by Alex Archer
“Unless they had someone helping them on the inside,” Roux said. “For a team of experienced operators like these guys, that wouldn’t be too difficult to obtain.”
George nodded. “Good point.” He checked his watch. “Their plane ought to be landing in the next thirty minutes. That means we’ve got a small window to plan our strategy. Any flaws with the plan will mean we’ll potentially be turning a picturesque seaside tourist attraction into a glow-in-the-dark hunk of barren rock.”
“Not if we have anything to do with it,” Annja said.
George looked at his watch again. “In about five minutes, this place is going to be overrun with suits looking to get their next promotion based on how well this operation unfolds.”
“Wonderful,” Roux said.
George smiled at him. “Welcome to my world. For the most part, I love what I do. But having to deal with these idiots is the low point of any day for me.”
“Why is that?”
“They don’t trust the opinion of a tech guy like me.” George smiled. “Which is why we need someone whose opinion they will respect.” He stood and walked to the door.
“You have someone in mind?” Annja asked.
“An old friend of yours, Annja,” George said. He opened the door and Annja saw a face she hadn’t seen since the jungles of the Philippines a long time ago.
“Vic?”
The Marine sniper walked in with a big wide grin on his face. “Hi, Annja, long time, no see….”
29
Annja looked at George. “This is your doing?”
George grinned. “Think of it as me stacking the deck in my favor, that’s all. These suits need someone whose opinion they respect. I’m just giving that to them. When Vic tells them the facts surrounding this situation, they’ll listen. If I tell them, they’ll ignore it.”
Annja nodded at Roux. “This is Roux. Roux, this is Vic Gutierrez, gunnery sergeant with the Marine Corps.”
“Ex-Marine, actually,” Vic said, shaking Roux’s hand. “I’m with another agency at this time.”
“Which agency?” Roux asked with a thin smile playing out across his face. “Or can’t you say.”
“Exactly,” Vic said. “And besides, it’s not important. When George called me and told me what was up, I got here as soon as I could.” He smiled at Annja. “You’re looking good. Still getting into all sorts of trouble, I see.”
Annja nodded. “I was on vacation, I swear it.”
“Weren’t you on vacation the last time you were over there? Right before the Abu Sayyaf grabbed you?”
“That poor country has a bad reputation with me,” Annja said. She looked at George again. “How did you know about Vic?”
George shrugged. “I told you that I’ve followed some of your adventures with great enthusiasm. You know how some people search Google to find references to themselves? I did that only on my computers. I wanted to see if you’d had any dealings with the government. Imagine my surprise when Vic’s name came up.”
“I’ve had plenty of dealings with spies and soldiers,” Annja said. “Sometimes they don’t end all that well.”
“Sometimes they do,” Vic said. He smiled and turned to George. “So, bring me up to speed here. I’m hearing chatter that there’s a phalanx of bureaucrats on their way here to ruin any hope of resolving this thing intelligently.”
George led Vic over to his computer and Annja watched as the former hacker briefed the former Marine sniper. Vic looked different in his suit, but Annja could tell the heart of a warrior still beat proudly in his chest. He listened intently as George briefed him, waited until he was done and then asked several pointed questions that George answered as best he could.
When they were finished, Vic looked at Annja and Roux. “Well, this is something to tell the grandkids, huh?”
“Something like that,” Annja said. “Will it be a problem?”
Vic shrugged. “Depends on who walks through that door. We could get lucky and score someone with half a brain they don’t mind using. Chances are, however, that we’ll get a boatload of idiots looking to rubber stamp their own careers even at the cost of thousands of lives.”
“That’s not exactly doing a lot for my morale,” Annja said.
Vic smiled. “Which is exactly why you and your buddy Roux are leaving. Immediately.”
“What are you talking about? We brought this to you.” Annja frowned. “I want in on anything that happens.”
Vic held up his hand. “Relax, Annja. I’m not cutting you out completely. I just don’t want you guys around when the bullshit brigade arrives. The less they know of the situation, the better off we’ll be.”
“That doesn’t even sound like it’s supposed to make sense,” Roux said.
“Smart man,” Vic said. “It’s not. I’ll give them the barest amount of intel on this so they can see how bad it is. Once they realize that, they’ll want to stay far away from it, which means they’ll turn over command to me.”
“You’ve got that kind of sway?” Annja asked.
Vic grinned. “Been a few years since the jungle, Annja. You wouldn’t believe what kind of pull I can get if I ask real nice.”
“Okay.”
Vic continued. “The problem with these idiots is that if they see you guys here—civilians, in other words—they’ll go nuts and start parading around trying to impress one another and you, not to mention they’ll start poking into the story details. And once they learn this came from you, they’ll start overstepping their bounds, dismissing facts and pretty much doing everything in their power to give this guy Spier exactly what he wants—a genuine clusterfuck.”
“So where are we going, then?”
“Martha’s Vineyard,” Vic said. “I want eyes on the ground there. George and I will join you, along with a select team of operators, once I get this mess cleared up.”
Roux glanced out of the window. “Speaking of which, I think your brigade just arrived.”
