Chapter 1: Paradise Lost
LORENZO
St. Carl Island
The Bahamas
February 6th
Seven years ago. Why was I dreaming about seven years ago? The clock by the bed told me that it was three in the morning. I was having a hard time sleeping again, just too restless.
Jill grunted in her sleep. Trying not to wake her, I got up carefully and went to the bathroom. The nondescript face in the mirror stared at me. What’s your problem, Lorenzo? It was weird to think about Kuala Lumpur again. It had been a turning point for me. Of course, Eddie had come back to haunt me, dragging me into the mess in Zubara, but he was dead now and I was still alive. So what had I become? I was a free man. I was my own man. I was a retired thief. I was wealthy. I was in a relationship with a wonderful woman, even though I didn’t deserve her.
But at what cost? A football stadium. The face in the mirror scowled. That’s what Carl had described. So what was I now? For some reason, the words of my foster father were on my mind that morning. I could hear his deep voice, fading on his death bed. Warning me about good and evil . . .
I wouldn’t be getting back to sleep tonight.
“Welcome to St. Carl!” the waitress said with extra cheer. Those simple words got my attention. St. Carl was a small enough island that anyone who wasn’t a regular got that greeting, especially during the off season when tourists were few and the staff was hungry for tips. The room was kept dark, in sharp contrast to the bright Caribbean sunshine trying to force its way through the now-open entrance. The lunch patrons were sitting in a few tight clusters, mostly workers from the nearby docks, and a handful of others, all of whom I recognized, but I didn’t know the three newcomers standing in the doorway.
The lead was a striking woman of Chinese descent, dressed casually, but not casually enough to pass for a St. Carl resident. Her black eyes were scanning across the room, looking for something, or someone. She was flanked by two men, one short Asian guy built like a cage fighter, and the other, a black man so tall he almost had to duck to get through the door, with a shaved head and more muscle than a side of beef.
Tourists, my ass. The door closed behind the three, plunging the room back into a nice, muted grey. I like grey. People like me just kind of fade away. I went back to my lunch, enjoying the spices and the ache in my muscles. Unable to go back to sleep this morning, I had got in a workout. I wasn’t close to my peak, but I’d still done thirty pull-ups, a hundred push-ups, and thirty minutes straight on an eighty-pound punching bag. Not bad for a gentleman of leisure on the wrong side of forty.
The woman said something, quietly enough that I couldn’t hear, and the waitress waved them toward the bar. I noted that the woman kept scanning, always looking, dividing the room into quadrants, and giving every occupant a once-over. She made eye contact with me, but I just kept chewing my food like any other slack-jawed yokel, just an everyman, not worthy of any attention. I had developed this ability with a lifetime of practice. I was good at appearing unremarkable.
I was also a master of reading people. It was a gift. Two seconds of eye contact told me everything that I needed to know about her. This woman was a killer, and she was hard, but I didn’t get the vibe that she was here to kill anyone in particular. She was here on business.
The woman broke away and headed for the bar. She stopped while the tall man pulled a wicker stool out and waited for her to sit. She crossed her legs gracefully, smiled at the bartender like a lion would smile at a gazelle, and placed several folded pieces of currency onto the bar. Beckoning him closer, conspiratorially, she started asking questions. The bartender, always a sucker for a pretty girl, took the money, scratched his head, looked around the room, shrugged, and pointed right at me.
And here we go. I sighed and took another bite.
The woman stood, delicately adjusted her blouse, and walked toward me. Her men took up positions at the bar, still close enough to shoot me if necessary. I waited for her to approach. The weight of the compact pistol on my belt, concealed under an untucked cotton shirt, was reassuring.
She stopped, hovering next to my table, while I nonchalantly finished my larb. Why Thai food for breakfast in a hole-in-the wall restaurant on a flypeck island in the middle of nowhere? Because I said so.
Of course the bartender knew me. I own most of this damned island.
“Are you Lorenzo?” She asked politely in perfectly nuanced English. Such a mundane statement seemed vaguely threatening when she said it.
I made her wait while I took a long drink of water. Most everything I ate was seasoned to be lethally hot. “At times,” I replied, pushing my dish away and wiping my mouth on a napkin. “Have a seat.” She did. It had been a while since anyone other than my Jill had called me that name on St. Carl.
