The Taste of Fear (A Suspense Action Thriller & Mystery Novel) Read online

  “We’re lucky with the weather,” Cooper told them as he unloaded the balloon equipment from the bed of the pickup. “Meteorological conditions are lovely after a storm. Visibility and wind speed, perfect. Kit will follow us on the ground so we can pack everything back up when we land.”

  With everyone lending a hand, the balloon assembly went quickly. They stretched the rip-stop nylon envelope on the ground, attached it to the wicker basket with special carbines, then hooked up the burner to liquid petroleum gas cylinders with intake hoses. A petro-powered ventilator blew cold air into the envelope. Cooper fired a burner to heat the air, which expanded, becoming less dense than the ambient air. The envelope plumped up. When there was sufficient lift, Sal, Scarlett, and Cooper hopped into the basket. The tear-shaped balloon rose from the ground. Below, Kitoi untied the anchor rope that was attached to the Hilux’s bull bar, and Sal reeled it in.

  Up and up they went until Cooper pulled a chord to open the parachute valve at the crown of the envelope. Hot air escaped, the ascent halted, and they began to drift horizontally. Scarlett remained holding tightly to Sal’s arm, half expecting to hear a loud pop, and for the balloon to zigzag wildly through the sky before crashing back to earth. That never happened, of course, and slowly her fear ebbed. To her surprise, she realized there was no wind because they were moving with the wind. She finally let go of Sal’s arm, baby-stepped over to the high wicker rail, and peered down. She swallowed back a shot of vertigo. The savanna unfurled beneath them in every direction for as far as she could see, the scattered trees appearing in miniature.

  Cooper told them the word “Serengeti” came from the Masai word “siring” which meant “endless plains.” He pointed to a golden tawny eagle wheeling through the sky, and later, a swirl of dark specs in the distance that he said were vultures circling a potential meal.

  Then a long black line materialized on the horizon. As they sailed closer, the line became a thick column several miles long. Eventually it resolved into an army of wildebeest hundreds of thousands strong. Their bodies, tiny from so high up, coated the ground like a colossal oil spill. Scarlett had never seen anything quite like it before.

  “Incredible,” she breathed.

  “They live in greater concentrations than any other animals on this planet—well, except for us, that is.” Cooper opened the parachute valve again, causing the balloon to descend. After fifty feet or so, he released the cord and fired a silent flame. “Whisper burner,” he told them. “So we won’t scare the beasties.”

  From the lower altitude Scarlett could make out the wildebeests’ long, boxy faces, curved horns, and unruly manes. Their upper bodies were well-muscled, but their hindquarters were slender, the legs spindly, giving them the appearance of being top-heavy. They were making a low, ceaseless bleating, which sounded like a football stadium full of croaking frogs. Burchells zebras were scattered throughout the herd at a count of about one to ten. Scarlett thought they were the ones making the yelping bark.

  “Where do they all come from?” she asked.

  Cooper gestured vaguely to the north. “From the permanent waters on Kenya’s Masai Mara Game Reserve. They come down here during the rainy season because of the abundance of lush grass. In February they’ll give birth to almost a half-million calves within a three-week period, right around here.”

  “The calves would be sitting ducks.”

  “It’s simple mathematics. They’re easy prey, yes. But there’s only so much a predator can eat in such a short timeframe. It’s nature’s version of a buffet.” He slapped his solid belly. “Stuff yourself now, but you’re not allowed to take any home.”

  A harsh ringtone trilled.

  Scarlett frowned.

  Another ring.

  She zeroed in on Sal. Before she could ask why he’d brought his phone with him, he stepped away to the far side of the basket, turned his back to her, and answered the call.

  Fitzgerald stood atop the large kopje, watching the hot air balloon drift slowly away until it was nothing more than a dot in the rapidly clearing sky. Below, speeding across the African veldt, the pickup truck followed the balloon’s progress. Then both balloon and truck disappeared from sight. He started down the steep-sided rocky hill toward the safari camp. What he had planned wouldn’t take a minute.

