“Not another word, gentleman. Collect your equipment and board the vehicle please.”
“I think I’d rather duke it out with the garda, ma’am.”
She stiffened, and he was impressed with her stern expression. “You don’t have a choice. Now, please.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said respectfully, then looked at the officer. “Keep the Glock for ballistics. You’ll learn I never fired it.”
The officer flushed and reluctantly conceded with a nod. With Max and Riley, he gathered the tanks, regulators, and DPDs, then took them to the truck. Cruz was at the rear by the door. All he needed was some aviator shades, a PRR rigged up the back of his neck, and he’d pass for Secret Service. Though they rarely wore Hugo Boss.
Sebastian came around to the side and over the open door, met her gaze. “Nice job, Olivia,” he said under his breath.
“We aim to please, and get your ass out of trouble,” she whispered, pinkening a little as she slid into the passenger seat. The doors slammed shut, Cruz behind the wheel. He started backing off the docks.
“McGill know about this?” Sebastian asked.
She scoffed, flipping down the visor to talk to him in the mirror. “Are you kidding? McGill knows everything even when I think he doesn’t. We haven’t needed this kind of clout in a while. A project barely draws attention normally.” She watched to see if the garda followed, then looked at Max. “You okay? That looks painful.”
He touched the bandage on his temple. “Fine, just pissed he could hit that hard underwater.”
“Safia tracked you and I heard it on that police band. They were sending a wagon for you guys.” She switched on the heat, and Sebastian got a whiff of the sea and wet neoprene before he felt the warmth. When they were on the highway, heading back to the house, she turned in the seat. “One of those bodies was the guy from the estate.”
He’d recognized the Fiat driver, too. “Forensics will tell them he didn’t die on the boat.” The missing fingertips and teeth would make the identification tough, if not impossible. “Notice the tattoos on his hand?” He could feel Max staring a hole in his head.
“There wasn’t much left of them.” She made grossed-out face.
“Between thumb and forefinger. A symbol like a fork.”
“Yeah,” she said with wonder. “I think it’s a trident or maybe a rune. The guy who tried to fillet me, he had one, too. Well, more than one, but I saw the fork when he grabbed my arm. He was wearing gloves in the cottage. His tattoo is bigger and more detailed than the guy with no fingers.”
He slid a glance at Max. “He had them on his knuckles, too. Hard not to miss when they’re trying to rearrange your face.” Like the dead Chechnya soldiers, he thought, and should have anticipated the guy had more backup. “I’m hoping your admirer is swimming with the fishes, but I doubt it.” Not with the RIB so close.
“Knife guy?” She shivered. “Pretty blue eyes, but there’s nothing there. It’s scary.”
He agreed. Eyes like glass, he thought, square jaw, flat forehead, and several deep scars on his face and throat. He was Noble’s kidnapper. He felt it in his gut. If he’d known they were on the water, then Blue Eyes cleverly set them up, but he doubted it. The propulsion device carried the team from shore without detection by Interpol till they started up the RIB’s motor. “There’s got to be a ship waiting for them. That RIB doesn’t take on enough fuel to get very far. Not in those waters. We need active satellite.” He turned over ways to track the bastards. “About three miles out.”
Olivia nodded. “Safia has it. She’s watching sixteen ships off the coast of Ireland right now. When the RIB meets with it, we’ll know.”
Riley asked for a phone and she handed over hers. He dialed. “Leaving Ireland now is just wise,” he said, putting the cell to his ear. “I’d like to come home for a visit someday.”
“Noble’s nowhere near here,” Sebastian said and they looked at him. “The Russian was just too confident and well prepared. Leaving those bodies is a distraction.” He looked at Olivia. “They want everything you do. The threat isn’t here, now it’s your dig. So I’d say, the ball’s in your court, ma’am.”
“McGill’s ordered us to Ice Harvest. Our jet’s waiting.”
“We brought our own,” Sebastian said and his ego swelled at the little flare of disappointment in her face. “I’m flying it.”