“My name is Song Ling.” She got right down to business. “I have need of your services.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You must not have gotten the memo, lady. I’m retired.”
Nonplussed, she reached into a pocket and pulled out a business-size envelope. “You will want to see this.” She held it out to me, her blood-red fingernails bright over the white paper. The nails were kept short, like those of most women more concerned about trigger control than fashion.
I was forced into my last job, too. It too had started with a messenger giving me an envelope, though Ling was far more attractive than the psychotic Fat Man who had served Big Eddie Montalban. That particular envelope had been filled with information on my extended family and threats against their lives. I had pulled off one of the most daring heists of my career, but the costs had been far too high. Too many people, friends and enemies both, had died because of the contents of that last envelope.
I didn’t take it.
“Ling, was it? Look, I’m sorry that you came all this way for nothing, but I’m not interested.” I pushed back my chair and stood. I could see both of Ling’s goons tense up. “I hope you enjoy your stay on St. Carl. The rock shrimp really is good this time of year. You should try some. My treat. And then have a nice trip home.”
“Your brother said you would react like this.” She didn’t even look at me. She placed the envelope on the table and spun it. “I didn’t pick you out of the crowd. You look nothing at all like him. I was expecting a man of greater . . . stature.”
I paused. That would explain how she found me. Son of a bitch.
I was a foster kid. I said as I sat back down. The envelope sat between us. Ling didn’t speak. I had been correct in my earlier assessment, she was a hard one. “How do you know Bob?” I asked, because of course, of all my brothers, it had to have been him. For some reason she didn’t strike me as the type of person that ran in the same social circles as my straight-laced, honorable, FBI Agent, older brother.
She opened the envelope and pulled out a torn paper napkin. It had been scribbled on with black ink. She shoved it toward me. “He gave this to me, right before he was chased down, beaten unconscious, and taken away. That was . . . ” she theatrically looked at her watch. “. . . seventy-two hours ago. I do not know if he is alive or dead.”
“What?” I snatched the napkin from her. I recognized Bob’s blocky handwriting.
HECTOR—NEED HELP. REMEMBER Q?
THEY KNOW.
DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME.
HE IS IN NORTH GAP.
HE IS THE KEY.
YOU MUST SAVE HIM.
The bottom half of the napkin was missing, torn off.
Q? Quagmire. Quagmire, Nevada. They know? Eddie’s dead. His organization is destroyed. Gordon . . . The shadow government types. They must have found out about Bob helping us in Quagmire.
The Quagmire Incident had made national headlines the year before. Everybody knew about how a civilian jet, owned by billionaire philanthropist Eduard Montalban, had allegedly been shot down by a surface-to-air missile. That part was actually true. I knew because I was the one who had fired the missile. The rest of the story had never made it to the news, nothing about the gun battle with a bunch of secret government agents in an abandoned prison work camp ever made it beyond the usual conspiracy-theory sites. Except all of that was true as well. Bob had been there for every bit of it.
“Who’s in North Gap? What does that mean?”
“North Gap is a decommissioned US Air Force radar station in the State of Montana. It is now used by a covert organization within the United States government. It serves as a secret prison and interrogation center for high-value, high-risk subjects. I’m here to offer you a trade, Mr. Lorenzo. You help me rescue someone from this facility, and I’ll give you all of the information I can to help you find your brother. We will lend you our full assistance and allow you to use our intelligence network for this end.”
“What happened to my brother? Where was he when he was taken? Why was he with you?”
Ling folded her hands neatly on the table. “Do we have a deal or not, Mr. Lorenzo? I do not have much time.”
I could feel the anger bubbling to the surface, the same killing anger that I had used as a tool for so long, the same evil that I had thrown into the deepest darkest well of my mind to be locked up safely for the last six months. “How about you tell me where my brother is right now or I cut your eyes out?” Her men sensed the change, and started to rise from the bar, hands moving under their shirts.
Ling didn’t flinch. She casually raised her hand, and her goons grudgingly lowered themselves. The rest of the patrons kept eating, unaware that for a split second the room had teetered on the edge of a gunfight.
“Read your brother’s words. That isn’t what he wants. This is bigger than your brother. Greater than you, than me, than all of us.” She spoke with the sincerity of a true believer, and those were the most dangerous kind. Ling produced a smart phone, tapped the screen a couple of times, then laid it on the table so I could see it.
