by Tom Clancy
With the Glock holstered at his side, he grabbed the combat knife and slid like one more predator beneath the ink-black water.
The river felt warm and thick in his palms; the vegetation growing from the bottom (which might have been hydrilla; he wasn’t sure) scraped across his bare feet. He estimated the river’s depth at just eight or nine feet in this section. He swam silently, guided by the kerosene lantern light shining down on the waves ahead. Yes, this was home. This was where Carmichael lived forever …
It was only as he neared the dock that he remembered the crocodiles.
He shuddered and came up beneath the second Zodiac, his exit from the water silent, his breath slowly released. Their man was in the first boat, docked farthest out. Moore peered furtively around the boat’s hull. The guy was one of Borja’s sicarios, mid-twenties, lanky, with a few tribal tattoos slashing across his shoulder blades. Samad and his men would not have tattoos; they were forbidden in Islam.
After his container made a louder chugging noise, the sicario stopped filling the tank, checked the fuel level, then lifted the plastic container once more.
Moore looked back at the house: all quiet, save for the almost electric hum of thousands of insects.
He submerged and swam back around the Zodiac, getting himself in position.
So the plan, formulated anew, was to take out this guy and fall back to the house. He and Towers would have one fewer guy to deal with and could still smoke ’em out. However, as he’d warned Towers, they had to be fast so gas boy wouldn’t be missed.
Moore held the combat knife in a reverse grip, the blade jutting from the bottom of his fist. Three, two, one, he kicked hard and came out of the water, slid one arm around the man’s waist while plunging the blade into his chest and dragging him over the side — and it all needed to happen before the guy yelled, because Moore couldn’t reach his mouth.
Every consideration had been taken. The blade’s tip was sharp, and it had good cutting edges. Moore had discovered the hard way that if you cut an artery with a dull blade, it tended to contract and stop bleeding. A cleanly severed main artery resulted in loss of consciousness and death. Furthermore, holding the man underwater would cause his heart to race, and death would come even sooner.
The snatch itself had gone off perfectly, textbook. Moore could go up to Rhode Island and give lectures about it at the Naval War College. The guy had gone over the side with only a gasp and a barely perceptible groan. Even the splash wasn’t very loud, as Moore had eased him down into the water rather than jerking him.
But in that second, as the water rushed over Moore’s face and he gritted his teeth and sucked in air — that second when every muscle in his body had tensed — he spied from the corner of his eye the back door of the house opening and a figure appearing in silhouette.
That individual had seen a man rise from the water and drag his colleague over the side. And it was all Moore could do to hold the struggling man beneath the water while shaking against the fear that the alarm had just gone off.
His heart red-zoned immediately.
He wanted to scream. They were fucked!
One task at a time. First, he willed himself into a moment of calm as he continued choking the man, who abruptly stopped thrashing.
As he released the guy, the first salvo of gunfire tore into the river, the shots punching just behind him as he now swam down toward the dock’s pilings and kept tight to them, on the inside beneath the dock.
Then came another salvo, and another, full automatic-weapons fire hosing down a 180-degree line around the dock, the muffled thumping painfully familiar. Still tight to the piling, Moore ascended until his mouth broke water, and he took in a long breath. Bring down the heart rate. And think …
Towers’s sniper rifle thundered from the tree line, and a man up on the dock hit the planks with a double thud, wailing in Spanish. A wounding round, to be sure. Towers knew what he was doing, but he’d also given up his location and would be slower to return fire with that bolt-action rifle.
More footfalls now. Louder. The dock vibrated. AK-47 fire popped again, two weapons. Towers’s gun replied with a formidable crack, then fell silent against an onslaught of withering fire.
A third AK added its voice to the first two.
Then, a break …
“Talwar? Niazi? In the boat, now!”
Moore could barely contain himself. That was him, Samad, speaking in Arabic and standing on the dock above Moore’s head. And there was Moore, in the water, armed with a knife and a pistol. Three versus one. Were the object to kill Samad, he would push out from beneath the dock and surprise attack. Again, he willed himself back into a state of calm. His impatience had already cost them too much. Hold position. Wait.