  “It’s me,” Danny said. “I’m with our guy.”

  Sal’s blood boiled at the mention of the man who’d tried to kill him. The fact that this particular man was rich and powerful himself, revered as a god in parts of Asia, made the attempted assassination only slightly less insulting.

  “Put him on,” he said.

  Raspy breathing sounded on the other end of the line.

  “Hello, Don,” Sal said.

  Silence.

  “I want a name.”

  More silence.

  “Danny!”

  Seconds later: “I’m here.”

  “I told you I wanted him in a talking mood.”

  A few muffled words followed. What sounded like a sob.

  “Yao Wang,” Don Xi said weakly.

  “Who is he?” Sal demanded.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You hired him.”

  “I never met him. That’s not how it works.”

  Sal cursed under his breath. But at least he had a name. “Is he going to try something again?”

  “No.”

  “Give me Danny.”

  “Yeah, capo?”

  “You heard all that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is he lying?”

  “I don’t know. He’s a tough old nut. Wouldn’t talk until I mentioned his boy.”

  “Tell him—” Sal lowered his voice. “Tell him that if we find out he’s lying, we’re going to…” He trailed off meaningfully. “Tell him now. Then put him back on.”

  Another muffled exchange. Sal glanced back over his shoulder. Cooper and Scarlett were both staring straight ahead, ostentatiously not listening.

  “Please,” Don Xi said. His voice was still weak, but it was as clear as it had been yet. “Let my son be. Have honor.”

  Honor? Sal thought. Where’s the honor in trying to roast someone while they slept? “You sure there’s nothing more you want to tell me about Yao Wang, Don? You heard what Danny said.”

  No reply.

  “Don?”

  A papery sigh. “There is another.”

  Sal’s hand tightened around the phone. He knew it! Goddamn Chinese were as double-faced as a two-headed dragon. “Keep talking, man,” he said.

  “An Irishman. His name is Redstone. That’s all I know.”

  Another bloody assassin.

  “You stupid old man. Danny!”

  “Yeah, capo?”

  “Find out everything you can on this Redstone. Everything. I’ll call you later.” He punched End, then turned back around.

  Cooper raised a bushy eyebrow. “You run a tight ship, captain.”

  Sal grunted and rejoined Scarlett at the basket rim. “Did I miss anything?”

  “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Not now, Sal.” She moved to the other side of the basket.

  He frowned. He’d chosen his words to Danny carefully. She couldn’t have gathered much from the snippets of conversation she’d overheard. Nevertheless, he shrugged the concern aside. It wasn’t important right then. What was important was what he’d learned.

  There is another… An Irishman. His name is Redstone.

  Sal said to Cooper, “This thing’s safe, right?”

  “The balloon?”

  “It can’t somehow catch fire or anything?”

  “The skirt’s made of Nomex. Completely fire retardant.”

  “What about these things?” He kicked a propane tank. “Stable?”

  “I’ve never known one to blow up, if that’s what you mean.”

  Sal noticed Scarlett shift her weight from one foot to the other nervously, as if she w
ere suddenly uncomfortable to be hanging out in the sky in a basket. She knew what he was getting at. But she’d already taken her stand. She was mad at him, didn’t want to talk to him. Wouldn’t break that silence, even now, even when she thought they might be in danger.

  Cooper fired the burner in a continuous stream, explaining that they had to clear the herd so they could land and so Kit could meet up with them. As the balloon floated upward, the wildebeest once more dissolved into a dark splash on the earth. At five hundred feet they caught an eastwardly wind and changed course.

  Sal’s thoughts returned to Don Xi. He hadn’t sounded very well on the phone. In fact, he’d sounded as though he was holding onto life by a thread. Sal felt no remorse. And where the offence is, let the great ax fall. He didn’t know which work of Shakespeare that was from—he’d never been a big Shakespeare guy; life was too short, time too precious, to be reading four-hundred-year-old texts—but he knew that particular verse because his Uncle Frank had told it to him. It was a family motto of sorts.

