The Attitude Adjuster: Three Cavanaugh/Protector Stories Page 4

  “None? That doesn’t seem possible. Unless wasn’t any shrapnel.”

  “Maybe the idea wasn’t to kill Dant as much as to keep attacking him,” Jamie wondered. “To prolong the revenge.”

  Cavanaugh thought about it and nodded. The motion aggravated his headache. “The same as the other times, whoever’s after Dant had information that allowed him or her to know in advance where the target would be.”

  The director of corporate security shrugged. “It’s a big leap from knowing that Dant would be at Lincoln Center and predicting that he’d go out to the fountain. It would have taken a lot of trouble to hide the bomb there. Nobody would have risked doing it without being sure that Dant would go out there.”

  “The fountain.” Cavanaugh remembered something. “Dant has a thing about it. From a movie he saw. The first time he visited New York, that’s immediately where he went.”

  “So whoever’s doing this has personal information about him,” Jamie said, “more than just the sort of details available by hacking his computer system and learning his schedule. Really personal information. The sort of thing only someone close to him would know.”

  * * *

  “I’m sorry,” the receptionist’s voice said. “Mr. Dant isn’t available.”

  “Then put me through to Mr. Novak,” Cavanaugh said into the phone.

  “He’s not available, either. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Yes.” Cavanaugh gave his name and phone number. “Do you know when they’ll be free?”

  “Not for quite a while. Both of them are in Europe.”

  Neither Dant nor Novak returned his calls.

  * * *

  A client had a television tuned to a business channel. He kept it on during a meeting with Cavanaugh and Jamie, wanting to track a story about hedge funds. As he glanced toward the television, Jamie did the same and suddenly pointed.

  “My God.”

  Above the stock-market quotes streaming along the bottom of the screen, a photograph of Dant appeared next to a caption that said BREAKING NEWS.

  “. . . near this peaceful Greek island,” an announcer somberly reported.

  The television showed wreckage floating on water.

  “According to Martin Dant’s security officer,” the announcer continued, “he went for a moonlight sail. Despite recent attempts to kill him, Dant was known for being determined not to let threats control his life. He was alone when the bomb went off on his boat. Windows were shattered within three blocks of the harbor. Local authorities are still searching for the body.”

  * * *

  “Five attempts on his life,” Jamie said. “Two with a rifle, three with explosives. Ever hear of an assassin who didn’t specialize in a single method?”

  “And that explosion at the Lincoln Center fountain,” Cavanaugh said. “All flash-bang but no shrapnel. What the hell’s going on?

  * * *

  Saudi Arabia.

  Gunshots echoed across the desert. With Jamie beside him, Cavanaugh drove a Range Rover to a checkpoint. They showed their identification to a Saudi guard, who studied a list, nodded, and motioned for Cavanaugh and Jamie to get out of the vehicle. In the stark heat, other guards approached them.

  The gunshots persisted.

  Jamie wore the black cloak that all women in Saudi Arabia were required to wear. The head cover wasn’t as strictly enforced for Western women. Even so, Jamie made sure that she had a black scarf in a pocket in case she was ordered to wear it. Meanwhile, a floppy brimmed Helios sun hat covered her head while dark sunglasses concealed her eyes.

  The vehicle was checked for weapons and explosives.

  So were Cavanaugh and Jamie.

  The guard motioned for them to get back in the Range Rover and proceed, but not before one of the guards slid into the rear of the vehicle, staying with them.

  Although unpaved, the desert road was remarkably smooth, not surprising given that the area was owned by a member of the Saudi royal family. The gunshots became louder.

  Buildings appeared ahead. Some were functional, containing what Cavanaugh assumed were offices, a lecture hall, a cafeteria, a dormitory, and bathrooms. Other buildings—mere shells—formed mock urban streets, along one of which a three-car motorcade was attacked by men with submachine guns and a rocket launcher. The motorcade slammed into reverse gear, pivoted one hundred and eighty degrees, surged into forward gear, and raced away, only to be confronted by more fire from submachine guns and a rocket launcher.

