by Dale Brown
“False bottom,” the agent said. He removed a piece of carpet from the floor of the safe, then a piece of metal.
“I’m afraid I must insist that I call the harbormaster and local police,” Gemici said. “This is getting quite…”
“More files,” the agent said, withdrawing another handful of folders from the bottom of the safe.
“This is outrageous!” Gemici said, his eyes bugging out in panic. “This is illegal! I shall report you to the ministry of justice in Cairo! You have no right to—”
“Got it,” the agent said, handing Kelsey a folder.
“Right on top—must be an important person, eh, Yusuf?” Kelsey said, flipping through the file. “Bottom note here says something about two million. Dollars? Egyptian pounds? Is this what Boroshev got paid to bring a nuclear weapon into the United States?”
“Nuclear weapon?” Gemici cried. “I know nothing of this! Nothing!”
“Sure you do,” Kelsey said. She continued to flip through the file, then gave up and handed it to the second agent, who began studying it himself. “You’re going to be extradited to the United States to face over two thousand counts of murder and conspiracy, Yusuf. I can pretty much guarantee you the death penalty. In fact, I don’t think we’re going to bother with going through an extradition—we’re going to hog-tie you like the murderous pig you are and just take you back with us. Your first stop will be Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Have you heard of it? Let’s go.” The second agent collected all the folders into a backpack while the first secured Gemici’s hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs.
“Wait! I will tell you all you want to know!” Gemici said. “But the real records of what Boroshev was doing are on board my ship, not here.”
“Ahmed?”
“Nothing in the files like addresses or phone numbers,” the second agent, an Arabic translator, said. “Looks like a payment sheet, maybe receipts. Hard to tell.”
“You better not be lying to me, Yusuf,” Kelsey said, “or I hope you can swim with your head bashed in.” She had the plastic handcuffs cut off. “Move out.”
They left the office and crossed over to the other side of the wharf to where the King Zoser was docked. There was one watch stander at the top of the gangway, who exchanged words with Gemici as they started up the ramp. The watch stander lit a cigarette and nodded, obviously not concerned that the captain was coming on board so late at night with four foreigners.
About halfway up the gangway, when the Arabic-speaking agent reached out to grasp the handrails with both hands as the ramp got slippery, Gemici saw his chance, slid under the handrail, and dropped about twelve meters into the harbor. “Ilha’uni!” Gemici shouted in Arabic when he surfaced. “Utlub el bolis! Ilha’uni!”
The watch stander reacted immediately, flicking his cigarette overboard, raising a small rifle, and shouting a warning to the rest of the crew. Several floodlights snapped on in the wheelhouse and somewhere on the bow. DeLaine, Ray Jefferson, and their agents were caught out in the open halfway up the gangway.
“Kelsey…?” one of the agents asked. “What do we fucking do now?”
“Let’s jump for it,” the other agent said. But at that instant the watch stander opened up with a short burst of machine gun fire and shouted something in Arabic, and the four Americans could do nothing else but raise their hands and remain still. More crewmen started rushing up on deck, converging on them, weapons at the ready…
Suddenly the searchlight up on the pilot’s arch near the wheelhouse went out in a shower of sparks, and they heard the sound of ripping metal, a scream, and then two splashes as something—or undoubtedly someone—dropped from the pilot’s arch into the harbor. As the terrified crew members ran over to the section of the rail to try to see what had gone overboard, there was another loud bang, the sound of crunching metal, and the searchlight on the bow went out.
“Move, everybody!” Jefferson said. He led the way up the gangway, drawing his sidearm.
