Ruthless.Com

Chapter Twenty-five

The surviving member of the pair that got into the Sacramento vault hadn't talked — not to the Sword detail that apprehended him, not to the Feds after he'd been given into their custody. And it was anybody's guess whether he was going to talk.

Gordian, however, wasn't sure that was essential to determining who had been behind the act.

The main question for him, then, was of motive.

Back in San Jose now — he had booked reservations aboard a commuter flight while the A&P mechs continued their inspection of the Learjet in Washington — Gordian sat at his desk opposite Chuck Kirby, trying to put the pieces of a complex and profoundly troubling puzzle into place. They had already run through the whole thing a couple of times, but neither man felt it would hurt to bounce it around once more.

"Let's try it back to front," Gordian said. "Starting with the break-in at the Sacramento facility."

"Sure, why not," Kirby said. "Doing it the other way hasn't nailed it."

"I don't know whether it can be nailed, not with the fragmentary information we have," Gordian said. "But we can get closer, make some more important connections."

Kirby nodded. "The disc they took off the dead man, then," he said.

"The disc," Gordian repeated, sighing. "The key-codes are used in communications systems UpLink has designed for a wide range of naval vessels. Obviously they would be of enormous value to any number of interests, both foreign and domestic."

"Allies and enemies, for that matter," Kirby said. "Everybody spies on everybody else. It's wide open until you look at how the thieves penetrated the vault."

"Exactly." Gordian's face was sober. "And if not for the surveillance videos capturing what happened after they killed poor Turner, the techies might've taken weeks, even months to find out. The wicked beauty of it is that the system defeated itself."

"And that's still the part I can't quite grasp," Kirby said.

"It probably isn't vital that you do.. although the concept isn't really that difficult," Gordian said. "It involves basic computer file architecture, the way hard drives are set up. There's a minimum amount of space allocated for every file on a hard drive… the larger the drive, the larger the allocation. Regardless of how much data you have in a file, the computer reserves that minimum space." He thought a moment. "Imagine a department store that only has gift boxes of a single size for their merchandise, no matter whether you're buying a ten-gallon hat or a gold forget-me-not for your wife's necklace. Since the box needs to be pretty big to contain the hat, that tiny charm's not going to be too visible when it's placed inside. In fact, it may even get lost."

Kirby nodded. "The data-strings that let the thieves through the system's backdoor… you're saying they were too small to be noticed. Like the charm. And they slipped past your whiz kids when the software employed by the biometric scanner system was examined for backdoors prior to installation."

"And the techs can't even be held at fault," Gordian said, nodding. "Do a careful diagnostic of any hard drive, and you'll find the percentage of file-space being utilized out of whack with the actual number of stored bytes. You store one word-processing file with a couple of words on it, another with several pages of text, and it's probable both are grabbing the same amount of space. When the technicians are looking for Trojan horses, they typically sniff around for long, complex algorithms such as the type needed to match fingerprint or voice characteristics. In this case, the backdoor key was short and sweet… a basic geometric pattern… a small item in a big box."

"The star on the sapphire," Kirby said. "Incredible."

"To me, what's more incredible is that our security system's primary biometric software was produced by— and acquired from — Monolith Technologies, of all goddamn outfits under the sun," Gordian said. He shook his head. "Talk about an incomprehensible oversight…"

"Don't beat yourself over the head with it, Gord," Kirby said. "Their stuff's the best being made. And the system was implemented a while before the problems between you and Caine started brewing. Viewed as an isolated incident, the break-in wouldn't even necessarily place Caine under suspicion. There could be rogue hackers within his company—"

Gordian's face tightened.

"It isn't hackers who tried to steal UpLink out from under me. Nor was it hackers who used Reynold Armitage as a point man in advance of the raid, or had my plane's landing-gear system sabotaged, or made Max Blackburn vanish into thin air."

Kirby released a breath. "We can't prove Caine's direct involvement with any of that"

"It's just the two of us here, Chuck. This isn't about what I can prove, but what I know," Gordian said. "Over the past seventy-two hours, the A&P team in D. C. has traced the plane's entire hydraulic circuit for leaks a half-dozen times. And found nothing. Also, the mechs here at home have paper checklists verifying they conducted the full preflight a day before we left, including eyeball inspections of the system's gauges and connections." He paused. "Somebody tampered with that plane after it was prepped. And the guard at the airport, a man named Jack McRea, fessed up to having left his post for several hours a couple nights ago."

