Legacies

6.

"All right," Kenny said as he came down the steps. "He's stowed in the trunk. What next?"

Sam Baker stood in a cone of light in the basement of the Clayton house and wiped the bloody blade of the filleting knife on a rag. He wanted to take a chunk out of Kenny and make him eat it for screwing up tonight. But Kenny was family, his older sister's kid, a broad-shouldered twenty-five-year-old with his mother's red hair, and you didn't scar up family, not even when they deserved it.

He'd punish Kenny and his partner another way.

"A number of things are next, Kenny. The first one is docking you and Mott five percent of your bonus."

Kenny's eyes widened. "Five percent? What the fuck for?"

"For letting that torch slip by you."

"Shit, man, we caught him, didn't we?"

"Yeah, after he was already inside and setting up his goodies. If you hadn't smelled the gasoline, this whole place'd be up in smoke, and we'd all be out of a sweet gig." Baker pointed the knife at Kenny's chest. "He shouldn't have got in in the first place."

"Guy must be a magician. We never saw him, and I swear we weren't goofing off."

"Swear all you want, but don't expect any sympathy from the rest of the crew. If this place had gone up, they'd have lost a hundred percent of their bonuses. You too. So maybe this'll keep you on your toes during your next shift."

"That sucks, Sam."

"Don't feel so bad. I'll see that it goes to Grandma."

Kenny made a disgusted face. "Yeah, right. Think she'll remember to send me a thank-you note?"

Suddenly furious, Sam grabbed the front of Kenny's shirt and jerked him close. Family or not, he was ready to do a tap dance on his nephew's head.

"You watch your tone when you mention your grandmother, kid. Got that?"

Kenny looked away and nodded. "Sorry. I didn't mean it."

Sam released him. "I hope not. Now, lug the rest of this accelerant upstairs and wait for the others."

As Kenny stomped up the stairs, Baker looked around the cellar and shook his head. Too close. Too damn close. He'd damn near shit his pants when Kenny had called to say they'd caught a firebug in the house. He'd run over and found this weasel-faced wimp tied to a chair in the basement. The guy had been carrying a couple of gallons of accelerant in quart bottles stashed in pockets inside his overcoat.

Hadn't taken long to break him down. Amazing how persuasive a filleting knife could be. Remove a couple of wide strips of skin and the words tended to pour out. The torch said some broad had hired him. Someone who fit the Clayton babe's description to a tee.

Shit!

Didn't that bitch know when to quit? What did it take to scare her off?

Baker had been so pissed, he'd gone a little crazy. Grabbed the nearest pistol and started bashing away. Softened the torch's skull real good. He was out cold. Maybe he'd never wake up.

Baker had considered calling Kemel, but changed his mind. Little ol' Ahab the Ay-rab was turning out to be something of a wimp. Look how bent out of shape he got over that itty-bitty car bomb. Probably work himself into a pretzel if Baker told him how he planned to take care of the torch.

Kemel just didn't get it. You don't play footsy with problems—you eliminate them. That way they don't come back to haunt you.

Like this firebug.

This guy had been taught his lesson—maybe permanently. But that wasn't enough. Baker wanted to send the Clayton babe another message. Her PI splattered on the street hadn't done it. Her lawyer blown to pieces right in front of her hadn't done it. Maybe the third time would be a charm.

But he wasn't doing this one alone. He was gathering all eight of his crew for this. With the body count rising, it was time to take out a little insurance. Get everybody involved. Raise the stakes all around.

Baker knew these were tough, stand-up boys. Not of the caliber of the SOG teams he'd accompanied into Laos and Cambodia in the early seventies but they knew their stuff, all veterans of mercenary ops in Central America, Africa, and the Gulf. Over the years he'd used them when he'd hired out to the various players in Medellin and Cali to do their dirty work along the drug routes in Central America.

But now the Mexicans had pretty much taken over the trade, and they preferred to use their own boys when they needed muscle.

The Mideast was the place. Saudi Arabia, especially. Plenty of money to spend, but no infrastructure. And feeling pretty paranoid after what Iraq did to Kuwait. His contacts over there kept telling him they didn't want or need mercenaries, but Baker knew different. Every Saudi he'd met thought he should be a prince. No one wanted to do the dirty work. That was why the country was full of Koreans and Pakistanis, imported to do all the menial work. If your Mercedes broke down, there was no one to fix it. But so what? You bought another one. And as for soldiering, why put your ass on the line when you can hire someone else's ass to take your place?

Baker wasn't getting any younger. He was tired of shopping himself around. His lion's share of the bonus when this job was done would put his finances on an even keel and pay up his mother's nursing home bills, but he wasn't about to spend the rest of his life sitting around and watching the tube. He needed a reason to get up in the morning, and Saudi Arabia looked to be a bottomless well of steady, low-risk paramilitary work, waiting to be tapped. If he showed this Iswid Nahr group Muhallal worked for that he could get things done, that he was the man, he'd be set for the rest of his working life.

But Baker believed in his own version of Murphy's Law: No matter how deep you've buried it, never underestimate the ability of shit to find a fan.

He wanted the whole crew in on tonight's dirty work. They could look on it as a sort of bonding ritual… a sort of baptism of blood.

Baker smiled. Not blood… a baptism of fire.

After which they'd be more than comrades in arms. They'd be accomplices.

And the Arab? Baker would tell Kemel Muhallal about it later.