“Do you know this man, Mr. Lorenzo?”
I looked at the picture on the screen. My eyes narrowed. “Yeah . . . I know him.”
Ling leaned forward. “One life for another. Your brother is an honorable man, Mr. Lorenzo. I want no harm to come to him. Right now, my people are doing everything they can to locate him. But your brother insisted that finding this man was more important than his own safety. Please. We need your help.”
I glanced down at the image again. A young man, with a young face, but hard eyes. His hair had been shaved off, and his face was crisscrossed with scars. As a matter of fact, I’d given him one of those scars.
Valentine.
VALENTINE
Location Unknown
Date/Time Unknown
You’re a natural-born killer, boy.
Hawk had said that. I found myself thinking about his words and that day I first met him in Afghanistan. It had been a bad day but it changed me, set me on the path that I’d walked ever since . . . a long, winding, bloody path that ended with me in a small, windowless cell.
Sitting against the wall, I stared blankly into space. Footsteps would occasionally echo from the hallway outside my door. Every so often an ancient industrial heater would come on, filling the hall with a dull roar while it ran and kicking up small clouds of dust from the vents. Fluorescent lights buzzed unendingly; they never turned them off. I didn’t know if it was night or day. I could sometimes hear voices from outside, but I was never directly spoken to while I was in this room. I wasn’t allowed to speak. If I made noise, they came in and sedated me, or worse. So I sat quietly, back to the wall, and lost myself in thought.
I didn’t know where I was, exactly. It was cold, and there were thick pine forests in every direction. I had been outside a few times. It may have been on a mountaintop somewhere, or up in Alaska. I had no real way of keeping track of time. This had to be intentional. I didn’t know how many days, or weeks, or months, I’d been in this place, but I grew increasingly certain that I would never leave. I knew that there was more snow on the ground the last time I’d been outside than there was the first time they’d let me out, so it was probably winter.
Of course, they hadn’t let me out in a while, as part of my punishment for stabbing one of the guards in the knee with a pen.
Despite ending up in prison, I didn’t regret knowing Hawk. The man was like a father to me, and I hadn’t even known I’d been lost before I met him. I joined the military because I just didn’t know what else to do with myself, volunteered for Afghanistan for the same reason.
My time with Vanguard Strategic Services International was something of a blur now, even though my career had lasted nearly five years. The deployments were all different, but they were all the same, too. We fought for the people who could afford to pay us in wars the rest of the world generally didn’t care about. Others fought for duty, honor, and country. We fought because it was our job.
I was good at it. It’s what I’m best at. A natural-born killer. Deep down, I’d always known. I killed my first man as a teenager. I grew up that day. I changed. And I knew I was different. I began to look at the people around me the way a wolf looks at a herd of deer.
Somehow I held on. My teammates kept me sane. We went through a lot of bad days and a lot of good ones. We fought together, partied together, and mourned our dead together. I traveled all over the world, and was paid a lot of money for what I did.
It all came crashing down in Mexico. Only three of us survived that mission, and our employer was forced out of business. My entire life was gone in the span of a couple of days.
I tried. I tried to return home, to the US, and get a regular job. I tried to live my life as a respectable citizen. I did that for almost a year, and I was completely miserable. Restless, disconnected from the people around me. When my former teammate Tailor showed up on my doorstep with a job offer, the deal was sealed.
Project Heartbreaker, they called it. We did good work, at first. I met the first woman I ever really loved. Her name was Sarah, and she made me a better man.
She died in a little country called Zubara. Most of us did, betrayed by the same shadowy organization that had brought us there. They were just cleaning up loose ends. Some of us managed to escape with our lives, and those who did went into hiding.
Not me. I was done running. I tracked down Gordon Willis, the man behind the entire operation, and shot him through the heart.
Then they caught me. So there I was, some time later, in a windowless cell, wondering when they were going to get around to killing me. I wondered if anyone had any idea what happened to me. Did anyone even care?
My eyes snapped into focus as the tromp of combat boots echoed down the hall. Three people, it sounded like. It didn’t seem like it was mealtime, and they never sent three men just to slide my tray of slop through the door. I took a deep breath, and tried to steady myself as I stood up. I knew what was coming next.