"And has since been released from your employ, I hope," Kirby said.

Gordian nodded. "Far as he's been willing to admit, he was lured off to a motel by long legs and a miniskirt. Suckered into leaving the hangars wide open."

The room was silent a few moments.

"The logical jump still bothers me," Kirby said. "Tying Caine to an attempted murder without evidence, for godsakes."

"Murders, plural," Gordian said. "You were on that plane too, Chuck. As was Megan and Scull."

"Gord, my point is—"

"I know what it is. And again, I'm not talking about specific evidence, but getting a handle on the totality of events that have been wheeling around my head. Max is investigating Caine's business operations in Asia, Max drops out of sight. I take on the Morrison-Fiore Bill, Caine jumps into the ring as a challenger, then as a person who wants to devour my corporation. Somebody breaks into my encryption facility, they do it using a backdoor in Caine-designed software. And so on and so forth. There's too much coincidence. And now the whole thing seems to have taken on a sense of acceleration… almost desperation…."

"Or urgency," Kirby said. "If we're going to walk the road you're inclined to lead us down, the keys on that disc they tried to snatch are at the heart of this."

Gordian nodded, his hands steepled under his chin.

The two men sat there quietly a while, thinking everything through.

Five minutes passed, then several more.

More thought, more silence.

Suddenly Gordian sat forward, his eyes widening.

Chuck looked at him. "Something the matter?"

"That word you used," he said. "Urgency. It's just that…"

He let the sentence trail off, moistened his lips.

Chuck kept looking at him.

"Oh, my God, how could I not have seen? That's why it's come to a head now. My God, the ceremony… the maiden run is today!"

"Gord, what the hell's wrongT'

Gordian shot his hand across the desk and gripped Kirby's wrist.

"The Seawolf," he said, speaking rapidly. "Its command and control systems… the systems that run the sub… they use UpLink encryption software. And the spare keys, the keys are on that disc."

Kirby was staring at him incredulously. "Gord, I'm not sure I'm reading you, or want to be reading you. But even if I am, the thing to remember is nobody got hold of them—"

Gordian sliced his right hand through the air to silence him, still digging the fingers of his left into Kirby's wrist.

"They aren't the only keys, Chuck," he said abruptly, his face white as a sheet. "You understand? We're talking about a nuclear submarine, a boat the President's going to be aboard. And they aren 't the only keys.''

Watching his team ready themselves on the transportable dock, Omori was convinced he had done well, both in selecting his divers and finding a suitable launching area for the insertion. Notched into the coast of Pulau Ringitt— a small island less than five kilometers south of Sentosa— the saltwater inlet was protected by a zone of mud and marsh that made it the sort of place few people wanted to go sloshing around in.

Omori checked his watch. Not much longer now. Not much longer before his men climbed into the underwater delivery vehicle and the time for preparation was over at last.

He was eagerly looking forward to that moment.

Invisible beneath its camouflage netting, the delivery craft rested on a floating dock amid the thick rushes near the bank. Its bullet-shaped, fiberglass hull was windowless, and though this aided in reducing its detection signature, it also meant Omori's team would be navigating solely on their instruments once they lowered the canopy.

He regarded them from the stern of the speedboat which had towed the dock into position twenty-four hours earlier, and with which he would soon guide it back into deeper water. The four divers had already slipped into their wetsuits and Oxy-57 breathing apparatus. While these had not been designed for the depths at which they would be operating, Omori had been assured the closed-circuit gear would provide breathable air for the limited time their use would be required.

He glanced at his watch again, his frequent reading of its face the only outward sign of the pressure he was feeling. The act to which he had wholeheartedly committed himself would boost the Inagawa-kai to unchallenged dominance over competing Yakuza syndicates, and would guarantee him a personal status to surpass that of Oyabuns and Emperors. But even that did not begin to describe what it would mean. Nothing like it had ever been done. Nothing. It would be remembered forever.

The prospect of future glories pushing any thought of failure from his mind, Omori switched on his minicomputer and waited for Kersik's electronic message to appear.

The show was not turning out to be quite what Alec Nordstrum had expected.

No, scratch that, he thought. As a writer, it was his job to use language precisely. And as a member of the press, he had an ethical obligation to be fair.

