BEVERLY BARTON - Murdock's Last Stand

As Catherine rounded her desk, she extended her hand in greeting. “Mr. Burdett.”

Burdett clasped her hand in his. His cool, slender fingers gripped loosely, his handshake reserved. “I appreciate your seeing me, Ms. Price. I realize that I probably made this matter sound mysterious when I phoned you and for that I do apologize. However, the news I have for you is the kind that should be delivered in person.”

Catherine had no idea what this man would tell her about her father. After all these years, she didn’t really care. Lanny McCroskey had been dead since she was sixteen and hadn’t really been a part of her life even before his death. His military career had sent him to Vietnam when she was a mere child and when he had returned, he’d been a stranger to her and to her mother. Her parents had divorced five years before her father’s mysterious death in Zaraza and during those five years, she hadn’t seen her father once.

“Won’t you sit down.” Catherine waved her hand in a well-mannered invitation.

“Thanks.”

Burdett waited for her to return to her tufted-leather chair behind her antique oak desk before he sat.

“Now, what is this information you have about my father that prompted you to fly to Tennessee to tell me in person.”

“Have you been watching the televised reports on the war in Zaraza lately?”

“Not really. I don’t watch much television. I prefer to spend my leisure hours reading.”

“Then let me bring you up to date on what’s going on there.”

“Is that really necessary?” Catherine glanced at her diamond-studded gold watch. Whatever this man had to tell her, she hoped he’d make it quick. She had a busy day ahead of her and she hated the thought of wasting time listening to some old war story about her father.

“Ms. Price, what if I told you that your father didn’t die in Zaraza twenty years ago?”

“What?” A nervous unease fluttered in her stomach.

“We have reason to believe that Lanny McCroskey was taken alive by the Zarazaian government and has spent the past twenty years in prison there.”

Catherine laid her tightly balled fists on top of her desk. She had understood Mr. Burdett’s words, but her mind refused to accept their meaning. “What makes you think that my father is a prisoner in Zaraza?”

“We received a letter—” Burdett reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a tattered envelope “—from General Ramos, the Zarazaian dictator.” Burdett held out the missive toward Catherine.

She stared at the envelope. She didn’t want to touch it. Didn’t want to become involved in whatever game this man was playing. Her father had died twenty years ago. The U.S. government had officially informed her mother of that fact.

“I don’t believe my father is alive and I have no intention of sitting here listening to any wild stories you’ve fabricated about—”

“Lanny McCroskey is alive!” Burdett lifted a photograph from the envelope. “He’s twenty years older and looks like hell, but I recognize the man in this picture. It’s your father, Ms. Price.” He laid the six-by-four-inch color snapshot on her desk.

Catherine fought the urge to swipe the picture off into the trash. But despite her doubts that it was possible for her father to still be alive, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from leaning forward slightly and glancing quickly at the photograph. Her heart caught in her throat as she looked at the vaguely familiar face. Without hesitation, she snatched the snapshot from her desk and lifted it for closer inspection.

The man’s hair was gray, as was his beard and mustache. He was thin, haggard, weary. Slumped shoulders. Hollow eyes. An aura of defeat surrounded him. This was an old man. A pathetic old man. This wasn’t the Lanny McCroskey she remembered. Big, robust, intimidating. Gone was the tanned skin and black hair. Gone was the virile, almost swaggering persona that had been a part of her army sergeant father. But the eyes were the same. A pure sky blue. Despite the misery she saw in his expression, she couldn’t mistake the resemblance between her own eyes and those that stared back at her from the photograph she held in her trembling hand.

“My God!” She clutched the picture with both hands, then brought it upward to cover her mouth with it as she closed her eyes. Tears lodged in her throat.

Burdett stood abruptly. “General Ramos is asking $100,000 in exchange for Lanny’s release.”

Catherine’s eyelids flew open. “What—what did you say?”

“It seems General Ramos is well aware that his dictatorship is nearing its end, so he’s selling his foreign prisoners back to their families for as much cash as possible. The asking price for Lanny’s freedom is $100,000 in U.S. currency.” Burdett offered Catherine the letter once again.

“Officially, we—the U.S. government—can’t become involved. But unofficially, I want to help you and am willing to put up part of the money, if—”

“I have the money,” Catherine said, her voice a mere whisper. “I can give you a check today.”

“I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple.” Burdett frowned, wrinkling his brow and deepening the lines around his mouth. “If you’ll read the letter, you’ll see that, in Lanny’s case, General Ramos is demanding that you deliver the money in person to the capital city of San Carlos. This holds true for all the political prisoners the governor is selling. By extorting money from individuals and not governments, he stands a better chance of finding a government that will give him asylum when he flees Zaraza.”

Catherine grabbed the letter from Burdett, unfolded the wrinkled page and scanned the message hurriedly. The conditions of the exchange were spelled out quite succinctly. No room for doubt. One hundred thousand dollars, U.S. currency, hand delivered by Lanny’s daughter, Catherine McCroskey Price, directly into General Ramos’s hands.

