by Graham Brown
“What the hell?” he whispered.
These were the very crates La Bruzca had insisted were for another buyer. In some ways it didn’t surprise him that La Bruzca had sold the missiles to the cult, but like everything else it was just too convenient.
He thought back to the meeting with La Bruzca. He could hear La Bruzca’s sinister tone as he intimated that he knew more about Hawker than the rest of the world did. Could it have some connection? He found it hard to believe events could really have come full circle.
There are no coincidences, he reminded himself, but what the hell did it all mean?
He glanced at his watch. In seven minutes it wouldn’t matter.
As Hawker continued the search below, Danielle crossed the main deck. A hint of moonlight had appeared on the horizon, though the moon had yet to show its face.
Getting her bearings she moved toward the bow. She remembered Moore saying the missiles appeared to be located forward, placed on rather obviously built launch rails.
Getting away from the accommodations block, she darted forward in spurts, passing various cargo hatches and covers. Every step out into the open felt like she was inviting a sniper to put a round through her heart.
It was still coal black in the shadows but that didn’t stop someone from having a night-vision scope. And in a minute the moon would be up and she would be painted with each step.
She hurried and quickly reached the forward section. There, between the two crane booms that might have once hoisted cargo out of the holds, she saw the launch ramps Moore had mentioned and a gray metallic structure the size of a small bus. It seemed nothing more than a crude covering, probably erected just to keep the missiles out of sight.
Even the launch rails seemed crude. She didn’t know what missiles these people had, but she couldn’t actually remember a missile old enough to need a launch ramp. She hoped they were so old that they wouldn’t operate.
She moved toward the housing, staying under cover, looking around for any signs of danger. If anyone from the cult remained alive and present they would be here, protecting these weapons, waiting to fire them.
No one shot at her and Danielle stole a glance through an open doorway that had been cut in the metallic housing. Inside, two missiles the size of truncated telephone poles sat on the launch rails. She pressed her back against the outside wall of the shelter and checked her rifle.
She would dash through the cutout door, swinging her rifle to the right, firing blind, because she didn’t have the chance to wait. And then once she’d cleared the area, she’d find a way to sabotage the missiles and prevent them from launching.
She took a deep breath, tensed her body, and looked toward the doorway.
The first sliver of the moon had risen over the water. Its pale light spilled across the deck. In that light Danielle saw something she hadn’t expected, hadn’t even considered: a tripwire, strung across the doorway, like the thinnest strand of spider silk.
CHAPTER 52
As Arnold Moore sat listening to Walter Yang, he hoped the young man was about to tell him it was all a hoax, that they could call off the dogs and let it all be, but the look on Yang’s face suggested something else.
“Be quick,” Moore said.
“I’ve been studying the virus like you suggested,” Yang said, “not the data Ms. Laidlaw recovered but the original Magician virus from the UN.”
“What did you find? Anything that will change our response.”
“Not really, but something interesting.”
“It’s a little late for interesting, Walter.”
Yang nodded. “I know what you mean but—”
“You don’t know what I mean,” Moore said curtly. “Two of our best are moving on the site right now. It’s probably heavily defended. Even if they’ve survived the insertion and the recon, the island will probably be blown out from under them before they can find what they’re looking for and get off of it alive. So trust me, you have no idea what I mean, when I tell you: it’s a little late.”
Moore knew his pain had gotten the best of him. Yang’s face said he regretted coming in, but he didn’t flinch.
“You don’t understand,” Yang said. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve been studying the inert section that you asked me to look at.”
Moore exhaled and shook his head. “I thought you said it was just blank space reserved in the DNA, a space that would be replaced by the payload?”
“It is,” Yang said. “But I think it’s something else as well. I think it’s a message.”
Moore felt as if ice water had just been poured down his spine.
“A message?”
Yang nodded.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what the DNA molecule looks like?” Yang said.
“Basically,” Moore said.
“The parts that go up the side are called nucleotides; the molecules that go across the middle—the rungs in the ladder if you want to think about it like that—they’re called bases or base pairs.”
“Right,” Moore said. “Go on.”
“In standard DNA there are only four types of bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. We abbreviate them A, C, G, T.”
“You’re saying someone coded a message in these base pairs,” Moore guessed, trying to jump ahead and hoping that it would be something they could use.
Yang nodded. “The primary parts of the virus are designed as we would expect, but the inert section is different. Successive rungs show a repeating pattern. You see this in certain sections of DNA. Often the telomere sections are the same over and over again: TTAGGG. But I found something different here. The repetition starts, stops, and then restarts.”
“How is that a message?” Moore asked. He felt the clock ticking.
“Because the pattern is neither consecutively repeating nor sufficiently random. That means it has to be purposeful. In this case, I found fourteen consecutive rungs of one type of base pairing, eighteen consecutive rungs of a second type, nine consecutive rungs of a third type. Then the pattern started over again. Fourteen, eighteen, nine. Fourteen, eighteen, nine. It seemed odd to me.”