The show was fine. A tour of the Keppel Harbor area, much fraternal camaraderie between President Ballard and his fellow heads of state, a beautifully organized and executed military parade composed of American, ASEAN, and JMSDF forces, and now the speechifying phase of the ceremony, held on the dock against the sleek, dark shape of the Seawolf. Soon Alex would be invited aboard the sub with the small party of invited journalists, and off they would slip into the octopus's garden for the signing of SEAPAC.. at which point he'd probably be forced to sit in with the bilgewater.

And that, he supposed, got to the crux of his complaint.

The show was fine, but his seats were lousy. Whereas he'd thought he'd be getting a backstage pass, and had planned to watch the action from the wings, thus far he'd gotten the equivalent of general admission at a rock concert.

He stood in the crowded press area on the waterfront, listening to the Japanese Prime Minister's remarks, getting bumped, jostled, and elbowed by scores of his rude and disorderly international colleagues, thinking this was surely just the first foul taste of Encardi's revenge, and that pretty soon he would be made to drink long and deep of its bitter waters. Already the President had snubbed him. The President's coterie of advisors had blown him off. Perhaps he was being oversensitive, but once or twice he'd even thought that some members of the President's Secret Service detail — men Nordstrum knew by name, and in some cases worked out with at the gym — were shooting dirty looks his way.

He had dared to go with his conscience, to stand with Roger Gordian, and for that had become a marked man, banished from grace, cast among the rabble.

Politics, he mused. Always politics.

Nordstrum sighed, trying his best to follow Yamamoto's speech… which was not easy with some reporter from an Italian news organization shouting and blowing kisses across his face to a female news anchor from a French television show. Questa sera, mi bella.

Dear God, the price one paid for holding to convictions in this world.

He glanced disconsolately at his watch. Another forty minutes or so before he'd be able to make his path to the ramp with the others getting into the nuclear-attack submarine. Even if he was restricted to the waste-processing facilities, he'd be grateful to be aboard. Damned grateful.

As far as he could see, his situation couldn't get any worse than it already was.

The Chinese hovercraft had arrived at the atoll under cover of darkness, transported in the well decks of two civilian tankers that had been refitted for military usage. Nearly ninety feet long and half as wide, each amphibious landing craft was powered by four sixteen-thousand-horsepower turbines — two of which fed the shrouded airscrews that would thrust it along at better than fifty knots, the others driving the centrifugal fans that provided vertical lift, allowing the craft to float above sea and strand on a smooth cushion of air. Their decks bristled with pintle-mounted 12.7mm Type 77 machine guns and 40mm grenade launchers.

Standing on the beach of the lagoon, General Kersik Imman watched his men board their vessels in preparation for the Sandakan raid, most of them filing up the ramps onto the four lozenge-shaped flotation craft assembled at the tide line, the rest climbing into a swarm of slender aluminum-hulled cigarette boats. All were suited as he was, in woodland fatigues, their faces veiled by cammo netting, their rucksacks and load-bearing harnesses laden with combat equipment. In strict adherence to Kersik's specifications, the light-assault rifles slung over their shoulders were factory-new, and would make effective personal weapons. Zhiu Sheng had delivered as promised, and for that — as for many other qualities — Kersik deeply respected him.

Perhaps one day they would meet again in some civilized place, a place far from this wretched island where the mosquitos were as fat as grapes from the blood on which they endlessly gorged, a place where they could sit at tables and chairs instead of hard straw mats that cramped their buttocks, a place where they could comfortably reminisce about all they had seen and done since they'd first met as younger men, one an Indonesian general full of pride and aspiration, the other a spirited Communist builder seeking to give shape to Utopia. Both holding dreams of Asian unity and greatness.

Yes, Kersik thought, perhaps they would indeed meet at some future time, and discuss how their greatest dreams had been attained at stages of their lives when most men were snugly wrapped in soft blankets of contentment. And together they would recollect the monumental day the Japanese and Americans who sought to dominate the region — and the ASEAN wayang kulit puppets with whom they worked their intricate shadow plays — were swallowed by an underwater behemoth of their own creation.

For now, though, there was only the certain prospect of the attack about to be launched, and the soul-heaviness of an old warrior who knew in his weary heart that the basic equation of war was always out of balance, the accretion of violence always beyond control, the smallest of gains always bought and paid for with the blood of far too many irreplaceable human beings.

Adjusting his pack on his shoulders, Kersik strode across the sand and boarded the vessel that would carry him to battle.

