The Wrecking Crew

CHAPTER 20

Anconia Island rose tall and proud into the moonlit night, skyscrapers jutting against the pinpricked fabric of the heavens. Far below the glass and steel buildings and their massive rising columns of supporting concrete and steel lurked the submarine Scorpion. Thirty feet beneath the surface and masked by the man-made island, Jonah felt nothing but confidence in their hiding place as he marched into the command compartment.

“Captain’s naked,” said Vitaly, shielding his eyes as Jonah Blackwell strode in wearing nothing more than a tan and a large waterproof bag slung over one shoulder.

“Again?” blurted Alexis.

“What do you mean, again?” said Jonah.

“Ha!” shouted Vitaly. “Alexis is Peeping Tina.”

Jonah plopped the waterproof bag onto the deck and sighed.

“Fine!” said Vitaly, exasperated. “If nobody ask, Vitaly ask. Captain, why must you be naked?”

“My Russian friend, I assure you there is a perfectly logical reason for being naked,” said Jonah, gesturing towards himself. “Our mission demands it. Indeed, this is tactical nudity.”

Hassan stuck his head through the hatch, and glanced at the assembled crew.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Jonah. “Come on in!”

“Jonah, I genuinely do not understand your orders.” Hassan stepped gingerly over the hatch threshold and into the command compartment, wearing nothing but a tea towel over his privates and a flush on his face.

Alexis whistled and then looked behind her as if it wasn’t her.

“Vitaly should get naked, too?” The helmsman pretended to begin unbuttoning his shirt. “Maybe this Vitaly-kind-of-party.”

“Please don’t,” said Hassan with a groan.

“Here’s the deal.” Jonah hefted the waterproof bag again and prepared to climb up to the lockout chamber. “We’re not going to surface the Scorpion. We’ll exit the lockout chamber, swim up through the water and sneak onto Anconia. Once we’re out of the water, we crack open this dry-bag and dress in mercenary clothing. Just like crossing the Rio Grande.”

“I’m Moroccan,” said Hassan, playing indignant. “Not Mexican. And another thing — I understand the concept, but wearing nothing, not even a pair of underwear? What difference could a pair of underwear possibly make?”

“I… didn’t think of that,” admitted Jonah.

“Too late now!” Vitaly laughed. “We have seen yelda already.”

“Guys!” said Jonah. “You’re thinking about this all wrong. Imagine you’re telling this story at a ritzy country club someday. Would you rather say you broke into a high-security facility, or that you broke into a high-security facility while buck-ass nekkid?”

“It does have certain ring,” admitted Vitaly. “But what is club of country?”

“Just be safe,” said Alexis. “Vitaly got us into the systems — I’ll be watching over Anconia’s internal security feed the whole time.”

“Our guardian angels,” said Hassan. He risked a glance at Alexis.

“Sure,” said Alexis. “But a guardian angel that won’t be able to do a damned thing if you get caught.”

“Not planning on getting caught,” said Jonah.

“Name one thing you’ve done that ever went according to plan,” said Hassan.

Ignoring Hassan’s crack, Jonah stepped onto the ladder to begin the climb towards the lockout chamber in the conning tower. “Onwards and upwards,” he said. “Alexis, you’re in command until I’m back.”

“Holding station thirty feet below surface,” said Vitaly. “You clear to exit.”

Hassan followed behind Jonah, glancing up as he put a hand on a rung of the ladder. He grimaced and looked away.

Jonah opened the door to the lockout chamber and climbed into the closet-sized space. Hassan squeezed himself in next to the American and sealed the hatch behind him. Alexis followed up the ladder, finding her station at the controls, watching them through a narrow portal.

“This is going to be a cinch,” said Jonah. “We flood the lockout chamber, open the exterior door, and swim out. There’s a lot of air in the waterproof bag, it’s going to rocket us straight to the surface. Just hold on.”

“I’ll have you know I nearly died the last time I attempted this,” said Hassan.

“Just remember to slowly exhale as you ascend.”

