The Wrecking Crew

CHAPTER 6

His face creased into a deep scowl, Charles Bettencourt stood on the far corner of Anconia Island’s floating jetway with arms crossed as the cold sea air brushed over the tarmac. The imposing oceanic city rose behind him, glittering tower blocks of glass and steel on three massive platforms. His lawyer stood beside him, mimicking his concern with similarly crossed arms.

Then he spotted the helicopters, five Blackhawks coming in low. Still distant, they flew in an attack formation, tight, fast, and on an intercept course with the long jetway. Chaos erupted. Medical personnel popped up gurneys and IV lines, stacked bandages, and checked oxygen lines. Volunteers with medical experience stood out of the way as best they could, rocking from foot to foot with evident tension. Dozens of armed security personnel clustered in small groups, each decked in a collage of armor and weaponry.

Behind him, a single Gulfstream G-4 jet spun up engines to a screaming pitch, forward thrust pushing against orange plastic stop-blocks. The aircraft bucked and vibrated, engines drowning out all other sounds as the assembled personnel covered their ears. It was his, or at least it should be. Today, it would be a medical transport, rushing the wounded to a Level I trauma center in Munich.

Bettencourt didn’t even want to think of what blood would do to the made-to-order Venetian carpeting he’d recently had installed. Perhaps some good would come out of the situation and he’d finally have an excuse to get that Gulfstream G-650 he’d had his eye on.

The five helicopters drew close; he could hear the dull thumping of the rotors slicing through the African air.

“Should we help?” asked his lawyer. “When they come in, I mean. Do you think they’ll need us to unload the wounded? Assist the medical personnel?”

“You’re wearing a $15,000 suit,” snapped Bettencourt. “A suit I bought you.”

One of the helicopters dropped from formation, gradually losing ground and altitude to the other four. Harsh white smoke poured from the engine compartment, trailing behind the machine. The rear tail kicked out like a drift car in a hairpin curve, pulling the airframe into a flat spin. And then it simply dropped out of the sky, nosing down, smoke trailing, violently smacking into the ocean. The blades chopped into the waves, splintering as the engine ground to a halt, leaving the stricken hulk to bob in ocean whitecaps.

Many of the civilians stood frozen, but several of the soldiers leapt into one of the nearby tenders, one of which roared to life and sped towards the stricken airframe. It appeared to Charles that they’d reach it before it sank. Either way, the helicopter was well insured. That would go a long way to mitigate the disaster with the Conglomerate.

The remaining four helicopters approached the jetway, flared, and landed hard. Bettencourt put his hand up to protect his face as dust and debris washed over the collected personnel. An IV bag stand fell to the ground, its bag splitting open, spilling saline solution over the thin layer of asphalt.

The helicopters bore witness to the battle: shattered glass and blood stains, punctured aluminum pockmarked with bullet holes and burn marks. They’d been in a hell of a fight.

Colonel Westmoreland, chief of security operations, stepped from the nearest helicopter and into the chaotic scene. He was a massive man, made all the more massive by his Kevlar/ceramic armor and heavily customized G36 assault rifle.

Bettencourt’s lawyer approached Westmoreland first, ducking under the still-spinning rotor blades.

That’s probably a mistake, Bettencourt thought with a flicker of amusement.

Sure enough, Westmoreland shoved the lawyer with almost enough force to knock him down. The lawyer didn’t wait to see what would happen next and turned tail to sprint away. Westmoreland took off his Kevlar helmet and hurled it at the lawyer, narrowly missing his heels. His closely shaved head matched the starkness of his callous expression.

The men in the tender managed to pull one last soldier from the drowning helicopter before it turned belly-up and slipped beneath the surface, disappearing from view. The tender spun around and buzzed back towards the pier.

Colonel Westmoreland pushed his way past the medical personnel and reached into the lead chopper. The mercenary dragged out his struggling prisoner, a shabbily dressed Somali, hands bound, black hood covering his head.

“He’s captured one!” said the lawyer. “One of the pirates!”

“Not sure why,” mused Bettencourt. “They don’t bargain for their own.”

Ignoring the chaotic scene, Westmoreland dragged the struggling man away from the crowd and towards the side of the pier. Bettencourt followed him, watching as the colonel put the man on his knees at the edge of the pier, whipped off his hood, and placed a 9mm pistol against the back of his head.

“Bad day, Mr. Westmoreland?” Bettencourt asked, approaching him from behind.