Khao Luan strode along the boardwalk toward his dwelling on the canal, popping fried, sugared pieces of tempe goreng into his mouth, thinking he'd been foolish not to have the canoe vender fill an extra container for him. At the rate he was going, there would be nothing left of the soybean cakes by the time he sat down at his table.

Stress always made him hungry, and he had awakened famished today. With good reason, too. This business he'd gotten into… Sandakan… the hijack of a nuclear submarine… the hostage taking of the President of the United States…

For him, it had all been about keeping the sea routes open for his trade. SEAPAC represented a threat to that trade, a solidifying of cooperation between regional governments in matters relating to the patrol of their waters, a substantial impediment to the flow of contraband from Thailand and elsewhere. Disrupting the treaty signing, perhaps even suspending its implementation indefinitely, had seemed a reasonable and pragmatic aim, a sound business strategy for one intent on staying at the top of his game.

Ah, though, how it had evolved.

He walked on, tossing another bit of food into his mouth. Until this morning, he'd been able to concentrate on the particulars rather than the broad contours of the plan, doing his part, taking it a step at a time. Which was how he generally approached things. But with its realization at hand — less than an hour away, unbelievably— the full weight of what he and his allies had undertaken had begun pressing down on him. And while he'd decided that the best way to deal with that pressure was to pretend this was any other day… well, it was difficult, that was all.

Luan reached the ladder that climbed to his door, paused at its foot, and looked into his box of tempe. Two pieces left. Really, really, he would have to send the men out for more.

He shook both remaining cakes into his mouth, absently tossed the container over his shoulder into the water to his right, and gripped the ladder frame to hoist himself upward.

Inches from where the cardboard box had joined the other refuse floating along the canal, a young female vendor in a loose-fitting sarong hunched forward in her canoe, her head lowering behind mounds of fruit, her hand slipping under a natty hank of cloth.

When that hand reappeared a moment later, it was holding a flat, palm-sized radio.

"Empire State to South Philly, do you read?" the vendor said in a quiet voice, transmitting over a trunked digital channel.

"Loud and clear, Empire State. The rooster back in the barn?"

"Just strutted in, big and nasty in life as in pictures," she said.

A brief pause.

She bent lower, waiting, holding the radio out of sight.

"Sit tight, Empire State," the voice replied after a second. "We're on our way to pluck his feathers."

Jointly sponsored by the ASEAN republics from its original blueprints to its funding and final construction, the Sandakan cryptographic key-storage bank was the largest in Asia, and the second largest in the world, ranking only behind a subsequently built facility of its type in Europe. In terms of proportion, it was to most of the world's other key-recovery banks what Citibank was to a small-town S&L. Sprawling across many acres of shoreline, the concrete-and-steel structure gave a fortresslike impression, and was protected by a sophisticated array of alarm systems and guard units of chiefly Malaysian and Indonesian composition. All this security was in place for a simple reason: The spare key-codes stored within its vaults were those of the region's largest governmental, military, and financial institutions.

It had been regarded as a logical, convenient, and secure place for the Japanese and American governments to store the spare keys to many of Seawolf's encrypted operational systems, including those which controlled its Advanced SEAL Delivery System — or ASDS — docking hatches. These would allow a fully pressurized mini-sub containing from eight to twelve special-op divers to launch and recover its personnel during insertions requiring long-distance, deep-submergence transport. As planned, when the SEALS returned from a mission aboard the sixty-five-foot ASDS vehicle, the computers aboard their vessel would signal the Seawolf's control systems to open the ASDS hatch so that the crew and passengers — and their equipment — could reenter the submarine via its docking chamber, and move from there onto its main decks.

Nga Canbera did not know, and would never know, precisely which Japanese government official had passed this information on to the Inagawa-kai, which had in turn relayed it to him through Omori.

And what difference does it make? he thought, sitting in his den now, watching the SEAPAC ribbon-cutting ceremony on television. He had remained home from the office to watch it undistracted, putting on his finest silk robe for the occasion. So far — given his knowledge of what would happen once the dignitaries were under way— it was proving to be quite a source of amusement.

For him the challenge of the game was the important thing, and though Nga had experienced his moments of apprehension lately, he felt the play would have been meaningless without an edge of danger. Today he would put aside his worries and enjoy himself. Could the Sea-wolf be tricked into swallowing a poison pill? After all, it was in theory only a matter of putting the right keys in the wrong hands — wrong from the American and Japanese standpoint, that is. And while Marcus Caine's failure to deliver the command-and-control keys had been a setback, it had in a sense only added to the excitement. Once Kersik got his hands on the Sandakan keys, Omori's divers would still be able to open the ASDS hatch. After that, they would simply have to put greater reliance on force than finesse, and use guns and bullets rather than keystrokes and passwords to take the submarine.