Hassan combed through his brain for a moment to come up with an answer. “The air in our lungs will be expanding as we rise to the surface. Unless we release that pressure, we risk pulmonary embolism and death.”

“Bingo,” said Jonah. “Let’s not pop a lung if we don’t have to.”

Outside the chamber, Alexis shot a twitchy thumbs-up through the portal window, her reservations painted across her face.

“I suppose we should just get this over with,” said Hassan.

“Unless you want to stick around and snap each other with gym towels.”

Ignoring Jonah, Hassan gave the thumbs-up to Alexis. Air hissed and cold seawater rushed up from vents in the deck, flooding the chamber. Jonah and the doctor floated up to the top of the chamber and filled their lungs with one final breath.

Jonah ducked underneath the surface and released the outer hatch door. Both he and Hassan took hold of the waterproof bag and pushed themselves out of the chamber. The massive jetway floated above them, shadowing the submarine from the moonlight of the predawn hour. Jonah and Hassan rose through the thirty feet of water separating themselves from the surface, drawn upward by the buoyant bag, each exhaling a tiny trail of silver bubbles.

The bag broke the surface at the foot of a massive concrete pillar next to the floating aircraft runway. Jonah hefted the bag over his shoulder and dragged himself up a ladder onto the runway, Hassan close behind. The two dressed themselves in fatigues and pulled ballcaps low over their eyes and wet hair. Jonah drew two pistols from the bag — his pearl-handled .45 and Hassan’s Moroccan military-issue 9mm — checked them and handed the smaller to the doctor. They stood up and straightened their disguises. Jonah nodded, stuck a small radio into his ear and kicked the empty waterproof bag off the side of the runway and into the ocean. It quietly burbled and slipped beneath the surface with a trail of bubbles.

The two men casually walked towards a massive reinforced hangar door built into one the circular pylon holding the superstructure aloft. Jonah scanned the stolen security badge against a reader. The hangar doors slid open, revealing an immaculately clean white vault filled with rows of warm, humming computer servers.

“Security pass worked,” whispered Jonah, holding a finger to his earpiece. “Entering the vault.”

“Good,” crackled Alexis’s voice from the other end of the connection. “Vitaly has control of the hacked security feed. I’m watching your every move, anybody else is going to see a pre-recorded loop. Find the command and control terminal at the far end of the room.”

Jonah led the way to a computer console at the opposite side of the circular room, the doctor following closely behind. He sat down at the console and booted up the computer while Hassan stood guard, pistol in hand.

“We’re there,” said Jonah. “What now?”

“Take the memory drive out and plug it into the command terminal,” ordered Alexis. “Vitaly says it will mimic a scheduled software update and bypass the lockout protocols. When the island experiences the power-loss event, the updated programming will have Anconia’s servers dump to the whistleblower drop-box servers instead of the corporate remote site.”

Jonah drew a solid-state memory drive out of his pocket and plugged it into the terminal. The screen flashed, loading Vitaly’s hacked software update. Completing the process, the terminal automatically shut down and restarted with the new programming.

“Done,” said Jonah.

“Now we crash the power management server,” said Alexis. “Remember to get out before the barn doors fly off.”

“Easy enough,” said Jonah, getting up from his chair. “Hell, we could be in Oman by breakfast, catch the fallout on CNN from a swanky hotel room.”

“Don’t get cocky,” said Alexis. “But I’m definitely up for room service — if you’re buying. From a separate room. In a different hotel.”

“Which server are we looking for?” asked Jonah.

“I’m watching you over the cameras,” said Alexis. “I want you to go one row to your left — strike that, your right. Then down three servers. Yes, that’s the one.”

Jonah and Hassan looked at the blinking black server, then at each other. It seemed indistinguishable from every other identical unit.

“Are you certain?” said Hassan into the radio. “They may not have noticed the software update, but they will definitely notice this.”

“Plug in the second memory drive I gave you,” said Alexis over the radio.

Hassan and Jonah looked over the server, pushing and prodding at it.

“I don’t see a place to plug this in,” said Jonah.

