The Asset

  “Oh my God!” Love said when she saw them. “Where’s Nuri?”

  “I think she went over the side when the grenade exploded,” Kennedy yelled, barely able to hear himself. “Get the first aid kit!”

  Love grabbed it and went to work on Mitchell. She tore open two clotting sponges and jammed them into the wound.

  “Can you breathe okay?” Kennedy asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said weakly.

  Kennedy and Love covered him with a space blanket and wrapped his neck in gauze. The bleeding had slowed, but he was still shivering and fighting to stay conscious.

  “He’s not going to make it,” Kruz said behind them.

  “Bullshit, he’s just in shock,” Kennedy said. “Hold on, Mitchell.”

  “I said, he’s not going to make it.”

  Kennedy turned and yelled, “Shut the fuck up!”

  Kruz was holding Kennedy’s gun. He shot Mitchell in the head.

  Kennedy and Love stared in disbelief at Mitchell’s dead body.

  “Remove his sidearm and slide it on the floor to me.”

  Love slid Mitchell’s Beretta across the tiles. Kruz expertly shucked the mag and jacked the round out of the chamber. His whole demeanor was different, cool and professional. At that moment, it became crystal clear to Kennedy why Lentz had always been so difficult to track.

  It was because he’d been hiding in plain sight.

  “You’re Lentz,” Kennedy said.

  Love looked at him, incredulous.

  “I prefer my new persona,” Kruz said. “The old me was so clichéd, like some Eurotrash James Bond villain. It worked in the 1990s but I would rather walk a mile in Noah Kruz’s shoes any day. And he doesn’t have a target on his back.” He laughed.

  Kennedy did the math. Noah Kruz’s first book, (R)evolution, was published in October of 2000, the year the CIA said Lentz went dark and dropped off the intelligence grid. Belle had given it to him as a Christmas gift. She knew Kennedy was having a hard time breaking away from the influence of their father and heard the book was changing peoples’ lives. It had changed his.

  “All of this was—” Kennedy started.

  “A very expensive roach motel,” Kruz said.

  He motioned to the stairs.

  “After you,” he said.

  Kennedy and Love walked up the stairs with Kruz’s gun at their backs. On deck, Kruz’s commandos were chucking the bullet-riddled bodies of Mitchell’s men over the side. One of them walked over and took off his helmet.

  It was Juarez.

  “Hi, guys.”

  “Fuck. No.” Love was stunned.

  “I guess you’re not dead,” Kennedy said.

  “Guess not. Although, I don’t recommend skydiving at twenty thousand feet over Siberia.”

  “You think you’re going to ride off into the sunset with this asshole?” Kennedy asked.

  “Translation,” Kruz said. “There’s still time for you to do the right thing, Juarez.”

  “There is,” Kennedy said.

  “I’ve already done it,” Juarez said.

  “How does betraying your country and killing millions fall into that category?”

  “We’re just taking advantage of a business opportunity before the competition gets too steep,” Kruz said. “Striking while the iron is hot, as they say.”

  “A business opportunity?” Love asked.

  “They believe if they destabilize the US, they can sell off its resources in a global fire sale and make trillions. Another James Bond cliché,” Kennedy said.

  “It’s no longer a belief. It’s reality,” Kruz said. “Many nations actually sponsored this operation, not officially of course. Some of them are even what the US State Department would call allies. And yes, their reward is a piece of the good old USA.”

  “There’s going to be nothing left when you’re finished with it,” Kennedy snapped. “Then the vultures will come in and fight for the scraps, just like in Iraq.”

  “It’s better than the alternative,” Kruz said. “The US is nothing but an oligarchy, like Russia, run by wealthy brutes who want to consume everything of value in the world. Now the world will have its chance to share what Americans take for granted and put a stop to the imperialist machine run by the Bushes or the Clintons or whatever hillbilly psychopath makes it into the Oval Office next. Walmart culture is about to learn a serious lesson about the global village.”

  “Maybe you should explain it to them with one of your pedantic, bullshit lectures,” Kennedy said bitterly.

  “The ones you paid over twenty-eight thousand dollars to see?”

  Kennedy looked at Love, embarrassed.

  “Don’t be ashamed that you were one of my biggest fans, Kennedy. I spent millions building my self-help persona, and I’m quite good at it. Case in point. You’ve used everything you learned from me to get where you are today. Without my books and lectures on conquering your fears, being decisive, taking risks, and knowing your true calling, you never would have found your true calling, which is this.”

  “My true calling? Everything I’ve learned from you has brought me to this moment of catastrophic failure,” Kennedy said.

  “That all depends on your perspective,” Kruz said. “In trying to stop me, you have failed. However, without your help, there’s no way I could have accomplished my objectives. So, in that way, I share this success with you.”

  “I never helped you,” Kennedy growled.

  “Actually, you were a big help. You and your friends. Running around to all those airports. So resourceful. And the way you handled TSA and DHS. Like I said, I couldn’t have done this without you. Your knowledge and expertise—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Kennedy yelled.

