Nelson Demille: The Lion's Game

Kate and I stared down the slope to where the phone was ringing. I still couldn't see it, but I had a general idea of where it was. I could tell now that it wasn't more than twenty feet away. It was actually directly in front of us, and if I ran out to it, I'd be blocked from Khalil's line of sight by the boulder. Maybe.

Before I could decide if I wanted to risk it, the phone stopped ringing. I said, "If we can get that phone, we can call for help."

Kate replied, "If we go out to get that phone, we won't need any help. We'll be dead."

"Right."

We kept staring at the spot where the phone had been ringing. It began ringing again.

It's a fact that a sniper can't continually stare through a telescopic lens without getting eye and arm fatigue, so he has to take short breaks. Maybe Khalil was on a break. In fact, maybe Khalil was calling us. He can't shoot and talk at the same time. Right?

Before I thought about it too much longer, I sprang forward in a crouch, covered the twenty feet in two seconds, located the ringing phone, scooped it up, spun around, and charged back toward the boulder, keeping the boulder between me and Khalil's line of fire. Before I reached the boulder, I pitched the ringing phone to Kate, who caught it.

I hit the boulder, spun, and fell into a sitting position, wondering why I was still alive. I took a few deep breaths.

Kate had the phone to her ear and was listening. She said into the phone, "Fuck you." She listened again and said, "Don't tell me how a woman should talk. Fuck you."

I had the feeling that wasn't Jack Koenig.

She put the phone to her chest and said to me, "Are you very brave, or very stupid? How could you do that without consulting me? Would you rather be dead than married? Is that it?"

"Excuse me, who's on the phone?"

Kate handed the phone to me. "Khalil wants to say goodbye."

We looked at each other, embarrassed, I think, by our brief suspicions that it was Ted Nash, our compatriot, who had been trying to kill us. I had to get out of this business.

I said to her, "You ought to get your number changed." I put the phone to my ear and said, "Corey."

Asad Khalil said to me, "You're a very lucky man."

"God is looking after me."

"He must be. I don't often miss."

"We all have off days, Asad. Go home and practice."

"I admire your courage and your good humor in the face of death."

"Thanks so much. Hey, why don't you get out of that tree, put down your rifle, and come across that field with your hands up? I'll see that you get treated fairly by the authorities."

He laughed and said, "I am not in the tree. I am on my way home. I just wanted to say good-bye and to remind you that I will be back."

"Looking forward to a rematch."

"Fuck you."

"A religious man shouldn't talk like that."

"Fuck you."

"No, fuck you, Asad, and fuck the camel you rode up on."

"I will kill you and kill that whore you are with, if it takes me all of my life."

I'd obviously gotten him angry again, so to direct his anger toward more constructive goals, I reminded him, "Don't forget to first get things straightened out with Uncle Moammar. Also, it was a guy named Habib Nadir who killed your father in Paris, on orders of Moammar. You know this guy?"

There was no reply, and neither did I expect one. The phone went dead, and I handed it back to Kate. "He and Ted would like each other."

So, we sat there, not quite trusting Khalil to be hotfooting it through the mountains, especially after that last conversation. Maybe I needed to take a Dale Carnegie course.

Kate called the Sea Scape Motel and got Kim Rhee on the phone. She explained our situation and present position sitting behind a boulder, and Kim said she'd get some Secret Service people to us. Kate added, "Tell them to be careful. I'm not sure if Khalil is actually gone."

She signed off and said to me, "You think he's gone?"

"I think so. The Lion knows when to run and when to attack."

"Right."

To lighten the moment, I asked her, "What's the difference between an Arab terrorist and a woman with PMS?"

"Tell me."

"You can reason with an Arab terrorist."

"That's not funny."

"Okay, then what's the definition of a moderate Arab?"

"What?"

"A guy who ran out of ammuniton."

"That's funny."

The sun got warm and burned off the remaining fog. We held hands, waiting for a chopper to get to us, or a vehicle or foot patrol to come by.

Kate said, as if to herself, "This was a taste of things to come."

Indeed it was. And Asad Khalil, or the next guy like him, would be back with some new grudge, and we'd send a cruise missile into somebody's house in retaliation, and round and round it goes. I said to Kate, "You want to get out of this business?"

"No. Do you?"

"Only if you do."

"I like it," she said.

"Whatever you like, I like."

"I like California."

"I like New York."

"How about Minnesota?"

"Is that a city or a state?"

Eventually, a helicopter spotted us, and after determining that we weren't crazed Arab terrorists, it landed, and we were carried on board.

They flew us to a helipad at the Santa Barbara County Hospital, and we were given adjoining rooms with not much of a view.

A lot of our new friends from the Ventura FBI office stopped by to say hello: Cindy, Chuck, Kim, Tom, Scott, Edie, Roger, and Juan. Everyone told us how well we looked. I figure if I keep getting shot once a year, I'll look terrific by the time I'm fifty.

My phone rang constantly, as you can imagine-Jack Koenig, Captain Stein, my ex-partner, Dom Fanelli, my ex-wife, Robin, family, friends, past and present colleagues, and on and on. Everyone seemed very concerned about my condition, of course, and always asked first how I was doing, and waited patiently while I said I was fine, before they got into the important stuff about what happened.

Hospital patients get away with a lot of crap, as I recalled from my last stay. Therefore, depending on who was calling, I had five standard lines: I'm on pain killers and can't concentrate; It's time for my sponge bath; This line is not secure; I have a thermometer up my ass; My mental health worker doesn't want me to dwell on the incident.

Obviously, you have to use the appropriate line for different people. Telling Jack Koenig, for instance, that I had a thermometer up my ass… well, point made.

On Day Two, Beth Penrose called. I didn't think any of the standard lines appropriate for that conversation, so we had The Talk. End of story. She wished me well, and she meant it. I wished her well, and I meant it.

A few people from the Los Angeles office also stopped in to see how Kate was doing, and a few of them even looked in on me, including Douglas Pindick, who turned off my intravenous. Just kidding.

Another visitor was Gene Barlet of the Secret Service. He invited Kate and me back to the Reagan ranch for a tour when we were up to it. He said, "I'll show you the place where you were shot. You can have chips from the rock. Take a few photographs."

I assured him I had no interest in memorializing the event, but Kate accepted his invitation.

Anyway, I learned from various and sundry people that Asad Khalil seemed to have disappeared, which did not surprise me. There were two possibilities regarding Mr. Khalil's disappearance-one, he'd made it back to Tripoli, two, the CIA had him and were turning him around, trying to convince the Lion that certain Libyans tasted better than Americans.

On that subject, I still didn't know if Ted and company actually let Asad Khalil go through with his mission of killing those pilots in order to make Khalil feel more fulfilled, and therefore happy and more receptive to the idea of whacking Uncle Moammar and friends. Also, I really wondered where the Libyans had gotten the names of those pilots. I mean, that's really an X-Files conspiracy theory, and it was so far out, I didn't waste too much time on it, or lose too much sleep over it. Still, it bothered me.