Whatever the Cost

1

Minister of State Security Choi Ho-ki stared across the parade ground, hands behind his back, watching the military parade in front of him; hundreds of loyal soldiers in the Korean People’s Army Ground Force going through intricately choreographed drill moves with wonderful precision.

President Kim himself was watching too, from a raised dais behind a row of battle tanks, surrounded by his normal entourage of key advisers.

The morning air was chilly, and Lt. General U Chun-su breathed out steadily and watched the air turn to steam in front of him as he waited for Choi to speak.

‘What do you think our great leader will say when I speak to him later?’ Choi said finally, eyes still locked on the parade ground, not even wanting to look at the Director of the RGB.

‘I will tell him myself,’ U said humbly, knowing that it would be expected. ‘I will tell him that I failed.’

There was a pause as Choi seemed to consider the matter. ‘No,’ he said evenly. ‘That is not what will happen. President Kim is expecting results, and we will deliver them, do you understand?’

‘But what can we —’

‘We can press ahead as planned. Off schedule of course, but you will have to be flexible. We still have quantities of the product left at Camp Fourteen?’

‘Yes, we have a large stockpile, but what —’

‘That is what you will need to figure out,’ Choi explained patiently. ‘If you wish to retain your position as Director, you will carry out this mission as directed. President Kim is only interested in results, not in methods. Get it there, use it, any way you can. Yes?’

U nodded his head slowly, watching the army parade in front of him, marching right past them with the click of boots and the swish of material; postures erect, faces proud.

He was just going to have to be creative.

‘Tango down!’ Lt. Commander Jake Navarone called out after making the shot, his suppressed H&K MP-10 submachine gun tracking across the room in front of him, his partner Duke Kleiner covering him as they cleared the ship room by room.

They’d already been through countless drills since arriving in Subic Bay — dry firing drills, range drills, practicing approaching the Navy boats via covert insertion, boat handling and night swimming — and had now been granted permission to use a full-size cargo ship loaned to the US Navy by Storm Shipping, an American company who’d had a ship at dock in the nearby Port of Batangas.

‘Clear!’ he heard Kleiner announce, followed by more pronouncements by other members of his squad.

‘Upper deck all clear!’ Navarone said through his throat mike.

Navarone and Kleiner swept out of the room and headed for the bridge where they were to regroup with the other SEALs, hearing muffled shots as they moved.

Before they reached their rendezvous, Navarone heard Commander Treyborne over his earpiece. ‘Hostages secured, all tangos down.’

Navarone smiled. Even though it was only an exercise, the people playing the pirates were no pushovers — they were all operators from SEAL Team Four who were stationed at Subic Bay. But DEVGRU were the best of the best, and trial runs like this were what made them so effective. Practice didn’t make perfect on its own; perfect practice made perfect, and that is what DEVGRU constantly strived for.

This latest exercise was only part of the puzzle; a piece of the mission broken down so that it could be perfected. They hadn’t inserted via boat or clandestine underwater swimming, and they wouldn’t be going through fully securing the ship and the extraction of the hostages. These skills would again be practiced separately, each man’s performance analyzed so that mistakes could be corrected and ironed out. And then it would all come together in a full mock-up of the operation — or as near as they could manage without detailed information such as the exact location of the vessel and the numbers and armaments of enemy personnel.

Once the vessel was located, thorough recon would have to be performed so that such questions could be answered, and then they would have to go through all their exercises again before committing to the real thing.

But when they did, Navarone knew that the pirates wouldn’t stand a chance.

Amir Al-Hazmi watched the volunteers as they went about their daily business in the compound. Men and women both, they had no work to do here, no chores as such, but each of them was an earnest true-believer and spent their time in deep prayer and meditation on what was to come.

They had been selected by The Lion — Al-Hazmi was one of only a selected handful of people who knew his leader’s true identity as Abd al-Aziz Quraishi, Assistant Minister for Internal Affairs at the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Interior — a long time ago, chosen for their backgrounds, their religious zealotry, and their absolute trust in Quraishi and the ideals of Arabian Islamic Jihad.

Al-Hazmi had known Quraishi for many years and had nothing but the highest regard for his master’s divine skills as a freedom-fighting mastermind. As he played with the curved, heavily-inscribed blade of his janbiya, the Arabic dagger characterized by both its curved short blade and its rhinoceros horn handle, Al-Hazmi thought back to how he and Quraishi had first met.

Al-Hazmi had only been a young man at the time, but had already been fighting with Al-Qaida fi Jazirat al-'Arab — al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — for years, and was a hardened veteran of many violent campaigns.

He had entered the life after his family had been killed during a botched raid on their home by Saudi Arabian security forces. Al-Hazmi had been a young boy when it happened, and had been forced onto the streets to take care of himself. And he had — his innate abilities with the janbiya, used against the criminals and street toughs who threatened him, soon brought him to the attention of the AQAP leadership. They took him in and provided him with a home, food, and religious education.

It was at the madrassa where he had learnt about the true greatness of Allah and the corrupt perversions of the United States and her puppet, the House of Saud. He had been a willing student, and as well as his studies of the Qur’an, he soon excelled at the paramilitary training camps of Yemen and Syria.

In his early teens he was a part of several successful operations, fighting against the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan; and the US troops had soon come to fear his janbiya, which he used to hack off souvenirs from dead soldiers and take them home for his grisly collection. But then his chance came to attack the heart of Saudi Arabia itself, a full-on assault of the Interior Ministry.

At just nineteen years old, he had led the attack himself.

But Allah, in His great wisdom, had decreed that the attack should fail, and Al-Hazmi and all of his colleagues had been captured and taken to the interrogation chambers below the government buildings of Riyadh.

It was there that he saw Quraishi for the first time; but instead of torturing him, Quraishi instead lectured him about why AQAP’s attacks were doomed to failure; poor leadership, poor training and — most importantly, according to Quraishi — poor intelligence.

Quraishi explained to Al-Hazmi that he wanted to use his power, his position, to lead a new jihad against the West and her allies; a jihad which would accomplish finally what all others had not — the annihilation of the Great Satan.

Al-Hazmi had been impressed with the man’s arguments, and found himself inspired by Quraishi’s leadership.

He had asked to join Quraishi’s fledgling organization then and there, and was accepted instantly, which made him one of the founding members of Arabian Islamic Jihad, and The Lion’s right-hand man.

Over the intervening years, as the membership and reach of the secretive group grew and grew, Al-Hazmi acted as Quraishi’s enforcer and executioner, tasks which soon earned him his own title of respect in the organization — Matraqat al-Kafir, the Hammer of the Infidel.

As one of the AIJ’s most senior operational leaders, Al-Hazmi had been entrusted by his master to secure and protect this all-important compound and to ensure that the upcoming operation went smoothly, including making sure that each and every volunteer boarded the correct planes at the correct time, and proceeded on to their destinations unhindered.

One of the resident medical personnel at the compound would see to the technical requirements of the mission; even now they were hard at work examining the contents which had just arrived by private jet from Medan in northern Sumatra. Without direct access to the scientists who developed it, they would have to spend some time experimenting to know exactly how to use it in the most effective manner. But that was work which would occur in the underground laboratory, and Al-Hazmi found that he didn’t really want to know too much about it. He had been there once, and had no yearning to go back.

Al-Hazmi knew that part of his job was to make sure that the volunteers didn’t have any second thoughts about what they were about to do, and so he had given clear instructions for them never to speak to the medical personnel, or to venture underground. Better for their motivation if they didn’t see what it was they had to do before the time was upon them.

Not that Al-Hazmi had much to worry about; they had been chosen just as he had been chosen himself. All of the volunteers were true believers, religious warriors who would do anything for the cause. Like Al-Hazmi, most of their families had been raped, tortured and executed by Saudi or US troops, or else killed by indiscriminate bombings, ‘collateral damage’ which provided a never-ending supply of fresh blood to the cause.

No, Al-Hazmi considered as he ran his thumb along the well-used blade of his priceless janbiya, he didn’t have to worry about the volunteers. And then he smiled broadly as he thought of what lay ahead.

No, he thought happily, it was the Americans who should worry about the volunteers.

2

The square was in absolute chaos when Cole finally returned to ground level. He’d known that police and security personnel would be using the elevator and stairs, and so he had ridden down on the roof of the elevator car, waited until the coast was clear, and then lowered himself through the access hatch and merged with the crowds.

Luckily, not enough time had elapsed for the authorities to cordon off the area or to secure it properly, and the square had been filled with hundreds of curious onlookers, many of whom were fixated by the two shattered bodies which had fallen from the top of the monument. It had been a relatively simply job for Cole to slip away in the confusion.

He’d since escaped fifty miles west to the city of Serang, where he’d located an internet café and was enjoying a cup of bandrek — a hot drink of spiced coconut milk popular in western Java — as he worked on the dead arms broker’s encrypted cellphone.

Cole used his hacking skills to piggyback onto one of the NSA’s decryption systems, and soon broke the encryption using sheer brute force. To Cole’s delight, the man had stored the contact details of many of his clients, one of whom was listed as Arief. Cole wasn’t surprised that Wong Xiang had such details; he would simply have believed that the sophisticated encryption would be enough to deter anyone who looked at his phone if it was ever lost.

Not that Cole could be sure that the number would still be being used by the pirate leader; a quick check of the number showed that it was a throw-away prepaid cellphone, and could easily have been replaced since the last time Wong had contacted him. But with nothing else to go on, Cole decided to pursue the lead.

Cole used the café’s secure landline modem to hack into the Indosat computer mainframe. He quickly called up the last known transmitter used by Arief’s cellphone, and found that it was a cellphone repeater station based in the town of Dumai on the coast of Sumatra — in the known operating zone of Liang Kebangkitan, and not a million miles away from where the Fu Yu Shan was hijacked.

Sure he was onto something, Cole nevertheless wanted something more concrete before he set out to perform a physical reconnaissance. A cellphone transmitter was one thing, but what he really wanted was a current GPS location for the phone.

Using the Indosat system, Cole remotely downloaded a tracking app to the pirate’s suspected cell phone and called up the information onto his own computer.

It immediately came up with a list of GPS coordinates, which Cole fed into a mapping system, pinpointing the cellphone exactly.

