Eliška stood off to the side, shaking her head.
Vuković raised a walkie-talkie and issued commands. The unmarked van pulled away from the curb. Several more laptop screens came to life with video feeds from the SWAT team’s helmet cams. Noble turned his attention to the displays and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his gut. Inside the van, the SWAT team checked the action on their weapons, topped off mags, and tested their microphones. Vuković said “Now you see how we do things in Croatia, Mr. Just Jake.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
Noble felt like a caged animal. He paced back and forth in front of the monitors, a restless lion eager for the hunt. He wanted to be in on the action, not watching it on a television screen. He thought about jogging the six blocks to the torpedo factory and linking up with the Specijalne jedinice policije, but Vuković would no doubt arrest him if he tried. So Noble paced, throwing dark looks at the monitors.
Ron Hinson stood off to one side, his hands buried in the pockets of a gray windbreaker. He caught Noble’s eye and communicated understanding with a slight nod. His expression said, What can you do? He didn’t like it any more than Noble, but this was Croatia. The local police had jurisdiction.
Eliška looked on in sullen silence. Her face was impassive. Noble watched her as much as the monitors.
The taciturn SJP Captain stood with his arms crossed over his barrel chest and a wireless radio nestled in the crook of one arm. His eyes bounced from monitor to monitor as he tracked the team’s movements. The van had stopped a block from the torpedo factory and idled at the corner. The Captain took one last look at the warehouse, thumbed the talk button, and gave the green light.
The van was moving again, picking up speed. A dash-mounted cam gave a front-seat view as the vehicle raced up to the main doors of the abandoned torpedo factory. The monitors had visuals but no audio. It was strange to watch without sound, like watching a movie with the volume turned off.
The van braked hard in front of the warehouse. The camera feed blurred and pixelated as the back doors of the van were thrown open and the team leap out. Another feed showed the view from a sniper perched on a roof two doors down. He followed the team’s progress through his scope. One of the SJP officers lugged a steel battering ram up to the weather-beaten doors. He squared up on the bolt while the other men stacked up to the side. The SJP officer reared back with the heavy door knocker and swung. His body cam turned to snow with the impact. The ancient timbers held fast. Hard to believe time and the elements hadn’t rotted the doors right off their hinges, but the oak barricade stood firm. It took two more swings.
Noble’s eyes flashed to the thermal monitor. If anything happened, he would see it on thermal first. But the image was all dark blues and heavy purples. Five bright red and orange heat signatures filed through the door, moving fast.
Lucas Randall stood in the pilothouse of the ULCV Maersk Minerva. The 400 meter long triple-E class container ship floated off the port of Rijeka, surrounded by blue waters and bright sunshine. Over thirteen thousand containers of various colors, mostly rust red with some blues thrown in, covered the deck. The pilothouse looked like the deck of a crude starship. There was a pair of seats for the pilot and the navigator, and a control panel covered in dials, levers, and hundreds of blinking lights. Hospital green paint was flaking off the walls in patches, revealing fire engine red beneath and, below that, primer gray. A small fire extinguisher hung next to an exterior hatch and a pinup calendar was tacked to the back of the door. Ms. April was a curvy brunette in a polka-dot bikini.
Sunlight glinted off the windows, turning the interior of the pilothouse into an oven. Lucas had a mobile phone clutched in one hand as he watched a tablet computer. It showed the inside of the torpedo factory and the intaglio press. Not long now, thought Lucas. He tugged at his shirt in an effort to cool off while he watched the tablet. He knew what was coming. Hee didn’t like it, but it had to be done. He wondered if it would be Noble or someone else. A QRF from a carrier group stationed in the Atlantic, maybe? Fellow soldiers. Brothers-in-arms. The idea left a bad taste in Lucas’s mouth.
Erik sat with one arm slung over the back of the pilot’s seat. He wore a pistol in a shoulder rig over a checked flannel shirt and work-stained chinos. He glanced at the tablet screen and then to the torpedo factory in the distance. They could just make out the shape of the launch house jutting out over the water. “Go ahead and blow it,” Erick said. “Why wait for the police? No one else needs to die.”
