He put his foot on the first tier of the wall and was about to boost himself up when an eagle-eyed lifeguard a dozen yards away shouted for him to stop. He must have been watching them the whole time and suspected they were up to something.
The two agents immediately were on guard and started moving toward them, even though Juan and Max were still out of their direct line of vision.
The time for subtlety was over. Juan heaved himself up onto the wall, climbing the three tiers with the agility of a monkey. When he reached the top, he lowered a hand to help Max. The lifeguard began climbing off his little mahogany tower and blowing his whistle to attract additional security. He either hadn’t noticed or had dismissed the two men in trench coats.
The agents burst into view. One threw open his coat and brought up a vicious-looking machine pistol. Max was halfway up the wall, as exposed as a bug on an entomologist’s lab table. Juan had a split second to make a decision, and he did so without hesitation.
He dropped Max.
Just as the agent pulled the trigger. Cement dust and chips exploded off the wall where Max had been dangling. People started screaming and stampeding away from the chain saw-like whine of the machine pistol as the entire thirty-round clip was emptied against the concrete wall inches above Max’s prone form.
Not knowing what was going on but acting on instinct and adrenaline, Cabrillo drew the Kel-Tec and returned fire. His first rounds were snap shots, just trying to break the gunman’s fixation on perforating Max. The gunman jerked slightly as a more carefully aimed yet still a little wild bullet struck the crown of his head.
The second agent started opening his coat, where he doubtlessly had his own weapon. Juan shifted his sights and, to his horror, saw that the “agent” was wearing a heavy suicide vest. He could see the packs of explosives and other bags that would contain metal scrap for shrapnel.
“Allahu Akbar,” the man shrieked.
Juan put a bullet down his open throat, and the man fell back like a marionette with its strings cut.
The first gunman had blood sheeting down his face and was staggering backward, dazed by the .380 caliber bullet that had gauged a trench through the top of his skull. He’d dropped his machine pistol down onto its sling and was fumbling in his coat pocket.
Juan couldn’t get a clear shot at him as people continued to streak past, not realizing they were blundering into the middle of the gunfight. He knew this first guy was probably also packing a vest and made the decision that hitting one of the civilians with a stray bullet was preferable to dozens of them getting mowed down in an explosion.
A hotel guard finally arrived. He’d been on the far side of the platform and hadn’t seen a thing. He noticed the one man down on the ground in a pool of his own blood, paid no attention to the guy with blood on his face, and instead trained his attention on Cabrillo, an obviously armed target.
He started to raise his pistol and nearly had it centered on Cabrillo when Max threw himself across the intervening ten yards and hit him like a linebacker. They crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs, bowling over another man in the process.
Juan took a chance and fired again. He hit the bomber in the chest, but the man merely staggered back from the impact. The bullet had hit one of the bags of nails, which stopped it like body armor. The Kel-Tec’s slide was locked back over an empty chamber.
Cabrillo flipped himself around so that his foot was pointing toward the gunman. The barrel of the .44 caliber pistol hidden inside his prosthetic leg made up its central support strut to give it as much length, and thus accuracy, as possible. There was only one round, so essentially the weapon was just a tube with a dual-trigger firing mechanism that ensured it couldn’t accidentally discharge.
When he hit the second trigger, it felt like someone had slammed the bottom of his stump with a sledgehammer. The round punched through the sole of his shoe, and the recoil almost knocked him off his perch. The heavy 300-grain bullet entered the bomber’s body in the abdomen, its kinetic energy lifting him off his feet like he’d been jerked from behind.
He hit the pool, his body parting the water, and sank from sight when the vest detonated. Water geysered in a solid white column that rose forty feet over the deck before crashing back like a torrential rain. The blast had been big enough and close enough to blow out part of the pool’s steel side. Water gushed through the opening, dancing and twisting as it fell over the side of the building on its long journey to the ground. The once-bucolic swimming pool had become one of the tallest waterfalls in the world.
There was nothing left of the bomber, and with the pool absorbing so much of the explosive force and the shrapnel, it didn’t appear that anyone had been injured, at least seriously.
Cabrillo’s hearing was just returning after the sonic assault of the blast. More people were screaming now, running, panicked and unsure of where to go or what to do. Over all this, he detected a high-keening wail, a sound of true mortal danger that cut above the fearful bleating of hotel guests.
There was a little boy still in the pool, his arms supported by plastic water wings. He’d been in the shallow end, playing by himself, when all the adults had scrambled from the water at the opening salvos of the attacks, and apparently his parents hadn’t had the time to rescue him.
As the water drained through the twisted opening, sucked through it like it was a high-speed pump, the floating child was being drawn inexorably toward the shattered metal.
Juan leapt off the eight-foot retaining wall and sprinted across the deck. He threw himself into a perfect dive that would have gotten applause from Olympic judges and struck out for the boy. He could feel the current pulling on his body. It was like trying to fight a riptide. He had been a strong swimmer his entire life and had been able to stroke his way out of some pretty dangerous situations, but nothing had prepared him for the raw power of the pool draining through its blown-out side. The hole was at least four feet in diameter.
