A man he did not recognize sat next to the table, watching. His eyes were so dark they seemed without pupils, yet they were studious and patient and somehow terrifyingly omniscient. His face was highly rawboned with a lantern jaw and powerful chin.
The man, seeing Walker’s eyes come to a meeting point with his own, held up an 8x10 photo. “Do you know what this is?”
Walker passed a dry tongue over parched lips. “Who are you?”
“Do you know what this is?” the man repeated.
Walker studied the photo and recognized it as a photo of his old unit, the Pieces of Eight. In it he was much younger and whole, everyone hamming it up for the camera with the exception of Kimball Hayden, the man without conscience or remorse.
“What do you want?”
The man held the photo close. “Take another look.”
Walker noted that he and two others were circled with a red marker. “Yeah… So?”
“The other two, I know they’re working for a private military outfit as consultants here in the Philippines. I need to know where they are. And you’re going to tell me.”
“You think so, huh? Well, you can just kiss my fat ass. How ‘bout that?”
“Where are they, Mr. Walker?”
“You know something, you little punk? You’re a real tough guy taking on a cripple, you know that? If you took me on in the condition I was in in that photo, you’d be a dead man.”
“I’m well aware of the Pieces of Eight and I hardly doubt, Mr. Walker, even during your prime, that you’d be able to match my skills as an assassin.”
“Tough talk coming from a man who’s whole. How about you undo the tape so we can see how well you fare against a cripple not tied down? Or are you too much of a pussy to find out?”
“Mr. Walker… where are they?”
“And why should I tell you?”
The man remained tolerant, and then in monotone, “Look at me, Mr. Walker.” From his cargo pocket he pulled out a silver cylinder and depressed a button. A pick shot out like the blade of a stiletto. Its tip keenly pointed and honed to a razor’s sharpness.
“Is that supposed to scare me?”
“No, Mr. Walker, it’s a tool, really — a writing pen, as you will.”
“What?”
The man held the blade over Walker’s naked backside.
“What are you doing?”
“Please, Mr. Walker, remain still.” The man set the pick’s tip against Walker’s shoulder blade, the embedded point drawing a bead of crimson. “This will only take a moment.” And then he drew the pick across his back, a neat slice running from shoulder blade to shoulder blade.
Walker arched his back against the pain, his teeth clenching in protest until the muscles in his jaw worked furiously.
But he refused to cry out.
“Very good, Mr. Walker, a true warrior never shouts out in pain, does he?”
“Oh, you son-of-a-bitch! Untie me and take me on as a man!”
The assassin held the photo towards Walker. “Mr. Grenier and Mr. Arruti — tell me where they are.”
“What do you want with them?”
“Isn’t it apparent, Mr. Walker? I obviously want to kill them.”
Walker laughed condescendingly. “Are you out of your mind?”
The man carefully placed the point of the pick against the center point of the horizontal slash, and drew the sharpened point downward along the spinal column to the small of his back, the drawing cuts forming a perfect T.
Walker arched again, his face as red as the blood that coursed from his wounds and onto the table, the veins of his neck sticking out in cords. “YOU… BASTARD!”
“That was close to crying out, Mr. Walker. Not the true sign of a warrior, is it?”
“Piss off!”
“Arruti and Grenier, where are they?”
Walker laughed.
“Mr. Walker?”
His laughter escalated.
“Very well, then.” The man placed the tip of the pick against the small of Walker’s back and drew a horizontal line, the three slices now forming the letter I.
Walker’s body tensed against the pain. And then through the set of his clenched teeth, he said, “You want to know where they are?”
The man waited patiently, the point of the pick stained with red.
“I’ll tell you. I’ll be glad to tell you… And do you want to know why I’ll be glad to tell you?”
The man held the pick high, the steel cylinder throwing off a mirror polish.
“Because they’re going to rip you to pieces,” he told him. “It doesn’t matter if they know you’re coming or not. They’ll smell you. They’ll sense you. They’ll feel you… And then they’ll kill you.”
“Where are they?”
Walker was obviously fading, his voice weakening. “You’ll find them in Maguindanao consulting against the terrorist factions there.”
“Thank you, Mr. Walker.”
“I’ll see you in Hell.”
“That’s unlikely.” The man placed the point of the pick at the base of Walker’s skull and forced the point upward through the opening of the brain stem and into the brain, killing him.
As Walker’s body deflated, the man expelling a final breath that cleared his lungs, he soon fell into the gentle repose of death.
The man, after watching Walker transition from life to death, pressed the button on the cylinder. The pick quickly retreated into the tube faster than the eye could see.
Placing the weapon into a cargo pocket of his pants, the man removed a red marker, wrote the letter ‘I’ in the circled picture of Walker, and left the photo behind.
The assassin would be in Maguindanao Province within hours.
CHAPTER FIVE
Cotabato City in Mindanao is a city of roughly a quarter-million people with a high Muslim population. It is also a city of growing insurgency where al-Qaeda and the Taliban were taking root — the area becoming the ‘New Afghanistan’ of the Pacific Rim.
Five years ago when The Blackmill Corporation became employed by the Philippine government as a freelance consulting firm from the United States, the government was really hiring high-tech mercenaries to help counteract the spread of revolutionary idealism that was becoming a blight to the small island nation. And Cotabato City, which bordered the guerilla strongholds thirty kilometers to the south, served as the company’s command post.
In a small, smoke-filled bar that smelled of sweat and cheap cigarettes that did little to mask that stench, War Consultants David Arruti and Sim Grenier sat at a table in the back of the establishment knocking back a few shots of whisky.
Although in their forties they remained in good shape, keeping their bodies regimentally fit. Of the two Arruti looked more like the aggressor with a handlebar mustache, shaved head, and powerhouse arms that were exposed from a sleeveless shirt. Sim Grenier, however, looked like the corporate thinker — a man of good dress, even though a huge Rorschach moth of perspiration spread out to meet the overflow from his armpits of a neatly pressed shirt — who always kept his hair nicely coiffed in such high humidity.
Whenever they banded together they spoke little of the past when they were a part of the Pieces of Eight. Instead, they spoke of the future and about guerilla insurgencies in Mindanao. They often spoke of strategies and counter offensives, as well as the beneficial possibilities their success may bring to the people of the Philippines.
But little did they speak of the past.
On the opposite side of the room a male wearing a camouflaged boonie cap sat alone at a table with a glass of water. He appeared to be focused on a Blackberry-type device, punching buttons with a stylus, his surroundings oblivious to him.
However, he did not go without notice.
Grenier kept a watchful eye on the man who appeared without concern.