“I don’t like it any more than you,” Lucas told him. “But we’re still waiting for port clearance. If I blow it before we get permission to leave, the authorities might shut down the harbor. Then where would we be?”
Erik made a face but said no more.
What was taking so long?
Lucas wanted to be under steam before anyone found the press. Once they were on the open ocean, they would turn off all transponders, change course, and meet up with a Feedermax. The counterfeits only made up the top layer of containers. The rest of the Minerva’s cargo was regular consumer goods. The feeder ship would offload the counterfeits for the trip across the Atlantic. After that, it would take a miracle for anyone to find the money before it hit the US market.
The speaker on the control panel gave a loud squawk, followed by a high-pitched squeal. A voice came over the airwaves, giving them permission to depart. Lucas snapped his fingers at Erik, but the navigator was already working the controls. The metal floor vibrated beneath Luke’s feet as the engines came to life. A moment later, the massive container vessel started to move, churning up water in her wake.
Lucas lifted the phone and started to dial when he noticed movement on the tablet screen. His mouth turned down in a frown. He saw a five-man team in dark fatigues, armed with MP5 submachine guns, file into the launch house and fan out around the abandoned intaglio press.
Erik had his hands on the controls, but he was watching Lucas. Sweat was beading on his forehead in large wet drops that trailed down his face. He didn’t have to say a word. His eyes said everything. He shook his head and looked away.
Too late, thought Lucas. Too late to back out now. He had spent too much time. Too much effort. He was too close to his goal. America had to die if the world was going to be reborn. There were going to be casualties. He punched in the last three digits and hit send.
Noble breathed a sigh of relief as the SJP team swept through the launch house without incident. He had been waiting for some trap. If Noble had been running the counterfeiting operation, he would have left a greeting party or an explosive charge at the very least. And he figured Lucas would do the same. But maybe Lucas had been forced to clear out quickly and didn’t have time to cover his tracks. He had left behind the press. That certainly pointed to a fast exit.
The SJP team had cleared the factory and now gathered around the intaglio press. The machine was the size of a small truck and took up most of the launch house. Shredded sheets of misprints lay on the floor and unused paper stood on pallets around the edge of the room. Shelves were cluttered with mostly empty ink containers. Noble watched the screen as one of the SJP officers stooped and picked up an uncut sheet of hundred dollar bills. The sheet had run through the press at a bad angle. The print was off. Someone had marked a large red X on the page before tossing it to the floor.
“That’s it,” Hinson said. “That’s what we’ve been looking for.”
All four of them had gathered around the laptop computers for a look at the machine.
“Where is the printing crew?” Noble asked. “That’s what I’d like to know.”
Vuković nodded in agreement. He raised the wireless radio and pressed the transmit button but never had a chance to speak.
Noble felt the explosion before he heard it. The ground trembled beneath his feet. It felt like the faint rumor that runs through the earth before a massive quake. An earsplitting bang rent the air. Noble flinched and pulled his shoulders up around his ears in an uncons
cious gesture. His hand was halfway to the pistol in his waistband before he stopped himself.
The lights winked out and fluttered back to life. The computer screens showed a confusion of movement. Noble thought he glimpsed a body tumbling through the air, before all five helmet cams turned to static. Only the thermal and sniper cams remained online. The thermal showed a bright-white bloom. From the sniper’s cam, they watched as the launch house deflated like someone had let the air out of a child’s bounce house.
Lucas heard a faint pop as the charges attached to the underwater pylons detonated. The water beneath the launch house leapt up like a volcano boiling over. The support pylons buckled and the torpedo factory crashed down into the sea. It would take the authorities days to sift through the wreckage. By the time they started piecing the puzzle together, America would be in an economic tailspin. He turned to Erik and said, “Get us out of here.”
“Da.” Erik throttled the Minerva up to twenty-three knots.
