Free Whistleblower and Never Say Die by Tess Gerritsen Page A

smells. Even the whomp of the mortar rounds. But Saigon’s changed. The spirit’s flown out of it. The funny part is, this hotel looks exactly the same. I used to stand at this very bar and hear your generals whisper to each other, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ I don’t think they ever quite figured it out.” He laughed and took another gulp of Scotch. “Memphis. Why would she want to go to Memphis?”
    He was muttering to himself now, some private monologue about women causing all the world’s miseries. An opinion with which Guy could almost agree. All he had to do was think about his own miserable love life and he, too, would get the sudden, blinding urge to get thoroughly soused.
    Women. All the same. Yet, somehow, all different.
    He thought about Willy Maitland. She talked tough, but he could tell it was an act, that there was something soft, something vulnerable beneath that hard-as-nails surface. Hell, she was just a kid trying to live up to her old man’s name, pretending she didn’t need a man when she did. He had to admire her for that: her pride.
    She was smart to turn down his offer. He wasn’t sure he had the stomach to go through with it anyway. Let the Ariel Group tighten his noose. He’d lived with his skeletons long enough; maybe it was time to let them out of the closet.
    I should just do my job, he thought. Go to Hanoi, pick up a few dead soldiers, fly them home.
    And forget about Willy Maitland.
    Then again…
    He ordered another beer. Drank it while the debate raged on in his head. Thought about all the ways he could help her, about how much she needed someone’s help. Considered doing it not because he was being forced into it, but because he wanted to. Out of the goodness of my heart? Now that was a new concept. No, he’d never been a Boy Scout. Something about those uniforms, about all that earnest goodliness and godliness, had struck him as faintly ridiculous. But here he was, Boy Scout Barnard, ready to offer his services, no strings attached.
    Well, maybe a few strings. He couldn’t help fantasizing about the possibilities. He thought of how it would be,taking her up to his room. Undressing her. Feeling her yield beneath him. He swallowed hard and reached automatically for the Heineken.
    “No doubt about it,” Hamilton muttered. “I tell you, it’s all their fault.”
    “Hmm?” Guy turned. “Whose fault?”
    “Women, of course. They cause more trouble than they’re worth.”
    “You said it, pal.” Guy sighed and lifted the beer to his lips. “You said it.”
     
    Men. They cause more trouble than they’re worth, Willy thought as she viciously wound her alarm clock.
    A bounty hunter. She should have guessed. Warning bells should have gone off in her head the minute he so generously offered his help. Help. What a laugh. She thought of all the solicitation letters she and her mother had received, all the mercenary groups who’d offered, for a few thousand dollars, to provide just such worthless help. There’d been the MIA Search Fund, the Men Alive Committee, Operation Chestnut—Let’s Pull ’em Out Of The Fire! had been their revolting slogan. How many grieving families had invested their hopes and savings on such futile dreams?
    She stripped down to a tank top and flopped onto the bed. A decent night’s sleep, she could tell, was another futile dream. The mattress was lumpy, and the pillow seemed to be stuffed with concrete. Not that it mattered. How could she get any rest with that damned disco music vibrating through the walls? At 8:00 the first driving drumbeats had announced the opening of Dance Night at the Rex Hotel. Lord, she thought, what good is communism if it can’t even stamp out disco?
    It occurred to her that, at that very minute, Guy Barnard was probably loitering downstairs in that dance hall, checking out the action. Sometimes she thought that was the real reason men started wars—it was an excuse to run away from home and check out the