Juan wished he’d have more time to practice with Max’s brilliant piece of engineering, but the ship’s decks were too dangerous, and using it over the water was suicide if something went wrong. He just had to content himself with the little bit of practice he got in the Oregon’s main hold. Keeping the contraption stable was tricky, but he thought he had the hang of it. If something did go wrong during the actual assault, he wasn’t likely to survive.
He piloted the submersible himself. They launched from the moon pool an hour before sunset and dove deep enough that they couldn’t be seen from above. Once it was dark, they could approach the surface. Linda Ross accompanied him. She would take the little four-man mini-sub back to the ship. All the equipment they were bringing was strapped to the top of the sub in a waterproof container.
“Can I ask you something?” Linda said as they started the slow crawl to a rendezvous at an unused pier along the Huangpu River.
“Shoot.” They were at a depth where there was just enough light to see feathers of biologic flotsam streaming by the thick domed canopy. The sub navigated through a lidar system—basically, radar with lasers.
“Why not just lob a missile down on to Kenin while he’s sunning himself? Surely there are times he’s alone.”
“If this was about revenge, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” Juan replied. “But I want to get my hands on his stealth technology, or whatever it was, that made that ship disappear and capsize Dullah and you on the Sakir.”
“I assume you then want to sell it to your and my favorite uncle.”
“I whetted Lang Overholt’s appetite while we were laid up in Bermuda. He said—and I quote—‘Get me that and I’ll hand you a blank check from the Treasury.’ I foresee a number one followed by eight zeros.”
It took Linda a second to imagine the figure. “A hundred million. My my.”
“We just got them back their stolen billion. I think they can afford it. Though Lang’s going to grit his teeth handing it over.” Juan smiled at the thought. His old mentor was known as both a brilliant strategist but also the biggest miser in Washington, D.C.
From time to time, they would rise close enough to the surface to get updated GPS signals to fine-tune the navigation plot. They were fighting the Yangtze’s current, so the going was slow. Because Shanghai is the busiest container port in the world, an unimaginable amount of ship traffic thundered overhead. In the submersible the hiss of steel through water and the chop of propeller blades was an industrial symphony. It dimmed little when they made the turn to start following the Huangpu River that bisected the megalopolis.
They stayed close to the middle of the river. Juan knew on either side of them were mile upon mile of commercial docks. This was a city of industry, and its rivers were its lifeblood. When they passed the Pudong District, they were at a depth of forty feet but could still see the artificial neon glow of the numerous buildings cutting through the water. Twenty minutes later, they drifted toward their rendezvous. The site was in the process of renewal. A cement plant had once stood on a piece of real estate that now was prime for residential development. The towers that were to replace it would be home to five thousand people.
Now the plant had been demolished, but the quay where raw materials had once been imported still stood. Juan had one of their encrypted walkie-talkies. “The Merman is here.”
“About time, Merman,” Eddie replied. “For a while there, I thought you’d come to your senses and called the whole thing off.”
Juan surfaced the mini-sub in the shadow of the quay and quickly saw that he could slip it between the dock and a partially sunken barge. They would be invisible. Eddie was parked in a Chinese knockoff of a Toyota van. A fine rain was falling, blurring the lights of the city. Juan unstrapped himself, gave Linda’s shoulder a squeeze, and made his way to the hatch.
“Take care,” Linda said.
“See you soon.”
Eddie had already released the straps holding the cargo pod to the sub’s upper deck, and, together, he and Cabrillo lifted it into the van’s rear cargo box. The pod itself wasn’t much larger than those seen atop cars, and it weighed less than a hundred pounds.
Once they were clear, bubbles boiled around the Disco submersible and it soon plunged back into its natural element. Linda would be traveling with both tide and current, so she’d be back aboard the Oregon in half the time it took to get here. Eddie drove the truck to a commercial parking lot that was less than two miles from Kenin’s tower fortress. They spent the next hour examining the items they had smuggled into China, making certain nothing had been damaged. Juan was trusting his life to this gear, so he was thorough and methodical.