He reached the child when they still had about ten feet to go before he would be sucked through. The kid flailed his arms, crying beyond all reason. Juan grabbed him by the hair to get out of the reach of his thrashing arms and tried to tow him clear, but the surge was simply too much to fight one-handed. He looked around in desperation. No one had seen what he was doing.
The hole was a bright spot near the bottom of the pool where sunlight illuminated the eddies and whirlpools that formed and dissolved as the water poured into infinity.
Cabrillo put on a burst of speed, his legs pistoning and his free arm hauling back with everything he had. For every foot he gained, the pool took back two. The vortex was just too strong. He had seconds before he was pulled through the rent in the side of the pool. He did the only thing open to him.
He stopped swimming.
And then twisted around so that he was facing the gaping tear. As they were drawn closer he held the child up in his arms. He would have one shot, one instant, when he could make this happen and save them both. If not, he and the boy would be sucked out of the pool and sent plummeting a thousand feet to their deaths.
They were less than two feet away. The water was still too deep to stand, so Cabrillo kicked hard, raising his upper body out of the water. He threw the boy at the ledge surrounding the swimming pool, sank down to the bottom, and sprang up again. He launched himself partially out of the water and hit the side of the pool directly over the tear in its side. The relentless pull sucked at his dangling legs and nearly drew him back in again before he managed to get a better grip on the cement and haul himself completely free. He looked to his side. The boy was just pulling himself upright, tears cutting through the water on his face, his right elbow bent as he examined the scrape he’d gotten when he hit the deck. Only when he saw that it was beginning to bleed a little did he began to wail like a fire engine.
Juan got to his feet and snatched up the kid so he wouldn’t fall in again. He hooked up with Max, dumped the sniveling boy next to a potted palm, and joined
the frenzied exodus off the SkyPark.
Ten minutes later, just as police were starting to arrive at the resort en masse, they hit the lobby. Any attempt at a security cordon at this point was never going to happen, and the cops seemed to realize it. People streamed out of the building like a herd of frightened animals. Cabrillo and Hanley allowed themselves to be borne along with the tide of humanity. Once out of the building, they made their way down to the far end of a line of taxis and hopped into the last cab in the string.
The driver was about to protest that he couldn’t take fares until it was his turn but stopped himself when he saw the three hundred Singapore dollar bills in Cabrillo’s hand.
He didn’t even care that they were wet.
7
MAX BROKE THE MINUTES-LONG SILENCE. IT HAD TAKEN him that long to get his breathing under control and for his normally florid complexion to return from the far end of the crimson color palette. “Mind telling me what just happened back there?”
Juan didn’t respond right away. Instead, he reached into his pocket for his phone, saw that it had been ruined by his time in the pool, and shoved it back in his pocket. Hanley handed over his undamaged cell. Cabrillo punched in a memorized number. On these disposable phones they never preprogrammed the extensions of other team members in case they were ever confiscated.
The line rang once and was picked up. “How you doing, Tiny?” Juan asked. Chuck Gunderson, aka Tiny, was the Corporation’s chief pilot. Though he spent little time aboard the Oregon, he was an integral part of the team.
“As one of my flight instructors told me, if you don’t have patience, you’ll never make it as a pilot.” Chuck had that peculiar Minnesota drawl made famous in the movie Fargo.
Had the pilot inserted the word “fine” into his answer, it would have indicated that he wasn’t alone and was most likely under duress.
“We’re on our way back right now. Contact ATC and get us a slot out of here.”
Gunderson must have heard something in the Chairman’s voice. “Trouble?”
“All kinds and then some. We should be there in twenty minutes.” Juan cut the connection and handed back Max’s phone. A pair of ambulances screamed past in the opposite lane, their lights flashing and their sirens going full bore.
“Are you going to answer my question?” Hanley asked.
Cabrillo closed his eyes, picturing the scene when they’d first spotted the suicide bombers. He concentrated on the people around them, not on the gunmen. The picture firmed up in his mind, and he studied the faces of the hotel guests and staff who had been in the lobby at that instant. It wasn’t an innate skill but rather something drilled into him during his CIA training so that when all hell broke loose he could distinguish additional threats or identify accomplices. Oftentimes in assassinations or bombings there was an observer nearby to report back on the operation.
“I think,” he finally said, “that we happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Hanley was incredulous. “You honestly think that was a coincidence?” he demanded.
“Yes,” Cabrillo replied, hastily raising a hand to stave off Max’s next remark. “Hear me out. As I mentioned earlier, if Croissard wanted to set us up, he could have had his goon, Smith—nice name, that, by the way—shoot us as soon as we were in the suite. Stuff our bodies into some big trunks, and no one would ever be the wiser. With me so far?”
Max nodded.
“That puts him in the clear, which means it’s unlikely he told anyone about the meeting since he really does want us to find his daughter. Right?”
“Okay,” Hanley said, drawing out the word.
“Now, who was around us when the bombers made their move?”
“Hell, I don’t even recall what they were wearing,” the Corporation’s number two admitted.