It seemed to be currently located on a narrow, unnamed island less than a mile long, sandwiched between the Sumatran mainland and the larger island of Pulau Rupat.

Cole smiled; it was an ideal location for a pirate base, an unknown islet wedged in a narrow channel which would deter large military vessels from attacking, whilst offering plenty of opportunities for the pirates to escape if discovered — to the mainland, to Pulau Rupat, or out of the channel and into deeper waters.

From the satellite maps, Cole could see that the island was heavily forested, the trees obscuring any rivers or internal channels which might be hiding a hijacked ship. In fact, at the resolutions offered by the maps, nothing of the little island except its vague shape could be made out at all.

Due to the nature of the area, Cole doubted that even the high-definition real-time surveillance footage of a targeted drone aircraft would reveal much more — the vegetation covered everything, and Cole was sure that the ship would also be camouflaged and perhaps even hidden in a sheltered sea cave, making positive identification next to impossible.

Cole wondered whether he should notify the US authorities, but thought better of it; what did he have to go on? At the moment, all he knew was that a cellphone which was linked to someone listed as ‘Arief’ was currently located on that little island. It could mean nothing, or it could mean everything, and Cole didn’t want valuable resources to be wasted if he was barking up the wrong tree.

Cole sighed as he finished his bandrek. There was only one thing for it.

He would have to find his way onto the island himself, and confirm that the Fu Yu Shan was actually there.

And if it was, he would remain on-site to provide real-time recon intelligence for the special ops team which would undoubtedly be sent to rescue the hostages and blast the pirates back into the fifteenth century.

The 35 day dry-aged rib-eye steak from the Shenandoah Valley Beef Cooperative tasted sublime as Jeb Richards consumed piece after mouthwatering piece.

It wasn’t on the menu for that particular evening, but Secretary of State Clark Mason had spoken to the maître d’ of 1789 and — sure enough — it had become instantly available.

The restaurant was one of the culinary icons of Washington DC, and was as good a place to spot political royalty as anywhere in the city. Richards knew that tongues might wag about his meeting with Mason, but who cared? They were both cabinet members, and meetings like this happened on a daily basis, especially at the city’s elite restaurants. Everyone knew that most of the important things which happened in the city originated over a good steak and a glass of wine during private meetings exactly like this one.

It would have been much more newsworthy if they had tried to meet clandestinely; for nothing was ever a secret for long in Washington, and the press would have had a field day with conjecture about what they were discussing.

As it was, relaxing in their mahogany chairs in the famous dining room, its cream-colored walls bedecked with centuries-old oil paintings, they were ignored completely; which suited Richards just fine.

‘So tell me you think this whole ship thing is a waste of time,’ Richards said through a mouthful of medium rare steak. The small talk was over for the evening, and now it was time for business.

Mason wiped at the edge of his mouth with a thick white napkin and took a sip of his Puligny Montrachet, regarding Richards with keen eyes.

‘I wouldn’t perhaps go that far,’ Mason began diplomatically. ‘I certainly think it’s important for us to put on a show, make all the right noises, don’t you? Ellen was right about the treaty with China, which is shaky at the best of times. Do we want to upset them?’ He shook his head. ‘Not really.’

‘But —’ Richards began, before Mason cut him off with a wave of the hand.

‘Sorry Jeb, but I didn’t finish. I said I think the pretense of doing something is important, not the actual doing itself. I would favor taking no real action, the same as you. As it happens, I think you’re right; I don’t think the kidnapping of three Americans — Chinese Americans in actual fact, and ones that don’t even live here, don’t pay their taxes here — well, I don’t think it’s anything to lose sleep over in the overall scheme of things, do you?’

Richards shook his head vigorously. ‘You’re damned right I don’t,’ he said. ‘A big waste of time and money is what it is. And it’s taking our eye off the ball, the things that really matter, you know? I mean, honestly, who gives a shit about a Chinese cargo ship?’

Mason shrugged his shoulders, taking another sip of his wine. ‘Not me. But the president does, I’m afraid and — for now, at least — she’s in charge.’

Richards smiled, knowing that Mason had his own eyes on Abrams’ job, fancied himself as the party’s chief candidate for the next election in just over four years’ time, when Abrams would step down after completing her second term. If she won the November election.

But it was generally believed — and the polls supported the assumption — that Abrams would win again, her appeal still high after surviving the assassination attempt. Richards knew that Mason had no wish to oppose her directly this November; but he also knew that the Secretary of State did want that top job one day, and wanted to appeal to this sense of ambition.

‘You’re right,’ Richards said eventually as he slurped unceremoniously at his own wine, ‘you’re right. We can only hope that our next president’ — he looked pointedly at Mason as he spoke — ‘is more sensible, and has a better grip on both foreign policy and internal security.’

Mason nodded his head in understanding. ‘Some of us take those things very seriously,’ he said with affected gravitas. ‘Very seriously indeed.’

Richards nodded his own head, pretending to be impressed with Mason’s words, his dedication. ‘I think that perhaps this incident might play badly for Abrams,’ he said at last. ‘It would be most unfortunate of course, but — after committing to finding the ship as she’s done — if the Fu Yu Shan was never found, if — let’s say — certain obstructions were placed in her path — then it would be very embarrassing for her, politically speaking.’

Mason smiled, warming to the idea. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘That would be very unfortunate, wouldn’t it?’

Richards smiled as he watched Mason finish his wine and gesture for the attendant waiter to pour him another glass. Mason picked it up, and Richards joined him with his own. ‘Here’s to the Fu Yu Shan,’ Mason said over the tinkling of crystal.

‘The Fu Yu Shan,’ Richards agreed, knocking back his own glass.

So Mason was aboard, he thought happily; and his own personal agenda was now one notch more secure.

‘Yes my friend,’ Abd al-Aziz Quraishi said into the secure telephone which rested on his office desk, ‘in sha’Allah.’ If God wills it.

It always amused him when infidels attempted to impress him with their vain attempts at expressing Islamic concepts. Quraishi knew that — for the man on the other end of the line — they were entirely empty words, devoid of meaning. For how could an infidel ever hope to understand?

But it did not matter to Quraishi; all it meant was that The Lion was a man who others needed to impress, even the man on the phone; a man with some considerable power in his own world, but who wielded no control at all over the leader of Arabian Islamic Jihad.

Quraishi put the phone down without another word and stretched out, pleased with how the day was progressing so far. This was the second good news he had received; he had already spoken earlier to Amir al-Hazmi, his beloved Hammer of the Infidel, who had assured him that preparations at the operations base were coming along exactly as planned. The scientists had not only received the necessary package, but were making good progress in understanding how to get the most out of it.

Quraishi stood and moved to his window, staring out at the busy streets of Riyadh below. The people of Saudi Arabia went about their daily lives with no idea about how those lives were about to be changed. Saudi Arabia — even the name of his beloved land offended him; but it wouldn’t last long.

For no longer would there be the corrupt rule of the House of Saud, in thrall to the American government and defiling their great nation with their continuous dealings with the hateful Satan. The hypocrisy of the regime continued to amaze Quraishi even after all these years; how could a nation which espoused shariah law and a strict interpretation of Islam also allow such gross disbelievers to desecrate their holy lands with their armed forces? How could they engage in business deals and political relationships with the enemy? It made Quraishi physically sick to think about it, but soon — very soon — America would fall, and without the backing of that nation’s all-powerful military, the King and his entire regime would crumble to dust under the might of The Lion and the AIJ.

None of the citizens in the street looked up at the building which housed the Ministry of Interior, and Quraishi was not in the least bit surprised. The Ministry was responsible for the Mabahith, the feared secret police unit which pulled men, women and children kicking and screaming from their beds in the dead of night and dragged them away to the brutal interrogation chambers dug out of the cool earth underneath the city — some located within the three subterranean levels of this very building.

Quraishi had worked within the Mabahith himself for many years — a perfect cover for a man his own organization would have recognized as a terrorist — and it had been a horrific time. To maintain his cover and progress his position, he had had to willingly torture and execute his fellow freedom-fighters, his fellow believers.

It had taken an enormous force of will to do the things that he had done, but he had trusted in Allah that it was all for a reason, believed that it would be worth the sacrifice when his final mission came to fruition, as it was now doing.

The innocent blood on his hands would be cleansed, and Allah would forgive him.

Quraishi opened a window to breathe in the air of his homeland, and the thick heat washed into the room immediately, smothering the overworked air conditioning and clawing its way over his body, sweat rising instantaneously from his pores, soaking his shirt.

He stood there looking out at Riyadh, thinking about the other reason people tried to ignore the building — it was hideous.

A gigantic upside-down concrete step-pyramid capped by a huge concrete dome, it was too modern by far for Quraishi’s traditional tastes, and merely another example of the regime’s Western perversions. The architecture of the various ministry buildings had been lauded across much of the world as bringing Saudi Arabia out of the dark ages, but to Quraishi they looked as if they had been designed by an unimaginative American kindergarten child with a box of broken crayons and a sight impediment.

Quraishi looked again at the people in the streets below him and was surprised to find a tear in his eye. He didn’t know whether it was caused by the memories of his horrifying past working in the Mabahith’s dark dungeons, or simply by his passion to release these people from their chains of slavery, bound as they were to a house of corruption and evil; but whatever the reason, he wiped the tear away, his face hard.

Now was not the time for emotion; not when there was still serious work to be done.

He could release all the tears he had when America was destroyed and Arabia had reestablished its true position as a holy land, and a paradise for true believers.

3

Cole’s head emerged from the dark waters, scanning the river ahead of him with his waterproof night-vision goggles, an unknowing gift from the dead arms dealer Wong Xiang.

Cole had managed to access Wong’s computer files through the cellphone’s internet connection, and had soon found reference to several storage warehouses rented in Wong’s name throughout western Java.

One had been not too far from Serang, a secure lock-up in the small coastal town of Cilegon, and Cole had headed straight there, wanting to beat the authorities before they accessed Wong’s records and made their own way there.

He had been delighted by what he had found; an arms cache far more impressive than the one underneath Boom’s garden shack. And it wasn’t just weapons; there was military-grade equipment of every type, and Cole realized that Khat had probably only been one of a handful of dealers who supplied Wong’s business.

