Mirage

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

They came at sunup on the third day of the trip. Just as Cabrillo had suspected, there were three boats — low, cigarette-style powerboats — that surged out of the predawn darkness like sharks circling in for the kill. They had less than a foot of freeboard showing, so they had never appeared on radar. There would be another vessel out here with them, a mother ship waiting over the horizon that would have towed the powerboats to the ambush point. There were five pirates on each craft, coffee-skinned Somalis who had turned this stretch of the Indian Ocean into one of the most dangerous places on earth. Juan suspected it was the crime lord from Başrah who had tipped them off and told them what ship to stalk. Başrah was a port city, after all, so he would have contacts in the pirates’ leadership.

Most of the men brandished AK-47s, but one on each boat carried the distinctive RPG-7 rocket launcher. They attacked from astern so the watch standers on the bridge never saw them, didn’t know about them, in fact, until an RPG round slammed into the fantail just above the waterline in an attempt to disable the Oregon’s prop and rudder.

On any other ship, the explosion would have left them dead in the water, but the Oregon was hardened and armored in critical areas so the rocket-propelled grenade did little but pucker the armored belt and singe some paint.

Because they had to keep the bridge manned anyway, Cabrillo had decided to switch control to there from the op center and keep only one person manning the high-tech room rather than the customary two. Seconds after the blast echoed throughout the ship, MacD Lawless leapt from the Kirk Chair where he lolled in boredom to the weapons station in the front of the room. Although he was the newest member of the Corporation, he knew Oregon’s systems as well as any of them.

It took him just a few seconds of channeling through camera feeds to spot the pirate boats. They were standing off about fifty yards from the ship, well beyond the range of fire hoses that some freighters deployed to protect themselves. They were waiting for their quarry to slow from the damage they’d inflicted with the RPG. If it did not slow, then another couple of RPGs would be fired into her. One way or another, they would not be deprived of their prize.

MacD at first considered using the ship’s 20mm Gatling guns, but their four guests were all ex-military and would know the industrial whine of the Gatling rattling off at three thousand rounds per minute. Best he deploy a more likely weapon on a smuggler’s ship. In one corner of the main view screen, a hidden camera showed the four guards down by the hold, paralyzed by indecision. They did not know what to do. Should they go topside and help defend the ship or should they remain at their post and be ready to make a last stand should pirates make it this far?

MacD activated a pair of M60 machine guns that Juan called their “boarder repellants.” The guns were hidden inside oil drums welded to the deck near the ship’s rail. The barrels’ lids popped open, and the weapons emerged, muzzle first, before rotating to a horizontal firing position. He clicked the targeting icon on his computer screen, locking in the automated firing plots, and let the guns loose.

The guns fired a NATO standard 7.62mm round, and while not particularly large or powerful, this weapon made up for it in sheer volume of fire. The first cigarette boat was raked from stem to stern with fifty rounds before anyone aboard knew what was happening. The driver was killed instantly, two of the gunmen as well. The other two were tossed into the ocean when the out-of-control boat barreled into a wave and flipped.

On the other side of the Oregon, the second gun had an even more devastating effect on another of the pirates’ boats. This one exploded when gas from the punctured tank ignited off the hot engine. The fireball was something out of Hollywood. The third attacking boat took heed and raced for the horizon before the M60 could target it, but the mother boat, which had foolishly approached, either didn’t see or didn’t understand what had happened to their comrades. They held a steady course so that they could launch another RPG at their prey’s fantail.

MacD hit the target icon again. On deck, the M60’s barrel moved mechanically and aimed ever so slightly upward to compensate for the increased distance and a little windage. The computer even took into consideration the ballistic changes caused by the barrel being heated from the first barrage.

The gun chattered again just as the rocket man heaved the launch tube to his shoulder. He was hit multiple times but managed to pull the trigger before he died. The problem for his teammates was that the RPG was pointed straight at the deck of their own boat when the igniter engaged. The rocket blew through the bottom of the mother boat with barely a check in speed and sank quickly out of sight without exploding. The hole in the hull became a huge rend that would have doomed the crew even had the machine-gun fire not continued to pour in on them.

In all, it took just a few seconds from the opening shot to the last. Lawless blew out a long breath while crewmen surged into the op center, Cabrillo being one of the first. He wore a pair of swim trunks under a cotton terry robe and dripped water onto the deck without noticing. He smelled of chlorine from the ship’s pool.

“Pirates in cigarette boats. Three in total. Two were greased, while the last one ran for the horizon. Then the mother ship approached and took a powder too,” MacD reported without being prompted. He knew what the Chairman wanted.

