“No need to be a hero,” said Hannon from behind the closed door. “I know this is personal, but keep your head.”
Mike winced at the “personal” remark. Victoria’s voice was suddenly in his ear. “Don’t get sucked into a dialogue, Mike. Just deliver the goods, get the hostage and get the hell out.”
He licked his dry lips. He’d heard her plainly, but he couldn’t resist letting Hannon talk. “What do you mean, it’s ‘personal’?”
There was a long pause, then Hannon replied: “I know it was your wife who got me convicted.”
Mike bristled, but said nothing.
“When I dropped that sailboat in Puerto Rico and started hunting for a cruise ship, I knew I’d be making my way back home through Florida. There was just one Floridian left on my list, so I figured I might as well take advantage of being there. Imagine my surprise when I dialed Mrs. Malone of Clearwater to check on her daughter’s whereabouts for the alumni association and learned she’d gotten hitched—to a Mike Posten, no less. Now don’t even try to tell me it’s a coincidence that my old shipmate and my favorite reporter ended up tying the knot. You wouldn’t be here, Posten, if it was a coincidence.”
Mike’s heart raced, but he stood his ground, staring at the door. Victoria’s voice blared through the earpiece.
“Step back, Mike. Abort. I repeat: Abort!”
Slowly, Mike’s right foot slid back an inch—then stopped. Her command made sense; Hannon was obviously out for blood. But something told him he had to play this out. Take his chances. Even before he’d walked down the hall, he knew there’d be no turning back.
He waited for Hannon to make his move.
A hundred feet away, Victoria cursed and stared helplessly at the scene that was unfolding.
Suddenly, Mike heard the chain lock coming off the door inside. But it didn’t open.
“We’re moving away from the door,” said Hannon from inside the closed cabin. “Count to five, slowly. Then open the door and push the cart inside.”
Mike drew a deep breath. “One.”
Victoria was on one knee, watching intensely. “McCabe, stand by. He’s entering in five seconds.”
“Two.”
“McCabe, do you copy?”
“Three.”
Her voice shook with urgency. “I need confirmation now. Digital if not verbal.”
“Four.”
“Dammit, McCabe!”
“Five,” Mike said as he swallowed hard and opened the door.
At that same instant, McCabe yanked open the door to enter from the veranda, and a drapery cord that was tied to the handle snagged the trigger on the missing flare gun, which was aimed at the fuel tank stuffed behind the mattresses.
The spring gun triggered a fiery explosion that obliterated the veranda. The major force was directed outward, away from the mattresses and through the open doorway. A tube of flame shot out the side of the ship like water from a hydrant. A shock wave shattered windows and glass balustrades on neighboring cabins. Little pieces of the veranda splashed into the ocean. McCabe landed with a thud on the Lido Deck below.
Inside the cabin, the blast sent everything flying toward starboard. Mike slammed against the door across the hall, then tumbled to the ground. He cried out in pain as the cart landed on his leg. His clothes were shredded down to his Kevlar vest, and his body was blackened with ash and debris. Thick black smoke filled the cabin and the hallway. He sat up and choked on the heavy smoke, so he laid flat on his back for the fresh air down low. The sprinklers came on throughout the corridor, soaking him with cold water.
Victoria stood at the end of the hall, drenched from the sprinklers, yelling into her receiver. No answer from McCabe. Nothing from Mike. The smoke and spray had filled the hallway like a foggy thunderstorm, reducing visibility practically to zero.
“Snipers, hold your fire!” shouted Victoria. From their positions at the end of the hall, it was impossible to tell Hannon from Mike, from Coolidge or even from Shelly.
Victoria grabbed a flashlight and goggles from the equipment box, then drew her gun and headed up the hall. An HRT agent in SWAT regalia was flanking her. Two people suddenly burst through a cabin door into the smoky hallway.
