Andrew Gross - Reckless

The next best option was something more clandestine. Bring in professionals. Call in a team that could subdue Thibault, disable him, and sneak him out of the country across the border with Romania or even Macedonia. Back into U.S. hands. The new international antiterrorist accords gave them broad powers. But apprehending a Serb in his home country, doing a covert abduction in a friendly state-that would never fly. That wasn’t exactly part of the current U.S. presidential administration’s foreign policy theme.

They had found him. But time was running out and they felt their viable options slowly drifting away.

“What’s the goal here?” Hauck asked atop the ridge, swigging water as the day grew hot and long.

He had come to a decision on his own.

“Apprehend him,” Naomi said. “Find out what he knows.”

“You can always apprehend him. We know what car he’s driving, what name he’s traveling under. You can always petition the local government to hand him over. Whatever the case, he’ll be facing serious charges here. And you’ll know where he is.”

Naomi stared at him quizzically. “So where are you heading, Ty?”

“You want to find out where this leads, right? What’s important is discovering what’s behind those murders?”

She nodded, going along.

“What we need to do is get inside that farmhouse.”

He turned and focused back on the house, not elaborating further. He could see Naomi weighing what he’d said in her mind. She wasn’t a field agent. She worked behind a desk. Her job was to fit together the threads of financial conspiracy and assess the threat. In the army, she’d been an investigator. Going in there, on the fly, without the backing of her bosses in DC, like some kind of operative-that definitely wasn’t the way careers were made in Washington. She’d be crossing a huge line.

Some time later, after Hauck figured she’d stowed the idea away as a bad one, she turned. “How do we do that?” she asked.

Hauck grinned. He’d been waiting for her to reply, “Over my dead body!”

“Thibault’s used to being a public person. He’s going to have to leave that farmhouse sometime.”

She sat back against the ledge and nodded, not so much in agreement as in coming to grips with the idea. Finally she replied, without turning, “Anyway, if anyone’s going in that farmhouse, it’s going to be me. I know what I’m looking for.”

He waited a moment. “You ever done anything like that before?”

She looked at him without answering.

“I’m just saying, this isn’t exactly music theory at Princeton, Naomi.”

“Any more than it’s handing out traffic tickets in Greenwich.” Her glare suggested there wouldn’t be much negotiating on this.

“Okay.” Hauck turned back to the binoculars, suppressing a smile.

Naomi said, “I thought this was just about your friend. The one who was murdered. You don’t have to do this either. We found Thibault.”

“What can I tell you?” Hauck said. “I’m learning to multitask.”

Now she was the one hiding her smile.

They watched a little longer. Hauck’s cell phone began to vibrate. It was Steve Chrisafoulis, he noticed, relieved it wasn’t Annie.

“Steve.”

“Where am I catching you?” the detective asked. The reception made it sound as if he was a block away.

“Just doing a bit of house-hunting,” Hauck said, rolling a few yards down the rise. He’d have liked to hear the guy’s reaction if he divulged he was on a hilltop in frigging Serbia.

“House-hunting…? We got something interesting back on James Merced. You remember your skating partner?”

“Yeah, Steve, I recall. I’m listening.”

“Turns out he came back stateside after receiving a get-out-of-jail card from Iraq. Seemed he had a few social problems with the enlisted women over there. Harassment. Assault. Attempted rape…They gave him a less-than-honorable discharge.”

“You don’t have to try hard to convince me, Steve.”

“When he got home, he knocked around a bit in California and Michigan, digging pools. Then he tried to hook on as a private contractor with a security outfit back in Iraq. Global Threat Management. You familiar with that company, Ty?”

“Yeah, I’m familiar.”

“That’s part of your outfit, isn’t it, Ty? Talon?”

Hauck felt a tremor tighten in his chest. “It is.”

“Apparently they shipped his ass right back out, soon as they found out about his record. I spoke with the employment director there. Still, quite a little coincidence, don’t you think? You and he, tied to the same firm…”

“You think that’s why he was trying to kill me, Steve?”

Hauck thanked him, and Steve said he’d keep him posted. They signed off. House-hunting…If he only knew…

Hauck crawled back up to the ridge.

“What was that?” Naomi asked.

“Real estate thing,” he said. She stared back at him. “Nothing…” He retook the binoculars. But it wasn’t nothing. It was the second time in a month he had doubts about his own firm, thought they might somehow be involved.

The sun was out. It was hot on this hilltop in Serbia. His brow was sweating. So why did he have the disturbing feeling that he was walking on thin ice?

“You know, I never handed out traffic tickets,” he said, focusing back on Thibault’s farmhouse. “Least not in Greenwich.”

“That’s okay,” Naomi said. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

They waited until almost dark. For a while, in the late afternoon, Thibault came out and walked around, smoking. He leaned against the wooden fence of the animal pen, staring up at the hills.

He had to have a plan.

Then he went back inside.

At the onset of dark, about seven, they went back down the hill. They’d come to a decision.

In the car, Hauck turned onto the main road and headed back toward town.

A gray delivery van pulled out on the road behind them, the driver waiting before they’d gone around a bend to turn on its lights. There were two men in the front who’d been sitting for most of the day. One had short, dark hair, long sideburns, and a heavy mustache.

“To je u njima,” he said in Serbian. That’s them.

Look!”

It was the next day, Friday, in the late afternoon. Naomi pointed toward the farmhouse. They’d been watching it all day. The sun was just beginning to set and they were about to pack it up and head back into town.

Hauck took the glasses from her and zoomed in.

Thibault stepped outside. He was wearing a black leather jacket and tossed a duffel bag in the backseat of the Audi. He was heading somewhere. He locked the front door.

Hauck put down the binoculars and looked at Naomi. This was their chance.

They had talked it over for most of the day. They had already passed back the license number of the rented Audi, and they knew for certain what identity Thibault was traveling under. What name he used to rent the car. They’d decided that if he left, one of them would take their car and follow.

The other would go inside.

That would be her.

“You better get moving.” Naomi stood up and strapped on a pouch that held a Nikon digital SLR, a special computer flash drive, a pen flashlight.

Her gun.

Thibault got into the Audi and started it up.

“Nervous?” Hauck asked. She was a desk agent, not a field agent. What she was putting herself into was definitely crossing that line.

“No,” she answered without hesitating. Then, blowing air through her cheeks, she shrugged. “Maybe a little.”

“Me too. Be careful going in not to trip any wires or safeguards he may have set up. Take a mental picture of how everything looks as soon as you get in. And make sure you leave everything just as you found it.”