“Could be a few minutes, could be a few hours,” she said.
“All right,” said Bloch. “I think we can take a much needed break. Shepard, come with me. I have something to ask you.”
Morgan found himself sitting alone at the table with Karen O’Neal, who slumped in her chair red eyed, staring off into nowhere.
“Tired?”
“You have no idea,” she said. “Although, maybe you do. Like we get to complain, the home squad here. It’s not like they’re shooting at any one of us in here.” She rubbed her temples. “Christ. My brain is just shot to hell.”
“It must be torture,” said Morgan. “Having to wait for results all the time. I don’t know what to do with myself if I can’t do something.”
“Honestly?” said O’Neal. “I’m glad for a little respite. I feel like I haven’t been away from my computer in days. I’m starting to see numbers in everything. They’re running in my head when I close my eyes, just running across my field of vision. God, I’m boring you out of your mind, aren’t I?” She smiled, a tired smile with heavy-lidded eyes.
“I wonder what that’s like,” he said. “Seeing the world like you do.”
“It’s alienating. You just don’t see things like other people. So a lot of the time, you don’t think like they do, you don’t talk like they do, and you end up saying the wrong thing. I’ve gotten better about that, but it’s still an issue.” She smiled to herself, as if remembering a private joke. “This one time, on a date, I told a guy that he had the exact same nose-to-eye proportion as Adolf Hitler.” She burst out laughing, an exhausted laugh, and Morgan joined in. “As you can imagine, that didn’t go over well.”
“So I take it there’s no one special in your life?”
She shrugged. “What can you do, with a job like this? I pretty much live here these days. No joke. There are a couple of dormitories over by the server room. I’ve spent every night this week so far sleeping back there—and ‘sleeping’ I’m talking here in purely relative terms, because I don’t think I shut my eyes long enough to qualify as real sleep.”
“Must be lonely,” said Morgan. “That kind of lifestyle.”
“I guess sometimes I prefer to keep my own company. How about you? Is the mighty Cobra married?”
“Almost twenty years,” he said, with more than a hint of pride in his voice.
“But no wedding ring?” she asked. “I mean, I get it. You can’t wear it here. I didn’t expect that you would wear a wedding ring. But you don’t have a mark either. You know. Suntan mark, or a depression in your skin. There’s nothing there.”
Morgan rubbed his ring finger where the ring was absent.
“I take it off. Whenever I’m not home. I’d rather no one know that I’m married.” He was already regretting opening up even to O’Neal.
“If you only put it on when you’re at home, how do you tell which one is the disguise?” A silence stretched out between them, and then she laughed again. “Just listen to me. What am I saying? Sorry. That went too far.” There was a ding, and she looked at the laptop that had been set up on the table. “We’ve got results!” she said.
“I’ll get Bloch,” said Morgan. But he didn’t have to. She had been in her office, overlooking the war room, and she had seen and was already on her way down. O’Neal, meanwhile, was scrutinizing the data on the screen.
“What do we have, O’Neal?”
“It looks here . . . We’ve definitely got something. It looks like he’s betting on—cable news outlets tanking?”
“Shepard, I want a list of major cable news buildings, and I want it an hour ago. Karen, I want all the affected companies, and anything else you might have. Let’s get this son of a bitch this time.”
“Boss,” cut in Shepard. “We don’t have to do any of that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know where they’re going to hit,” said Shepard. “There’s a conference under way. Executives from all the major channels are getting together on this mega yacht, Martha’s Vineyard to New York City.”
“Oh God,” said Bloch.
“And there’s one more thing,” said Shepard. “Tomorrow they get off the boat. It’s going to happen tonight.”
CHAPTER 26
Long Island coast, January 29
Young Alison Bernadette Wiley was bored out of her mind.
The Mirage was supposed to be some kind of wonderland. It was much smaller than a cruise ship—she’d been on one of those too, and hated it—but it was still plenty big. There was a heated pool and constant all-you-can-eat buffets and annoying monitors who were supposed to make sure that you were having fun every single minute of the day. She’d stay in the cabin if her mother let her, but even the big ones were cramped. Meanwhile, it was absolutely freezing outside, and reading, the only thing that could distract her meaningfully, made her seasick.
