The Hamlet Warning by Leonard Sanders Read Free Book Online

motionless in the darkness for more than five minutes before a shadow emerged from the cane field and approached the car. Loomis placed his Colt’s Python in his lap, turned on a faint dash light, and tapped the button that released the door catches. Richard Allen Johnson slid in and closed the door. Loomis pushed the button again, throwing all the latches.
    “Hello, shithead,” he said.
    “I’ll sure say one thing for you, Loomis,” Johnson said. “You really know a remote rendezvous when you see one.” He saw the pistol in Loomis’s lap. “Well, honk if you love Jesus! Don’t tell me you think I’ve taken up that old contract on you!”
    “How in hell would I know?” Loomis said. “It’s been damned near fifteen years since I’ve seen you. People change.”
    “Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, you seem like the same old asshole to me,” Johnson said.
    “I can’t see that Washington duty has given you any polish,” Loomis said. “Are you certain you lost my man?”
    “Three blocks from the hotel,” Johnson said. “I sure hope he can find his way back all right. And you don’t have to worry. I’ve got three men out there. No one will interrupt us.” 
    Same Johnson. Cocky, overconfident, impatient, completely fearless, a 225-pound bundle of nervous energy constantly threatening to erupt. A man who lived for danger. Johnson had weathered the years well. In the dim light, Loomis could see patches of gray in the hairline over his temples, but his body apparently was as lean and tough as it had been in the late fifties when he made All-America as a halfback at Ohio State, or in the sixties when he and Loomis were laying waste in Southeast Asia. Loomis had not expected to see him again. They once were the best team in the Far East. Loomis had assumed those days were gone forever.
    “You’re risking your health and mine,” Loomis said. “I hope you’ve got a good reason.”
    “The best,” Johnson said. “I’m what’s so popularly in demand these days: a man with a message. And here’s the message: you are in a unique position to perform a very valuable service for your country.”
    “I hate to sound crass,” Loomis said. “But what’s my country done for me lately outside of trying to kill me?”
    Johnson sighed. “I tried to tell them that’d be your attitude. Not a bone of forgiveness in his whole body, I told them. No sense of charity whatsoever. So they have empowered me to offer you a proposition. You play along with us on a little project, and we’ll see that those old charges against you are wiped off the books. Full restoration of citizenship. Clean files.”
    Loomis had learned, long ago, to hide his true feelings. For years, he’d accepted the fact that he probably would never be able to go home again. Johnson’s offer awakened thoughts, images he’d long blocked from his mind. But as these thoughts came, they were shackled to another: nobody offers something for nothing.
    Loomis waited until he was certain he could keep his voice level. “Who’s ‘we’?” he asked.
    “Consider who could make that offer,” Johnson said. “Then you’ll begin to get some idea of what’s involved.” 
    “I have. But who sent you? Are you here representing the company?”
    “I really don’t know,” Johnson said. “And I’m not being evasive. It started out as one thing and evolved into another. There’s an awful lot of people connected with it now.”
    Loomis believed him. But it wasn’t enough. “I have no guarantee, then?”
    “Oh good Lord, Loomis! Is there ever, in our kind of life? But this obviously comes from the top. And I personally think it’s a very generous offer. After all, you killed two of the company’s best men.”
    Loomis couldn’t control a sudden surge of anger. “What the fuck am I supposed to do? Apologize?”
    Johnson turned in the seat to face him. “Listen, Loomis. I’ll level with you for old time’s sake. There’s something big