The Rules Of Silence by David Lindsey Read Free Book Online

incredulous. “This is it? I just get ready to cough up sixty-four million?”
    “No, I didn’t say that.”
    “Then what in the hell do I do?”
    Norlin didn’t say anything. He was thinking, and the fact that he wasn’t just firing off action points, wasn’t rolling out a game plan, wasn’t giving Titus go-to names, scared the shit out of him. Norlin was Titus’s cop show equivalent of his one phone call, and he wasn’t coming through.
    Titus wiped the sweat off the side of his face. This wasn’t what he’d wanted. He’d wanted Norlin to be reassuring, to have answers. He felt his chest tightening; he felt time running out; he felt desperate.
    “I’m no good to you, ”Norlin said.
    Jesus.
    “I’m not. Wherever this guy’s coming from—Colombia, Mexico, Brazil—he’s from another world. Believe me, these guys do not breathe the same air we do. Listen, last year in Colombia alone, nearly a billion dollars were paid out in kidnapping ransoms. Big business. And it just doesn’t get any more serious than this.”
    Norlin shook his head, thinking.
    “What I’m seeing here, this is some kind of hybrid operation. I don’t know. I’ve never heard of this kind of thing happening in the States. I’ve never heard of this much money being demanded. I’ve never heard of them wanting to keep the money transfer ‘legal.’”
    His voice was flat. He wasn’t getting excited about it, he was just laying out the facts.
    “Killing friends, family, for negotiating leverage, that’s routine in Latin America, India, Philippines, Russia, those places, yeah. But here in the States? Shit. I don’t know what they’re thinking. It’s just way, way out of whack. It’s hard to believe.”
    Titus thought he heard a glimmer of hope.
    “You think this could just be a huge poker hand, then? He’s calling my bluff? If I cough up some money, he hits it lucky? If I don’t, he’ll just disappear? He took a shot at it, and it didn’t really cost him anything to try.”
    “No. ”Norlin was quick to come back. “That’s not what I’m saying. You’ve got to believe this guy. ”He shook his head. “Everything’s accelerated in the last two years. There’s a harder edge to everything, terrorism, international crime. Law enforcement’s pressing harder, intelligence community has gotten back into the trenches. Everything’s more extreme. Looking down the road, we knew we were going to be seeing things we’d never dreamed of seeing before. This is the kind of thing we were afraid of. And the worst part of it is, we’re just not geared up yet to deal with something so damned brutal.”

Chapter 8
    Titus turned and sat on the slab again, a few feet away from Norlin. He felt a little light-headed, his thoughts alternating in velocity between a stunned, sluggish incredulity and the frenetic, revved-up hyperjitter of panic. He wanted to stand up again. He wanted to pace. He wanted to be able to think methodically. He wanted more air. He wanted to wake up.
    “I’m going to give you some advice, ”Norlin said. “Your situation, there are going to be pressures put on you, deliberately, to make fast decisions. And you’re going to have to do it. You won’t have any choice. But it’s going to be tough because sometimes—and it’s just the odds, you can’t fight it—sometimes you’re going to make the wrong decisions. The consequences are going to be painful.”
    “What’s that mean, exactly? ”Titus wanted it spelled out, bad news in black and white.
    “It means that after it’s done, it’s done. If you’re going to second-guess yourself, you’ll go crazy before this is over.”
    “Odds are, people are going to die, you mean.”
    “Think of it like this: This man is bringing you a sick situation. He created it. You didn’t. He’s going to force you to make choices where nobody wins. When that happens, remember who started it. You’re just playing the hand that this guy’s dealt you.”
    Titus let