He had quickly decided what he needed, packed it all up in a huge military rucksack and a couple of canvas kit bags, and headed for the local ferry port where he’d boarded the last boat of the day across the narrow strait which separated Java from Sumatra.

Arriving in Bandar Lampung later that same evening, and with nobody showing any sign of interest in the contents of his heavy bags, Cole had rented a 4x4 and immediately set off on the long journey north to Dumai.

Cole had driven the eight hundred miles to Dumai in one go, stopping only for food and gas, and arrived in the city within twenty hours of getting to the Sumatran mainland. Exhausted, he had rented a cheap motel room to get some much needed rest. Despite his desire to get on with the operation, he nevertheless made sure he slept long enough to fully recharge his batteries, not knowing when his next chance to rest might be; and being alert would be an absolute necessity over the hours and days ahead.

The long journey through the contrasting jungles, rice paddies and sudden urban sprawl of Sumatra had given him time to reflect on who he was; what he was.

He was a weapon, and that was all; a weapon as finely honed as any before him.

He had already killed — how many since leaving Thailand? He had tried to count, but hadn’t managed to get past Cambodia. Who knew how many had died during the chase through that dark jungle, the battle at the temple?

And did it even matter anymore how many there had been? How many more there would be to come?

Because Cole knew that there would be more; had always known, ever since his first kill in Iran as a young twenty-year old SEAL sailor just out of training. He had felt it then, and he felt it now; it wasn’t a compunction to kill, just an acceptance of its inevitability.

Would a Michelin-starred chef ever stop cooking? Would a world champion boxer ever completely get over the urge to hit the bag, just a little?

Mark Cole; it wasn’t even his real name.

He had tried family life, and had even loved it, loved those whose lives he had been blessed with.

But somewhere — somewhere deep down — he had known it would not last. Could not last. That sort of life was simply not a long-term option for a man like him, and as he piloted the heavy 4x4 along the broken, unpaved roads of Sumatra’s rural heartlands, eyes bleary with exhaustion, the realization had hit him like a slap to the face.

Had he willingly endangered his own family? Had he wanted them to die, so that he could get back to the life he knew and — yes, he could admit it now — loved?

He simply didn’t know; all he did know was that Sarah, Ben and Amy were not the only family he had lost.

When he had agreed to leave the life of Mark Kowalski behind, in order to become Mark Cole, a deep-cover contract laborer for Charles Hansard and the American government, he had accepted that he would have to leave his family behind, all believing that he had been Killed In Action on a mission to Pakistan.

His mother, his father, his two brothers, his sister; grandparents and cousins, nieces and nephews; he had left them all behind in the frozen trailer parks of Hamtramck, Michigan.

What would they think if they knew?

And so the hours had passed, one after the other, on the long journey to Dumai; until Cole had fallen into bed with one final thought.

If he was a killer, he would use his skills — his nature — for a just cause, to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.

He was a guard dog, and he fell asleep to the sounds of howling.

Upon waking, Cole had then driven further north to a more remote location on the coast, and had used his stolen SCUBA gear to swim to an adjacent island just one mile to the west of the suspected pirate’s lair. He had laid up there and scoured the opposite coastline with his high-powered binoculars for signs of a river or other ingress into the island.

He had spotted what he thought might be a channel, although it was hard to tell at that distance even with the binoculars; and had then bypassed the island at a safe distance and swam across to the larger island of Pulau Rupat, where he had repeated the procedure for the islet’s eastern coast. On that side he had spotted no sign of a water-based entrance inland, the coast overgrown with vegetation.

Cole wasn’t able to observe the northern and southern coasts, but they were so narrow that there wasn’t much that he would have missed; and he therefore decided that his best course of action would be a covert infiltration of the small island via the channel he’d identified on the west coast.

The miles of swimming weren’t a problem to Cole — his years in the Navy SEALs had prepared him in exquisitely demanding fashion for tasks exactly like this, and with fins on, the job was even easier. What was a problem now, as he made his way down the riverine channel which cut a swath through the dense jungle, was being seen.

He’d chosen to carry out the recon mission at night-time. He’d been confident enough to observe the islet from more remote locations during the day, but when it came time to access the little island itself, Cole knew it had to be under the cover of darkness.

But he still worried about the pirate gang’s own night-vision devices; if they sourced their equipment from Wong, then it stood to reason that they would probably have the same gear as him. Possibly radar too, although Cole knew it was unlikely that they would have anything sophisticated enough to pinpoint a single human body.

He didn’t want to swim on the surface of the river — which was, he’d already noted, just about big enough for a vessel the size of the Fu Yu Shan to float down — due to the threat of being seen by alert sentries; and so he was forced to swim a certain distance underwater and then emerge at regular intervals to observe the riverbanks around him. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do.

Treading the warm water beneath him, Cole scanned the northern bank first, before something caught his attention and drew his gaze southwards. It was at the extent of the goggle’s perception, but Cole was sure he’d seen movement further down the river, on the south bank.

Knowing he would have to get closer, Cole reentered the water and kicked steadily upstream.

Two minutes later he raised his head again, looking south.

Yes.

There was something here, and Cole looked across the river and tried to discern the green and black images fed to him through the night-vision goggles.

There was a dark shape, and Cole soon identified it as a cave which cut into the side of the jungle, a tributary from the main river feeding into it.

Swimming in closer, Cole could soon make out what appeared to be a dock hidden inside the cave, armed men standing guard along a wooden jetty. They seemed alert, switched on; none of them smoked or did anything else to compromise night discipline, but Cole was relieved to see that they weren’t using night-vision devices. Perhaps they were confident that the hideout would never be found, or else never considered the fact that a lone swimmer could prove a danger. Security would probably only be really boosted when radar, or lookouts posted further out, at the entrances to the main channel between the mainland and Pulau Rupat, alerted them to the presence of a suspicious boat in their waters.

But Cole was sure of one thing; he had found the pirates’ hideout, the lair of Liang Kebangkitan.

Now all he had to do was find out if the Fu Yu Shan and its crew were still inside.

The cave itself was illuminated by high-wattage floodlights which ran on huge portable generators, and Cole knew that he wouldn’t be able to surface without being seen. After ditching his SCUBA gear on the far bank — fearful it would leave a tell-tale stream of bubbles rising to the surface as he entered the cave — Cole swam back across the river with just his fins, submerging as he neared the entrance.

He knew he didn’t have a lot of time, but slowed down as he entered anyway, careful to check for underwater booby-traps or surveillance devices. He swam over some steel netting which was designed to trap a submersible, but otherwise passed into the lair without a problem.

He tried to keep to the darkest, most shadowed parts of the water, knowing that if he was seen, he would be dead — and the pirates would be able to carry on keeping their hideout undiscovered.

Cole paused, his powerful lungs allowing him to stay submerged for minutes at a time, and slowly let his waterproof portable periscope break the surface of the still waters of the inner dock. He fitted his eye to the rubberized seal of the eyepiece and had his first real look at the base of operations for Liang Kebangkitan.

The cave was immense, a vast cavern in the hillside; Cole could see a variety of portacabins across the far side of the dock, leading deeper into the cave. In front of them was a row of marine craft including several fast RIBs, and what looked like a fairly large sailing yacht.

But on the other side — its vast bulk covering the inner channel in the shadow in which Cole was hiding — was the immense cargo ship, the Fu Yu Shan.

As the periscope tracked across the docking bay, Cole depressed a switch which activated an internal camera in the viewfinder, taking shot after shot after shot of the pirate’s lair.

Finally he let the periscope come back under and propelled himself silently further inland, until he could feel the rough steel hull of the ship under his hands. He slipped around the ship until he was between the hull and the wooden dock, and — covered in shadow — finally allowed himself to come to the surface.

He took in a sweet lungful of tropical air, careful not to make any noise as he did so, knowing that a sharp gasp would soon bring people running, and assessed the situation. He had found the ship, but he still didn’t know whether the hostages were here too, or had been shipped out to some other location. Before he contacted the US government, he had to be sure that the crew was here too.

There was only one thing for it; he would have to go ashore.

Just over two hours later, Cole was back on the far side of the river, wearing dry clothes and watching the cave entrance through military-grade night-vision binoculars.

His time in the cave had been short but adrenalin-fuelled, as he crept through the shadows, securing his special equipment in several hard-to-detect places.

Since slipping back into the warm river waters and swimming back to his observation post on the opposite bank, Cole had already learned a great deal more about the lair, and was ready to make his call.

He pulled the encrypted satellite phone towards him, and dialed the number for the White House.

‘I need to talk to the president,’ he said when the call was answered, careful to keep his voice low.

He was rewarded by a laugh at the other end of the line. ‘Take a number pal,’ a young man’s voice said with heavy sarcasm. ‘Everybody wants to speak to the president.’

‘Tell her it’s about the Fu Yu Shan,’ Cole said as calmly as he could, impatience building within him; here he was opposite the pirate hideout that the entire world was looking for, and he was being dicked around by a kid with a chip on his shoulder.

‘The what?’ the voice asked.

Cole’s patience snapped suddenly; he didn’t have time for this. ‘The fucking cargo ship that was hijacked and everyone in the entire world is looking for!’ he whispered violently. ‘Now get me the fucking president on the phone, now!’

The authority in Cole’s voice caused hesitation on the other end of the line, and Cole knew the man was weighing his options.

‘The president is busy,’ he said eventually. ‘She can’t take unsolicited calls. Who is this? I’ll make an appointment for you to call back when she’s free.’

‘Trust me, she’ll take my call,’ Cole assured him, not wanting to play this card, not wanting anyone to know that he was still alive. But what other choice did he have?

‘Tell her that it’s the Asset.’

Ellen Abrams’ blood ran cold as she heard the words –

I’ve got a call here from someone calling himself the Asset, claims to have information on that hijacked ship, the Fu Yu Shan.

The Asset.

Mark Cole.

A man from the past, a man who had saved her twice; recently, when her own bodyguard had tried to assassinate her, and once a long time before, back when she’d been a senator visiting Iraq on a fact-finding mission for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Mark Cole had still been known by his real name.

Mark Kowalski — a SEAL team member from Hamtramck, Michigan; before that treacherous bastard Charles Hansard had got his claws into him and destroyed his life.

