Dmitry Romanov sat at his desk, his head resting in his hands. The silence from Alexandra gnawed at his soul. He knew something had gone wrong. Deep down, he knew that his carefully-laid-out plans were not going as he had wanted. Unexpectedly, the U.S. vice president had cancelled their meeting and, on the news, it was being reported that the President of the United States himself was flying to Russia to meet with President Ivankov for an emergency summit in Moscow. Until half an hour ago, he had no idea if his daughter was alive or not, when a text message had arrived asking for a pickup. Instantly dispatching his best pilot, Dmitry Romanov waited for word from his daughter. So far, there had been no message whatsoever from the helicopter crew, adding to Romanov’s growing anxiety.
The door to his private office opened and Nika stepped inside. “Father, the helicopter is approaching and there still has been no word from the pilot, but I just received a text from Alexandra.”
“What did she say?” asked Romanov, raising his head.
“That the bombs are in place, and that there was fighting between Chang’s men and some police,” reported Nika.
“Anything else?” asked Romanov, seeing the hesitation in Nika’s eyes.
Nika paused and then said, “Alexandra wrote that she had been shot in the leg, but she says she’s okay.”
Romanov stood, all thoughts of defeat suddenly erased. “Tell the captain to have the ship’s doctor waiting for the helicopter. Once we have Alexandra safely on board, we will detonate the bombs and then set a course for Algeria,” said Romanov, his eyes burning with vengeance.
“Very well, Father,” replied Nika as she walked over and picked up the ship’s telephone to pass on her father’s orders.
Romanov took a deep breath and then sat back down. With the North Sea oil industry gone, the U.S. and Europe would have to come back around and offer him the control of his homeland. They just needed a little inducement.
Ten minutes later, Nika stood on the back deck of the yacht, looking expectantly at the gray horizon. The Imperator was anchored in a quiet bay with tall cliffs to protect it from the coming blast, but the ship’s radar had told them that the helicopter was only minutes away. With still no sign of the craft, she was about to head below deck to warm up, when an object approaching the stern caught her eye. Nika saw that it was her father’s helicopter flying toward them, and a wave of relief washed over her. She ordered the doctor to see to her sister the instant the helicopter landed. Not wanting to waste another moment, Nika dashed inside to tell her father the good news.
The helicopter slowed down and, like a giant, golden eagle, it seemed to hover for only an instant above the helipad before it gently landed. Its engine instantly switched off. The long, sharp rotor blades slowed, and then stopped. The ship’s doctor, a thin Indian gentleman, accompanied by two security personnel manhandling a stretcher, walked along the slick deck to the helicopter’s side door. The door slid open and an assault rifle appeared.
Jackson pulled the trigger, cutting down the two guards before they could draw their weapons. He jumped down and yelled “Swim!” at the terrified doctor, who nearly tripped over his own feet as he dashed for the side of the boat. Freezing water or not, the man never stopped, quickly disappearing over the side of the ship.
Mitchell joined his friend. “That’s really subtle, Nate,” reproached Mitchell.
A klaxon sounded.
“So much for the element of surprise,” said Mitchell, turning to face his team. “Okay. Sam and the Marines, get to the operations room. Nate, plant the charges below and no heroics—that means you, Nate.” Mitchell eyed his friend. “We all meet back here in ten.”
No one said a word as they all sprinted off in separate directions. Only Yuri remained on deck, with a pistol in his hand should he need it.
Mitchell took two stairs at a time as he sprinted down into the bowels of the ship, straight for Romanov’s office. A guard racing from the opposite direction did not even see Mitchell before almost smashing into him. With a swift stroke from his rifle into the guard’s chin, Mitchell sent the guard flying off his feet, straight back onto the floor. Mitchell picked up the man’s pistol before he edged toward the corner of the hallway and peered in the direction of Romanov’s office. Outside stood two guards, their hands firmly wrapped around their FN-2000s, looking at the roof as if they could see what was happening above them. Mitchell stepped back and looked down at the unconscious guard.