A key hit the lock. The door swung inward. Three men in black uniforms strode in. I recognized all of them. I’d seen them all before. Reilly, Smoot, and Davis. They didn’t speak as they shoved me against the wall and cuffed my hands together and shackled my feet. They jabbed me in the side to get me going, hard enough to leave a throbbing pain. I shuffled up the hallway, chains clinking like an inmate at the County Jail.
There was a time when I’d tried to resist, tried to make myself a pain in the ass, hoping for rescue or escape. In my confinement, I’d worked out, doing push-ups and sit-ups in my cell to stay somewhat fit. As time went on, that hope faded. I gave up exercising. What was the point? I was going to die in this place. I was too much of a liability for them to ever let me go.
I hung my head slightly, but said nothing, as I clattered along in chains.
LORENZO
I studied the image for a time. “I don’t know what happened to him. Once he popped that guy in Virginia, he just dropped off the grid. I figured the secret government types murdered him.” I slid the phone back to Ling.
“From what your brother has told me, you owe him a great deal.” Ling’s dark eyes almost bored holes into me. Of course she was right. Jill would be dead if it hadn’t been for Valentine, but that wasn’t the sort of thing Bob should be sharing. How much had my brother told this woman?
“No disagreement there, but the way I see it, the way he saw it, we’re even. No offense lady, and in normal circumstances, I’d love to go take on the entire US government to rescue somebody who shot me with a .44 magnum, but it sounds like my brother’s in trouble. Family comes first.”
“How noble of you,” Ling said flatly. “My organization is searching for your brother as we speak, and as soon as we have information on his whereabouts, we will act. I understand your frustration. But until we are able to locate Bob, there is little that can be done.”
“You might be surprised,” I muttered.
“Perhaps not. I know exactly what you can do. You are one of most accomplished thieves in modern history. The Vladivostok gold train robbery, the Bahrain Museum of Antiquity heist, the South African Diamond Exchange, and rumors of many others. You are a master of disguise, stealth, and various intrigues.” She smiled as she saw my reaction. Yep, the old poker face was out of practice. Island living makes a man soft.
“You missed a few of my greatest hits, but apparently you know me. So who the hell are you supposed to be?”
“I am a strike team commander for the organization called Exodus. I assume you are familiar with our work?”
I nodded slowly. Of course I knew about them. Anyone who worked in the circles I did had heard of Exodus. “You kill people. Slave traders mostly. Criminals, terrorists, drug lords . . .” Mostly I knew about them from their reputation, and it was a grisly one. They were a bunch of pseudo-holy warrior kooks who never took prisoners and rarely left witnesses. “You pop anybody you decide is evil enough.”
“There’s a lot more to it than that, but you are fundamentally correct. This does not bother you, I trust.”
I smiled. “I’m morally ambivalent.”
“So your brother implied. Given your reputation, I’m surprised you haven’t crossed paths with our organization before.”
“I try not to take sides. And, no offense, I’m too good at what I do to be snared by a bunch of vigilante fanatics with automatic weapons. Please continue, Miss Ling.”
Ignoring the slight, Ling glanced around the restaurant to make sure no one was listening before continuing. “My organization was working on a matter of some significance. We were planning a mission against a very-high profile target. Have you heard of Sala Jihan?”
“The Pale Man?” I snorted. Every professional criminal who had ever worked in the Eastern hemisphere had heard of him, but it was all legend and nonsense from the superstitious or crazy. He was central Asia’s cross between the boogieman and Jack the Ripper. Villagers had been telling scary stories around campfires about him for hundreds of years. “I don’t have time for fairy tales.”
“He is quite real, I assure you.” Her flash of anger was very convincing. “Or at least some slave-trading warlord wants people to think he is real, and that he has returned. Someone calling himself Sala Jihan appeared a few years ago, and during that time, he’s amassed an army and now controls the trade of slaves, illicit arms, and drugs across south and central Eurasia.”
“That part of the world was Big Eddie’s territory,” I stated.
“Eduard Montalban was not in the same league as Sala Jihan.”
“Then you didn’t know much about Big Eddie.”
“He was a bored rich man’s son. A sociopath, of course, and dangerous, but in the end all of his power came from his family. His older brother is dead now, of course, and so is he. Thanks to you. That was well done, Mr. Lorenzo.”