Kowalski had been recruited by Hansard directly from SEAL Team Six into a new group that was being formed, based on the unit known as the Intelligence Support Activity but with an even lower profile, and an even broader remit.

Only two years into active operations for Hansard’s coyly-named Systems Research Group, Kowalski had been caught on a mission in Pakistan and imprisoned for over a year in a hellish jail in the remote Northern provinces. He had eventually been found — entirely by chance — by Hansard, who’d been visiting the prison on other business entirely.

Kowalski had already been declared KIA — Abrams herself had spoken at his funeral — and Hansard had made him an offer a patriot like Kowalski found impossible to refuse; become an off-the-books ‘contract laborer’, unconnected to the US government but entrusted with the most dangerous, the most secretive, and the most vital missions in existence; jobs that nobody else was capable of.

Abrams didn’t know the exact details, but much of the work involved assassinations; apparently Kowalski had learned some form of method while in prison that allowed him to kill without detection.

But to be completely unconnected to the US government, military, and intelligence services, Kowalski had to be reborn; and so Mark Cole had come into existence, his appearance altered through plastic surgery and a completely new life created for him to fill.

‘Mark Cole’ was a diving instructor from Phoenix, Arizona, who lived with his newly-wedded wife Sarah at a beach house in the Cayman Islands; a man whose real job as America’s spearhead covert operative meant that he could be called into action at anytime, anywhere in the world.

Nobody in the US government who used his services knew who he was; they just knew that if they needed a job doing, they went to Charles Hansard and asked for use of the Asset.

The Asset.

A man who had lost his wife and two children and had then disappeared, assumed dead in an inferno that engulfed a house in the Austrian village of Kreith.

A man she owed her life to.

She smiled. So she had been right all these months; he was still alive.

When all those people, part of Hansard’s violently reactionary group known as the Alumni, had perished in that ‘accidental’ fire at the hotel in Mexico, Abrams had wondered if Cole had somehow managed to survive, and had gone on to exact his revenge.

But he hadn’t reemerged, and she had eventually all but forgotten about him as the months passed.

But now he was calling about the location of the Fu Yu Shan, and Abrams felt her pulse quicken as she allowed herself to wonder what he had managed to find out.

‘Put him on,’ she ordered the secretary. ‘Immediately.’

4

An emergency meeting of the National Security Council had been convened, and there were hushed whispers all around the huge conference table as people wondered what was going on; but all conversation died down when President Abrams swept into the room and took her place at the head of the table.

Jeb Richards fidgeted in his seat nervously. He had done what he could to suppress useful intelligence, and knew that Mason would have been doing the same, but the persistent rumors suggested that the reason for this meeting was that there had been a breakthrough in the hijacking case.

Richards could only hope that it wouldn’t interfere with his own plans, his own assurances and promises that he had made to other parties.

‘Thank you all for coming at such short notice,’ he heard Abrams begin, morbidly curious to see where this was going to go, ‘but we have received information that we need to work on, fast. In conjunction with John’ — she nodded her head towards Eckhart, the National Security Adviser — ‘and Pete’ — she nodded again, this time at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs — ‘I have ordered the DEVGRU squadron to our naval base at Sembawang, Singapore, from where they will stage a proposed hostage rescue mission for the crew of the hijacked cargo ship, the Fu Yu Shan.’

Secretary of State Clark Mason was almost out of his seat by the time Abrams had finished her opening statement, eyes bulging. ‘What exactly’s going on here?’ he demanded as calmly as he could. ‘And why haven’t I been informed about any of this?’

Abrams regarded him icily. ‘I’m informing you now,’ she said. ‘Time is of the essence here, as I’m sure you appreciate, and I didn’t wish to waste any time informing each and every one of you individually.’

Mason bowed his head in acceptance, and Abrams carried on with the briefing. ‘We have received intelligence pertaining to the location of the Fu Yu Shan.’ There was a collective murmur from the group, but it ended as quickly as it began as Abrams continued. ‘It appears that the group behind the hijacking was indeed Liang Kebangkitan, and their hideout has been traced to a small island off the coast of Sumatra. Pete will give you all the details later, but suffice it to say that the ship is there, and so are the hostages.’

Richards grunted. Mason might have accepted the situation, but Richards didn’t mind having a pop himself. ‘Where has this information come from?’ he asked with a concerned expression. ‘I haven’t heard anything about it. What kind of source is this?’

Abrams held up her hands, soothing the atmosphere. ‘It comes from a reliable source,’ she said reasonably. ‘One that I trust implicitly.’

‘Can you tell us what it is?’ Richards shot back acidly. ‘This is the National Security Council, isn’t it? If we’re going to authorize any form of action, then we need to know it’s from a trusted source. And if I haven’t heard anything about it through any agency in my department, then it makes me want answers, okay?’

Richards watched Abrams nod her head thoughtfully, seeming to weigh things up. ‘Okay,’ she said at last, ‘this intelligence comes directly from one of our operatives, codenamed the Asset.’

Richards almost choked as he heard this. ‘The Asset?’ he blurted out. ‘But who the hell is he? Can we trust him?’

There was more conversation around the table now, more heated and open than before, but all heads turned as Abrams cleared her throat.

‘We can trust him,’ she confirmed. ‘I can vouch for this man one hundred percent.’

‘You think?’ asked Clark Mason, getting himself back into the picture. ‘With all due respect, I believe we’re going to need a little more than that before we launch a military operation on foreign soil.’

‘We’ve got more than that,’ Major General Pete Olsen’s voice boomed down the table. ‘Now why don’t you do us all a favor, simmer down a bit and listen to what we’ve got?’

Richards was shocked by the man’s brusque disrespect to the Sec State, but Mason seemed to fold under the man’s intense gaze.

‘Good,’ Olsen said as nobody else dared interrupt him. ‘Now look at this.’

An image came up on the high-res screens around the room, showing the coast of Sumatra. ‘Now, here we can see the coastal city of Dumai on mainland Sumatra,’ he intoned with his rich bass voice, ‘with the island of Pulau Rupat off to the east. If we look closer,’ he continued as he flicked a button, the image on the screens zooming in, ‘we can see seven smaller islands in the channel between the two. Our interest lies with the easternmost islet, here,’ he said as he zoomed in even closer, highlighting the tiny island, the satellite maps showing a green outline of thick vegetation.

He clicked another button, and the image switched to direct line-of-sight photographs of a narrow river. ‘This is a riverine channel which cuts through the island,’ Olsen said, pressing the button once more. ‘And here is the entrance to the pirate’s hidden cave, where they are hiding the Fu Yu Shan and its crew.’ Several images flicked by, taken in both daylight and nighttime conditions. ‘And here,’ he said pointedly, ‘is the Fu Yu Shan itself’ — he clicked through to another picture — ‘the cabins used by the pirates’ — another picture — ‘and some of their marine vehicles and other equipment.’

Olsen looked around the room at the stunned expressions on the faces of the Security Council members.

‘When were these taken?’ asked Catalina dos Santos, stealing the words right from Richards’ open mouth.

‘Yesterday,’ Olsen replied evenly. ‘And we are getting regular updates.’

‘You mean the Asset is still there?’ Richards asked in disbelief.

‘Yes,’ Olsen replied with a smile. ‘We’ve got real-time, on-site reconnaissance.’

Dammit, Richards thought to himself, cursing the agent who had found the pirates.

Under the table, he started to text his personal secretary.

Urgent. Find out everything you can about intelligence agent codenamed The Asset.

‘Listen up,’ Ike Treyborne announced to Red Squadron, lined up in front of him in an old aircraft hangar at Sembawang naval base. ‘We’re going to get our gear squared away immediately. Night Stalkers are also en route and should be here by morning. After that, we’ll need to be ready to move at an hour’s notice, understood?’

Jake Navarone, along with the other members of the Red Indians, gave a nod of his head in affirmation. The Night Stalkers were pilots from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), the incomparable covert ops flyers charged with delivering JSOC special mission units such as DEVGRU to their targets. Piloting advanced aircraft such as the Black Hawk and Little Bird under some of the harshest operational conditions imaginable, they had built a legendary — and well-deserved — reputation for themselves.

‘We have maritime elements also en route,’ Treyborne continued, ‘but if push comes to shove and we have to move quickly, we’ve got access here to some suitable vehicles. I’ll discuss that with troop commanders individually at this evening’s briefing.’

Red Squadron had been called into action more quickly than expected, but the intelligence that they were being fed by JSOC was real-time, and nobody knew for sure how long the agent providing it could stay in place for.

And the intel was good; photographs of the river, the surrounding area, the cave entrance, the disposition of buildings within the cavern, the Fu Yu Shan itself. Whoever was sending it over must be one hell of an operative, Navarone considered.

JSOC was even able to patch through to them up-to-date thermal imagery from infra-red cameras that the agent had somehow managed to set up throughout the cavern. A gift of exquisite operational value, it allowed the SEALs to see where each and every person was in the cavern.

It appeared that the hostages themselves were being held together in a room off the main cavern. It wasn’t clear from the thermal imagery, but Treyborne and the analysts back at JSOC believed that it was likely to be a smaller side-cave, probably sectioned off with steel bars.

What was clear was that there were eleven bodies in that room — identified as hostages by their limited and restricted movements — whereas the ship had originally had a complement of twenty-two, including its armed security element. Navarone and the other SEALs wondered what that meant for the missing eleven.

Navarone could guess about the six men who had been charged with protecting the ship; they had probably all been killed during the initial assault. But the other five? They might also have been killed during the raid, or after — perhaps as an example to the others, maybe because they tried to fight back. Or else they may have died subsequently from illness, dehydration or starvation, or any number of other complications.

But there were eleven live hostages left, and to Navarone and the rest of the Red Indians, that was a hell of a lot better than none.

The thermal imaging also allowed the SEALs to track the movements of the pirates; who was on sentry duty, when and where, as well as a wealth of further information about their general habits within the lair.

The on-site agent was also sending back analysis of the lair’s fortifications and defensive systems, which seemed formidable. JSOC specialists were running through it all now, and Navarone knew that he would probably learn more at the briefing for troop leaders later on.

But they had an intelligence goldmine, and that would make their work a lot easier.

