Caravan of Thieves by David Rich Read Free Book Online Page B

who were after me. Dan brightened up considerably when I told him about being undercover in Afghanistan.
    “You posed as an Afghan? That’s marvelous. And these American soldiers bought it. I always knew you had potential.”
    “We should get out of here. I stole that car in Vegas and it’ll be found at the landing. These guys have the means to put it all together,” I said.
    “And you think the general put the shooters onto you?”
    “He’s after me. There was an incident, a bad one.”
    “Don’t be so sure the general is behind it. Doesn’t sound right to me.”
    “Okay.” I didn’t care about that right now. Those shooters weren’t likely to be the first to show up on that river. “Where can we go?”
    “Wait,” he said. “I want to know…You set these guys up in Afghanistan, you got them to trust you.”
    Was this the moment to say “I learned it all from you. You deserve all the credit”? His flickering eyes and pleased smile seemed to offer warmth and refuge. Inclusion. But I knew the trap: warm yourself at that fire and you’ll freeze to death. For a moment, I thought he could not help it: those were his eyes and his smile, all he had. Dan was looking at me with something resembling pride. I felt vaguely ashamed.
    “So you had to fool Afghans, too. Who was tougher to fool, us or them?”
    “Dan, I’ll tell you all about it when we’re on the road.”
    “Three days ago, I had driven out to New River City to try to collect on a job we did at a new development. The boss wasn’t in. The secretary looked kinda cute and pretty soon we were on the boss’s couch together. It was easy. Real easy. I’m not bragging, I’m telling you this for a reason. She got up to go into the bathroom to freshen up. Took her purse and took her time. I wandered over to the desk where she had
USA Today
. They have a page with newsfrom every state. I always check Oklahoma. It said the graves of three veterans of Iraq had been dug up. Two of the bodies were left alone, but the third was missing. The secretary had to be pretty fresh by then, but she was getting fresher still. I stood by the door and heard a few words and then she hung up her phone. They’d gotten to her. They had contacted her before I got there and were paying her to keep me there. These guys have resources. I don’t think there’s a better place than where we are now.”
    Father and son with fish, beer, cigars, sunshine, and water. A borrowed boat and borrowed time, unless McColl conveniently had a heart attack. And Shaw, too. I spent the time listening unless he asked and prodded for war stories. My reluctance must have come off as youthful sullenness, but I was struggling to isolate each of my resentments and squash them. I wanted to make sure I had Dan right. Filling in that picture had been a lifetime quest, with all the gathered evidence and clues snatched from fleeting moments together or observations of Dan with his women, his cronies, his victims. Now it was uninterrupted access and I couldn’t stop staring into the fire, even though I knew I should run.
    I even watched him sleep. He was still a handsome man, rugged and strong. I tried to guess how old he was, but it was just a guess and the thought of asking made me laugh out loud. Questions weren’t paths to the truth or even to facts; they were cues to start the entertainment, or to change the channel and be captivated for a few more moments. No story ever came off as a rerun. Every moment was fresh; his smile would form and his eyes twinkle a bit and he’d ease in: “I was fishing on the Salmon River up in Oregon when a bear…” “Once, at a party in New York, a woman I’d never met before, very beautiful, came up and asked me to walk her home…” “They deputized me once in Santa Fe to help them catch a bank robber…”
    I was on deck, Dan was inside finishing his lunch on the second day, when a raft came around the upstream bend. The rifle was leaning against the rail