Chapter 72

72

Washington, D.C.

Erin Banfield downed her scotch in a single slug to calm her nerves. She was afraid to act, and afraid not to. She was afraid that no matter what she did, she would die.

Unless she was very, very careful.

The Vendor's phone call was a surprise unto itself. The secretive arms merchant had only ever communicated with her by text, no doubt to hide his voice, which revealed so much about a person—nationality, class, education, age. For a time, she imagined the Vendor might be a woman. After all, why not? Women could be as ruthless and cunning as men.

But the second he opened his mouth and vomited out his tirade, she knew it was an older man with an Asian accent, and a current or former heavy smoker.

And he was out of control.

Today she had to lower the volume on her phone to mitigate the screaming rage pouring out of her receiver. He was positively unhinged.

Banfield was long used to her inferiors insulting or dismissing her with subtle gestures, carefully couched words, and imperious attitudes. But she had never been yelled at before. It shook her to the core.

It was clear that Mendoza and the Oregon had prompted the Vendor's near psychotic break. He ranted about "another miraculous escape" and swore undying vengeance. He no longer knew where the ship was.

As far as Banfield was concerned, Mendoza was his problem. But Mendoza and the Oregon —or the Norego or whatever name it was sailing under—suddenly became her problem.

"I'm sending you a team of trained assassins to capture Overholt and torture him. I must know where that damnable ship is. And I want Mendoza's head on a pike. Make the arrangements immediately!"

She tried to explain the near impossibility of the feat, especially if she hoped to avoid suspicion and maintain her cover.

Undeterred, he suddenly softened his tone and offered her a king's ransom for her assistance in the Overholt kidnapping.

The offer gave her pause. Overholt had never done her any favors. Not really. He was nice enough, and respectful of her intelligence. But he never used his influence to help advance her career. He seemed indifferent, at best. When she was young she had once offered herself to him, but feigning a gentlemanly regard for his deceased wife's honor and his own, he gently declined her offer. He became aloof after that. She always assumed he undermined her career without her knowledge after that faux pas.

But all of that was water under the bridge. What concerned her now was the fact the venerable Overholt enjoyed excellent federal security protection. Worse, the old man had a reputation for cold vengeance—one that extended even beyond the grave thanks to a coterie of fiercely loyal colleagues who would wreak savage retribution on anyone who touched him.

What to do?

In the heat of the moment of the phone call, all she could think of was to defer the Vendor's outrageous request. She promised him she'd pull together all the information he would need for the assassin squad in the next three days. Overholt was incommunicado at the moment anyway, she assured him.

He mumbled his thanks and told her he would contact her again in seventy-two hours, and when he did he wanted the necessary details. He tried but failed to hide the murderous menace in his voice before killing the call.

She stood there nursing another drink and weighing her harrowing options.

If she betrayed the Vendor, he would no doubt kill her. If she arranged for Overholt's murder, her sleepless life would eventually end on a terrifying note in a moldering, unmarked grave.

Beyond those fears, she also faced the possibility of either a life of relative poverty or a life of wealth, cavorting in the Algarve with her Portuguese Lothario.

In a moment of weakness she briefly considered turning herself in and plea-bargaining her way to a light sentence in exchange for betraying the Vendor. But the vulgar thought was beneath her dignity, and entirely out of the question. She could never allow herself to be caged like an animal, not even for a moment, and not even to save her life.

She finally realized there was really only one thing she could do.

Cash in her chips.

And run.

★

Pau Rangi Island

The Bismarck Sea

"Faster, you idiots! Hurry. Hurry! You are all my friends. I beg you. Hurry! "

The Vendor ran around the underground submarine pen in frenzied urgency. The AI-powered Ghost Sword had to be loaded and depart in less than two hours or the Guam attack would fail.

To his credit, the German and his technicians had loaded the neurotoxins into their dispersion tanks, and most of those had been inserted into the drones. The drones now were being loaded onto the Ghost Sword , but the loading crews were falling behind schedule.

Beyond the timetable, the Vendor fretted over his phone call with Banfield. He knew she was hedging her bets, and assumed she would fail to follow through on her vague promises. He would deal with her later.

Kidnapping Overholt was a desperate gambit on his part, but he needed to know where Mendoza and the Oregon were. The Americans were a poisoned splinter in his eye. Though no match for his own towering intellect, they threatened his entire operation, if only out of tenacity of will and mindless luck.

They were out there, somewhere. The Vendor's last surveillance drone hovering over Jaco Island caught the twin explosions erupting beneath the Oregon 's waterline the night before. His drone torpedo had undoubtedly hit the vessel. The sight of the geysering water had thrilled him to no end.

But the second explosion was a surprise. At first he'd hoped it had struck the ship's ammunition stores, but when he saw the Oregon didn't erupt in a ball of flame or break in two, he concluded the hell-born ship possessed reactive armor that defeated his attack.

That was unheard of. He grudgingly acknowledged the brilliance of it as events unfolded. But his thin admiration gave way moments later to rage when the violent storm above the island destroyed his surveillance drone. Now he had no idea where the Oregon and its resolute crew were currently located. He hoped they had retreated to a nearby port for needed repairs after his lightning barrage. But his intuition was that Mendoza was as relentless in his pursuit as a lock-jawed pit bull stalking a tethered steer.

The Vendor's agitation only increased as he realized the dozen uniformed technicians in his employ ignored his rising torrent of vile curses and fawning praises. They were all painfully aware of the giant digital clock counting down the remaining time until launch.

Big bonuses were riding on their success, and he'd hoped that was motivation enough. But they also knew the penalty for failure. And failure was in the cards. The Vendor warned them of an impending assault by unknown forces and ordered them to wear holstered pistols and to sling Uzi mini submachine guns to their chests. They did so without complaint, but the Vendor feared their sloth was a silent protest.

He swore violently as a man stumbled on the Ghost Sword 's deck, nearly dumping a container over the side. Just twelve more drone pods needed to be loaded and the ship could finally slip beneath the surface, invisible to any known form of detection save the human eye.

The Vendor glanced at his ancestors' shrine on the far wall. He muttered a quick prayer, begging the kami to make these fools work faster.