“Freeze!” she shouted—but it was an elderly couple, two of the portside passengers they’d been unable to evacuate earlier. Two other doors flew open with still more passengers who were coughing from the smoke that had seeped into their cabins. Victoria looked at her HRT escort. “Get the passengers out of here!”
He broke away quickly to tend to the passengers. Victoria was suddenly on her own.
The smoke began to clear as she forged ahead, and the sprinklers were producing more of a mist than a shower. The hallway lights, however, were completely blown out within fifty feet of the cabin. Victoria ran to the edge of darkness, then halted. She waited a moment for her pupils to dilate. With her back to the wall, she quickly scanned the debris. She could see the cart and scuba equipment. Thankfully, the tanks hadn’t ruptured and compounded the explosion. The Kevlar shield lay scorched on the floor—hopefully, it had saved Mike’s life. But there was no sign of him.
Victoria inched closer to the gaping hole that was once the doorway to cabin 921. She stopped just at the edge of the hole. She noticed a charred smell, which didn’t bode well. She could hear a crackling sound every three or four seconds, like a leaky pipe dripping onto hot coals. She crouched, then wheeled on one foot and peered inside.
It was worse than she’d expected.
The back wall and veranda were completely gone, making the cabin look like the back of a dollhouse. Through the gaping hole, she was listening to the ocean and looking at the night sky and stars on the horizon. The moon lent the cabin an eerie light. The interior looked as if someone had taken a flamethrower to it. Scorched wallpaper was peeling off the walls. Half the ceiling had been blown away, exposing a portion of the cabin above. The shell of a television and mini-bar lay amid the blackened remains of a bed and dresser.
Cautiously, she stepped inside. She pointed her gun toward the bathroom, then switched on the flashlight. Damage was minimal, but there was still no sign of Mike, Hannon or his hostages. She turned away from the bathroom and stepped toward the closet. Again, she pointed her gun and switched on the flashlight. Nothing. It was just as scorched as the rest of the cabin. She left her flashlight burning and scanned the rest of the cabin. She could quickly discern that the main blast had gone out the door that led to the veranda. Inside, however, she saw no trace of human life or remains.
It was then that she noticed the side door that presumably led to an adjoining cabin.
She switched off the flashlight and reached for the brass handle. It felt warm through her gloves, but it didn’t burn. With her gun drawn she turned the handle.
A burst of gunfire splintered the door. Two shots missed, but one hit her in her Kevlar vest, knocking her backward. She was stunned for a second, then got up quickly. She was about to make a run for it when the side door flew open with the force of a hurricane, nearly swinging off its hinges. Hannon stood in the doorway right behind Mike, holding a gun to Mike’s head.
Victoria froze.
“Drop the gun!” said Hannon.
Her mind raced with a flood of bad news. Her back was to the gaping hole in the ship and ocean beyond. The only way out was on the other side of Hannon. Mike was between her and Hannon. And he was naked from the waist up—Hannon was wearing his vest.
“I said, drop the gun!”
Victoria was in the classic stance: her arms extended out in front of her, both hands on the gun to steady her aim. For a split second, she saw herself in Mike’s shoes, back at Quantico, staring down the barrel of a gun as some nervous cop in training decided what to do.
“Where are the hostages!” she shouted.
“In the next cabin. Some people have enough sense to leave before a cabin explodes.”
“You son of a bitch. You left while Mike was counting down. You
set us up.”
“You set yourself up. Now drop the gun.”
She aimed at his forehead. He was only slightly taller than Mike, giving her an opening of just a few inches. She wanted to wait for backup or a better shot, but she could see the gun slowly sliding forward on Mike’s head, angling toward her. Hannon had no intention of letting either one of them out alive.
“Drop it!” he shouted again.
“Drop dead,” she whispered.
On instinct, she fired off a shot that sounded like thunder. In an explosion of red both Mike and Hannon tumbled backward. They landed side by side on the charred remains of the cabin floor.
Neither one moved.
Victoria rushed toward them. “Mike, are you okay!”