“An off-switch would probably work just as well,” said Alexis. “Keep looking. Hold on — I’m getting activity. I see security personnel and mercenaries mobilizing. It’s disorganized, but something is definitely happening. They may be on to you.”

“How much time do we have?” demanded Hassan.

“I don’t know,” said Alexis. “Just hurry.”

The doctor frantically circled the matte-black server, feeling over the sides, the top, circling it trying to find a switch or a port, anything that would allow him access into the computer itself.

Hassan looked up, just in time to see Jonah run towards him with a fire axe raised high over his head. The doctor tripped over his own feet and fell back as Jonah yelled a war cry, swung the axe and buried the metal head into the server. Yanking the blade out of the blinking machine, Jonah swung again into the now-smoking face of the computer, smashing glass and sending plastic and metal shavings scattering across the clean white floor.

The doctor hopped to his feet, yanked a fire extinguisher off the wall and joined Jonah, bashing the computer server over and over again as the metal casing crumpled underneath the assault.

“Seriously?” shouted Alexis over the radio. “This is the solution? You guys are a couple of Neanderthals.”

“Did she… say something?” said Hassan, short of breath.

“She called us cave men.”

“I’ll have… you both… know,” wheezed Hassan between blows with the butt of the fire extinguisher. “I’m a… highly skilled… surgeon!”

The server made one last long, sorrowful grinding sound and expired. The floodlights around the clean room flickered and died. Dull, lifeless emergency lighting faded to life. The axe and fire extinguisher clattered as Jonah and Hassan dropped their blunt instruments onto the dark floor. The two men ran over to the main terminal computer just in time to see the download bar budge, the first few percentage points of progress as the massive data stream shot up into the dedicated satellite overhead. Vitaly’s software update was working — Anconia Island’s computer servers began to spill their secrets to activist organizations across the world.

“Shit, just lost video feed,” said Alexis over the radio. “Probably due to the power interruption. Nothing more you guys can do. Get out of there!”

Jonah and Hassan drew their pistols and sprinted towards the hangar door. As they drew close, the door opened on its own, the first rays of the dawn spilling through. Dark shapes moved on the other side — mercenaries. A hulking man stepped out from behind the door with an automatic rifle in hand. The massive figure fired, sending bullets ricocheting into the floor, inches from Jonah’s feet, driving him back into the room.

“Go to the backup escape. The ventilation shaft,” shouted Alexis through the radio. “Far side of the room! Now!”

Jonah fired his pearl-handled pistol twice over his shoulder as he and the doctor retreated, neither shot striking true. Behind them, Colonel Westmoreland’s bulky form stepped into the emergency interior lighting, radiant in his sadistic glory. He shot just below Jonah and Hassan’s ankles, ricocheting bullets off the deck and pushing the retreating intruders further into the server farm.

Jonah caught Hassan by the collar, dragging him behind a server, forcing the pair to bob and weave through the forest of computers as the colonel and his heavilyarmed mercenaries stacked up at the hangar-door entrance, ready to move in.

“Go to the main terminal!” hissed Jonah. “Run!”

Hassan followed Jonah as both men sprinted the last length of the room, throwing themselves to the ground and sliding to a stop underneath the desk. Jonah risked a quick glance at the progress bar. The download had been interrupted less than ten percent into the process. It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.

Hassan ripped the vent-cover off the wall to reveal an opening that wouldn’t fit a five year old.

“Now this is a proper cock-up,” said the doctor.

“We’re not getting out this way,” Jonah said into the radio. “Alexis — you know what to do.”

Alexis started to speak, but Jonah ripped out his earphone and stomped it to bits before she had a chance to say anything.

“The vent looked big enough according to the building plans,” said Hassan.

“But it’s not,” said Jonah. “We’d probably just get shot in the ass while crawling away anyway.”

“This is bad.”

“It gets worse,” agreed Jonah. “They’ve got us cornered and they know it. We should be dead already — they’re trying to take us alive.”

Hassan grimaced and pointed to his gun and then to Jonah. “We could… you know… each other…” said the doctor.

