by Joshua Hood
Shaw made his way to the solitary table in the center of the room and took a seat. He placed his attaché case on the floor and was turning his attention to the men seated before him when Senator Landon Miles rapped the gavel against the sounding block and called the Senate Intelligence Committee to order.
“Director Shaw, there are three reasons you have been called before this committee today. The first is the memo you submitted at the beginning of the month regarding the Gen 4 program. Do you recall that memo?”
“Yes, sir, I have a copy here,” Shaw answered, pulling a stack of files from his attaché case and placing them on the table.
“Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but six months ago you advised this committee that by the end of the year the Gen 4s would be operational,” Miles said, pausing his attack to consult his notes. “I believe your exact words were, ‘They will be ready to kick ass and take names.’ Do you remember saying that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But according to your latest timeline you now require an additional six months. Why is that?”
“Well, Senator, it’s not like we are making license plates.”
“Excuse me?”
Dammit, c’mon, Levi, get your head out of your ass.
“My apologies, Senator, what I meant to say was that turning a man into a weapon takes time, especially taking into account certain abnormalities we found with the Gen 3s.”
“You’re talking about Adam Hayes. Am I correct?”
All it took was one look at the senator’s face, the triumphant jut of his jaw, and Shaw knew that he’d screwed up. Let his focus slip just long enough to walk right into the chairman’s trap.
Got to get ahead of him, redirect the conversation.
But before Shaw had a chance, Senator Miles leaned forward in his chair, his eyes hungry as a starved wolf. “Since you brought it up, Director Shaw, I don’t think my colleagues would object if we put a pin in that first question and cut to the real reason I called you here this morning.”
Shaw reached instinctively for the bottle of water sitting next to his microphone, mentally preparing himself for the question he knew was coming.
“I would also like it clearly noted in the record that this is the last time I am going to ask you this question—do you understand that, Director Shaw?”
“Yes, sir,” Shaw replied, twisting the cap free and taking a drink.
“Good, now, for the last time, where in the hell is Adam Hayes?” Miles asked, his voice cold as a knife.
Shaw swallowed the mouthful of water and was returning the bottle to its place when his mind drifted back to the last time he saw Adam Hayes. The memory was crystal clear, every emotion, every angry word etched painfully in his mind.
He hadn’t wanted it to go down the way it had, but Hayes had left him with little choice.
* * *
—
“Either you come in, or I will send a team to bring you in,” he’d told him over the phone.
“Are you threatening me, Levi?”
“No, Adam, we are way past that point.”
“Somewhere public, where I can see you and you can see me.”
“The bridge at Rock Creek, two hours.”
“I’ll be there.”
Shaw had arrived in an hour and sat on the bench at the west side of the bridge while a General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper circled silently twenty-five thousand feet above. At $15.9 million, the Reaper was the most advanced surveillance platform in the government’s arsenal. With its sophisticated ground targeting systems and APY-8 Lynx II radar the UAV was the perfect blend of technology and lethality.
Ten minutes later the operator reported in, his voice clear through the microcommunication bud pressed into Shaw’s ear.
“This is Viper two-one, we’ve finished our sweep, no contact with target.”
With the area clear, Shaw was beginning to think that Hayes had somehow detected the surveillance—knew that he was being watched and had blown off the meet.
But how?
“Because that’s what you trained him to do,” he muttered.
Shaw got to his feet and was preparing to leave when he saw him standing alone on the far side of the bridge.
“What’s this all about, Levi?”
“Are you serious?” he demanded. “Adam, you killed a United States senator in broad fucking daylight. Did you really think there weren’t going to be any consequences?”
“I did what you trained me to do,” Hayes said, voice flat, eyes cold and lifeless as a shark’s. “I did what you and everyone else up on the Hill were too scared to do.”
“You’ve got two options. You come back and go to work or . . .”
“Or what?”
* * *
—
Senator Miles’s voice shattered the memory and yanked him back to the here and now. “Director Shaw, do you need me to repeat the question?”
Shaw took a deep breath and cleared his mind, set the bottle on the table, and looked up at Senator Miles, his face unreadable.
“I have no idea, Senator,” he lied.
4
CEUTA, SPAIN
Stealing a boat hadn’t been on Hayes’s to-do list when he woke up that morning, but plans changed, and if there was one surety in this line of work it was that survivability and flexibility often went hand in hand.
By the time Hayes made it down to the alley and retrieved his bag, the sun had dropped below the horizon and the shadows were advancing across the water like a skirmish line. He shouldered the pack and started back the way he’d come, his mind on the black speedboat he’d seen from the window.
But the plan crumbled when he stopped at the mouth of the alley and stared, disbelieving, at the street.
On his way over, the Avenue Juan de Borbón had been almost empty, the bars and nightclubs that lined it locked up tight. But with the sun on its way down that had changed. Now the street was alive, the neon signage from the bars bouncing off the stucco walls, illuminating the sea of flesh that writhed and danced in time with the music pouring from the clubs.
Well, shit.
