CHAPTER TWO

“I see. That’s that, then.” Parnell nodded as if he agreed with their choices. Only one important question left to be asked. “Contract payments were made to the Colonel. He held my share of revenues. Where is my money?”

Larry’s eyes widened. The three glanced sideways at each other. Larry licked his lips as if his mouth had dried up. “We, uh, got paid in cash. No paper trail that way. The Colonel kept the cash locked in a room in his New York City apartment. At the Dakota.”

Parnell’s breath caught painfully in his chest. His nostrils flared of their own accord. “Who is living in his apartment now?”

Curly said, “We don’t know. Sir.”

Moe seemed to sense Nitro Mack was close to the last of his patience. He jumped in with what he probably figured would get the heat turned in the right direction. “Reacher knew the money was there. We didn’t know the combination to the safe, but Reacher did. The money should be there. But if it isn’t, he probably took it.”

Parnell narrowed his eyes and felt his nostrils flare. He put the kind of edge in his tone that every army grunt was conditioned to fear. “This Reacher seems like a convenient scapegoat to me, gentlemen. He shows up out of nowhere, destroys your CO and your entire team, and steals my money. Then he disappears. You expect me to believe a story like that?”

Curly was the one who stepped up this time. “General, we need to work. If we’d split that nine million dollars between us, why would we be sitting here in this hellhole begging for table scraps?”

Parnell had dressed down many a soldier. He knew when he was being lied to.

Thing was, this preposterous story came across his bullshit meter and registered as true.

Unbelievable, sure.

But true.

Just one thing didn’t ring solid. “Where did your CO keep the rest of the money?”

Larry arched his eyebrows. “Like we said, the money was in the apartment’s safe. All nine million dollars of it.”

Parnell concealed his surprise by cocking his head as if he was thinking things through. So, nine million was stashed in the apartment, but what about the rest?

These idiots had no idea.

“What about Scavo?”

Larry’s eyebrows raised. “Nick Scavo? He, uh, hasn’t been with our company since that revolution in Africa, sir. We figure he was killed. We lost three men there.”

“Any chance he was helping Reacher in this last mission?” Parnell knew the answer to the question already.

These three had no clue where Scavo was, or whether he made it out of Africa.

Parnell tuned out Larry’s feeble excuses and sipped the warm beer.

He glanced around the crowded bar. The noise level had jumped up a dozen decibels since these jokers walked in.

No one seemed to notice the four men talking quietly in the back corner.

He returned his attention to his wannabe business partners. “Okay. Here’s how this is going to go. You’ll do the job I hired you for here. When you’re done, you’ll get paid in cash. Half of what you receive is mine. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison, nodding as if they meant it, which was not likely.

“One final thing.” Parnell’s frosty blue eyes pierced like lasers under the deep frown that creased his brow. “What does this Jack Reacher look like?”

The three glanced at each other. Larry cleared his throat and spoke for the crew. “Uh, well, sir, he, uh, looks a lot like you. Tall. Big. Dark blond hair. Blue eyes. Like that.”

Parnell tilted his chin up and locked gazes with them one at a time. “I’m going to check your story. If I find out you’ve lied to me, none of us will be happy. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” they said again in unison. “No problem, sir.”

Parnell nodded. “Get to work. I’ll be in touch.”

They scrambled to their feet and snapped a smart salute. Old habits die hard.

Parnell nodded again. The three turned away.

He watched as they wound through the crowd to the front and exited into the sun-washed desert.

After they cleared the threshold, Parnell rose and hurried toward the men’s room.

At the end of the narrow hallway, he ducked out through the back door and stepped into the blinding sunlight.

He slipped on a pair of aviator sunglasses.

Within seconds, he’d located his vehicle and sped away from the bar, raising a plume of dust behind him.

He had covered about half of a mile of the rough dirt road when the bomb exploded and shook the very ground underneath him.

He clamped both hands onto the steering wheel to avoid being thrown out of his seat, but he kept the accelerator pressed to the floor.

He glanced back to see vehicle parts and body parts still settling after the blast.

Exactly as he’d planned. The vehicle the three stooges arrived in had blasted to unidentifiable bits nicely and right on time.

He smirked with satisfaction.

Witnesses he’d paid would say the cause of the blast was a landmine beneath the vehicle.

Landmines were common enough.

Not a bad guess.

The explosion rocked everything within a two-mile radius. Too much damage for a landmine, but no one would bother to sort out the actual cause.

Life was cheap in Iraq.

The three stooges were not part of any authorized work force. No one would care why or how they’d died.

Hell, it was likely no one would even notice for a good long time.

Parnell glanced over his shoulder for a last look.

Mission partially accomplished.

He smiled again and then began to whistle an old tune from his teenaged years. Another one bites the dust.

Now all he had to do was find Reacher and recover his money.

Parnell figured Scavo was involved in all of this somehow. He would find Scavo, too.

All of which would need to be handled carefully. If he acted too soon, he’d attract the wrong kind of attention.

An army general’s life was not his own. Privacy was impossible as long as he remained on active duty. Which was fine. Working his side deals within his current fish-bowl job was second nature to him now.

He’d be tied up here in Iraq for another few months, more or less.

Plenty of time to locate Reacher and Scavo, the last two members of the Colonel’s crew.

Accumulate the resources he needed.

Plenty of time to make a solid plan.

He grinned. Hell, the first thing on the list was obvious.

Find that nine million, maybe still stashed at the Dakota. The Colonel certainly wouldn’t need it.