Annja looked out and saw a fleet of black SUVs had rolled into the parking lot. From within, dozens of suits with phones stuck to their ears spilled out and stalked toward the terminal building.
Vic frowned. “Shit, that was fast.” He looked back at Roux and Annja. “All right, you two, get the hell out of here. You’re just two people catching a flight to somewhere. Take the back stairway down and find hangar five. There’s a chopper there already spinning its rotors.”
“That’ll take us to Martha’s Vineyard?”
Vic pushed them toward the door. “Yep. Now go!”
Annja and Roux stepped outside and the door locked behind them. From down below they could hear the commotion. Roux glanced at Annja. “I guess we should get lost.”
They hurried down the back stairway, as Vic had told them. Outside on the tarmac, a stiff breeze blew in from the west. As they wandered the flight line, Roux pointed at a hangar on their left. “There it is.”
Just outside the hangar, a Bell Helicopter painted blue with yellow trim sat spinning up its rotors. The pilot waved them aboard.
Annja climbed in and slid over so Roux could sit next to her. The pilot motioned for them to put on headsets.
When they had, he spoke. “Welcome aboard.”
“Thanks,” Annja said. “You know where we’re going?”
The pilot nodded. “Sure do. Sit back and enjoy the ride. We’ll be there before you know it.”
Annja heard the air-traffic controller come on the headset, directing the pilot that he was cleared for takeoff. The pilot responded, and then instead of racing down the tarmac toward liftoff, he simply pulled back and the helicopter lifted off the ground. Annja looked out the window and saw the ground falling away fast.
They skimmed at treetop level until the pilot adjusted his heading and increased their altitude. Then they were off on a straight course bound for Martha’s Vineyard.
Annja had been to Massachusetts a few times, but she couldn’t recognize any landmarks as they flew farthe
r southeast. She watched the cities and towns fall away beneath her.
Roux, for his part, looked annoyed at having to be in the air again so soon after the ride across the Pacific.
“You okay?” she asked.
He nodded. “Tired of flying. If God had meant us to do this, he would have given us wings.”
“But the view is incredible,” Annja said. “You’ve got to admit that.”
“My eyes are closed,” Roux said. “Wake me up when we get there.”
Annja leaned back and looked out toward the horizon. She could already see the Atlantic Ocean far off to the south. The pilot pointed ahead of them.
“That’s where we’re going. Beautiful day for flying!”
Annja agreed. She hoped Vic was right about the bureaucrats. They couldn’t afford to screw this up; everything had to work out perfectly or else Spier and his gang of ex-special-ops commandos could succeed in killing the German chancellor, and possibly the American president, as well.
Anger bubbled to the surface as she thought about Hans. He played me, she thought. And I fell for it. I made it so easy.
But could she blame herself? All she’d been looking for was some companionship. And a vacation is the perfect place to have a little uncommitted involvement, right?
Imagine if they hadn’t been around after the shark attack, she thought. She owed him that at least. He had saved her life.
Unless he caused the shark attack in the first place, she thought. She frowned. How could he have done that? They would have had to chum the waters. And she’d seen no evidence of that.
Besides, deliberately setting up a shark attack would also have meant they had to be certain Annja could kill the shark. And how would they have been able to predict that?
None of them knew who she was, after all. And they certainly hadn’t known about the sword.
At least, she hoped they hadn’t.
The thought that they might have researched her before they traveled to the Philippines was disconcerting, but at the same time, she disregarded the fear as completely unsound. There were too many factors at play for anyone to control completely.
The shark-attack save had to have been legitimate, she figured. Probably it was the only thing that was in this whole vacation.
Beneath the helicopter, the landscape changed from taller trees to shrub pine and sand.
And then they were out over Nantucket Sound, flying into Martha’s Vineyard. Annja could see the boats in the water, the sandy beaches and the darker blue of the Atlantic Ocean far below. It was so different from the Pacific Ocean and the Philippines, she thought.
But just as beautiful.
“We should be down in five minutes,” the pilot said. “Stand by, okay?”
Annja responded and then nudged Roux awake. “Almost there,” she said. “I thought you’d want to see us land.”
“Ugh, no,” Roux said. “Why do you torment me so, Annja Creed?”
“Because I love it.”
“Apparently.”
The helicopter flew over a small airfield and then slowed, started to rotate, and the ground came up at them with a suddenness that made Annja’s stomach drop slightly.
The skids of the chopper touched down. The pilot switched the rotors off and they waited until they’d stopped turning.
Annja removed her headset and stepped out of the chopper. The pilot smiled. “Thanks for flying with us.”
“Thanks for the lift.”
Roux stepped out behind her. “Thank God that’s over.”
“I wonder where we go from here,” Annja said. “You think Vic’s got something set up already?”
“That would require quite a bit of planning on his part,” Roux said. “And considering George only just filled him in on things, I’d say it’s doubtful we have a solid plan in place.”
“I guess we should do as he says and just look to get some eyes on the target. See if Spier and the gang show up.”