Her dad was there for work, of course. He was always off somewhere working and her mother with him, doing shopping, judging from the suitcases of new clothes and shoes and trinkets she always brought home. At least they usually had the sense to leave Alison at home, where she had friends and all her stuff and her cat, Pierre.
But this time, they’d informed her that she would be coming along.
Her mother had taken away her e-book reader for the night. It had been the only thing that was making the whole trip tolerable for Alison, who was now forced to endure the evening without it. “Go and be social,” her mother had said. “There are plenty of other kids your age here. Why don’t you make some friends and tell me all about it later?”
So here she was, at the most pitiful excuse for a dance she had ever seen. The boys were all off to one side, looking at the girls, who were standing precisely opposite them. On the dance floor were only a handful of monitors, trying to drum up enough enthusiasm and unsuccessfully pulling reluctant kids to dance with them. Lame eighties music was playing, and there was a disco ball and colored lights reflecting on the walls, which despite the trappings looked nothing like they belonged to any kind of nightclub. It just looked like a rec room with the lights out.
Alison decided to walk out and be alone. At least there she wouldn’t be bored and pressured into pretending like she was enjoying herself. And after a while, she’d go back to the cabin anyway. One of the monitors called out to her as she walked away, “Hey, leaving already?” She murmured a “Be right back” and slunk out anyway, bringing her heavy coat and mittens with her.
There were a couple of older kids making out on one of the deck chairs, so she walked farther away, where she wouldn’t see them and they wouldn’t see her. Here, the fun Nazis wouldn’t see her and force her to participate in any activities—she realized how much she had come to dread the word in just two short days. It was cold out there. Freezing, actually. She wondered who had had the stupid idea of having a stupid cruise in the middle of winter. She looked out at the land, just a couple of lights far away and barely visible. She wondered if the people there could see her too, and if they were as bored as she was. Then she lay back on one of the deck chairs and looked up at the sky. The ship wasn’t moving because of the party, so mostly it was nice and still, except for the gentle bobbing from the waves. She looked for familiar constellations.
She took out her smartphone to look them up. She had an application that had all the constellations, on both hemispheres, and which could even identify them through the camera. She tried using it, but it needed to connect and she couldn’t get a signal. Weird, she thought. It had been working fine before, and the ship wasn’t moving at the moment.
That’s when she realized that there was a helicopter coming out of the darkness to land on the boat.
CHAPTER 27
Long Island coast, January 29
Morgan felt the rumble of the Embraer military cargo plane in his bones and checked his watch. Five minutes till the drop.
“Time to strap on the gliders,” said Bishop. Morgan and the three other membe
rs of the tactical team present, Diesel, Rogue and Spartan, motioned to indicate they understood. This wasn’t going to be a rehearsed grab of an unarmed civilian. They were dropping into an unpredictable situation with armed hostiles. Morgan would never do this with a team he didn’t trust completely. As he sat there, feeling the deep rumbling of the aircraft resonate throughout his body, he felt glad that he had these people by his side. They had seen action together before. They knew the signals and each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and knew how to work together like a well-oiled machine even in the absence of a definite plan.
“Cell phone and VHF radio signals on the boat just went dead,” said Shepard over the comm. “Can only be a jammer, meaning hostiles are on the boat. I repeat: hostiles are on the boat.”
Great, thought Morgan. “Any risk of us losing communication?” he asked.
“Negative,” said Shepard. “We’ve got spread spectrum transmission. Communicators should work fine.”
With little time to prepare or coordinate, they had taken the few minutes they had on the ground to stretch and warm up, standing right next to the aircraft that was to take them. The plane was a black behemoth with downturned wings with twin jet engines. And goddamn, the son of a bitch could move once it was up in the air.