“Damage?”

“One RPG to the stern. Awaiting a report from damage control. Speed and course are unaffected. The guns are already stowed.”

Juan looked at the camera feed showing the four guards at the entrance to the hold. They were talking animatedly among themselves and finally reached some sort of decision. One of them shouldered his rifle and started for the nearest stairwell that would lead him to the main deck.

“I suppose,” Juan said, “I should go tell him what happened. MacD, pop two of the guns out again. Linc and I will pretend we fired them.”

Max Hanley finally made his appearance.

“Damage?” Juan asked, for he knew Max would check on his beloved ship before anything else.

“We won’t be changing our name anytime soon. My magnetic sign is all messed up, but other than that we’re good.”

“All right, we suspected this was coming. Now we’ll wait to see if we get attacked again and prove once and for all there’s no honor among thieves.”

Linda Ross was manning the op center six days later as the Oregon was coming abreast of the island of Sumatra for the final dash to Jakarta. Juan and Hali had the topside con. Every few minutes, she would scan all the various computer screens and control panels for any sign that there was some sort of trouble aboard the ship. Then she would scan the main display. On it were shots of the sea, both fore and aft, as well as a radar plot refreshed by the repeater’s swing arm. Another part of the screen was a cable news feed where talking heads were discussing heightened tensions between China and Japan over the discovery of a massive gas field near some disputed islands. Yet another was a peek into the hallway outside the hold where their four guests guarded the door. The men were unshaven, and the strain of maintaining vigilance over the past days showed in the hollowness of their eyes and the stoop to their shoulders.

She had to give them props. They were untrusting strangers who had held it together. Although the three Arabs now allowed themselves a half hour on deck each day, Winters never left his post.

She didn’t see anything happen and only realized something was wrong after staring at the screen for another twenty seconds.

In all the days and nights since they’d boarded, only one of the guards slept at a time while the others kept watch. Studying the image, she took valuable time to recognize that three of the guards were sleeping and the fourth was gone. The resolution wasn’t the best, but she quickly realized it was Gunny Winters she could no longer see, and the three men lying on the deck had each been shot execution style. There was remarkably little blood, but each had a bullet hole in their head.

She was about to call Juan up on the bridge and tell him what was happening when the engines abruptly cut off. Winters had had more than enough time to get from the hold to the bridge and take command of the ship. Linda was certain that he’d ordered Juan to cut power. The Oregon was now adrift under the command of a traitor and thief. And just like when the Somalis had struck, Cabrillo had predicted something like this too. And his first standing order when the next attack came was to simply wait it out and see where it headed.

Linda called Max to the op center along with Eric and Mark. She kept helm control up on the bridge for now, but they would want the A Team in place when they retook their ship. She checked the radar repeater. There was a vessel about eighty miles away, and, as she watched, the icon split into two distinct returns. She knew in just a few seconds that this fast-approaching mystery ship had launched a helicopter and it was inbound at better than a hundred knots.

“Here we go.”

Cabrillo could have ended Malcolm Winters’s mutiny in the first few seconds had he so chosen. Winters had been good, stalking his way to the wheelhouse, but Cabrillo had seen him creeping up on him in the reflection of an old coffee urn that sat on a shelf below the fore windows.

Instead of reacting, he’d sat seemingly unaware until Winters pressed the still-warm barrel of his Beretta against the back of Juan’s head. “Sorry about this, Captain, but there’s been a change of plans.”

Hali, standing at the wheel, turned sharply with a quick intake of breath because he hadn’t heard Winters until he spoke.

“Stand easy,” Juan said in Arabic.

“Yes, sir.” Hali fell into the role of frightened crewman.

“What is it you want?” Cabrillo asked, switching to English.

“Number one is, I want you to cut the engines.” Winters moved around so he could cover both Cabrillo and Kasim. An M4 assault rifle was slung across his chest.

Juan suspected a man like Gunny Winters, a veteran of three tours in Iraq, would speak at least some Arabic, so he gave the correct orders to Hali at the helm station. The beat of the engines, an artificial noise created to muffle the whine of the Oregon’s true power plant, eased down until the only sound was the subtle hiss of water floating past the ship’s steel sides.

The morning was as beautiful as only the tropics can be. The sun was up, but the heat and humidity were still some time away. There was the merest of breezes, and the waves were long and ponderous and swelled no more than a few inches.

“What other weapons do you have besides the M60s you used on the pirates last Friday?” Winters asked.