Roux checked his watch. “They’d need to either drive or fly down here. If they drove, they’d have to catch a ferry. If their plane landed on time and if they flew, then they could already be here.”
“I think they’ll probably drive down and take the ferry. Blend in more that way,” Annja said. She pointed near the terminal. “See the people here hoping to catch a glimpse of a celebrity flying in on a private bird? Spier won’t want that kind of attention.”
Roux nodded. “Good point.”
“We need to get into town and find out where the chancellor is staying on the island. Once we get that information, we can plan accordingly.”
Roux frowned. “You know any sort of action we take is going to immediately put us on the radar of the chancellor’s security people and possibly also the Secret Service, right?”
“What about it?”
Roux put a hand on his chest. “I’m as attention averse as Spier. The last thing I want is people looking into my background and figuring out that I should have died about five hundred and twenty years ago.”
Annja smiled. “You really think that they’d be able to find that kind of information?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried,” Roux said. “And you don’t need anyone looking beyond your lightweight celebrity, either. Now come on, let’s find a shuttle so we can get this game afoot, shall we?”
30
Annja and Roux caught an airport shuttle into Edgartown, but even as they drove closer to the outskirts of the town, they could see the increased security was going to be immense. The local police had been supplemented by a serious state police presence as well as federal agents with the Secret Service, State Department and a few other organizations.
Annja shook her head as they approached the crowded sidewalks of Edgartown. “I can’t even imagine why they’d try anything here. They’ll never get anywhere close to where the chancellor is staying.”
Roux shrugged. “Maybe they don’t need to. If they’ve figured out how to weaponize that pearl, then all they’d need to do is detonate it from somewhere they can be certain will take out their target.”
Tourists clogged the streets, mostly couples with children, and Annja frowned. A nuclear device of any type would result in an untold number of casualties. Among them, innocent children. It was unacceptable. And it was unthinkable that someone like Hans would find it so easy to forsake his military background and kill civilians who had nothing to do with his past. If he has a beef with the German government, then he should have simply waited until he could get to the chancellor without needing to threaten the lives of so many kids.
Her anger grew until Roux put a hand on her arm. “I can feel the rage boiling off you. I know what you’re thinking. Just try to control yourself. Otherwise, we’ll end up drawing too much attention to ourselves. We’ve got a job to do.”
“I’ve got a job to do,” Annja said. “I’m the one with the sword, remember?”
Roux nodded. “That doesn’t mean you can’t have a friend along to help, as well.” He grinned. “Or a few, for that matter, since George and Vic will be along, too.”
Annja took a calming breath. “Sorry. I just can’t fathom how they could rationalize hurting so many innocent people. This island is filled with kids!”
“I know,” Roux said. “But don’t drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out. The minds of those who are committed to death and mayhem can’t be swayed by rational discourse.”
Annja nodded. “In that case, I’ll have the sword do my arguing for me.”
ANNJA’S CELL PHONE purred a few moments later as they got off the shuttle in front of a souvenir shop.
“Annja? It’s George. You guys get there okay?”
“Yes, we caught a shuttle at the airport. We’re in Edgartown right now.”
“Good. We’re coming to you. Don’t move, okay?”
Annja started to say, “You’re here?” but then she saw the black SUV across the street and George waving them over. She nudged Roux. “There they
are. Let’s go.”
They climbed into the backseat. George was driving. Vic was dressed in black assault gear, load-bearing equipment and had enough ammunition on him to outfit a small revolution. But he smiled when they climbed in.
“Welcome to Martha’s Vineyard.”
Annja shook her head. “How did you guys get here so fast?”
Vic shrugged. “F15. It’s a little faster than a helicopter.”
“I thought an F15 could only seat two people.”
George groaned. “I had to sit on Vic’s lap. Don’t ask. It’s not an experience I ever want to repeat.”
“All in the name of national security,” Vic said. “But anyway, we flew into Otis on the cape and then choppered over. I briefed the Secret Service and grabbed one of their war wagons.”
“How did it go with the suits back at Hanscom?”
“They moved the incident command center into Boston, so they could have easier access to good places to drink and massages at their hotels,” Vic said. “But otherwise, I managed to convince them that this would be better handled by a small unit who could close on the assassins and deal with them without the need for any artillery strikes.”
George grinned. “What he means is he got them to sit the hell down and shut the hell up while we went to work.”
Annja looked at George. “Are you trained for this?”
“Technically? Nope. But Vic says on-the-job training is the best kind there is, so here I am.”
Annja looked at Vic. “You’re not serious.”
Vic shrugged. “My man wanted to come along. Says he’s qualified on firearms, so who am I to deny him some fun.”
“This isn’t fun, Vic,” Annja said. “These guys are professional operators. I know they have your respect.”
“They do. I’ve heard of the KSK guys before. I know we’re not dealing with any slouches here.”
“In that case,” Annja said, “why are you bringing along an amateur—no offense, George.”
George frowned. “Annja, you’re not exactly commando grade, either. So how is it that you get to be here and I don’t?”
“There are some things you don’t exactly know about me, George,” Annja said. “Things that will actually make me an asset to the team.”