  Juarez laughed and shook his head.

  “The millimeter wave scanner upgrades ring a bell?” Juarez said. “You installed a ten-kiloton nuclear bomb in twenty-five of the biggest airports in the US.”

  Kennedy could barely breathe. A wave of panic surged through his body like an electric shock.

  “Kennedy,” Kruz said.

  His voice brought Kennedy back from the brink. Kruz was looking at him, almost prideful.

  “You’re my asset. All of this—Juarez bringing new intel about my sinister plans to the CIA, Red Carpet being formed, Alia recruiting you—was my operation. And you, with your considerable talents and intelligence, executed it flawlessly.”

  Kennedy was glad he was going to die. He was going to be responsible for the deaths of millions he swore to protect, and disgrace the memory of his dead sister. It was more than he could bear.

  “When?” he heard Love say a million miles away.

  “The day before Thanksgiving,” Kruz said. “Biggest travel day of the year, right, Kennedy?”

  He put his hand on Kennedy’s shoulder.

  “When does the biggest surge of passenger traffic happen on that day?” Kruz asked.

  “Nine A.M. Eastern,” Kennedy said listlessly.

  “People want to get where they’re going as soon as possible,” Kruz said. “To really maximize that trough and leisure time. So the morning flights are the busiest.”

  “You have to stop this,” Kennedy said to Juarez.

  “Brother, this is my baby as much as it is his,” he said.

  “And he couldn’t stop it, even if he wanted to,” Kruz said. “It’s out of our control—a stipulation of my partners. They weren’t willing to place all of their trust on the shoulders of one man. Incidentally, that’s why we used the millimeter wave scanners. As you may know, millimeter waves are excellent for communication. The air force uses them for missile guidance and the like. So, when the time comes, the detonators will be activated by a preprogrammed satellite signal, which will use the scanners as a receiving antenna. You reme
mber that part of the threat memo, which was drafted by me, where it talks about a large-scale, coordinated attack? That means the satellite will detonate all of the bombs simultaneously, like a well-timed fireworks show, giving the federal government exactly zero response time. And nothing, not even Juarez shooting me in the head, can stop it.”

  “Fucking coward,” Kennedy said to Juarez.

  “I think it’s time to say good-bye to our friends, Noah,” Juarez said, ignoring Kennedy.

  “A turncoat is the worst kind of traitor,” Kennedy said to Kruz. “An enemy to both sides. They can’t be trusted.”

  “You’re right,” Kruz said and shot Juarez in the head.

  Love screamed and buried her face in Kennedy’s shoulder.

  “Thank you for pointing that out,” Kruz said courteously. “But he was right. It is time to say good-bye.”

  Kennedy lunged at Kruz, grabbing his gun arm and wrestling him to the ground. He knocked the gun out of Kruz’s hand and pointed it at his head. The commandos surrounded them.

  “Get back or he’s dead!”

  “Let me go or they’ll shoot her,” Kruz said casually.

  One of his commandos grabbed Love. She fought him, but he forced her to the ground and held her there with his knee on her chest.

  “Instinct is far superior when it comes to decision making and it’s very easy to deploy because you feel it without thinking,” Kruz said. “What does your instinct tell you? Shoot the bad guy or save a girl who is going to die anyway?”

  The helicopter came back around and hovered above them.

  “Put the gun in her mouth,” Kruz ordered.

  “No!” Kennedy yelled, throwing the gun overboard and getting off Kruz.

  Kruz stood and looked at his watch.

  “Better go,” he said. “I left you a consolation prize belowdecks—a beautiful new Louis Vuitton suitcase, because you’re such a world traveler. Can you guess what’s inside it?”

  Kruz laughed. The commandos trained their guns on Kennedy and Love, who clung to each other. The chopper blade was stirring up the seas, making the yacht pitch and roll. The speed ropes dropped down. Kruz and his men grabbed them. One of the commandos was about to blow Kennedy and Love away with his assault rifle when the chopper climbed and the only rope attached to it was Kruz’s. His team watched in disbelief as their ropes landed on the boat deck and the chopper flew away. They quickly forgot about Kennedy and Love and ran for the lifeboats, cursing and shoving one another out of the way.

  “He put one of the nukes belowdecks,” Kennedy said to Love. “We need to get off this boat. Right now.”

  “How?” Love asked, panicked.

  Kennedy looked around and zeroed in on the fishing chair.

  “Come on!”

  He ripped open the scuba locker on deck, grabbed two masks, a dive tank, and two inflatable dive vests. He picked up one of the guns on deck, and he and Love jumped on the fishing chair and swung it out over the water.

  “Put on your mask and vest!”

  They threw on both. Kennedy had Love sit on his lap so he could hold on to her and the dive tank. A high-pitched noise started coming from belowdecks.

  “That’s a pulse detonator!” he yelled. “Hold on tight!”

  “What the hell are we doing?” she yelled back.

