One Rough Man by Brad Taylor Page A

outside heaved the terrorist into the van while the third kept the voltage going, preventing Azzam from doing anything but twitch. They climbed in behind him, sliding the door shut. Knuckles breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the clammy sweat on his body for the first time. They’d been working toward this moment for what seemed like years, but the entire operation had taken less than the planned five seconds. The van sped out of the area, only stopping momentarily to allow Knuckles to recover the Remington ball.
     
     
    IT HAD BEEN ALMOST SEVEN MINUTES, and I was growing a little antsy. Maybe I should have had Knuckles confirm his plan. I was itching to break radio silence but wouldn’t, mainly because I’d never hear the end of it from Knuckles. I knew better than to bug the team. He would do the right thing. I hoped. Finally, I got the call.
    “Pike, Pike . . . this is Knuckles . . . Jackpot. I say again, Jackpot.” Knuckles spoke in a calm monotone, as if he had just awakened from a nap.
    I knew this was an act. He was probably hyperventilating when he put the handset down. I matched his cadence, because that’s what cool commandos do, and replied, “I copy Jackpot. What’s your ETA to my location?”
    “Two minutes.”
    “Roger. Standing by.”
    I cranked the car and waited. Two minutes and fourteen seconds later they pulled up, not that I was looking at my watch. Knuckles was grinning like a teenager who had just egged the principal’s house. He gave me a thumbs-up, and we pulled out of the parking lot with me in the lead. My car would now be a buffer vehicle for any contingencies that might happen en route.
    Within minutes we were out of Tbilisi proper and headed toward a warehouse the support team had rented, not a single bit of evidence left that anything at all had occurred.
    I called in the mission, alerting the reception team we were en route. Twenty minutes later, the car and van pulled into a vacant warehouse, the rolling door closing behind us.
    I left the packaging of the terrorist to the support team, knowing he wasn’t being flown out until tomorrow. In the meantime, he would be given a complete physical to make sure he wasn’t on the verge of a heart attack, then sedated for the trip. My part of the mission, the fun part, was over. I grinned when I saw Blaine Alexander come out of the small office we were using for a tactical operations center.
    “Another good one. No issues whatsoever.”
    I noticed that Blaine’s face was grim.
    “What’s up? Did something go bad on the Chechen hit?”
    “No. It’s personal. Can I see you alone?”
    My first thought was that he was pissed that I had altered the plan and taken Azzam without talking to him. I followed him into the office. “Yeah. Sure. What’s up?”
    Blaine closed the door. “Pike, I don’t know how to tell you this. It’s about your family.”
    After the first sentence I could no longer hear him. All I could hear was my daughter saying I kept the bad men away.

PART TWO

13
    Guatemala
Nine Months Later
     
    P rofessor John Cahill gave an exasperated sigh and sat down, sinking into the fetid jungle soil. Sometimes he felt like he was trying to run a race in knee-deep mud. He was deep within Guatemala’s Reserva de la Biosfera Maya—the Maya Biosphere Reserve—in the northeastern department of El Petén, and for some reason his workforce had decided to quit. He had been doing this sort of excursion into the heart of the Yucatán going on thirteen years now, all in a quest for his mythical Temple of Priests. He had been robbed by bandits, contracted malaria, and almost killed by an asp, but never had his workforce refused to continue.
    Once a rising star in the Latin America department of the University of North Carolina, he was now teaching undergrads basic anthropology theory at the College of Charleston, his fall from grace complete. The school itself was a pretty good liberal arts college, but it didn’t have a major in