Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [21]
“Who’s this guy supposed to be, anyway?” Brad Parker asked as he sat at the umbrella-shaded table and watched the bikini-clad lovelies strutting their stuff around the pool.
“Hell if I know,” Lawrence Ford replied. Like Parker, he wore sunglasses, a Hawaiian shirt, and lightweight trousers. Also like Parker, the long tails of the shirt Ford wore served to conceal the butt of the flat, deadly little automatic that was holstered at the small of his back.
A mandatory accessory for the well-dressed tourist in Corpus Christi, Texas, Ford had called the weapon earlier.
The warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico rolled up on a beautiful white sand beach on the other side of a strip of lush green lawn dotted with palm trees. Despite the nearness of the Gulf, the pool here at the hotel was doing a brisk business. It didn’t have any sand or fish in it, and besides, a lot of the beautiful young people gathered around the pool were more interested in being seen and in hooking up with somebody than they were in actually swimming.
“My God, we’re a couple of dirty old men,” Ford said as two lovely twenty-year-olds in tiny bikinis strolled past their table.
“Speak for yourself, Fargo,” Parker said. “I’m still young.”
“You just keep on deluding yourself that way.” Ford took a sip of his drink. It had a tiny umbrella in it, which he tried to ignore. It was embarrassing for a grown man to drink a drink that had an umbrella in it, he thought. But he and Parker were supposed to look like typical tourists, which meant they were beyond embarrassment.
Both men were in their forties. The tall, burly Ford was from Fargo, North Dakota, hence the nickname, and despite being raised in such a cold climate, since going to work for the Company he had most often found himself on assignment in hot places: Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Central America, now Texas…. He had thought more than once that his bosses were engaged in some bizarre conspiracy to make him sweat.
Parker, on the other hand, had been born and raised in Southern California and had the blond good looks to prove it. His face had a rough-hewn quality that kept him from being too pretty, though. A few years earlier, he had been hurt badly during a mission in Afghanistan, and even though he had fully recovered and gone back on active duty, the carefree look he’d had in his eyes as a young man was gone forever.
Nobody who knew the truth of what really went on in the world could be carefree. And nobody knew that truth better than these shadow warriors.
“So what are we supposed to do here?” Parker pressed.
“Find the guy, grab the guy, hold on to him until somebody picks him up,” Ford replied with a shrug of his brawny shoulders. He had a little paunch he struggled with, but like the shorter, more slender Parker he was a very dangerous man in a fight.
“Then he must be somebody important.”
“Importance is in the eye of he who pays the bills.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of putting on that cynical act?”
“Who says it’s an act?” Ford smiled lazily. “Don’t look now, but there’s our pigeon.”
Parker didn’t react other than to ask, “Where?”
Smiling and nodding, Ford said, “Sixth floor balcony.” He counted the balconies from the corner of the building and matched it up with the floor plan he had studied. “Room 627.”
“Very good.” Parker finished his drink. “What’s he doing up there?”
Ford threw his head back and laughed as if his fellow agent had said something funny. That gave him a chance to look directly at the man who had ventured nervously out onto the balcony. The target was small, almost boyish looking with a mop of blond hair.
“Just looking around, as far as I can tell. Watching these nubile young lovelies parade around the pool.”
Parker ran a thumbnail along his jawline as he frowned. “So they knew he was in Corpus Christi and even knew what hotel he was staying at, but they couldn’t find out his room number?”
“They wanted to leave something for us to do,” Ford drawled. “You know, so we’ll feel like we’re earning our wages.”
“I feel like it every time the weather turns