They were going to do a HALO jump—High Altitude-Low Opening. This meant they’d have to descend the better part of twenty thousand feet with their parachute still tucked in their bags. But they weren’t going to do it unaided.
“Suit up, everybody,” said Bishop. Morgan took his Raptor glider and began to strap it on as the rest of the team did the same. This took a few minutes as they fiddled with the harness so that they were properly fitted, but soon enough, they were ready: five soldiers geared up to tear through the air to their target.
“All right, it’s drop time,” said Bishop. The cargo door opened with a loud whir of the engine, and ice-cold wind flooded the cabin.
Zeta team took position and dropped off the back, disappearing into the night one at a time: Spartan first, then Rogue, then Diesel.
“You’re up, Cobra,” said Bishop.
Morgan pulled down his helmet. The night vision came online simultaneously with the HUD overlay, showing a grid over the terrain. The boat required no overlay. It shone bright on the vast expanse of the ocean, visible even at such a high altitude. The other members of the tac team around him were colored blue in his display. It was a necessary precaution. Without it, they might easily hit each other, which could send two men in a tailspin into deadly cold water.
Tactical team Zeta circled the target below in their gliders. Morgan’s HUD told him they were losing altitude fast. The winds near surface level were mild tonight, so they would not need to fear drifting off course after activating their parachutes. Getting closer to the ship, he could see a shape like a huge black beetle on the deck of the mega yacht. A chopper. He glided to the other end of the boat, the aft deck. As he drew closer, he saw two men in black holding a rifle, patrolling the deck.
Morgan glided in circles above the ship, careful to keep a safe distance from the others. Even though the yacht wasn’t moving, and as enormous as it was for a yacht, it was still a relatively tough target to hit from the air. He made his way down in a matter of minutes, so that he was within range of deploying his parachute. He sailed over the boat, trying to bring his speed to a minimum. He timed it so the two men patrolling the deck were on its far side as he approached. He pulled the cord for the parachute, and the glider broke loose from his back, though still attached to him with a rope. The chute deployed, yanking him upward and arresting his fall. He drifted down, sailing above the boat, aiming for a spot of clear deck. A sudden gust of wind carried him farther than he intended, and sent him sailing toward one of the armed guards. The guard looked up and then called to the other, pointing straight at Morgan, who could see the whites of their eyes. He had been spotted.
They would shoot Morgan as he was passing over them, and there would be nothing that he could do, except maybe . . . He looked down, and did some quick mental math. The men took aim with semiautomatics. He pulled the emergency release just as bullets started flying. Freed from the parachute, he fell precipitously, and the bullets sailed over him. He hit the deck rolling, and searing pain went up his bad leg. But before the men could react, he pulled his handgun and shot one of them between the eyes.
There was the matter of the second man, however, who was now taking aim. Morgan had no time to fire back As he braced for the impact of the bullets, the man was taken down by a hail of gunfire that came from somewhere to Morgan’s left. He saw Spartan running toward him, holding her weapon of choice: an AR-15 she had nicknamed Mandy.
“Thanks,” said Morgan. “I owe you one.”
“Damn right you do,” she said. “I just saved your ass.”
“Perimeter secured,” said Rogue.
“Come together on me,” said Bishop.
They moved stealthily, covering each other as they did. Once together, they moved across the deck in formation.
“There’s their chopper,” said Diesel.
“They’ll have heard us,” said Morgan, “Wherever they are. We’ve got to take cover.”
Morgan heard the sound of a chair scraping on the deck behind him, and he turned around, gun cocked. What he found was a little girl looking up at him. She’d been hiding in a sconce on deck.
Morgan looked up at the rest of the team, and saw that they were looking at Spartan.
“Hey,” said Spartan, “Don’t look at me. I don’t know how to talk to kids!”
This was taking too long. “Hey,” Morgan said to the child. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I think I should be,” she said. “I’d never seen people shoot guns before. Did you come to rescue us?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what we’re here for. What’s your name?”
“It’s Alison.”
“Alison, where is everybody?”
