Commander-in-Chief

44

John Clark climbed into the dinghy tied off on his sailboat just after midnight, leaving Adara Sherman behind on the fifty-two-foot Irwin. He cut engine power when he was still a half-mile off Tarpon Island, which meant he had to paddle for nearly fifteen minutes, but the water in this bay was nearly as placid as a swimming pool, and he had the added benefit of being able to point himself directly at all the lights coming from the big villas on the hillside to guide him to just the right spot for his landing.

It had been a long while since the ex-SEAL had hit a beach in a small watercraft, but he was certain he’d never conducted a midnight raid on a five-star resort. He had a feeling he could have had Adara call ahead to arrange a piña colada and a grilled lobster under glass waiting for him once he landed on the shore, except for the obvious wrinkle that he was not a guest at the exclusive island retreat.

He pulled his boat up off the white sand and dragged it under some meticulously maintained foliage, alongside a pair of high-end wooden recliners. Then he passed a little copper bucket where he could dip his feet in water to wash off the beach sand, which he declined to do. Quietly he headed up the pathway on the hill toward his target location.

When he was halfway up the path he heard a noise ahead of him. He stepped into the sandy area below the mangroves just to his left and ducked down behind a jacaranda. Other than the loud pops in both of his knees as he knelt, he didn’t make a sound.

Fifteen seconds later two young men passed, both holding rakes. One had a mesh bag over his shoulder, and Clark got the idea they were on their way down to the beach to comb it for any tiny bits of seaweed that might have washed ashore.

The guests of Tarpon Island didn’t want to wake up to a pristine paradise marred by nature.

Clark shook his head. As a member of Navy special warfare, he’d swum through swamps so green and gooey he could have written his name on the surface with his fingertip. He was cut from a very different cloth from the average patron of this swanky place.

When the two men were out of sight he pulled a night-vision monocular out of his pocket and used it to lead him the rest of the way up the winding stone path that led directly to the sliding back door of the immense villa.

There were lights shining on the second floor, he’d seen this from the bay, but the ground floor appeared to be completely dark. John looked for the telltale tiny red lights of a security system or motion detector anywhere on the ground floor, but he saw nothing.

He tried the glass door and, to his surprise, found it unlocked. He pulled it open a foot, then retreated back to a thick copse of bushes off the patio.

A few minutes later, when no one came to investigate the breach, he felt certain there had been no security system activated at the villa, so he returned to the back door and entered slowly.

It took him nearly five minutes of slow, steady movement to make it from one end of the ground floor to the other. The space looked neat but well lived in, but there was no one here at present.

Eventually he doubled back to the stairs out of the living room, and he took these up, still moving at a near glacial pace. He had his night-vision device in his hands, but he’d taken the time to let his eyes adjust to the low light, so he didn’t use the monocular.

On the second floor he found a child’s room. Again, it looked like someone was living there now, but they weren’t in the bed or the adjoining bathroom. He’d been told Walker had a young son, and he found himself surprised the kid was out of his bed well past midnight.

He made his way into the master bedroom next, crept in complete silence, and moved to the bed. Here he did use his monocular to confirm it was empty.

Another minute to check the second floor more carefully and he was done.

It was on his second pass around the property that he noticed the shattered wineglass by the couch. That someone had just left it there along with the wine on the tile floor made no sense, unless they had to leave in a hurry.

Unless it was something bad.

As he headed back down the stairs, Clark spotted a security camera high on the wall. For a moment he was worried this camera linked with the resort’s security office, but that didn’t make much sense to Clark. He couldn’t imagine some millionaire checking into this chic place with the full understanding he or she would be watched like a research specimen.

He looked closer at the camera. It was attached to a small radio system. A tiny antenna stuck up a few inches.

Clark had seen these units before. They could broadcast only one hundred feet or so.

He realized this was a private system. Used for a guest’s own security detail that might travel with them to the resort.

Clark walked through the entire villa looking for the security station, finally finding it outside the building in a small one-room cottage on the far side of the driveway. The door to the cottage was locked, but he picked the lock quickly, then moved inside, careful to keep the lights off and his head below the level of the windows, just in case anyone was around.

He saw there were five cameras set up to run on the monitors, but the three inside the building had been shut off, obviously for the privacy of the guests. The other two feeds, one on the front drive and one at the rear of the property, including the path that led down to the beach, were up and running, and now they broadcast black-and-white images taken from the infrared low-light-capable camera.

Clark looked down at the security board. It didn’t look like anyone was using this room at all, so he didn’t know if the video recorders would be working, but to his surprise he found the attached computer made a digital recording in a loop that recorded over the file every eight hours.

Quickly he pulled up the front-of-the-house camera, backed it up to the beginning, and began to look through the video on the monitor. The timestamp said it was four-thirty that afternoon, and the image of the driveway and lush vegetation alongside it was in color and very clear. He began racing through it at sixteen-times speed, looking for any clues.

At six-thirty he brought it back to normal speed. A golf cart had pulled up in front of the house and a heavyset black woman was climbing out with several pots and pans and trays. She seemed to be a hired cook. She disappeared into the house, making a couple of trips to move all her equipment.

Clark raced through some more time, stopping again when the woman came back out at seven-thirty, talking on her cell phone. He watched her for a moment, then sped it up again.