Mike sat up in a daze. He brought his hand to his head, as if checking for a bullet hole. Then he glanced back at Hannon. He was motionless, eyes open. The top of his head was gone. Not a pretty sight—then again, it was.
“You could have blown my head off,” he said in disbelief.
“Or I could have stood by and watched Hannon do it.”
He sighed, then smiled thinly. “You’re right. Thanks. I owe you.”
“For saving your life, or for killing Hannon?”
His mouth curled into a wry smile. “For getting me the exclusive on that bastard’s obituary.”
Epilogue
mike filed his firsthand account of Hannon’s demise by modem from the ship, in time for the early edition of the Miami Tribune. The reaction in the newsroom was fairly predictable, with overly eager editors who didn’t know the facts trying to rewrite his story. He had a brief ship-to-shore argument with one editor who wanted to harp on Agent McCabe’s death as evidence of yet another botched FBI operation, followed by a few words with Aaron Fields, who urged him to take more personal credit than Mike thought was due. Ultimately, he wrote a piece that, in a perfect world, might well have put Victoria Santos on the short list of candidates for the next FBI Director.
The news, of course, wasn’t all good. The stolen credit card Hannon had used to purchase his cruise and the alias he’d used aboard ship had police searching for the real Keith Ellers, the old sailor who was last seen in Antigua and whose boat was found in Puerto Rico. Likewise, customers at the Admiral’s Inn in Antigua recalled having seen the young bartender, Dominique, talking with a man who looked like Hannon, and she hadn’t returned to work since. Both were presumed dead, bringing Hannon’s death toll to seventeen, counting Agent McCabe and the two security guards at the Charter Bank—eighteen, if you wanted to count Curt Rollins. The only consolation, Mike wrote, was that there would never be another.
What he didn’t write, however, was his biggest consolation: Karen was forever off Hannon’s hit list.
The MS Fantasy docked at the Port of Miami the following morning, distinguished from all the other white and shiny cruise ships by the charred black hole in its side that marked the explosion. Mike walked off the ship beside Victoria and David Shapiro, followed by the rest of the FBI team. They all looked battle weary, but their eyes glowed with the smile of victors. Victoria looked up and waved as eleven hundred grateful passengers and crew cheered from the decks above, sending them down the gangway to the pier. It was like a parade, she thought, without the ticker tape.
Legions of reporters were waiting on the pier, peppering them with questions as they headed for the terminal. Victoria chuckled to herself as she overheard a beaming Leddy Coolidge talking to a television reporter from one of the national networks.
“The name’s Coolidge,” he said proudly. “Most folks just call me ‘Cool’.”
David Shapiro stopped in the main lobby for a makeshift press conference. A huge media circle formed around him and Victoria, and the two of them took questions from every direction. From a distance, she and Mike exchanged thin smiles of good-bye. He started away, then forced his way through the wall of flesh. Victoria discreetly edged her way over as Shapiro was speaking to the crowd.
Mike spoke softly, so only she could hear. “I just wanted to say, you make one hell of an FBI agent.”
She smiled with her eyes. “You make a lousy one. Stick to reporting.”
He smiled back, then turned and slipped away. A few reporters tailed after him as he headed quickly up the inclined corridor, back toward the main security checkpoint inside the terminal. He was only half listening to their incessant stream of questions. His mind had one focus—finding Karen.
At the end of the hall he finally saw her.
She was just fifty feet away, standing on the other side of the gate, where the guards had stopped everyone but members of the press. She was squeezed between dozens of anxious friends and relatives of the remaining passengers. Their eyes met immediately. She tried to burst through the gate, but the security guard restrained her. Mike sprinted the last bit of distance between them. The pushing and shoving from the crowd nearly turned their embrace into a head-on collision, but neither of them seemed to mind. They just threw their arms around each other and squeezed with all their strength.
A microphone suddenly came between them. “Mr. Posten, how do you feel?”
He glanced at the reporter, then looked into Karen’s eyes. “Let’s get outta here.”