With the two Marines in the lead, Sam advanced, her M4 tucked tight into her shoulder. They moved down off the helipad, and I Marines edged forward down the deck. Suddenly, a door in front of them opened. A man stepped out, saw the Marines, and went for his holster. Two shots rang out. The man dropped to the wooden deck, blood pooling underneath him.
“That’s got to be the ops room,” said Sam to the Marines, pointing at the door that the dead man had just exited.
“Okay, stay close,” said the lead Marine, a young, red-haired sergeant, as he cautiously crept to the closed door. He placed his hand on the doorknob. He looked back at his African-American partner. The sergeant lifted his hand, showing three fingers. Sam and the black Marine nodded their heads. After silently counting down from three, the door was flung open and the sergeant stepped inside. “Move an inch and I’ll kill you all,” yelled the sergeant in fluent Russian.
Every head in the room turned at once and froze.
With a loud thump, the body of the unconscious guard hit the golden-carpeted floor outside Romanov’s office. Both guards flinched, and looked down at the body. Neither man was prepared when Mitchell turned the corner and then calmly shot both men once in the chest. Mitchell dashed forward and threw the guards’ weapons back down the hallway, without bothering to see if he had killed either man. He knew he did not have time for such things. He had only one thought—to stop Romanov. Mitchell hauled off with his right leg, and kicked in the door to the office. Ryan dove forward, rolled over, and came up on one knee, his M4 tight in his shoulder. Looking over the weapon’s sights, Mitchell was surprised to see Dmitry Romanov sitting there, with an almost serene look on his face. The Russian crown jewels lay in front of him on the mahogany table.
“You can’t stop me now, Mister Mitchell,” said Romanov, lifting his hand to show a small remote detonator. “All I need to do is press one button, and it is all over.”
“You don’t have to do that,” said Mitchell, wondering if he could kill Romanov before he pressed the button. He doubted it.
“Yes, I do. The rules of the game have changed, and I want to turn them back in my favor. Now, Mister Mitchell, since you are here, I suspect that my beloved Alexandra is no longer with us,” said Romanov, with more than a hint of sadness in his voice.
“That’s correct,” replied Mitchell.
“How did you manage to contact the ship?”
Mitchell tossed Alexandra’s phone on the table; it slid across the polished surface until coming to rest by Romanov’s hands. “I simply had one of my people send you fake messages, making you think she was alive so you wouldn’t set the bombs off.”
“Clever of you,” said Romanov as if the words left a bad taste in his mouth. “How did my Alexandra die?”
Mitchell locked eyes with the megalomaniac and said, “Your precious daughter died with a pickaxe stuck in her chest.”
Sadness turned to blind rage in Romanov’s eyes.
A familiar voice from behind Mitchell spoke. “Father, I’ve heard enough. Drop your gun, Mister Mitchell.”
Turning his head, Mitchell saw Nika standing there with a pistol in her hand, aimed squarely at his head.
“Now!” shrieked Nika.
Mitchell dropped his rifle. “I should really learn to look both ways when entering a room,” said Mitchell, realizing that he had screwed up.
“Take a seat,” ordered Romanov, indicating to the chair opposite him.
With a feigned smile on his face, Mitchell sat.
Romanov looked at his daughter. “Nika, I doubt that we
will now be able to leave in peace. Head below and prep the submarine, and I’ll join you shortly.”
“You have a sub? Who the frig are you, Doctor Evil?” said Mitchell, referring to the Austin Powers films.
“Money buys many things,” responded Romanov. “Now, Mister Mitchell, I doubt that you are here alone.”
“That’s correct.” Mitchell played for time. “Currently my people are accessing your financial records while another is going to ensure that you, your daughter, and this ridiculously overpriced dinghy end up on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”
“No need to be so crass at the end, Mister Mitchell. I intend to let you live long enough to see the bombs detonate, thereby letting you and your oversized ego know that you have failed. After that, I will put a bullet in your head to erase you from my mind,” said Romanov, pulling a pistol from his desk drawer.
“Kill me if you want. But you’re finished. There will be no place in the world where you will be safe. You will be hunted down, and like Bin Laden, you will end up a dead man.”
