by Mike Maden
“You can’t win, Troy. You can’t stop the war. And you’ll lose your life behind iron bars. Or there’s this.”
Myers pulled a photo out of her purse and handed it to Pearce. He examined it.
“A sailboat?”
“Our sailboat. A Beneteau First 38. It’s waiting for us down in the British Virgin Islands.”
“Why did you buy it?”
“Because it’s blue, like your eyes.”
“Expensive?”
“Terribly. But you’re worth it.”
Pearce studied the photo more closely. He felt his heart lighten. “You want me to be a pirate?”
“I think you already are one.”
“We don’t know how to sail.”
“We’ll have all the time in the world to learn. Or we can just park the boat and fish off the back deck. You haven’t been fishing in a long while.”
“I miss it.”
“I know.”
“What happened to the idea that we need to be useful?”
“I can’t think of anything more important than you getting healthy and well, however long that takes.”
Pearce thought about what was happening in Syria. He knew what kind of carnage was taking place over there. He could smell the cordite and burnt flesh. He wanted to stop it. Felt guilty for not already stopping it. And then his mind flashed back to the ghost-white images of the women being butchered by the ISIS killers in Iraq. He couldn’t stop that, either.
He was worse than useless.
He handed the picture back to her. “Let me think about it.”
She pushed it back into his hands. “Keep it. It will look great on your windowless cell wall.”
He couldn’t help but grin a little. “I’ll use it to hide my escape tunnel from the guards.” He turned serious. “Any word from Ian?”
Her eyes narrowed. “He said everything’s being taken care of, as per your orders. He wasn’t specific.”
“He wasn’t supposed to be.”
“You’ve got to let it go. For you. For us.”
“I am.” He pocketed the photo.
“Really?”
He nodded. “I will.”
Myers leaned forward, peering into his face. “Promise?”
He lowered his eyes. “I’ll try. I swear to God, I’ll try.”
“What about Lane’s offer?”
Pearce shrugged. “I’ll think about it.”
“The offer won’t last.”
Pearce looked up. “Betray my country or betray myself. Hell of a choice.”
“I don’t see it as a betrayal of your country.”
“But I do.”
Another awkward silence. Myers heard the second hand ticking on the wall clock. “We’re almost out of time.”
“I know.”
“What shall I tell David?”
Pearce saw the pain in her eyes. He knew his answer.
He just couldn’t say the words.
65
EASTERN PROVINCE, SAUDI ARABIA
It was only the third flight of the recently delivered Saudi Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone and it was already routine. It could fly continuously for fourteen hours fully armed but it had been in the air for only eight on today’s mission, keeping watch over the Kingdom’s eastern shoreline on the Persian Gulf. The Reaper ran a continuous circuit from the border of Kuwait in the north all the way down the coastline to Bahrain in the far south and back again.
The nearsighted Saudi captain piloting today’s mission sat in an air-conditioned ground-control station parked at King Abdulaziz Air Base, just north of the bustling port city of Al Khobar. He was as newly minted as the Reaper he was monitoring, having just graduated from drone pilot training with the 9th Attack Squadron at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.
The mission had been routine so far. In fact, it was mind-numbingly dull thanks to the vehicle’s autopiloting capabilities, just one function of the most advanced navigational software and avionics package available, designed and built by an American company.
The captain stifled a yawn. His sensor operator had stepped outside for a smoke, leaving him alone in the GCS. He thumbed through a well-worn Victoria’s Secret catalogue he’d found in the officers’ lounge. He succumbed to a second yawn as he flipped to a dog-eared page, struggling to see in the dimly lit room.
The Reaper’s direction suddenly turned away from the coast and headed inland. No alarms sounded. The captain was too preoccupied to notice the change until it was too late.
But it wouldn’t have mattered if he had.
—
A DOE-EYED QATARI GIRL from the royal house of Al-Thani swam naked in the vast blue pool inside the expansive stone courtyard.
Al-Saud leered at his newest and youngest wife from the shade beneath the portico and sipped on a minty mojito, his favorite cocktail. She was already pregnant, another sign of favor from Allah, whose blessings were as heavy and real as the thick rope of golden chain around his neck. His villa near the coast was a pleasure palace he had purchased just for the two of them with the dowry he had received from the girl’s father.
Life was good, and al-Saud was filled with the gloating satisfaction of all patriots on the winning side of a war. A war he had helped orchestrate. Thanks to him, the Americans were providing the drones his country required for fighting Daesh and keeping the filthy Persians at bay. Victory was certain.
But al-Saud’s thoughts turned inward. He sighed. House arrest was, literally, a gilded cage. But it was still a burden. His desperate desire was to be back in the good graces of the king. He would be now if it weren’t for Pearce. Pike’s new contract to assassinate the American was paid in full, a wedding gift to himself. He prayed it would be completed soon.
His mood began to sour until he remembered the comforting admonition of his uncle. “The Americans have long arms but short memories.” The old sheikh was right, of course. He would be back in service to his family and his nation eventually. He only needed patience, and a good word from Chandler at just the right time. Until then, he would be forced to endure the sensate life of a pampered Saudi royal. He laughed.
C’est la vie.
Al-Saud drained the last of his glass and slipped off his swimsuit. It was time to pleasure himself again with his young wife in the pool’s cool salt water. He padded over to the gold-tiled edge in his bare feet and called out to the girl. She laughed and waved him in. He felt his manhood swelling as he gazed upon her bright and eager face.
A glint of sunlight caught his eye. He glanced up into the pale blue vault. He sensed more than saw the blinding fury of two erupting Hellfire missiles, cutting off his scream in the scalding fire that burned away his world and everything he loved.