“Are you shitting me?” said Jonah. “No, I’m not going to let you shoot me. Let’s play this out. Jesus, man.”

Footsteps approached, combat boots clicking on the white plastic floor.

“Jonah fucking Blackwell, I presume,” boomed Colonel Westmoreland’s voice. “No doubt joined by your tagalong doctor. You’re a couple of tenacious bastards, I’ll give you that. What was that old ruse you pulled with the submarine? The junk shot?”

“Thought you’d want your men back,” shouted Jonah at the unseen mercenary as he played for time. “Sorry they were in so many little pieces.”

Colonel Westmoreland laughed. “That’s the problem with using a seventy-year-old trick,” he boomed. “Body parts and a fake oil slick. I knew I’d been had when I inspected a severed arm you sent floating to the surface. But by then it was too late. I’ve only seen one tattoo that reads ‘Rats get fat while bastards die’. Nice coloration, really great fucking artwork with the death’s head. Of course, I liked it a lot better when it was attached to a friend of mine. Begs the question — are you a rat or a bastard? Because right now, you’re hiding like a fucking rat.”

Jonah shook his head and didn’t answer. In the cover of darkness under the desk, his body pressed up to Hassan, his pistol covered the room, searching for a target. The colonel’s voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

“I want to make sure your situation is perfectly fucking clear,” continued the colonel. “First — whatever you were trying to accomplish, my nerds have already stopped it. Second — I can shoot the left nut off a cat’s ballsack at a hundred yards. That means I had to go far out of my fucking way to avoid shooting you as you ran off like a couple of little fucking schoolgirls.”

“Much obliged,” shouted Jonah back to him.

“So here’s the deal,” said the colonel. “If I give the order, my men are going to come in shooting and put you both the fuck down. It will be for keeps this time, that much I promise. Or — toss the peashooters and we’ll settle this like fucking men. Fight it out hand-to-hand. In fact, I’m feeling so generous this fine morning, I’ll let you both take me on. If you tap out, I’m throwing you in zip-cuffs and hauling you upstairs to meet the boss. And let me tell you — he’s pissed. But if I tap out… you’re free to leave.”

“Utter nonsense!” exclaimed Hassan. “What will Charles Bettencourt have to say about that?”

“This is between us,” said the colonel. “He can blow it right out his fancy ass. This is the fairest deal you’ll ever get.”

“The two of us against him,” Hassan whispered. “How hard could it be?”

“Hard,” answered Jonah, taking Hassan’s handgun from him. “Assuming the deal is legit to begin with. But I don’t see another fucking option at this point. You ever do any fighting?”

“Not since primary school,” admitted Hassan.

“This won’t be a schoolyard throw-down,” said Jonah. “Aim for soft points. Don’t bother playing fair. And for Christ’s sake, keep your thumbs on the outside of your fists.”

Jonah took his pearl-handled 1911 and Hassan’s military pistol and threw them across the floor, sliding them to the other side of the long white room. Colonel Westmoreland emerged from the shadows, stepping on the 1911 to stop it. The colonel picked the weapon up and inspected it, nodding in approval before handing it to an associate along with his personal assault rifle and customized H&K pistol. With a sinister grin, he stepped forward, massive in his body armor, arms wide open and inviting Jonah and Hassan to attack. The other mercenaries backed out of the server room, holding Jonah and the doctor in their iron sights until the hangar doors slid shut, locking the three men in the impromptu gladiatorial arena.

“End it fast,” whispered Jonah. “Go for the legs. I go left, you go right. Take him off his feet. I’ll hold him, you kick his face in.”

Jonah and Hassan crossed each other, picking up speed as they ran to intercept. Their adversary hunched down and charged like a linebacker. Colonel Westmoreland grunted in surprise as both legs were knocked out from underneath him. He slammed against the ground chest first, arms splaying. Before he could flip himself over, Jonah jumped on his back and wound an arm around his neck with a vicious chokehold.

But before the doctor could strike, Colonel Westmoreland jumped to his feet, Jonah hanging onto his back like a rodeo cowboy. Hassan stood in stunned silence, the mercenary towering over him.