‘I spoke to Commander Lewis before setting off from Subic,’ Treyborne continued, referencing Chad Lewis, the Commander of Task Force 73, Logistics Group Western Pacific, who was the officer-in-charge of the base, ‘and he’s already been setting up an ad hoc training facility based on the general layout of the river and cave system, so we can get some situation-specific rehearsal in.’

There was a general murmur of approval amongst the man; they couldn’t wait to get started, knowing that time spent rehearsing was never wasted.

‘So get yourselves squared away and back here in thirty minutes ready for our first run-through,’ Treyborne instructed. ‘We don’t have the mission green light yet, as it needs approval from above’ — at this there were the expected moans and groans, and Treyborne raised his hands for silence — ‘but we need to be ready when we get the call. Any questions?’

‘Just one,’ Navarone said. ‘Who the hell do we have out there? Who’s getting us all this intel?’

Treyborne shook his head. ‘I’ve got no idea, son, and I probably never will. But if I do ever find out, I’ll be buying him a cold beer, that’s for damn sure.’

The young woman was pushed roughly to one side as Arief Suprapto sat up in his bed, running a hand through his long hair, head pounding from too much moonshine whisky. There had been plenty of alcohol being shipped aboard the Fu Yu Shan, but Suprapto had never been one for labels, and generally found that he preferred his own concoctions anyway. Besides which, the expensive bottles had already been sold at great profit to a dealer on the supposedly tee-total mainland.

In fact, most of the cargo had already been sold on, just one part of his deal with Jemaah Islamiyah. He didn’t normally like to sell on the cargo until after the hijacking negotiations had been concluded one way or another — selling products from hijacked ships was one way that his gang could be traced, and he had survived so long by not giving into impatient greed. But the terrorist group had offered him a princely sum — both for the single crate, and to offload the rest of the cargo as quickly as he could — and just this once, Suprapto had agreed to throw caution to the wind.

He was surprised by the amount offered by his Jemaah Islamiyah contact — a sum far greater than what was typically available for the fairly small regional Islamist group — but had never been a man to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Although he had agreed to sell the cargo, he had made sure that his men travelled far and wide to do so. Goods had therefore been traded all through Sumatra, as well as to connections in Java, Malaysia and Singapore.

It had brought Liang Kebangkitan hundreds of thousands of dollars, but Suprapto was not interested in the money; or at least not for its own sake. Money was only good because it motivated his men, and allowed him to purchase equipment that enabled him to go on pirating.

It also bought all sorts of tasty equipment for his gang’s hideout, including marine radar systems which were used by several of the world’s most advanced naval forces. It was this sort of perimeter security which allowed him to relax in his luxurious private cabin without fear of a sudden raid; any such attack would be picked up a long, long way away.

He had sonar too, in case of a submarine insertion, and airborne radar to warn him of unfriendly breeches of the channel’s airspace.

The remote cavern was loaded with means of defending the gang if attacked, too — torpedo launchers and anti-aircraft guns to take care of naval and air assault, and the entire island was rigged with mines and other nasty surprises in case anyone was stupid enough to approach on foot.

The fact that the Chinese shipping firm hadn’t yet paid the ransom that he’d demanded didn’t trouble him unduly; negotiations like this often took a lot of time, months in some instances. He was aware of the strong line being taken by both the Chinese and the US governments, but he knew — sooner or later, when the ships and her crew still hadn’t been located, and everyone was tired of the story in the world media — they would open up and agree to Suprapto’s terms. Especially if he began sending back pieces of the hostages; a finger here, an ear there, and they would soon pay him what he wanted.

Not that he was in a hurry; the money from Jemaah Islamiyah was more than enough to tide them over for years to come.

The hooker in his bed, one of a group he’d brought over from Dumai as a reward for him and his men, reached out to caress his thigh, but he cast her hand away and stood, strolling naked to the bathroom to relieve himself.

His phone rang then, and he returned to his bedside to pick it up. It was Umar Shibab, his contact with JI. What the hell did he want? Suprapto thought gruffly as he answered; their business should be concluded.

The answer came moments after he picked up the call, although the possible ramifications of the information took a while for his moonshine-addled brain to process.

It seemed that his arms broker had ended up dead in Jakarta, hurled from the top of the National Monument. It might not have seemed so strange in and of itself — arms brokers dealt with some pretty unreputable people, and such instances were not particularly uncommon — but a second body had been found right next to Wong Xiang. This man was unknown, with no ID or distinguishing features, but the rumor appeared to be that he was a Korean agent of some sort. And the bodies of three more Orientals — also thought to be Koreans — had also been found scattered throughout the city.

It only concerned Shibab — and now Suprapto himself — because the crate which had been delivered to Jemaah Islamiyah had been the one from North Korea which had been loaded onto the Fu Yu Shan at the port of Dalian.

Was it merely a coincidence? Or had North Korea found out about the link between Liang Kebangkitan and Wong Xiang, and sent men to question him? And if they had, what would they have learnt from the man before his fall from the tower?

And why had the Koreans been killed? And who had killed them?

Whatever the answers, Suprapto knew one thing — he would have to increase security measures on his island.

Pulling on his clothes, he raced from his cabin to find Reza Panggabean and get things organized.

5

Jeb Richards stifled a yawn. He and the rest of the National Security Council members had been in the Situation Room for hours now, and it was beginning to grate.

Sure, they’d had breaks to grab a coffee and use the restroom; and the group had broken up into smaller units on occasion to discuss things independently, to try and win people over to a particular way of thinking in a vain attempt to build some sort of consensus.

But the bottom line was that they had been at this damned table for most of the day, and a decision still hadn’t been reached about what was going to happen.

Essentially, the room was divided into those who favored direct and immediate military action, and those who wanted to approach things more diplomatically.

Richards and Mason belonged firmly in the second camp; Mason because he was a born diplomat, and ordering military action wasn’t really in his nature; Richards because he didn’t want a raid to reveal things he wanted to keep a secret, for now at least.

And his secretary still hadn’t got back in touch with him with any information about the Asset.

And so on and on the hours dragged, as Mason and the Attorney General discussed the legalities of operating in a foreign nation, and Olsen and his followers argued back about the primacy of US interests and how they had to strike while they had usable intelligence.

‘Look,’ Mason said reasonably, starting another round of negotiations, ‘the fact is that now we know where the ship is, where the crew are. We’ve got the upper hand now. I’ll go back to Jeb’s proposal’ — Richards nodded his head as Mason gestured towards him — ‘to block the channel and surround the island, in order to enter negotiations with this Arief Suprapto and his group. Furthermore, I —’

‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists!’ Olsen shot back quickly, cutting Mason off. ‘We never have, and we never will! What are we going to say? Please can we have our citizens back? Pretty please? With sugar on the top?’ Olsen shook his head. ‘You must be out of your mind.’

‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists?’ Mason asked gently in response. ‘That’s a naïve attitude, and you know it. We’ve negotiated with every terrorist group in the world at one time or another, when we thought it would serve our interests. Hell, we created the Taliban when we sponsored the mujahedin against the Russians, if you can remember that far back.’

‘If I can remember that far back? How dare you, sir! I was fighting Soviet proxies in Granada and Panama back when you were jerking off to the Sear’s catalogue in your mommy and daddy’s bathroom! I —‘

‘Gentlemen, please!’ President Abrams interjected quickly. ‘This is not the time or the place for behavior like this, do both of you understand?’

Olsen nodded his head, his military training instantly making him obey his commander-in-chief. ‘Yes ma’am,’ he said. ‘Please forgive my outburst.’

Mason nodded also, though he was slower and more reluctant to respond than Olsen. ‘Sorry Ellen,’ he said. ‘I guess it’s just the pressure getting to us.’

Abrams looked around the table. ‘We’re all under pressure,’ she said. ‘I understand that. But unfortunately, that’s the job, and we’ve brought it on ourselves. The American people expect a decision, they expect us to act, and we will sit here and work things out until a decision is reached. Do I make myself clear?’

There was a murmuring of acceptance around the huge conference table, and Abrams nodded. ‘Good. Now, my own gut instinct is to move in immediately, as soon as all our pieces are in position — which won’t be until tomorrow morning. So you’ve got until then to convince me,’ she said, eyeing Mason and Richards. ‘If you think diplomacy and negotiation is the answer, fine. But you need to lay out exactly what you propose, and how you intend to achieve it.’

Mason nodded his head and smiled. ‘No problem. We can do that.’

‘I have a question,’ Richards asked. ‘Given that the Fu Yu Shan is a Chinese ship, and that most of the crew are Chinese, when are we thinking of telling President Tsang Feng about all this?’

Richards didn’t know what the answer would be, but he did know that the mere thought of the Chinese would muddy the waters yet further. They couldn’t take the risk of upsetting their partner, and yet if a combined rescue operation was to be launched, it would take weeks, if not months, to set up and organize.

By which time, it wouldn’t matter what was discovered there.

‘The situation is delicate,’ Abrams responded, ‘but I have already spoken to President Tsang, and he is happy to allow our forces to take the lead on this, given our proven track record in direct action raids. He is asking to send personnel from the PLA Special Operations Command to liaise with DEVGRU in Singapore, and JSOC is currently working out the details.’

Pete Olsen nodded his head, glad to be able to stop Richards’ troublemaking in its tracks. ‘DEVGRU’s squadron commander actually thinks it might be a good idea to have liaison officers there, as the PLA spec ops people have had some recent experience on anti-piracy missions and know that area better than we do.’

Ah well, Richards thought, shrugging his shoulders at Mason, it was worth a shot.

Still, there were still plenty of other things they could use to delay and obfuscate the –

Just then the secure telephone rang on the table in front of the president.

She picked it up immediately and kept her composure as she listened to the person at the other end of the line, all eyes on her.

‘Thank you,’ she said after a time. ‘I will be in touch shortly.’

She replaced the receiver and looked down the table at the members of her security council.

‘Looks like the timetable’s been moved up,’ she said. ‘The Asset has just reported activity at the pirate base. It looks like they’re getting ready to move the hostages.’

Oh shit, Richards thought helplessly as he looked across the table at Mason.

‘General,’ Abrams said, turning to Olsen, ‘I authorize the rescue mission to go ahead, effective immediately.’

