Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

"I will take you to the pier. You can get out without help?"

"Yes."

"And then I will go beyond the floodlights, which, if they don't come on as we approach the pier, will do so as soon as you step on the pier. There are motion sensors."

"Okay."

"There is a guard shack, usually only one man, at the shore end of the pier."

Castillo said, "Thank you," instead of what started to come to his lips: "I know. This is not my first visit to 'Karinhall.'"

The man moved on hands and knees to the forward compartment and dropped into it. Castillo both heard and felt the chunk as the man engaged the transmission and the propeller began to spin.

Thirty seconds later, the engine revved and Castillo sensed the speedboat going up on the step. Ten seconds after that, he got a face full of spray. Max went down on the floorboards next to the puppy. Castillo sought what refuge he could behind the windshield.

The speedboat slowed and almost stopped as suddenly as it had accelerated twenty minutes before.

Castillo raised his head above the windshield and saw in the faint light that they were very close to a pier. He grabbed the puppy from the floorboard by the loose skin above its neck and stood up on the leather seat.

The man driving the boat skillfully put the stern against the pier and held it there long enough for Castillo to jump out of the boat. The moment Max leapt onto the pier, the engine revved and the boat headed back out on the lake.

Castillo had just enough time to change his grip on the squealing puppy when floodlights came on, blinding him.

It took perhaps twenty seconds for his eyes to adjust enough for him to see down the pier.

Twenty yards away a man came warily, in a half-crouch, down the pier toward him. He held an Uzi. Max was halfway between them; his hair bristled, and he was growling deeply.

The man cocked the Uzi.

"If you shoot the dog," Castillo called in Spanish, "you will die!"

He repeated the same threat in Russian and then a third time in Hungarian.

"Lower the gun!" a voice from farther away called, loudly and authoritatively, in Hungarian.

Castillo could now see the second man, who also had an Uzi.

"Hey, Janos," Castillo called in Hungarian to Aleksandr Pevsner's bodyguard. "What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?"

And then, as Janos kept advancing toward them, Castillo ordered in Hungarian, "No, Max! Sit!"

Max sat, but Castillo could hear him growling still.

Janos looked around the pier.

"You are alone?" Janos asked, then without waiting for a reply: "You didn't bring the redheaded woman?"

"Do you see her, Janos?"

"He does not expect you," Janos said, then corrected himself: "He did not expect to see you."

"Well, he knows as well as I do that life is full of surprises," Castillo said.

Janos gestured for him to walk down the pier. Halfway to the shore, the floodlights died and were replaced with small lights illuminating the pier and a path beyond.

"You are well now, Colonel?" Janos asked softly.

"It hurts me a little to sit down," Castillo said honestly. "The leg's okay."