Chapter 35

35

Aboard the Oregon

"What do you mean, you've lost them?"

Max leaned over Hali's shoulder at the comms station. The Oregon was no longer picking up the implanted trackers on Juan and Linc. Every crew member had them in case of emergencies—and to keep tabs on their people in the field.

"They just disappeared—poof." The curly-headed Lebanese American gestured an explosion with his long, thin fingers. "Either they've been surgically removed, destroyed, or jammed."

"Did we do a check before they left? Maybe the units died."

Hali pulled up a check sheet on his screen and pointed at it. "Dr. Huxley signed off on them before they left. Signal and power both at one hundred percent."

"Could there be a problem with the satellite?"

Hali pulled up the satellite tracker screen. It showed the dozens of tracker signals emanating from the Oregon .

"It's receiving and sending just fine. Maybe there's a weather anomaly."

"Maybe there's a tooth fairy, too." Max was really worried.

The only intel they had on Juan and Linc to this point were the trackers. Did they get on a plane? On trucks? Ruck into the bush? They could be anywhere.

But wherever they were, they were surrounded by at least ten paid killers and there was no way to back them up.

"We'll just have to wait for them to contact us," Hali said.

Max stood, his face set in stone.

"Yeah, unless they're already dead."

★

Washington, D.C.

Erin Banfield lived in one of Georgetown's refurbished Federal-style brick townhouses. It was luxuriously appointed and well-furnished, providing her all of the comforts she and her fat, irascible white Persian cat, Winston, required.

It was barely affordable twenty years ago when she bought it on her meager government salary. She could never have afforded it today on her still miserable federal wages after the skyrocketing real estate valuations of the last few years. It was yet another reason why she hated all K Street lobbyists and their overpaid minions who were driving up the price and misery of living in the habitable parts of the District.

She took another sip of her scotch on the rocks, recalling the conversation she had with her boss at the office, the second this week. She almost wanted to laugh.

Despite his family's wealth, his dashing good looks, and fast-tracking CIA career, Trevor Das was oddly insecure. When he called her up to his office in the afternoon, his state of emotional agitation was off the charts.

She assumed it was because Das viewed his leadership of the interagency arms-trafficking task force as his springboard to bigger and better things. Anything that threatened his perceived status as the head of that group turned the normally suave young man into a paranoid lunatic.

"Your old buddy Overholt is at it again," he began, closing his office door behind her and practically spitting out the words.

"What did he do this time?"

"Another covert op. A place in Kosovo."

"Where?"

"Mitrovica. He's cutting me out again. I won't put up with this."

"I don't blame you. It's…unseemly." She pressed him. "What happened to his foray into Afghanistan?"

Das shrugged. "No idea. It went dark. Probably went sideways."

Das glanced around the office despite the fact she was the only occupant. "I need details. Find out what he's up to. Who's on the assignment. Who he's reporting to. The works." He lowered his voice. "And I need you to do it on the sly. Can you please do that for me?"

"Of course," she told him.

He calmed right down; in fact, when she left, he had a smile and slight bounce in his step.

And now here she was at her home computer with Winston purring as he rubbed against her ankle, hoping for a lift into Banfield's ample lap. She obliged.

She petted Winston while asking him, "Why does Trevor Das keep complaining to me about Overholt? And why does he want me to pursue this? Could it be he's setting me up as the fall guy if there's blowback?"

Winston's rheumy eyes shut as his claws kneaded into her sweater.

Banfield engaged her virtual private network—effectively placing her computer address location on a server in Slovenia. She then pulled up the Children's Global Charity Network website and selected the donations page in the name of Trevor Das.

Within a few minutes she entered in her selection: two milking goats for a needy family in Kenya. She also checked off several other numbered items and then answered the question "What are your favorite Bible verses you would like to share with your family gifts?"

She entered in Genesis 42:8, Psalm 88:3, Proverbs 3:3, Exodus 20:8, 1 Samuel 6:6, 2 Chronicles 7:7, and then logged off.

Banfield drained her glass and shut down her computer for the night. She set Winston down and carried her Waterford tumbler to the bar for a refill.

She glanced around her living room. She loved her townhome. It was a perfect expression of her good taste and classic sensibilities. She hated to sell it. But it made no sense to keep it after she retired a few months from now. Besides, her villa in the Algarve suited her just fine, as did her much younger Portuguese boyfriend, who was already living there, awaiting her permanent arrival early next year.

She checked her watch. Trevor's charity network order would be accessed by the Vendor within the next few hours. The two goats, checked items, and Bible verses were secret codes providing him all the information she had on Overholt's operation, including the longitude and latitude of Mitrovica, Kosovo.

It was up to the Vendor how he wanted to proceed. The fact that Das had no idea what happened to the Afghan mission told her the Vendor had resolved that issue satisfactorily. No doubt he would do the same in Kosovo.

He needed to. She was walking a very thin line. He paid her a great deal of money for her services, but none of it would be of any use to her locked up for life in a supermax federal penitentiary. She'd left enough digital crumbs over the past year to point at Das in case things did go sideways, but hopefully it would never come to that. Among his many gifts, Banfield admired the Vendor's precision most of all.

She took a stiff pull of her scotch and refreshed it again before carrying it back to the bathroom. She needed a long, hot soak in a tub full of delicious bubbles to finish up such a satisfying day.

★

The Malacca Strait

The Jade Voyager rolled and yawed beneath the captain's feet as he stood on the bridge. His gut tingled with the strange sensation of floating in space, untethered to solidity, like a speeding car hydroplaning on a freeway.

The wiper blades slapped away at the heavy rain battering the bridge glass, but they couldn't keep up. He could barely see the deck pitching and the crash of yet another wave hitting the bow at a steep angle. The ship rolled hard again. He grasped the railing to steady himself. The frightened young faces on the bridge with him fought to keep their composure. They trusted their captain, but none of them had ever seen anything like this.

The captain knew the Jade Voyager could handle it. His worry was the stacks of containers crowded on his decks. The owners were on the verge of bankruptcy and had pressured him to push the safety limits to increase the cargo load for this trip to India. They sent him to a small but accommodating Indonesian port infamous for its lax enforcement of safety standards. The stacks were unusually high, but not entirely out of reason. Despite the heavy load, the captain was confident in his ship, his apprehension alleviated by the owners' promise of an extra bonus for his cooperation.

But here, in the belly of a storm-tossed night, the captain began losing his nerve.

A rogue wave had hit his vessel at precisely the wrong angle, sending his ship into an accelerating spiral of uncontrollable pitching and rolling. The physics of mass and energy were upsetting the balance of weight of the overstacked containers—lashed to the deck with rusted and fraying cables the owners couldn't afford to replace.

A ship's alarm sounded as the Jade Voyager angled past the thirty-degree mark. The sharp, sizzling crack of snapping cables suddenly burst outside.

The captain pressed closer to the rain-spattered bridge glass. He caught a glimpse of the first stack of bright yellow containers tumbling into the sea, dragging the next stack into the water behind them, and then a third.

Ten more followed.

The sudden loss of weight began stabilizing the ship. The remaining containers on the deck stayed in place.

The captain mopped the sweat from his face, then lit a cigarette, resigned to his fate.

He would be blamed by the owners and the authorities for the reckless decision to overstack the cargo.

He was ruined.