Cabrillo had to admit he was impressed. Judging by the silver in his high-and-tight haircut, Winters was closer to fifty than forty. He had been operating on stress, caffeine pills, and little sleep for over a week and yet he still looked pretty good. Yes, there was the beard, and his eyes were bloodshot, but he had lost none of his military discipline and little of his bearing. In a different world, the two of them would probably be friends.

“I keep a Tokarev pistol in the safe in my cabin, and my first engineer has a shotgun.”

“Tell your man to go and get them. He is to slide them, breeches open, through the door at the rear of the bridge. If I see him or any other member of your crew, you will die. Understand?”

“Yes.” Juan relayed the orders, noting wryly that Winters did seem to understand because he nodded when Juan explained the safe’s combination. Two minutes later, a sawed-off shotgun came sliding from the passageway behind the bridge, followed a moment later by a battered Tokarev pistol. The pistol’s slide was locked back so it could not fire, and the double barrels of the shotgun were broken open so it was evident it was not loaded. Winters squinted at the pistol, satisfying himself that the magazine had been pulled.

“Toss them both overboard, please, Captain.”

Cabrillo picked up the two weapons, crossed over to the starboard wing bridge, and heaved the weapons over the side of the ship. He knew that Winters wouldn’t be too concerned by the M60s down on the deck. In the close confines of the bridge, such a weapon would kill a hostage just as surely as the kidnapper.

Juan returned and stood by the helm. Winters had positioned himself well back from the windows in case he’d been lied to and someone had a scoped rifle. Again, Juan was impressed.

“Now what?”

“I want two crewmen to man that gantry derrick down on deck and start heaving the empty containers over the side.”

“What about your three companions? Surely they will have something to say about this.”

“They’re dead,” Winters said bluntly. “Now carry out my orders. And have your wheelman return to the hallway behind us for further instructions.”

Juan yelled through the back door to Hali and told him what to do. It took a little more time to organize a work detail. Eddie Seng and Franklin Lincoln soon strode out of the superstructure and made their way to the mast crane. Eddie fired up the diesel that powered the controls, and though it smoked as if it were about to expire, it ran as smooth as a sewing machine.

While Linc took the controls, Eddie scrambled up onto the first of the deck-loaded containers. He lugged a rusted wire sling that had four hooks, which could be attached to the four corners of a container, and a central loop for the hook coming down the crane’s main cable.

By the time they had one of the containers dangling over the side of the ship, a new noise could be heard out over the water, the unmistakable beat of a helicopter’s rotors. The noise grew until it filled Cabrillo’s head. He could not see the chopper because it was coming up from the southeast and was soon hovering over the stern. He motioned to Winters that he wanted to see from the bridge wing. The old gunny nodded.

Cabrillo stepped out into an artificial gale kicked up by a Sikorsky S-70, the civilian version of the Black Hawk helicopter. The chopper’s side door was already open, and as soon as the craft was stabilized over the fantail, a pair of thick ropes tumbled down to the deck. Two men followed them even before they had been fully deployed, dropping like stones until braking just before they smashed into the steel. Another pair followed a second behind them.

And then the chopper veered off and began thundering back south. The men were dressed in black combat fatigues and were loaded with gear and weapons. They had fast-roped with the precision of Special Forces, which was precisely what they had been.

“Your crew will remain inside the ship at all times,” Winters said from where he crouched. “I don’t care where just so long as they remain out of sight. If they venture too close to a doorway or window, they will be shot.”

“Hali,” Juan called.

“I am here, Captain. What was that noise?”

“Four more soldiers have boarded the ship. Pass the word that I want all crew members to go to the mess and wait there. No one is to go near the deck at any time. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Captain. We will wait in the mess hall until you come for us.”

Juan wondered whether he and his crew were meant to survive this ordeal or if Winters and his masters would eliminate them as potential witnesses. He suspected the latter. Not only was the crew witness to this hijacking, scuttling the ship would actually cover the theft from the crime bosses. A judicious SOS call, and a search and rescue that discovers the ship already well down at the head and beyond salvage, and, voilà, a billion dollars, free and clear, from your partners.

The empty container hit the water with a tremendous splash and bobbed like a red cube of ice in a drink. Eddie clutched the wire sling after detaching it from the container and was swung back on board.

Winters cursed when he shot a glance out the wing window. He no longer feared a sniper since his men controlled the deck. “I forgot to tell you to open the door so the containers sink.”

“I will pass that along.” There was an old bullhorn in a cabinet under the chart table.