At eight p.m. the woman packed up her kitchenware and left in the golf cart.

Clark went to sixteen speed again and watched the recording until the point where he saw himself lurking around the driveway and the security shack. He fumbled with the controls for a moment to erase the video, then he started with the back of the house.

On this feed he watched for a moment, then sped it up to eight-times speed. Nothing was happening, so he reached down to increase the speed again, but just as he did so he saw movement on the path. He rewound the recording, then hit play, watching it in regular time.

A young boy with black hair, Clark put him at about seven or eight years old, appeared on the path from the beach, then shot below the camera, heading toward the house. Behind him, two women, one with chestnut hair, the other with auburn hair and wearing a wide-brimmed hat and large sunglasses, came up from the beach, towels and drinks in hand.

Clark waited for a minute to see if Terry Walker would be following them, but there was no one else. He gave it another minute, then increased the speed, his finger idling above the key that would return the video to normal speed. He tapped it when a large auburn-haired man with sunglasses and a baseball cap walked purposefully up the path.

After less than a minute, the man appeared again. He held the shoulder of the boy. Behind them, the two women walked closely together.

This, Clark realized in an instant, was probably the strangest-looking kidnapping he’d ever witnessed, but he was sure that’s what it was. The two tall Caucasians had taken Terry Walker’s wife and child, and rushed them down to the beach.

John Clark spent the next five precious minutes cussing under his breath as he tried to figure out how to save the video recording onto a DVR disc he found on a shelf. He finally gave up with more bitching about the technology, then used the camera of his own mobile phone to record the film. He could already hear Gavin Biery chastising him for his low-tech method to a high-tech problem, but Clark knew he couldn’t spend the entire night here.

He then erased the remaining video and left the cottage.

His exfiltration of the property and the island took more than twenty minutes. As soon as he was back on his sailboat he called Jack Junior, who was in Virginia.

Ryan had been ready for the late-night call, so Clark didn’t have to wait for him to wake up.

“Bad news, Jack. Walker’s family has been kidnapped.”

After a pause over the line, Jack blew out a sigh. “Well, that complicates things. I presume it was Limonov and Kozlov.”

“I have no doubt they are behind it, but they did it through proxies. I have video of the kidnappers, one male, one female. Their faces are obscured by hats and glasses.”

“Any idea where they went?”

“I suppose they used a boat to get them out of here, but the kidnapping took place around five-thirty, so they have a seven-hour head start.”

Jack said, “So they could be halfway to Moscow now if they wanted to be.”

Clark said, “If they left the country, they didn’t do it in Limonov’s aircraft. Adara has a man at the airport here who’s watching Limonov’s plane for us, and it’s sitting right there. No way they would take the Walkers out of here on a commercial flight. Either they went across the open water to Puerto Rico and flew out on an exec jet there or else they are still here in the area. If that’s the case, they will be in a rented house or they’ll be on a boat.”

Jack thought about this. “I’ve been doing some research on Walker. If they are going to use BlackHole to launder money, they might need to keep Walker there at his office or close by. Depending on his security setup, it’s possible he has to make large clandestine trades from his own server. If that’s the case, they’ll probably do it tomorrow.” Jack added, “Maybe he refused to comply, so they just snatched his wife and kid to help convince him.”

Clark said, “Yeah, and when they don’t need Walker’s help anymore…”

Jack said, “Right. Do you have any ideas?”

“Yeah,” Clark said. “I’m going to take a look at his office setup. If Adara and I head back to Tortola now, I can be in position by early morning. Maybe I can get eyes on Walker and find a way to get him away from Limonov.”

“I can be on the first flight down.”

“No, Jack. You stay up there. Run the video I sent you, keep looking into Salvatore, and keep trying to find out what Limonov and Walker are up to.”

Jack said, “Okay, I’ll do that, but if you gain access to Walker, I have a funny feeling you’ll learn a lot more than I will up here.”

Clark and Sherman motored west through the night from Tarpon Island toward Tortola, pushing the sailboat’s motors to full power. Clark sat at the helm at first, but after an hour or so Sherman asked if she could relieve him.

Clark said, “It wouldn’t hurt for me to get a couple hours’ sleep before I get there. Tomorrow might be a long day.”

Adara said, “You should go below. The bed in the master stateroom is made up. We’ll be in port by five a.m. It’s only a five-minute drive from the marina to Walker’s office building.”

“Thanks, Ms. Sherman,” Clark said.

Adara hesitated for a moment, then said, “Mr. Clark, I know you want me to return to D.C. in the morning, but I’m a little concerned that it might be dangerous down here for just one operative.”

John said, “Are you offering to stick around?”

She said, “This is a big boat, you could use the help.”

“I am sure you are right, but I don’t want to take you away from your other duties. Ding and Dom might need an extraction at any time. Even in D.C. you are five hours closer to them than you are here. Plus the Gulfstream can fly there direct. If you had to haul ass to Lithuania from here, you would need to stop for fuel, tacking on another ninety minutes, minimum.”

He could tell from her look that she was concerned. He said, “I need you to support them, not me. My work here won’t be nearly as taxing as what the others are doing.”

Adara said, “I hope you’re right about that.”

“Me, too.” Clark went below deck, and Adara Sherman took the wheel and looked out over the black water.