Free Badger Games by Jon A. Jackson Page A

town, out in Southfield. Handy to the airport,” he explained.
    â€œThat’s okay,” Joe said. “I’ll be rich. I can afford a cab. Hell, maybe I’ll buy a new car. In this town, there’s probably a place that’s open all night for car shoppers.”
    The colonel’s car was rented too. But it was a Lincoln. Joe liked that. Among other things, he reasoned that if the colonel was on official business, he’d have an official car. So maybe this was Lucani business. Besides, the car was comfortable.
    On the way, once they’d reached the expressway, the colonel said, “Actually, now that I think of it, Miss Sedlacek could be a useful ally. That’s assuming that she is, as you say, not interested in the rackets.”
    â€œHow’s that?” Joe said, surprised. “You mean, join the group?”
    â€œNot exactly, but maybe as a sort of adjunct member. She’s a Serb, isn’t she?”
    â€œI’m not sure,” Joe said. “I think her mother is, anyway. So what?”
    â€œI’m sorry if I seem obsessed about this business of recovering missing agents,” the colonel said. “But we’ve got another, similar problem. Unrelated to this present business. We had a man in Kosovo. That’s in Serbia.”
    â€œI’ve heard of it,” Joe said. “They’ve had a lot of trouble. A war.”
    â€œYes. Well, this fellow—let’s say his name is Franko—was working on a drug case. There was a pretty brisk trade in hard drugs moving up through Bulgaria, into Kosovo, then out along the coast, and so on. The drugs were not destined for Serbia or Kosovo—they were processed and moved on. I dare say some got siphoned off en route for local sales, but we weren’t concerned with that. It was an official DEA operation, infiltrating, tracking. It wasn’t a Lucani operation, per se, though there were some connections. But then along came the war, and the DEA bailed out. Only Franko was still there. Now it appears he’s not.”
    â€œWhat happened to him?”
    â€œWe’re not sure,” the colonel said. “He was a bit of an odd duck. He may have been arrested in one of the early sweeps by theSerbs, when they were ‘ethnically cleansing’ Kosovo. He may have been posing as an ethnic Albanian; we’re not sure. He could have been executed. They did a lot of that, you know, the Serbs. Especially young able-bodied men. Though, come to that, they weren’t too picky. They shot everybody sometimes.”
    Joe was interested in this story, but he said, “I don’t know anything about Serbia, Colonel. I wouldn’t be much use to you over there.”
    â€œNo, I know you wouldn’t. But Miss Sedlacek—”
    â€œShe doesn’t know anything about the old country, either,” Joe said. “I remember her saying something about that.”
    â€œThe point is, Joe—let me finish—it looks like Franko could have gotten out. We don’t know that for sure, but we’ve had some information. It’s not very reliable. But—”
    â€œIf he got out, you’d know, wouldn’t you? He’d contact you.”
    â€œNot if he’d been turned,” the colonel said. “Or if there were some other circumstances that we don’t know about. If he’s still on the case … it might not be prudent for him to contact us.”
    â€œSo where would he be? Italy? France? I don’t know anything about those places either.”
    â€œYou had a place in Montana, didn’t you?” the colonel asked. “In Butte, or near there? It burned down, I understand.”
    â€œYeah. So what?”
    â€œThere are a lot of Serbs in Butte.”

Deathgrip
    J oe Service was into simplification. The rest of the world, it seemed, was not. His ultimate simplification was this: I am. After that, things got complicated. Lately, even the first