Olsen grinned. ‘Yes ma’am,’ he said as he picked up his own phone. ‘Get me General Cooper at JSOC,’ he barked down the line. He waited impatiently for several moments as he waited for the JSOC commander to be located. ‘Miley,’ he said eventually, ‘it’s General Olsen. We have the green light for the hostage rescue operation. Mission is a go. I repeat — mission is a go.’

Richards slumped back into his chair and sighed. It was possible that all was not lost; perhaps enough time had already passed for it not to matter anyway?

And he and his colleagues would have to be very unlucky for someone to be able to work out what had really happened, and why the Fu Yu Shan had been hijacked in the first place.

Richards felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, and pulled it out, reading the text message.

Yes. His secretary had information about the Asset.

Richards excused himself from the conference room, and fled down the corridors of the West Wing to make his call, and learn everything that she had found out.

The day’s training finally over and done with, Treyborne’s detailed briefing now also out of the way, Jake Navarone sat in front of the secure laptop computer in the squad’s recently commandeered recreation room.

‘Hi!’ he said happily, connected via the internet to his family’s home computer back in Tampa, Florida.

‘Hey Jake!’ his father replied, a huge smile over his weathered face. ‘How you doin’, son? And where the hell are you? Oh, I forgot, you can’t tell me, right? Secret stuff I bet, wow, my little Jake the secret agent man!’ Ernesto Navarone broke off his diatribe and turned behind him, yelling out, ‘Celia! Girls! Get down here, we got Jake on the phone from Mars or someplace! Come on!’

Behind his dad, Jake could see feet coming hurriedly down the stairs; the large pair belonging to his mom, the next two pairs those of his sisters.

Jake Navarone wasn’t married; nor did he have a steady girlfriend. The fact was, he just didn’t think it was fair. The life of a commando in SEAL Team Six wasn’t that of a married man, or that of a father. Not a good one, anyway. And his family had been so good to him, he only wanted the best for his own wife and children when he was eventually ready to settle down. Which, the way he felt now — charged up and excited about the mission ahead, filled with the fear-tipped thrill of adrenalin — probably wouldn’t be any time soon.

But he kept in constant touch with his parents and kid sisters, at least as much as operational security allowed. They kept him grounded in reality, and his head screwed on right.

His mother’s grinning face pushed past his father’s into the video camera. ‘Hey Jake!’ she said, ‘How’s it going? How you doing?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You looking after yourself? You eating right?’ She leaned closer to the screen, examining him from a thousand miles away. ‘You look a little skinny.’

‘Leave him be, Celia,’ Ernesto said, pulling his wife onto his lap and letting Jodie and Bobbi get past.

‘Jake!’ they screamed as one, excited to see him as always. Navarone felt his heart warm, and he smiled. He could be anywhere in the world, preparing for any kind of mission, but the feeling he got when he called home was always the same.

The sisters were twins and were just ten years old, an eighteen year gap between them and Navarone; a big enough gap for people to wonder if there’d been a mistake of some kind. But his parents refused to use terms like ‘mistake’ or ‘accident’, believing that anything so perfect could only have been a blessing for their family.

Navarone had an older brother too, a great guy just two years older who had his own small office supplies business up in New York and a young family of his own. In fact, Brandon Navarone’s two boys weren’t much younger than the twins.

‘Where are you, Jake?’ asked Jodie.

Bobbi shook her head and tutted at her sister. ‘He can’t tell you that,’ she said impatiently, before a smile played across her lips. ‘If he did, he’d have to kill you. Isn’t that right, Jake?’

Sitting on a broken canvas chair in a bland concrete rec room on a Singapore naval base, Navarone nevertheless felt he was back at home, right back with his family.

‘Well, I don’t know about killing anybody,’ he said with a grin, ‘but I might have to — ’

Navarone felt a vibration against his waist and looked down at the pager on his belt. But before he had a chance to read the message, the door to the rec room burst open and Tim Collins, a young Team Six shooter from Tallahassee, shouted over to him, excitement across his eager face.

‘We’re on!’ Collins shouted across to Navarone. ‘Come on!’

Watching the man as he raced off down the corridor, Navarone turned back to his family. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to call back some other time.’ He was already rising from his chair, hand reaching out to disconnect the call, and he reflected again that this is why he wasn’t married.

‘I’ve got to go to work.’

From his vantage point across the river, Cole had seen enough to distinguish the regular daily routine of the pirate hideout. And what he had been witnessing over the past few hours was decidedly out of character for the previously quiet little cavern.

Men had been racing around all over the place, checking nets here, weapons there; and more men were arriving too, presumably other pirates from Liang Kebangkitan who had been getting some R&R away from the base.

Cole had identified the man he believed to be Arief Suprapto, and could listen in to the man’s screamed orders through the parabolic mike which rested next to him, nestled in the undergrowth. The words meant nothing to him unfortunately, as they were spoken in an unintelligible Indonesian dialect; but he was feeding the data directly back to JSOC, and perhaps they would be able to decipher it.

President Abrams and General Olsen had decided to link Cole up directly with Lieutenant General Miley Cooper, commander of US Joint Special Operations Command, and Cole had been impressed by their common sense. All too often, politicians and military bigwigs tried their best to get themselves inserted too deeply into special ops missions, with the result that decisions were delayed, information was not passed on, and — ultimately — the wrong people often got killed as a result. But in direct contact with JSOC, Cole would be able to help guide in any team that was sent.

He had described the situation to Cooper over the secure sat-phone he’d taken from Wong’s warehouse — defenses were being shored up, and the hostages had been moved back on board the Fu Yu Shan.

Cole realized that Suprapto must have gotten wind that something was happening, and wondered how he knew. Was there a leak in the White House? The Pentagon? If China knew, was there a leak on their end? Or else had Suprapto found out about Wong Xiang back in Jakarta, and was merely taking precautions just in case?

He didn’t know, but at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter either; all that mattered was that the situation was changing, and things would have to happen fast on the American side if they were to have any hope of resolving the situation.

Cole suspected he knew the reason for moving the hostages back aboard the cargo ship — if the hideout was attacked, Suprapto would set sail with the boat and threaten to sink it and kill the crew unless the assault force withdrew.

Cole had reported all of this back to JSOC, and had been pleasantly surprised by the speed of the response; not a full hour had passed before Cooper was back informing Cole that the mission had been given the presidential green light.

Cooper wanted Cole to remain in position and help guide the team in. Apparently there would be a squad from DEVGRU, Cole’s own old unit, who would insert on inflatable boats up the riverine channel the same way Cole had. Once close enough they would swim underwater and enter the docks, several of their number gaining access to the ship through the steel hull, from where they would secure the hostages and re-take the hijacked vessel.

At a certain point after this initial action, other team members would emerge from the cave’s waters and take out the pirates and secure the hideout.

The Night Stalkers were still en route, but due to the limited time frame it had been decided to launch the rescue without air support. The location of the hideout precluded close naval support too, and there was no way that the Ranger battalion was going to be on-site in time.

Cole had been amazed, but impressed; air, naval and ground support was always nice, but it was the icing on the cake. The warriors of SEAL Team Six were trained to do things without support of any kind, and were good enough to succeed without it, too. But normally, politicians were wary of sending in men without backup, just in case things went wrong and there were congressional hearings to deal with as a result.

But, he remembered, Ellen Abrams was one tough bitch; if she wanted DEVGRU to go in now, then that’s what would happen.

Cole just hoped he would be able to help.

6

Jake Navarone slipped into the slow-moving, warm waters of the riverine channel which cut through the small island; the unnamed island which held the pirates, the hostages, and the Fu Yu Shan.

Tag Johnson deflated the boat and swam down to secure it underwater, marking the spot which a small electronic buoy in case they needed to return to it later.

Navarone and Johnson and ten more men submerged themselves and swam for the cavern entrance, using Draeger rebreathable tanks which recirculated the air and therefore didn’t leave any bubbles.

Another troop would be approaching from the other side, and another was infiltrating overland. A fourth element, an ad-hoc group made up of men from the normal three troops and led by Ike Treyborne, was stationed on the opposite bank to provide reconnaissance and covering fire, plus reinforcements if needed. It was planned that Treyborne and whoever had been providing on-site intel would link up, but Navarone didn’t know whether that had happened or not; he had his own tasks to concern himself with.

The water was dark and murky, but Navarone didn’t have to see further than his low-light compass to know where he was going, and the twelve men of Red Squadron’s Bravo Troop made steady progress towards the cave.

He couldn’t put his finger on why, but Arief Suprapto had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling. And as a man who always trusted his instincts, he decided to act sooner rather than later.

He had put the crew back on board the Fu Yu Shan as a precautionary measure, knowing that Chinese or US forces would be extremely unlikely to attack the vessel with hostages onboard, and was prepared to make sail in the vessel at a moment’s notice. The engines were up and running, it was fully fuelled, and crewed by his own men.

But he still wasn’t happy, and got on his radio to Panggabean, asking for Captain Yang Yaobang to be brought to him immediately.

And then he went to make sure that his beloved Liang Dao Ming was ready and waiting for him.

Cole waited patiently in the thick, dense underbrush, his eyes never leaving the pirate cave across the river from him.

The Fu Yu Shan hadn’t set sail, but the engines were on, and it looked like it had a full complement of crew members. Cole was feeding information back to JSOC on a regular basis, who in turn were briefing the SEAL squadron in real-time. He had already described the dispositions and armaments of the pirate gang, and knew his hidden cameras were also providing much needed information.

He checked his watch — 0150, just minutes before all hell would break loose.

He was expecting the command and control SEAL troop to be here any second, ready to set up shop and provide fire support for the assault elements. He would hand over all of his equipment, and let them run the show.

He’d done enough.

But then he saw a man being dragged off the Fu Yu Shan, and brought to the pirate he’d previously identified as probably being Arief Suprapto, who stood on the dockside.

And then he watched in disbelief as first the hostage, and then Suprapto himself, were lowered down into another vessel, hidden in the water between the dock pilings. Cole zoomed his night-vision binoculars in as far as they would go, and confirmed his fears.

It was a mini-submarine.

How the hell had he missed it?

In an instant, he considered his options — notify JSOC and let them make the decision; wait for the SEAL troop to arrive and explain the situation to its commander, and let them handle it; or option number three.

As the mini-sub’s hatches were closed and it sank beneath the calm waters of the cavern, Cole decided in a heartbeat on option three.

