The Asset

Love punched him in the arm.

  “Don’t hit me. She was the one who almost killed you.”

  “Oh my God, she was a disaster.” Love laughed. “Lost control of the jibboom in a thirty-knot wind. Sucker knocked me into the drink. You valiantly dove in and pulled me back to the boat.”

  “Yep,” he said, taking a swig. “Some serious hero shit.”

  “You were all smooth with your lifeguard training . . . but then you realized the top to my bikini had come off.”

  “What? I don’t remember that.”

  “Bullshit, you practically got to second base saving my butt.”

  “How did I go from hero to perv so quickly?”

  “I’m not saying you copped a feel. It was just funny when you saw the girls bouncing around next to your arm.”

  “How do you know what I saw? You were passed out.”

  “Not the whole time.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Because I liked it, dummy. Jesus.”

  She reached for his hand. He held hers tightly.

  “One thing I don’t understand is how you’ve managed to be alone for so long.”

  “After Belle died . . . I couldn’t see myself being some normal guy with a wife and family. All I could think about was the fact that she would never have that, so I didn’t feel right having it either.”

  “Dude, she would have wanted you to be happy. You were the best big brother ever.”

  “Not when it counted. The night before she died . . . I said . . . I was horrible.”

  Tears rolled down his cheeks and he didn’t try to hide them or play it off.

  “She forgives you,” Love said. “She knew you had her back. Always.”

  Love kissed him.

  “And this? This is a good thing. I’m good with it. I spoke to Belle last night. She’s good with it. How about you?”

  He nodded and kissed her again.

  “I’m good with it.”

  The Noah Kruz event got into full swing at 4:00 P.M. Kennedy was whisked into the venue through a private entrance with the other VIPs. There were only twenty of them and he was the only one who had purchased the one-on-one session. They waited in a posh greenroom, drinking champagne and toasting the success Noah Kruz had helped them realize. The whole scene made Kennedy’s stomach turn.

  An hour earlier, Love’s stage manager friend had let her in through the talent entrance at the back of the venue and showed her to Kruz’s Life Sculpting Suite. After he was gone, Love let Mitchell and a couple of his mercs in through the same backstage entrance, and they took up positions inside the suite. Back at the marina, Nuri and the rest of the mercs were waiting in the rental yacht. Noah Kruz’s yacht pulled into its slip next to them shortly after 6:00 P.M., and his crew got to work loading cargo and preparing the boat for departure later that night.

  Kennedy took his front-row seat at around the same time and, after a bombastic entrance, Noah Kruz began his ebullient presentation. Normally, Kennedy would have been rapt, hanging on every word, but that night he could barely bring himself to listen, the sound of Kruz’s voice sounding hollow and inflated, like a balloon slowly releasing a roomful of hot air. And he was embarrassed by the voices of his fellow “Kruzers” droning around him. They sounded like some kind of cult parroting their leader in a shrill, robotic chorus. Kennedy slipped into an existential coma, feeling every drop of faith and enthusiasm he’d had for Kruz drain out of him. The cacophony that trumpeted the end of the show was the only thing that could slap him back to reality.

  “So pick yourself up,” Kruz bellowed in conclusion. “Save yourself. That’s how you win. And being a winner is the best possible gift you can give to the people around you and the world. Good night!”

  Standing ovation. Kruz’s four beefy bodyguards fought off the crowd as he shook hands and signed autographs. Kennedy went to another tedious VIP cocktail reception back in the greenroom to wait for his one-on-one. All he wanted to do was get on with it, but he ended up having to talk to a lot of lost and damaged people who couldn’t get enough of the cold cuts platter. Kruz worked the room, taking his perfunctory handshake photos and signing autographs, then breezed out.

  “Hello, sir.” An older man with dyed hair and eyebrows accosted Kennedy. “I’ll be escorting you to your session with Mr. Kruz.”

