Gideon's War / Hard Target

Abu Nasir shook his head. “They’re all locked up in the cabins now.”

“Then get these goddamn cuffs off me . . . Abu Nasir.” Parker gave the nom de guerre a sarcastic twist.

“Yes, sir.”

The bearded American pulled a knife from his pocket and quickly cut the cuffs off Earl Parker’s wrists.

“Sorry about the face, Mr. Parker,” he said. “You told me to make it look real.”

Earl Parker eyed him expressionlessly, touched the corner of his mouth, then studied the blood on his fingers.

“You want me to get you something for that, sir?”

Earl Parker spit blood onto the deck. “Your people screwed the pooch. Gideon Davis is still alive.”

The bearded American nodded. “I know, sir. My team is still on it, though. They’ll find him. Trust me. He’s a dead man walking.”

“He damn well better be.” Parker stood. “I trust you didn’t bloth=Ñ€w it at Kampung Naga, too?”

“Clockwork. No survivors.”

“Good. Anything else I need to know? Any more screwups?”

“No, sir. Other than the ambush, everything’s right on schedule.”

“Good. Then put me back in with Kate Murphy and that fool Stearns. We’ve still got a long way to go before we cross the goal line, so I want to keep an eye on things from the hostage perspective. But if anything comes up, any decisions that need to be made, any wrinkles in the plan, anything whatsoever that’s above your pay grade—you bring me out. And I mean double-time quick.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

Suddenly Earl Parker’s hand shot out. He grabbed the younger man by the collar and jerked him forward so that their eyes were only inches apart. “And if you ever hit me like that again, Timken, it’ll be the last fucking thing you do.”

If you had managed to locate the passport for the leader of the group that had seized the Obelisk, you would have found that his real name was neither Cole Ransom nor Abu Nasir. And it certainly wasn’t Tillman Davis.

Sitting in a safe-deposit box in a discreet bank in Geneva, Switzerland— along with ten passports with ten other bogus names on them—was his genuine passport, the one imprinted with his real name: Orville Timken. The last person to call him Orville, though, was a kid in junior high. After Timken beat the kid to the ground for calling him “ORRRRRRRville,” nobody else had wanted a piece of that, thanks, and it had become understood that he preferred Tim or Timmer or just plain Timken.

Later Timken found out that he shared his name with a company that made ball bearings. He had been sent by his military unit to a convention for weapons manufacturers, where he stumbled across a booth with his name on it. The people who ran the booth had a glass bowl full of ball bearings on the table at the front of the booth. Each ball bearing had his name laser etched on it.

“Half-inch, ultrahigh precision 62100 steel, hardened to Rockwell 59,” the helpful salesman had said. “Every single one of them will mike at plus or minus three ten-thousandths of nominal, guaranteed.”

Timken looked into the bowl, saw his face reflected in hundreds of tiny fun-house mirrors. Something about the ball bearings—their featurelessness and hardness and regularity—gave him a momentary stab of pleasure. He reached into the bowl, grabbed a handful.

“Sir, if you wouldn’t mind limiting yourself to just one or two?” the helpful salesman had said.

Timken had given him The Look.

“Well, I suppose it’s okay,” the salesman said with a tight smile. “What application did you have in mind for them?”

“Putting them in a sock and hitting some nosy faggot in the face until he shuts the fuck up.”

The salesman’s tight smile didn’t go away. But after that he had just looked over Timken’s shoulder, as though Timken weren’t standing there at all.

Since then, Timken̵#82Ñ€7;s name had worn off the tiny, shiny ball bearings, and he suspected they probably would no longer mike at three ten-thousandths of nominal anymore. But they suited his needs just fine. He could put them in a pocket or a briefcase. He could take them on a plane without the TSA morons confiscating them. He could take them anywhere. Then when he needed them, he put them in a bag or a sock or a wadded-up shirt. And when he hit you with them you fell down and didn’t move.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Timken had carried the ball bearings in his pocket since...

His life would have been pretty much over with if he hadn’t been rescued from the wastelands by a man who understood the peculiar nature of his talents. A man who understood that a great nation sometimes had to do dark and ugly things, and that when those things had to be done, Orville Timken could be counted on to come through.

A man named Earl Parker.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

WATER CASCADED IN A thunderous rush over the high U-shaped cliff that rose before Monkey’s boat. Sunlight caught the spray from the waterfall, refracting a brilliantly colored rainbow. If not for the circumstances, Gideon reflected silently, this could have been a postcard for some idyllic tropical retreat.

Monkey throttled the engine back. To one side of the waterfall was a tiny strip of beach from which extended a bamboo pier. Behind it was a small cluster of grass huts.

“Is this where my brother is?” Gideon asked.

Monkey shook his head and pointed. “Up there.” The cliff face ran in an unbroken line of white rock as far in both directions as Gideon could see. It was as though the entire surface of the earth had cracked in half, one piece sliding down below the other. The cliff must have been nearly a thousand feet high and was topped by a thin green rim of jungle.

“How do I get up there?”

“Climb,” he said.

“Climb?”

Monkey shrugged, nudged the boat against the rickety bamboo pier, and killed the engine.

“Do you at least know the trail?”

“No,” he said, quickly adding, “And I’m not about to find out.”

Gideon knew that Monkey wasn’t to blame here. This wasn’t his fault. But still, he felt a flash of anger. “You took me all this way and you’re just going to abandon me?”

Monkey gave him a sideways look. “What you expect? You go

“Meaning what exactly?”

Monkey stared up at the high cliff. “The people up there? They’re not people. Not like you and me. They got no rules, no laws, no right and wrong. No God.”

“Do you at least know someone who can guide me up?”

“Maybe if you had money . . .”

“My brother has money.”

“I don’t see your brother here.” Monkey seemed moderately pleased with the fix that Gideon was in.

“Come on,” Gideon said. “Help me out here. You’re in my shoes, what would you do?”

Monkey continued to stare up at the jungle. “Do what I’m go

Gideon’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve come this far, I’m not about to turn around now.”

Monkey shook his head, as if to say he was done trying to talk Gideon out of his suicidal scheme, then pointed at a cleat on the pier. “Tie us to the pier. Maybe I translate, help you find somebody.”

Gideon had cut one of the mooring lines back in Alun Jong, but there was another one coiled on the bow. He grabbed the end and stepped onto the pier, which felt spongy under his feet, as if it was rotting from within. As Gideon stepped carefully on the bamboo deck, afraid that he might fall through, he heard a roar. He turned in time to see Monkey slamming the throttle into reverse. Before Gideon could leap back onto the boat, it had already pulled away from the pier. Monkey was laughing as he backed the boat up.

Gideon tried holding on to the rope, but the boat was too powerful, and the rope slid through his hands, burning his fingers and palms as it slipped into the water.