Burn: A Novel by Linda Howard Page B

remarkable. “And I’ll need two people embedded in the ship’s crew.”
    “Names.”
    He provided them, his thoughts already moving ahead. He would also need someone on the security staff, and putting one of his people there at this late date was probably impossible. Therefore, he needed to buy someone who was already on staff. He relayed that requirement, too.
    “I’ll have everything set up. Get your people ready.”
    They both hung up. Cael left his chair to get more coffee. He’d been awake and at the computer for more than an hour, but it was barely five o’clock in the morning, California time, too early to call any of his people and put them on alert. Instead, he took his cup out onto the porch and sat in one of the comfortable rockingchairs, stretching his long legs out to prop them on top of the porch railing. Dawn hadn’t yet rolled across the mountains to the east of him, but the birds and insects were producing an anticipatory symphony. He listened to them, enjoying the songs and solitude, the soft feel of the early-morning air on his bare chest.
    His house was the only one in sight, and he liked it that way. The house itself was two-story, made of timber and rock so that it blended into its surroundings, not so big as to attract notice but large enough that he could be comfortable. The security array was more extensive than normal, but not immediately apparent. He’d installed at least half the precautions himself, so no company would have a set of schematics that could be used to breach his defenses. Maybe he had a touch of paranoia himself, but the way he looked at it, he’d rather spend some extra money than be caught with his pants down. He was in a dangerous business—not as dangerous now as what he’d done before, but in his type of work you didn’t win many friends.
    Trust was the keystone in his relationships, both professional and personal. Professionally, he didn’t trust the people he worked for, but he did the people he worked with. He had a good group assembled. They didn’t work together exclusively, but more and more the others were turning down jobs that hadn’t come through him.
    He hadn’t set out to be the head of anything. For that matter, he hadn’t set out to work in the world of black ops. A combination of birth, circumstance, and natural talent had gradually led him to where he was now, and he had to admit the job was a good fit.
    He’d been born in Israel to American parents. His mother was a nonpracticing Jew; his father a laid-back Mississippi Delta boy who didn’t give a hoot one way or the other. The fact that his mother didn’t practice the religion she’d been born into was a sore spot with Cael. “If you aren’t willing to follow the customs that pertain to you,” he’d once groused to her, “why the hell couldn’t you have left my foreskin out of it?”
    “Stop complaining,” she’d retorted. “You didn’t need it.”
    “But I might have
wanted it
, and now I’ll never know, will I?”
    Just as a matter of principle, he didn’t like the fact that one of his body parts had been removed without his permission.
    He’d lived in Israel until he was ten, and had grown up speaking three languages: Hebrew, English, and Southern. Later on he’d added Spanish and German, with a smattering of Japanese that he was gradually expanding. Moving to the United States had been a big culture shock to him, but one he liked. He may have spent his first ten years in Israel, but he’d always been aware that he was an American. This was where he belonged.
    Even so, he retained a deep fondness for Israel, and because he’d been born there he had dual citizenship. When he was eighteen he’d decided he wanted adventure, and he’d served a stint in the Israeli army, where he’d exhibited certain talents that brought him to the attention of Mossad. He’d done some jobs for them, before maturity and a desire to live brought him back to America, where he’d