Colonel Westmoreland turned to face his boss, shook his head, and turned back. The man at gunpoint wasn’t a man; he was a boy, maybe only fourteen or fifteen. His small frame, clad in filthy, threadbare rags, quaked with fear.

“Hey,” Bettencourt said to the kid. “You speak English?”

The pirate said nothing. Bettencourt slapped him lightly on the side of his face. “English?” he asked again.

“Fuck your mother!” shouted the pirate in a voice nearly an octave higher than expected. Bettencourt chewed down a snicker; the kid sounded like a Brooklyn cabbie who hadn’t been tipped. Not great at making his own case for survival — maybe too young to realize that capture and a bullet to the back of the head meant more than a red splash screen and a re-start from the last save point of his video game. He shook his head at Westmoreland and stepped away from the edge.

The colonel holstered his pistol and yanked the hood back over the boy’s face, ending any further conversation. Behind them, the doctors and volunteers continued the grim task of triaging the wounded; some turning their attention to the mangled, bloody men zipped inside black plastic bags.

Bettencourt put an arm around Colonel Westmoreland’s massive shoulders. It was the sort of consoling gesture he imagined might be appropriate for the occasion.

“What happened out there?”

“Dalmar happened.” Westmoreland practically spat the words. “Dalmar fucking Abdi happened. Come with me, I have something to show you.”

Grabbing the hooded prisoner, Westmoreland stomped off the jetway with Bettencourt and his lawyer following close behind. Bettencourt’s jaw clenched, his deep scowl returning.

Dalmar fucking Abdi indeed.

The free-flowing spigot in Bettencorp’s bottom line, the cocksucking jackal of the high seas. Nobody even knew who the bastard was. One rumor said Dalmar Abdi was the son of Mohammed Farrah Aidid, Somali warlord and illegitimate self-declared president of the country, a man who picked a brutal close-quarters fight that claimed two American helicopters and eighteen servicemen. Supposedly, Dalmar Abdi, all of six years old, rusting Kalashnikov rifle longer than he was tall, lead a company of ten children against an American rescue convoy.

Another said that he was the son of a Mogadishu soft drink magnate, educated in Rome before returning to his homeland as an aid worker. Once discovering the state of the country and the vicious campaign against it by western powers, he rose up, gathered supporters and became the most feared pirate in the region.

It was probably all bullshit. Dalmar Abdi was just another pirate, albeit an exceptionally gifted one. Bettencourt rankled at the fact that he’d made Dalmar rich, not just Somali rich, but coke-off-a-model’s-tits, soccer-franchise, private-island rich. Four years ago, Dalmar and his crew captured a Ukrainian transport loaded with Sovietera tanks and self-propelled artillery, enough firepower to redraw the entire region. It wouldn’t have mattered except for the fact that the transport was under Bettencorps protection and Bettencourt had personally guaranteed safe passage to some notably humorless Russian plutocrats. It wasn’t just a matter of honor that the weaponry be returned. Bettencourt had little interest in waking up one morning staring at the wrong end of a Makarov pistol.

So he’d dug deep and paid. A lot. Low nine figures, to be precise. He was hoping it was enough for Dalmar to reconsider life in Somalia and go retire to some Swiss chalet like so many of the other political figures of the region. Hopefully a place where he could send a trusted asset to personally extract a refund for the ransom.

But then Dalmar did something completely unexpected. He gave it all away, some to the construction of a local hospital, and the rest to the locals themselves through a network of warlords and tribal leaders. Bettencourt realized he’d inadvertently kick-started the creation of one of the larger private militaries in the region, most of whom were volunteers. Abdi recruited from multiple tribes, continued taking ships under Bettencorps protection, and ransoming, stripping, and sinking them. Despite Bettencourt’s hopes, Abdi stayed out of Somalia’s territorial squabbles, content to simply pay off huge swaths of the country. He became the golden goose, a scrappy pirate with no visible manifestation of his staggering wealth and power. Perhaps Abdi knew that you can’t put a self-guided bomb into a man’s mansion if he didn’t have a mansion.

The tide didn’t turn until Bettencorps purchased a fleet of heavily armed helicopter and jet drones, enough firepower to keep the Somali shark at bay. They’d acquired the wealth of armaments from an American Department of Defense grant after a great deal of arm-twisting by a legion of extraordinarily expensive lobbyists. They’d needed an excuse, which Bettencourt was only too happy to provide — fudged satellite and high-aerial surveillance supposedly linking Abdi’s brigands to Al Qaida of Africa. A little bad press, it seemed, was enough to get the big guns.