“Go outside, Captain, and my men will kill you before you take two steps. Do either of your guys out there speak English?”

“Yes.”

The former Marine took the bullhorn and strode out onto the bridge wing. “Hold fast. It’s Winters.” His amplified voice boomed and echoed while down below two of his guards swung their guns up and took aim before relaxing once again. “You two, working on the crane. From now on, open the container’s doors so they sink. Raise your arm if you understand.” The Asian crewman who’d met with them on the dock back in Umm Qasr raised a hand in a nervous wave. Winters returned to the bridge. Though he’d spoken to the men outside, he’d never once taken his eyes, or the aim of his pistol, off the Chairman.

It took three hours to unload all the empty containers. By the time Eddie and Linc had finished, a boat had approached. It looked like a typical oil field tender with a boxy superstructure hunched over the bows and a long open rear deck. On the deck sat the Sikorsky helicopter that had dropped off Winters’s men, as well as an enormous crane on crawler tracks. Between the two was ample room for The Container.

Cabrillo understood at once why they had brought their own crane. When the mission to steal The Container was laid out, Winters and his American partners didn’t know if the ship chosen to smuggle the money out of Iraq had its own derricks to transfer cargo. Prudently, they had assumed it did not and brought their own crane with them on this high seas rendezvous.

“In case you are wondering, we are not going to kill you,” Winters said conversationally as he watched his partners steaming closer.

“I am not reassured,” Juan said.

“No. It’s true. The way we figure it, there’s no way you can show up in Jakarta with tales of us betraying the others. They might believe you, they might not, but they surely will make you pay for losing their money. Your only chance of staying alive is to sell this ship in some backwater port and vanish.”

Cabrillo said nothing.

“I’ve had a bellyful of killing,” Winters went on. “Those three down below—” His voice suddenly cut off as a new sound enveloped the ship, the banshee scream of one of her 20mm Gatling guns opening up on the approaching tender. The rounds tore into her stern like a predatory cat rakes the haunches of its prey. Steel was shredded as easily as paper. The tender’s rudder was shot completely off, and rounds destroyed the stuffing box where the single driveshaft passed out of the hull and into the sea. The shaft itself snapped under the onslaught, and her bronze propeller popped free like a rotten tooth.

Water began flooding her engine room in such volumes that the crew down below never stood a chance. The fusillade lasted just seconds, but it was enough to doom the ship to a fast-approaching death.

Juan had been expecting the blast from the Gatling. It had all been preplanned days ago as they gamed various boarding scenarios. Had a helicopter approached the Oregon where The Container could be hoisted off, it would have been shot down. They had left the Sikorsky unmolested because the empty containers had yet to be pulled free from the hold, and also because it did not have the lift capacity to carry off the cash-filled container.

If it was all in hundred-dollar bills, it would still weigh eleven tons. Twenty-two thousand pounds of money. It would be more if smaller denominations were thrown into the mix.

The distraction of the tender’s destruction gave Juan no advantage. Gunny Winters nearly shot him in the face when Cabrillo charged. The old Marine had the reflexes of an Olympic fencer and the concentration of a Zen master. Even as the Gatling continued its dreadful wail, Winters was ready for a fight. Juan had barely pushed Winters’s arm aside when the gunny cycled through four snap shots, the noise exploding in Cabrillo’s ear. They crashed, chest to chest, and Juan felt like he’d run into a cement-block wall. Winters was about Juan’s height, but under his loose shirt his body was thick with muscle. Winters smashed forward with his head like a striking cobra and would have crushed Cabrillo’s nose had the Chairman not whirled back, maintaining his grip on Winters’s gun hand. A lightning kick aimed for his groin came next, and Juan twisted his leg to take the massive blow on his thigh. His leg felt weak down to his toe.

Most fighters armed with a pistol would concentrate on using the weapon and ignoring everything else. Not this man. He came after Juan with everything he had. It was as if the pistol clutched in his right hand was meaningless. Meanwhile, Cabrillo opened himself up to punches and kicks as he was forced to maintain his grip on the gun hand.

The Gatling finally went silent, and smoke poured from the hundreds of holes shot into the tender’s hull. The fight in the wheelhouse was in its seventh second when Cabrillo realized he was more than likely going to lose. And that set him off — the idea of defeat. He slammed Winters’s hand into a window frame again and again until the pistol fell to the deck.

He released the hand, knowing it would be useless to Winters, and threw a combination of punches that the gunny expertly parried. Juan just had to buy a few more seconds. The plan called for his people to overwhelm the guards on deck and retake the bridge. Max would be storming through the door any second with Linc and MacD on his heels.