She arched a brow, looking him over in a way he remembered. Intimately. “Fine. I didn’t want to share my G-five with you anyway.”
He grinned.
“A G-five?” Max said. “Shit. I want a ride in that.”
Spring, 1175
Having lived with the Irish for some time now, I hazard that my experiences could fulfill some adherent questions for my brothers. As no one shall read this afore my demise, I will do my utmost to speak without hindrance. God is, after all, my supreme confidant. In these pages, I shall question what I cannot speak to even my brethren of Saint Angela’s. I wait and hope for that day.
My faith in the church’s true message is tested daily. A fact, I’m certain, the Irish pagans would relish. I have known in my heart since I was a small boy that understanding leads to acceptance and compromise. The church is un-bending so it is God’s message I bring. I often stroll through the countryside, offering counsel to our newly converted disciples of Irish blood. Yet far more pray to pagan gods. I have seen their ritual offerings on the road and near homes. They are mere requests in food and fruit, ribbons, and stones. A gathering of wishes, I feel, to the power stronger than themselves. Is that not where all faith begins? Do I not make an offering of bread and wine for blessings on my flock? I seek a common path, my lord. The church brims with ritual and ceremony and to deny thus to others is a duplicity I cannot abide. I pray I am not forced to choose.
Whilst trying to understand the pagans is indeed fascinating, many compromises have been forced on the Irish. I do not wish this monastery to be one of combat, but one of sanctuary. For any faith. The bloodshed of this crusade was as horrific as I have seen. This hamlet of Ireland is wounded, and I shall continue to extend a hand in friendship in the hope of bridging the divide England has wrought on these good people.
Svalbard, Norway
Sebastian hurried away from the nearly empty parking lot and ran down the pier. He paralleled the trucks from the airport and spotted them between warehouses. Riley waved to him and split off, heading northeast. He ran harder, darting left and slipping between buildings to the waterside.
“Well, aren’t we all full of money,” he muttered. “Finn, you see that?” A massive ship berthed at the end of the pier. Workers marched like ants from trucks to the gangway but no farther. The trucks’ license plates matched from the airport.
“Roger that,” Riley said. “They aren’t letting anyone aboard. I’m getting eight by tens of the crews. They either need a diet plan or they’re carrying.”
“Roger that. Looks like your sister’s expedition ship, ey?”
It was rigged for a purpose, but Sebastian couldn’t pinpoint it. A research ship, maybe. His dark self wasn’t getting closer, not in a sea of pale-skinned blonds. The trucks blocked the cargo being unloaded. Sitting in the water would give a better view, he thought, holding at the warehouse wall. Across the road were the dock and about four big fishing trawlers that looked abandoned and barely sea-worthy. He didn’t want to sail it, just get on it, and waited for some cover, then ran across the road and down the dock. He jumped into the middle trawler, and worked his way to the mast rigged to swing giant nets over the sea. He climbed, and used the nest of ropes and pulleys for cover. He sighed through a single scope binoculars. One of Olivia’s gadgets she had handy. It had thermal, night vision, and a camera.
“Northern Lion. Nuke powered and loaded for something,” he said in the PRR. Cranes poked like broken arms on the deck. The equipment was completely shielded with tarps, but whatever it was, pushed the ship’s waterline.
“The stern is an electronic hoi
st system like we use in hangers,” Riley said. “They’re putting something big in the water, but I can tell what it is. I’m thinking a bathyscaphe.”
Safia was so tight on satellite she’d caught the RIB hooking up with the mother ship, a freighter. That couldn’t have been easy. The inflatable boat’s wake was no more than a white dot, but when the world turned, and she was in perfect range, she got one telling bit. Tattoo guy on the deck, saluting his dead. For him, it just confirmed the guy was Spetsnaz and without a thought, he rubbed the cut behind his ear. The freighter ported in Iceland. Flying from Ireland, they’d arrived hours ahead of it and saw it unloaded. Crates, numbered, no names. He photographed everyone and recognized the bastard who’d gone after Olivia.
