Free The Job by Janet Evanovich, Lee Goldberg Page A

detailed briefing when I leave here.”
    “I assume you’re going to assemble a team.”
    “We’re going to recruit Tom, Willie, and Boyd,” she said. “You’ve met them on past operations. Nick also has a tech guy in mind. And we’re going to need you and a couple of your buddies with naval experience. Specifically, a chief engineer to handle everything down below and a boatswain to handle everything on deck. We’ll pay top dollar.”
    He shook his head. “You’ll only have to pay their expenses. The guys I have in mind will do the job just for fun.”
    “They could get killed.”
    “That’s the fun part. And it beats the hell out of dying of boredom.”
    She studied her father. “Is that why you’re helping me? Are you that miserable not being in the field anymore?”
    “Of course not. I love living with Megan, Roger, and the grandkids. It’s the family life I never got to have when you andyour sister were growing up. And when Megan and Roger aren’t around, I get to teach the kids important life skills.”
    “Like how to make explosives out of household cleaning supplies.”
    “They’re way past that now,” he said.
    “They’re five and seven years old.”
    “They’re fast learners. Now we’re working on how to kill a man with whatever you’ve got handy in your sack lunch. Do you remember when you used to practice that?”
    “Yeah, you taught me how to smother a man with a sandwich baggie, and how to shove a straw up his nose into his brain. Those are treasured memories. I think of you every time I eat a sandwich.”
    “A father can’t ask for more than that.”
    “So if you enjoy retirement so much, why leave Tyler and Sara and go off and risk your life with me?”
    “There are still a few things I can teach you,” he said. “For instance, do you know how to make a field battery?”
    “A
what
?”
    “A battery made out of potatoes, copper wire, and a few nails.”
    “Nope,” she said, though she couldn’t imagine a situation where she’d need one.
    “There you go,” he said. “Besides, there’s nobody who is going to watch your back better than me. You know that.”
    “That’s why I’m here.”
    “And that’s why I’m going to be there with you, wherever
there
is, any time you ask and as long as I’m able,” he said. “It’s what fathers do.”
    “Most fathers don’t show up with hand grenades and bowie knives.”
    “They should be ashamed of themselves,” Jake said.

The Caterpillar 797F mining dump truck was twenty-four feet tall, forty-nine feet long, thirty-two feet wide, and rolled on six tires that were each thirteen feet high and five feet wide. The sticker price of a 797F, with cup holders, was $5.5 million. It wasn’t a sporty drive. It was like driving a two-story building, as Wilma “Willie” Owens discovered for herself as she tried to steer the massive vehicle through the barren landscape outside the Black Butte open-pit coal mine. Willie had already flattened a mine supervisor’s unoccupied car like a beer can and was heading straight for an office trailer, sending the lone watchman scrambling out the door in terror.
    Willie might have had an easier time controlling the truck if she’d logged the weeks of training in a simulator that a 797Fdriver is required to do. Instead, she’d put on a pair of skinny jeans, squeezed into a tank top that barely held her double-Ds, and sashayed into the Mint Bar in Sheridan, Wyoming, where the dump truck drivers from the mine hung out. Willie had an insatiable desire and natural ability to drive anything with a motor on land, sea, or air. Problem was, she was entirely self-taught, and almost always unlicensed, which meant there could be a steep, and destructive, learning curve.
    Willie was wandering around her early fifties, but in the dim light of the bar she’d looked twenty years younger, and her bleached blond hair looked pretty darn sexy. The effect was enhanced by the copious amounts of alcohol that