Winters’s right hand should be worthless and yet he managed to unsheathe a fighting knife he carried strapped inside his shirt. Cabrillo fought the natural urge to get away from the blade. Instead, he stepped closer, limiting Winters’s ability to swing the knife. Winters flipped the blade and started to plunge it into Juan’s shoulder. Juan grabbed at his wrist, but the former Marine had the better position and superior leverage, and the knife sliced into the meat of Cabrillo’s trapezius muscle. Winters was angling the blade so it would eventually find the major arteries feeding the brain.

Hot blood poured from the wound and down his chest. Cabrillo roared as he tried to keep the knife from digging deeper while Winters tried just as hard to ram the blade all the way home.

It went in an inch. The deeper it was driven, the less Juan could check its remorseless plunge. He could sense his opponent gathering himself for one last effort, one last thrust, that would kill him.

He felt the spray of blood on his face before he heard the shot. Winters collapsed, lifeless, the knife ripping savagely from Cabrillo’s body as he collapsed in a heap. Max stood in the doorway leading aft, a compact Glock in his hand still pointed at the ceiling, still smoking.

“The other four surrendered without a fight,” Hanley said.

“I had just about every advantage under the sun, and he still nearly killed me.” Juan peeled back his sodden shirt to look at his wound. It was a small slit, and little blood was seeping out.

“Better get Hux up here with her sewing kit,” Max remarked mildly.

“Your concern for my well-being is touching.”

“Ah, but I did just save your life.”

“A charge I can’t deny.” Juan looked down at Winters’s corpse. “Tough old bird.”

“What do they say, there’s no such thing as an ex-Marine.”

Within a few minutes, the bridge was crowded. Hux had Juan on a seat with his shirt off so that she could clean, stitch, and dress the wound. Max was overseeing the rescue of the passengers and crew of the oil field tender. The boat was sinking by the stern so steeply that her bow was already out of the water. She was going too fast for them to launch a lifeboat, so men jumped free, with life jackets if they could find them, and started swimming for the big freighter they had come out here to rob.

Linda, MacD, and Mike Trono, all armed, were near the lowered gangplank ready to welcome their new guests.

Cabrillo refused anything stronger than Tylenol and was back on his feet in time to see the crawler crane rip from its restraining chains and smash its way across the tilted deck and destroy the already-submerged helicopter.

“Someone’s not getting their toys back.”

“Dollars to donuts,” Max said around the stem of his pipe, “the tender and crane were rented, but that helo was owned by whoever financed this little caper.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Juan agreed.

The tender’s bow was now sticking straight up in a frothing roil of air bubbles escaping from the countless 20mm punctures. And then she was gone. The water continued to boil for a few seconds, but the hull planed off far enough that that too came to an end. All that remained was a small slick of oil and a few pieces of unidentifiable flotsam.

The first of the survivors reached the boarding stairs. Each was thoroughly patted down and told to sit on their hands in an open section of deck near the four men who’d choppered aboard.

Juan and Max went down to the deck to inspect their prize. As they had guessed, the tender’s crew was hired help — in this case, native Indonesians who probably worked the oil fields off Brunei. They would be detained and questioned but ultimately released. What interested Juan were the four Westerners. Two of them, he suspected, were the two from Iraq. The other two were older, and while they looked like a couple of drowned rats after their unexpected swim, they both had a sage dignity and a predisposed haughtiness. He didn’t recognize either of them, and they remained mute when he asked their names.

Cabrillo rolled his eyes. He took out his phone, snapped pictures of their faces, and e-mailed them to Mark Murphy, who was still plugged in to the DoD databases. They got a hit right away, and the answer rocked Juan back on his heels.

“Max, do you know who we have here?”

“A rat.”

“True, but a former Deputy Under Secretary of the Army kind of rat.”

“Deputy Under? That’s a real title?”

“Gotta love bureaucracies. Isn’t that right, Mr. Hillman? Don’t know who your friend is yet, but I’m guessing you’re the top dog here.”

“Who are you people?”

“Sorry, my party, I get to ask the questions. I think it’s funny that you thought you would get away with it. You honestly thought the Pentagon would casually write off a billion dollars? A billion untraceable dollars. This money will be funding black ops for years, and you thought the military would simply forget about it.”

By the crestfallen look Hillman shot Cabrillo, that was precisely what he and his co-conspirators thought.