The Zodiac bobbed up and down as the men climbed aboard, and one of them turned the key on the outboard. The engine started immediately.
Moore couldn’t disable the engine without being spotted and drawing their point-blank fire, but maybe he could sink the boat before they knew what was happening …
While the Zodiac had a rigid fiberglass hull, it still had synthetic rubber tubes constructed in separate sections, six or more chambers, he estimated. The rubber was actually a plastomer bound to a dense polyester cloth and tougher to damage than plain old rubber, but that didn’t mean Moore wouldn’t try.
He pushed off the piling, submerged again, and swam up beside the Zodiac while the motor was still idling. He took the knife and plunged it into the first compartment. The air hissed loudly and sent a steady rush of bubbles into the river. He swam under the boat as the men reacted and thrust his knife up once more, stabbing another section.
The fifty-horsepower engine throttled up, and Moore dove quickly to avoid being hit by the skeg or shredded by the propeller. As the boat passed overhead, he turned, swam hard for the surface, came up, and drew his pistol, lifting it over the waves and targeting the back tubes of the boat, firing once, twice, before the man at the outboard lifted a pistol and squeezed off two rounds. Moore threw himself back under the water, kicking hard for the dock.
By the time he began pulling himself up onto the dock, Towers was sprinting toward him, carrying all their gear. “What the fuck?” was all he shouted.
“Second Zodiac!” Moore answered.
Towers threw the backpacks and rifles into the boat and climbed aboard. “Keys! No keys!”
The guy Towers had hit still lay on the dock in a pool of blood and clutching his hip. Moore dropped to his knees beside the man. “Keys for the boat?”
The man just looked at him, all teeth and agony.
Moore went through his pockets. Nothing. Back in the house? Should he go check? No time.
Wait. The guy in the water. He looked up. The body was floating facedown. Moore ran to the edge of the dock and dove in, swimming out to the corpse. This guy had probably put the keys in the first outboard. There was nothing to say that he didn’t have the keys to the second one still in his pocket.
Moore reached him, felt the man’s pockets, found the keys, and dug them out. He swam back to the Zodiac and tossed the keys to his partner, who fumbled to get them in the outboard.
“Good to go!” Towers announced.
Moore reached up, and Towers hauled him into the Zodiac. While Towers started the engine, Moore threw off the line. The engine thrummed, and they sped away from the dock as Towers used one hand to tug on his night-vision goggles.
“They’ve got a good lead on us,” Towers said, pointing ahead as they dropped into the first Zodiac’s dissolving wake. “And I got a good look …and that is them! Samad is wearing a gray or tan T-shirt. The other guys are wearing black.”
“I heard him call to his men.” Moore was fighting for breath, trembling badly, the adrenaline overwhelming him as he riffled through his pack and produced the satellite phone. He thumbed it on and scrolled to the call log. There was only one contact saved there: BOOTNECK FIVE.
He hit the button, waited.
&
nbsp; “This is Bootneck Five,” came a distinctly British voice.
“Hey, this is River Team,” Moore said. “Our package is on the move. They’re heading north in a Zodiac toward the rendezvous point. We’re in pursuit. We need your intercept at the rendezvous.”
“No problem, River Team. We were hoping for your call. I’ll contact you once we’re in position.”
“Thanks, bro.”
“You’ll thank us all later with a pint, mate.”
“My pleasure.” Moore returned the phone to his backpack, then sat up and readjusted his grip on the Glock, testing out his firing position from his seat. The wind was whipping over them now, and from the shoreline came pinpricks of light that became darker forms as they approached.
“Hey, did you check fuel?” Towers called.
“Shit, no.” Moore leaned down and rapped a knuckle on the plastic gas tank. Hollow. He dove for a small pocket on his backpack and produced a penlight, which he directed on the plastic so he could see the shadow line of fuel. Oh, shit …not good news. And that’s why the first guy had come out to fill the tank.
“You think we’ll make it?” asked Towers.