And maybe, if he were very fortunate, there even would be a little bloodshed to make things more interesting.

His eyes wide with disbelief, U. S. Secretary of Defense Conrad Holden looked at the telephone receiver in his hand as if it had been invaded by an evil poltergeist… albeit one that possessed the voice and speech mannerisms of Roger Gordian, someone he'd known for many long years.

"Roger, are you certain?"

"I'm telling you it's going to be Sandakan, Conrad.

And it will roughly coincide with the sub's embarkation. They won't want to give us time to disable the key-codes."

"But the sub's launching in a half an hour—"

"Then get off the phone with me and call somebody who can stop this from happening!"

Hotter and sweatier than he was accustomed to feeling, Luan was about to change his shirt when he heard it: the regular thup-thup-thup of rotors beating the air, rapidly getting louder and closer.

He looked across the room to where Xiang and his bodyguards had been throwing a pair of dice.

"What's that sound?" he said, already knowing the answer. The army helicopters had been ubiquitous when he was driven from the hills of northern Thailand.

The pirate tossed down the dice and turned abruptly to his fellows.

"Get your weapons," he grunted. "We're being attacked."

Leaning out the door of the Bell Jet Ranger chopper, Nimec extracted shells from his utility webbing, slapped them into his 12-gauge and pumped the forestock to chamber the first round. Like Osmar and the other three Sword ops in his team, he had on a pullover cowl, gas mask, and black Nomex Stealthsuit. The Zylon body armor underneath his shirt was both lighter and stronger than Kevlar.

Nimec gestured for the pilot to lower the chopper to a stabilized hover, and peered at the wooden structure below. There were a number of windows on all sides. He chose one of them as his target and pulled the trigger of his pump gun.

The finned CS bomblet disgorged from its muzzle in a train of propellent vapor, punched through the window, and burst open to release a cloud of tear gas.

Nimec chambered another round, fired, and loosed a third at the Thai's hideout. Billows of white smoke erupted from the windows.

He slung the weapon over his shoulder — he also had an MP5K against his side — donned his gloves, and signaled his companions to the door.

A moment later the rope line was dropped from its hoist bracket. One after another in quick succession, the men gripped the line and fast-roped to the boardwalk like firefighters sliding down a pole.

Submachine-gun volleys erupted on the ground almost the instant they alighted — stuttering from inside the house, from the dwellings around it, and from the wooden walkway that ran the length of the canal.

His head ducked low as his teammates laid down a lane of covering fire, Nimec raced around to the front of the hideout.

A man surged into his path from the gushing smoke of the building, bringing an FN P90 up in his direction. But he was half-blinded from the CS, and Nimec was quick to react. He jogged out of the way as the pirate released a stream of 9mm rounds. Nimec raked him across the middle with a burst from his MP5K, then kept dashing for the entrance without a backward glance.

He paused in front of the heavy plank door, sprayed the lock with bullets, and kicked it in with the flat of his foot. With his peripheral vision he could see Osmar running up on the left.

He looked over at him, signaled a crossover entry, and ticked off a three-count with his fingers.

Together they rushed forward into the house.

Minutes after the ribbon-cutting fanfare concluded, the delegation of world leaders was ushered across the gang, over the black anechoic tiles covering Seawolf's hull-like rubber flagstones, and then down into the sub by its executive officer. President Ballard dropped through the hatch first, followed by Prime Minister Yamamoto and the Malaysian and Indonesian heads-of-state.

The press contingent came next, Alex Norstrum at the back of the line, straining to see past a tall, broad-shouldered Canadian reporter who had been directed to board ahead of him.

As the group filed through a passageway toward the control room, Ballard felt as if he were about to step into the set of a Hollywood space opera, something about star-ships and wormholes in the space-time continuum. And in a sense he was entering a time machine, one which was capable of hurling him back through the accumulation of years and distance that had brought him to middle age, stripping the overlay of political cynicism and calculation from his face, and briefly revealing the excited countenance of a ten-year-old orphan from the Mississippi boondocks whose dreams had fueled a long, difficult journey from poverty to the Presidency. He goggled at the equipment and status boards filling up every corner of the brightly lit space with open wonder, his wide eyes no sooner landing on one piece of gadgetry than getting snagged by another of equal or greater fascination.