Colonel Westmoreland scanned his security badge against a massive hangar door built into one of the four main circular steel pylons holding up the largest platform of Anconia Island. The marine equivalent to an underground vault, the doors opened wide to reveal an immaculately clean, white circular room filled with endless rows of humming black computer servers. The colonel led Bettencourt, the lawyer, and the prisoner into Anconia Island’s command and control system.

“Give me the room,” the mercenary barked to the assorted white-coated network engineers and programmers. It didn’t matter what they were working on, they took one look at the hooded prisoner and filed out wordlessly, heads down. Westmoreland pushed the boy into a chair and told him to stay put. The boy obeyed as Bettencourt and his lawyer found seats.

Colonel Westmoreland dug through the boy’s pockets. Finding a few trinkets, he slammed a pack of gum, a few 7.62mm shell casings, and a plastic card onto the nearest desk.

Bettencourt reached for the laminated card. On one side was the Batman comic book logo, one of the older ones before the latest redesigns. He flipped it over. To his surprise, he found a smiling digital picture of the boy on the other side.

Official Member, Batman Hero’s Club. The boy had scrawled his name on the card, Jaff Suliman. Bettencourt frowned and passed it over his lawyer, who typed the name into his smartphone.

Colonel Westmoreland dug into his vest and produced a small half-terabyte solid-state memory card. He plugged — no, jammed it into the command and control computer. The lights to the server farm dimmed and a video flickered, projected larger-than-life on the nearest wall.

Taken from Westmoreland’s perspective, the video began in the bay of one of the Blackhawks, shot from a camera mounted to the side of the colonel’s helmet. The helicopter swooped low over a Russian transport ship as she tossed in the waves far from the coast.

“It was a fucking ambush,” narrated the colonel. “They love these Russian transports for some reason. I don’t know what the thinking is; we’re never going to put any heavy weaponry within 2,000 miles of these animals.”

“What did this one carry?”

“Grain. Mostly.”

“Anything belonging to the Conglomerate?”

“No. Thank God for that.”

“Are you sure we should be talking in front of the prisoner?” asked the lawyer.

“Fuck him,” Colonel Westmoreland said. “He’s never seeing daylight again.”

“Fuck your mother!” shouted the prisoner from inside his hood. Westmoreland aimed a half-hearted kick at him, still almost managing to knock the boy out of his chair.

“All we knew is that we got a distress signal from one of our client vessels,” said the colonel. “We were showing up to assist, maybe do a little turkey shooting if we found any pirate skiffs nearby.”

Bettencourt smiled at this. He’d had a turn on one of the new miniguns when they’d first arrived at Anconia. Epic. The sheer amount of fire the guns laid down was second to none, long, scorching lines of bullets so hot and thick they glowed like lasers in mid-air, brighter even than the midday African sun.

The video continued, Westmoreland’s chopper leading the other four in a swooping arc around the transport.

Bettencourt felt a little dizzy as he watched Westmoreland’s disembodied hands reach for the rope, then slide down onto the deck of the transport. The camera took a position behind one of the ventilation funnels as men dropped all around him.

“This is about the time things start going wrong,” Westmoreland said.

On the video, a figure moved onto the outside staircase adjacent to the bridge, a towering monolith located on the rear of the transport, rising nearly four stories over the relatively flat deck. Westmoreland aimed his rifle at the figure, then lowered it as the man began to wave both arms. He appeared to be one of the sailors, beckoning the mercenaries towards the bridge.

The colonel took three steps forward when the entire bridge and every portal in the four-story high structure lit up like a Christmas tree with muzzle flashes and incoming bullets. The sound was deafening, even over the PA system of the audio/visual room, so loud that the speakers cracked and went to static, unable to convey the full auditory violence of the gunshots.

Westmoreland’s video flew to one side, finding cover. The man beside him fell, hit, while others returned fire. The helicopters flew in circles, trying to find an appropriate target on the transport superstructure.

“Holy shit,” exclaimed the lawyer.

“If it weren’t for those helicopters, we’d be dead or captured,” said Westmoreland.

“Was Dalmar on board?” Bettencourt asked.

“How should I know? We don’t even know what he looks like. But if he was, there’s a good chance we got him. The pirates may have scored a victory, but it cost them.”