“They’ve got all the passengers trapped inside, on the upper deck. My parents are there. Are you going to help?”
Morgan nodded. “Leave it to us,” he said. “You should go back to hiding. It’s not safe for you to be out here. You’ve been very brave, Alison.”
She just nodded vigorously. “Please. Please save them.”
She scurried off, and the team ran to take cover by the stairwell to the upper deck.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” said Bishop. “We go for the passengers first. If their intention is to massacre everyone, our mission ends there. But if they’re planning to sink the whole ship, we move down to vital systems. It’s most likely they’d be targeting the hull. Shep?”
“I’ve marked the most vulnerable spots on the map,” broke in Lincoln Shepard through the comm. “I can give you directions from here.”
“All right. Upper level. Rogue, find a vantage point and back us up. Cobra, you run lead. They’ll be expecting us, so this is going to be tricky.”
All but Rogue moved in synchrony toward the upper deck, Morgan and Spartan through the nearest stairway, Bishop and Diesel up the other. Reaching the upper deck, Morgan noted that the ballroom had windows all along its four walls, and Morgan had to crouch down to avoid being seen. He walked along the outer wall of the ballroom when he reached a door and peered inside.
The boat’s ballroom was decked out in the finest linens. Each table had a towering centerpiece blooming with white flowers, and there was a stage over on one end. All the passengers and crew were huddled together on the dance floor. There were sobs coming from the crowd.
“Who’s out there?” yelled a man with a Russian accent, standing at the door. “We have hostages. Show yourselves with your hands up and weapons on the ground.”
“Rogue, do you have visual?” asked Bishop over the comm.
“Affirmative. Three hostiles. One by the door, two more hiding among the hostages.” The one who had yelled out did not dare come outside, and seemed to be taking what cover he
could.
“I want you to incapacitate the farthest on my mark,” said Bishop. “Cobra and Spartan, take the one closest to you two. Diesel and I will deal with the other. In position. move out.”
It all happened in an instant. Spartan threw in a flash grenade. Morgan heard the buzz as Rogue’s bullet whizzed past him, and the tinkle of broken glass as it tore through the window. At that, Morgan rolled sideways into the ballroom and put a bullet in the closest man’s forehead. The one that Rogue had hit was on the ground, his leg bleeding. He yelled out in pain as blood poured from his wound. The other, closer to the far door, had been taken out by a bullet from Diesel’s rifle. There was screaming among the passengers, and some began to stand up and look for the exits.
“Let’s move in,” said Bishop. “Spartan, give me crowd control. Cobra, with me.”
“All right, everyone,” Spartan yelled out, her strong voice carrying throughout the ballroom. “We are here to save you. Calm down. Everything is okay and under control. That’s it, nice and easy. Everyone find your family and stay put. Are Alison’s parents around here somewhere?” A woman in a short black dress and dazzling jewels stepped forward, and then a man with carefully coiffed brown hair and striking blue eyes raised their hands. “Oh God, is she all right?” said the mother.
“She’s fine, ma’am. I just wanted to tell you that she’s a hell of a girl.”
As the passengers moved around, slowly at first but more and more agitatedly, Morgan followed Bishop to the injured guard.
“Move and you die!” said Bishop, training his semiautomatic on the man, whose gun was still within reach. He kept one hand on the ground, which kept him propped up, and raised his other in surrender.
“Cobra,” said Bishop. “Get him outside and away from these people. And patch him up. I don’t want him bleeding out before we interrogate him.”
The man looked up defiantly, but Morgan could clearly see the fear that ran beneath. He crouched down and helped the man up, and they hobbled together outside. Morgan used plastic cuffs—they took up little enough space that everyone on the team always carried them on a mission—to tie his hands to a brass railing along the edge of the deck, and sat him on the floor. He ran down to the lower deck to his glider and took out the first aid kit from the storage compartment. Coming back up, he cut open the man’s pants around the wound. It was a nasty one. Bone had clearly been shattered. If he survived, he’d probably lose that leg.
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