“They have been planning on recovering this money for years,” Juan continued. “True, no one knew who had it, but they were damn sure they were going to get it back. We even knew you and your Iraqi buddies would turn on each other in the end. Had we made Jakarta, I fully expect a few hundred of al-Qaeda’s finest there for the reception.”

“Where’s Gunny Winters?” asked one of his friends from back in Umm Qasr, one of the men they suspected would be a former officer above Winters.

“He was one of your men?” Juan asked.

“I had the privilege of being his commanding officer on his last tour.”

“He was a good Marine?”

“The best.”

“He’s dead.” The man already knew because he didn’t react. “Max shot him while he was trying to skewer me like a pig, and now that good Marine is going to be forever known as a traitor and a thief. I hope all you are proud of yourselves.”

“What happens next?” This from one of the guards who’d fast-roped down from the Sikorsky.

He looked too young to be part of the original cabal. Juan guessed he was a former soldier now working as a mercenary and had been hired on for this job. He probably didn’t know what was fully at stake.

“In a few hours, a Navy amphibious assault ship that has been following us since we left the Persian Gulf is going to steam over the horizon. They’re going to send a boat to pick up the lot of you and a big Chinook helicopter for The Container. The four of you who fast-roped down to my ship will be charged, tried, and convicted of piracy, while these lovelies will spend the rest of their lives in some unnamed allied country’s worst prison, and most likely without the benefit of a trial. If I were a betting man, I’d say Sub-Saharan Africa, where the HIV rate among inmates is close to fifty percent.”

Hillman and the others visibly paled.

“You see, Mr. Hillman,” Juan added, “Uncle Sam won’t acknowledge a theft of this magnitude took place. It makes our government look inept, and that means you are going to be quietly swept under the carpet.”

“Shows what you know,” the former DoD official sneered. “They’ll make a deal because I’m not the ‘top dog.’ I can name names, and then I’ll walk away clean.”

Cabrillo leaned in close so that the man could see the depth of Juan’s hatred and the joy he was taking in Hillman’s defeat. “That’s a problem. See, you’re top enough, in their book. You’re taking the rap and the fall. Sing as much as you want, they’re just going to ignore you.”

He and Max walked away. He had no idea if his threat was true, but it was nice to see Hillman really start to shake as he contemplated his fate.

Eddie and Linc pulled the last container from the hold, following the takedown, and set it on the deck. Cabrillo and Hanley walked around it once. The customs seals were still in place. Juan put a hand on the metal side of the box as if he could sense what was inside.

“Tempted?” Max teased.

“Don’t start that again. But there’s something I have to do. Overholt won’t be too pleased, but I’ve got to at least look at it.” He cranked open the rear door, breaking the delicate seal.

What they saw were square bundles about the size of hay bales wrapped in various shades of colored plastic. The bundles were stacked like any other commodity and ran almost to the ceiling. They could have been packages of tangerines or DVD players or any other commodity shipped in conex containers.

“Ho-hum,” Max said. “What did you expect? Ali Baba’s treasure room?”

Juan started at how accurate his friend had been. “Never hurts to hope.”

Cabrillo wrestled one of the bales from the stack and slit open the plastic with the knife he always carried. Fresh pain erupted from his shoulder, reminding him that he would need to take it easy for a few days. He opened the tear enough to pull out some money, a four-inch-thick chunk of hundred-dollar bills.

“I read someplace that a stack of one thousand American dollar bills is a little over four inches thick. These are hundreds, so I’ve got a hundred grand here.” They both looked at the enormity of the cache and had a better understanding than just about anyone on the planet of exactly what a billion dollars really was.

He wedged the money back into place, and this time let Max put the bale back into the container. They closed the door, the locking arm coming down with a finality that ended an eight-year operation. Ironically, their fee would most likely come from this very stack of money once it made its way into a black budget account.

Hours later, after the dead Iraqis had been buried at sea and the prisoners and cash transferred over to the USS Boxer, the Chairman hosted a dinner for the crew in the dining room and, to rounds of raucous applause, detailed the money each member of the Corporation should expect for the successful recovery of The Container.

As fate would have it — and, in their business, fate dealt more hands than most — Juan had just poured his second glass of Veuve Clicquot when he felt his phone vibrate.

It was the duty officer in the op center. “Sorry to ruin the party, Chairman. There’s a call on your private line.”

“L’Enfant,” Juan breathed. It had to be, and that could only mean the information broker had found Pytor Kenin. After this untimely but lucrative distraction, it was time to get back on the trail of Yuri Borodin’s murderer.