by Maden, Mike
Jack grinned. “I always said it’s better to be lucky than good.”
“I think it was a little of both.”
Jack’s decision to take out the warehouse refrigeration unit was based on Gavin’s intel that the computer could only operate at millikelvin temperatures.
What Gavin didn’t tell him was that those near-absolute-zero temperatures were achieved through a process known as “laser cooling,” not freon and a compressor like an old Maytag making ice cubes.
Destroying the warehouse HVAC unit had no effect whatsoever on the quantum computer’s subatomic cooling. But tearing out that motor, the transformer, and the electrical lines along with it temporarily disrupted the power supply to the building. That disruption lasted less than two seconds before the emergency backup generator kicked on. That was just enough time to disrupt the laser cooling mechanism. Once disrupted, the TRIBULATION system completely shut down and had to be rebooted.
Jack’s attack also distracted the warehouse security team long enough to give the FBI SWAT a window to insert and seize everything before TRIBULATION could resume operation. They grabbed the scientists, programmers, and hardware before the five trillion could be disbursed and before the attack on Snow Dragon, scheduled for launch just seven minutes after the moment Jack disrupted the power.
Ryan raised the shotgun to his eye, lining up the Bradley white front bead on top of the silver mid bead like a little snowman. “Pull!”
Cravy hit his remote and the orange clay disk shot out of the high house. The twelve-gauge jerked on Ryan’s shoulder. The bird exploded in a cloud of orange dust just as the low house bird launched out of its thrower. Ryan fired.
Missed.
The clay crashed harmlessly into the grass behind them.
“Maybe it’s time for shuffleboard, old-timer.” Jack smiled.
Ryan looked at Cravy. “I’ll take my extra here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ryan loaded a single shell into the top chamber and stepped up to the square.
“Pull!”
The low house bird sped into the sky. Ryan crushed it. He turned back to his son. “Back to even, boyo,” he said with a wink.
Cravy grinned. He liked working with the Ryans. Good guys. Not like some of the congressional pricks the President sometimes brought out here.
Jack and his dad marched over to the second station.
Jack reloaded two more shells and stepped into the square. He punched the release button, racking his first round, then raised his Benelli to his eye. He put the front red optic and brass mid beads together into their figure eight.
“Pull!”
The high house bird darted across the sky. Jack led it and pulled the trigger, busting the clay. The second bird flew past in the opposite direction. Jack nailed that one, too.
“You missed your calling,” Ryan said. “You should go pro with that thing.”
“Two stations does not a champion make,” Jack said. He turned to Cravy. “Right, Mike?”
Cravy grinned. “Well, two in a row’s a good start. You just gotta work your way up from there.”
“How far up?” Jack asked.
“Oh, I dunno.” Cravy scratched his chin thoughtfully. “A couple ten thousand more oughta do it, for starters.”
“I’ll be lucky to hit the next one,” Junior said, stepping out of the square, changing positions with his dad.
The President barked, “Pull!”
Killed two clays.
“Oh, so I guess now we’re getting serious,” Jack said.
“I’m always serious. I thought you knew that.”
Jack laughed. “That move of Logan’s, putting the near-kelvin-zero operation inside of a frozen food warehouse? Makes me think he must have watched a lot of Breaking Bad.”
He led the way to the third station. His dad followed.
“It was a damned smart play. The whole operation was. Logan knew to begin his drone attacks in the area where SBIRS had been knocked out. DoD’s still looking into it but they think his people might have been the ones to disable it.”
Ryan sighed, frustrated.
“The bastard really bamboozled us. Hell, who am I kidding? He got the better of me is what it boils down to. White Mountain Logistics and Security was the perfect cover for his plan. He was in deep with the federal government, and his operations were global. He could move any kind of material to any location of his choosing without raising any suspicions because he was a trusted and security-cleared defense contractor. And I bought into it, hook, line, and sinker.”
“Can’t blame yourself for that one, Pop. What he planned was so freaking crazy, no one could have predicted it.”
Jack stepped into the square at the third station. He saw the set of his dad’s jaw. He was taking this all really hard. Time to change the subject.
“I never did hear the rest of the story on Runtso. Gavin thought he was one of the good guys.”
“Those birds aren’t gonna shoot themselves.”
“Fine.” Jack stepped up and loaded two more shells into his shotgun.
“Pull!”
Bang, bang. Two dead clays.
Jack shrugged. “So, what about Runtso?”
“The FBI went over those cartridges Gavin found with a fine-tooth comb. It led them to some other files stashed in other interesting places. The bottom line is that Runtso totally bought into what he called the ‘Heist of the Universe.’ It was a real ego trip for him. But when he found out about Logan’s war plan, he got cold feet.”
“So, not exactly a good guy.”
“Not exactly. He helped let the horse out of the barn and tried to chase it down after the fact. If he hadn’t shown up in Barcelona to meet with your friend Renée while you were there, Logan’s plan might have actually worked.”
The President stepped into the square, yelled, “Pull!” Killed two clays.
“Next station, gentlemen,” Cravy said, pointing at number four. They headed over.
“Whatever happened to the Parsons woman?” Jack asked.
