Dark Watch

21

MAX Hanley ordered Franklin Lincoln and his SEAL assault team to launch their Zodiac as soon as he heard the ship saw whining from inside the shed across the bay. Max hurried from the boat garage to the operations center buried below the Oregon’s superstructure. The red battle lights were on, which blended with the blue computer screens to make the room glow an awful shade of purple. Why Max had never noticed this detail before was just one of the million things swirling through his mind.

With the rest of the breaker’s yard quiet so late at night, Max was certain that Shere Singh had fired up the ship saw because he had caught the chairman. Eric Stone was at the helm, Murph had the weapons station, and Hali Kasim and Linda Ross were watching the threat board. Max settled in the command chair, hooking a hands-free microphone over his balding head.

“Linc, you on the net?”

“Roger, Oregon. We’re approaching in stealth mode. ETA seven minutes.”

Max was about to ask why they didn’t open up the Zodiac’s big outboard, because the sound of the saw would surely mask the engine’s throaty roar, but then remembered that in the moonlight the Zodiac’s wake would show as a white crescent on the otherwise black sea.

Lincoln continued, “Oregon, be advised that there is a lot of traffic pulling away from the beach. I count four, repeat, four utility boats. Thermal scan shows they’re loaded to the gunnels with men.”

“I have ’em,” Mark Murphy called from the weapons station. His screen showed the feed from the thermal/IR/ low-light camera mounted on the Oregon’s main mast. “I estimate fifty soldiers in total, armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.” He typed commands into his computer to call up the ship’s vast arsenal. His screen split so that each forty-foot boat approaching from the beach was on its own display. A sight reticle appeared over each dark-hulled craft. “Targets designated tango one through four. I have tracking on all inbound.”

“Where’s the Zodiac?” When the Oregon’s batteries opened up, the last thing he needed to worry about was a friendly fire accident.

“Linc’s angling out of the way, but he’s moving slow.”

Max brought up a wide-angle camera shot on his screen. Singh’s men were coming straight for the Oregon as the Zodiac slowly motored off to the starboard. The ex-SEAL couldn’t gun his engine because the guards would open fire as soon as they saw his wake. Max was forced into a waiting game between Linc’s progress out of the line of fire and the speed of the approaching utility boats.

“Incoming!” Linda Ross called out from her station. “Missile launch from the beach.”

In the two seconds it took her to shout the warning, the RPG had covered half the distance to the Oregon, and before anyone could react, it finished the other half. The five-pound missile struck the anchor fairlead high on the bow and exploded. The Soviet-made RPG mangled a good-sized chunk of steel and blew a hole up through the deck but didn’t damage the anchor chains or machinery.

“We’ve got more. Multiple launches!”

Wallowing this close to the beach, the range was too short for the ship’s automated defensive systems to engage the incoming missiles.

Max had no other choice. “Helm, all back full!”

Eric Stone had anticipated the order, and his hands were already drawing back the dual throttle controls. Deep within the ship the four massive magnetohydrodynamic engines came to life. Like flicking a light switch, the revolutionary engines were running at full power in an instant, drawing seawater’s naturally occurring electric charge, amplifying it through the cryo-cooled magnets, and creating a force wave that pumped water though her drive tubes with unimaginable power.

The backward acceleration was enough to send dishes tumbling in the galley and toss a batch of files on Cabrillo’s desk into the air. But they weren’t quick enough to avoid the incoming volley of RPGs.

Six of the notoriously inaccurate missiles fizzled harmlessly into the sea. Another impacted one of the Oregon’s dummy cargo derricks, dropping it like a felled tree. The heavy steel mast crashed against the deck hard enough to make the eleven-thousand-ton vessel shudder. The eighth missile slammed into the superstructure below the bridge. The shaped high-explosive warhead was designed to punch through a tank’s thick armor, so when it exploded through the half-inch steel, much of its force remained. Two of the mock-up cabins the Corporation used during harbor inspections were gutted by the kinetic force of the explosion, but the damage was mostly cosmetic. The damage control computer activated the fire suppression system without need for human intervention, and it also directed damage control teams to the area.

“I want a report in thirty seconds,” Max said over the ship’s emergency channel.

He checked the GPS display and speed indicators. They were backing out of the breaker’s yard at twenty knots and accelerating. A few seconds more, and they’d be out of range of Shere Singh’s RPGs. But if he had more sophisticated weapons, Stinger missiles, for example, they still needed more room to shoot the rockets out of the air.

“Linc, give me a sit rep.”