On target, he thought. He’d followed those crates to the airport and bribed his way to learning it was headed to Svalbard. Cold-as-ice Svalbard, he thought, zipping his jacket and watching the traffic on the end of the pier. For a minute, it looked like a fight starting and he saw a man rush to adjust the swing of a crate to the deck. Accident avoided, though he’d like to know what was under that tarp.
“Coonass, deck of the ship, near the blind passageway. The woman. She’s the only female so far.”
She stood in the corridor in the shadows, but yeah, definitely female. As the trucks unloaded, the workers were paid and the population thinned. He watched the woman speak into a radio. A moment later, a man waved to her, grabbed a big case, then headed down the gangway to the pier. He shouted at the workers, then opened the briefcase.
“The case is full of Norwegian kroner and they’re over-paying,” Riley said.
The last two trucks pulled away as the dockworkers rushed off to spend their ging-wah. The crew was still moving the crates belowdecks and Sebastian thought, there’s got to be four floors to it before the cargo level. Mean-looking ship with barely room to move on the forward deck. It was another half hour before the docks were barren except for the ship and a couple men at the stern, smoking.
A short white truck rolled up the street. Sebastian climbed down, and from inside the abandoned fishing trawler’s wheelhouse, his gaze followed it till it passed. He left the boat and ran down the dock. He couldn’t cross to the warehouse without risking being spotted, and he crouched on the short pier, using the stern of the boats for cover. The smell was enough to gag a maggot. He couldn’t see Riley, yet knew he was somewhere across from the Northern Lion in a warehouse. The truck stopped. From the cab, two men climbed out.
“We win the Kewpie doll.” The Spetsnaz from Ireland. Sebastian wished he had a sniper rifle. “Opportunity to get aboard and look around?”
“Negative, they’re locked and loaded for war. Topside and bow.”
He swung left and had to search for them, then spotted a shooter behind a crate, another in sniper position on the roof of the wheelhouse. “Shit. We need more guns.” One man looked his way and Sebastian ducked, waited, then on his stomach, jungle crawled till he could see. The dock rocked on the water. All the cargo they’d seen unloaded was marked with diplomatic seals he knew were fake, but that got them anywhere without an inspection. He hated to think it, but Noble could be inside one of those wooden crates.
“Safia had a frequency track on the ship. It’s been right here for four days. The plan filed with the harbormaster doesn’t give a destination port. Only Greenland Sea. They accept this shit?”
“Money talks, buddy, and they’re swimming in it.”
“The Northern Lion has been this route before. This is the third time it’s berthed here. I mean right here, this slip.”
Sebastian frowned to himself. “A dry run?” He narrowed the lens on the man’s face as the blond woman stepped into the sunlight and addressed Spetsnaz. She was pretty in a severe sort of way and as she spoke, he saw the man soften and smile. With the docks empty now, the men didn’t try to hide the weapons.
“If they have Noble aboard, they need him, Coonass. They’ll treat him well.”
He hoped so, and he prayed Noble obeyed and survived till he could figure out how to get him back. “We hang till night, maybe opportunity to—”
“Coonass, back of the truck, back of the truck!”
Sebastian leaned out and risked exposure, clicking off photos as the stocky man walked a dolly down the truck ramp. “Well, color me surprised. That sure looks like a sonar case.”
The broad white case bore a few scrape marks but it was identical to the one in which Vince Mills stored his deep-water sonar. He’d never actually seen the case, only photos, but it was the right size. Then Spetsnaz tipped it on its side. “Check bottom left.”
“Roger that, Mills’s logo,” Riley said. “See, I knew they were hunting underwater. But Jesus, someone with mafia ties has Noble?”
“Sure explains the abundance of cannon fodder.” Risk the hired mafia and keep his own men safe and undercover. “Drivers, start your engines.” He could feel the vibration of the massive icebreaker powering up. “Back off, we track from the sky, but we bring our chopper onto the ice.”
And armed, he thought as he watched the bastard push the dolly up the gangway.