It was too late to find a taxi so they walked back to the rented office that overlooked Kenin’s penthouse retreat. MacD Lawless was watching the darkened terrace through the powerful camera lens. Mike Trono was stretched out asleep in the adjoining office. Cabrillo let him be and wrapped a sleeping bag around himself and curled up on the carpet. He was asleep in moments.
Next morning, the rain had intensified, and the forecast said it would continue for at least another day. The men remained holed up in the office. Eddie was reduced to the role of errand boy, going out to get their meals. They maintained the overwatch of the rooftop terrace because there wasn’t much else to do. All of them had been on such stakeouts before and each had his own way to combat the boredom.
Thirty hours after sneaking into the country, Juan was with Eddie in the truck. The weather had broken. Seng was behind the wheel while the Chairman rode in the cargo bed. He was strapped in and ready to go. The roof panels had been cut and hinges attached so he could open them with the pull on a length of rope. They just needed to wait for Kenin.
Eddie found a parking space near where he’d spent part of a night watching the building’s back door. He had to remain with the vehicle in case a cop wanted him to move. MacD was in position farther down the street ready for the diversion while Mike was up in the office with a radio to tell them when Kenin went out to enjoy the sunshine after so many days confined indoors.
The guards had done their dawn sweep, and at nine o’clock repeated it because the girl was coming out to swim. Mike relayed this information to the others using a predetermined series of clicks on their walkie-talkies. Not knowing the level of government monitoring made them prudently circumspect.
Juan heard two clicks from his radio handset. Kenin had made his appearance. Juan’s stomach knotted. Minutes to go. He tightened his grip. He wouldn’t open the roof panels until he heard that final single click in case anyone in the surrounding buildings looked down and became curious enough about an open-topped van to call the police.
He had to wait until Kenin was seated poolside. One guard would be standing outside the little pavilion that housed the elevator. But the real trigger moment would come when Mike saw the elevator guard switch frequencies on his radio and check in with the guards down in the penthouse suite. He did it every five minutes. A simple “All’s well.” Once he gave that, Juan had just those five min—
Click.
Cabrillo yanked on the rope, and the two precut sections of roof hinged downward, flooding the interior of the van in light. The truck shifted slightly as Eddie jumped clear and started making his way to another vehicle they had stashed nearby.
Down the street, MacD set the paper bag he’d been carrying in the space between two parked cars and casually blended back into the throngs of people on the sidewalks. After a ten-second delay Cabrillo knew was coming, the contents of the bag started to erupt.
It had been filled with tiny firecrackers. Ironically, they had smuggled them in because they couldn’t guarantee the quality of local fireworks from the nation that invented them. They lit off like echoing popcorn. Those people nearest the smoking eruption of tiny explosions stepped back smartly while nearly every other pedestrian edged forward to see what was happening.
For half a block, all eyes were on the sparking and popping bag. No one paid the slightest attention to the van.
They never saw what emerged from the top.
The technology had been around since the 1960s. Max had found the design specs on the Internet. The only issue had been finding sufficiently pure hydrogen peroxide to fuel the contraption.
Cabrillo had spent the morning strapped to a jetpack. Now, with the crowded street distracted by the continuous string of firecrackers going off, he toggled the switch that caused the fuel to react with a silver catalyst and expand in an exothermic reaction that blew superhot gas through the pack’s twin jet nozzles. The sound was like that of steam escaping from a loose fitting, but the exhaust was invisible.
Juan’s first attempts at using the jetpack tethered down in the Oregon’s hold had been disasters. Seconds after lifting free of the deck, he would begin tumbling in midair, and had it not been for the ropes supporting him, he would have killed himself a dozen times over. But then came the eureka moment when he intuitively understood the dynamics of this kind of flying and he could keep erect and stable until the tanks ran dry and he would alight onto his feet with the grace of an eagle returning to its aerie.
