Page 19 of Dangerous Lover

He’d earned that money. It was fuckinghis. He’d been dreaming of a big hit for years and when he’d heard the rumors of a village whose men had all gone off to war and with millions of dollars in conflict diamonds hidden in the ground, he’d instantly known that this wasit. His big chance.

He’d never have to soldier again, or ever have to work atanything, ever again. Never take orders again, never do anything but what he damned well pleased.

No more jungles, no more deserts. No more bivouacking in primitive encampments on stony ground.

Deaver planned on living in luxury for therest of his natural life. Buy a mansion somewhere nice, somewhere sunny, somewhere OUTCONUS. In the Bahamas maybe. Or maybe Montecarlo.

Why not? Buy a big house with a pool and servants and lots and lots of women. Not that many beautiful women wanted to fuck a soldier, but they sure as hell lined up ten deep to fuck rich men.

He could taste it, smell it, feel it, this new life.

And it was all gone. All his dreams for his future, a future he’d sweated and taken bullets for, wiped out in a second by Jack Prescott.

For a moment the heat of rage swept through him, wiping out every other thought except that of hunting down that fucker Jack Prescott, getting his diamonds back and killing Prescott with a knife, taking a couple of days to do it.

None of this showed on his face. He bent his head forward and dropped his voice to a murmur. “Come in here, Axel. And I’ll give you something that will make Maja drop to her knees in gratitude.”

“Okay, Vince.” Though there was no one else in the hut, Axel dropped his voice, too. As if they were about to exchange confidences.

Deacon stood up and backed away slowly. “Come inside.” His voice was still low. “I’ll show you what I’ve got for you. For her.”

Axel didn’t even hesitate. Deacon knew Axel thought of him as someone much like himself. Nice white boy caught up in the craziness that was west Africa.

Axel unlocked the cell door and walked inside, following Deacon, who’d reached his cot and pulledsomething out from under the hard mattress. A cloth bag with smooth round objects that rattled.

Axel’s excited breathing was loud in the darkened room.

Deacon smiled. “Maja’s going to love these. Come over and look.” Deacon reached over the cot to suddenly open the shutters, flooding the room with harsh light. Axel was temporarily blinded and would remain blind for about a minute and a half. More than enough time.

Deacon had closed his eyes and turned his back to the window and he could see just fine.

His hand dropped to his boot where he quickly and quietly pulled out a long thin dagger with a folding handle the UN troops hadn’t even noticed. He’d been briskly frisked for arms before being shut up in the detention center but no one had thought to check his boots. Or his belt buckle with the mini-revolver or the garotte wire along the inside of his belt.

The garotte was out of the question. Deaver needed Axel’s clothes intact. A slow choking death would loosen his bowels and bladder. And a bullet wouldn’t do—it would stain his uniform with blood.

There was only one way to do it.

Deaver dropped the bag into Axel’s hands. The bag opened under Axel’s eager, fumbling fingers. When the bag was open, he poured the contents in his hand. It took him a few seconds to realize that he held not diamonds, but stones. His head lifted.

“What—” he began. It was his last word on this earth. Deaver hooked his left arm around Axel’s chest and with his righthe slipped the stiletto he kept as sharp as a scalpel straight into the brainstem. It immediately stopped all bodily functions. Axel went from sentient being to stone in a tenth of a second. He slumped into Deaver’s arms, an instant corpse.

Deaver worked fast.

In five minutes he’d exchanged clothes and shoes. Axel kept his passport and airline ticket on his person at all times. He’d told Deaver he had an unholy fear of the cleaning staff stealing them. The UN peacekeeping mission had been too much for him. He was thinking of resigning his commission back in Finland and getting a good job with Apple, something he should have done eight years ago.

Well, good old Axel wasn’t going to get that job with Apple, but hewasgetting out of Africa, in a manner of speaking. Permanently.

Deaver hitched Axel up in a fireman’s lift and made for the door. He opened it slightly and waited for a moment in which no one was visible. It was 17:20, close to dinner time and the encampment was deserted. When Deaver was sure no one could see, he slipped out the door and made his way around the back.

The detention center backed onto the jungle. In the steamy heat, Deaver made his way carefully, disappearing immediately into the dense foliage, leaving barely anything to track. He was lucky. If he’d had to carry a man in the high deserts of Afghanistan, the sand would have kept his footprints for weeks. In the jungle, his tracks would be covered within the hour.

He walked until his instincts told him he was beyond the natural patrol point and put Axel down. Deaver looked at him, stretched out on his back. He looked peaceful, as if he were taking a nap.

You should thank me, buddy,Deaver thought.I just gave you a great death.The best.

It was the one thing soldiers feared above all else—a bad death. Long, lingering, painful. The RA rebels specialized in hacking deaths, where it takes a man maybe an hour to die after having his hands, then his arms, then his feet and finally his head chopped off. Sometimes it took the child-soldiers, wielding axes half their size, ten tries to separate the head from the body.

Deaver had seen men taking hours of agony to die after having been gut-shot or having their insides ripped open by a land-mine. Two employees of ENP had been hacked to death by a ragtag squadron of RA thugs. It was after looking down at their bodies that Deacon vowed to get himself some real money and finally get out of the business.

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