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Liam says, “Go. If Abdullah comes out, I’ll take care of it. Go.”
He steps back, watches with satisfaction as they get into the minivan. The engine starts, backs up, makes a U-turn, and heads back down the dirt driveway, kicking up a trail of dust.
Liam starts moving and a man calls out, “You!Senor!Stop!”
The man is the same one from before, slim, bearded, long-sleeve black T-shirt and long pants, and thick eyebrows knotted in fury.
Liam holds his hands out. “Hey, I’m just leaving. Have a nice day now!”
He stalks to Liam and takes out a knife from a belt scabbard. The blade is shiny and looks sharp. “What you say, have a nice day? You took away our whores.”
Liam says, “They changed their mind. That’s all. Why don’t you take a walk and cool down?”
Time,he thinks,time.
“Walk?” he yells. “I walk into you!”
Liam holds up his hands—not high up—and says, “Hey, hey, hey—”
The Hezbollah man lunges, Liam spins sideways, and as the knife hand goes by, with his right hand, Liam grabs a shirtsleeve, twists it, and with his left elbow, breaks the man’s nose.
He cries out, falls to his knees, and Liam—still holding tight to the sleeve—hammers the man’s wrist on Liam’s knee.
The knife falls to the dirt.
Liam picks it up.
Shoves it hard up into the terrorist’s left armpit, where the axillary artery is located, and Liam draws it up and out.
The Hezbollah man gasps, tries to speak.
Blood spurts out from the severed artery that supplies blood to the arm and fingers and is now supplying blood to the dirt road.
Liam wipes the knife hilt on the man’s T-shirt, drops it on his chest.
He leans over and whispers, “In a couple of minutes, you’re going to be dead, alone in Venezuela, compliments of the CIA.”
He runs back down to the rocky beach, splashing into the water, pushing the paddleboard out. With fast and hard strokes with the paddle—still sitting down—he gets beyond the swell of the waves, turns, and faces the stone cottage.
“Benjamin, this is Liam. Status?”
Just the sounds of the waterslap-slappingagainst his paddleboard.
“Benjamin, status?”
He peers out to the north. Hazy and hard to see the boats out there.
“Benjamin?”
His voice comes into his earbud. “Liam … we’re a go here.”
“Did that patrol boat come by?”
“Affirmative on that.”
Liam picks up the monocular aiming device. “Damn … everything okay?”
Benjamin says, “Yeah. A twelve-pack of Corona and a hundred-dollar bill made everything all right. They’re off to harass some other poor fisherman. Starting countdown … now. Forty seconds.”