Max had done the calculations, and Cabrillo trusted no man more than Hanley, but as he lifted out of the truck’s cargo bed he knew he could be dead in thirty seconds. That’s all the time he had to soar four hundred twenty feet into the air and land precisely on the flat-roofed elevator housing. If he didn’t make it, he’d be just shy of terminal velocity when he augered into the pavement.
Cabrillo came out of the truck with the majestic slow rise of a Saturn rocket, the weight of thrust tightening the straps between his legs and across his back. He wasn’t going to bother with a helmet, but Max convinced him to wear it after mounting a camera so the Oregon could watch his progress as he climbed higher and higher. The world shrank beneath his feet, and he could tell that his launch had gone unnoticed as they’d planned.
There was nothing to be done about people in surrounding buildings seeing him. He could only hope they saw it as some sort of publicity stunt. Ten seconds into the flight, the top of the building looked no closer in the helmet’s monocular display, and he’d burned half his fuel.
But as the hydrogen peroxide jetted through the exhaust nozzles, the weight dropped and his speed increased. His acceleration was geometric, and quite quickly his target appeared to be within reach. The countdown display calculating thrust time showed he had eight seconds of fuel, and he had only a dozen floors to go. More and more of the city opened to him the higher he rose along the skyscraper’s sheer glass wall, but he took no heed. He concentrated on keeping his body still and his movement to a minimum. That was the secret of flying the turbo-vacuum, as Max called it. Stay nice and steady and keep corrective gestures small. He wavered only slightly as he shot higher and higher and knew that if he survived this, it would be an exhilaration he would never forget.
Four seconds left and he passed the thirty-ninth floor. He eased ever so slightly off the throttle control, slowing his assent. He didn’t want to fly higher than absolutely necessary.
He cleared the last floor with a second of fuel remaining, then realized he still had to get above the glass wall that encircled the top of the building. He didn’t remember if Max had included this final barrier in his calculations.
There was nothing he could do. He leaned in to launch himself at the wall and managed to clear it by kicking his legs forward. This threw off his aerodynamics, but it didn’t matter. The last of the peroxide fuel spewed from the pack, and Cabrillo fell two feet onto the top of the elevator housing. He managed to land on his knees and not hurt himself thanks to pads built into the thermal protective chaps he’d worn.
He slapped the quick release for the belt and shucked out of the jetpack like it was a cape. Empty, it weighed less than forty pounds. He was on his feet a second later, an FN Five-seveN pistol in hand. It was fitted with a silencer and an extended magazine containing thirty rounds, plus the one already in the chamber.
The guard stationed at the elevator had heard something landing atop the building and was slowly walking backward away from the structure to get a better look. His pistol was only partway up. Juan got the drop on him. The high velocity and small size of the FN’s rounds put the man down.
The Chairman took off the helmet and thermal chaps and jumped the eight feet to the terrace floor. He was closer to the southeast side of the building, so he took off into the artificial jungle. Cabrillo moved quickly, his veins buzzing with adrenaline. His senses were heightened to the point that he could hear traffic down on the streets even over the glass barrier. The second guard was the sniper, and Cabrillo saw him as he was scoping a high-rise about five blocks away. The way he held motionless and kept the weapon on one spot told Juan that this guy wasn’t as professional as the others. The building he was looking at had balconies and he’d doubtlessly spotted one with a sunbather on it.
He died getting an eyeful.
Cabrillo still had three minutes before the security team downstairs was alerted that something was wrong. He should take out the third guard now, but he was close to what they had identified as the air intake for the penthouse’s ventilation system. The mechanism was just an anonymous gray box nestled among the trees. Juan bent to it, unclamping a side panel that gave access to the sophisticated filtration system. He pulled the racks of molecular filters until the air circulating downstairs was the same choking smog the rest of Shanghai’s citizens polluted their lungs with every day. Next came the pony bottle of gas. It was a knockout gas similar to the one the Russian Spetsnaz had used to retake a Moscow theater back in 2002, but much safer. Cabrillo opened the tap and let the ventilation fans draw the gas into the suite and distribute it to every nook and cranny.