“They’re on to us,” the SEAL called back. Over the voice channel Max heard the bellow of the Zodiac’s engine and the crackle of machine gun fire. “One boat is chasing us. The other three are still closing on you.”

“Give us a minute to get out of those missiles’ range, and we’ll provide cover fire. Gomez Adams is about to launch our second UAV, so we should have a good view of the battlefield in a few minutes.”

“Roger.”

Arrowing across the bay at nearly forty knots, Linc couldn’t hope to hit anything as he sprayed rounds at the utility boat with his M-4A1. The three-round bursts were intended to keep the pursuers from firing at him. So far, the few return volleys had been wild. The men had simply propped their weapons against the utility boat’s gunwales and fired without looking.

He couldn’t believe the hits the Oregon was taking and realized that they had been expected. But it didn’t matter if the Sikh owner of the breaker’s yard was on to the Corporation. What mattered now was finding the chairman and then beating a fast retreat.

The ship saw had stopped its ungodly racket a moment earlier, and Linc didn’t know if this was a good sign or bad, but until the Oregon took out the utility boat chasing in their wake, they couldn’t risk making a run for the shed. Or could they?

Mike Trono was at the Zodiac’s helm, and Linc used his hands to indicate what he wanted to do. Trono nodded wordlessly and sent the lightweight boat skidding in a tight turn that would take them past the back of the huge shed.

The maneuver allowed the utility boat to cut the distance between it and the Zodiac, and the guards on board were emboldened by the opportunity. A dozen guns opened up at the same time and had Trono not juked the Zodiac, its rubber hull and the four men riding in her would have been cut to ribbons.

Linc and the others fired back. Even Trono fired his pistol with one hand while gunning the throttle with the other. One of the guards on the utility boat clutched his throat as he fell forward over the rail. He struck the roiled water of the bow wave and was sucked under. Even if the wound wasn’t fatal, the props would dice his body into hamburger as the boat motored over him.

The utility boat peeled away, giving Trono the opportunity to slow as they passed behind the warehouse just as the ship saw came back to life — quieter this time because it wasn’t cutting through metal.

Clutching his rifle tight to his chest, Linc rolled over the soft side of the Zodiac, absorbing the impact with the water on his massive shoulders. He was left bobbing in the wake as Mike brought the Zodiac back onto plane and rocketed parallel to the beach.

He ducked under the shed’s metal skirt and came up inside the structure.

There was enough light to see that the name of the ship inside had been removed from her stern. But, with the chain saw whirring farther toward the beach, it was impossible to hear any voices that would tell him what was happening.

“Oregon, this is Assault One,” he radioed. “I am inside the shed preparing to look for the chairman.

“Roger that,” Max replied instantly. “We’re almost ready to engage, so your extraction will be clear. Good luck.”

Linc clicked his radio in response and began to swim down the length of the ship, searching for a way to reach the deck. Then he heard the distinct crack of a pistol up near the ship’s truncated bow.

Seconds later two bodies tumbled over the ship’s rail. Both wore black, one in a combat uniform and the other wearing a wet suit. It had to be Cabrillo. Linc didn’t know the identity of the other person but wasn’t surprised the silhouette had a woman’s curves. Only the chairman could find a date in a place like this.

No sooner had the pair sunk below the water when two guards appeared at the rail, their gun barrels tracking back and forth as they searched for the two people who’d leapt overboard. The range was too long for Linc to guarantee his shot, so he silently swam on, keeping near the catwalk that ringed the shed a few feet above the tide mark. Twice he watched Cabrillo and a woman who looked vaguely familiar bob to the surface for air. Linc was sure they were headed for an open metal stairwell. That’s where Juan must have stashed his rebreather, he thought.

The guards fired down into the water, but Linc could see they had no idea where Cabrillo had fled. By Linc’s estimate, a full minute had passed since the last time Cabrillo had surfaced. He knew the chairman to be an excellent free diver capable of staying under for two minutes or more but not after a shoot-out on a ship and having fallen thirty feet from her deck. He must have reached the Draeger set.

Just as he reached this conclusion, he heard Max’s voice over his radio say they were engaging at the same time he heard the 40mm automatic cannon mounted on the Oregon’s fore quarter start to pound away.

Undistracted by the cannon outside, the guards began concentrating their fire at a spot about ten feet from the staircase. Something had drawn their attention. In a move that took tremendous strength because he was wearing combat boots rather than swim fins, Linc kicked his legs to thrust his upper body out of the water and brought his M-4A1 to his shoulder. Before gravity dragged him back down again, the former SEAL got off a pair of three-round bursts. One of the guards had his AK shot from his hands. The other’s head vanished in a crimson mist.