The sub's commanding officer, Commander Malcolm R. Frickes, USN, was saluting his guests from the control room entry way.

''It is my honor and privilege to welcome you all aboard," he said, stepping aside to let them enter.

Ballard enthusiastically returned the salute, swallowed, and gestured toward the periscopes on a raised platform in the center of the room.

"Do I get to look through one of those)" he asked.

Frickes smiled.

"Sir, you're the Commander-in-Chief," he said. "And that means you get to do anything you wish."

General Yussef Tabor, commanding officer of the Malaysian Army's 10th Parachute Brigade, could scarcely believe the orders that had just come down the line. He was to deploy his three airborne battallions — almost three thousand men — to Sandakan at once and assist the regular key-bank guard units in defending the beachhead.

Against who or what it was to be defended was unclear — but he at last saw an opportunity to be a true soldier. As the closest element of Malaysia's Rapid Deployment Force, stationed in Sabah less than thirty miles from the city, his would be the first of the support units to arrive. And that sat just fine with him.

After a decade of hunting illegal immigrants like a dog-catcher chasing down helpless puppies, it was high time for a mission he could be proud of.

Overcome with tear gas, his face tomato-red, Khao Luan was uncontrollably retching and coughing as Xiang tried to drag him into the barn. Gripping him under both arms from behind, the pirate opened the door and started to back his way through, but was still trying to maneuver his boss's weight when Nimec and Osmar burst into the house.

Osmar thrust his weapon out.

"Hold it!" he shouted in Bahasa. "Both of you!"

Breathing hard, Xiang stared at him a moment through thick braids of CS gas. Then, still partially supporting the Thai with one hand, he whipped the other behind his back and brought a donut-shaped P90 around on its strap.

The burst went wide, peppering a roof support, chewing out splinters of wood, Osmar got down into a crouch and fired back, intentionally aiming low. With Luan between him and the big man, he wanted to avoid shooting to kill, knowing the Thai might hold the answer to Blackburn's disappearance.

Luan sagged, clutching his meaty thigh, blood spraying from his femoral artery. Xiang tried to keep him erect, but was unable to manage it, and he went down with a crash. Retreating into the barn, the pirate triggered his weapon, sweeping it in an arc between Osmar and Nimec. Glass shattered somewhere in the house.

This time it was Nimec who fired back, squeezing off two crisp trigger pulls, brrrat-brrrat. He could hear sporadic exchanges of fire out on the walkway, and now and then a groan from one of the incapacitated pirates on the floor.

"Cuff Luan and the rest of these bastards!" he shouted to Osmar through his gas mask. "I'm going after him!"

Sea spray roiling up behind them, the four hovercraft scudded over the waves on pillows of air, flanked by dagger-shaped speedboats. They had covered nearly two thirds of the distance to the beach, and would be making landfall within a matter of minutes.

In the forward deckhouse of his vehicle, Kersik lifted his binoculars to his eyes to scan the LZ. He had mustered a force of close to three hundred men, outnumbering the key-bank guard by a third, and with the further advantage of surprise—

Kirsik blinked once, twice.

His eyes widened and widened against the lenses of the binoculars.

At first the dots he had seen against the fleecy backdrop of the cloud looked like insects. A sweeping, descending swarm of locusts.

But he knew all too well what they were.

Paratroopers.

Hundreds of them. Thousands. Alighting on the beachhead.

Had his ears not been filled with the deafening roar of the airscrews he might have heard the transports arriving sooner, heard them as he could now, buzzing, the buzz becoming a whine, the whine becoming a drone….

He let the glasses drop from his trembling fingers and ran to the deckhouse radio, but by the time he'd transmitted his warning to the other vessels the incoming fire had begun, and the world was exploding all around him.

Omori had hardly seen the small email notice appear on his LCD before he realized the message was not from Kersik at all, but his contact in the Japanese Diet… a member of the Nationalist minority whose leaking of top-secret intelligence about the Seawolf had been at the core of the hijack plan since its initiation.

He opened the message and felt his stomach turn on itself.

Though there was only one word on his screen, it was sufficient to make him realize his plans had just come to an abrupt and crashing end:

Omori dug his knuckles into his forehead and released a high mewl of anguish that instantly drew the attention of all four divers on the floating dock.

He did not look at them, or say anything to them. They would know what had happened just from looking at him.

