least bit ashamed that he lacked the quintessential silent-and-deadly skills. “I’m not Recon, just the go-to guy.”

      “Then go-to somewhere else.”

      Max’s lips tightened. “You need me, two heads are better.”

      “Like we have a clue where the bastard is, or the diamonds?” Sam offered a banana.

      “He’s here, we know that much.” Max squatted, removed his pack, and fished in his gear. “And the next buyer.” Max pulled out a small packet, tore it open, and squeezed peanut butter onto the banana.

      Sam shook his head, amused. All former military, Dragon One was a retrieval team for hire, and Max was logistics and supply. A damn good mechanic, he could find food and equipment where no one else would look, and amazingly, knew where he was without a compass. A GPS had nothing on him.

      Max shoved a wad of banana and peanut butter in his mouth and Sam thought, the guy’s a bottomless pit, never without some chow.

      “You were right. Happy?”

      Sam sat, his back against a tree. “That I missed the jet? No. Rohki’d be dead if I’d found him.” He was the only one close enough to have shot Riley at that range.

      Yet word was out that the diamonds were for sale and the Sri Lankan government’s threat—that anyone dealing with the Tigers or anyone else for the stones would end up in a cell in Welikada Prison—wasn’t much of a deterrent. Just the image of that hellhole should be, but there was enough intel traffic in the Congo, Sierra Leone, and Angola to know that more than one terrorist group has stones mined on the backs of babies.

      Evidently, someone had found a large geode and was hot to sell.

      Sam would get the stones back and find their intended purpose. He had a sneaking suspicion it was Turkish missiles, made in the USA. Buying the stones off the market was still an option. Well, they hadn’t planned to actually buy them in the first place. Confiscate was a better word. If all else failed, then they’d fork over the cash. Riley had developed a plan to intercept the cash too. It made no sense to take the stones off the black market and give the assholes the money they needed to buy weapons.

      But the dam break destroyed that and everything else in its path. Which meant they had to start from scratch.

      “If Rohki had washed up in the debris from the flood, this still wouldn’t be over. Pisses me off they got in the air so fast.” He arrived in time to see the small jet cross the sky.

      “We had other priorities.”

      They were both quiet for a moment, Sam thinking of Riley hooked up to tubes, and a machine helping him stay alive.

      Max broke the silence. “Someone paid to get the jet off the ground ASAP. No customs search, and no manifest. Who’s got that kind of pull? Never mind, forget I said that,” he added at Sam’s sarcastic look.

      “Aside from the fact that the stones are worth millions, and those were just the ones we tracked, Al Qaeda has cells all over the place.” Add the Thai mafia, the Chinese–Thai Chiu Chow mafia, gunrunners, drug cartels, prostitution, and human trafficking. “There’s plenty to choose from around here.”

      “We go nosing in their business, it’s going to get really hairy.”

      Sam waved that off. “We find Rohki, we find the stones and the weapons,” he said, climbing to his feet.

      “You plan on beating it out of him?”