“Interpol found a corpse that might be her washed up on shore in Montenegro. It’s hard to tell from the level of decomp, so they’re running DNA tests.”
“That’s too bad. A real waste of genius.”
“Genius doesn’t matter as much as character,” Ryan said. “Heraclitus said that character is destiny. But I think it’s loyalty that’s destiny. Logan loved himself more than his country and was willing to destroy it. Parsons loved her own ambition more than her science, and it got her killed. I’ll take an honest man or woman over a smart one any day.”
Jack took his position, loaded his weapon. “Pull!”
Cravy let fly. Two puffs of red dust hung in the air.
Jack changed positions with his dad.
The Caesar Guerini barked twice. Two birds shattered.
The Ryans followed Cravy over to the fifth station. They didn’t speak. Jack’s mind was clearly somewhere else.
“What’s bugging you, son?”
“Logan. Where the hell did he go?”
Ryan darkened. “We may never find the bastard.”
“I can’t let it go until we do.”
“Well, don’t let it ruin your game today, old man. You’re up.”
Jack stepped into the box. He pulled two more shells out of his pouch and loaded them.
The President laid a hand on his son’s broad shoulder.
“I also wanted you to know that Renée Moore is getting her star at Langley. She died in service to her country, trying to bring Runtso in. There’s a ceremony next week, if you’d like to attend.”
“Yeah, I would.”
Ryan smiled and squeezed his neck. “I’ll join you, if you don’t mind. I read her service jacket. She was a real patriot, one of our best and brig
htest.” He looked at his son. “You two went to school together, didn’t you?”
Jack looked at his dad and nodded slightly, unable to speak. He took a deep breath and gathered himself up. Ryan stepped back.
Jack brought the gun to his eye.
“Pull!”
Two clays flew.
Jack missed both.
71
GULF OF MEXICO
The Dulces Sueños cruised due north some eleven miles north-northeast of Cancún at minimum speed to conserve fuel. It was scheduled to round the tip of the Yucatán Peninsula before sunrise.
Despite its security contingent of cartel sicarios on board, the resin-infused carbon fiber vessel remained a very soft target. Logan knew that speed made a soft target hard—or at least, harder to hit. He was as restless as the tide these days, trapped on board his Mexican-flagged luxury yacht. He was unable to risk going ashore even under the cartel’s protection. America’s eyes were everywhere. He still needed to hide. A luxury yacht near the Mayan coast was just another platinum needle in a haystack of platinum needles.
Despite the late hour, he couldn’t sleep. The rumble of the boat’s big diesel engines calmed his nerves a little. The two-hundred-and-eighty-foot four-deck cobalt blue vessel remained far enough from shore to avoid any landward threats, and just inside the outer bounds of Mexico’s territorial waters to remain under her jurisdiction. The Uxmal, a lightly armed twin-diesel Mexican Navy Tenochtitlan-class vessel, half the size of his own, patrolled these waters on a disciplined schedule like a vigilant sheepdog.
Logan knew that Ryan wouldn’t risk a shooting war with Mexico over something as trivial as his arrest, especially since the TRIBULATION project had been completely defeated. The President was many things but he wouldn’t risk America’s national interest to satisfy his personal need for vengeance.
With Sammler destroyed, Logan turned to his most important criminal ally, the infamous Gulf Cartel, under whose protection he now lived as he plotted a return to the stage. He’d stashed away enough money, resources, and weapons to secure his future, despite the fact Ryan’s government was seizing White Mountain assets and shutting it down.
The only thing that kept him from losing his mind was imagining the look on Ryan’s face when he realized Buck Logan had played them all and nearly ran the table, all on Ryan’s watch.
* * *
—
The HALO jump was timed to the patrol route of the Uxmal, now at its maximum distance from Logan’s vessel. Speed and silence were key to the operation. So was the covering darkness of the moonless night.
Adara was the first to splash into the dark water two miles due north of Dulces Sueños, a fifty-five-pound float bag leading her way. Once in the water, she shed her chute, pulled on her fins, opened the bag, and began assembling the vehicle inside.
Thirty seconds later, the rest of The Campus team dropped into the Gulf, less than a quarter mile from Logan’s luxury vessel. Three landed due east, the other two due west of the big boat. Like Adara, they were kitted out in neoprene scuba suits.
But strapped to each of their chests in specialized harnesses was a 77-pound Rotinor DiveJet RD2, along with suppressed H&K MP7A1 automatic PDWs, firing 4.6x30mm armor-piercing rounds. They also carried full underwater diving and boarding gear—along with a few other surprises.
Once in the water and clear of their chutes, Clark, Ding, Dom, Midas, and Jack unharnessed their DiveJets, pulled on the rest of their dive gear, and checked their comms—waterproof Sonitus tactical mics attached like a retainer to their upper back molars, utilizing bone conduction through the jaw for both transmitting and receiving radio signals. The Campus started using them after seeing them deployed by a Marine FAST platoon in Indonesia.
“Alpha ready?” Clark asked.
“Alpha ready,” Adara replied.
“Bravo and Charlie are ready. See you in twenty.”