“Wa’if! Haelan!” the watch stander shouted, then opened fire. One of the first rounds hit an agent in the leg; he screamed and dropped to the gangway. The other shots missed, but the watch stander kept on firing. Jefferson and DeLaine went back to help the injured agent to his feet, drawing their weapons and preparing to return fire. The watch stander had them all in his sights and was ready to squeeze the trigger…
…until he heard a loud thud! right beside him. He looked up and saw a massive figure standing beside him, as if he’d appeared out of thin air! The figure, a cross between a man and a machine, snatched the rifle out of his hands like a parent taking a noisy rattle away from an infant, then crumpled it up in his right hand as if it was nothing but a stick of cinnamon. Then its left hand snapped out, grasped the man by the throat, picked him up with ease, and casually dropped him over the side.
“Bolton, what are you doing up there?” Jason Richter radioed from inside CID One. He looked toward the bow and saw Carl Bolton in CID Three, the newest model, climbing down from the bow lookout. “Get down here and let’s secure this tub.”
“I can’t get the hang of this thing,” Bolton complained. He finally got the nerve to just jump the ten meters down to the deck and found the landing much softer than he expected. “I don’t know how Moore did it.” He and Jason stood guard at various places around the vessel, staying out of sight but still prepared to fight off any response from police or port security. DeLaine, Jefferson, and the two agents were belowdecks for about fifteen minutes. Soon they were back on the wharf, folding and stowing the CID units and hurrying away in a rental truck. They could see the police starting to arrive in the rearview mirrors as they sped away.
“We didn’t find anything in Gemici’s cabin, and we couldn’t find Boroshev’s cabin,” Kelsey said. “But we did find several folders of notes. Looks like we’re going sightseeing, guys.”
A Secret Location
Early the next day
“We were raided!” Yegor Viktorvich Zakharov screamed into the secure satellite phone. “You sonofabitch, we were raided!”
“Shto ty priyibalsa ka mn’e, Yegor?” the voice on the other end of the connection known as the Director asked in passable Russian. “Calm yourself.”
“They had a firefight with Gemici’s men on his ship—with two of those damned robots!” Zakharov shouted. “They’re here, right now. You knew about it, and you said nothing!”
“Don’t give me that bullshit, Zakharov!” the Director retorted. “I told you to stay out of the United States. Instead you engineer another attack! Now look at what you’ve accomplished: the fucking President of the United States has gone before Congress and asked for a declaration of war on you! You brought this on yourself!”
“What do you intend to do about it?”
“ ‘Do?’ I’m not going to do a fucking thing!” the man insisted. “You’ve got one more job to do out there, and then you’re out. You’ve already been paid half the cost of the last job—you’d better finish it. After you’re done, you should take your money and go back to Brazil or the Caribbean or whatever rock you intend to hide under, and disappear. Stay that way.”
“The mission was, Kingman dies,” Zakharov said. “He’s managed to escape every time.”
“The mission was: you do as I say, when I say it, and you get paid,” the Director snapped. “I never wanted you to strike inside the United States. If I told you once, I told you a dozen times: attack Kingman everywhere but the United States. No one is going to care if you blow up a trillion dollars’ worth of oil infrastructure in Nigeria or a power plant in Brazil, but blow up one oil head in the United States and they’d send the Marines out after you. Now you’ve got something even worse than the Marines—this lousy little task force. The attack in San Francisco was a waste of time and resources. I told you he wouldn’t be there, and blowing up that building hasn’t stopped his operation even for one day! The only thing you’ve succeeded in is enraging the Americans, turning most of the world again
st you, and driving Kingman even deeper belowground.”
“You’re nothing but a fucking coward!” Zakharov shouted. “I knew what you wanted: you wanted to see Kingman dead…”
“Wrong, you idiot. I want Kingman bent, broken, humiliated, bankrupt, and defeated—then dead,” the Director said. “But you’re not going to do it by blowing up his headquarters in San Francisco. You’re turning him into the aggrieved party—people are even starting to feel sorry for the conniving bastard!”
“If you’d give me all the money I need, I could have his entire worldwide operation in flames in a year!”
“You’re being paid very well,” the Director said. “These added expenses caused by your escapade in San Francisco are coming out of your pocket. Finish this one last job, then go on your way. I never want to speak to you again.”