  However realistic, it was a practice exercise using non-lethal ammunition.

  The people engaged in the exercise were Saudis. The men supervising it were American, German, and Australian, all of them former members of special-operations units. Cavanaugh knew their backgrounds because he recognized all the instructors, having worked with them from time to time.

  After a siren blared and the gunfire ended, a burly sunburned man in desert camouflage fatigues came over.

  “It’s been a long time, Cavanaugh.” The man’s accent was Australian.

  “Good to see you, Randall, especially alive.” They shook hands. “Anytime you want a job at Global protective Services . . .”

  “I like it better on my own.”

  Cavanaugh nodded. “Training a protective detail for the royal family?”

  “A favored cousin. The man you asked me about on the radio—he’s over there.”

  “Thanks for the favor.”

  Cavanaugh and Jamie approached the street on which the mock ambush had occurred. The man they wanted to talk to was explaining something to one of the drivers.

  Sensing, he looked toward Cavanaugh and Jamie, narrowed his eyes, finished his explanation to the driver, and reluctantly walked over.

  “Hi, Novak,” Jamie said.

  Hardly pleased, Novak asked, “What brings you two here?”

  “Old times,” Cavanaugh said.

  “Our feelings are hurt,” Jamie added. “After everything we’ve been through, you don’t return our phone calls or answer our emails. It’s enough to make us feel rejected.”

  “Look, you know what Dant was like. He did what he wanted. Half the time, it was impossible to get ahead of him and clear the way. What happened to him wasn’t my fault. He insisted on taking that sailboat out, and short of restraining him, I couldn’t have stopped him.”

  “We want to talk to you about your girl friend,” Jamie said.

  The smell of burned gunpowder hung in the air.

  “Girl friend?” Novak asked.

  “You’ve been in Saudi Arabia only two weeks, and already you forgot the woman you’ve been living with for the past year?”

  “Sure. Right. My girl friend.”

  “Dant was smart enough to have a woman on his security team until three years ago,” Jamie pressed on. “Laura Evans. Used to be in the Army. In a special-ops unit for women who accompany members of Delta Force on some of their missions—the kind of missions that involve infiltrating a foreign country by posing as tourists. A young married couple on a holiday blends easier than a man traveling alone.”

  Novak nodded. “I know about that female unit.”

  “Yes, as I recall, you tried to tell Dant about it, but he interrupted you. We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Laura yet. She dropped out of sight. But Dant’s computer records indicate that she was the last woman hired to protect him. Why do you suppose she was the last?”

  “I have no idea, but I bet you’re going to tell me.”

  “We contacted agents who worked with your girlfriend on that assignment,” Jamie said. “Seems that Dant treated her as a bodyguard instead of a protector, or maybe it’s more accurate to say he treated her as a body. Kept trying to strike up a relationship with her. Wanted to take her to dinner. To have a drink with her. To be alone with her. Wouldn’t let her do her job. Pissed her off so much that she quit before the way he distracted her might get both of them killed.”

  “Okay,” Novak said, “I see where th
is is going.”

  “You and Laura crossed paths on an assignment a year and a half ago. You started dating and eventually moved in together.”

  “I don’t deny it. Not that we see each other a lot. When I’m working, she isn’t—and the other way around.”

  “We know Laura wasn’t working when a sniper fired at Dant at Teterboro Airport,” Cavanaugh said.

  “Hey, that’s an awfully big accusation you’re—”

  “You complained to her about the way Dant wouldn’t follow directions to keep him safe,” Cavanaugh continued. “In turn, Laura complained about how he treated her when she worked for him. She said, ‘If anybody ever tries to kill the son of a bitch, if he gets the hell scared out of him, he’ll appreciate what his security people do for him.’ ”

  “You’re dreaming,” Novak said. “There’s no way to prove a conversation like that ever happened. If you went to the police, they’d laugh at you.”

  “We’re not the police.”

  Novak pointed toward drivers getting into the motorcade vehicles. “Look, we’re about to start another exercise. I don’t have time for this.”