Jump in the river and follow the damn thing himself.

‘Where in the hell is he?’ Ike Treyborne asked as his group came across the site that had been used by the recon operative. All of his things seemed to still be there, but no sign of the man himself.

Maybe he’d heard them coming and had decided to make himself scarce? Maybe he didn’t want to be identified, even by DEVGRU?

But then Treyborne’s earpiece cackled to life, his direct line to JSOC. ‘Our asset has identified a small submersible leaving the dock,’ came the voice of Lieutenant General Miley Cooper, ‘possibly containing one hostage and Arief Suprapto, the pirate leader.’

Damn! Treyborne wondered how he’d known they were coming.

‘He’s pursuing the submersible himself, so as not to interfere with the planned operation,’ Cooper advised him. ‘You are therefore to continue as planned.’

‘Yes sir,’ Treyborne said as he looked at his watch, checking down the line to verify that his men had strung themselves out in proper formation. It was 0159, and his SEALs had their weapons trained on the pirate hideout. Next to them, two liaison officers from China’s Special Operations Command scanned the opposite bank and reported back to their own commander, who had based himself at Sembawang.

Treyborne wished the unknown agent luck with the submarine, but he had his own job to do.

And there was just one minute left until it began.

Cole had managed to strap on his SCUBA gear and was in hot pursuit of the mini-sub as it accelerated slowly away down the channel towards the river-mouth and the open water beyond.

The vehicle was easy to follow, the pilot using lights to illuminate the dark waters ahead. Cole wondered what the SEAL troop coming this way up the river would think.

Cole swam as quickly as he could; the sub was going slowly for now, Suprapto being careful in the narrow channel, but as soon as it left the mouth of the river and entered the open water, it would be able to disappear instantly.

Cole recognized the model as a Triton two-man submersible, primarily designed for use by the owners of luxurious super-yachts. The two adjacent seats were entirely exposed by a large Plexiglas bubble, situated in a bright yellow horse-shoe. It had a top speed of only three knots, but that would be more than enough to lose a lone swimmer if it opened up.

They were getting close to the river mouth now, and Cole knew he would have to make his move soon or risk losing them forever.

He felt reverberations through the water then, and realized that DEVGRU’s assault had begun in earnest. Cole knew that they would rescue the ten hostages aboard the Fu Yu Shan.

Cole grimaced as he increased speed; he would just have to make damn sure that he rescued the eleventh.

The assault on the Fu Yu Shan went so smoothly that Jake Navarone was immensely grateful for the hours of rehearsal they’d put in. The fact was that — compared to the highly-trained SEALs of Team Four who’d been playing the enemy back in Subic Bay — the pirate gang was no match for them.

They were fine as long as they were attacking unsuspecting vessels which couldn’t defend themselves, but when it came time to face real professionals, they folded instantly.

Navarone and his men had inserted into the boat via the anchor’s hawse hole, and a concealed rear access point which had been identified from plans sent to them by the Tsing Tao Shipping Line. They had subsequently gained access to the ship completely undetected, and — once they were all in position — the assault had commenced.

Their suppressed weapons had taken the pirates out in the blink of eye, and the ship and the hostages were completely secured in under a minute from the first shot being fired. With control of the ship secured, Navarone made the call to the other assault elements to proceed, and the noise of gunfire and explosions rang out only seconds later.

In less than four minutes, Navarone heard the words of Alpha Troop commander Bill Hoggs come through over his earpiece. ‘Sector One secure,’ the experienced SEAL announced to Navarone’s relief, followed soon after by Charlie Troop commander Nelson Iboria’s affirmation that Sector Two was also secure.

‘Affirmative,’ Treyborne confirmed over the radio. ‘Location is secure, and we are ready for phase two.’

Navarone smiled, glad that they had been able to take over the hideout so quickly, but knowing that it was down to hard work, training, and professionalism. The pirates had never even had a chance to use their radar or defensive weaponry, and Navarone was glad that they had not waited for support; sometimes missions were better off with as few elements involved as possible, as it minimized the amount of things that could go wrong.

But now, as Commander Treyborne had announced, it was time for Phase Two; checking that the base was entirely secure, and then inviting everyone else to join the party.

7

Suprapto was disheartened, but pleased with himself nevertheless. The ripples through the water could only be from explosions, which meant that his base was under attack, just as his gut had told him.

How he had known, he had no idea; but he was inordinately glad he had taken Captain Yang into the submersible when he did. With the most important hostage still safe, there was still a chance for negotiation. And if Reza managed to get the Fu Yu Shan moving, all was not lost; not yet.

He smiled as his powerful lights showed the mouth of the river opening up ahead. He would soon reach open water, and be safe.

But then he felt the mini-sub lose speed, as if it had caught on something. Was it dragging something?

He tried to look around out of the clear Plexiglas cockpit, and then his heart stopped dead as he saw the masked face peering in at him from the dark waters.

Cole had reached the submersible just a few hundred yards from open water and now gripped hold of the bright yellow sides and pulled himself up to the cockpit bubble, his masked face appearing from the gloom.

He saw a man dressed in a ship captain’s uniform in one of the seats, gagged and restrained; presumably Captain Yang Yaobang of the Fu Yu Shan. In the other, his mouth wide in shock, was the pirate king himself, Arief Suprapto. The man’s hair was Samson-like in its extraordinary length, his ears and eyebrows adorned with golden rings, and Cole could see tattoos covering the muscular body which lay underneath his camouflage combat vest.

And then the look of shock was replaced by one of indignant rage, and Cole watched as Suprapto pulled a Colt .45 from his thigh holster and placed the barrel against Yang’s head, shouting at Cole through the bubble.

Cole couldn’t hear him, but the meaning was clear enough; get off the submersible, or Yang would be killed.

But rather than heed the warning, Cole shrugged his shoulders and held something up to the Plexiglas bubble, close enough so that Suprapto would make no mistake about what it was.

A thermal grenade.

Cole then made a big show of magnetically attaching it to the hull of the Triton submersible, showing Suprapto his empty hands.

To the pirate king’s fury, Cole then held up three fingers and swam away into the murky depths.

Three minutes until the thermal grenade exploded, and the mini-sub was blown out of the water.

There was only one choice that Suprapto could possibly make.

Arief Suprapto was enraged. What had that lunatic done? Did he want to kill the captain? Did he not care if the hostage lived or died? What sort of man was this?

And now he was swimming away, brooking no further negotiation, so confident was he that Suprapto would have to land the mini-sub, pop the hatch and escape before the grenade blew.

And the kicker was that this man was right; that is exactly what he would have to do. His pride was great, but his desire to survive to fight another day was greater yet.

As the counter timed down, Suprapto turned the mini-sub and piloted it straight for the south bank.

Cole watched and waited as the Triton two-man submersible rose to the surface, racing south until it collided with the muddy riverbank, beaching itself.

The huge Plexiglas dome popped open moments later, just as Cole made it to shore himself.

Cole raced towards the beached submarine, kicking off his flippers, stripping away his SCUBA gear, and pulling a stainless steel SIG Sauer 10mm from a shoulder holster as he ran.

He had the handgun up and aimed as he neared the sub, its yellow paint — now covered in mud — reflected eerily in the moonlight. He looked around, trying to trace the pirate and his hostage.

In the light from the moon and stars, Cole saw the tracks leading through the thick mud. Suprapto was already well away from the vessel, dragging Captain Yang by his hair into the jungle.

Cole fired a shot into the air, and Suprapto stopped in his tracks. He could have shot the man, but it was important that he be kept alive — if possible — for questioning.

An explosion rocked the shore, the thermal grenade exploding and blasting the Triton submersible into a million pieces.

Flames licked at the edge of Cole’s vision, illuminating the scene in front of him as Suprapto pulled Yang towards him, arm around his neck as his Colt .45 was once again aimed at the captain’s head.

The fire played over Suprapto’s savage face, flickering in his reptilian eyes. The pirate king’s tongue flicked out, licking his lips.

‘Let me go,’ he said in broken English. ‘Let me go, or else you have to explain why captain has no head, eh?’

Cole kept his aim steady. ‘I don’t really have to explain myself to anybody,’ Cole said, his voice as steady as his gun.

A shot rang out and Suprapto’s body was wrenched violently backwards, the Colt flying from his hand. He dropped to his knees, blood spurting from the gunshot wounds in his arm, Cole’s single shot penetrating both the forearm and the bicep.

Captain Yang staggered back, eyes wide with shock at how close he had come to death.

Cole moved toward the injured pirate, who held his arm in agony as he stared at Cole with burning hatred, flames still flickering across his blood-spattered face.

Cole kicked the man onto his back, stepping down with his boot onto Suprapto’s bicep, the damaged bone fracturing under the pressure, and placed the barrel of his gun between the pirate’s eyes.

‘Now let’s talk,’ he said with a smile.

‘We’re just missing the captain, sir,’ Navarone explained to Commander Treyborne as they stood on the cargo ship’s main deck. ‘Yang Yaobang.’

The hostages were walking freely around the dockside now, trying to get some life back into their unbound limbs and some sense back into their terror-riddled minds.

Ted Grant, a shooter from Alpha Troop who was also a trained psychologist, had set aside some space on the bridge to talk to the hostages, and was holding conference in the semi-private room.

The bodies of the dead pirates had been collected and placed in rows to be examined, and the few remaining survivors were corralled in the rock pen where the Fu Yu Shan’s crew had recently been staying.

‘I know,’ Treyborne replied. ‘Our contact saw that Suprapto was making off with him in a damn freakin’ mini-sub, and took off after them. I don’t —’

‘Hold it!’

Navarone heard the call from the cavern entrance, and he and Treyborne raced over to the rear of the ship to find out what was happening.

Navarone saw an athletically-built man carrying a blood-stained half-naked pirate across his back, a man in a captain’s uniform limping along behind them.

The SEAL who had his gun pointed at the men listened to the athletic man speak, and nodded his head in understanding, turning back to look up at the deck of the Fu Yu Shan.

‘Sir!’ he called up. ‘It’s the Asset! He’s got Captain Yang with him, and Suprapto!’

Treyborne grinned. ‘I’ll be right down!’ he said happily.