“What about this task force?” Zakharov asked. “What about those robots? What am I supposed to do about them?”
“Sounds to me like you might need a lot more men,” the Director said. “They’re your problem. It would definitely be in your best interest to smash them, before they get any more support or funding. Use every weapon and every man you can scrape up, but take them down once and for all.”
“I need more information on them,” Zakharov said. “You can get me the data on their technology I need to destroy them.”
“I’m not your messenger boy, Zakharov…!”
“You’re involved in this as much as I am,” Zakharov said. “You can get the data. I’m busy doing your dirty work—you can sit back in your comfortable office, push a few buttons on your computer, and get what I need, and we’ll both be better off.”
There was a short pause on the line. Just as Zakharov thought he had hung up, the Director said, “Check your secure e-mail box when you can. I’ll see what I can find out. But you are the fighter. You’re being paid a lot of money to fight smart and win. Do it right this time, Zakharov. Don’t screw it up again.”
The White House, Washington, D.C.
A short time later
“She’s here, sir,” the outer office secretary said, standing in her boss’s doorway, “and I’m afraid she’s not going to leave until she gets some time with you.”
Robert Chamberlain made a show of running a hand through his ever-thinning hair and turned in his seat. From there, he could see the west entrance to the White House—and sure enough, there she was, surrounded by her ever-present camera crew and a small crowd of curious onlookers: Kristen Skyy of SATCOM One News. “She’s persistent, I’ll give her that,” he muttered.
“What do you want to do, sir?”
He shook his head with extreme, exaggerated irritation. “She wants to talk to me, not the President?”
“She said only to you.”
“What did Collins say?” All press interviews had to be approved by the President’s chief of staff first, but he knew that Collins rarely said “no” to anyone, especially to a female correspondent.
“She hasn’t spoken to the chief of staff. She showed up outside without an appointment and asked to talk to you. Do you want me to contact Miss Collins’s office?”
“No, don’t bother. I’m not going to give her a statement of any kind anyway.” The last thing he wanted now was for that busybody Collins to find out so soon that Skyy was here. Chamberlain sighed, then nodded. “All right, let’s get it over with. But the camera crew stays in the Appointments Lobby until I find out what she wants.”
Minutes later, Kristen Skyy breezed into Chamberlain’s office. A couple of days locked away in New Mexico only helped to make her look even more beautiful, he thought. Although her handshake was sincere enough and the smile looked genuine, he could definitely feel that aura of anger inside her at being cooped up at the Task Force TALON training area after returning from Brazil. “Have a seat, Miss Skyy. I have a really busy day, so I hope you don’t mind if this meeting is short.”
She didn’t sit, but marched right up to his desk before he could rise or sit elsewhere; he was forced to lean back in his chair to increase the distance between them, something he didn’t like. “I just have one question, Mr. Chamberlain: why hasn’t my request to accompany Task Force TALON overseas been approved?” Kristen asked.
“The answer should be obvious, Miss Skyy—TALON is moving fast and operational security is absolutely critical,” Chamberlain replied. “They can’t afford to watch over you while taking on Zakharov and his gang of terrorists all over the world.”
“Dammit, Mr. Chamberlain, I earned the right to go with them!” Kristen said.
“You what?” Chamberlain retorted, rising from his chair and leaning forward on his desk, going nose to nose with the gorgeous television journalist. “You did no such thing! If it was up to me you’d still be under investigation for luring Richter and Vega to Brazil…”
“I didn’t ‘lure’ anyone…”
“…and just because you managed to survive your encounters with the terrorists doesn’t mean you can tag along with TALON anytime you feel the need to grab another headline!”
Kristen looked as if she was ready to bore into Chamberlain, but instead she took a step back away from the desk and averted her eyes. Chamberlain took his seat. “Mr. Chamberlain, I’m sorry for barging into your office like this,” she said. “But I feel as if I’m intimately tied into everything that goes on with Task Force TALON now. I know…I know I was wrong to go around you to get Jason and his team to Brazil, but I felt we had to take the opportunity we had, and I made a decision. I know how it must have hurt you and affected your authority, and I apologize, deeply apologize.”