He sank back down under the surface and waited for any other gunman to rake the water. What he got instead was a hand clamped around his ankle. He resisted the urge to kick it away. The chairman.

Linc felt Cabrillo thrust the regulator mouthpiece to his lips and took a few grateful breaths before passing it back. Juan must have then given it to the woman because he could feel her chest moving against his shoulder. Together the three of them began an awkward swim that was more dog paddle than any other stroke with each taking turns at the regulator. It took several minutes to retreat down the length of the tanker.

Once at the shed’s rear doors, Cabrillo brought his party to the surface below the catwalk. His forehead stung from where he’d torn away the flap of skin, and his right leg throbbed from the groin all the way to the toes he’d lost years earlier.

“Your timing couldn’t have been better,” he told Linc. “I think my fin broke surface and gave away our position.”

“Any more in here, boss?”

“Shere Singh took off the instant I pulled my gun, and if you capped the last two on the Toyo Maru, then that’s all I know about.”

“Let’s not wait for reinforcements, shall we?” Tory said.

“I’m with the missus.” Linc keyed his tactical radio. “Oregon, this is Assault One. I’ve got the chairman and the mermaid we pulled off the Avalon. We’re ready for extraction by Zodiac.”

“You have to wait. There’s still one more utility boat out here. We’re tracking it now with the eye in the sky, but we need a few minutes to try to destroy it.”

Cabrillo took Linc’s headset. “Negative, Oregon. Shere Singh could be escaping as we speak. We need him.”

“Okay, Juan. I’ll vector the Zodiac to your position.”

A moment later the Zodiac roared over to the spot where Linc had performed his roll-off and throttled down to a low burble. Juan abandoned the Draeger rebreather and followed Tory and Lincoln under the door. Linc’s SEALs easily plucked her from the water and helped Cabrillo and the team leader into the rubber-hulled craft. Juan wasn’t fully inside before Mike Trono opened the throttle gates and shot the nimble boat across the waves.

They came under immediate fire from men on the beach, their weapons winking in the darkness like angry fireflies. Trono twisted the boat away from shore and out toward the open bay where the Oregon was trying to find the final utility boat. The other three were flaming wreckage that would soon sink to the bottom of the harbor. The fourth had to be hiding amid the dozens of rusted hulks awaiting their turn in the shed or on the beach for dismantling.

Juan moved to the Zodiac’s bow to call directions to the helmsman as they entered the flotilla of derelict ships. He’d donned a pair of night vision goggles. The outboard reverberated between the decaying hulls as they threaded their way toward the Oregon. With this many vessels, it was like running full speed through a maze. Trono bobbed and weaved the Zodiac, following Juan’s hand signals, barreling past a supertanker that had to be a thousand feet long and between a pair of car ferries that still carried the livery of the English Channel company that ran them.

They rounded the bow of the ferry, and were angling for a gap between a partially sunken tugboat and another container ship when the last utility boat appeared from behind another ship. The Corporation team responded a second quicker and raked the utility boat from stem to stern with well-aimed fire.

The utility boat cut a tight arc in the water and took off after the Zodiac. With the tide changing, the bay was growing rougher. Both boats buffeted in the rising swells, making it impossible to engage with their weapons. In calm seas the Zodiac could more than outrun the heavily laden work boat, but the waves were acting as a great equalizer.

Every time Trono tried to break out of the forsaken armada, the utility boat was there to cut off their escape back to the Oregon.

The outboard coughed, dropping power for a moment before rehitting on all cylinders. Mike Trono felt around the big engine cowling and cursed when his fingers felt a bullet hole. They came away wet, and he sniffed at the liquid clinging to his skin.

“Juan, they got the gas tank,” he shouted over the engine noise. “I don’t know how much longer we can play cat and mouse.”

The utility boat had broken off pursuit, but the Zodiac was headed away from the Oregon and still boxed in by so many ships they couldn’t tell where Singh’s men would attack from next.

“Did they head back to shore?” Tory asked.

“I doubt it,” Juan replied just as the work boat leapt from behind a big commercial fisherman.

More gunfire stitched the seas around the Zodiac as Trono tried to squeeze another half a knot out of the engine. He could smell oil burning inside the cowling. The bullet had done more than hole the gas tank. They zigzagged past the ferry boats again when something caught Cabrillo’s eye.

