David Golemon - Ripper

Collins looked up and nodded to the first of the two guards inside of the infirmary’s single-bed room. Jack tapped his wrist and the large army sergeant took a few steps toward the bed and unlocked the restraint holding Farbeaux’s hand to the rail. Henri turned his head and watched the guard move back into the shadows. He lifted his right hand and then rubbed his wrist with the left. His eyes focused on the small room in general and avoided Jack’s gaze altogether.

“No, Henri, I didn’t come in here for that.”

“So when may I expect a meeting with my attorney, and when is my arraignment?”

Jack smiled as he sat in the chair next to Farbeaux’s bed. The Frenchman could see Collins was going on zero sleep. His face, although clean, hadn’t seen a razor since their return from Nuevo Laredo. His jumpsuit was clean and pressed and his wounds had now been tended, but there was still something wrong with Collins outside of him needing a shave.

“I think our department will want to keep the court system out of this one, Colonel. We have no evidence to offer a U.S. court of law that would place you in any crime scene that we know of. Oh, there’s no doubt that the FBI will have some questions for you, but as for the Group, we have nothing we can charge you with.”

Henri continued to rub his wrist where the handcuff had chafed his skin. He looked at Collins and then slowly reached for the control that raised the bed to a sitting position.

“I seem to be quite sore,” he said as the whine of the bed’s motor ceased.

“Two bullets, ten small pieces of shrapnel, three broken ribs, and a severe concussion. All in all you could qualify to be a part of my security team the way you get busted up like you do.”

“If that is the prequalifier to becoming a true blue blooded American hero like you and your men, I think I’ll pass, Colonel.”

Jack didn’t respond and remained silent as his eyes moved away from the Frenchman. After all of the years of chasing the Frenchman, Jack found he had little or no animosity toward the former commando. Collins had long suspected that Henri on several occasions had just been the bogeyman everyone believed him to be — a convenient one. Appearances, Jack knew, could be as deceiving as the Group sometimes found history to be.

“Okay, so you didn’t come here to read the charges against me. You didn’t bring in flowers or a get-well card, so just what is it that brings you to my sickbed, Colonel?”

Jack leaned back in his chair and then looked toward the darker recesses of the room. With a nod of Jack’s head Farbeaux watched the two large security men leave the room silently, closing the door behind them.

“Oh, I see, shot while trying to escape?” Farbeaux joked.

“With you, Colonel, I wish it were that easy. If anyone shoots you, it won’t be me.”

Farbeaux saw the complex look on the face of his adversary — a man he hated for causing the death of his wife, Danielle, deep in the Amazon Basin four years before. But he was also a man he had begrudgingly come to respect.

“Your wife, Danielle, tell me about her.”

The question took Farbeaux by surprise, mainly because he had just thought of her himself. It was as if the American had read his mind, and he didn’t like that one little bit. Henri gathered his senses and then looked Collins over.

“I loved her, Colonel, that’s all that needs to be said. She was the only woman, besides one other, that knew me for what…,” he looked away from Jack’s eyes, “knew me for something other than someone’s psyche evaluation in a foreign intelligence report.”

“You said Danielle and one other?” Jack asked.

Finally Henri turned and faced Collins. “What do you want of me, Colonel Collins?”

“I guess I’m here to say I’m sorry. Sorry for your perception about my having anything to do with your wife’s death.”

Henri stared at Jack for the longest time. He reached out and took a plastic cup from the rolling table at the bed’s side and drank water from a straw. He placed the glass back down and looked away toward the door of the room. Jack looked down at the bandage wrapping his left hand.

“The thought of losing Sarah … if that had happened, I don’t think I would have reacted any differently than you have been toward me.”

“There is one major difference here, Colonel,” Farbeaux said, finally turning angry eyes on Jack. “Sarah is breathing, while my wife, Danielle, is not.”

“Yet you risked your life, your fortune, and at the very least your freedom to try and save the woman I love. Why is that Henri?” This time Jack’s eyes never left those of Farbeaux.

“Some things in my life are not to be found in that thick little folder that Senator Lee started on me and my exploits many years ago. I too have my secrets, Colonel.”

Jack nodded his head once and then stood. He removed a small notebook from his breast pocket and then with a pen jotted down some words. When he was done he tore the sheet from the pad and then paused.

“When you’re transferred to Washington and turned over to FBI custody for your trip to the Justice Department, I have no doubt you will find a way to escape. When you do,” Jack handed the Frenchman the note, “call this number; you can reach me anytime.”

Henri looked the paper over and then looked up at Collins.

“So we can finish whatever it is we have to finish.” Jack leaned in closer to his onetime antagonist. “Stay away from Sarah, Henri. Despite what you may be inclined to believe, she is not Danielle.”

Farbeaux was silent as Jack turned and headed for the door, but just before he opened it and without turning around Jack said, “Henri?”

“Colonel Collins?”

Farbeaux didn’t think Jack was going to continue as he pulled the door open. Then he let it close a few inches.

“Thank you for doing what you did in Mexico, no matter what the reasons behind it were.”

With that the colonel left the clinic’s sterile room and disappeared.

Denise Gilliam came through the same door a moment later along with the two security men. She took Henri’s wrist and checked his blood pressure.

“Well, your B.P. is not as bad as I would have thought it would be after your little meeting,” Denise said as she released Henri’s wrist. “You need to get some rest. If you need anything, just ask one of these two rather large gentlemen.”

“He quit, didn’t he?” Farbeaux asked as his eyes finally went to those of the doctor.

“I don’t listen to, nor do I confirm, rumors, even if I know them to be true, Colonel Farbeaux.”

Denise walked away as Henri’s eyes moved to the door.

“Goodbye, Colonel Collins. I suspect I’ll be making that phone call sooner than you may think.”

Henri Farbeaux turned off the light above the steel headboard and then placed his hands behind his head and went into deep thought.

A small man with a paunch and a sweat-stained baby-blue blazer adjusted his field glasses as he watched the Mexican National Police force come and go from the hacienda. Every once in a while he would see an old woman, his files said that she was the late Juan Guzman’s mother, start haranguing the officers as they compiled their evidence packages inside of the main house. He knew the police hadn’t actually removed any evidence from the hacienda to this point.

The man worked for the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, Mexico’s version of the CIA. The National Security and Investigation Center, or CISEN, was one of the more corrupt agencies in the Mexican federal establishment. For years they had been trying to clean up the factions at work deep inside of the agency, but they had thus far been unable to curb the avarice thrown to certain members of the corrupt agency. The man with the field glasses was one of these men.