Romanov smiled and shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you? The world needs oil, and I am the man who can deliver it. Your government will never come after me; I am their only hope for long-lasting peace and stability in Russia.”
Mitchell gritted his teeth; unbelievably the man still thought he could buy his way out of the stinking hole he had dug.
“From the look in your eyes, Mister Mitchell, it is only now that you see I am right. All of your foolish heroics have been for nothing.”
Jackson stepped down off the metal stairs and looked around the dimly lit engineering room. It seemed deserted, but his experience and the gnawing in his gut told him otherwise. Jackson turned three hundred and sixty degrees to make sure there wasn’t anyone lurking in the shadows, before pulling a couple of charges of C-4 explosive from his backpack and laying them down on a steel worktable. He set the timers for five minutes, walked to the nearest wall and securely placed the charges onto the hull of the ship. Once they exploded, the hole torn into the side of the yacht would be fatal. The ship would sink in minutes.
A faint noise echoed in the shadows.
Jackson spun about, just in time to see a man edging toward him, his hand raised with a wrench clenched in it. Jackson fired one round at the man, hitting him squarely in the arm. With a loud clang, the wrench hit the metal floor; the man stood there, wide-eyed, holding his bloodied arm.
“Now, why did you have to try that?” said Jackson, looking at the injured man. “I hope you can still swim.”
The man looked down at the business end of Jackson’s weapon, stepped back, and eagerly nodded before edging his way to the stairs. When he realized that he wasn’t going to be shot in the back, the man turned and hurriedly fled up the stairs.
Movement farther down the room caught Jackson’s attention. Realizing that his rifle was more of a liability than an asset in the cramped space, Jackson drew his pistol and then warily moved to the other end of the engine room.
The red-haired sergeant, a Russian immigrant to the States, sat behind a computer console, his eyes going through Romanov’s business correspondence. A terrified computer operator had been “coaxed” by Sam into opening up the Romanov Corporation’s private files for the Marine. Emailing anything and everything of value directly back to the computers at the Polaris Complex, the sergeant was laying bare Romanov’s duplicity, his double-dealing with the Russian insurgents, and his plans to cripple the West economically. It was all there.
“Two minutes, then we’ve got to go,” said Sam to the Marine, as she checked her watch.
The young man nodded without looking up from the computer screen. He intended to use every second he had to finish the traitorous Romanov.
Flying twenty meters above the white-capped ocean waves, two ghost-gray U.S. Navy F-18s closed in on the Imperator. The lead plane flew toward the yacht as if it were going to fly straight into it, while the other plane banked away and started to climb into the dark gray sky. At one kilometer out, the lead pilot reached down and flipped a switch on his console, and with a deafening roar he flew right over the Imperator, its wake rattling the ship as if it were a toy in a child’s bathtub.
The sound of the rapidly approaching plane penetrated deep inside the Imperator. Dmitry Romanov ran his thumb over the remote detonator, his mind suddenly filled with doubt. Had Mitchell been a decoy to give someone time to sink his yacht? Looking over at Mitchell, Romanov was disconcerted to see him sitting there with a confident grin on his face. I’ve been set up, thought Romanov. Rising from his chair, Romanov looked at Mitchell with hate in his eyes. Slowly he brought up the detonator and then pressed the button.
For a second, Romanov held his breath, expecting an explosion as bright as the sun to flash on the horizon, but nothing happened. Repeatedly smashing his thumb on the detonator, Romanov stared down at the impotent device in his hand, a bewildered look growing on his face.
“It’s useless,” explained Mitchell as he stood. “The plane that just flew over your yacht was configured to do an electronic warfare burn. Every device, from the detonator in your hand to your ship’s navigational computers, was all fried in an instant. You lose, Dmitry Romanov.”
Blinded by his anger, Romanov swore and hurled the detonator at Mitchell.
Mitchell ignored the device and dove straight at Romanov, smashing him in his chest, sending him flying over the wide wooden desk. His pistol flew out of his hand and fell to the floor. Mitchell quickly glanced about for the pistol, but could not see it anywhere. He reached down and grabbed Romanov by the collar, hauled him to his feet, and sent a fist into Romanov’s stomach, painfully forcing his opponent to double over.