Westmoreland raised his right leg and kicked Hassan square in the solar plexus, sending him flying back into a server, knocking both over with the brutal, crashing impact and the tinkle of broken glass. Reaching behind his head, he smashed Jonah in the face with a fist and threw him to the ground with both hands. Jonah rolled away just as the man stomped the ground where his face had just been.

Hassan drew himself to his feet, moaning and clutching his chest. Grimacing, he adopted a fighting stance, unwilling to let the pain slow him down.

“Motherfucker, you are fast for a drunk,” said Jonah, whipping a fleck of blood off his lower lip.

“And you’ve got a smart fucking mouth for a dead man,” came the retort. “And you, Doc Haji — what are you so pissed about?”

“You killed my mother and my cousin,” said Hassan, jutting his chin out in anger. “And I promise you this — you’re not leaving this room alive.”

On their feet, Hassan and Jonah circled Westmoreland like a pair of hyenas, flanking the colonel on either side. Jonah snapped a nod to Hassan and both men prepared to charge.

“You two are off to a shitty start,” barked Westmoreland, cracking his neck and his knuckles. “I’ve had better fights from women.”

The colonel absorbed the full force of the doctor’s flying tackle as he simultaneously caught Jonah by the throat. Using Jonah like a battering ram, the colonel pinned Hassan against a server, repeatedly punching Jonah in the face with a free hand, sending the back of Jonah’s head smashing into Hassan’s unprotected face.

Jonah managed to wiggle free and jumped on Colonel Westmoreland’s back a second time. The mercenary grabbed Jonah’s wrist, wrenching it as he flipped Jonah over his shoulder and to the ground. Before Jonah could react, the mercenary thrust a shinbone into his face.

Jonah stumbled to his feet, allowing one glance over to Hassan’s unconscious, crumpled form.

Shit, thought Jonah. The doctor wouldn’t be much help going forward. Without a third man in the fight, it would turn into a straight-up boxing match.

“Well, now I’m fucking bored,” said the colonel.

Face and hands a mess of cuts and blood, the mercenary swung at Jonah, easily breaking through the block and catching him on the chin. Jonah felt the fight leave him as he hit the blood-splattered floor, stars dancing in his blurry vision. Westmoreland violently kicked him in the side of the head, the final coup de grâce knocking Jonah into the sweet release of unconsciousness. Somewhere deep in his battered mind, Jonah felt a small spark of happiness. He hadn’t won the fight — but stalling Charles Bettencourt was the next best thing.

Jonah stirred to life just as the cloudy glass panels to the penthouse elevator faded to clear. The elevator soared like a gondola over Anconia Island, rising high above the oceanic city. Jonah pushed himself to his knees, blood draining from his mouth. Beside him, Hassan had managed to push his battered body against the corner of the elevator, staring at him with empty eyes. Jonah looked back at him with a glance that said more than a thousand empty words. Their victorious captor stood above them, bulky arms crossed, tapping a steel-toed combat boot in impatience.

Colonel Westmoreland smirked as the elevator doors opened, revealing an angled, glass-roofed penthouse. The massive exterior helicopter pad clung from the side of the building, completing the architectural opulence. Charles Bettencourt’s gleaming white personal helicopter idled, rotors lazily spinning, ready to depart at a moment’s notice.

The colonel grabbed Jonah and Hassan by their ziptied wrists and dragged them across the marble floor towards Bettencourt’s mahogany desk.

“You’re leaking,” mumbled Hassan to Jonah, glancing towards Jonah’s bleeding leg. The wound left a long trail of smeared blood as Jonah slid along the floor.

“Shit,” Jonah groaned. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Silence reigned for a moment as the pair considered their fate.

“I was going to say this earlier,” murmured Jonah. “But now is a good of a time as any. Doc, I’ve been abandoned by a lot of people in my life. You are the first one who chose to come back. I’m sorry it didn’t work out like you planned.”

“Maybe in another life,” whispered the doctor. “We could have been friends.”

“Doc,” laughed Jonah, coughing up blood as he spoke, “in this life, you’re the only friend I got.”

