Kodiak Sky

CHAPTER 2

“Sir?”

Troy Jensen’s eyes flashed open. He hadn’t actually been asleep, just dozing to conserve energy. He was a light sleeper to begin with, but at this point in such an intense mission he rarely slept until it was done. He could go seventy-two hours without it and still function normally. So far it had been only thirty-nine.

“Yes?”

“The guide’s here,” Jim Bennington called from the other side of the zipped tent flap.

“I’ll be right out.”

Troy lifted up on one elbow and gazed down at the young woman who was lying on her back beside him, naked. She clearly had no problem sleeping, and he took a moment to envy her ignorance as she snored lightly.

It was stiflingly hot and humid in the jungles of eastern Venezuela, especially this late in the afternoon. But he and the woman hadn’t stripped naked to stay cool. Until twenty minutes ago they’d been engaged in quiet but crazy sex, which had gone on nearly uninterrupted for an hour. She’d been impressed with his stamina, gasping so over and over, in between demands for more.

Finally, she’d begged for a break and had quickly fallen into a deep slumber when he granted her request.

Troy rose to his feet, stepped into his comfortable nylon fishing pants, and pulled them up. He loved having sex before battles. It didn’t distract him at all — just the opposite. It got his alpha adrenaline pumping and made him focus on the mission even more when the interlude was over.

He loved Latinas, too. He always had. They were wild and passionate women who screamed every lewd thing they imagined during intercourse as soon as they imagined it, without considering or caring how the words might make them sound — at least, the ones he’d been with had. Troy found that level of uncloaked female passion at the moment of climax incredibly intoxicating.

The beautiful, dark-haired woman asleep on the tent floor had been no different. He’d been forced to cover her mouth with his hand several times so the other men in camp wouldn’t hear all the crazy things — which had turned her on even more. Turned out she liked being restrained.

She’d gotten him off three times in the last hour, the second time so intensely he’d almost yelled out with pleasure himself. Fortunately, he’d been able to stifle it.

He cast another hungry glance at her exotic features, so tempted. They wouldn’t begin the assault until at least midnight, and that was still hours away. But after a few moments he pulled the long-sleeve, bamboo-lined Free Fly shirt over his head and laced his boots up. It was time to focus on the mission.

“This is Pablo,” Bennington informed Troy as he emerged from the tent, gesturing at the dark-skinned man standing beside him. “He’ll lead us to your target. Whatever that is,” Bennington added.

Troy shook Pablo’s hand. He appreciated that the guide had remained closemouthed about the objective — as he’d been strictly ordered to do by Troy’s messenger.

“Pablo came down from Guayana City,” Bennington continued. “He’s sorry he’s late, but the morning storms clogged the roads. Plus, he couldn’t be obvious about what he was doing or where he was going. He’s worried he’s been watched during the last few days. He claims to have visions, and the one he had last night wasn’t good.”

Bennington was short and muscular with a shaved head, probably a Green Beret, Troy figured, though he wasn’t sure. He didn’t even know the man’s rank.

Troy’s uncertainty wasn’t a failure to be diligent. It was by design. Tonight’s mission was being waged against a formidable enemy, a man who had more money and more weapons than most countries. A man who was brutally vindictive and, on top of everything else, lately rumored to be going insane. If anyone in the team was captured, the torture would be extensive and excruciating, so unbearable the victim would surely give up honest answers to anything he was asked. The less the five men on this mission knew about each other, the better.

“How sure are you that the target is at the compound?” Troy asked. It seemed far-fetched that anyone would be watching this man.

“Eighty percent,” Pablo answered in a thick Spanish accent. He was the same height as Bennington but very thin. Gaunt to the point his knuckles and elbows seemed on the verge of piercing his taut, dry-looking skin. “Maybe.”

Eighty percent in this line of work was excellent, even with a hesitant “maybe” thrown in at the end. Anticipation surged through Troy’s body. Daniel Gadanz’s severed head would make one hell of a trophy.

Noise on the sprawling First Manhattan trading floor had reached a fever pitch. Men and women shouted into phones and at each other as they gestured wildly, in some cases seemingly to no one in particular. And the sum of their voices created a dull roar in the gigantic room, which overlooked Wall Street from the twenty-seventh story of the firm’s shimmering, glass-encased headquarters.

Minutes ago the Federal Reserve had announced a major shift in monetary policy. A tightening, which had sent interest rates spiraling skyward. Conversely, bond prices were suffering the China Syndrome, burning through every circuit breaker on the plunge down as if the chain reaction couldn’t be stopped.

The Fed hadn’t used a megaphone to shout its strategy shift from the highest peak around — just the opposite. They’d whispered it, as they usually did. This time by subtly and slightly raising the reserve requirement for the nation’s banking system. But that was more than enough to cause the panic.

The key to this afternoon’s mayhem: The Fed’s move had caught the market by surprise — most of it, anyway.

Jack Jensen sat calmly in the middle of the chaos, gazing at two photographs he kept tucked into his cramped position between the bank of phones he used to trade his nine-hundred-million-dollar bond portfolio.