The sergeant swore as the screen flashed and then went blank the second after the plane, piercingly loud, shot over the yacht. “Thirty more seconds, I just wanted thirty more seconds,” he said.
Sam laid a hand on his shoulder. “Time’s up, Marine, we have to go.”
The sergeant stood up and turned toward the cowering computer operators. In Russian he said, “Time to swim. If you can’t, take a life preserver with you, but you are all going over the side, right now!”
The men nodded. With their hands still in the air, they scurried out of the room, like rats off a sinking ship.
Sam pulled a charge from her satchel. She placed it on the computer mainframe and set it for three minutes. With the Marines once more in the lead, Sam started to make her way back up to the helipad and safety.
The heat inside the engine room was almost unbearable. Jackson was dressed for the freezing temperatures outside. Rivers of sweat poured down his clean-shaven head straight into his eyes. Thick clouds of steam made visibility near impossible. The smooth metal floor soon became slick and dangerous. Someone must have opened the valves, thought Jackson. Trying his best to blow away the annoying sweat, Jackson pushed deeper into the bowels of the ship, looking for the intruder. The sound of chains rattling caught his attention. Edging forward, his pistol aimed into the thick, gray cloud, Jackson mentally counted down in his head. He had barely two minutes before his charges exploded, flooding the engine room and him with it. When he moved around a turbo, Jackson stopped in his tracks, not believing what he was seeing. An athletic-looking woman in a snug-fitting dry suit was preparing to launch a submersible from a hatch built into the bottom of the boat. For a brief moment, Jackson almost thought he saw a ghost, but he remembered that Jen March had said there were two Romanov daughters.
“Going somewhere?” asked Jackson, stepping out so he could be seen.
Nika stopped what she was doing, looked over at Jackson, and then smiled.
Jackson stepped forward with his pistol trained on Nika’s chest. “What’s so damned amusing?”
“You must be one of Mister Mitchell’s friends.”
Jackson nodded.
“You are such a big man; while you chased shadows in the steam, I snuck around you and changed the timers on your ch
arges.”
Jackson hesitated. Could she have been that fast? One look at her undeniable physique told him that she was not lying.
Less than a second later, the charges detonated, knocking Jackson off his feet and sending him crashing against the hull. Thousands of liters of ice-cold water rushed in from the mortal wound torn in the ship, quickly flooding the engine room.
Staggering unsteadily to his feet, Jackson glanced at Nika, but she was already gone. The sound of air escaping the submersible indicated that it was diving. He yelled and fired off one shot in rage. Jackson turned and found himself already struggling through freezing-cold, knee-deep water. By the time he made it to the stairs, it was up to his waist.
The explosions rocked the yacht from side to side. Mitchell had to let go of Romanov to prevent himself from smashing against the side of the ship.
Although battered and bruised, Dmitry Romanov was still a powerful man. Seeing a chance, he dove at the table. He scooped up the long, golden scepter in his hands, spun around and brought it up, intending to swing it down like a deadly mace onto Mitchell’s head.
The flash of the scepter arcing through the air made Mitchell turn his body. The rod flew past his head by mere millimeters, striking Mitchell in his collarbone and sending an agonizing jolt of pain down his right side. Mitchell jumped back to avoid the scepter as Romanov skillfully brought it back up in one smooth movement. Reaching behind him, Mitchell felt a chair. He wrapped his good hand around it, hauled it around and threw it at Romanov, who weaved to the side as it flew against the hull of the ship, shattering to pieces.
“You may have ruined everything, but I will at least see you go to hell,” snarled Romanov, as he brought up the scepter, aiming to send it crashing into Mitchell’s skull.
Mitchell turned sideways as the heavy golden rod barely missed him. With lightning-like reflexes, Mitchell grabbed Romanov’s over-extended arm and twisted it as hard as he could.
Surprise shot into Romanov’s eyes as his arm painfully twisted over. He had no choice, but went with his arm and fell to his knees, writhing in agony. The scepter fell to the green-carpeted floor, away from his limp hand.