It would take just four days for the money to reach Miami. From there, it would be trucked to various cities along the East Coast where associates waited to introduce the fake cash into the money supply. Within days, the American financial system would crumble. Taking all the money-hungry bureaucrats in Washington down with it, Lucas told himself. Nothing could stop them now.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Vuković sprinted to the factory, stumbled out into the surf, and started clawing through rubble. He heaved aside large slabs of broken concrete and tortured steel, shredding his hands in an effort to save his men. Noble caught up moments later and tried to stop him.
“They’re dead,” Noble said.
Vuković spun around, catching Noble with a wild haymaker. The surprise blow put Noble on his butt. Vuković went right back to digging.
Noble, more surprised than injured, climbed to his feet and wrapped Vuković up in a bear-hug to stop him from hurting himself. “They’re gone,” Noble said. “They’re gone.”
Vuković struggled, thrashing and cursing, but finally relented. Noble felt bad for him. He had lost men in combat before. It was a crushing feeling that no words could accurately describe. It left a large empty space right in the middle of your chest, and nothing would ever fill the void. But Noble had never lost an entire unit. It had to be devastating. Noble was able to hoist thee Captain back onto dry ground by time the sirens and flashing lights converged on the scene.
What remained of the launch house lay on the ocean floor. Demolition charges had taken out the supports and dropped the whole structure into the surf. The roof of the observation deck was visible above the waves, a jigsaw puzzle of twisted steel, shattered brick, and weathered timbers. Broken pylons jutted up through the wreckage like skeletal fingers. Saltwater crashed over the jumbled heap and turned to foam. A fine silt filled the air, stinging Noble’s eyes and scouring his throat. He turned his head to the side and spat.
Emergency crews combed through the wreckage, looking for any sign of survivors. Police and EMS workers in hip waders stumbled around the broken pile, while rescue divers searched the ocean floor. The chances of finding anyone alive were slim to none—unless one of the SJP officers had been lucky enough to be trapped in an air bubble underwater. And Noble doubted that. The launch house had collapsed and the roof had come down on top of the team, sealing their doom.
Poor bastards, thought Noble. They didn’t stand a chance.
The walls of the manufacturing plant ended abruptly at the seawall, as if a giant’s axe had hacked off the end of the building with one powerful swipe. Noble stood at the opening, gazing out over the jumbled heap. Beyond the hump of broken stone and rebar stretched an azure sea dotted with merchant vessels and cargo ships. Somewhere out there, a ship was steaming toward the United States with a cargo hold full of counterfeit cash. Noble’s lips pressed together in a grim line.
Vuković sat with his back against a wall. His face was a mask of stunned disbelief. His eyes stared, unfocused, into the distance. Blood was drying on his fingertips. Gashes covered his forearms and two of his fingernails were missing.
Ron Hinson and Eliška had come along minutes later. The assassin was handcuffed to the Secret Service agent. They stood off to one side, watching the emergency crews work. Noble considered telling Hinson that he was handcuffed to one of the world’s most deadly assassins, but decided against it. Hinson probably already knew and he’d done it anyway. Noble’s respect for the agent went up a few notches.
While the rescue personnel worked to clear the rubble and recover the bodies, Noble turned back into what remained of the torpedo factory. He spotted a frayed scrap of gold and white cordage. He had noticed the pieces of rope scattered around the floor of the factory as he raced to catch up with Vuković. He picked up a piece and turned over it in his hands. Something about it was very familiar, but Noble couldn’t place it. He scowled at the strip of fabric and tried to imagine what it had belonged to.
“Mattress,” Vuković mumbled.
Noble turned to him. “What did you say?”
Vuković motioned to the length of frayed rope. “Is mattress seam.”
Noble looked again at the cord in his hands and tried to imagine it attached to bedding. Vuković was right. It was the seam from a mattress. He dug the burner phone from his pocket and dialed.
Gwen picked up after two rings. She sounded exhausted and defeated. “Hey, Noble. Any survivors?”