Traders didn’t have cushy offices like their investment banking counterparts at the firm. They operated from tight quarters, with other traders a few feet away on all sides. More than six hundred people packed this room, and many of them were going manic right now.

Jack gazed at the photo of his wife, Karen. She was a pretty, slender brunette with delicate features and a lovely, symmetrical smile. Well, it used to be lovely and symmetrical. Nine months ago she’d been shot in the head. Even after all the rehab, she was still having problems walking. Her speech had been affected as well, as had that lovely smile. She could no longer control the left side of her face, so the smile was crooked most of the time.

Jack had married her two months ago on a summer morning in a church outside Greenwich, Connecticut. He loved her so much — still.

His eyes shifted to the photo of his brother, Troy, standing before a crab boat christened the Arctic Fire as it lay at anchor in Alaska’s Dutch Harbor. Two years younger than Jack, Troy was a tremendous athlete who’d conquered the Seven Summits and circumnavigated the globe in a sailboat alone — all by his late twenties. Perfectly proportioned, he had dirty blond hair that fell to the bottom of his collar in the back as well as laserlike blue eyes and a killer smile women adored.

He and Troy were different in many ways. Troy acted on impulse and feared nothing. Jack analyzed everything and acted deliberately. Hell, they didn’t even look alike, Jack thought to himself wryly with a soft chuckle. He was taller and darker and not nearly as well proportioned as Troy, with a smile in photographs that seemed forced and less charismatic.

Of course, there was a glaring reason they didn’t look alike. Cheryl was their mother. But only Troy was blood to Bill Jensen.

Jack’s eyes narrowed as he stared. Despite all the differences, they were close as hell. They always had been, even though Troy was the star of the family and Bill’s favorite while they were growing up. Jack hadn’t spoken to Troy in nearly two weeks, and he knew what that meant. The kid was in some far-off shadow of the world, protecting a population who’d never be able to thank him because they’d never know he was there.

“Jesus Christ! What am I gonna do? I mean, what the hell am I going to do?”

Jack’s gaze darted toward Russell Hill, who occupied the position immediately to the left on this bulkhead, which ran down the spine of the huge room. The red-haired young man, who always wore flashy suspenders along with an arrogant attitude, was not himself.

“Easy,” Jack urged loudly above the roar. “Stay calm. Calm always wins the day.”

“Fuck you, Jack.” Russell slammed the bulkhead counter in front of them so hard the lunch change lying on it jumped for the air. “Maybe you’re okay, but I’m down twenty-seven million in the last ten minutes.”

It sounded like a lot, and it was for any individual trader, but not for First Manhattan as a whole. Last year the firm had surpassed a trillion dollars in assets and reported more than fourteen billion in profits. Twenty-seven million was nothing in the grand scheme. Of course, it might mean Russell wouldn’t get a bonus this year, and bonuses were everything for bond traders. A trader’s after-tax salary barely covered his commute to and from Manhattan.

“I’m gonna lose my house when I don’t get shit at the end of the year,” Russell muttered desperately, burying his face in his hands. “I got nothing saved. I’m gonna lose everything.”

Until a few minutes ago, Russell had been bragging every chance he got about the ten-thousand-square-foot monstrosity he’d built last year in a ritzy area of Long Island — complete with beachfront and pool. Jack lived with Karen in a small apartment in Greenwich. The needle on Jack’s sympathy meter was barely registering.

“Cut your losses,” he suggested, leaning over so Russell could hear him above the din. “Close out your worst positions.” Russell was long on many of his trades, Jack knew, way long. If rates kept rising, Russell’s losses would continue to pile up as well. It was that frighteningly simple. “Hedge yourself.” They sat so close together Jack couldn’t help but overhear how Russell had positioned his portfolio during the last month. There were no secrets on a trading floor. “You have to.” Plus, Russell had one of those inescapable, obnoxious, foghorn voices. “You can’t risk losing any more.”

“My father wasn’t CEO of this place for thirty fucking years,” Russell snapped. “I can’t just eat twenty-seven million bucks in losses. The hell with a bonus, I’ll be fired tomorrow morning when they sort through this shitstorm. I’ve got to let it roll. I’ve got to hope this thing turns around in the next hour. But you,” he said, stabbing the air at Jack, “you don’t have to worry about a thing.”

“Oh, yeah, I do.”

“Your father got you this job. You’re safe even if he is missing. He’s still a legend around here.”

Last December Bill had left the Jensen compound — set in the countryside outside Greenwich, Connecticut — to “get some things at the store.” He’d never returned.

No one had heard anything from him in nine months, and state and federal law enforcement officials assigned to his high-profile disappearance still had no leads as to his whereabouts. People were starting to whisper that he was dead. A few months ago First Manhattan’s board of directors had replaced him as CEO.

“I’m just like you, Russell. I’ve got to make this work every day. No one cuts me any slack because of my last name.” Jack gestured at the phones in front of them. “Stop the bleeding. Make the trades. Don’t be an idiot.”

“Fuck you!” Russell screamed at the top of his lungs. He slammed the bulkhead again, reached into a drawer, grabbed a huge nickel-plated Colt .44 Magnum lying inside, and pointed it at Jack. “I’m done here. And I’m taking you and everyone else I can shoot with me!”