Countdown: H Hour Read Online Free PDF

it, use it when you feel the time is right.’ He said, too, to consider it a tentative signing bonus and that it would be subtracted from your real bonus if you actually did sign on with us. He also said that if there were some close relatives you thought might need a safe haven, then maybe a place could be found for some of them, too. Might be in a line battalion. Might be cutting grass. Or anything in between. But a place.”
    Aida nodded somberly, thinking upon the benefits of having a secure bolt hole. “Well . . . maybe then,” she agreed. “We’ll see.” She passed over a computer disk, explaining, “That is a bill of particulars for every at-large Abu Sayyaf and al Harrikat operative and sympathizer I was able to extract from police files. Both, because you never can tell when someone’s going to switch over. There’s also an intelligence summary from the army in there, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it authoritative. There’s no difference in the level of fighting, after all, between a province we’ve cleared of the enemy and one we’ve abandoned. In any case, it’s free, not something Boxer paid me for.”
    Both exited the car from the curb side. Lox dragged his bag after himself, dropped it to the street, then reached in to pull Welch’s out as well. The pair grabbed their bags, then walked to the gate. Aida’s small sedan was screeching a turn around the next corner even before they reached it.

    There had only been two guards, both of them on the gate, when Lox and Welch walked through. They’d been polite enough, but also firm. Nobody was getting in to see Madame until and unless they were thoroughly searched.
    Terry shrugged, saying, “Well, do your jobs then.”
    As the guard squatted to finger Terry’s ankles, the American thought, Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.
    Search completed, one of the bodyguards remained on the gate, securing it and likewise the bags. The other led them to the bungalow, up the broad wooden steps, and into a living room furnished in wicker and cooled—inadequately cooled—by a large overhead fan. Terry still had the disk given him by Aida safely stowed in one pocket.
    “The two Kanos you were expecting, Madame,” the guard announced.
    An old woman, wearing a printed silk dress and with a string of pearls precisely sized for her age and station, was seated on one of the wicker chairs with her legs demurely crossed. Above the pearls, on a simple gold chain, was a crucifix. Quality told; behind the wrinkles—and there were surprisingly few of those—was a bone structure that boasted a past of rare beauty.
    She nodded and said, “Thank you, Pedro, that will be all until I summon you.” Her accent was pure New England. Her tone was pure command, as if by right.
    “Yes, madame,” the guard agreed, with a polite bow of his head. He withdrew backwards, then disappeared out the front door.
    “Please, gentlemen, be seated,” Mrs. Ayala said, indicating with a bejeweled hand a pair of wicker, padded chairs opposite her own. Terry thought the hand surprisingly youthful, if not precisely young. He also thought that the gold, rubies, emeralds and pearls detracted from that youthful appearance.
    “Radcliffe?” Terry asked, as he took his seat.
    “Mount Holyoke,” the woman answered, serenely. Weeping and shrieking time was over; this was business.
    Terry nodded. Old money. They’re different.
    “I have agreed,” she said, “which is to say I have agreed, tentatively, to your . . . your firm’s conditions. ‘Double or nothing.’ And ‘all you find, all you keep.’ I don’t care about the latter and the former appeals to me. An agreement, however, is not my husband back in my bed. Tell me how you intend to get him back when the police and the army cannot.”
    Terry liked—no, he admired —that kind of directness, and said so. He then added, “I trust you will not be offended if I am equally direct,