  Sal’s great-great grandfather, Rocco, had been part of the original Mafia, or what eventually became known as the Mafia, which arose in the chaotic years after Italy annexed Sicily in the 1860s. By the turn of the century Rocco had become capo of the largest and most influential family in Palermo. When Mussolini tried to wipe out the Mafia and their political allies, Rocco and his wife and son fled to New York City, where he got right back in the protection/racket game.

  When the Castellammarese War ended in 1931, and the new boss of bosses created the Five Families of New York, Rocco’s son, Bernardo, was made boss of the Monrealesi family. Soon after “Beautiful Bernie”—a nickname he got when a gangster from a rival family dunked his head into a fish tank alongside a housecat with very sharp claws—was murdered thirty years later in his Park Avenue office, his son, Frank, was installed in the vacant post. “Crazy Frank”—whose nickname was self-explanatory—was a shrewd businessman, and before anyone else was doing it he staked out major interests in a casino in Havana, Cuba, and the Riviera in Vegas. Skimming the winnings became the family’s most lucrative business. But then everything changed in the seventies. Hippies and free love cut into strip club profits. Off-track betting picked up, taking a chunk out of the bookkeeping operation. And the Feds finally started cracking down on organized crime. To top it all off, big business was moving into Vegas, squeezing the gangsters out. So by the mid-eighties Frank was running a pretty clean shop: waste disposal, restaurants and bars, vending machines, trucking.

  During this time Sal had just graduated from college and was working in his father’s restaurant. When Frank came by for dinner one night, and mentioned he was looking for a bookkeeper for The Cleopatra, his Atlantic City casino, Sal jumped at the opportunity. After several dull months of analyzing the gaming revenue journal entries, Sal pitched Frank a plan that involved leasing slot machines to third parties, issuing mortgage bonds, and using equity financing to free up capital to reinvest in the casino and improve profit margins. A gambler by nature, Frank went with the suggestions.

  Two years later The Cleo’s revenue was up forty-four percent while room occupancy had rocketed from sixty-three to ninety-five percent. Sal was promoted to vice president of finance. Over the next ten years he championed a string of successes, which included securing a seventy million dollar long-term mortgage investment from a life insurance giant, the first deal of its kind in the country, to build the largest and glitziest casino in Atlantic City.

  Following this, Sal was the driving force behind the creation of the luxury management company Star International, which put up five-star resorts in Mexico, the Bahamas, and Jamaica. In the summer of ’95, after the president and CEO of Star suffered a stroke on the seventh hole of Poipu Bay Golf Course in Kauai, Frank, who was chairman of the board, nominated Sal for the top position. The vote was unanimous. At thirty-three years old Sal became the youngest CEO of any company to earn a ranking on Fortune 500 that year.

  Then disaster struck. Police found Frank’s mutilated body in a dumpster in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Sal interviewed nearly fifty ex-soldiers before settling on Danny Zamir as his “security advisor.” Danny tracked down Frank’s killer, a Columbia Law student named Giuseppe Adamo who was the son of a gangster Frank had knocked off back in the early eighties. Danny took Sal to a ramshackle building on the Lower West Side where the punk was being held. The room smelled like a monkey house. Adamo was lying on the floor, dehydrated and emaciated, surrounded by his own excrement. Sal rolled him over so he could look him in the eyes. Then he left, to let Danny do what he had to do.

  Sal kept Danny around as his security chief, but he never again used him for anything resembling the Adamo thing. Until now, that is. Because Don Xi had tried to kill him, and that was simply something he couldn’t forgive and forget.

  Rocco, Beautiful Bernie, and Crazy Frank would have all concurred.

  “We’ll land over there,” Cooper announced suddenly.

  He told Kitoi their coordinates over the radio, then pulled the chord that opened the parachute valve. He remained holding it as the balloon sunk through the air. They came at the ground surprisingly fast, but Cooper bounced the basket across the flat savanna like a stone skipping water until they slowed to a gentle rest.

  “Try that in a herd of wildebeest and see what happens,” he bellowed. “Lo! There’s our ride.”