“Mike, take us back to that sunken tugboat. I have an idea.”

They raced across the bay toward the dark shape of the sunken ship. She’d settled awkwardly on some obstruction on the seafloor so that her bow was thrust out of the water and her back deck was awash. A broken crane dangling over her deck was nearly invisible in the moonlight.

Cabrillo concentrated on the course he wanted to take, ignoring all other distractions, including the fire coming from the utility boat. He had one shot to make this work. With his arms outstretched he called minute direction changes that the helmsman responded to instantly, feathering the hurtling Zodiac with a light touch.

“Okay, slow us down, draw them in.”

Everyone heard the crazy order, but no one questioned it. The Zodiac dutifully slowed, which allowed the utility boat to cut their separation to seventy feet. As if senseing the moment of victory, the utility boat’s driver hammered his throttles to their stops in hopes of running down their quarry.

Juan continued to feed course changes to Trono, guiding them so they would pass astern of the sunken ship. He looked over his shoulder to see the utility boat bearing down on them like a shark making its final lunge. Through his goggles’ enhanced optics he could even see the delight on the helmsman’s face as he prepared for the kill.

A few more seconds, Juan told himself, studying his target once again. A few more seconds. Now!

He dropped his left hand to order Mike to make a hard turn to port. The Zodiac was now racing for the gap under the tugboat’s broken crane. The larger utility boat was cranked over in pursuit, its driver never seeing he was being led into a trap.

“Down,” Juan shouted as the Zodiac crossed behind the tug’s sunken rail and shot under the ruined crane boom. There was barely three feet of clearance, and had they not ducked to the floorboards, the rusted steel derrick would have taken off their heads.

Juan looked back as soon as they were through. The utility boat was following in their wake but at the last second the helmsman must have seen the crane. He threw the wheel to its lock, but it was too late. They were going too fast. The boat smashed into the crane, and the metal easily ripped through the fiberglass hull. A gouge was torn down her entire length, and one of her big fuel tanks was ripped from its mounts.

None of the men aboard the doomed craft had time to brace themselves, and all twelve of them on the deck were launched over the bow by the sudden deceleration. Most landed safely in the water, although one hit the crane boom headfirst and died instantly.

The diesel spilling from the ruptured tank pooled inside the filthy bilge, but before enough seawater could dilute it, a spark from the ruined electrical system detonated the mixture in a ballooning fireball of orange and black.

“Scratch the last utility boat,” Cabrillo said over the tactical radio. “We’re headed home.”

The Zodiac’s engine died when they were still a hundred yards from the Oregon, forcing them to man the paddles. With the motor silenced they could hear continuous gunfire from the beach as Singh’s men fired blindly out to sea.

Juan threw the painter to a waiting deckhand as the rubber craft reached the ramp. By the time the last of Linc’s SEALs had piled out, Juan had limped to where Julia Huxley waited with a spare prosthetic leg. He’d radioed ahead. She used surgical scissors to cut away part of his wet suit and examined the stump. Apart from some purple swelling, his leg seemed okay, so she let him strap on the second prosthesis as she examined his head wound.

“What happened?” she asked, peering at the gash with a penlight.

“Rifle butt.”

She flashed the light into his eyes, checking if he had a concussion. She grunted, unsurprised that his pupils reacted normally. “You have a head like a cannonball. How do you feel? Dizzy? Lightheaded? Nauseous?”

“None of the above. It just stings a bit from the salt water.”

“I bet.” Julia knew that like most men, Juan was downplaying the pain. She swabbed out the four-inch-square wound, making sure that the antibacterial made him wince a few times before putting a large sterile dressing over the cut and swathing the top of his head with a gauze wrap. “That should hold you. Sorry, but I’m fresh out of lollipops.”

“Then I guess I should have cried more.” He dry-swallowed the painkillers she’d handed him.

Julia noticed Tory Ballinger standing nearby. “Do I even want to know what you’re doing here?”

“Tory works for Lloyd’s of London,” Juan said, getting to his feet and testing his weight on his artificial limb. While the stump was sore, he had full mobility. “She’s working the same case we are but from the other end.”

“And I thought it was my bedside manner.” The two women shook hands, and Julia asked if Tory needed any medical attention.

Tory was toweling off her hair. “Thanks, Dr. Huxley. I’m fine. Bit shaken maybe, but unharmed.”

“Juan has a good bottle of brandy in his cabin. I’m prescribing at least one snifter.”

“Chairman, you there?” It was Max Hanley over the ship’s intercom. Cabrillo hit the switch mounted to a nearby bulkhead.