“He probably wasn’t onboard,” said the lawyer. Westmoreland turned toward him and glared. “No really — think about it. When was the last time we had a confirmed report he was a part of one of these raids? My intel guys think he’s directing from landside.”

“Your intel guys,” chuckled Westmoreland sarcastically.

“Yes, my intel guys,” the lawyer said, chin jutting out in defiance. “With respect, most generals don’t serve on the front lines, Colonel. Why would Dalmar risk it?”

Westmoreland turned his back on the lawyer and resumed the video.The three men watched as the mercenaries charged up the stairway through a hail of bullets, fighting their way to the bridge. The two lead men threw grenades through the doorway. The bridge exploded, glass shattering and tumbling onto the deck. The last wounded man tumbled through the door to the bridge, collapsing at the base of a navigational terminal, blood pooling around his feet and ankles. Behind them, more pirates poured from below, materializing like ghosts, capturing the deck where they’d been moments before.

“We had to turn the bridge into an unassailable position,” said Westmoreland, narrating the video as it continued. “Once the last man was in the bridge, we torched the exterior stairway with thermite.”

Westmoreland’s video turned back to the bridge, a scene of perfect chaos. Wounded men struggled, attended to by their comrades while others shoved the crumpled bodies of hostages into the corner. Helicopters strafed the decks below.

Three pirates burst through the door to the interior stairwell, catching the mercenaries by surprise. Westmoreland was first to return fire, but the pirates vanished before any were hit. The pirates hung back, probing the weaknesses of the impromptu fortress, never staying long enough to give the mercenaries a clear shot. They’d learned to fear the fixed guns of the helicopters, but at such close range the heavy weapons couldn’t be brought to bear without wiping out the mercenaries as well. Every bullet expended brought more pirates, peeking, crouching, whistling to each other as they advanced. Westmoreland was losing.

Fuck it, said a voice over the video. The green flash of an unpinned grenade flew through the air and down the stairwell. With a concussion too loud for the video to capture, the weapon detonated with a blinding flash, collapsing part of the interior staircase.

And then an AK-47-wielding boy stepped into view of the helmet-cam. Charles instantly recognized him as the colonel’s prisoner. In the video, Westmoreland dove to the floor, reached into the compartment below and dragged the boy out by his collar, punched him squarely in the face, ripped the rifle from his grasp, hooded and zip tied him within seconds. Bettencourt felt genuine amazement at the speed of the capture. From the boy’s perspective, he may have well been abducted by aliens, a single hand reaching down from above and dragging him upwards and away.

The men pushed their way up a ladder and onto the roof of the ship, kicking and breaking off radio antennas and radar units, trying to make enough room for their escape. The first of the helicopters flew in for a dangerous one-skid landing, allowing Westmoreland’s men to pile aboard. Westmoreland practically threw the prisoner into the chopper, then dove in after him. The helicopter took off, rejoining formation while a second repeated the rescue.

The two lead helicopters broke formation, backing away for an attack run, then strafed the entirety of the ship, firing countless rounds into the waterline of the ship. The transport started to list almost immediately, taking on water into every below-deck compartment.

Bettencourt didn’t know if any crew survived the encounter this far, but he knew none of them would live for long. The Russian transport heeled over but refused to sink. Above the bridge, the last of the shot-up mercenaries were loaded. The helicopter accelerated, gaining speed as it escaped the wounded ship, chased by three long-tailed rocket-propelled grenades — the pirates fired one final salvo, one last attempt to inflict damage.

Two missed, but the third impacted the rearmost chopper, halfway back to the tail rotor. The craft spun, losing control, but the expert pilot righted her, re-gaining trim and putting her back into formation. The last clip of the video showed the fleeing helicopters moving away as the Russian transport, burning, rocked in the lapping waves.

“We have to strike back,” said Westmoreland, yanking the memory card out of the computer. “At this moment, Anconia Island is on war footing.”

Bettencourt frowned, the offshore bankers, software developers, data miners and other denizens of Anconia wouldn’t like that kind of talk. They weren’t soldiers. Before he could formulate his response, his lawyer interrupted.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “But I think I found our prisoner’s Facebook page.”

The lawyer synced his phone into the nearest terminal. Sure enough, the young prisoner’s image flashed into view, maybe a year younger, proudly wearing a Batman T-shirt and holding an RPG.

“Cute kid,” said Bettencourt.

“Holy shit, I think Dalmar has a page, too,” said the lawyer, bringing up the pirate’s stark rifle-crossed emblem.

