Clive Cussler - Thriller 2 - Stories You Just Can’t Put Down

“I’m a big girl, Dan.”

“I’ve never doubted that, but I’m sticking to my guns. From now on, I’m the one taking the risks or the house goes on the market, as planned.”

Sergei Kariakin was Russian Mafia, which meant he didn’t just kill babies for fun, he ate them, too. The only place he was called Sergei or Kariakin was on his rap sheet where his name was followed by “aka Peter Pride.” Sergei loved America, which he called “the land of criminal opportunity,” and he had adopted an alias he thought sounded like the name of a movie or rock star. The fact that he was as ugly as his crimes and couldn’t carry a tune didn’t faze him and no one dared point out these problems.

Normally, there were several firewalls between Peter and the narcotics and sex slaves that were his bread and butter, but he’d made a mistake two years ago and had faced certain conviction until the key evidence in his case disappeared from the police evidence locker. I had a gambling problem back then and someone had told Peter’s lawyer about it. One evening, a very polite gentleman who never gave me his name made me a proposition. Within a week, my gambling debt had been retired and Peter’s problem had been solved. I stopped gambling cold turkey, but I stayed on Peter’s payroll, dropping timely tips about raids and snitches when I could get away with it.

My meeting with Pride took place in the dead of night in a deserted industrial park. Neither of us could afford to be seen socializing with the other. At first, Peter was reluctant to bring Dan into his organization. Even if he hadn’t been picked up after Alberto Perez was arrested, Pride worried that Dan was on the DEA’s radar screen. I told him I’d poked around and, as far as I could tell, the DEA didn’t know Dan existed. I pitched Dan’s upper-class clientele and the opportunity it presented to Pride to broaden his market.

A week later, Dan and I met Peter in an abandoned warehouse at three in the morning. The meeting ended with Peter agreeing to front Dan a kilo of cocaine. If everything went well, there was a promise of more to follow. I was so pumped up on the way back to Pine Terrace that I didn’t feel the effects of being up for more than twenty-four hours. As soon as we were inside the house I started ripping off Dan’s clothing. I don’t even remember how we got from the entryway to the bedroom.

The next afternoon, I was so beat I had trouble keeping my eyes open. I staggered into police headquarters and found a note asking me to see Sergeant Groves. Groves was a handsome black man with a trim mustache and a serious demeanor. It was rare for him to lighten up and he looked even more tense than usual when I walked into his office and found him sitting with Jack Gripper and a man and a woman I didn’t recognize.

“Shut the door, Monica,” Groves ordered. I did and he motioned me into the only available seat.

“You’re in deep shit,” he said.

There was a DVD player on Groves ’s desk. He hit the play button and I heard myself telling Dan how I’d helped Peter Pride beat his case. My heart seized up. The conversation had taken place in the bedroom of the house on Pine Terrace. I wanted to ask how they’d recorded it, but I was too frightened to speak.

“That confession will send you away,” Groves said.

My throat was as dry as the Sahara. I knew I shouldn’t say anything without a lawyer, but I still asked, “What do you want?”

“Pride,” answered the woman.

I was in shock, but part of my brain was running through my alternatives.

“You can’t use that tape. You’d have to have bugged the house.”

“We can use it if we planted the bug with the permission of the owner,” she said, and I felt myself die a little.

Dan had been arrested the day after his connection was busted. Jack Gripper had been in on the arrest and he remembered what I’d told him about the house. Bobby Marino had gone down for stealing the evidence in Pride’s case, but I became a suspect when a snitch in Pride’s organization told the police that he’d heard a woman took the evidence. One of the tips I’d given Pride had been a setup. Sergeant Groves had given the location and time of the raid only to me. When there was no one at the house that was raided they knew I was guilty, Gripper and I were switched to the call-girl sting and Dan was told to give me a call. Nature took its course after that.

When I found out that Dan had betrayed me I went from shock to anger to bitterness. I saw him once more after my arrest when we were preparing for the setup that eventually put Peter Pride away. He told me he was sorry and really did love me, but he’d had no choice. I don’t believe he loved me, but, even if he did, I knew he’d forget about me when the next woman came along; someone who wasn’t serving the sentence that would keep me in prison for at least seven years.

There is no view from the cell I share with Sheila Crosby, a 42-year-old embezzler, but I can still see the view from Dan’s bedroom when I close my eyes.

Sometimes I imagine that I walk out of prison and Dan is waiting for me in the Rolls. We ride to the house on Pine Terrace and I take a shower to wash away the jailhouse stench. After the shower, we make love. When Dan is asleep, I walk out onto the patio and watch the approach of a storm that’s been brewing in the Pacific. It’s a magnificent storm, and when it passes, I am as untroubled and serene as the Pacific after that storm. And I am married to my prince, and I am rich, and I live in a castle on Pine Terrace.

On his Web site Marcus Sakey gives us a glimpse into his creative mind when he says, “I love traveling, especially if there’s a chance of hurting myself. I’m a wicked good cook. I never miss the Golden Gloves. I like bourbon neat, food so spicy the guy sitting next to me catches fire, and the occasional cigar.” In very few lines he’s given us a clear picture of himself, a skill he applies to his own characters. By the time you’ve finished reading “The Desert Here and the Desert Far Away,” two army buddies, Cooper and Nick, will seem to live and breathe even though you’ve only known them for a few pages. The characters and their shared history drive this story relentlessly toward an ending that is as surprising as it is inevitable.

The Stones are on the stereo and you are wondering what you’re doing here, in this dingy Las Vegas bar, with a man you last saw wearing combat BDUs half a world away. Cooper has his head in his hands as he says he can’t believe how fucked he is. “A mistake, man. That’s all.”

You dip a chicken wing in ranch and strip the flesh from it. Cooper makes a hysterical little sound. “Vance is going to kill me. He wants to make an example.”

And you laugh, because it sounds funny, something out of a movie, not something people really say to each other. Cooper gets that look, a half sneer, like an older brother about to pound you, only you never had an older brother, just Cooper. “I’m serious.”

“Okay,” you say, and dump the chicken bone.

“Nick,” he says, and puts his palms together like he’s praying, and for a second you’re back in the front room of a shitty cinder-block apartment, watching Cooper make the same gesture at you over a bloodstained body. “Nick, Nick, Nick, Nickie. I need you, brother.”

And you sip your beer and listen to Mick Jagger tell you that ti-iiime is on your side, and think about the best night of your life.

There is the smell of popcorn and nachos, the growl of hundreds of people talking and betting and shouting. The meaty thump of boxers warming up with their trainers, one-two-back, fists quick and feet flickering. A ring girl, five feet nine inches of toned grace in tight jeans and a black bodice chatting up the muscled soldiers at the army booth. This is the Golden Gloves, and tonight is the finals, and you are fighting next.