“I’m here. What’s the situation?”

“They’re still firing at us from the beach. Just small arms. No RPGs. George Adams has the UAV circling the compound. A few minutes after the ship saw kicked off for the last time, he spotted someone running from the shed. They hopped into a jeep and tore out of the facility headed for a cluster of houses a mile or so up the coast. There’s a chopper on a nearby pad, but so far there’s been no activity around it.”

“What about our bird?”

“Crew has it on ten-minute standby,” Max replied, meaning the four-passenger Robinson helicopter could be in the air in ten minutes.

“Tell George to turn over the UAV to Eric Stone. The kid has enough hours on the Microsoft flight simulator to qualify for his commercial pilot’s license. I want to be airborne as soon as possible. We need Singh alive if we’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

“You sure you’re up to this?” Julia asked.

“I’m more pissed than hurt,” he told her. “Singh knew we were coming.” He snapped on the intercom again. “Max, it’s me. Listen, Singh’s been a step ahead of us. He unloaded the Toya Maru from the Maus a while ago. Probably when you broke off at Taiwan. Hiro’s tanker is already inside the shed and halfway to becoming razor blades.”

“How?”

“It doesn’t matter now, but I think the Maus has better radar than we thought. She must have known you were tailing her. Have Hali get ready to file a report with the Indonesian authorities. I suspect Singh’s plugged in with the government, so he’ll have to cut through a lot of red tape, but bottom line is we need this place raided by the navy or coast guard as soon as we’re clear.”

“I’m on the circuit,” Hali Kasim interrupted. There was a manic edge to his voice. “Chairman, you’re not going to believe this, but I just got a signal from Eddie’s transponder.”

“When?”

“Just now! Two seconds ago.”

“Jesus. Where is he?”

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Doubt crept into the communications officer’s tone.

“Talk to me, Hali.”

“Russia, sir. The western coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. What the hell is he doing there? I thought the snakeheads had their conduits running into the U.S or Japan.”

Juan went still and turned his mind inward so he could no longer hear Linc and the other SEALs stowing the Zodiac and their gear or feel Julia’s concerned look or Tory Ballinger’s intrigued scrutiny. Eddie Seng had been taken to Kamchatka. While the question of why worried at part of his mind, the bulk of his intellect was forming a plan, calculating speed, distances, and the priorities of the mission. He factored in the Oregon’s speed, the maximum speed of the Robinson R-44 with various payloads, and the need to interrogate Shere Singh.

He was sure Eddie wasn’t the only Chinese immigrant that had been taken to the isolated part of Russia, a volcano-strewn jut of land that had been closed off to the world for the better part of the past century. How many more had ended up on its rugged shores was something he couldn’t know, but instinct told him there would be a great many.

What was Singh’s connection? Transportation was the obvious answer. He could move men and ships inside the pair of floating drydocks with virtual impunity. He could hijack vessels carrying illegals from the open seas and make sure any witnesses, like Tory’s hapless Avalon, never survived long enough to file a report. All Singh needed to know was which ships were carrying immigrants, and he could target them at will. That would mean that someone in China was supplying that information, Cabrillo realized, but was the smuggling the only crime taking place, or was it a means to an end?

“They need cheap labor,” he said aloud.

“What was that?” Tory asked. She’d stripped off her wet jacket and wore only a thin black T-shirt. A fluffy towel was draped over her shoulders to cover her breasts. Her dark hair was damp and untamed and somehow incredibly attractive. If she had any questions about what she’d seen of the Corporation so far, she had the good sense to keep them to herself.

“This is about cheap labor; slaves. The night we saved you we also took out a pirate boat that was carrying a shipping container. We sank the ship and managed to recover the container, but not in time to save the people who’d been locked inside. We later learned they were illegal Chinese immigrants. I had one of my men follow the route those poor bastards had taken in hopes of learning what they were up to and how it related to the pirates. He just turned up on the Kamchatka Peninsula.”

“We at Lloyd’s only suspected Singh of hijacking shipping in the region and using his facility here to eliminate the evidence.”

“There’s more than that,” Juan said. “He’s also hijacking ships carrying Chinese immigrants and transporting them to Kamchatka. And if he needs transporters as big as the Maus and her sister drydock, it leads me to believe they’ve probably seized hundreds, or maybe thousands of illegals. They’re using them as slave labor.”

“What on earth for?” Tory asked.