“Full-throttle. Just keep going.” Moore estimated their speed at nearly thirty knots, all they could bleed out of the little outboard. He reached down and pulled on his own NVGs, the world transformed from layers of gray, dark blue, and black to glowing green and white. He focused his attention ahead, and there, in the distance, he spotted the Zodiac with three ribbons of whitewater fluttering behind.
A gunshot ricocheted off the side of their outboard.
“Get down!” Moore ordered, throwing himself on top of his backpack.
Towers ducked but had to keep his hand on the tiller. Moore tugged off his NVGs and grabbed one of the sniper rifles. Three more pops sounded above the din of outboards, and a hissing came from the front portside of their boat. Moore crawled up toward the bow, propped his elbows on the tubes, and settled down with the rifle. He sighted the back of the Zodiac, but between all the bouncing of their craft and the target, an accurate shot was impossible. If he gambled and the shot went wide and struck Samad in the head …He cursed and turned back to Towers. “I can’t get a bead. Can we get any closer?”
“I’m trying!”
Moore leaned over, set down the rifle, and tugged out his Glock. Samad had probably called ahead to their pilot for an early pickup. The pilot’s cell phone was already being monitored by the NSA, so the second he got that call, Moore’s people would know. A quick check of his smartphone confirmed that. Text message from Slater: Chopper called. He’s en route to the ruins and rendezvous.
But so was a Sea King Mk4 helicopter carrying up to twenty-seven Royal Marines who would fast-rope into the rendezvous point and secure it. However, if Samad spotted that helo, he and his boys could ditch early and make a run for it into the jungle. The fool could get himself killed if he did that.
Moore checked their GPS position on his smartphone, the signal from his shoulder chip being received and routed to the Agency’s satellites and that information being shot back down to him for a position accurate to within three meters. They were about five miles up the river now, with about four miles to go, which translated into less than ten minutes boat time.
They heard the whomping first, followed by the distant flashes of the helo’s lights. No, it wasn’t the Guatemalan pilot but the Royal Marines, coming in loud, as though announced by trumpets, and if Samad didn’t see that bird far ahead, then he had his head under the water. Shit.
Behind Moore, the outboard sputtered, and then he felt it — the bow lowering toward the waves as they slowed, the tube growing softer as more air jetted out.
Samad’s Zodiac was less than fifty meters away. They’d slowed, too, the boat’s pilot distracted by the oncoming helicopter, which, perhaps, confused him. They were expecting a small chopper but were getting a big one. Moore hadn’t considered that.
As the outboard chugged even more loudly, sucking on fumes now, Moore cursed again and looked back at Towers, who said, “Up to the Marines now, I guess, huh? They got orders to take them alive, I hope?”
“Those orders don’t mean shit. If they’re fired upon, they will fire back. I only wanted them as a roadblock.”
A more high-pitched thumping from the northeast joined the deeper baritone of the Marines’ chopper, and Moore lifted his binoculars to spy the tiny R44 whirlybird whose twin-bladed rotor sat atop a dorsal-fin — like platform. The helo could carry a pilot and three passengers, and that’s exactly what its pilot intended to do.
But how would the Guatemalan react to soldiers fast-roping into his intended landing zone? He’d haul ass out of there. And Samad would see that, too.
Moore panned down with the binoculars and focused on Samad’s Zodiac. The man himself was pointing up at the second helicopter, then gesticulating wildly for his man at the tiller to pull over, across the river.
When his man failed to react, Samad himself seized the tiller, and the Zodiac cut hard to the right toward the shoreline, and that’s when the portside tubing struck something in the water. The boat fishtailed suddenly as the outboard was struck and lifted partially out of the water. The violent impact threw Samad and one of his men across the Zodiac—
And over the side. Into the water. The guy at the tiller, who’d been white-knuckling that handle even as Samad had taken over, shouted and broke into a wide arc, trying to wheel around. Moore saw it now — a fallen tree all but an inch or so submerged and nearly invisible in the darkness. Samad’s pilot had run right over it.