Hand in hand they weaved a path through the crowd, toward the exit. As the crowd thinned they picked up speed. Their fast walk became a jog, and they were running and grinning like fugitives as they broke through the doors and cut across the parking lot. Karen pitched him the car keys. The doors flew open and they jumped inside. In thirty seconds they were at the stoplight, looking across eight lanes of traffic on busy Biscayne Boulevard. He was about to turn south toward downtown, but Karen pointed north.
“Get on the interstate.”
He looked at her quizzically. “How come?”
“I packed a bag for you. We’re going to the airport.”
He smiled as he steered onto the entrance ramp, picking up speed as they merged into traffic. “What’s this all about?”
“There’s a lead we need to track down.”
“What kind of lead?”
“You know that woman you married eight years ago?” she said coyly.
He glanced up from the road. “Yeah. I kind of miss her.”
“Well…she wants to talk to you.”
“Really? Where is she?”
“Paris. At the Plaza-Athénée.”
Mike nodded slowly, then stepped harder on the accelerator.
“That’s a relief,” he said as he reached across the console and took her hand. “For a second there I thought you were going to say Antigua.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The thank-you list is a long one, but one person stands out—my wife, Tiffany, for sharing the high points and for making the low ones completely irrelevant.
I’m especially pleased that the real pros who teamed up for my first book came together for a second. My editor, Rick Horgan, was again a great teacher, this time showing me the value of a well-structured outline, not to mention an ample supply of midnight oil. My literary agents, Artie and Richard Pine, have me convinced that no one in the business does it better than they do, but only because their remarkable actions speak louder than words. And Joan Sanger, true to form, provided helpful commentary on early drafts.
They say you should write what you know about, but it sure doesn’t hurt to have smart friends. Rick Castillo, M.D., and Julietta Rodriguez, Ph.D., helped show me the way into the mind of a serial killer. Detective James Hall and the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office got me as close to jail as I ever want to get. Jerry Houlihan and Rebekah Poston lent their considerable legal expertise on bank secrecy and offshore banking. “Miss Magg,” in the Candler County Sheriff’s Office, and David Moore, Candler County Coroner, showed a good deal of southern hospitality in helping me create the fictional town of Hainesville, Georgia. The folks in the social sciences department of the Broward County Library helped more than they know, as did the many journalists
and law enforcement personnel I interviewed along the way, including Professor Bruce Garrison of the University of Miami College of Communications and Chief Warrant Officer Dan Waldschmidt of the United States Coast Guard. My thanks to all of you.
I’m also grateful for helpful comments and support from Eleanor Raynor, Judy Russell, Carlos Sires, Terri Gavulic, and Nancy Lehner. Finally, I deeply appreciate the genuine enthusiasm shown by my friends at Steel Hector & Davis, especially my friend and secretary of nine years, Bonnie Kahn-DeVreeze.
About the Author
James Grippando is the bestselling author of seven novels—Beyond Suspicion, A King’s Ransom, Under Cover of Darkness, Found Money, The Abduction, The Informant, and The Pardon—which are enjoyed worldwide in fourteen languages. He lives in Florida, where he was a trial lawyer for twelve years. Visit his website at www.jamesgrippando.com.
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Praise
Raves for The Informant
“Intriguing…Grippando handles this unusual plot with ease.”
Chicago Tribune
“Surges with tension…an absorbing tale written with cool competence.”
Publishers Weekly
“Edgy…keeps you tearing through the pages.”
Kirkus Reviews
“A breathlessly scary, unpredictable thriller…extravagantly plotted…Grippando has produced a work that will deserve its place on bestseller lists.”
Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel
“It’s not only titillating, but terrifying—indeed, terrorizing…An edge of your seat kind of story that takes the FBI—and Grippando’s readers—through a series of bizarre twists and turns.”
Naples Daily News
A King’s Ransom
“Fast-paced…hair raising…a great escape. [You] won’t want to put it down.”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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