  Sal followed Cooper’s finger and spotted the Hilux angling toward them from the southwest, shooting up a contrail of dust. When the truck arrived two minutes later, they packed up the balloon and loaded it into the flatbed.

  Sal and Scarlett didn’t say a word to each other during the long trip back to camp.

  CHAPTER 11

  Wednesday, December 25, 6:38 p.m.

  Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

  “You can leave us now,” Qasim said to his wife in Arabic.

  Raja, dressed in a colorful hijab, picked up an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts and went inside. Jahja did not know what her body looked like beneath the long garment, but she had a beautiful face. He had thought that for as long as he had known her, though he had never told Qasim this, of course. As a devout Muslim he shouldn’t have had such thoughts about his brother’s wife. Yet he was a man, and men had thoughts like that, regardless of how strong their faith was.

  Jahja and Qasim were sitting on the second-floor veranda of Qasim’s house in the Kinondoni District of Dar es Salaam. It was not a bad neighborhood, but it was not a good one either. To the east, Jahja could see the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean; to the north and west, the sprawling buildings of the city. Across the street, on the corner, was a branch of the American Subway restaurant chain. Two men stood outside it, laughing loudly.

  “Tell me, brother,” Qasim said. “How is Hana?”

  “She is good.”

  “And Sara?”

  “She is also good.”

  “She believes you are in Germany again?”

  Jahja nodded. He was a salesman for a German pharmaceutical company. In the past he had often traveled for business to visit clients. Those trips had ceased after he was burned. The sales director had never told him the burns were the reason for keeping him at the London office, hidden away, out of sight. But a lot of people no longer told him what they were really thinking. Regardless, the decline in business travel coincided with an increase in personal travel, most of which was to come here, to Dar, to visit his brother and his associates.

  Sara was never the wiser.

  “You will see her again,” Qasim said.

  “Do you believe that?”

  “If Allah wishes it, yes.” He stabbed out another cigarette in a fresh ashtray. “You are not having second thoughts, are you, brother?”

  For a moment images of London—the good times in London—flashed through Jahja’s mind. His wedding at Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire, the birth of Hana at St. Bartholomew’s, Hana’s first steps at their South Bank flat. Then, as always, those
images vanished as quickly as they had come, replaced by scenes from the day his life changed forever.

  He had been in Algeria, visiting his parents in his ancestral town of Tamanrasset. They had all been at Friday evening service at the mosque he had attended since he was a child. He and his father were in the main hall, a barren room devoid of furniture, statues, and pictures; Islam did not condone any form of representation of Allah. Sara, Hana, and his mother were with the rest of the woman in a separate area closed off with panels of fabric. Everybody, however, was faced toward the niche in the wall that denoted the direction of Mecca. They were reciting the first chapter of the Qur’an when there was a thunderous explosion and the high ceiling blew inward. Jahja was knocked unconscious. He woke up in a hospital sometime later, where he received news that his father had perished—and where he saw himself in a mirror for the first time after the bandages were removed.

  Multiple Arab-speaking television networks reported that the destruction was the result of a stray American cruise missile. They cited twenty-three dead and forty-seven injured. Jahja knew this to be the truth because he knew many of the victims personally. The Pentagon and US mainstream corporate media dismissed this reality with “the claims of civilian casualties could not be independently verified.”

  An all too familiar rage churned inside Jahja.

  “No,” he told his brother. “I am not having second thoughts.”

  “Come then,” Qasim said, standing. “Let me show you what you have no doubt been waiting to see.”

  They went downstairs to the attached garage where two white vans were parked side by side. Both were several years old and slightly beat up. Qasim handed Jahja a set of keys and pointed to the van on the left. Jahja unlocked and opened the tailgate doors. The entire cargo body was packed with oxygen and acetylene tanks, bags of aluminum nitrate and ammonium nitrate fertilizer, and truck batteries. Nestled in the center of it all was a small detonation device. The bomb was nearly identical to the two used to destroy the American embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi exactly ten years ago, which killed 224 people, blinded 150, and injured thousands more.