Kersik, he thought, his fist pressing deeper into his brow.

Kersik had failed.

If he'd been holding a knife in his hand, Omori would have plunged it into his heart and brought the pain to an end then and there.

A blow to the rib cage almost dropped Nimec the instant he plunged through the door.

Stunned, scintillae whirling across his vision, he reeled against the wall of the barn, his MP5K sailing from his fingers.

He clamped his jaws around the pain in his chest. Whatever hit him had felt like an iron mallet, and if he'd been running straight rather than angling through the door, would have probably caught him below the diaphragm and made him lose consciousness. But the muscles of his chest had absorbed enough of its impact to keep him on his feet.

He gulped down a mouthful of air, struggling to get hold of himself—

And saw the giant's fist coming at him barely in the nick of time. He rolled sideways, twisting his head to avoid its pile-driver force, then slipped another blow as the pirate came charging in at him, his arms raised to get him in a squeeze hold, meaning to crush him against the wall with his bulk.

Nimec wasn't going to give him the chance. He could feel the strength flowing back into his legs and knew he had to move, stay out of the giant's reach, avoid going toe-to-toe with him at any cost. It had been his hand, his bare hand, that caught Nimec the first time. He'd have to make sure he didn't let it happen again.

Waiting until Xiang was almost on top of him, Nimec cocked his front leg and kicked it speedily up and out at his solar plexus. He heard the slam of his foot against the giant's flesh, saw him lurch backward, and followed through with a second snap kick to the same area.

Xiang staggered back another step and Nimec used the moment to scramble away from the wall, dancing on the balls of his feet like a boxer, getting a rhythm under him, working up some steam.

But the pirate was quicker on his feet than his size would have indicated. Rounding on Nimec, he lunged forward, rushing him head-on.

Nimec tried feinting sidweays, but was a hair too late. A sinewy forearm smashed across his lips and his head rocked back on his neck. He tasted blood, felt his knees weaken a little. Xiang hit him again, this time in the throat with his elbow. Nimec gagged, his eyes blurring.

And then, suddenly, Xiang's massive palms clapped down on either side of Nimec's head, his fingers forming a cage around his jaw and cheekbones. Nimec raised his own hands, wedged them up inside Xiang's forearms, gripped his wrists, and tried with all his strength to pry them apart. But the giant only held on and began steam-rolling forward, carrying Nimec along with him, backing Nimec across the floor of the barn then ramming him up against the wall opposite the door with an impact that jarred him to the bone.

He brought his face in close to Nimec, his features a quivering mask of rage, his breath gusting into his nostrils.

"You want to fight, I'll break your fucking neck right here!" he bellowed, shaking Nimec, battering his head against the wall. "Right here like I did to that other American!"

Nimec's eyes widened. His heart pounded and swelled within him until its beating seemed to fill the universe.

Like I did to that other American.

Groaning from exertion, he pushed against the pirate's wrists, pushed, pushed—

Right here.

That other American.

Pushed—

For an instant he thought the pirate's grip would never relent… and then, miraculously, it did.

Shoving off the wall, Nimec brought his knee up fast, driving it into his crotch. Xiang's hands fell away from his head. Nimec hit him again, hard to the face with his fist, kept pressing. Threw another jab, another, another.

The giant started to sag, but Nimec didn't let up. He just kept thinking that Max was dead, and this was the man who'd killed him.

Two, three, four more powerful jabs, and then Xiang surprised him. He fell forward heavily, lumbering into Nimec and knocking him backward.

In that moment, as the two men separated, Xiang lifted his bloody face, his lips twisted into a sneer, and pulled his kris from its sheath.

Nimec froze, staring at that long, wavy blade, but Xiang didn't give him time to react. The giant lunged forward, the knife flickering toward Nimec's throat.

Nimec moved back a half step, pivoting on the ball of his left foot, and reached out. His right hand caught the back of Xiang's knife hand. His left hand slapped the inside of the giant's elbow, then turned and lifted the elbow up and out. Without pausing, Nimec stepped forward, pulling the giant toward him, and buried the knife deep into Xiang's chest, directly below the rib cage and angling up toward the heart.

Xiang remained on his feet another few seconds, looked down at the knife jutting from the center of his rib cage with an expression of utter astonishment, and dropped onto his face.

Nimec stepped back, breathing hard, the pain of his wounds rising up within him, and looked down at the fallen giant.

It was, at last, over.