Moore stole a look back. Their outboard was down to a gurgle. He took up the sniper rifle, even as Towers released the tiller and lifted his own gun, working the bolt to prepare for his next shot.
The engine quit. They were gliding now toward the other Zodiac and the men in the water. Twenty meters. From the corner of his eye Moore saw movement along the shoreline. Splashes. Glowing eyes. The man in the Zodiac spotted him, thrust out his pistol — but not before Moore sighted his head and took the first shot.
While the pilot might have been a valuable prisoner, keeping him alive decreased Moore’s chances of capturing Samad. They needed to isolate the target. The man’s head snapped back, and he slumped near the outboard. Pilotless, the Zodiac now drove straight for the shoreline.
Samad and the other guy, either Talwar or Niazi, swam back toward the boat, both hollering and well aware they were not alone in the water. While Samad struggled forward, his partner let out a horrific cry before vanishing beneath the waves.
Towers took the butt of his rifle and used it like an oar, trying to steer them closer to the other boat. Ten meters now.
The water moved again.
And Moore spotted the first enormous shadow coming up behind Samad and fired twice. The shadow jerked left and disappeared.
Samad, a man who’d been raised in the mountains and desert, was hardly a good swimmer, and in his panic, he began to hyperventilate and go under.
Towers fired at another shadow just to the left of Samad, and Moore realized what he had to do.
He dropped the rifle, checked to make sure his Glock was still holstered at his side, then dove into the water.
Meanwhile, Towers took up both pistols and began firing all around Samad, trying to create a screen around him. Then he widened his fire as Moore came up and swam hard toward the man.
“Just calm down,” Moore told Samad in Arabic. “I’ll get you out.”
Samad did not answer and continued thrashing and gasping for air. If Moore got too close, he could be knocked out, so he drew up slowly, then, seeing a chance, he darted closer and grabbed one of Samad’s wrists as Towers glided up to them in the Zodiac.
“Come on, the boat’s right here,” Moore barked.
He jerked Samad forward, past him, then shoved the guy up toward the Zodiac, where Towers seized one of the handles on the hull and used the other to haul Samad aboard. As the man collapsed onto the
deck, his clean-shaven face and head glistening with water, Towers drew his pistol and said, “Allahu Akbar.”
Samad glared at him.
Moore breathed the sigh of a lifetime. They’d done it. He clutched the Zodiac with one hand and just hung there for a few seconds, the tears threatening to fall. He wasn’t sure how he felt: overjoyed one second, wanting to commit murder the next, and those conflicting emotions overwhelmed him. For the moment, all was right with the world, and he wished Frank Carmichael were there to see it. The water was their home, be it an ocean, a river, the bottom of a pool.
Towers had already tossed a pair of handcuffs to Samad and ordered that he bind his wrists behind his back, which he did. “Hey, I can’t help you up,” he told Moore. “I’m covering him.”
“No problem, buddy. I’ll be right there.”
The satellite phone began to ring.
Moore whirled and faced the Zodiac, reaching up to pull himself into the boat. The water moved strangely.
And in the next pair of seconds, Moore freed his Glock from its holster, shoved the pistol into the water, and jerked the trigger.
Epilogue
BLACK COFFEE
Starbucks
McLean, Virginia
Two Weeks Later
The Starbucks in Old Dominion Center, known as the Chesterbrook store, was a stand-alone building with a fireplace on the second floor. It was one of three Starbucks near the George H. W. Bush Center for Central Intelligence, and the lines were sometimes out the door during the morning rush. Moore was not fond of waiting fifteen minutes for a five-dollar cup of coffee, and so he’d told her to meet him there at four p.m., during the slower time, when the blenders and cappuccino machines weren’t humming quite as often. He sat in a chair near the entrance, creating profiles of the people around him and those ordering at the counter. He summed up their entire lives within seconds, where they’d grown up, where they’d gone to school, whether or not they hated their jobs, and how much money they made. He assigned them sexual orientation, marital status, and political affiliation. Being a keen observer was a prerequisite for his line of work, but the game now had nothing to do with that and everything to do with calming down.