The pair of wounded men passed free-standing glass panels holding parchments of colorful and ancient dragons, kraken, samurai, and geishas.

“Nice digs,” commented Jonah through a mouthful of blood. “The artwork looks expensive.”

“It’s human skin,” said Hassan, chuckling with pained, mournful snorting.

“Charming,” said Jonah. “Very Martha Stewart Living.” His face twisted with pain and amusement, joining the doctor in the absurdist giggling. Before long, the two were howling in pathetic, insane laughter at the sheer hopelessness of their situation.

Rolling his eyes, Colonel Westmoreland stopped at the foot of the desk and spun them around to face the corporate cutthroat. Hassan and Jonah drew themselves up to their knees. Charles Bettencourt stood behind the desk, arms crossed, a deep scowl on his face. His lawyer sat beside him in a wheelchair, unshaven, wearing a loose sweatshirt, and with both legs in casts.

“I don’t even know where to begin.” Bettencourt, shook his head in bewilderment. “The very fact that you both are alive is a testament to the total incompetence of my security forces.”

“Nice to see you too, Chuck,” said Jonah, a smile still on his bloody, swollen face. “You know — I never actually caught the name of your lapdog attorney. Nevermind that, I’m just going to call him Wheels.”

“You son of a bitch!” shouted the lawyer from the wheelchair. “You did this to me, you fuck!”

Bettencourt scowled and held a hand to silence the man. “He knows he did it to you,” said the CEO with a tone usually reserved for dealing with exceptionally stupid children. “That’s why he said it.”

“Boss, I brought you a gift,”said Colonel Westmoreland, drawing Jonah’s pearl-handled 1911 pistol out of his waistband and setting it on Bettencourt’s desk. “Figured it would look good in the ol’ trophy case.”

“This is one classy hand-cannon,” mused the CEO. “He doesn’t seem the type. Vintage?”

“Look at the serial number,”said Colonel Westmoreland. “Built in 1928. Beautifully restored with modern internal components. A fine weapon. I’m keeping the doctor’s military-issue nine-millimeter for myself.”

Bettencourt nodded and set the weapon on the desk with a click of metal against glass.

“So Wheels,” said Bettencourt, putting a hand on the back of his lawyer’s shoulders, “what’s our exposure here?”

The colonel laughed.

“Don’t you start,” said the lawyer. “I’m coming off some serious painkillers, and I’m not in the fucking mood.”

“Just answer the question,” barked Bettencourt.

“Fine,” said the lawyer. “So there’s no question that we have data in the wind. The good news is that we managed to shut down the satellite uplink before more than about fifteen percent of total server capacity reached any remote servers.”

“Who do they belong to?” demanded the CEO. “Competitors?”

“That’s the bad news,” said the lawyer. “They’re whistleblower drop-boxes. Activists, NGOs, and political organizations, many of which have it in for us. So whatever they did get, they’re going to be able weaponize with the help of the media. We’re going to have to assume they know everything about our disposal program. The Conglomerate… well, I can’t speak for how they will react.”

“They speak the language of money,” Bettencourt said. “And they need me. We could be on the ropes for a while, but it’s far from game over. I’ve prepared contingency plans for just such an event. Get our legal and public relations folks mobilized. Get them everything they need to start shoring up public perception. Our Investor Relations guys know what to do to keep share prices from plummeting. I’ll call our Russian friends; try to smooth things over there. Hell, Tony Hayward at BP convinced the public he gave a shit about estuaries. This should be a walk in the park by comparison. Nobody gives a flying fuck about Somalia, and nobody plays this game better than we do.”

“And the prisoners?” asked Colonel Westmoreland.

“What prisoners?” Bettencourt said. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re already dead. Don’t fuck it up this time.”

Colonel Westmoreland nodded and put his H&K pistol to Hassan’s head, cocking the hammer with his thumb.

“Jesus!” Bettencourt shouted. “Not in my fucking office.”

“I got to know just one thing,” said Jonah as Colonel Westmoreland reached for his zip tied hands to drag him away. “Was the job offer real?”