Cole remembered Ike Treyborne. They had served together in SEAL Team Six, back when they had both been lieutenants. He’d been a good man, and Cole was delighted to see that he was still operational, despite his rank.

But even though Cole recognized Treyborne, it was unlikely that the commander of Red Squadron would recognize him; he’d changed considerably through plastic surgery since his days as Mark Kowalski.

‘So you’re the Asset?’ Treyborne asked with a smile as he met Cole by the dockside. Cole nodded, and Treyborne extended his hand, pumping it furiously. ‘Well, I gotta tell you, I’m damned glad you were here. You did an amazing job. Really, I mean it.’ Still shaking Cole’s hand, his eyes narrowed. ‘Do we know each other?’ he asked.

‘It’s possible,’ Cole said noncommittally. ‘I’ve been around.’

Treyborne laughed. ‘Yeah, I’ll bet you have.’ He looked down at the body of Arief Suprapto, unmoving on the dock. ‘Is he —‘

‘Dead?’ Cole finished, then nodded his head. ‘Yes, unfortunately. Captain Yang’ — he gestured behind him at the dazed Chinese captain, whose eyes were still staring off into the distance — ‘got a bit carried away, picked up Suprapto’s Colt .45 when I was questioning him and blew a hole in his chest. Guess he had a lot of built-up frustration.’

Treyborne laughed again, Cole’s deadpan humor overcoming the disappointment. ‘You said you questioned him?’ he asked hopefully, as Captain Yang was led away by one of his men.

‘I did,’ Cole replied seriously. ‘And I think we need to talk.’

‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Treyborne said as he listened to Cole’s debrief. ‘So what does it all mean?’

Cole had managed to convince Suprapto to tell him everything — or at least as much as he was able to tell him before Captain Yang had gone and put a .45 slug in his heart.

It had been the Korean agents back in Jakarta which had made Cole so determined to get answers. Why were they interested? What was their part in all this?

It hadn’t taken long for Suprapto to admit that the hijacking wasn’t opportunistic; he had been hired specifically to target that particular vessel. Cole learnt that Liang Kebangkitan had been hired by Jemaah Islamiyah to hijack the Fu Yu Shan, earning the princely sum of twenty million US dollars for one small crate.

Suprapto didn’t know what was in the crate, and Cole believed him; he had merely travelled to the mainland and handed over the wooden box to his JI contact, Umar Shibab, who had put it in his jeep and driven off. For some reason, Suprapto suspected he had been planning on flying it out somewhere else, but didn’t know why he’d thought that; perhaps something the man had said.

What Suprapto did know was that there had been two highly trained men on the ship who had tried to defend the cargo; and when the pirate leader had quizzed the captain about them, it transpired that they had joined the crew at Dalian — the same port where the crate had been taken on board.

Cole knew the port of Dalian — it was right next to North Korea.

‘I think our best possible guess,’ Cole answered Treyborne, ‘is that North Korea was trying to smuggle something out of the country and into Karachi, possibly for use nearby, or else for further transportation elsewhere. And Jemaah Islamiyah — or one of the larger, better funded groups behind it — got wind of what it was, and decided it wanted it for itself. So they hired these pirates and took control of the crate.’

‘And we think that inside the crate is…’

Cole nodded his head. ‘A weapon most likely, yes. What kind? I’ve got no idea. But obviously powerful enough to be worth all this effort, as well as twenty million US dollars.’

Treyborne breathed out slowly. ‘Nuclear?’ He watched as Cole shrugged his shoulders, and his own slumped. ‘Ah, shit. So this thing’s far from over, I guess.’ He bowed his head as he thought. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘I guess we better tell the president.’

8

The mood throughout the White House Situation Room had been buoyant and enthusiastic after the first transmissions from General Cooper — the hostages and ship were safe, and Liang Kebangkitan had been subdued without any serious US casualties. President Tsang Feng had also been delighted with the news, and there had been an air of excited satisfaction within the members of the National Security Council.

But then Cooper had patched Commander Ike Treyborne through directly to the NSC, and the mood had been soured immediately.

Could the hijacking of a cargo ship really have just been for the sake of one small box? A small box of unknown origin, which could contain anything?

‘What else can we get from Suprapto?’ asked Catalina dos Santos, worry across her handsome features.

On the satellite video uplink, Treyborne shook his head sadly. ‘Regrettably, Arief Suprapto was killed before we could finish questioning him. But I think we need to take this seriously and start making some moves. On the one hand, we need to pursue the Jemaah Islamiyah lead and find out where the cargo went, and on the other, we need to trace the cargo back to wherever the hell it came from so we can find out exactly what it is we’re dealing with.’

‘Thank you for your advice, Commander,’ Jeb Richards said, ‘but let me establish something here. All we really have — in terms of suspecting this wasn’t just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill hijacking — is the word of this unknown operative?’ Richards asked. ‘Nobody else knows anything about it?’

‘Captain Yang was also there when Suprapto was questioned, but at the moment he’s been sedated and is unable to be of any help.’

‘How convenient,’ Richards said. He took a drink of his coffee, set the cup down, and cleared his throat. ‘So let me get this straight. The pirate leader winds up dead, this Asset claims that Yang shot him, and then comes back with a report of a mystery weapon from North Korea? Which we can’t really corroborate now, one way or another?’ Richards looked around the room. ‘Does that strike anybody else as a little hard to believe?’

‘I’ll vouch for the man,’ President Abrams said forcefully.

‘Ah, Ellen?’ Clark Mason interjected smoothly, and Jeb Richards watched in anticipation, knowing that Abrams’ confidence was about to be somewhat curtailed. He took a long slurp of coffee and waited for Clark Mason to begin in earnest.

‘Yes?’ Abrams asked impatiently.

‘It’s just that you might not want to pin yourself too closely to this Asset. I’ve received intelligence that this operative is the former agent known as Mark Cole, one of Charles Hansard’s hired assassins.’

Mason paused as there were collective gasps from around the room, and Richards admired his sense of theater.

‘Although he was believed to have been killed in Austria, at the time of his supposed death there was still an arrest warrant out for him, relating to the deaths of dozens of our own agents throughout Europe.’ Mason looked around the room, all eyes turned to him. ‘He was also implicated in the death of Bill Crozier, who at the time was Director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service.’

‘Those agents who were killed were all later suspected of being tied to Hansard’s own group,’ Abrams fired back, ‘and there was never any evidence that this man had anything to do with it.’

‘Nevertheless,’ weighted in Milt Staten, the Attorney General, ‘having spoken to Clark and some of our other colleagues, it is clear that this Mark Cole — if it is indeed him — should be brought in for questioning on charges of assassination, treason and murder.’

Abrams looked around the room, disbelief on her face; it was clear that she felt she’d been set up, betrayed. Richards’ smile only widened.

‘I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up a warrant for his arrest,’ Staten concluded with a grave tone, ‘if you’ll beg my pardon, Ellen. I felt time was of the essence.’ He turned then to the image of Commander Treyborne, who was waiting patiently yet furiously as the politicians went about their self-interested cliquish little games back in the capital. ‘Commander Treyborne,’ Staten instructed the military officer, ‘as Attorney General of the United States, I order you to arrest Mark Cole and bring him back to the United States for questioning and possible trial for the aforementioned charges.’

Richards nodded across the table at Mason, still smiling. Assassination, treason and murder.

Perfect.

‘And I suggest,’ Richards added, just to get his own little dig in, ‘that we take whatever this killer has to say about mystery crates and North Korean agents with a very large pinch of salt.’

Treyborne’s face was grim as he entered the bridge, where the Asset and his troop leaders were now going through the day’s events.

He saw Navarone and the other leaders noticeably tighten up as they saw his face; they instinctively knew something was about to happen.

And when Treyborne raised his H&K MP-10 submachine gun in the direction of the mysterious agent, they all immediately followed his lead and went for their own weapons, until they were all trained on the man they knew only as the Asset.

Mark Cole looked around at them, not making any sudden moves, hands rising slowly in surrender. ‘Is there a problem?’ he asked.

Treyborne shook his head sadly. ‘I’m sorry, son. I really am. But I’ve just been ordered by our attorney general to place you under arrest and bring you back to the United States for questioning on charges of assassination, treason and murder.’

Cole nodded his head in understanding. Someone had talked.

‘Okay,’ he said, looking around at the confused but determined faces of the men surrounding him. ‘But you were right before. We do know each other. And before you go through with this, maybe I should tell you who I really am.’

The Lion emerged from a cell in the second basement of the Ministry of Interior building, hood, robes and camera equipment stored safely back in the briefcase he carried at his side.

Abd al-Aziz Quraishi had just made another recording for his followers throughout Saudi Arabia and around the world, another call to arms under the banner of Arabian Islamic Jihad. As he waited for the elevator that would take him back up to his fourth floor office, he reveled in the irony. The basement cells were for torturing enemies of the regime, and here he was, inciting revolt from within. It was beautiful, a poetic justice that could only come from Allah.

As he rose upwards through the building, cell phone service was restored and he felt a vibration in his pocket. He took out his phone and read the message, anger rising instantly to the surface.

The Americans had re-taken the Fu Yu Shan.

He controlled his breathing, his self-mastery overriding his initial anger immediately. What did it mean? What would they be able to learn?

At a push, they might get Suprapto to talk, and he might let slip that he was hired by Jemaah Islamiyah to hijack the ship. But it was unlikely in the extreme that they would be able to find out that Jemaah Islamiyah had in turn been instructed to hire the pirates by the Lion’s own organization. And even more unlikely that they would know about the crate, or be able to find out what was in it. And they certainly wouldn’t know that the crate was now in an AIJ safe house, under the protection of Amir al-Hazmi, the Hammer of the Infidel; being examined by a team of loyal scientists in an underground laboratory while his volunteers waited above to be called to action.

But it was a matter for concern nevertheless, and as soon as Quraishi was back in his office, he placed a call to al-Hazmi on his secure phone.

‘Amir,’ he began in his melodic voice, ‘there have been complications. We will have to move our timetable ahead. Tell the scientists to start the procedure.’

He received confirmation from his trusted second-in-command, and replaced the receiver.

Everything happens for a reason, he considered as he paged his secretary for a cup of jasmine tea.

If the timetable was being moved up, then it could only be the will of Allah.

The West would just have to fall sooner than planned.