  They shook hands and the man led Kennedy down the hall to the Life Sculpting Suite, where he would have Noah Kruz all to himself. When they walked in, Kruz was sitting behind a desk, waiting for Kennedy with a mildly condescending smirk on his face.

  “So why do you want to save the world?” Kruz asked.

  “Beg your pardon?” Kennedy said.

  “It’s in your personal profile,” Kruz reminded him in an accusing tone.

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Kennedy had put that in his profile years back when he wasn’t completely jaded about making a difference in his work. He took the seat he was offered on the other side of Kruz’s desk.

  “Let’s try this again,” Kruz said. “Why do you want to save the world?”

  Kennedy tried to think of a bullshit response but opted for the naked truth.

  “Because I care about people.”

  Kruz pressed a button on a small electronic device on the desk. Kennedy heard an audio playback of himself saying, “Because I care about people.”

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Yes,” Kennedy said, confused.

  “I don’t think so,” Kruz said, and played it back again.

  “Because I care about people.”

  “The way you said it? How did it sound?”

  “Um—”

  Kruz held up his hand, stopping the “um” from going anywhere. He played the recording of Kennedy’s voice again.

  “It sounds like I’m full of shit,” Kennedy said.

  “Exactly!”

  Kruz slammed his hand down on his desk so hard he knocked half of his books onto the floor. He stood up and paced around the room, cracking his knuckles. Then he got behind Kennedy and dramatically half whispered in his ear.

  “How old are you?” Kruz asked.

  “Thirty-three.”

  Kruz made a “tsk” sound.

  “I would have guessed closer to forty. Your body has begun to age early. Do you know why?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because you’ve been telling it over and over, for years, that you don’t matter. The world matters. People matter. But not you. And you’re dying a slow death. It’s called chemical senescence—the mass slaughter of cells perpetrated by proteins in your blood. When you have purpose in your life, your cells continue to divide at a rate that keeps you youthful so you can carry out youthful tasks, like procreating. When was the last time you had sex?”

  Kennedy looked self-consciously at Kruz’s handlers.

  “Months,” Kennedy said.

  “What, six, eight, twelve?”

  “I’ve lost count.”

  A handler gave Kennedy a signed book and T-shirt, the signal that his time with the guru was almost up.

  “What do you have left then?” Kruz asked.

  Kennedy said nothing.

  “Exactly. Nothing. Stand up.”

  Kennedy stood. Kruz stood in front of him, face-to-face.

  “Do you want to die?”

  “No.”

  “Louder!”

  “No!”

  “I believe you!” Kruz smiled proudly. “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “Trust my gut,” Kennedy said and put his gun in Noah Kruz’s face.

  What the fuck is—?” Kruz started to say as Kennedy fired a dart into his chest.

  His security detail went for their weapons, but Mitchell and his mercs, who had already been hiding in the room, quickly took th
em and the rest of Kruz’s handlers down with more darts. They zip-tied the wrists and ankles of his staff, duct-taped their mouths, and put Kruz into a huge commercial laundry hamper on wheels, covering him with towels and table linens. Kennedy, Mitchell, and the mercs wheeled the hamper quickly through the backstage area and back out the door they’d all come in. Love was waiting in a laundry service van the mercs had brought. They loaded the hamper into the back and took off.

  * * *

  One hour before Noah Kruz was lecturing Kennedy in the VIP room, Nuri and the mercs back at the marina had taken out Kruz’s crew with tranq darts and put them belowdecks on the rental yacht. While they waited for Kennedy, Love, and Mitchell to arrive with Kruz, they prepped his yacht. Nuri modified the communications systems so it would emit false GPS data showing the boat was on its way to Nassau for Kruz’s next event. This would keep the Coast Guard happy. It would also make it impossible for Lentz to track the yacht, which he would undoubtedly be committing all his resources to do, once he realized Kruz was missing.

  When Kennedy, Mitchell, and Love arrived, they moved Kruz from the laundry hamper to a berth belowdecks and were under way in a matter of minutes. Mitchell switched on a police scanner and listened for chatter. Nothing yet. Their heading was straight east toward Bimini. Mitchell wanted to avoid the southerly boat traffic to the Bahamas and the Keys and get into dark water before they got to work on Kruz.