Already the ship had begun to list. Mitchell struggled to keep his balance as the ship slipped deeper into the cold gray water.
Mitchell had had enough. He smashed his knee into Romanov’s head sending his opponent tumbling to the floor. Mitchell grabbed the scepter, and before Romanov could get up off his knees, Mitchell, with a loud yell of rage on his lips, smashed the scepter straight into the side of his opponent’s head. He heard the sound of bone cracking as blood flew from a deep gash in Romanov’s head.
The color from Romanov’s face instantly drained. His disbelieving eyes went blank. He tried to say something, but no sound escaped his dying lips.
“You wanted it so bad,” said Mitchell, struggling for breath as he tossed the scepter onto Romanov’s body, “you keep it.”
“I would have said, he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword,” offered Jackson, from behind Mitchell.
“It’s not a sword, it’s a scepter,” explained Mitchell, shaking his head at his friend’s joke. He looked at over at Jackson and saw his soaked clothes dripping water all over the deck.
“What happened to you?” asked Mitchell.
“I went for a swim. Come on, boss, we need to get off this wreck before we go with it.”
Another explosion tore through the yacht as Sam’s charge destroyed the operations room. The ship was beginning to list heavily to port. Both men knew that it had only a few minutes before it began the crushing descent to the bottom of the ocean. They ran as fast as they could toward the helipad.
Yuri knew what to expect and had switched off all the power on the helicopter. He had preserved the craft’s electronics when the F-18s flew over the ship. Now, sweat drenched Yuri’s forehead as he fought to keep the chopper level. The ship had already begun to sink from underneath the helicopter’s wheels. He struggled to keep the helicopter hovering just above the tilting deck. Yuri inched it over to avoid the rotor blades from striking the deck of the yacht as it sank to one side.
“Do you see them yet?” asked one of the Marines over the chopper’s intercom.
“Not yet,” replied Sam, sitting in the passenger seat beside Yuri.
“If Ryan and Jackson are not up here soon, they will have to swim. I can’t keep the helicopter like this much longer,” Yuri said, his eyes focused on the tilting deck.
“There! There they are!” Sam screamed for joy as Mitchell and Jackson emerged from below. The Marine edged over, slid open the side door, and looked out. The ship was sinking faster by the second, threatening to turn over and capsize, and take Mitchell and Jackson with it.
Mitchell and Jackson fought against the doomed ship; each step was a struggle, as they crawled their way over the debris-strewn deck to the hovering helicopter. The sound of the ship slipping below the waves was overwhelming as air blasted out from deep inside.
Yuri, seeing them move closer, increased the pitch, and prepared to take off the instant Mitchell and Jackson were inside the helicopter.
“You first,” said Mitchell to Jackson. “I’m a better swimmer than you.”
Jackson fought the urge to say something, but turned and jumped up into the open door of the helicopter. With the Marines pulling him along, Jackson made it inside. He rolled over thrust his arms down to grab Mitchell just as the ship began to roll over.
Mitchell leaped up and grasped Jackson’s powerful arms with his good hand, just as the deck slid out from under his feet.
Yuri struggled to raise the helicopter away from the stricken ship. For a moment, Yuri thought he had waited too long, and then ever so slowly, the nose of the helicopter began to rise. Praying and swearing up a storm in Russian to anyone who would listen, Yuri pulled back on the joystick as the chopper clawed its way into the sky.
With a loud grunt, Jackson pulled with all his strength. A second later, Mitchell’s head popped up. Sam dashed over, reached down, grabbed Mitchell by the collar of his winter jacket, and together, they all pulled him up and into the open door.
“Thanks,” said Mitchell, lying on his back, looking up at everyone in the chopper. “I really wasn’t looking forward to a swim in the North Atlantic this time of year.”
Ryan sat up and looked out the window, numb inside, as the Imperator disappeared from view. A bubbling, foaming froth soon marked the final resting place of Romanov and his twisted dreams of power.
Yuri banked the helicopter around and headed for shore.
49