“I hope you’re not using your personal account.”

“No, I’m using corporate. What should I do?”

Westmoreland simply crossed his arms, not approving but knowing too little about the process to actually protest.

“Hell, I don’t know,” said Bettencourt. “Friend him. The Public Relations department will throw a shit fit when they find out, but do it anyway.”

The lawyer pressed a few keys, all three men waiting for a moment.

“I sent the request.”

“War footing,” said Westmoreland, intending to return the discussion to a subject with which he was eminently more familiar.

“Um, sorry to interrupt,” said the lawyer. “But he just friended me back.”

“Already? The fucker must live on Facebook.”

“He just might,” mused the lawyer. “He actually has more followers than our corporate site… hold on… now we’re getting a video chat request from him.”

“Seriously?” Bettencort said.

“Agree to it,” said Colonel Westmoreland. “We have a prisoner. That’s something worth talking about. Can we trace the source? I want to know exactly where that fucker is holed up.”

“Trace it? Are you kidding me?” said the lawyer. “This is Facebook we’re talking about.”

“Despite your shitty attitude,” said the colonel, “I still don’t know if that’s a yes or no.”

“Let me put it this way, do you want some pedophile tracing your kids?” said the lawyer, shaking his head. “No, you can’t trace somebody using Facebook.”

“Well, stop fucking around and start the feed,” said the colonel.

“Put it on the main screen,” Bettencourt directed.

The lawyer swept the page up onto the server farm’s main screen. and with a jab of his index figure, accepted the video chat request. A few seconds later, an image formed on the big screen and Dalmar Abdi filled the display, a dark, intense, handsome face staring directly into the camera. Bettencourt found himself wishing they’d picked a smaller screen; Dalmar dominated the room like the Wizard of Oz, while the room’s fisheye camera rendered him and Westmoreland as small, slight figures.

Dalmar was transmitting from a nondescript bedroom, a simple mud-walled space with a single bed. A second man, tall, muscular, bare chested, slept soundly wrapped in the sheets, blissful and unaware. So the rumors were true — Bettencourt could practically smell the sex through the video connection.

“Colonel!” announced Dalmar with practical glee and in near-perfect English. “I missed you! Get it?”

With that, Dalmar threw his entire head back and laughed the deepest, purest belly laugh, his shiny white teeth blinding, his echoing voice booming over the room’s PA system.

“Mr. Abdi,” said Charles.

“Oh, I see Charles Bettencourt is with you,” said Dalmar, still smiling with the last remaining chuckles. “And his pet lawyer. All of my friends are here! All of my friends, the men who give me so much money and such endless fun.”

“How many men did you lose today?” asked Colonel Westmoreland with a sadistic smile.

“None!” shouted Dalmar, his smile never wavering. “I have never lost a man. Those shot, rise as the sun sets; those drowned, swim to shore, those burned and maimed—”

Unwilling to listen to the ranting another moment, Colonel Westmoreland grabbed the prisoner by the neck and threw him to center of the camera’s view. Hands still tied behind his back, the boy stumbled and collapsed in a heap as the mercenary straddled him, yanking off his dark hood.

“And who is this?” said Dalmar. Unmoved by the display, he seemed genuinely curious.

Blinking in the sudden artificial light, Jaff immediately affixed his stare to Dalmar’s image. His eyes went wide, his mouth hung open. Celebrity? Hero worship? Was Dalmar actually Jaff’s Batman?

“Ah, I can see now!” said Dalmar. “It is my best soldier, Jaff!”

Jaff mouthed words, but no sound came out. He knows my name, the boy seemed say.

“Jaff, I am very proud of you,” said Dalmar.

“But I was captured,” the boy whispered, not certain his idol could hear him.

“There is nothing you could do that would make me disappointed in you,” responded Dalmar. “After all, what do we say to our captors?”

“Fuck your mother!” shouted Jaff.

“Very good! Very good! My friends, let us put my best soldier aside for a moment. We have business to discuss. Jaff, I promise you that your moment will come.”

Jaff bowed deeply, his face aglow with a burning pride.

“I’ll begin,” said Bettencourt. He stood up and adjusted his suit. “Dalmar, I’ll admit it. I’m impressed. They said nobody could take a vessel traveling faster than eighteen knots, and you took one. I can’t get you to retire—”

“And you cannot kill me.”

“But let’s not get bogged down in semantics,” the CEO continued. “What’s it going to take? I feel like I don’t even have a starting point with you here. Give me a number. Ask for the world and we’ll see where the negotiations take us. What do you say?”