Then he went hunting for the third guard.
Mike Trono had said the man was on the western side of the building. But that intel was four minutes old, and these were roving guards. He went west anyway, keeping off the paths and in the planted beds as much as he could. He avoided the swimming pool area entirely. If Kenin got a glimpse of someone slinking around his little urban oasis, he’d bolt instantly. The man had the instincts of a wharf rat and three times the cunning.
Juan found a spot where he could look down the entire western edge of the building but couldn’t see his mark. He moved on, careful to disturb nothing. The man gave himself away with a sneeze. He was less than ten feet from Juan, hidden by a wall of ferns. Juan was about to take his shot when he heard Kenin’s voice and the girl’s reply. His hunt had drifted closer to the pool than he’d realized.
He waited. The guard did the last thing Juan expected. He came through the wall of ferns rather than stick to the path. Even silenced, the Five-SeveN made enough noise to carry to the pool. An assault rifle barrel parted the foliage. Cabrillo grabbed it, yanking the guard off balance even before he’d emerged from the artificial jungle. As the man’s head came into view, Juan clubbed him with the butt of his pistol, and again as he slowed the unconscious man’s fall to the deck. He checked for a pulse. It was there but weak. He would live.
The gas he’d released would reach maximum saturation in just a few minutes more. There was no use in delaying. He moved to the nearby path and slowly stepped out from the forest and onto the teak pool surround. The girl saw him first and screamed. Kenin looked up from his computer and startled. His sanctum had been breached.
“Hands up, now,” Juan ordered in Russian, and repeated the phrase in Chinese as Eddie had taught him. He gave them a half second to comply before shooting the pitcher of iced tea on the table between their chairs. Kenin’s nubile companion yelped again, but this time both of them raised their hands.
“Tell her to get into the pool and stay there,” Juan said, still speaking Russian.
The Chinese girl must have understood the language because she rose fr
om her chaise and jumped awkwardly into the azure water, her eyes like saucers and her pretty face ashen with fear.
Kenin regained some of his lost composure, his eyes hardened, and though his hands were still up, they were no longer comically stretched to their limit as they’d been seconds earlier. He demanded with hauteur, “Who are you?”
“The best man at Yuri Borodin’s wedding. And right now I am begging you to give me an excuse to put a bullet between your eyes.”
Understanding dawned on the rogue admiral. “You’re the Chairman. You are Juan Cabrillo.”
Juan saw motion out of the corner of his eye and reacted on pure instinct. He triggered off a half dozen rounds so fast, it was as though the FN were an automatic weapon. He glanced left and saw Kenin’s butler stagger out from behind a big rubber tree. Five of the six shots had hit him center mass, blood stained his white jacket. A MAC-10 machine pistol fell from his nerveless fingers as he pitched face-first onto the tile decking.
Kenin used the momentary distraction and took off running for the elevator. He had maybe a seconds-long head start and was closer to his destination by twenty feet. Juan couldn’t afford to shoot him in the back, so he took off after the Russian. He was twenty years younger than Kenin, but the admiral ran with the drive of a cornered animal. He knew his life was on the line and put on a burst of speed he probably hadn’t thought he was capable of.
Cabrillo still closed the gap. Kenin wore open-toed moccasins under his linen slacks and they slapped with each stride. Juan was readying himself to tackle Kenin from behind when the Russian stopped ten feet shy of the elevator vestibule, turned, and threw the punch he’d trained his entire life to throw.
Juan too had stopped short and reared back slightly but still took the most brutal punch he’d ever felt. Kenin knew his opponent was going down, though he hadn’t yet fallen. Kenin had broken his wrist throwing that punch, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was about to escape. It didn’t register that the man who had somehow breached his security swung the big pistol up just enough that when he triggered off a round, it took off the Russian’s pinkie finger at the first knuckle.