Read Online Call to Treason by Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik, Jeff Rovin - Free Book Online

five-foot-ten Mandor left the van and went down the concrete stairs.
        This was his partner's contact, and he had not wanted to go in without him.
        It was already hot, over eighty-five desert-dry degrees. Even though it was cool and dark when he had left his home on the northwestern shores of Lake Mead, he was glad he had worn Bermuda shorts and a white T-shirt.
        Las Vegas was not an early rising city, but the man they had come to see was from Maryland. He was still on East Coast time. There was no one in the small casino of the At-lantica. Mandor waited at the entrance, looking at the slot machines as though he were trying to decide whether to play. There was a large, convex mirror in an overhead corner. It allowed the people at the hotel desk to see into the casino. Mandor used it to watch the lobby. The tall, powerfully built Richmond was on the house phone, beside the small bank of elevators. When he hung up, Mandor walked over.
        The men did not acknowledge one another. There were security cameras in the lobby, by the casino. They walked to the elevators, and Richmond touched the button. When the door opened, both men stepped in. Richmond pushed the button for the fifth floor. When they arrived, he turned left. Mandor went right. There was a security camera inside the elevator as well. There were no security cameras in the fifth-floor hallway. When the door shut, Mandor turned and followed Richmond.
        "How was the drive?" the bald-headed Richmond asked over his shoulder.
        "Sweet," Mandor replied as he caught up to his partner.
        He gave him a pat on the shoulder. Mandor liked his old friend, and he respected him. "There was no traffic at this hour."
        "Yeah," Richmond said. "I made it from Oceanside in four hours flat."
        Richmond lived in a small cabin high in the Coastal Range of Southern California. He built the place himself four years ago. After years of freezing his ass in Chicago where he was one of five kids raised by a single mother in a one-bedroom walk-up on the South Side then as a driver in Alaska, Richmond wanted to live in consistently warm sunshine. That had been Mandor's desire, too, though he had always wanted to be on the water.
        Richmond did not know Eric Stone, the gentleman who had contacted them.
        All Stone said was that they had been recommended by Pete at the oil company. Peter Farmer was the foreman on the last rig where Mandor had worked. Richmond had recorded the conversation, and let Stone know it.
        Richmond made Stone state that he was not a government agent and this was not a sting.
        The men knew what this was not. They did not know what it was.
        Richmond had called Pete to make sure Stone was legitimate. Pete said he was, though he did not know what the man needed.
        They stopped in front of room 515, and Richmond knocked. Mandor pushed his shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair behind his neck. He did not like to wear it in a ponytail. He did not like restraints of any kind.
        That was how he ended up in the oil business. Back home in Toledo, Ohio, when he was twenty, he had beaten up Noel Lynch's former boyfriend when he found them together. Rather than face charges and possible jail time, he fled to Mexico and then to Venezuela, where he was hired to work on an offshore rig. He loved the challenge. He actually enjoyed facing the battering winds, the savage cold, the endless hard labor. When that got routine, he traveled to Alaska.
        When that ceased to challenge him, he and Richmond came up with their new gig. One that had no overhead, was advertised by word of mouth, and was not taxed. They provided muscle for anyone who needed it.
        The men had started doing that in Alaska. When environmentalists tried to block the tanker trucks or impede access to the rigs, the two men would cart the organizer away or his wife, if she had come with him and persuade them