Chamberlain nodded, crossing his fingers before him. “Well, that’s a start,” he said.
“I mean it,” Kristen said. “I know I like to behave like a big shot, and I like being in control, but I now realize that my attitude and actions have an enormous effect on many around me. I don’t want to be an enemy, Mr. Chamberlain, but I know sometimes my mouth and my bad-ass attitude makes me look that way.”
If mentioning her mouth and her ass was meant as a distraction, it worked—his eyes were automatically drawn to both those luscious parts of her body before flicking back to her eyes. She didn’t seem to notice, but he was sure her remarks were deliberately intended to elicit just that very reaction. He turned in his chair to look out the window; after a moment’s thought, he nodded. “All right, Miss Skyy,” he said. “I’ll approve it.”
“Thank you so much, sir.”
“You and your network will sign all the usual waivers of responsibility and liability.”
“Of course.”
“TALON has already deployed, and they’re incommunicado right now,” he went on. “To preserve operational security, I’m going to put you on the next scheduled military logistical flight to their general location, and I’ll arrange for Major Richter to meet you somewhere so you can join the team. The final decision whether or not to allow you to accompany the team will be his. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“How soon can you leave?”
“We’re packed and ready to go right now, sir.”
“I should have guessed,” Chamberlain said. “Report to base ops at Andrews right away; I’ll have a security pass and travel orders waiting for you at the front gate. Tell your boss that you’ll be out of touch, period—no communications with anyone from here on out until cleared by Major Richter himself. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. I just hope you know what you’re doing, Kristen.” Chamberlain stood. “I’ll never understand this obsession with ‘the story,’ Miss Skyy,” he said. “The only way I can begin to understand is to equate it with my deep desire to defend my homeland. But the comparison still always comes up short.”
“I think you have it right, sir,” Kristen said, extending a hand. Chamberlain shook her hand and nodded. “Thank you again.”
“Sure. Remember, from here on out, no communications until Richter says it�
��s okay. Good luck to you, Miss Skyy.” He took a seat and started typing e-mail notifications to the chief of staff and orders to his secretary for the security passes and travel orders. As he typed, he could see Kristen Skyy fairly running out to the west entrance, with her crew members hustling to keep up.
Jason Richter, he thought, had no idea what was coming his way, he thought, and he wondered how he was going to be able to handle it…
She knew she said she wouldn’t tell anyone, but she had Jason’s secure short messaging service address already programmed into her phone, so she shot him a quick message: “CLEARED 2 GO BY NSA. C U SOON. LUV KRISTEN.” That couldn’t hurt anyone, she thought…right?
Near Giza, Egypt
Three nights later
The Giza necropolis is one of the starkest yet one of the most beautiful places on earth, awe-inspiring enough to give even ruthless warrior-princes like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Emperor Caligula, and Napoleon Bonaparte—men who conquered much of the then-known world—pause. The region has been the location of countless battles throughout history, and yet the pyramids, tombs, monuments, and ancient structures of the necropolis remain very much as they have been for over four thousand years. They have been invaded, desecrated, stripped of their wealth and beauty, and some have even been razed over the centuries to make way for newer ones, but there they are still, chilling and majestic.
Of course, the necropolis is no longer isolated on the limestone plateau on the edge of the Sahara Desert overlooking Giza. The city of Giza now engulfs the necropolis, so close that diners in a Pizza Hut restaurant right across the street can look out the front window and get a full awe-inspiring view of the Sphinx and the three Great Pyramids while munching on pineapple pizza. In turn, the sprawling Cairo metroplex have begun engulfing Giza as the Egyptian economy slowly improves and workers flock to the city. Thousands of visitors from all over the world still tour the pyramids and monuments every day, but it is no longer the mystical, mysterious, and magical place it once was.