Noble turned away from Vuković and dropped his voice, “Never mind that. I think I know how they’re moving the money. The floor of the factory is covered in mattress scraps.”
“You think they are hiding the money inside mattresses?” Gwen asked. She sounded fully awake now.
“It would make the perfect camouflage,” Noble said.
He heard Gwen snapping her fingers at Ezra. She said, “Okay, we’re on it.”
“Let me know what you find.”
Gwen hesitated.
“What now?” Noble asked.
“Armstrong has already laid in the pipeline for an extraction,” Gwen said. “She wants you to get Cermákova to the wharf five miles south. A team will be there by five o’clock—your time—to pick her up.”
Noble glanced at Eliška and said, “Fine, but I want to know as soon as you find anything, understood?”
“No way, Noble,” Gwen said. “Your part in this operation is over.”
“Gwen, this may be our last chance to stop that money from reaching the States,” Noble told her.
“I know that,” Gwen said. “But even if I wanted to, I couldn’t pass the information to you without Armstrong finding out.”
Noble bit back an angry reply. He wanted to unload on her. He turned and spotted Hinson. He said, “You can send the information to Hinson’s phone. Armstrong won’t be monitoring that.”
She sighed. “If we find out anything, I’ll try to pass the information on. No promises.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
“I think I found it,” Ezra said. All he wanted to do was curl up and drift off, but he kept plugging away in a feverish race to find the money. He said, “Yeah, I think this is it.”
“What have you got?” Wizard asked. The DDO had spent the last twenty minutes smoking one cigarette after another until the situation room slowly filled with thick gray smog. He hunched over Ezra’s shoulder. The glowing tip of his cigarette bobbed in Ezra’s peripheral vision.
“It’s a complicated series of connections. The links are buried in shell companies, but it all traces back to Keiser in a roundabout sort of way,” Ezra said.
Gwen stopped what she was working on and turned to him. She looked like Ezra felt, exhausted and harassed, barely able to keep her eyes open.
“Walk me through it,” Wizard said.
“Keiser’s Apollo fund owns controlling shares of an emerging technologies firm called FabianFirst.org. Keiser sits on the board of directors. FabianFirst acts as an umbrella firm for over two dozen different shell companies that do every
thing from disease resistant GMO foods to space exploration technologies. Fingers in many pies.” Ezra waggled his fingers. “One of their holdings is a commercial shipping outfit named Inter-Ocean Couriers. Nine months ago, IOC acquired the Maersk Minerva, a Triple-E class cargo container ship. It’s four hundred meters long and can carry over eighteen thousand shipping containers.
“FabianFirst’s other holdings include a discount bedding outfit based out of China that goes by the name of Hangzhou Trading Company. Five months ago, Hangzhou Trading got an order for four hundred and fifty thousand queen-size mattresses, which were delivered to another of FabianFirst’s shell companies, a hotel chain with locations up and down the East Coast.”
Gwen was nodding along as he spoke. She said, “You think they shipped the mattresses to the warehouse in Rijeka? The money goes into the mattresses, the mattresses go into cargo containers, and the containers are loaded onto a ship bound for the United States.”
“That’s the way I see it,” Ezra said.
Wizard blew smoke at the ceiling. “Are you sure about this? We may only get one shot at that money.”
“The Maersk Minerva received port clearance at 2:43 p.m.,” Ezra told him. “Exactly one minute before the torpedo factory was scuttled.”
Wizard plucked the cigarette from his lips and jabbed the smoldering tip at the computer screen. “Find that ship.”
Ezra and Gwen went to work while Wizard smoked. Ten minutes later, Gwen was shaking her head. “The Maersk Minerva’s GPS went dark thirty minutes after she left port.”
“Too bad Jake Noble doesn’t have a description of the boat,” Wizard said in an offhand sort of way. “He’s our only asset in the area. Might be the only man who can stop this. I’m going to update the Director on our progress. You two keep working the Minerva. I want to know how much fuel she was carrying, an estimate of every American port she can reach, and how long it would take to get there.”
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