“Overcoats, which in this heat should have tipped me off that they weren’t Singapore security forces. Anyway, you and I were the only two Caucasians in the lobby when they started after us. Everyone else was Asian. I think this attack has been in the works for a while, but it was seeing our white faces that triggered them into executing their plan.”
“Seriously?” Max asked, his voice dripping with doubt.
“Just because there has never been a terrorist attack in Singapore doesn’t mean it isn’t a target. The casino’s brand-new, a shining example of Western decadence. Any jihadi worth his salt would be drooling to blow up the place. We just happened to be there when it happened.”
Hanley still didn’t look convinced.
“How about this,” Juan offered. “If by tonight some group hasn’t laid claim to the attack, we’ll assume we were the targets and we’ll back out of our deal with Croissard, since he was the only person who knew we were going to be at the hotel. Would that satisfy you?”
More emergency vehicles went barreling by, followed by a pair of SUVs painted in jungle camouflage colors.
When Max didn’t say anything, Juan caved. “Fine, I’ll call Croissard and tell him we’re out and that he needs to find someone else to save his daughter.”
Hanley shot him a look. “That is the feeblest attempt at manipulation I’ve ever heard.”
“Is it going to work?”
“Yes, damnit,” Max spat, angry at himself for being so predictable. “If some group claims responsibility, our mission’s still on.” He crossed his arms and stared out the window like a petulant child.
Cabrillo felt no qualms about using his friend’s emotions like this. Hanley had done it to him a million times before. And it wasn’t that either needed to be nudged to do the right thing. It was that they needed to be in total agreement. Their relationship was the foundation on which the Corporation was built, and if they didn’t see eye to eye on nearly everything, the entire team would lose its edge.
Juan had the driver drop them about a quarter mile short of the General Aviation area. Just because Tiny had said everything aboard the plane was all right didn’t mean that the area was secure. The pair approached cautiously, using cars parked along the access road as cover. The cement building, with its row of green-tinted glass windows, looked normal. There was an armed guard out front with a valet, but he’d been there when they had first arrived.
Planes were taking off and landing normally, meaning the airport was still operational. That, coupled with the fact that the uniformed rent-a-cop didn’t look particularly wary, told Cabrillo that the authorities had yet to issue any sort of alert.
They were eyed as they entered the building. Juan’s suit had stopped dripping but was still soaked, and Max’s was scuffed-up from the attack.
“Our taxi hit a fire hydrant,” Juan explained as they passed.
Moments later they were escorted by a pretty Malaysian hostess to their Gulfstream and were entreated to return to Singapore soon.
“What happened to you two?” Tiny asked as they mounted the stairs. Despite the cabin’s ample headroom, Gunderson had to stoop over to keep his flight cap atop his blond head. His shoulders seemed to brush both sides of the fuselage.
“Later,” Cabrillo said. “Get us the hell out of here.”
Tiny ducked back into the cockpit and set about following the Chairman’s order with his copilot. Juan got on the aircraft’s satellite phone and dialed Roland Croissard’s cell. It rang eight times, and he was sure it would go to voice mail when the Swiss financier picked up.
“Mr. Croissard, it’s Juan Cabrillo.” The background din was a symphony of sirens. “What’s happening there?”
“A bombing on the roof of the hotel.” Croissard’s voice was edgy, near panic. “They have evacuated all the guests. It is a good thing, because ten minutes after the first explosion another ripped through part of the casino.”
Juan covered the handset’s microphone and relayed that last bit of information to Max, adding, “See, we were nowhere near the gaming floor. It was a coincidence.”
Max’s perpetual scowl deepened, but he knew the Chairman was
right.
“Are you and Smith okay?”
“Oui, oui, we are unharmed. Just a little shaken up, perhaps. Well, at least I am. Nothing seems to bother John.”
“That’s good. I think we are all victims of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.” Juan had to raise his voice when the Gulfstream’s twin engines began spooling up. “I want to assure you that this will not affect our transaction. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do. And I am most relieved.”
“Let Mr. Smith know that I will be in touch with instructions for how we will pick him up. As I said earlier it will most likely take place in Chittagong, Bangladesh.”
“D’accord. I will tell him.”
Juan cut the connection. He rummaged through a storage locker and found a pair of mechanic’s overalls. They were sized for Tiny Gunderson, but a dry tent was preferable to a well-tailored but wet suit.
They took off a few minutes later, and no sooner had the undercarriage clicked into the fuselage than Tiny’s voice came over the intercom. “Singapore control just shut down all departing aircraft. They’re requesting we return to the airport, but I figure we’ll be beyond their twelve-mile limit before they can do anything about it. Whatever you and Max got into back there, Chairman, it sure has their dander up.”
Hanley and Cabrillo exchanged a look. Max leaned forward to a small refrigerator and pulled out two beers, a Peroni for Juan and a Bud Light for himself. The “Light” was an admission that his personal battle with the bulge was ongoing. “I’d say,” he said, “that we just barely kept our butts out of a Singapore Sling.”
Cabrillo groaned.
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