Read Online Paying Back Jack by Christopher G. Moore - Free Book Online

bar. “How do we get the weapon?” Tracer smiled, shaking his head.
    â€œHe’s got it worked out with Mooney.”
    â€œCobra Gold Mooney.”
    â€œMooney is Waters’s man. Six months and he’ll be working for LRAS.”
    â€œTell Waters I want a night scope, too.”
    Tracer nodded. “I already did that. And a silencer. And a tripod. Twenty rounds should do it.”
    â€œOne shot, one kill,” said Jarrett.
    Jarrett stared straight ahead, his eyes no longer focusing on the yings. He said nothing through two songs. This was Jarrett’s way of thinking through his options and deciding there weren’t any real ones on the table—or on the stage, for that matter, or just about anywhere one looked in the world. Tracer understood this about his partner. The man was giving himself some thinking time. Staring at the yings without looking at them, as if some Zen answer could be found in the way they moved onstage.
    â€œHe can find one, for sure?”
    â€œThey’ve come as part of Cobra Gold. Mooney delivers the rifle, and then three days later we do the job, return the rifle, and go back to Kabul. And everyone’s happy.”
    Jarrett nodded. “Who’s the target?”
    Tracer shrugged. “The asshole who murdered Casey’s son a couple of years back.”
    â€œI thought Casey’d taken care of that himself,” said Jarrett.
    â€œCasey’s working in Bangkok. He can’t do something where he works.”
    â€œWe do that all the time,” said Jarrett.
    â€œThat’s different. What we do in Baghdad, Kabul, or the other shitholes doesn’t necessarily work in places like Bangkok. There are political considerations.”
    â€œThat sounds like Waters talking.”
    Jarrett had nailed it straight through. Those had been Colonel Waters’s words. Casey had been transferred to Bangkok a couple of years earlier. Everyone in Baghdad who knew Casey thought he’d kill the man who’d murdered his son. When the weeks drifted into months and the months into a year, it looked like Casey had gone soft and had become meek, Christian-like in his forgiveness. Casey had been assigned along with six other private security contractors to work in a prison in Baghdad. The transfer was a promotion and more money. Everyone who knew him, including Jarrett and Tracer, thought Casey had thrown himself into his work and was working his way through his son’s death.
    â€œWaters couldn’t say much on the phone. He was in Bogotá.”
    Jarrett shot him a frown.
    â€œHand on my heart,” said Tracer.
    â€œMan, you ain’t got no heart. Everyone who knows you knows that. And I thought he hated Colombia.”
    â€œIt ain’t written anywhere they send you to the place you wanna go.”
    That much Jarrett agreed with. Even legends like the Colonel had bosses who cut them orders on the basis of certain skills in the field. Waters once said he’d rather be surrounded by Taliban than a squad of MBAs. He worked for LRAS, but he wasn’t the typical company man; he was a holdover from the old corporate culture, when veterans had run the management. Waters blamed himself for not having the right business skills to make the transition as a corporate team player. He said he’d wasted his time learning to speak fluent Spanish rather than balance sheets. It made him an asset in Latin America but a liability to the bottom line. Once during the Gulf War, Colonel Waters, then a captain, had told Tracer that his one regret was that he hadn’t studied Swedish. Six-foot blue-eyed blondes with legs as long as the New Jersey Turnpike had a powerful pull on him.

FIVE
    WHO WAS THE WOMAN who fell to her death from the hotel? What was your relationship with her? How long have you known her? Why did she come to your room? Did you have a fight?
    That was the string of questions asked by a couple of cops, though one officer