It seemed odd to Moore, mostly because it seemed odd to his geneticist. “But what the hell does it mean?”
“Genetically it means nothing,” Yang said. “But then I remembered what you said about Ms. Gonzales working for the NRI years ago and the connection hit me. N is the fourteenth letter in the alphabet, R is the eighteenth, I is the ninth. Fourteen, eighteen, nine, three times in a row. NRI, NRI, NRI. In a virus sent to a former NRI employee.”
Moore felt the hair on his neck stand up.
“Could there be any other reason?” he asked, feeling the claws of panic pulling at him. “Any reason at all for such a pattern?”
Yang shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Using the same logic, I ‘read’ the rest of the inert strand,” Yang said. “The next seventy-eight base pairs are arranged as follows, repeating patterns, eighteen in a row, then five in a row, then twenty-two, then five, fourteen, seven, and then five again. If you take those as letters they spell out one word: REVENGE.”
Moore felt the room spinning. Someone was after them. Whoever it was wanted them to know it at some point. Perhaps they’d been meant to discover this earlier, or perhaps well after the fact. But who and why?
Moore ran through the facts in his head. Ranga’s involvement brought Hawker in. The letter to Gonzales tipped the NRI and brought Moore and Danielle into the fray. All along whoever they were dealing with had been one step ahead of them, to the point where they’d even found or guessed the location of the safe house in Kuwait where Hawker had stashed Savi and the little girl.
Ranga.
Hawker.
Danielle.
Information that no one outside the NRI should have known.
Revenge.
The answer hit Moore like an anvil.
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Each of them had plenty of enemies, plenty of people who might want to see them suffer or die, but Moore could think of only one person with reason to hate them all.
He grabbed his phone and hit the button to autodial Danielle’s satellite phone.
“Pick up!” he shouted to the air. “Pick up.”
A British voice came on the line. “This is Keegan.”
“Keegan, put Danielle on the line,” Moore said.
The response brought added pain.
“It’s too late,” Keegan said. “They’re already on the island.”
It was too late. And if Moore was right, Hawker and Danielle were walking into a death trap.
CHAPTER 53
A board the USS Shiloh, Captain Petrie watched as his men ran through the prelaunch sequence for the Tomahawk missiles and reported back in. Guidance was confirmed, warheads were armed, safeties removed.
“Preparation sequence complete,” an officer at the tactical station said. “Vertical launch system ready. TLAM four, seven, eight, and eleven ready to fire. TLAM units twelve, fourteen, fifteen, and nineteen on standby.”
Captain Petrie looked at the ship’s clock, watching as the second hand swung across the bottom of the hour and up the side. The ship was prepared, the board was green.
“Safeties off,” Petrie ordered.
The fire control officer flipped up the plastic guard on the launch trigger, uncovering the Fire switch. The second hand continued to sweep higher, passing the 11 and closing quickly on the vertical position. Precisely as it hit 12, Petrie gave the order.
“Commence firing.”
The weapons officer pressed the switch. A flaring sound was heard and the black night was lit up by blazing white flame as the first Tomahawk launched from its tube and lit its booster.
The missile fired off the ship at an angle, leaving a trail of smoke that the next missile blasted through only seconds later.
Somewhere in the Persian Gulf, two other cruisers were doing the same thing. And sixty miles north of the Shiloh’s position, whatever existed on the small rocky island had approximately four minutes to live.
CHAPTER 54
Leaving the missile crates behind, Hawker continued his search. A chart room, a room filled with welding equipment, a room filled with moldy stores of flour and rice. Finally, at the heart of the lowest deck he found a door that looked different from the others. In fact, it looked like an airlock with rubber sealed edges and a handle that would have been at home on the inside of a commercial aircraft door.
He glanced in through a small window above the handle. It looked like a lab in terms of styling and modern equipment. He saw movement in the corner. Sonia sitting in a chair, sobbing, covering her face.
Left to die, he guessed.
He threw the handle open and rushed toward her.
“Hawker, no!” she shouted.
A shot echoed through the room. Hawker felt an explosion hit him in the back and he flew forward, slamming into the wall face-first. He fell and his rifled clattered out of his hand.
Rolling over, he looked back toward the doorway. A man with jaundiced-looking eyes, sunken into a narrow, hatchetlike face, stared at him. A snake tattoo coiled around his right arm, and a dark scar lay hidden beneath a block of ink that curled around his neck.
“Welcome to my parlor,” the man said, raising a Chinese-made SKS rifle to a resting position.
The SKS fired the same slug as the AK-47. A heavy 7.62 mm shell. The blast had thumped Hawker hard. Part of it had penetrated the vest.
Now on the ground, Hawker felt as if he couldn’t breathe, as if the vest weighed a ton. He could feel blood flowing down his side. The only sound that came through the ringing in his ears was Sonia’s muffled screams.
She dropped down beside him as another man came in the door. This second man was a hulking brute, with a different tattoo on his forearm, a knife dripping with blood. He stood a step behind the first. He guessed the snake man was the leader of the cult. Their prisoner, Yousef, had called him Draco.