Hayes stepped off the curb and turned to the side, trying to shoulder his way to the edge where the crowd thinned out, but it was no use. He was hemmed in, blinded by the flashing lights and thumping bass from the clubs and unable to break free of the sea of flesh carrying him down the street.
The panic attack started in the pit of his stomach, a cold twinge that raced up his spine and into his ears, where it hissed like static from a busted TV.
Not now, he begged, fighting the urge to lash out at the bodies pressing against him and the hands clawing at his skin.
He kept his head down and his hand clamped over his pistol, twisting and shouldering his way through the crowd, fighting his way to the edge.
Then he broke through and found himself standing alone, staring at the white halo of the stadium lights beating down on the marina a hundred yards ahead.
Almost there, the voice taunted.
“Fuck off,” Hayes said, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
Growing up in Tennessee, Hayes’s knowledge of boats was limited to fishing trips with his dad in Florida and the riverine training he’d received in Special Forces. But you didn’t need to be Magellan to figure out that if renting a twenty-foot Yamaha center console cost five hundred dollars a day, owning one of these yachts cost a hell of a lot more.
He guessed that there were at least a hundred million dollars’ worth of boats floating in the marina. Which is why he was surprised that the only people keeping him from walking down the pier and stealing whichever one he wanted were the doughy security guard sleeping in the air-conditioned shack and the single attendant fueling a Hacker Runabout from the gas pump on the edge of the pier.
But Hayes wasn’t buying it.
&
nbsp; Mainly because he’d seen what lay beneath the town’s warm and sandy façade. Knew that the majority of the yachts bobbing in the marina didn’t belong to the rich tourists, but to the smugglers and drug runners who used Ceuta as a base of operations. People of means, guarded by serious men trained to shoot first and ask questions later. A fact that promised that somewhere down there, hiding in the shadows, were men with guns.
Only one way to find out.
Hayes skirted the marina, searching the slips until he located the black speedboat bobbing next to the Westport tri-deck he’d seen earlier. He was close enough now to read the name off the bow—The Mako—and recognize the model. It was an Outerlimits SV43—one of the fiberglass rocket ships drug runners used to outrun the Guardia Civil ships that patrolled the area.
It was the perfect boat for the job at hand, but first Hayes had to knock out the lights.
He found the junction box on the northwest side of the marina, a brushed metal square attached to a utility pole three feet from the guard shack. In a perfect world, one where Hayes had the time and resources to come up with a plan that didn’t involve him going to jail or getting shot, he would have requested a wiring diagram. Used it to find the upstream source of the thick black power cable that went into the side of the junction box. Once he located it, an explosive charge with a time delay would have allowed him to kill the power at his leisure.
But now all he had was a ticking clock and the gear in his pack.
He opened the front pocket and pulled out a magnesium road flare, a miniball fragmentation grenade, and a roll of duct tape.
Hayes stripped a length of tape from the roll, ripped it free, and stuck it to the front of his pants. He zipped the bag, stuffed the flare into his back pocket, and, holding the grenade, stepped out of the shadows.
Staying low, he eased onto the pier, footsteps silent as he slipped past the guard shack. At the junction box, he secured the grenade to the electrical cable with the strip of tape.
This is a terrible idea, the voice said.
As Hayes pulled the pin from the frag, he realized that, for once, he agreed with the voice.
Too late now.
He moved toward the Hacker Runabout, knowing he had about five seconds before the minifrag went off and all hell broke loose.
The attendant heard him coming and glanced up, a bored look on his face as he continued refueling the boat.
“There’s a fire,” Hayes said, tugging the road flare from his back pocket.
“What? Where?” the man asked.
“Right here,” he answered, scraping the nose of the flare across the abrasive striker.
The flare came to life in a sputtering rush of smoke and magnesium, the attendant’s features changing from boredom to alarm when Hayes dropped the flare atop the life jacket in the stern of the boat.
“If I were you, I’d get the hell out of here,” he said.
The man nodded, and leaving the nozzle in the Hacker ran toward the guard shack, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Hayes pushed himself into a jog and had just clattered aboard the Mako when the minifrag detonated and the marina went dark. He ducked behind the wheel, tore open his bag, and fumbled around inside until he found the crap pair of Russian night-vision goggles he’d borrowed from Vlad.
With a twist of the switch he activated the goggles and night-shifted to an emerald-green twilight. Compared to the PVS-23s or the GPNVG-18s the SEALs were using, the Russian-made night vision was junk, but he could see and that was all that mattered.
After casting off the lines, he ducked into the cockpit and was about to use the knife to snap the ignition lock when Hayes saw the key dangling from the dash.
It’s about time I caught a break.
He twisted the key to the on position and the gauges flickered to life, filling the cockpit with a pale yellow glow. Hayes was checking the fuel level when he heard the crackle of static from the Westport tri-deck, followed by an angry voice.
“Alexander, what the hell is going on out there?” the voice demanded in French.
Hayes followed the voice to the sundeck and found a man standing at the rail, the unmistakable outline of a submachine gun hanging from the sling around his neck.