  “What if he isn’t working with Lentz?” Kennedy asked.

  “Then we just rolled snake eyes,” Mitchell said.

  “Bogus GPS signal is working great,” Nuri said. “Coast Guard thinks we’re on a hundred-and-eighty-degree magnetic course heading due south for Nassau, with a point-four-three-degree easterly correction for current. Engines trimmed at twenty-five knots, arrival time estimated at six-point-three-seven hours.”

  “Roger that,” Mitchell said. “Another ten miles or so on this heading and we can have a come-to-Jesus with the guru.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, when it was dark, Noah Kruz was tied to a fishing chair on the bow. The back of the chair was tethered to a cable from the boat’s hydraulic deck crane. Next to the chair sat plastic buckets full of stinking chum. The deck lights were off, and Kruz was lit with military infrared floodlights. As Kennedy watched Mitchell interrogating Kruz—panicked, as Kennedy had been back in the meat locker at the Hôtel de Crillon—he was terrified they might be wrong.

  “I told you, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Kruz said to Mitchell. “I’m a fucking motivational speaker, for chrissakes! Why would I put my career and life in jeopardy to harbor a terrorist?”

  “Hoist him up,” Mitchell said to the mercs.

  They started up the crane, which reeled in the cable and lifted the fishing chair off the deck. The crane boom swung laterally and telescoped out so the fishing chair was hovering above open water.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Going fishing,” Mitchell said.

  Mitchell dumped a chum bucket into the water below Kruz. Within seconds, it was boiling with a twisting mass of tiger, bull, and hammerhead sharks. He lowered the chair a foot. Kruz screamed.

  “I’m not a professional interrogator, so you’ll have to forgive my crass methods. The thing is, I don’t really have the time to try to gain your trust, play good cop/bad cop, knock your pride and ego down, or whatever else is in the handbook. So, I’ll just go with the naked truth. No one knows you’re out here. You’re going to talk to me or you’re going to die,” Mitchell said.

  He lowered the chair another foot. Splashes from the feeding frenzy soaked the bottom of Kruz’s khakis with seawater and fish blood. He screamed again.

  “Screaming isn’t talking,” Mitchell said.

  He lowered the chair another six inches.

  “Stop! Stop! I said I don’t know shit!”

  “I know what you said,” Mitchell said calmly. “But let’s see if you say something different when they get hold of your feet. Oh, and so you don’t bleed to death, the boys have a blowtorch to cauterize your wounds. It will be the most agonizing pain you’ve ever experienced, but I’m pretty sure we can keep you alive all the way up to your balls if we do this right.”

  “Please. This is insane,” Kruz said, hanging his head in exhaustion.

  Kennedy couldn’t take it anymore. He was sick and tired of playing a guessing game with so many lives at stake. He remembered how Alia had been when she fired him. She didn’t have time to fuck around with his feelings, and neither did they now with Kruz.

  “Not as insane as trying to play tough guy and keep your mouth shut,” Kennedy said as he doused Kruz with a full chum bucket.

  Blood and grisly hunks of rotting fish covered him from head to toe. He vomited from the smell, dry-retching when there was nothing left to puke.

  “Looks like bad cop just showed up,” Mitchell said.

  “Send it down,” Kennedy said with authority.

  “Yes, sir,” Mitchell said, nodding to the mercs.

  They lowered the chair to the edge of the waves. Sharks were gulping pieces of fish inches from Kruz’s feet. He was whimpering something.

  “What’s that?” Kennedy asked.

  “I just can’t believe this is happening.”

  “Put him in the fucking water,” Kennedy snarled.

  “No!” Kruz yelled.

  “Take it easy,” Love said.

