Read Glass Tiger for Free Online Page B

seven-car crash on 1-5 north of Stockton tied traffic up all the way back to Manteca. We didn’t get to the Delta until two a.m. By then Corwin had already murdered them both.’
    Murdered his own daughter? God, if Eden was still alive…
    ‘There was gunfire,’ said Hatfield. ‘The local cops went in, but he was gone. Since they had resigned from the campaign, the Secret Service couldn’t investigate. Mr. Jaeger asked my FBI team to look for Corwin’s body in the Delta. After six days, we decided that he had either drowned or died of his wounds.’
    ‘So why am I here?’ demanded Thorne. ‘Get the charges against me dropped and fly me back to Kenya with no hard fee—’
    ‘Charges?’ demanded Wallberg, suddenly icy.
    Hatfield looked uneasy. ‘Thorne has been, ah, deported from Kenya on a poaching charge.’
    ‘I told you to ask him if he would come.
Ask
him.’
    Jaeger scaled a sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve across the table.
    ‘It came the morning of the President’s swearing-in.’
    Thorne read: CONGRATULATIONS TO A DEAD PRESIDENT. CORWIN.
    He objected mildly, ‘Anybody could have sent this.’
    ‘Nobody outside this room knows it was Corwin at the Delta. Not even the Secret Service.’
    ‘My men traced someone we think is Corwin to King’s Canyon National Park in California,’ said Hatfield. ‘Two of my Hostage Rescue/Sniper team members, Ray Franklin and Walt Greene, showed his picture around, got a maybe identification. They got to his campsite up on the ridge trail just twenty minutes too late.’
    Wallberg blurted, ‘It’s all crazy! I haven’t thought about Hal in years, but apparently he thinks I put Damon up to shooting him. He murdered Damon. He murdered Nisa.’ His voice rose. ‘Now he wants to murder me. He has to be stopped.’
    Hastings Crandall, the Press Secretary, said, ‘I had Pete run a computer search to evaluate hundreds of ex-servicemen. You’re a generation behind Corwin, but you were a close match. The parallels are amazing. He grew up in Minnesota, you in Alaska, you both hunted all your lives. He was Special Forces in ’Nam, then a mercenary. You were a Ranger in Panama, then did classified stuff for a CIA front. After some unknown trauma in your life, you became a recluse in Kenya as he did in Minnesota.’
    ‘I did some killing in Panama, yeah, but I don’t do that any more. I resigned because I shot a couple of innocents by mistake.’
    ‘I’m not asking you to kill,’ said Wallberg. ‘I just want you to come up with scenarios of how you might kill me.The FBI Hostage Rescue/Sniper team will do the rest. Right, Terrill?’
    ‘Right. He won’t have to get his lily-white hands dirty.’
    ‘I’m not going to force you to accept.’ Wallberg glared balefully around the table. ‘I am ordering your full exoneration in Kenya if you take the job or not. But – I need you.’
    They wanted him to play a chess game where you never saw your opponent’s board, he never saw yours. Neither of you could be sure the other existed. The greatest stalk a hunter could have, of the most dangerous game on earth, and he wasn’t expected to kill anyone. All he had to do was find an ex-sniper who had become a foreign mercenary and had murdered his own daughter. Hatfield and his goons would do the rest. A worthy stalk of a worthy opponent, without personally facing that dreadful enticing moment of kill or not kill.
    ‘Let’s do it, Mr. President.’
    Watching Wallberg, Thorne saw a not-so-subtle release of tension. The squared shoulders relaxed, the hard knots of muscle at the corners of the mouth softened.
    ‘I feel in my heart that you’re going to stop this man.’
    Jaeger said, ‘A major’s pay and perks. In the morning, go to the Mayflower Hotel shops and pick up a wardrobe more suited to the climate. Hastings and Peter will be logistical support.’
    Hatfield said, ‘I’ll schedule your psychiatric interview and psy tests. You’ve been through it before with the