Chapter 18

Virat Sharma had remained in his office late into the evening, hoping for good news from his men aboard the Khalil . He indulged himself with a meal and a couple of drinks and spent much of the night standing on the balcony, staring at the tanker through a set of binoculars. From time to time he would pick up a handheld radio and call his foreman, checking on his progress.

As the night ran on, he became irritated. It was a big ship, he told himself. And the Americans hadn’t said what they were looking for.

He considered going home, but with another tanker set to beach itself tonight, he decided to stay. He always enjoyed the arrivals, no matter how many times he’d seen the spectacle.

He was just about to put a call in to the idling ship when the door to his office opened and a Caucasian man barged in. The man was bald, sizable, and confident. He held a gun in one hand and put a finger to his lips with the other, making a shushing sound as he stared unblinking across the room.

Sharma tensed, shocked at the intrusion. He indeed remained quiet, but not because he’d been told to be. It was more from surprise, as three fierce-looking men with more tawny skin tones came in behind the white man. They were young, lean, and looked so similar to each other that they could have been triplets. There was something feral about them, Sharma thought, as if they weren’t quite human. He noticed tattoos on the sides of their necks, long strings of alphanumeric codes and what looked like a couple letters from the Greek alphabet. Aside from these, there wasn’t a mark on them.

The triplets spread out around the room while the white man closed the door slowly. “My name is Blakes,” the white man said quietly. “Your name is Virat Sharma. These are my dogs, and they will rip you to pieces with their bare hands if you don’t cooperate.”

Sharma was wary, but not cowering in fear. He’d grown up on the streets of Mumbai. He’d been involved with criminal elements by the age of twelve and had killed a man before he turned eighteen.

He’d fought his way out of that hell and made it in the world of large-vessel salvage by dealing fiercely with competitors, shakedown artists, and corrupt government officials. Just to stay in business in Alang one had to be strong enough to fight off threats from various gangs.

“What do you want?” he said calmly.

The white man slid the pistol into a shoulder holster that fit snugly under his safari jacket. Instead of throwing a punch, he smiled warmly and put his arm around Sharma, guiding him to the window and gesturing at the Khalil . “Tell me about that ship out there. The one with all the lights running about it.”

“We’re preparing it for stripping,” Sharma explained. “The breakdown begins in the morning.”

It was a good lie. But not good enough.

The white man took his arm off Sharma and reached for a pair of binoculars. “A very hasty preparation, by the looks of it.”

Freed for the moment, Sharma eased backward toward the desk. If he could lean against it, he could reach back and press the hidden alarm button. “The faster we break it down, the sooner we get paid.”

“What about these other ships?”

Sharma spoke from memory. “KN-42 is a frigate retired by the Indian Navy. The Soufriere is a Liberian-flagged freighter built in the nineties. The other ships are—”

“Which one is the Soufriere ?”

It was hard to see in the dark. Sharma didn’t want to leave the desk and the chance of signaling for help. “Between the fires and the Khalil .”

The binoculars went up and then came back down. “And the Americans that came in here this afternoon. I assume they asked about it?”

Sharma bumped the desk, leaning on it for support. He moved one hand behind him, finding the lip and sliding his fingers along it. He was so focused on the act that he didn’t bother to lie. “No,” he said. “They wanted something off the Khalil .”

“Ah,” the white man said. “And you sent all your men aboard to look for it. How cunning of these Americans.”

As Sharma watched, the intruder lifted the binoculars to his eyes once more, retraining them on the Soufriere. While he was focused on whatever he saw there, Sharma pressed the emergency button.

Nothing happened.

He pressed it again, but to no avail.

The intruder lowered the binoculars and turned. He looked disappointed. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but there’s no help coming.”

The man nodded to one of his triplets. The office door was pulled wide open. On the other side lay Sharma’s two hulking bodyguards, face down in pools of their own blood.

One seemed to have gotten a hand on his pistol, but had obviously had his throat slashed before he could use it. The other had been impaled by multiple foot-long spikes and now lay with his body lifted from the floor by the protruding tips of the weapons. Farther away, a third employee of his lay dead as well.

As Sharma stared in shock, the intruder grabbed the radio off the windowsill. Switching channels, he caught the chatter coming from the crew on the Khalil . “You communicate to them with this?”

Sharma nodded.

“That’s all I need to know.”

With that he walked away, stepping out through the door and over the dead bodies. He stopped only to utter a word to his three soldiers: “ Mord. ”

Sharma lunged for a weapon he kept hidden on the desk, knocking his inbox to the side and sending a stack of papers flying. The snub-nosed .357 revolver was there. He grabbed it and spun around.

Before he could bring it to bear, one of the men had stabbed him in the gut. A second smashed his arm with a pipe, knocking the gun to the carpeted floor.

Sharma fell back, cradling his shattered arm. When he looked up, the three men were hovering over him. Their eyes reminded him of the rabid animals that ran the streets of Mumbai. They were on top of him simultaneously and all he could do was scream.