Clark gave the signal. Each of the men in Bravo and Charlie grabbed the control grips of the four-foot-long, lithium-ion dive sleds and slipped beneath the waves, tracking on a swift and silent intercept course for their target.
* * *
—
The Bravo and Charlie divers stopped on their first timed mark and stripped away their tanks, then rose just enough to breach the surface. At one hundred yards they were still far enough away that searching eyes would struggle to see the black forms in the black water. Each man swapped his scuba mask for NVGs and pulled his suppressed HK.
“Bravo and Charlie are in position,” Clark said. “Alpha, you are good to go.”
“Launching now.”
Clark acknowledged. The clock was ticking.
It wouldn’t be long now.
* * *
—
In less time than it took for Clark and the others to get into position, Adara had removed, unfolded, and assembled the waterproof UAV and its controller from the float bag. She pulled on her own pair of waterproof NVGs and shoved the rolled-up bag between her thighs to add to her buoyancy.
Time to rock and roll.
Weighing just fifty-five pounds, the Songar UAV lifted swiftly into the air. The drone’s night-vision sensors, camera, and laser range finder fed its data in first-person shooter imagery into the gaming-styled, handheld controller. The drone was hovering in position one hundred feet above the water when Clark reported that both teams had reached their waypoints.
Lying directly in the path of the oncoming vessel, Adara needn’t fly the Songar any farther. The sound of the UAV’s whirring blades was masked by the gentle rolling Gulf waters and the rumbling diesel engines coming toward her.
She zoomed in on the brightly lit forward bridge on the third deck of the magnificent super yacht, bought and paid for with dirty narco-money and crewed by narco-killers. She felt no guilt when she set the reticle on the man standing at the helm and pressed the trigger.
* * *
—
The helmsman never heard the shot or the sound of the breaking glass as the 5.56 NATO round tore into his abdomen. He fell to the floor with a scream, grabbing at his burning guts.
The captain dashed out from behind a door just as more bullets—fired in three-shot bursts—shattered more of the bridge-wide glass. Two of the rounds struck him in the chest. A third ripped out his throat, splattering blood against the polished mahogany bulkhead as he dropped to the deck.
* * *
—
The first shots startled the starboard guard out of his waking slumber on the second deck. He was no coward. The other sicarios were shouting behind and below him as more shots rang out from the distance.
He unslung his AK-47 cuerno de chivo—goat horn—and charged forward toward the sound of the gunfire coming from high and ahead of the boat. He raced at a dead run toward the bow and raised his rifle at the sparks flashing like angry fireflies in the night sky. But the sparks changed position, pointing at him.
Bullets clawed his chest open.
The brave sicario died before he could even scream.
* * *
—
Clark waited for the sound of AK-47 fire—the weapon of choice of assholes everywhere—before giving the “go” signal.
All five men simultaneously revved their silent DiveJet engines and sped toward the yacht. Their eyes were locked on the sicarios charging forward on all three decks, firing their weapons at the Songar drone dancing in all directions off the bow and sniping at them from out of the dark.
Thirty seconds later, all five Campus operators had reached the port and starboard sides of the slow-moving vessel, avoiding the spinning props at the stern. They slapped boarding hooks onto the rails, the first man up clearing the way for the others to follow. They scrambled aboard completely undetected by the distracted gunmen, leaving their DiveJets behind.
They’d already studied the yacht’s sc
hematics. Clark and the others knew where they had to go, and what they had to do.
Jack most of all.
* * *
—
As Clark and Bravo team cut down the sicarios Adara hadn’t already killed on the outer decks, Charlie team—Dom and Jack—began clearing the interiors, Jack in the lead.
One fat, hairy gunman, naked save for his bikini underwear, leaped out of his stateroom with a gold-plated Desert Eagle, aiming it at Jack’s face as he bolted past the door. A bullet from Dom’s HK tore off the man’s jaw before he could fire his pistol. He fell to the floor, mewling in agonizing pain.
Dom did him a favor and put a second one in his skull.
Jack raced up the three flights of interior stairs, reaching the fourth deck, where Logan’s private quarters were located.
Logan reached for a mag to slam home into his daddy’s ivory-handled .45 Colt just as Jack turned the corner into the door, his PDW held high ready.
Jack charged forward and knocked the pistol out of Logan’s meaty hand with the butt of his HK. The Colt crashed to the floor with the thunk of heavy metal. Jack pulled his weapon back to his eye.
Jack heard the calm, professional chatter of his team echoing in his skull, and the sharp retorts of the last 4.6x30mm rounds dispatching the remaining sicarios.
Logan looked at Jack like a wounded child, slapped around by an angry parent.
“I wasn’t gonna use that on you, boy.” He glanced at the pistol on the floor. “It was for me.”
“No shit.”
Jack’s finger slipped onto the HK’s two-and-a-half-pound trigger. It would take more energy to scratch his nose than to kill this son of a bitch where he sat.
But his dad’s orders were clear.
Alive, not dead.
“No easy way out for you, Logan. Instead, you’re going to spend the next forty years of your miserable life in a cement hole somewhere, tied into your chair and crapping in a baggie in the dark.”