“It could be anything.” Juan hit the intercom again. “Max, make preparations to get us out of here. I’ll take Linc and Mike Trono with me to find Shere Singh. I want you headed for Eddie’s location with every knot the old girl can give. We’ll catch a flight to…” He needed a second to recall Kamchatka’s capital. “Petropavlovsk.”

“Not gonna happen, Chairman,” Mark Murphy said over the open circuit. “I’ve been on the Internet since Hali said that’s where Eddie is. The government is reporting a major volcanic event is under way. I confirmed it through the U.S. Geological Survey’s website. The Russians are saying there’s so much ash falling that they’ve been forced to shut down the airport. No one’s going in or out.”

Juan cursed under his breath. “Okay, that doesn’t change anything. I still want the Oregon under way as soon as possible.”

“What about Shere Singh?” Max asked.

“My window to catch him just narrowed, that’s all. Even with the Oregon moving at maximum speed, we should have a half hour here before you steam out of the Robinson’s range.”

“May I say something, Captain Cabrillo?” Tory asked.

Juan nodded.

“I infiltrated this facility from the landward side, and I have to say it’s bloody enormous. I’ve been observing the place for a week, and even I don’t know the full scope of Singh’s operation.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that if you’re only giving yourself thirty minutes to find him, then I think I can lead you to where he keeps his residence when he’s here.”

Juan hesitated for a fraction of a second. Tory Ballinger was a virtual stranger to him, but he felt like he knew her because he recognized a great deal of himself in her steady gaze. She’d handled herself well just moments earlier, and he still didn’t know how she’d kept her wits when she was trapped aboard the Avalon. He saw in her the same indefatigable British spirit that had once made their island the most powerful nation on earth and had seen England through the blitz during World War Two. While in Winston Churchill that look came across as pugnacious confidence, in Tory it was alluring drive.

And to top it off, Juan thought, her own investigation had led her to the very same place his had taken him, and he doubted she’d blown up a building and kidnapped a corrupt lawyer to get here.

“You’re on.”

Tory had expected an argument. It was in the storm clouds building behind her bright blue eyes. Juan’s quick acceptance of her offer left her off balance for a moment and her mouth agape.

“We’ve got about five minutes to change and kit up. Come with me. You, too, Linc. We’re not done yet.”

Moments after the Robinson R-44 lifted from its hydraulically operated pad, the Oregon cut a tight circle in the bay using her athwartships bow thruster, and Linda Ross gave Eric Stone the order for full speed. Max Hanley was down in his beloved engine room. As soon as the order came through, the quad magnetohydrodynamic engines spooled up like aircraft turbines, and almost instantly the water at her stern boiled up with the raw force of her revolutionary propulsion system. Linda also ordered Mark Murphy to rake the sea just short of the beach with the Gatling gun to give the departing chopper a few moments of cover fire.

George Adams sat in the Robinson’s left-hand seat with Juan at his side. Linc and Tory took up the rear bench seats. With their personal weapons and equipment as well as the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle lying across Linc’s lap, the chopper was crowded. Adams looped them out to sea and crossed the shoreline well north of the breaker’s yard.

“There’s a compound up the beach about a mile,” Tory said over the helo’s intercom. “It’s where the executives live. I watched them for a couple of days over the past week. One of the houses is much larger than the others, and now that I’ve seen Shere Singh up close and personal, I remember him living there.”

“Any guards?” Juan asked.

“A few, but after tonight I expect the area to be lousy with them.”

Juan smiled at her turn of phrase, but inside he knew to expect the worst. “What about access to the facility?”

“There is a road that runs north and south behind it. There’s a hydro dam and a smelting factory to the north.”

“Much traffic?’

“Mostly lorries hauling the steel plates to be melted. And almost nothing after nightfall.”

“Okay, folks, we’re coming back over the coastline.” Adams’s helmet was integrated with a night vision camera mounted on the Robinson’s nose to give him greater visibility. “I see the compound she just mentioned. A lot of lights and a lot of people milling around. And, as luck would have it, a few of them aren’t armed.”

“Keep us out of their range and let’s see what’s happening.”

“I see a chopper pad a little farther away from the compound,” Adams said. “It looks like they’ve got a JetRanger, and her rotors are starting to turn.”

“Can we follow them?” Tory asked.

“She’s got us by forty or fifty knots and at least a hundred miles of range,” Juan told her. He looked back at Franklin Lincoln. “How about it, big man?”

“I’m on it, boss.”