I happened to agree, but I was growing impatient. “What does any of this have to do with Bob?”
“Your brother was looking for someone with some extremely vital information. This individual he was searching for was also being pursued by a certain US government agency which I believe you have some experience with. The person Bob was after had fled to Sala Jihan’s territory. It is easy to disappear there.”
I had always thought of my brother as the law-abiding, rational one. That was why it had been kind of shocking to see him shoot some of his fellow federal agents, without hesitation, back in Quagmire. I could see Bob putting what he thought was right and good ahead of what was practical. I was the practical one of the family. “So where is he now, and how many people do I have to kill to get him back?”
“We’re working on that. But first we need you to help us rescue Valentine. Read your brother’s words. It’s what he wants.”
“And why the hell is Valentine so important?”
She didn’t get a chance to answer. One of her bodyguards, the tall black man, approached quickly and tapped her on the shoulder. “Ma’am, I received. We need to leave.”
Ling brushed her hair back, and stood. “We need your help, Mr. Lorenzo. Our plane will be leaving the airfield in ninety minutes. Gather your equipment and meet us there. If we do not see you, then we will attempt this rescue without you. The choice is yours.”
I stayed seated and stewed for a moment. Technically, I owned the airfield on St. Carl, and this woman had landed on my runway without my permission. Of course, I leased it to the island, and tourist planes weren’t uncommon, but I was already angry and that just made it worse. I repeated my question. “And why is he so important?”
She looked at me like I was stupid.
“We never leave a man behind, Mr. Lorenzo. Your brother understood that much.”
“Reaper.” The phone picked up as I charged up the stairs to my home. The beach stretched for a mile in each direction below me, and my boat was rocking softly at my nearby dock. Seagulls squawked overhead. Ling and her men were on their way back to the airstrip. I was supposed to grab my stuff and meet them there.
“Hey, Chief! What’s up? Haven’t heard from you in forever.”
“Where are you at?”
“I’m kicking ass and taking names. Can I call you back?” I could hear clanking and something roaring in the background. Reaper played a lot of video games. “You like that, bitch? Huh? Witness my perfection! Go cry to momma, noob!”
“No. This is serious.”
“Oh shit.” Reaper was suddenly all business. “This line is secure. What do you need?”
“I’ve got some work for you to do.” I looked at my watch. “Find out everything you can about a decommissioned air force base in Montana called North Gap. Then I want you to get my brother’s file from the FBI database and forward it to me. I want to know where he was, and what he was working on.”
“Wow. Jumping right back into the deep end.” Reaper whistled. “That’s gonna be a tough one. I’ll get on it.” For most people, a request to break into a secure government database would seem a bit odd. For Reaper, it was the kind of thing he did for kicks. “It might get really expensive.”
“I’ll cover it. And get me everything you can find on Valentine.”
Reaper was quiet for a moment. “Like from Zubara? That Valentine?”
“Yes, that Valentine. Find me everything you can on him. Everything. I want to know where he came from, where he’s been, and what happened to him after Quagmire.”
“I’m on it!” Reaper paused for a second. “Are we back, Chief?”
He’d been bugging me about once a month for the last half a year about resuming our life of crime. Even though he was the only surviving member of my last team, and he was now independently wealthy from our looting of Big Eddie’s treasury, he just couldn’t leave it alone. I suppose some of us just aren’t good at walking away.
“We’re back.”
“Sweet! I’m on this!”
I pocketed my phone as I stepped into the entryway. “Jill! I’m home. We’ve got to talk.” My voice echoed through the vast space of vaulted ceilings, but no answer came. My home was huge. The average slum apartment I had lived in as a kid could fit in the living room. This had been the Montalban family vacation home on this island. The walls were white, the floor made of bright local wood, and an ocean breeze caused the curtains to flow softly over the very expensive furnishings. For a place that Big Eddie had hardly ever visited, he had spared no expense. “Jill!”
“I’m up here.” Jill’s voice came from upstairs. I ran, my sandals slapping on the marble stairs, then softly as I hit the thick carpet of the second floor landing. She was waiting in the bedroom, a large cardboard box open on the bed, packing peanuts strewn everywhere. She was wearing the little orange sundress that I loved on her, and didn’t look up as I entered. “Those antique candelabras I won on eBay got here, and look! They’re so pretty! I’m going to put these up in the dining room. So how was lunch, honey?”