Aboard the Northern Lion
Svalbard
Veta stood at the bridge of the icebreaker, and through the windshield, watched her men load the last piece of equipment. The crane swung the cabled platform onto the forward deck, and she stepped closer to the windows as the men secured it. She let out a breath she wasn’t aware she held, then lifted the radio to her lips. “Be very certain she is secured as instructed, Androv, da.”
From the deck, he turned to wave. “Da, Commander, as you ordered.”
She would like to be down there with them, supervising, but she trusted her men. They joined her eagerly and looked to her as more than a commander and maintaining discipline, but to keep them focused. This would not be a pleasant journey, yet within each of them was a sacred vow to fulfill it to its end. They understood that all would not come back alive. So many had already perished.
She moved to the right, and peered down toward the street, keeping her features schooled when she saw the truck. Excellent. Her gaze shifted back to the cargo and along the lash lines. Well done, she thought, her anxiousness untempered since she started down this path three years ago. A crewman bumped her and she moved back against the only vacant wall to give them a clear path to their duties. At the bridge, the captain called down to the cargo hull, giving specifics to lashing the valuable equipment. Piloting such a vessel required great skill and an experienced crew, and her confidence in them magnified after the voyage across the Barents Sea.
Then the captain looked back over his shoulder, nodding. “Ready for your orders, Commander.”
“We need only wait for Comrade Kolbash, Captain. Then we will be under way.” She lifted her radio. “Androv, pay the workers and get them off the dock.” He responded, then walked to the briefcase near a spool of rope and went to do just that.
Signaling the captain, she left the bridge, taking the passageway, then the short stairs to the deck. The cold air stung her eyes and she zipped her jacket. She waited for the docks to clear a bit, then walked toward the ramp. Her gaze followed the short fat truck rolling down the pier, but her focus was on the driver. Her palms dampened.
She shoved them into her pockets, feeling somehow incomplete till this moment.
He was here.
Dimitri Kolbash parked the truck and tossed the keys on the floorboard before he left the vehicle. He stopped short, darting back for his duffel, then strode to the rear, hopping the bumper to throw open the retractable door. In the back, he unstrapped the dolly, positioned the hard-sided case, then unloaded it from the truck. He walked briskly to the ramp, ignoring the workers hurrying off the docks and shouting happily over their quick pay. She was too generous. Less money and they’d work harder for it, but she was in command and he respected her choices, yet not always her reasons behind them. She thought money bought silence. He did not.
Dimitri pushed
up the ramp, giving a hard look at a man rushing to help. He would deliver this to her and no other. They’d already risked much for the mission. He didn’t anticipate her disappointment and shouldered the blame. The bookseller had outsmarted them, and the translation was gone. She had the most important pieces, he reasoned, and should stop this quest for the relic, but he knew in his soul, she would rather die than let her father’s work perish.
She met him on the deck, smiling. She was such a beauty when she did that, he thought. She spun on her heel, and he followed her, turning onto the passageway barely wide enough to accommodate the dolly, then into the conference room. The case was awkwardly large, yet not heavy. He lifted it to the long table, then stepped back.
Her gaze slid to the bruises on his jaw and cheek, and she frowned. “It is good to see you well, comrade.”
His gaze lingered over her before he spoke. “And you.”
Her beauty still affected him, and seeing her dressed so severely did little to change that. The dark gray uniform designed for a man fit her well enough to silhouette her voluptuous figure, yet it was buttoned to her throat, and she appeared unapproachable. As she wanted. She closed the door, her gaze skidding once to the case.
“I knew you would succeed.”
“Ahh, my Liziveta, you honor me with that smile.”
She rushed into his arms, kissed him deeply. “You have made this all possible now.”
He released her and stepped back.
“What is wrong?”
“I did not recover the translation.” She strode away, cursing foully, and he long accepted that he’d failed her. “Forgive me, Veta.”
She spun, her angry expression dissolving into a gentle smile. “The blame is not yours, Dimitri. We still possess the means to get it.”
Damage Control Page 16