David Morrell: The Fifth Profession

All Savage cared about was the Mykonos estate. The moment he learned who'd designed its defenses, he knew-in the same way an art historian would have recognized a Renaissance style-what barriers he faced.

His longtime and trusted Greek informant had verified what Joyce Stone had claimed. The movie legend's sister was being held captive on her billionaire husband's lavish summer estate on Mykonos.

You want to divorce me, bitch? No woman ever walked away from me. I'd be a joke. An ungrateful wife has only one use. On your back. I'll teach you.

But summer had become September. The start of the tourist season in Athens was the end of the tourist season on Mykonos -because of lowering temperatures. To force her to spend an autumn and perhaps a winter on the island was Papadropolis's idea of a further insult.

Savage lowered his camera, switched off the automatic pilot, and gripped the Cessna's controls. For six months, since the disaster he'd almost described to his Greek informant, he'd been in seclusion, convalescing. His arms, legs, head, and back still ached from the injuries he'd sustained. Nightmarish memories persisted in haunting him.

But the past could not be changed, he strained to remind himself. The present was all that mattered.

And his work.

He had to get back to his work.

To prove himself to himself.

He veered from Mykonos, heading north above the legendary wine-dark Aegean, patting his camera. It was good to be on an assignment again.

He felt as if he'd returned from the dead.

Savage rose from the waves and crept toward the shore. His black wetsuit blended with the night. He crouched behind boulders, stared at the murky cliff above him, and turned toward the sea. The speedboat's pilot, a British mercenary whom Savage often employed, had been told to hurry from the area as soon as Savage dropped into the water a half-kilometer from the island. The pilot hadn't used any lights. In the dark, with no moon and approaching storm clouds obscuring the stars, a sentry couldn't have seen the boat. Amid the din of waves crashing onto rocks, a sentry couldn't have heard it either, though Savage had taken the precaution of placing a sound-absorbent housing over the speedboat's motor.

Satisfied that he'd reached here undetected… unless the guards had night scopes… Savage pulled at the strong nylon cord cinched around his waist. He felt resistance, pulled harder, and soon withdrew a small rubber raft from the water. Behind a rock that shielded him from the spray of the waves, he unzipped the raft's waterproof compartment and took out a bulging knapsack. His wetsuit had kept the frigid water from draining his body heat and giving him hypothermia as he swam with the raft toward shore.

Now he shivered, peeling off the wetsuit. Naked, he hurriedly reached into the knapsack to put on black woolen clothes. He'd chosen wool because its hollow fibers had superior insulating ability, even when wet. His socks and cap were made of the same dark material. He slipped into sturdy ankle-high shoes with cross-ridged soles and tied them firmly. Warm again, he applied black camouflage grease to his face, then protected his hands with dark woolen gloves that were thin enough to allow his fingers to be flexible.

What remained in the knapsack were the various tools he would need, each wrapped in cloth to prevent their metal from clanking together. He secured the knapsack's straps around his shoulders and tightened its belt. The knapsack was heavy, but not as heavy as the equipment he'd been accustomed to carrying when he was in the SEALs, and his strong back accepted the burden comfortably. He placed his wetsuit, snorkel, goggles, and fins into the raft's compartment, zipped it shut, and tied the raft securely to a rock. He didn't know if he'd be forced to return to this site, but he wanted to have the raft here in case he needed it. Papadropolis's guards wouldn't notice it until the morning, and by then, if Savage hadn't returned, their discovery of the raft wouldn't matter.

He approached the cliff. A breeze gained strength, the storm clouds now completely obscuring the sky. The air smelled of imminent rain. Good, Savage thought. His plan depended on a storm. That was why he'd chosen tonight to infiltrate Papadropolis's estate. All the weather forecasters had agreed-around midnight, the first rains of autumn would arrive.

But Savage had to get to the top of the cliff before the storm made climbing difficult. He reached up, found a handhold, braced the toe of one of his boots in a niche, and began his ascent. Though two hundred feet high, the cliff had multiple fissures and outcrops. An experienced climber, Savage would not have trouble scaling it in the dark.

The wind increased. Spray from the waves stung his face and made the cliff slippery. He gripped his gloved fingers tighter onto outcrops, wedged his boots deeper into niches, and climbed with greater deliberation. Halfway up, he reached a fissure. Recalling it from the photographs he'd studied, knowing it would take him to the top, he squirmed inside it, braced his boots against each side, groped up for handholds, and strained higher. His mental clock told him he'd been climbing for almost ten minutes, but all he cared about was each second of caution. The fissure blocked the wind, but a sudden cascade of rain replaced the spray from the waves, and he fought the urge to climb faster. He groped up, touched nothing, and exhaled, realizing he'd arrived at the top of the cliff.

The rain fell harder, drenching him. Even so, it now was welcome, providing him with greater concealment in the night. He crawled from the fissure, scurried across the rim, and crouched among bushes. Mud soaked his knees. His stomach fluttered with nervousness as it always did at the start of a mission.

But it also burned with fear that despite his meticulous preparations he might fail as he had six months ago.

There was only one way to learn if he'd recovered.

He inhaled, concentrated on the obstacles he faced, and subdued his distracting emotions.

Scanning the storm-shrouded night, detecting no guards, he crept from the bushes.

The photographs he'd taken had revealed the first barrier he would come to-a chain link fence around the estate. From the photographs, he hadn't been able to determine the height of the fence, but the standard was seven feet. When he'd magnified the photographs, he'd discovered that the fence was topped by several strands of barbed wire attached to braces that projected inward and outward in the shape of a V.

The rain made the night so dark that Savage couldn't see the fence. Nonetheless, by studying the photographs and comparing the theoretical height of the fence with the distance between the fence and these bushes, he'd calculated that the barrier was twenty yards ahead. The photographs hadn't shown any closed-circuit cameras mounted on the fence, so he didn't worry about revealing himself to remote-controlled night-vision lenses. All the same, from habit, he crawled. The rain-soaked ground felt mushy beneath him.

At the fence, he stopped to remove his knapsack. He took out an infrared flashlight and a pair of infrared goggles. The beam from the flashlight would be invisible to unaided eyes, but through the goggles, Savage saw a greenish glow. He aimed the beam toward the fence's metal posts, scanning upward toward the projecting metal arms that secured the barbed wire.

What he looked for were vibration sensors.

He found none. As he'd expected, the fence was merely a line of demarcation, a barrier but not an intrusion detector. It kept hikers from trespassing unintentionally. Its barbed-wire top discouraged unskilled invaders. If animals-roaming dogs, for example-banged against it, there'd be no alarm needlessly attracting guards.