Painkiller: A Novel

358 Pages·2005·1.29 MB·English

by  Will Staeger

WILL STAEGER
PA I N K I L L E R
FOR NADINE
(the list of reasons runs longer than this book)
Contents
ONE
He couldn’t remember coming here; he didn’t know where he was…
TWO
Six o’clock in the morning and already the phone was ringing…
THREE
A cadaverous man slathered Grecian Formula on his hair and…
FOUR
Cooper was down deep. He’d been under for two minutes…
FIVE
Traveling light, only a single bag strapped over her shoulder…
SIX
Cooper didn’t like to moor his boat in San Juan harbor…
SEVEN
Cooper beheld a cannabis leaf. Made of wood and painted…
EIGHT
Forty miles north of Beijing, an unmarked stretch limousine wound…
NINE
Laramie had chosen a black suit, looking the part on…
TEN
Ronnie bent down along the path, dug for a couple…
ELEVEN
Knowing not a single decent combination of commercial flights existed…
TWELVE
The Chevy’s radio actually worked, Cooper homing in on some…
THIRTEEN
Laramie hit the parking lot in Langley around seven-forty-five…
FOURTEEN
The ’74 Chevy got them up the mountain in eight hours…
FIFTEEN
Cooper showed the mug shot to every visible man, woman…
SIXTEEN
In 1974, at the tail end of the Vietnam War…
SEVENTEEN
Laramie stood in the doorway to Malcolm Rader’s office…
EIGHTEEN
There came the cold sweat—the sheen that chilled his skin…
NINETEEN
One year before the USS Chameleon was sunk by the…
TWENTY
For his first exercise since the long haul up the…
TWENTY-ONE
Peter M. Gates hadn’t joined the Agency to fool around. His…
TWENTY-TWO
The clock in the corner of her monitor told Laramie it…
TWENTY-THREE
“That Laramie?”…
TWENTY-FOUR
One day a nineteen-year-old named Travis Malloy was a private…
TWENTY-FIVE
In the far eastern reaches of the Lesser Antilles lay…
TWENTY-SIX
Deciding he needed a break from the stakeout routine, Cooper…
TWENTY-SEVEN
The next time Jim left to pick up Rhonda for…
TWENTY-EIGHT
Eleven revolutionary leaders stood behind the resort on Mango
Cay…
TWENTY-NINE
Pete, you stay for a bit?”…
THIRTY
When Cooper got back to Conch Bay, the satellite shots…
THIRTY-ONE
Spike Gibson peered through a set of Xenon binoculars from…
THIRTY-TWO
Dottie, the blonde waitress, was taking dinner orders from the…
THIRTY-THREE
When Cooper’s eyes opened in his bungalow, he did not…
THIRTY-FOUR
He reprimands her in his very office—in the presence…
THIRTY-FIVE
They sent a woman. That, she knew, was how they…
THIRTY-SIX
The hardware behind Spike Gibson’s perimeter security system
required so…
THIRTY-SEVEN
When the phone chortled its usual two rings and the…
THIRTY-EIGHT
Admiral Li came down to the poolside lounge and found…
THIRTY-NINE
Stabbing the fish with a barbed hook, the boy held…
FORTY
In the Virgin Gorda marina, Cooper had Worel pull alongside…
FORTY-ONE
Cooper figured out what Ronnie’s smart-ass look was all about…
FORTY-TWO
Once the mainframe’s reboot sequence began for the day, Hiram…
FORTY-THREE
They reached the waters off the western shore of Mango…
FORTY-FOUR
Admiral Li found Spike Gibson in his private gym…
FORTY-FIVE
That was one hell of a strategy,” Laramie said, “that tried-and-true…
FORTY-SIX
When Carlos Muske, the president’s national security advisor, had
Finished…
FORTY-SEVEN
The rotors of the helicopter shot a streaming gust of…
FORTY-EIGHT
Inside the Hampton, Cooper and Laramie were taken to a…
FORTY-NINE
Peter M. Gates had his morning routine nailed. As DDCI, he…
FIFTY
Cooper breathed rhythmically through the regulator. The
breathing apparatus he…
FIFTY-ONE
Crawling down the ladder built into the submarine’s hull, Deng…
FIFTY-TWO
Cooper’s instinct had been to do it the minute he…
FIFTY-THREE
As Gibson’s echoing plea reached her ears, Lana the maid…
FIFTY-FOUR
The splash of water shocked him awake…
FIFTY-FIVE
When Zeke Sampson, captain of the USS Hampton nuclear attack…
FIFTY-SIX
Lana had the accelerator pinned to the floor, allowing her…
FIFTY-SEVEN
When Deng’s twin torpedoes struck the hull of the PX-38 U.S. Navy…
FIFTY-EIGHT
Lana had no need to cock her weapon, nor pull…
FIFTY-NINE
Rusty since her training days at The Farm, Laramie still…
SIXTY
Gibson detected the sound of the shots around the time…
SIXTY-ONE
The pool of blood from Lana’s intestines seeped along the…
SIXTY-TWO
Cooper had always been able to take a punch; back…
SIXTY-THREE
Because of its proximity and the weapons it had on…
SIXTY-FOUR
Once his equipment detected the signal from Cooper’s homing
beacon…
SIXTY-FIVE
Of the fourteen Tridents that were able to clear the…
SIXTY-SIX
Laramie was trying to get oriented. She found she was…
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