  “You told her when Dant would be at Teterboro,” Jamie said. “It’s a small airport, mostly for business jets. Not hard for a professional to infiltrate. Laura shot at him, deliberately missing. Later, the two of you enjoyed the practical joke. Hell, there was even the possibility that he might pay you extra to increase his security.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You enjoyed it so much that you couldn’t stop,” Jamie insisted. “The bomb in the Cape Cod boathouse. The sniper attack in the Grand Caymans. The two of you were determined to see Dant sweat. But I’ll give him credit. He didn’t.”

  “I’ve heard all I’m going to—”

  “We have hotel receipts and witnesses that prove Laura was at the Grand Caymans when the sniper shot at him there. We figured she wouldn’t risk bringing a rifle into the country, so we asked around and found the drug dealer she bought it from.”

  “The police won’t believe a goddamn drug dealer.”

  “But I told you we’re not the police,” Cavanaugh emphasized.

  The fierce sun had terrible force.

  Novak studied them. “Dant’s death wasn’t our fault. We had nothing to do with it.”

  “Sure sounds like a practical joke that went bad.”

  “The first three attempts . . .” Novak sighed. “Okay, that was Laura and me. Wanting to get him to come to his senses and realize how important his security was.”

  “What about the bomb at the Lincoln Center fountain?” Jamie asked.

  “As big a surprise to us as it was to you,” Novak replied. “After that, I was scared. Believe me, I tried everything I could to keep Dant off that fucking boat. I have nightmares about it. In a way, I did kill him. Because somebody got the idea from Laura and me. The difference is they wanted to do it for real. God knows he had a lot of enemies. Look at how his empire collapsed after he was killed. The bastard couldn’t stop doing whatever he wanted, taking chances regardless of the risk. He borrowed against one corporation to prop up another, then borrowed against that one to save yet another. He even raided pension funds to meet his payroll, but nobody realized it because he had a genius for cooking the books. He ruined a lot of people. Maybe one of them realized what was going on and decided to get even. Or maybe . . .”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe Dant couldn’t bear the idea of going to prison. Laura and I wondered if maybe he killed himself, going out as dramatically as he did everything else.”

  A siren blared.

  “I need to get back to work,” Novak said.

  “Don’t bother,” Jamie told him. “You and your girlfriend aren’t protective agents anymore.”

  “What? But this is the only thing I know how to—”

  “You swore to risk your life for Dant. You accepted money from him. Then you attacked him. You make me sick,” Cavanaugh said. “We don’t have enough proof to go to the police. But we’ve got plenty enough proof to convince the agents who depend on you to watch their backs. If we ever hear that you’re on another protective detail, we’ll spread the word about what you did. You won’t like what happens to you.”

  The siren blared.

  * * *

  “I believe him,” Cavanaugh said, driving away.

  “So do I,” Jamie told him. “But we’re not any closer to finding who killed Dant. He had so many enemies, it could take years to investigate them all.”

  “Maybe it isn’t a question of who hated him most. How about, who benefited most?”

  * * *

  The Pacific island was so out of the way that it didn’t have regular aircraft or boat service. In Hawaii, Cavanaugh—who had a pilot’s license with multiple ratings—chartered a two-engine seaplane with extra fuel tanks that gave it an extreme range. He and Jamie, accompanied by two protective agents and a special passenger, took four hours to reach the island, whose palm trees, white beach, and gentle surf seemed like a vacation poster when seen from above.

  After touching down in a sheltered cove, Cavanaugh guided the seaplane toward a dock. Beyond it, a village nestled among palm trees.

  Puzzled natives waited for them.

  “Does anybody speak English?” Cavanaugh asked as he and Jamie and the agents tied the aircraft to the dock. “Français? Español?”

  No one responded.

  One agent guarded the plane while the other agent and the special passenger followed Cavanaugh and Jamie past the villagers toward the end of the dock. Beyond the soft beach, they reached the grass huts of the village.