Told you this was a bad idea, the voice said.
The man lifted the submachine gun to his shoulder, the bone-white glare of the LED weapon light mounted to the fore-end cutting through the darkness like a knife.
“Some kind of explosion, boss,” the man replied, “looks like a boat is on fire.”
“Get everyone on deck, now!” the voice screamed over the radio.
Hayes ducked beneath the dash, adjusted the brightness of the gauge lights, and then hit the power button on the Simrad HALO surface radar. During the day he wouldn’t need the GPS or the navigation computer to clear the marina, but at night it was a different story. And Hayes knew that even with the night vision, trying to get the Mako out to sea without the nav computer was a great way to end up as a grease stain on the rocks.
Safety first.
He wasn’t sure if the Mako’s owner was blind or if the universe just hated him, but when the Simrad’s LCD screen blinked to life, the brightness setting was maxed out. The screen lit up the cockpit like a searchlight, and Hayes was trying to turn it down when the light caught the attention of one of the men on the tri-deck.
“There, in the water,” he shouted, the blaze of white from the weapon light attached to his submachine gun hitting Hayes in the face, flaring his night vision, leaving him blind and exposed to the peal of gunfire that followed.
5
CEUTA, SPAIN
Hayes was blind and pinned down, the spray of lead from the yacht buzzing over his head like a swarm of angry hornets before slamming into the captain’s chair. The 9-millimeter rounds shredded the seat, filling the cockpit with a confetti of vinyl and bits of insulation.
Hayes slapped the now-useless night-vision goggles up and out of the way and ignored the snap and crack of the rounds past his head. He inched forward, groping in the darkness like a child playing a lethal game of blindman’s bluff, desperate to find the dashboard.
His hand brushed the wheel and Hayes adjusted left, fingers fumbling over the switches and buttons that dotted the control panel.
But where the fuck is the key?
Then he found it and the Mako was alive, her twin Mercury 1350s rumbling like a primeval beast, the vibrations from the engines rolling up Hayes’s spine.
“Oh, hell yes,” he said, shoving the throttles forward.
The Mako leapt from her slip like a stone from a sling, the sudden acceleration sending Hayes tumbling backward, the wheel spinning free as she raced into the night. He scrambled to his feet, knowing he had to get the Mako under control or he’d never make it out of the marina alive.
Keeping his head low, Hayes reached up and grabbed the wheel, a quick glance at the LCD showing the nav computer still trying to sync with the satellites.
As the Mako accelerated, the bow lifted free of the water, and without the aid of the nav computer, Hayes was blind to what lay ahead. His internal compass told him that he was heading north, but as a pilot, he knew better than to trust his instincts in the darkness.
“Looks like I’m going to have to do this the old-fashioned way,” Hayes said, slapping the night vision over his eyes.
Still under fire, he climbed to his feet and grabbed the wheel, ignoring the snap of the bullets over his head. He needed to see what lay ahead, which was impossible with the bow pointing skyward. By adjusting the trim tabs he got the nose down in time to see the pylon sticking out of the water ten feet ahead.
With the Mako’s engines running wide open and the tachometer sweeping toward five thousand RPMs, there was little time to think, so Hayes desperately yanked the wheel hard to the left.
The powerboat
sidestepped the obstruction like a running back dodging an open-field tackle, swinging the nose wide, away from the mouth of the marina and toward the massive seawall on the south side.
A second burst of rifle fire buzzed past his head, but Hayes ignored it. His only concern was getting the Mako back on course. He inched the wheel back to port, knowing that at this speed even the slightest miscalculation could be deadly, but the Mako handled like it was on rails, swinging smoothly back on course. Hayes hazarded a quick glance over his shoulder where a second shooter was now engaging him from the aft deck of the yacht. He raised the barrel of his MP5 skyward to compensate for the submachine gun’s limited range.
The bullets fell short and Hayes watched them slap harmlessly in his wake, but any reassurance that came from being out of the shooter’s range evaporated when he saw additional gunmen launching a pair of two-person Jet Skis from the back of the yacht.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
In open water, the Jet Skis’ small engines didn’t stand a chance against the Mako’s twin Mercurys, but to take advantage of the powerboat’s speed, Hayes had to clear the surf zone, get past the six-foot breakers slamming across the mouth of the harbor without being swamped or smashing into the jetties.
The safest choice was to slow down, wait for a lull in the surf, and then use the Mako’s power to get the hell out of Dodge. But Hayes knew from the hissing snap of lead past his head that if he wanted to get out of Ceuta with the same number of holes he’d arrived with, he had to go now.
“Let’s do this,” he said, shoving the throttles to their stops.
The Mako blasted from the marina like a fiberglass bullet, and in the cockpit all Hayes could do was hold it steady, watching as the swell reared up like a white-maned stallion. There was a moment, a split second, when he thought that his luck had changed, that somehow he’d timed it just right and all he had to do was punch the Mako through the back of the wave and go about his business.