I didn’t respond. I stepped past her, opened the door to the closet, and examined the three black duffel bags sitting on the floor. The first bag was set up with US currency and clothing that would fit in most places in America. I grabbed it and dragged it out. I reached up a shelf and grabbed another black case, this one carrying my disguise kit and other tools of my former trade. I hadn’t asked, but I assumed that Ling’s plane would have spots to smuggle weapons past customs. It was kind of a given in these kinds of social circles. The last duffle was my go-bag, with weapons, ammunition, and gear kept ready.
After a moment, I turned around and faced Jill. She stood there, looking confused, with a silver thing in her hands. It was designed to hold candles, but had a lot of points and edges. Knowing her temper, I was concerned that I was going to have to dig it out of my forehead when I told her that I was about to jeopardize my retirement and take off with a bunch of nut jobs to attack a secret government base to rescue a mercenary.
“What’s going on?” Jill asked. Her dark eyes narrowed dangerously. Her hair was pitch black, and tied casually in a ponytail. Her skin was bronzed. Island living had been good to her. She was just as beautiful as the day that I had rescued her from a band of Zubaran terrorists. Considering that the first time we had ever actually spoken, she’d attempted to shoot me, our relationship had come a long way. “That’s your bug-out bag.” She looked back up at me, an edge in her voice. “Lorenzo, what did you do?”
I grabbed Jill gently by the arms, partially to comfort her, and partially to prevent her from getting a good swing with the candle holder. The running joke was that Jill was half Filipina, so when she got angry, people got stabbed. I didn’t know how she was going to take this. “Listen to me. Bob’s in danger. He’s been kidnapped,” I said as calmly as I could manage. Jill gasped. She loved my brother. He’d helped save her from Gordon Willis after all. “It’s a long story. I’m going to get him back, but first I need to spring Valentine out of jail.”
Jill looked confused for a moment. She hadn’t heard that name in a while. “Valentine? Michael Valentine? He’s still alive?” She’d known him a lot better than I had, since they’d spent some time together at Hawk’s ranch. “I thought he was dead.”
“I’ll call you and explain everything. I don’t have time now. There’s a plane at the airfield leaving soon. I need to be on it.”
She tossed the candlestick holder on the bed. “I understand. I’ll grab my bug-out bag.” Jill didn’t have my background. She wasn’t really a criminal, but she was tough. She adapted and overcame adversity no matter what, a trait which I really admired. Sometimes I worried that she had adapted to life with me a little too well. She hadn’t even flinched at what I’d said. We were still technically newlyweds, but we had been through a lot together, so I knew how she was going to react to what I was going to say next.
“Jill . . . no.”
She blinked rapidly, the way she always did when I said something stupid. “What do you mean, no? Bob’s in trouble. We have work to do!”
“No, just me. It’s too dangerous. These people I’m going with, I don’t trust them. They’re bad people.” Here comes the stabbing part. “I need you to stay here.”
“What?”
“I can’t risk you, and I’ve got work for you to do, and I’ll call and tell you, but I just don’t have time now. I have to go.”
“Lorenzo, you don’t have a team anymore. Carl’s dead. You never work alone.”
“I called Reaper,” I said defensively.
“Reaper hasn’t done anything for the last six months but play video games and waste money on lap dances. He’s not exactly in practice. If you don’t know these people, then you need me to watch your back.”
“Jill,” I looked into her eyes, “do you trust me?”
She looked away. We’d been living an idyllic existence, my violent past left far behind. The evil that had plagued all my days had been locked away, seemingly forgotten, never to be brought out again. The horrible things that had befallen Jill were buried with them, and we’d begun a new life together.
That time ended now, and it was a lot to take in. Finally she turned back to me. “Yes.”
I kissed her and held her tight. “I love you,” I said softly, then let her go, her hands lingering on mine as I drew away. I slung the rifle case over my back, and grabbed my other bags. “I gotta go.”
She followed me down the stairs and across the lawn. I stopped at my climate-controlled tool shed, unlocked the heavy padlock, and went straight to one of the wooden crates. This was the stuff I wasn’t comfortable storing in the house. Jill fidgeted as she watched my preparations. She knew full well what I was doing.
“Be careful.”
“Always.”