  The sound of engines guided them to electrical generators and numerous barrels of fuel. The primitive façades of some huts contrasted with their sophisticated interiors, which included air conditioning, a stove, a refrigerator, a freezer, satellite television, computers, even a wine cooler.

  “Where is he?” Cavanaugh demanded of the natives.

  They looked baffled by his question. Or maybe they just pretended to be baffled.

  “Fine. We’ll get him. It’ll just take a little longer.”

  The island was eight miles long and four miles wide, with a ridge along the middle. Plenty of spots in which to hide.

  Not that it mattered. The special passenger was a bloodhound.

  Cavanaugh let the bloodhound sniff the interior of the master hut. When the dog found a scent, it barked repeatedly, ran outside, and led them toward the interior of the island.

  The trees became thicker, the undergrowth denser. They made their way to a stream and took fifteen minutes to find where the scent emerged a hundred yards to the left on the other side of the water. They squirmed over fallen trees and reached a steep rocky slope, the start of the ridge that formed the island’s spine. Sniffing along the bottom of the slope, the dog stopped in confusion, circled, came back to the same spot, and again was confused.

  “Dant couldn’t just vanish,” Jamie said. “How did he hide his scent?”

  She and Cavanaugh looked above them, noticing a tree branch.

  “He jumped up, grabbed the branch, squirmed toward the slope, and touched down several feet above where the dog could smell him,” Cavanaugh realized.

  They lifted the dog onto the slope. Instantly it retrieved the scent and scrambled upward, with Cavanaugh, Jamie, and the handler working to follow. They reached a bluff and hurried along it. Sweat stuck their clothes to their skin. Along another slope, the dog again lost the scent.

  But this time, there wasn’t a tree branch above them to explain how Dant could have lifted himself and fooled the dog.

  “Well, if he didn’t go up and he didn’t go forward . . . ,” Cavanaugh said.

  “He backtracked and jumped off the trail,” Jamie concluded.

  They ran back the way they’d come and almost passed the cave before they realized it was there, camouflaged by bushes. The bloodhound barked frantically, wanting to charge in.

  The handle
r restrained it.

  Cavanaugh wiped sweat from his face and unclipped a canteen from his belt.

  “Dant, are you thirsty?” he yelled toward the cave. “You covered a lot of distance in a hurry. I’ve got water.” He shook the canteen so that Dant could hear the water sloshing.

  The shadowy cave was silent.

  “Or maybe you planned for an emergency,” Jamie said, “and stocked the cave with food and water.”

  Cavanaugh raised the canteen to his mouth, taking several swallows. Although the water was unpleasantly warm, his parched tongue absorbed it.

  “Fine. We’ll set fire to the bushes and smoke your miserable ass out of there.”

  He and Jamie gathered dead leaves and branches, stacking them in front of the bushes that obscured the cave.

  He struck a match.

  “Okay,” a voice said from the enclosure.

  The bushes rustled. Gradually a figure emerged.

  But he didn’t look anything like Dant. He was bald and bearded. His nose had a bony ridge. A scar disfigured his neck.

  “Never heard of anyone getting cosmetic surgery to look ugly,” Jamie said. “Since you went to all this trouble, why didn’t you try to pretend to be someone else when we arrived?”

  “I was prepared to until I saw who was getting off the plane.” Dant’s expression was sour. “I figured I could fool most people, but not anybody who spent up-close time with me and specializes in paying attention.”

  “Yeah, those camera-friendly blue eyes of yours are hard to disguise,” Jamie said. “Tinted lenses might have done the job, but I suspect you forget to put them on day after day when only the natives are around to see you. Even with tinted lenses, you wouldn’t have fooled us, though. Your cosmetic surgeon told us what you look like now. “

  “But . . .”

  “Yes, I know—you thought you’d guaranteed his silence by promising him a quarter-million dollars a year,” Jamie said. “The trouble is, the second check you sent him bounced. Worse, he believed what you told him about how well your companies were doing. To impress his clients, he said he had a stock tip that couldn’t go wrong. They invested heavily. When your house of cards collapsed, the clients blamed him for their losses. His practice is ruined.”