“George, hold us steady,” Lincoln said as he loosened his shoulder harness. He opened his door, ignoring the frenzied hurricane of downwash from the rotors that whipped into the small chopper’s cabin. The Barrett was an ugly weapon, nearly five feet long and heavy. In the hands of an expert the half-inch bullets it fired were accurate up to a mile.

Adams turned the Robinson broadside to clear Linc’s view. A few guards in the distant compound fired at the hovering helicopter, but the distance was too great. Lincoln fitted the big rifle to his shoulder and checked the sight picture through the night vision scope. The world was an eerie green through the optics, but somehow intimate. He could see the frustration on the guards’ faces as they fired at the chopper. He scanned the scene and settled the reticle on the idling JetRanger helicopter. His view was so sharp he could see the air shimmering from the heat that poured from the turbine’s exhaust.

The crack of the gun sounded like a cannon, and Linc absorbed the brutal recoil without taking his eyes from the sight. The bullet arrived long before anyone on the ground heard it, so the destruction came as a stunning surprise. It struck the JetRanger’s rotor mast, the most vulnerable part of any helicopter. The whirling mast came apart so that her blades were launched like a pair of deadly scythes. One cut through a cluster of men who were setting up a shoulder-fired missile. The dismemberments were something even a veteran like Franklin Lincoln had a hard time stomaching.

The other blade hit a large fuel tank mounted on stilts. The highly volatile aviation gas went up in a towering explosion that overwhelmed the scope’s light filters. Linc looked over the rifle and saw flames mushrooming outward and upward. Anyone standing within a hundred feet of the tank was knocked back by the concussion. Anyone within fifty feet had been immolated.

“I’ve got movement,” Adams called out. “Rear door of the JetRanger just opened. Guy wearing a turban is running for it.”

“That has to be Shere Singh,” Tory said. “Where’s he going?”

“Hold on.” A few tense moments passed. “Okay, he’s getting into a car. Looks like a big Mercedes sedan. He’s getting into the backseat. There’s only him and the driver.”

“Want me to take him out, Juan?” Linc asked, bringing the sniper rifle to his shoulder again.

“Not here. Let him get out onto the highway and away from all these guards.”

“Singh must have radioed someone,” George announced. “Another car is pulling away from the residential compound. Looks like at least three armed men inside.”

“We knew this wouldn’t be easy.” Cabrillo checked his watch. A third of their thirty-minute window to catch the Oregon had gone by.

A moment later they all saw the headlights of the pair of cars race out the facility’s back gate and head south. The road was hemmed in by dark jungle, so the lights reflected as though the vehicles were speeding through a tunnel. George opened the throttle to the Robinson’s engine and quickly overtook the vehicles.

The drivers maintained a fifteen-foot separation. It was a little tight for what Juan had in mind, but he had no other choice. He plucked a grenade from the web harness over his shoulder and opened the small window set into the chopper’s right-hand door. Optimally the grenade should have a five-second fuse; however, each incendiary’s timer varied by as much as a second — not a big deal when throwing one into a foxhole or trying to take out troops advancing on foot — but with the cars hurtling at ninety miles per hour, they could cover more than a hundred feet in a single tick of a watch.

Cabrillo pulled the pin, maintaining a firm grip on the spoon, and held the grenade outside the window. The toss was more experience and instinct than calculation. He released the spoon to prime the weapon, waited a few moments, and let it drop.

The grenade was instantly swallowed by the darkness, but a second later the Mercedes swerved as the driver reacted to something heavy bouncing off the trunk. The grenade rolled off the car, hit the road, and momentum kept it tumbling down the asphalt. The trailing car raced over it as though they hadn’t seen it or didn’t understand what it was. Another second passed, one of the longest in Juan’s life. He was sure that the guards’ car had safely passed the grenade and was reaching for another when it detonated directly under the vehicle’s gas tank.

The two explosions came an instant apart. First the low crump of the grenade and then the second spectacular detonation of the gasoline. The rear of the car lifted off the road, and it pivoted on its nose for a heartbeat before slamming onto its roof. It rolled seven times, shedding sheet metal and waves of burning fuel. It ended up careening off the road and slamming into a utility pole, the force of the impact bending the car in two around the teak pole.

Shere Singh’s driver unintentionally slowed as he watched the destruction in his rearview mirror. This gave Franklin Lincoln all the opportunity he needed. George passed the Mercedes flying ten feet above the low jungle canopy and fifty feet to the right of the road. Linc nestled the Barrett to his shoulder and fired. While a normal bullet might have only punctured the Mercedes’s tire, the .50 caliber slug shattered the spline where the front axle met the wheel. The entire assembly, wheel, hub, and tire were torn from the car. The heavy Mercedes dropped onto the shattered axle in a shower of sparks, and the car instantly began to decelerate as the driver fought to keep it on the road.

