Mirage

The first of the survivors reached the boarding stairs. Each was thoroughly patted down and told to sit on their hands in an open section of deck near the four men who’d choppered aboard.

Juan and Max went down to the deck to inspect their prize. As they had guessed, the tender’s crew was hired help — in this case, native Indonesians who probably worked the oil fields off Brunei. They would be detained and questioned but ultimately released. What interested Juan were the four Westerners. Two of them, he suspected, were the two from Iraq. The other two were older, and while they looked like a couple of drowned rats after their unexpected swim, they both had a sage dignity and a predisposed haughtiness. He didn’t recognize either of them, and they remained mute when he asked their names.

Cabrillo rolled his eyes. He took out his phone, snapped pictures of their faces, and e-mailed them to Mark Murphy, who was still plugged in to the DoD databases. They got a hit right away, and the answer rocked Juan back on his heels.

“Max, do you know who we have here?”

“A rat.”

“True, but a former Deputy Under Secretary of the Army kind of rat.”

“Deputy Under? That’s a real title?”

“Gotta love bureaucracies. Isn’t that right, Mr. Hillman? Don’t know who your friend is yet, but I’m guessing you’re the top dog here.”

“Who are you people?”

“Sorry, my party, I get to ask the questions. I think it’s fu

By the crestfallen look Hillman shot Cabrillo, that was precisely what he and his co-conspirators thought.

“They have been pla

“Where’s Gu

“He was one of your men?” Juan asked.

“I had the privilege of being his commanding officer on his last tour.”

“He was a good Marine?”

“The best.”

“He’s dead.” The man already knew because he didn’t react. “Max shot him while he was trying to skewer me like a pig, and now that good Marine is going to be forever known as a traitor and a thief. I hope all you are proud of yourselves.”

“What happens next?” This from one of the guards who’d fast-roped down from the Sikorsky.

He looked too young to be part of the original cabal. Juan guessed he was a former soldier now working as a mercenary and had been hired on for this job. He probably didn’t know what was fully at stake.

“In a few hours, a Navy amphibious assault ship that has been following us since we left the Persian Gulf is going to steam over the horizon. They’re going to send a boat to pick up the lot of you and a big Chinook helicopter for The Container. The four of you who fast-roped down to my ship will be charged, tried, and convicted of piracy, while these lovelies will spend the rest of their lives in some u

Hillman and the others visibly paled.

“You see, Mr. Hillman,” Juan added, “Uncle Sam won’t acknowledge a theft of this magnitude took place. It makes our government look inept, and that means you are going to be quietly swept under the carpet.”

“Shows what you know,” the former DoD official sneered. “They’ll make a deal because I’m not the ‘top dog.’ I can name names, and then I’ll walk away clean.”

Cabrillo leaned in close so that the man could see the depth of Juan’s hatred and the joy he was taking in Hillman’s defeat. “That’s a problem. See, you’re top enough, in their book. You’re taking the rap and the fall. Sing as much as you want, they’re just going to ignore you.”

He and Max walked away. He had no idea if his threat was true, but it was nice to see Hillman really start to shake as he contemplated his fate.

Eddie and Linc pulled the last container from the hold, following the takedown, and set it on the deck. Cabrillo and Hanley walked around it once. The customs seals were still in place. Juan put a hand on the metal side of the box as if he could sense what was inside.

“Tempted?” Max teased.

“Don’t start that again. But there’s something I have to do. Overholt won’t be too pleased, but I’ve got to at least look at it.” He cranked open the rear door, breaking the delicate seal.

What they saw were square bundles about the size of hay bales wrapped in various shades of colored plastic. The bundles were stacked like any other commodity and ran almost to the ceiling. They could have been packages of tangerines or DVD players or any other commodity shipped in conex containers.

“Ho-hum,” Max said. “What did you expect? Ali Baba’s treasure room?”

Juan started at how accurate his friend had been. “Never hurts to hope.”

Cabrillo wrestled one of the bales from the stack and slit open the plastic with the knife he always carried. Fresh pain erupted from his shoulder, reminding him that he would need to take it easy for a few days. He opened the tear enough to pull out some money, a four-inch-thick chunk of hundred-dollar bills.

“I read someplace that a stack of one thousand American dollar bills is a little over four inches thick. These are hundreds, so I’ve got a hundred grand here.” They both looked at the enormity of the cache and had a better understanding than just about anyone on the planet of exactly what a billion dollars really was.

He wedged the money back into place, and this time let Max put the bale back into the container. They closed the door, the locking arm coming down with a finality that ended an eight-year operation. Ironically, their fee would most likely come from this very stack of money once it made its way into a black budget account.

Hours later, after the dead Iraqis had been buried at sea and the prisoners and cash transferred over to the USS Boxer, the Chairman hosted a di

As fate would have it — and, in their business, fate dealt more hands than most — Juan had just poured his second glass of Veuve Clicquot when he felt his phone vibrate.

It was the duty officer in the op center. “Sorry to ruin the party, Chairman. There’s a call on your private line.”

“L’Enfant,” Juan breathed. It had to be, and that could only mean the information broker had found Pytor Kenin. After this untimely but lucrative distraction, it was time to get back on the trail of Yuri Borodin’s murderer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Considering their destination, it made sense that Eddie Seng would accompany Juan for the scouting mission. L’Enfant had only provided an address. Mark and Eric had done their usual excellent research on the location, but nothing beat eyes on the ground. They flew commercial from Jakarta to Shanghai.

Neither man was particularly comfortable in Eddie’s native land. Seng didn’t like it because he’d spent much of his CIA career here, recruiting agents to spy for him, and he’d had more than his fair share of scrapes with the various security arms of the People’s government. He suspected the dossier on him ran about a thousand pages. He looked nothing like he did in those days, the very best plastic surgeons the CIA’s money could buy had seen to that, but, nevertheless, every time he’d returned here he felt that he was being watched.