“I’ll provide the money, Mr. Burdett, but I will not take the money to Zaraza.” Lanny McCroskey was her father, she reminded herself, and she’d never miss the hundred thousand, which was only a pittance in comparison to the ten million Rodney had left her. But she didn’t really owe her father anything. And she certainly wasn’t ready to risk her life entering a South American country embroiled in a twenty-year civil war. “Surely you can send a female agent into Zaraza. Someone who can pose as Lanny’s daughter.”

“Ms. Price, if General Ramos knows you exist, knows your name, then our guess is he has a way to identify you. Perhaps recent pictures of you.”

Catherine shuddered. The thought that some stranger working for the Zarazaian government might have snapped her picture without her being aware of it both frightened and outraged her.

“Are you saying that the only way I can save my father is by actually going to Zaraza?”

“Yes, I’m afraid that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Burdett told her. “Of course, it’s your call, Ms. Price. We can’t force you to rescue your father. However, if you decide to go, I can guarantee you a professional bodyguard to accompany you on the trip.”

“A professional. Do you mean a government agent?”

“No. As I told you, the government can’t become involved in this.” Burdett cleared his throat. “The man I have in mind has worked for Dundee Private Security and Investigation for over a year now, but before that he was one of the best mercenaries around. If anyone can get you in and out of Zaraza safe and sound, it’s Murdock.”

“Murdock? Aloysius Murdock?” Catherine asked.

A hint of a smile curved Burdett’s lips. “No one calls him Aloysius and lives.”

“This Murdock was in Vietnam with my father, wasn’t he? And he was in Zaraza with him twenty years ago, too! I vaguely remember my mother mentioning once that Mr. Murdock paid her a visit after my father was killed.”

“Will you go to San Carlos and deliver the money to General Ramos?” Burdett asked. “Remember, you’ll have Murdock at your side the whole time.”

“If Mr. Murdock is a contemporary of my father, then he must be at least in his early sixties. Do you honestly think he’s physically capable of—”

“Murdock’s forty-six. He was just a green kid in Nam, not a career soldier like your dad. And believe me, I doubt any man half his age is in as good a shape as Murdock. Take my word for it, he’s a man of steel.”

The last thing on earth Catherine wanted to do was travel to a third world, war-torn country to rescue the father who had deserted her and her mother long before he’d been reported killed. Why should she risk her life for a man who’d walked out on her without a backward glance? Christmas and birthday presents didn’t really count as far as she was concerned. The fact that he’d sent gifts up until he’d supposedly died in Zaraza hardly made up for his absence.

“I can withdraw the money from my bank this afternoon,” Catherine heard herself saying, despite her uncertainty. “When can you arrange for me to meet Mr. Murdock?”

Dinner had been on the Dundee Agency tonight. Once a year, Sam Dundee dragged himself away from Le Bijou Bleu, his island retreat in the Gulf Coast, to come to Atlanta and inspect the troops. Or, at least, that was the way Murdock thought of the big boss’s visit. The rest of the time, Ellen Denby, Dundee’s CEO, was in charge. Ellen had been the one who had hired Murdock, as well as most of the other current employees, and she was the one who made the decisions. But Sam still owned the agency, despite his retirement several years ago.

A private room at Peaches, a local downtown Atlanta bar and grill, had hosted the crème de la crème of private security agents. Murdock glanced around the table as Sam handed his credit card to the waitress. Over a year ago, after deciding he was getting too old for a life of constant danger, Murdock had retired from his career as a soldier of fortune and come to work for Dundee. The men congregated here tonight were cut from the same cloth as he. Former mercenaries, special forces members, lawmen and government agents. And not a guy under thirty-five in the bunch.

One man—Egan Cassidy—was Murdock’s age and a former Nam vet. Their paths had crossed more than once in the years they’d both been mercenaries. The youngest of the bunch was Joe Ornelas, a former Navajo policeman who had just turned thirty-five.

Murdock had a passing acquaintance with all the Dundee employees, but Cassidy, Ornelas and four others were men whose expertise Murdock knew firsthand and for whom he had the greatest respect. Matt O’Brien, a pretty boy with a mind like a computer. Hunter White-law, the silent, deadly type. Jack Parker, a deceptive charmer. And David Wolfe, a mystery man, who’d been hired personally by Sam Dundee.

And of course, there was Ellen, who was an enigma. Ultra feminine. Beautiful face. Built like a brick out-house. Yet tough, shrewd and a match for any man.

When Jack proposed a final toast, this one to the lovely Ellen, Murdock lifted his beer mug and joined in the good-natured fun. Despite her knockout good looks, Ellen fit in with the crowd of macho men as if she were one of them. She could outdrink, outcuss and outsmart every last one of them and they all knew it.

Murdock had learned about Dundee’s from an old buddy, Gabriel Hawk, who had once been a freelance CIA operative and with whom Murdock had occasionally worked on assignments, especially in the Caribbean and Central and South America. He and Hawk spoke Spanish like natives.

Hawk had left the agency after marrying his last assignment, a former missionary who had tamed one of the baddest of the bad boys when she landed Hawk. Murdock never thought he’d live to see the day a woman would be able to wrap Hawk around her little finger. He’d been wrong.