Chapter 57

57

Washington, D.C.

Erin Banfield plopped down in front of her home computer with a full tumbler of scotch on the rocks in one hand. It was a daily vice that helped calm her nerves as she accessed the dark side of her life on her secure private network.

First and foremost, she reviewed her investment portfolios, several of which were located in carefully hidden overseas accounts far from the prying eyes of U.S. government auditors. Her nest egg was almost large enough to flee her Georgetown roost. Still, she needed to accumulate as much tax-free cash as possible if she hoped to sustain her beachside love nest with her hot-blooded Portuguese paramour for the long run.

That need for extra cash drove her to a second checklist item, which was monitoring Langston Overholt’s affairs via the private server of his that she managed to hack. Years ago, she would have done this at the office, but CIA internal security had gotten tighter in the last decade. Network administrators were continually monitoring unwarranted activities and unauthorized access on federal machines. Her Georgetown bastion was more secure than any government sensitive information facility and the safest place from which to spy on Overholt.

She quickly scanned Overholt’s files and discovered the old man’s emergency exfil request two hours prior for a quick reaction force to be deployed immediately to a specified GPS location.

She stopped reading the email in order to geolocate the coordinates. She discovered it was a private island off the southern coast of Mindanao, the Philippines.

Her eyes then fell on the next email posted five minutes later. It was another request from Overholt canceling the emergency quick response force, no reason given.

Strange.

She was still processing the unusual pair of requests when she suddenly realized she hadn’t finished reading the first email. She pulled it back up for details.

The emergency exfil request was for the rescue of two American contractors deployed with the vessel Oregon.

Oregon? Oregon? Where had she heard that name before?

Banfield took a long pull from her scotch and set her glass down on a dog-eared copy of Jumble puzzles she had finished in a day. They were too easy for her incredible intellect, but they always brought her warm memories of doing them as a young girl with her father on her weekend visits to his house. The puzzles required her to unscramble random letters to form intelligible words. The praise her father heaped upon her had been an elixir for her broken, impressionable soul. It had also ignited the intellectual fire that would ultimately lead to her current career as a CIA intelligence analyst.

And then it suddenly hit her. O-R-E-G-O-N could also be spelled N-O-R-E-G-O.

“Norego,” she whispered.

That was the name of the ship that the Vendor had requested information on after it had caused him some problems he didn’t want to talk about.

This was the first bit of intel on the Norego she had been able to uncover.

She needed to contact him immediately.

The Celebes Sea

Linc surveyed the debris field. The Makṛī was a smoldering pile of wrecked debris, its legs and various mechanical parts littering the area like so many Legos on the living room floor on Christmas morning. Three distinct craters indicated points of impact beyond the direct hit the spider-bot took. What appeared to be an obliterated HUD helmet and a smashed tablet provided nothing of use.

Linc bent over and picked up what looked like a piece of the machine’s motherboard. It was half-melted, but a large chip was attached to it. He pocketed it. No telling what the boys might be able to pull from it.

“There’s not much left of him,” Juan said, standing thirty feet away. Rahul’s ruined corpse had not only been hit but tossed through the air like a bloody rag doll. The brilliant engineer lay in a mangled, bloody heap, nearly unrecognizable in his current state. Only his shredded one-piece flight suit and the camel-colored Merrell tactical boot affixed to a leg five feet away from the ruined torso gave Juan any confidence in his identification of the corpse.

Juan fished around in the few intact pockets of the bloody flight suit, but founding nothing of interest, not even a fragment of identification. Linc stepped up beside him, his big frame blocking the early-afternoon sun.

“Our dead Indian friend and his grounded drones means the game’s over,” Linc said. “What do you want to do now?”

Juan stood, and wiped his hands against his combat pants.

“Technically, the game isn’t over until all ten flags are captured.” Cabrillo held a hand to his ear. “What do you hear?”

Linc cocked his head. “Birds singing. Haven’t heard that in a while.” A big toothy smile brightened his fearsome face. “Sounds kinda nice, actually.”

Juan smiled. “Yeah, it does. But what you don’t hear is that god-awful horn that’s supposed to signal the end of the game.”

“And if the game’s still on, it means the Vendor will kill us all if we don’t grab those flags by tomorrow.”

“Exactly. The good news is that means the Vendor will still be hanging around, hoping to save his twenty million dollars.”

“Unless he intends to break the rules and murder us anyway.”

“We’ll deal with that, too.”

“What if the Vendor has already left?” Linc asked.

“Then we get whatever intel we can off of Plata. He’s been the Vendor’s contact person for this shindig. Speaking of which, we should contact Plata. Let him know the situation.”

Cabrillo keyed his mic and called for Plata.

“You get your flag?” the surly Guatemalan responded.

“Better than the flag. We killed Rahul and destroyed his monster-bot.”

Several cheers went up over the tactical net. All of the mercs were on the same radio frequency.

Only Plata remained quiet. There was a pause on his end. Finally he asked, “How?”

“Long story. We’ll talk about it later. Better still, all of his drones are grounded.”

“Again, how?”

“Does it matter?”

“So we’ve won? The money’s ours!” McGuire’s throaty laugh roared in Juan’s earpiece. The rest of the mercs shouted and cheered.

“Cálmense, amigos. We haven’t won yet,” Plata said. “We need to grab the rest of the flags.”

“And we only have until tomorrow to get them or the Vendor will still kill us,” the Frenchman added.

“Let him try,” the Russian said.

“Osipenko’s right,” Plata said. “We’ve already proven we can beat him.”

We?Juan shook his head. Plata’s arrogance was only matched by his inferiority complex.

“Grabbing those flags should be easy enough,” Juan said. “Davis and I must still navigate a minefield, but the rest of you should not face any opposition. Still, take all necessary precautions.”

“I’m giving the orders, Mendoza. Not you,” Plata said. “Everybody stays on mission. When you capture your flag, get back to the rally point ASAP. After that, we’ll have to see what other tricks the Vendor might have up his sleeve. Understood?”

The others signaled they heard their orders and would comply.

“Mendoza out,” Juan said and killed his radio. He turned to Linc.

“We’ve got a date with a minefield.”

“Too bad we couldn’t use one of those drones you scrambled.”

“We’ll head back to the armory and see how we can MacGyver our way out of this mess.”