—
SITTING IN HIS OWN GCS in San Diego, Ian turned the Saudi Reaper toward Iranian airspace. With any luck the Saudis would think it was Tehran that had managed to pull off the hijacking instead of him. Thanks to the Reaper’s navigational software and avionics package—designed and built by a subsidiary of Pearce Systems—Ian had taken effortless control of the drone and piloted it toward al-Saud’s private residence just five miles off its preprogrammed route.
The Reaper’s onboard facial-recognition software confirmed al-Saud’s identity before Ian launched the Hellfires and the high-powered optical camera captured the astonished look on the prince’s face just moments before he and his compound were vaporized.
Too bad about the girl, he thought to himself. But as his nana told him years ago, You sleep with the Devil in a bed of your own ashes.
Monitoring the communications channels of the Royal Saudi Air Force, Ian knew that two fourth-generation Boeing F-15SA strike fighters had been dispatched, just as he assumed they would be once the Reaper was discovered off course. Equipped with the AN/AAS-42 infrared search-and-track s
ystem wedded to the Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System, the Saudi pilots would easily find and destroy the slow-moving turboprop Reaper with or without help from Saudi ground-control radar. No doubt they would completely destroy the aircraft along with its black box. But Ian was a cautious man and put a worm in the drone’s CPU that already destroyed any evidence of his activity just in case the black box was recovered.
Ian tapped an encrypted message on his console.
“14Gipper.”
66
OFF THE COAST OF CABO SAN LUCAS, MEXICO
Pike stared at the barrel of a pistol. His hands were raised. She stood well outside of his arm’s reach. The weapon was rock steady in her two-handed grip. The Korean was a pro, for sure.
“Irony is a bitch,” Stella said.
“I’m not following you.”
“Tamar was my friend. We ran an op together with Pearce, right here, in these waters.”
Pike wanted to bargain but the cold rage in her pitiless eyes told him it was pointless.
Stella motioned with her pistol. “Turn around.”
Pike hesitated. Her fingertip slid gently from the trigger guard to the trigger. Not good.
He turned around.
So this was it, he told himself. He faced the wide blue Pacific and its vast pale horizon. Tiny whitecaps shimmered in the morning light. He could imagine worse ways to go than a bullet to the back of the head, staring at the sea.
“She was an honorable woman and you’re a piece of shit,” Stella said. “I want those to be the last words you ever hear.”
“Technically, my dear, the last words—”
Stella clocked him on the back of his skull with the butt of her pistol. Hard. He moaned as he fell, hitting the deck with a sickening thud. He wasn’t dead. She was sure of that.
Couldn’t be dead.
That would ruin it.
—
PIKE WOKE, eyes fluttering, surprised he was still alive.
His head throbbed, an excruciating headache. His shoulders were killing him, too, and pain shot down the length of his back. His wrists were cuffed to the broad wheel of his brand-new yacht, hands purpling. The weight of his body was suspended from his wrists as if he were crucified in reverse on a silver, circular cross.
He stood up on wobbly legs, the locked wheel supporting him. He shook his head to clear it.
He remembered.
That crazy Korean bitch. Something about irony.
He looked around. Miles offshore. Nobody around.
He called out. She was gone.
Thank God for that.
The cuffs dug into his wrists. He twisted them. The plastic bands dug in deeper. He cursed. Tugged again, hard. Tendons popped. He screamed at the top of his lungs, panicked, raging.
A muffled explosion forward shook the deck beneath his feet.
That caught his attention. He listened.
Utter silence.
Except for the gurgling noise.
What the hell?
He twisted all the way around, his stiff neck barely able to rotate enough to look directly behind him.
A boat. About a half mile away.
He squinted. He saw the Korean standing on the bow of another boat with a pair of binoculars.
The deck began tilting forward beneath his feet.
He whipped back around and the deck angled further.
It was going down.
Fast.
—
STELLA WATCHED PIKE scream and flail, his wrists still pinned to the big silver wheel. She could hear his anguished cries even from here. Probably from the pain in his two wrists, now broken, but maybe from sheer terror.
She hoped it was both.
The bow submerged, filling with tons of dead ocean weight. The stern stood high out of the water like a shark fin.
She zoomed in on Pike’s manic, jerking dance as the helm filled with surging sea. A moment later the rest of the ship followed the bow, plunging beneath the surface of the cold Pacific, Pike at the wheel, his screams cut off, steering a course for a deep blue hell.
She lowered her binoculars. Tossed the remote-control detonator over the side.
Her phone vibrated. She checked the message. It was Ian.
“14Gipper.”
She smiled. Good timing.
Ian was a good man and a great boss. He owned the company now.
She was glad he decided to tie off the loose ends. They owed Pearce that much, even if he didn’t ask for it.
She texted Ian back. “24Gipper.”
She wished she could tell Pearce it was over now, but he was gone. So was Myers.
Off the grid. Nobody knew where, not even Ian.
They were on a boat, she heard.
She smiled.
Ironic.
She prayed they were happy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest thanks again to Ivan Held and G. P. Putnam’s Sons for believing in the series. I’m grateful for the guidance provided to me by my editor, Sara Minnich, and I congratulate her on the newest addition to her family, William. Tireless Lauren LoPinto kindly threw in with us and I owe not a little to my copyeditor, David Koral, and production editor, Claire Sullivan.
As always, a tip of the hat to my literary agent, David Hale Smith, and his assistant, Liz Parker, along with the entire team at Inkwell Management.
Angela, my wife, is always my first reader. She never fails to inspire me both on and off the page.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Maden holds both a master’s and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California–Davis, specializing in international relations and comparative politics. He has lectured and consulted on the topics of war and the Middle East, served as a political consultant and campaign manager, and formerly hosted his own local weekly radio show. His previous books in the Troy Pearce series include Drone, Blue Warrior, and Drone Command.
mikemaden.com
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