Wiser Than Serpents Read Online Free Page B

before he’s willing to meet with you,” said the taller, nastier-looking of the two.
    David shrugged. The guns were real enough. They had to be, to make it overseas and into the right hands. Yet inside each gun, the CIA had installed a surveillance chip to leave a trail that David and the other members of this op could track.
    Hopefully, in the end, they’d bring down Kwan’s organization. Before they sacrificed precious lives. “Fine, I’ll want a sample of his merchandise.”
    One of them smiled, and it sent a warning into David’s gut. Something didn’t feel right. He’d been undercover in enough hot spots over the world, first as a Green Beret, and then as a Delta Force operative, to recognize something sour in the air.
    But he said nothing as he turned and wound his way to the container he’d set up for just this scenario. He hoped Chet had heard the exchange and had him in his sights.
    Not that Chet would step in should the op turn ugly. This was important enough to both of them, to the war on terror, to the thousands of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan being mowed down with their own American-made weapons to sacrifice David’s life, should it become necessary.
    David stopped before a locked container and entered the code to the mechanical lock. The door came open with a teeth-grating whine.
    “Inside.”
    With the moon rising over the water, streams of hazy light raked the container yard. But it couldn’t penetrate the palpable blackness of the container. However, David had personally secreted the one crated box of weapons in the container and now walked over to it without hesitation. He reached out to crack it open when a light flickered across the crate.
    “Stop.”
    The voice came from the darkness, and David couldn’t make out the face of the speaker. When the light panned the floor, he plainly recognized the man writhing in the pool of luminescence, bleeding from the head, his hands tied behind him.
    Chet.
    David stared at him and everything inside him turned to liquid. “What’s going on?”
    “We have a problem.”
    David narrowed his eyes, trying to get a fix on the speaker.
    “We caught your partner here working with the CIA.”
    Chet glanced up at him, his face granite. David leveled the appropriate glare at Chet. Lord…
    “We’d like to think that he was double-crossing you, Ripley.”
    Was that a question? David walked over to Chet, grabbed him by the hair. “Is that true, O’Hare?”
    Chet looked at him, and slowly nodded.
    Pain cut through him, and David thought he might gasp. Instead he backhanded Chet. His partner fell back and the sound of Chet’s ragged breathing filled the container, burned right into David’s soul.
    “I think we’d like a demonstration now.”
    David looked up, into the shadows. He made out a taller man, deep-set eyes, a thick build. “I was supposed to meet Kwan.”
    “First a demonstration. Then Kwan will see you.”
    Which meant that David couldn’t end this here, couldn’t somehow shoot their way out in a blaze of gunfire and fists.
    “What demonstration?” he growled.
    The man nodded past him, toward one of his men. David heard the crate being wrenched open and bile burned in his mouth. He met Chet’s gaze with a coolness meant to mask his feelings. Chet glanced away from him, closed his eyes.
    No, God. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Especially since Chet was more than a partner. In a way, he was family.
    How would David ever tell Chet’s cousin Gracie—who just happened to also be his pal Viktor’s fiancée?
    He heard one of the men behind him uncrating the Smith & Wesson double-action .45 semiautomatic from the straw and oil that kept it dry and secure. He then heard the ratchet of the eight-round magazine as it slid into the chamber. He tightened his jaw, fixing a hate-filled look he didn’t feel on his “betrayer.”
    The cold, round end of a pistol pressed against David’s brain stem as another man stepped forward and handed