The Secret Soldier

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Authors: Alex Berenson
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took a right too fast and nearly cracked a tree but feathered the gas and the brake at the same time and kept the van on the road.
    Now Wells saw the Daewoo’s headlights. He was one turn away when the shots started, four in a row, a medium-sized pistol. Finally, too late, Wells skidded around a corner and saw the Audi stopped in the middle of the road, its driver’s door opening. The sedan’s hood was crumpled, and the minibus looked worse. Daewoos were not exactly built to military specs.
    Twenty feet away now. Wells stopped the van, jumped out, ran for the car. Marley pushed open his door and stumbled out, nearly falling. Red dirt smeared his Hawaiian shirt. He focused on the minibus and didn’t see Wells. He raised the pistol in his right hand, taking careful aim at the Daewoo’s windshield—
    Wells tackled him, a linebacker drilling a quarterback from the blindside, a clean shoulder-to-shoulder hit that arched Marley’s spine. The gun clattered from his hand and skittered into the drainage ditch. Wells kept coming, driving his legs, finishing the hit, pushing Marley face-first into the mud of the road. Marley grunted and then cursed wildly, shouting into the night. Wells grabbed a hank of his long blond hair and jammed his face into the road to choke the fight out of him.
    Gaffan jumped out of the bus and piled on, putting a knee in Marley’s back. Together they cuffed his arms and his legs. They turned him over, and Wells slapped a piece of duct tape on his mouth. They picked him up and ignored his wriggling and tossed him in the Econoline’s cargo area and slammed the doors.
    “What about the van?”
    “Let the cops figure it out.”
    Wells reversed down the hill until the road widened enough for him to make a U-turn. He didn’t hear sirens. The incompetence of the Jamaican police might save them yet.
     
     
    AT THE BOTTOM OF the hill, Wells turned right, east, away from Montego. After Rock Brae, the next town, the road opened into low green fields. A billboard promised they were looking at the future home of the Marriott White Bay. Wells pulled over and grabbed a baton and leather gloves from his kit. He nodded for Gaffan to drive and slipped into the back. When they were moving again, he tore the duct tape off Marley’s mouth, taking a piece of Marley’s lips with it.
    “What’s your name?”
    “You assholes are dead,” Marley said. “You have no idea. I’ll kill you.”
    “No one’s killing anyone.”
    “Slice you up.”
    “We want to have a conversation, that’s all.”
    “You think you’re hitting a coke house? Snap off a couple hundred keys and no one’s going to notice? You are as stupid as they come.”
    Wells didn’t enjoy beating prisoners, but he had to take some of the fight out of this one. He smashed an elbow into the side of Marley’s skull, the soft spot high on the temple. The force of the contact ran up Wells’s arm into his shoulder. Marley’s head snapped sideways. But when he opened his eyes, Wells saw that he hadn’t given up.
    “Your name.”
    “Ridge. Real name’s Bruce. But everyone calls me Ridge. Since high school. Ask me what you need to ask. I can answer without getting myself killed, I will.”
    Wells sat Ridge against the side of the van and offered him three photos of Keith Robinson. The first was a blown-up version of Robinson’s CIA badge. The second and third were computer-generated versions, predictions of what Robinson might look like now with long hair—or no hair.
    “Mind if I ask why you want him?”
    “Yeah,” Gaffan said from the front of the van. “We do.”
    “Robin speaks,” Ridge said.
    “Focus,” Wells said. “He might have different hair. Put on weight.”
    “Lemme see the third one.” Ridge looked for a while. “There’s one guy, it might be him. He’s maybe fifty pounds heavier.”
    “He’s in your business?”
    “Works a couple places on the east side. Nowhere too fancy. We buy from some of the same people. He’s

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