“You wish to negotiate?” asked Dalmar, theatrically incredulous. “How does one negotiate with death? You, you people, you bring death with you. Death to our people, death to our seas, death to our hope. And I am the deathkiller. I pray for your massacres, for the poisons you pour into our waters. For every Somali you kill, I raise an army of their brothers and husbands and sons.”

Bettencourt’s phone rang, and he found himself absentmindedly checking it. Lucianna… goddamn it, every time he missed one of her kickboxing lessons she blew up his phone like some crazy stalker. Annoying as hell, almost not worth it—

“Am I boring you?” Dalmar’s voice boomed over the streaming video. Bettencourt realized the room had gone absolutely silent.

“What the hell, boss?” Westmoreland demanded. Even his lawyer seemed irritated.

“Shit, I’m sorry. It’s my kickboxing instructor, goes bonkers every time I skip my personal training session.”

“Are you screwing her?” asked Dalmar.

“Well… yeah.”

“That’s your problem right there, Boss,” muttered Westmoreland. The lawyer nodded in agreement.

“I understand, my friend,” said Dalmar, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder to the sleeping man in bed behind him. “This one is unbelievable. Always wants to upgrade, whatever that means. Wants a nicer house, a nicer car. I cannot win.”

“Now do we get to talk about the prisoner I’m about to fucking execute?” asked Colonel Westmoreland, clearly annoyed.

“To business then,” said Dalmar. “I am willing to speak of Jaff, my best soldier. My best soldier knows, as all the best soldiers know, that their commander only asks one thing of them.”

Dalmar’s dark eyes pierced through the video feed, focusing all his energy on the young, enraptured pirate.

“Jaff, do you know what I am going to ask?”

Jaff shook his head.

“I only ask you die well.”

Jaff nodded in complete focus and agreement. The boy spun around and suddenly his hands were free and he launched himself at Charles Bettencourt like a cannon shot, as if the entire universe had shrunk to a singular nothingness between two immovable objects. Something glinted in his hand and Charles’s brain sputtered and spit something out like knife. The worst part was that he just stood there with his mouth hanging open like some thoughtless dumbfuck begging to get his gut slashed open. Just as fast, Westmoreland had his hands around the boy’s neck, throwing him to the ground.

Out came the colonel’s custom pistol, and it popped once, twice, three times directly into the boy’s chest, deafening in the small room. The boy sputtered once, gurgled, dropped the knife, and died.

Dalmar let out a long sigh and shook his head. “Missed again.” He smiled one last time, a wide, sad smile and said, “Until next time.” Then he closed the feed and all that remained on the screen was his main Facebook page.

“You’re welcome, Boss,” Westmoreland said.

Bettencourt didn’t look up. He was distracted, staring at his shoes around which a puddle of blood was forming. Jesus. But probably not the first pair of Pradas to walk through blood, he thought. And no, I do not need to thank you, Colonel. That’s what annual performance bonuses are for. He glanced up at the screen and then turned and headed back out to the landing deck with his lawyer, as usual, on his heels. Westmoreland’s cruel smile followed them to the massive door, disappearing only as it slid shut behind them.

Something about the sea air centered Bettencourt, putting him back into his proper alignment. It wasn’t the blood or the boy or the gunshots — not even Dalmar’s superior taunts. It was the surprise, a sensation he felt deeply unused to. He hated it.

“Walk me through my afternoon,” he said to his lawyer. He leaned against the nearest railing and peeled off his bloody shoes, holding them to his side, standing on the rough metal grating in his socks, watching the waves below.

His lawyer pulled out a Blackberry and scrolled through the new messages. “Well, the Russians are trying to get in touch. They’re pissed about the transport; want somebody’s head on a platter. It’s going to take some serious kowtowing to get out of this one.”

“I’m not in the mood. What else?”

“Um, this is a little weird, but the Conquerer is arriving in the next couple of hours. At least I think it’s the Conquerer.”

“I’m not following.”

“Let me put it this way. It sure looks like the Conquerer, but the pilot is calling her the Fool’s Errand. Somebody named Dr. Nassiri is in command, says he knows you. Says you have some kind of arrangement.”

“Hmmm…” Bettencourt racked his brain for some reference to Dr. Nassiri without success. He threw his shoes over the railing. They tumbled through the air and disappeared into the ocean.

“Set up the appointment.”