"Ann Maxwell - Risk Unlimited 01 - The Ruby" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maxwell Ann)

There was only one runway within reach, the 6,000-foot private landing strip owned and maintained by Risk Ltd.
Cassandra Redpath’s international security firm.
The cryptic design on the Gulfstream’s fuselage told Cruz that it was a Risk Ltd. plane, which meant that a new
client was on the way. The source of the two-beep summons, no doubt.
After a last regretful look at the crack in the bedrock, Cruz took a drink of water from the canvas Lister bag that was
perched on the edge of the hole. When he was finished, he rubbed the wet bag across his face and chest, cooling
himself.
He picked up his day pack but left the shovel and pick where they were. He had never seen a sign that anyone else
came to the desolate slot canyon, but if they did, and if they needed a pick and shovel, they were welcome to help
themselves. Smaller things than that had made a difference between life and death. Cruz had seen enough death.
He climbed aboard the battered three-wheel ATV and kicked its engine to life. Once he left the jumbled rock floor of
the slot canyon behind, he twisted the throttle hard and headed back across the slope toward Karroo at forty miles an
hour.
And with every bump, Cruz wondered what had gone wrong.
The possibilities were as limitless as they were dangerous. The last time Redpath had beeped Cruz twice, he had
ended up negotiating at gunpoint for the release of an Italian businessman’s son. The boy had survived with no more
than rope burns on his wrists to show for the experience.
Cruz hadn’t been as lucky. He had recovered enough to walk without a limp, but his left knee still ached with every
change in the weather.
When Cruz pulled up to the main house in a cloud of grit, Cassandra Redpath was waiting in the shade of a ramada
she had built with her own hands. The structure was open on all sides to the wind and thatched on top to provide
shade.
Redpath was an unusual woman. She had been so intrigued by the ramada that she had done a short monograph
on the structure’s name. She postulated that the Soboba Indians had adopted the name from the Spanish ramada,
which in turn sprang from Ramadan, Arabic for „the hot month.“ The Spanish had taken the name from the Moors and
then traveled halfway around the world to give it to a prehistoric Indian invention that was both ceremonial and
practical.
Redpath savored those kinds of unlikely historical linkages. They strengthened her conviction that mankind was
connected by language and human need, even as it was separated by politics and greed.
„What’s up?“ Cruz asked as he walked into the rama-da’s ragged shade.
Redpath squinted up at Cruz, who was silhouetted against the burning light of day.
Cruz had no such disadvantage in watching Redpath. The subdued light beneath the ramada revealed a lean,
sun-weathered woman in cotton slacks and shirt, short red hair shot through with gray, and green eyes. Redpath was
in her fifties or early sixties. Cruz had never been sure which, and it hadn’t ever mattered enough to ask.
He knew that Redpath had started out in life as an academic historian, specifically a student of everyday life in
other eras. But she had an unusual turn of mind that allowed her to see patterns in contemporary life that others
missed.
As a result, Redpath had spent thirty years as an analyst and then as a senior executive with the Central
Intelligence Agency. She had resigned from the CIA to become U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. She held the
post for four years. Then she resigned and formed Risk Ltd.
„You’re blocking my view of what’s wrong,“ Redpath said.
Cruz stepped aside, turned, and followed Redpath’s glance. Heat shimmered up off the blacktop runway where the
company Mercedes waited, distorting the shape of the Grumman until it looked like a phantasm from a horror show.
The airplane’s door opened and a staircase emerged.
After a few moments, a figure appeared in the doorway of the aircraft. He seemed to hesitate.
Redpath smiled.
„Some people are intimidated by the Mojave desert,“ she murmured.
„Good,“ Cruz said succinctly. „Too many people out here as it is.“
Redpath ignored him.
A man descended the stairway to the hot tarmac. Two steps behind, like a well-trained hound or an Ottoman slave,