The Spy Devils by Joe Goldberg (top rated books of all time .TXT) 📕

Chu? Is this Li Chu?” he asked, shoving Bai’s face toward the mangled contorted faces of his dead colleagues. Each time Bai shook his head no.

On the last no, he spun Bai to face him. The violent left hook followed by a right uppercut to Bai’s face made him bite the end of his tongue off. His broken jaw was forced up. The already unconscious man hit the ground with a thump.

Bridger felt the warm sun as he stood over the body. Bridger was shaking. He took a deep breath and looked around at the dead bodies of the Chinese assassination team.

Li Chu had escaped. That was a mistake.

Li Chu had somehow made it back to a safehouse apartment, where they had stashed a medical kit. He didn’t recall how he was able to patch his wounds, but he had. When finished, red stains smeared the sink, shower, and floor of the bathroom. Dark red rags and towels littered the floor.

The mirror reflected a battered face he didn’t recognize. Swollen black and blue eyes. The blood he missed was dried in his hair and speckled on his face.

What did I do wrong? How could this Bridger ruin my plan? Kill the rest of my men?

Tugging a cap loosely over his bandaged head and ear, he closed the safe house door behind him and stepped out onto the streets of Taipei.

Li Chu knew it was in the van—in the parking garage. He had to see it even though the dizziness had him close to fainting several times.

He opened the driver’s door, and there it was. A black and red business card with an image of a three-pronged pitchfork. He didn’t have to turn it over to read the white block letters printed on the other side, but he did. It had been left for him.

It read: GREETINGS FROM THE DEVIL.

6

The 12th at Augusta National

West Texas Hill Country, USA

Bridger slept as well as he had in months—which meant 7 a.m., an hour later than usual. He had been moving continually for two days. Twelve hours ago, he landed his Embraer Legacy 450 at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and piloted his Bell 505 helicopter to his west Texas Hill Country ranch.

Thirty hours before that, the Devils had snatched the Dragon Fire assassins from the parking garage.

That next morning in central Taipei, a suspicious SUV was discovered on the lawn across the street from the Presidential Office Building, the baroque-style palace built during the Japanese colonial period on the island during the early 1900s. Covered live on national television, special operations and anti-terror units from the Taiwan Military, Taipei Police, and National Security Bureau, Taiwan’s principal intelligence organization surrounded the area and evacuated nearby buildings.

Two unidentified men, who appeared unconscious, were shown being removed from the SUV. Later on that day, at press briefings, Taiwan officials declared that the men found inside secured with duct tape were Chinese intelligence assassins. They showed pictures and videos as proof and called for United Nations investigations.

Now, back home for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Bridger was ready to extinguish the last flame of Dragon Fire.

Bridger’s sanctuary was once known as River Ridge Ranch, named for the river and tributaries that crisscrossed the acres of pasture, brush, woods, and flat to rolling to hilly terrain. Located somewhere between Austin and El Paso, the ranch served previously as a recreational hunting, hiking, riding, and fishing corporate retreat. Access to the location was only by a private dead-end road or by air.

Previously used as a lodge, the 6,200-square-foot main house had eight bedrooms, five baths, a workout room, a modern open kitchen, bars, vaulted ceilings, and a five-car garage all surrounded by a spectacular 360-degree view of west-central Texas. Other structures on the land included an equestrian center, stables, corral, barns, wilderness cabins, plane hangar, and runway. There were stocked ponds. River frontage. Livestock and wildlife of all kinds.

It was his 2,698 acres of leave me the fuck alone that he renamed Abaddon—a biblical term for "Place of Destruction.”

It had been nine years since the newly-formed boutique investment bank Hubbard Park Investments of New York and its founder Trowbridge Hall bought the property. Trowbridge Hall, aka Bridger, made it his base of operations. An untraceable series of dummy and cutout corporations purchased the ranch for a little more than three million dollars. With aftermarket upgrades—communications, landscaping, security—the total came close to seven million dollars.

After some brief stretching to shock his jet-lagged muscles back to life, Bridger took a deep breath in, then slowly out. He caught the smell of eggs, beans, and tortillas.

When he walked into the huge kitchen, he saw Luciana standing in her stained Dallas Cowboys apron, looking at several steaming pots on the industrial-sized stove.

Luciana and her husband Luis were a somewhere-in-their-fifties couple. Luis worked outside and managed the large ranch staff. Luciana took care of the house and cooked. They were an honest, hard-working, courteous, and loyal couple. And once Bridger had vetted and tested them, he told them his secret. They were two of a small group of “civilians” who knew what else investment banker Trowbridge “Trow” Hall did for a living.

They were paid well for keeping the ranch functioning and his secret to themselves.

Luis and Luciana had adopted Bridger as a replacement for their seventeen-year-old son. He was lost years ago—the result of being on the wrong street in Laredo at the wrong time when some biker gangs decided to have a shoot-out. Mr. Trow, as they liked to call him, in some ways adopted the couple as a new set of parents.

“Mr. Trow! You are awake,” she said with a broad smile through full lips. She dropped a towel and hugged him, and then kissed him on his cheeks.

“Yes, tha-anks, Luciana,” Bridger sputtered out as she released him. “Smells good in here.”

Her face wrinkled, and her lips curled. Walking to a pot, she picked up the towel, took the lid off the pot, picked up