  Kennedy moved the merc out of the way and grabbed the crane control. Mitchell eyeballed him tensely. Kennedy had no intention of killing their only link to Lentz, but at that moment, no one on that boat knew it. He had seen Israelis interrogate suspects, and it was all about commitment. The suspect needed to feel important, but ultimately expendable.

  “I’m going to give you one last chance to tell us what we want to know, or I’m going to let the sharks take your legs and watch you bleed out.”

  Kennedy lowered the chair. Kruz’s feet were in the water. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. A bull shark tore his shoe off, gashing his foot. Kruz screamed bloody murder. Love joined him.

  “I work for Lentz! Let me up! Now!”

  Kennedy raised the chair just as three sharks breached, snapping at Kruz’s feet and barely missing them.

  “Prove it or you’re going all the way in!” Kennedy yelled.

  “I’m his travel cover! He chose me because I’m not like other celebrities. I have a clean record with the FBI and DEA and my fans at TSA and Homeland gave me special status. They hired me to speak at their fucking holiday party!”

  “What’s he got on you?” Kennedy asked.

  Kruz tried to answer him but just started sobbing, his whole body shaking.

  “Bring him up,” Love said to Kennedy.

  Noah Kruz sat in a deck chair with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. One of the mercs was dressing the wound on his foot. Once they pulled him up, he’d been more than happy to spill his guts about how Lentz coerced him into service.

  “He knew things about me . . . things I was certain I had buried. And he threatened to expose them. He kept saying he was going to show people I wasn’t the man I said I was. Unless I helped him. At that point, I had a shelf full of best sellers and more money than I knew what to do with. I didn’t want to fuck that up.”

  “What was he blackmailing you with?” Love asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kennedy said. “We need to know his plans.”

  “He never told me what he’s doing,” Kruz said with conviction.

  “Don’t fuck with us,” Mitchell said. “We can strap your ass back on that chair.”

  “I’m not fucking with you! Why would he risk it? He had me by the balls!”

  “I’ve heard enough.” Mitchell pulled his gun.

  “Wait. Listen.” Kruz was stuttering with fear. “Just because
he didn’t tell me anything doesn’t mean I can’t help you. I’ve been keeping notes about everything—where we’ve been, who works with him—”

  “He’s grasping at straws,” Mitchell said. “Fucking guy played us to get him out of the water. Now we’re getting the half-truth two-step.”

  “Noah, Lentz is planning a massive, coordinated terror attack in cities all over the country,” Kennedy said, “and you’ve been helping him.”

  “What? Jesus . . .”

  Kruz covered his face with his hands and started to cry again, but Kennedy slapped them away.

  “We need to find him right now,” Kennedy continued. “Where is he?”

  A low thumping sound was heard off in the distance.

  “Chopper,” Mitchell whispered. “Stealth. Low acoustic signature.”

  “He’s here,” Kruz said, shaking. “He found us. He can’t know I’m with you. He’ll think I opened my mouth. I’m better off dead. Let me jump—”

  “We can protect you,” Mitchell said. “Get him down belowdecks,” he said to Kennedy and Love. “Lock and load,” he said to his mercs.

  He barely finished speaking when a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter appeared directly overhead without warning.

  “Move now!” Mitchell yelled.

  He and the mercs scrambled for their weapons. Kennedy and Love cut Kruz loose and Love took him down belowdecks. Kennedy was looking for Nuri when gunfire from the chopper rained down on the yacht. He took cover and saw her hiding under a lifeboat.

  He pointed to the companionway door. She nodded and they both started crawling for it. An M84 stun grenade fell from the chopper and detonated twenty feet from them, rendering them both temporarily blind and deaf. When Kennedy was able to focus again, Nuri was gone. Black speed ropes slithered down from the chopper and commandos fell out of the sky, blasting the hell out of Mitchell and his men. They were quickly overwhelmed and Mitchell was wounded in the neck. Kennedy hauled him to his feet and helped him down the galley stairs. His wound was gushing blood and they were both soaked with it when they got to the stateroom where Love had taken Kruz. Mitchell was pale and shivering.