Bettencourt sighed and put a hand on his hip. The colonel stood, waiting for the answer.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” said the CEO. “I wanted to create a stable, secure, permanent installation off the Horn of Africa. A place that would provide economic opportunity free of national interests. But instead I was met with suspicion and violence.”

“What self-serving rubbish,” said Hassan, interrupting him.

“You’re wrong! It’s not bullshit. I was trying to help them, goddammit. But they’re slaves. Slaves to their tradition, to their nonsensical fundamentalism, to poverty and ignorance. I wanted to set them free.”

“By poisoning them,” Hassan added.

“Well, I do admit that is truly unfortunate,” murmured Bettencourt. “But new nations are expensive. As are new ideas. I came to realize these people are beyond help, they’re the one nation on earth too fucking backward to even form some semblance of self-government. I was overextended financially, risking not just Anconia Island, but the whole of the Bettencorps empire. And then the Conglomerate came to me with a proposal that could save everything, a problem for which they required the utmost discretion. They had in their possession dangerous relics of a forgotten war — weapons so dangerous they were more valuable destroyed than sold.”

“And you took these weapons,” snarled Hassan, “and you buried them in the deep waters of the Indian Ocean.”

“Of course I did! I was forced, forced to agree that the best place to hide weapons that shouldn’t exist was among people who didn’t matter. It was such an easy choice to make. What they wanted was so simple — their interests protected, a blind eye turned, and for that I got my bottom line secured.”

“Round of applause for the despondent plutocrat,” said Hassan, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “For he can never fail the world, the world can only fail him.”

“Chuck, here’s what I find truly amazing,” said Jonah. “It’s amazing that you’re still failing to ask yourself a series of very simple questions. I’m disappointed, I really thought you knew us better than that.”

“I’m listening.”

“What do you think our objective was? To expose you to the world, only to watch you bribe and manipulate your way out of infamy? See you pay an army of lawyers and spin doctors and put a fucking smiley face on an empire of poison? Do you really think our war against you will come down to dueling interviews on Larry King Live?”

“Larry King went off the air in 2010, you ignorant dipshit.”

“What you’ve failed to consider is that we do not play by your fucking rules,” continued Jonah. “You cannot hide behind a rigged system. Not from us.”

“Charles, what you’ve failed to consider,” said Hassan with a smile, “is that we are just the distraction.”

Bettencourt frowned, considering this new information.

“They’re bluffing—” Westmoreland snapped derisively.

The CEO cut him off with a wave of a hand. “We can’t take that chance.” He turned to the lawyer. “Check on the status of every ship within a hundred miles. Look for anything out of the ordinary; I don’t care how small it seems.”

The lawyer wheeled himself over to the desk and activated the built-in screen. The mahogany surface disappeared, replaced by a computer display.

“Maybe the colonel is right, maybe you’re full of shit,” said Bettencourt, turning back to Jonah and Hassan. “But I’m not. Believe me when I say we’re going to hunt and sink your submarine and kill your friends.”

“How you use your little remaining time is your own business,” said Hassan.

“’Cause it is on like motherfucking Donkey Kong,” added Jonah, waggling his head.

“Found something,” interrupted the lawyer. “There’s a note in the file of the SS Erno Rubik. Cargo container supercarrier, on route from India to South Africa. They reported a fire in the generator room less than an hour ago and are currently communicating by telex only.”

“Have they asked for assistance?” asked Colonel Westmoreland.

“No — we’ve offered several times and they’ve refused. Could be nothing. What should we do?”

“Contact our security team on that ship,” said Colonel Westmoreland.

“Hold on,” said the lawyer, squinting his eyes at the map. “The radar feed is updating. They’re turning and increasing speed. I… I think they’re turning towards Anconia Island.”

“Tonnage?” demanded the CEO.

“One-hundred-and-eighty-six thousand tons,” said the lawyer, the blood draining from his face. “Four times the size of the Titanic. She’s more than a thousand feet in length, one of the largest cargo ships ever put to sea. And she’s on a collision course.”