Sonia reached Hawker’s side. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Get away from him,” Draco ordered.
Tears streamed down Sonia’s face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again. “I’m so sorry.”
The hulking man stepped forward, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her back.
Hawker tried to rise but the wind had been knocked out of him. Based on the sudden shortness of breath he felt and the immense pain on his right side, he guessed he might have a punctured lung.
“You don’t look so dangerous now,” Draco said. “Hardly enough to cause anyone pain. And yet you are the bane of my existence.”
Hawker stared in utter confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I don’t even know who you are.”
The man snapped off a shot at Hawker. The bullet took a chunk out of the wall by Hawker’s head. Hawker flinched and contorted his body away from the impact. The pain in his side tripled.
“You don’t know me?” Draco shouted. “After what you did to me?”
Hawker’s chest heaved and fell awkwardly as he fought for breath and understanding. Perhaps he could buy some time. His hearing had come back and some of his strength seemed to be returning. More important, Danielle was still out there.
He pressed himself against the wall and used it as leverage to force himself up. He stood facing Draco.
“You were only hired to take the fall,” Draco said. “Don’t you know your role? You were supposed to die or disappear and be blamed for what happened.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hawker said.
“They cast me out because of you!” Draco shouted. “Cast me out into the darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth and they took you in. You: a traitor.”
The man knew something about him, wherever the information came from. But Hawker was no traitor.
“I never betrayed anyone,” Hawker managed. “I just wouldn’t … betray my conscience.”
“Well, that’s the problem with a conscience,” the man replied. “It can really mess up your day.”
As Hawker spoke he realized for the first time in a long time that he had nothing left to make up for. He’d done what was right. Not just what was right for him, but what was right in and of itself. And even then he’d spent years struggling with the choice that had banished him.
His only guess was that this man must have been involved somehow, though he didn’t recognize him.
Just then a thunderous explosion rocked the boat. Hawker steadied himself with a hand on the wall, hoping it was the first of the Tomahawks, but it was followed by only a few rumbles and then slowly the odor of smoke began to seep into the room.
Draco glared at him. “Have you no respect?” he said.
“Bow your head. You’ve just heard the sound of Ms. Laidlaw’s death at the hands of a tripwire.”
The smug arrogance and the words themselves lit a fire in Hawker. Not waiting, not thinking, he charged. He pushed himself off the wall and lunged forward. The SKS fired. A shot hit Hawker on the side, a glancing blow. The vest took most of the energy and Hawker collided with Draco, wrapping his arm around the man’s neck, trying to tackle him.
They stumbled together but didn’t fall. They crashed through the door into the bay where Nadia was strapped to the gurney. Hawker drove the cult leader into the wall.
Still standing, Hawker slammed his knee into Draco’s stomach and then butted his forehead into Draco’s face. The man’s nose shattered and he cried out. The back of his head hit hard against the wall as he tried to get the rifle loose and shoot Hawker.
Using the leverage he’d gained, Hawker wrapped one arm around Draco’s neck and grabbed his weapon with the other. Gripping it with all his might, he kept Draco from turning it at either him or Sonia.
Draco pulled the trigger anyway and gunfire sprayed the room. The recoil hammered near Hawker’s wound. Th
e pain was incredible, but Hawker held on, and Draco fired again, unwittingly forcing his own man, Cruor, to take cover.
As the latest shots ended, Hawker could feel his hand burning where he held the rifle. He let go, slammed a punch into Draco’s face, and then turned him and bent him backward, pulling the man off his feet and body-slamming him to the ground.
Hawker landed on top of him and began to pummel the bastard, slamming his fist into Draco’s face.
Before he could beat Draco to death, Cruor lunged for him, grabbing him around the neck and choking him. The brawl became all disjointed, a glimpse here, a punch there, another blow here.
Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Sonia smashing something into Cruor’s skull, and the man went off to the side. But as the thug landed, he rolled, brought his own weapon to bear, and blasted Sonia in the stomach. She fell backward against the wall, clutching her abdomen and doubling over.
At almost the same moment shots rang out from the other direction, blood splattered on the far wall, and Cruor collapsed to his knees and then fell on his face.
Draco scrambled away, ducking through the door to where Nadia lay. A pair of shots chased him, puncturing the glass between them. Fissures spidered across the clear plate and it crumbled in toward Hawker.
As the shattered glass fell away, it revealed Draco hiding behind Nadia. His right hand held an injector attached to her IV line; his left hand held another one that hooked into the same line at a Y connection. They were large syringes, the size of toothpaste tubes, with thumb-sized plungers. One had been marked with a red stripe and one with white.
Hawker looked around wondering where the hell the shots had come from. Danielle stood in the doorway with a rifle raised to her shoulder.
“Never one without the other,” Draco managed. The words came raggedly from his busted mouth. “I trust you recognize me, Ms. Laidlaw.”