For good measure Linc put two bullets through the front of the hood and gave a satisfied nod when steam erupted from the mangled radiator.

Adams brought the Robinson over the road, keeping just behind the dying limousine, and when it finally came to a stop, he had the skids on the macadam. Even before the machine had settled onto the road, Cabrillo, Linc, and Tory Ballinger were rushing ahead. Linc and Juan carried M-4A2 assault rifles while Tory had borrowed a Beretta semiautomatic pistol from the Oregon’s armory.

The team had covered half of the twenty yards when the driver heaved open his door. He was out and around it before anyone could get a shot off. From his covered position behind the door, he sprayed the roadway with fire from a machine pistol. The driver was panicked, and his shots went wild, but still the trio fell to the ground. Linc opened up with his M-4, concentrating a withering stream of 5.56mm into the open door. The high-powered rounds ricocheted off the armored door and turned the bulletproof glass opaque.

Having assumed that the big Mercedes would be armored, Juan fired under the door. His first burst missed the driver, but the second tore apart the calf and ankle of one of his legs. As he fell the door closed, exposing him to a double tap from Tory’s Beretta. The impact threw him bodily into the car’s fender before he slid to the ground in a disjointed heap.

Juan checked the Mercedes’s rear door. Locked. He loosed his nearly full magazine into the glass at point-blank range. The first dozen bullets couldn’t penetrate the tough laminate, but by clamping the barrel tightly he was able to bore a hole through the pane. Linc stepped up as Juan backed away to reload and expanded the hole, sending chips of glass arcing though the air like glittering diamonds.

Once Juan had his weapon reloaded, he tapped Linc on the shoulder to cease firing.

“Singh, I’m giving you three seconds to place both hands outside the window.” There were no sounds coming from inside the vehicle. “One. Two. Three.” Linc and Juan opened fire at the same instant. Bullets passing through the shattered glass started to disintegrate the opposite window. Several imbedded in the seat back, and a couple pinged off the armored plating and rattled around the back of the car until burying themselves in a soft target. A sharp cry of pain cut above the rifles’ chatter. Both men held fire.

“Singh!”

“I’m shot.” His voice remained strong. “Oh, praise to Allah, I am going to die.”

“Put your goddamned hands outside the window now, or I throw in a grenade.”

“I cannot move. My legs, you have paralyzed me.”

Juan and Linc exchanged a look, both certain they couldn’t trust the Sikh but knowing they had no alternative. Juan reached his hand into the car and opened the door with Linc in position to cover as much of the interior as he could. As the door came open, the interior lights came on. Singh was on the floor and as soon as he could draw a bead he fired with his own machine pistol. His aim was even worse than his driver’s. The stream of bullets plowed into the armored door, saving Linc’s life. The former SEAL did what tens of thousands of hours of training had instilled in him. As he dodged out of the way he put two rounds into Singh’s face, one below the eye and the other straight down the man’s throat. His turban uncoiled like a striking snake, and the back of his head came apart in a blooming flower of blood and tissue.

Linc cursed, twisting away in frustration and self-recrimination. “Damnit, Juan, I am so sorry. It was just —”

“Instinct,” Juan finished for him, peering into the car to survey the carnage. “You had no choice. I would have done the exact same thing.”

Tory shouldered past them and stepped into the back of the stretch Mercedes. Ignoring the blood she patted down Shere Singh’s corpse, handing out his wallet, a leather billfold. She plucked a briefcase from where Singh had wedged it into a seat cushion, looked around to see if she’d missed anything, and backed out once again.

“Well, lads, this turned into a dead end, eh?” She wiped her hands on the seat of her pants and gestured up the road behind the idling Robinson helicopter. “It won’t take long for more of Singh’s forces to get organized and come looking for their boss. Discretion being the better part of valor and all that, I think we should get the hell out of here.”

As they started for the chopper, George Adams added power in preparation for takeoff, choking the air with fine grit and forcing them to bend double. Juan tapped Tory on the shoulder and jerked his thumb back toward the Mercedes limousine.

“Just an investigator for Lloyd’s?”

Tory intuitively knew what he was talking about. She gave him a cocky grin. “Before that I was employed by Her Majesty’s government.”

“Doing what?”

She placed a hand on her holstered Beretta. “Troubleshooter.”