In the Company of Killers Bryan Christy (good books to read for beginners .txt) 📖

on his web belt. “Touch anything you like, Mr. Klay. Be my guest.” He pointed to a pair of computers and said, “Hurry up with those!”

“Yes, General.”

Klay returned to Hungry. She was still on her hands and knees beside Sehlalo’s body, holding the dead man’s hand, weeping. Blood covered Sehlalo’s face and chest. Hungry was red with it now. It covered her hands and her blouse. It was in her pearls. Klay gently laid Tenchant’s blue windbreaker over Sehlalo’s boots. “Hungry,” he whispered, lifting the jacket to show her what he wanted to do. She gave him some room. He pulled the jacket like a blanket over Sehlalo’s lower body and felt an ankle holster.

“Gen-er-al!” a voice called.

It was a familiar voice, and yet not familiar. Everyone stopped and looked toward the bathroom. Tenchant emerged from the hallway shirtless, a hand on his belly, the other carrying a pistol. Strips of T-shirt were tied around his abdomen to staunch his bleeding. Blood dripped from the bottom of his pant leg over his boot.

“General Visser. Take your men out!” Tenchant ordered.

“But—”

Tenchant waved the pistol. “Out, General! All of you!”

Visser hesitated, then nodded to his people. Garbage bags dropped and hard drives got one last kick toward a pile in the room’s center.

“Close the door behind you,” Tenchant said.

The general glanced at Klay. “We still have work to do here.”

“Close the door, General,” Tenchant said.

The mercenary pulled the steel door closed behind him with his eyes on Klay. Tenchant hobbled across the room and pressed the lock button. Klay heard the low hiss of the door’s steel bolts slide into place.

Tenchant turned and wiped his face with the back of his weapon hand. “You should really hear yourself sometimes.” He impersonated Klay: “‘Don’t worry, Tench. I never leave a man behind.’” He snorted. “And that ‘who’ obsession. You said it to me my first day, you know. You said it on three stories we worked together, and then you said it again on the plane over here like it was the first time.” Tenchant spat onto the floor and mocked Klay again: “‘There’s always a who.’

“Well”—Tenchant spread his arms wide—“HERE I AM!”

Tattoos raged over Tenchant’s upper body. A large sun on each pectoral. A double lightning bolt on his right shoulder, a Celtic cross on his left. His makeshift bandage did not hold. The bullet hole in his abdomen burped blood.

“You kill me. Just the fucking arrogance you bring to it, you know? And the whispering . . .” He mocked Klay’s low growl: “‘Back in a minute, Tench.’ Making me lean in to hear every goddamn word. Well, now’s your moment. You want me to tell her? Or you want to fucking mumble it?”

Hungry, holding Sehlalo’s hand, looked at Tenchant.

“He’s CIA, honey,” Tenchant said. “Always has been.”

Hungry shut her eyes and took a steeling breath.

“This is your mess, Klay. I tried to avoid it. I called you on your phone. Over and over. Tried to get you back here. I had them distracted looking for fucking addresses. You could have kept them going.” Tenchant pulled a desk chair to the middle of the room and sat down. “But you couldn’t be bothered. Miss Edna got hungry, wanted to go out. I asked her to wait, reminded her of her daughter’s wedding. But no. The fat bitch had to get her cupcake on. Asked what I was doing.”

Hungry glared at him. “She knew you were hacking us.”

“That right?” Tenchant seemed to consider that, then nodded at Sehlalo’s body. “I should’ve gone for the greatest risk first, but Julius was right-handed, and he was holding a coffee cup.” He grimaced. “He was faster than I expected.” He coughed and turned to Klay. “You weren’t supposed to get anywhere, but then, well . . .” He pointed his weapon at Hungry. “You got inside the very special prosecutor.”

“Let her go,” Klay said.

“Unnecessary. All of this,” Tenchant continued. He pointed to a red and black thumb drive lying on the floor. “I got a virus into their computer system anyway. Everything’s destroyed.” He coughed again. “They’ll paper this up. ‘We regret to inform you . . . Assailant or assailants unknown . . .’ You take on corruption in this country, it could be anybody at all.”

Tenchant stood up, raised his weapon, and pointed it at Hungry. “He killed you, not me.”

Klay drew Sehlalo’s ankle pistol, surprising Tenchant. Their two shots sounded almost as one.

The revolver bucked in Klay’s hand, but he did not vary his aim. On the fourth shot, Tenchant went down. Klay crossed the room and kicked the gun away. He turned and saw that Hungry had been shot. “Hungry!”

Hungry ignored her wound. She picked up Sehlalo’s mobile phone and dialed. “You are going to prison,” she spat.

THE NEW ORANGE

Warden’s Office,

Kgosi Mampuru II Management Area

Pretoria, South Africa

Ras Botha leaned forward and tapped a blue visitor’s card on the conference table.

“I hear you had some trouble,” he said.

Klay did not respond. He wore an orange prisoner’s uniform. The knuckles on his right hand showed angry red bottle caps where skin used to be. He was being housed in a communal cell with fourteen other prisoners, not all of them welcoming.

Botha was dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, open-collared white shirt, and alligator boots that matched his briefcase. He set his briefcase on the table, removed an orange, and rolled it across the table. “You’ll want that now.”

Botha was right. An orange did look different from this side of the table. Still, Klay didn’t touch it. Hungry was gone. He had no idea where. Officers loyal to her had surrounded the building and ordered the general and his men to surrender. The general’s men were private contractors, paid to fight but not to die. Hungry’s people loaded them and the photographer into white vans and disappeared. The team’s medic had hardly bandaged Hungry’s shoulder when she was on her feet again, issuing orders to secure the crime scene and gather up her team’s documents and computers. Once the work was