  Kennedy held on tightly to the chair and to Love and fired his gun at the deck crane cable lock. He missed the first three times, but the fourth hit dead center, causing it to release the cable spool. The fishing chair plunged into the black water and sank rapidly. As they descended, they took turns breathing the air from the tank. They reached the hundred-foot limit of the cable and stopped dead in the water. Kennedy pulled Love off the chair and they swam clear of it.

  The suitcase nuke on the yacht detonated.

  Up on the surface, the ten-kiloton blast wave blew through the boat and commandos at the speed of sound, shredding them into pieces that were instantly vaporized by a ball of fire burning at tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit. A brilliant, swirling plume of smoke and white-hot ash shot hundreds of feet into the air and formed the shape of a mushroom before it dispersed and cascaded back down into the sea.

  The explosion sent shock waves and liquid fire down into the water, but neither were powerful enough to hurt Kennedy and Love at one hundred feet below the surface. The majority of the bomb’s energy was forced into the air above versus down into the densely pressurized seawater. Kennedy and Love had both been diving many times and were able to use the slow inflation of their vests to ascend without getting decompression sickness.

  By the time they surfaced, there was nothing but black water below and black sky above. That far out, the water temperature was at least ten degrees lower than the balmy Florida coast. They could survive in it for a while but eventually they would succumb to hypothermia, if the sharks didn’t get them first. Kennedy activated the GPS distress signal devices on their vests.

  “I’m beginning to think the bomb would have been the way to go,” Love joked.

  “Yeah, I’m with you. Quick and painless, with cremation and burial at sea all in one shot,” Kennedy said.

  “Versus the slow hypothermia and/or shark mauling we’re facing,” Love said.

  “Wow, you’re a real ray of sunshine,” Kennedy said. “You forgot to mention the radiation that’s probably giving us brain tumors right now.”

  “Sorry.”

  Love embraced him tightly.

  “May I cry on your shoulder?” she asked, crying on his shoulder.

  “Just this once. But don’t let it happen again.”

  They held their embrace for a couple of hours in the water. Their body temps made the cold more bearable, but soon they started to shiver. Kennedy fastened their vests together so they wouldn’t separate if they lost consciousness. He knew they were going to die, but there was something about being there with Love that made it easier.

  “You know, one good thing that came out of this is now I have someone to spend the rest of my life with,” Kennedy said, kissing her.

  “You’re lucky it’s so short that you won’t have to deal with all of my annoying idiosyncrasies,” she said, trying to smile.

  “Like what?”

  “I snore.”

  “Yeah, I’ve already experienced that,” he joked.

  “Stop it, I don’t snore,” she said. “But I do drink milk out of the carton.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I drink right out of the whiskey bottle.”

  “Well, that’s legal of course,” she said.

  She was getting sleepy, so he shook her a bit and kissed her awake.

  “I’m going to say something and it’s going to sound awkward,” he said.

  “Shoot.”

  “I love you, Love.”

  “You’re right. Awkward. I love you too, you big lug.”

  “Thanks for helping me pull my head out of my ass,” he said.

  “My pleasure.”

  “Someone like you could get me to do just about anything, I think.”

  “Oh, I’m going to have to take you up on that,” she said.

  She was getting drowsy again. So was he. He forced himself to keep talking.

  “You know? I could use a drink. How about you?” he said.

  “What’ll you have?”

  “Whiskey. Neat. No, 151 rum. On fire.”

  “Sounds delicious. Grappa for me. Served next to a roaring fire.”

  Love was shivering uncontrollably. Kennedy tried to hug her tighter, but he was shivering as well, and his arms felt weak and leaden. He fell asleep and woke up with a start. Love was passed out. His hands and feet were numb, and he could feel his mind slipping, draining out of him and being swallowed up in the black seawater.

  He tried to shake Love awake again, but he was
fading fast.

  “Wake up,” he whispered. “Don’t want to go alone . . .”

  His vision blurred. He shook his head, trying to stay awake, but a warm blackness filled his eyes and spread over his body, until he drifted off into nothingness.

  Kennedy opened his eyes and he was back on the plane with Belle.

  “You drifted off,” she said.

  “Yeah, sorry. What were you saying?”

  “I was saying I’m proud of you.”

  “Bullshit,” he said sarcastically. “What were you really saying?”

  “It’s not bullshit. You’re a pretty all right brother.”

  “I’m proud of you too,” he said, tearing up in spite of himself.

  “God, you’re such a crybaby.” She laughed.

  “I know. I’m weak, like Dad says.”

  “Weak, my ass.”

  “Hey, you’re not supposed to talk like that.”

  “I’m on a plane. International waters. Rules don’t apply. In fact, I think I’ll order a drink.”

  “No you won’t,” he said. “But I might.”

  Belle pushed the flight attendant call button.

  “Jesus, Belle.”

  “Told you I’m getting a cocktail.”

  “Cut it out. They’re not going to serve you.”

  “They might serve you,” she said hopefully.

  Kennedy switched off the call button. Belle switched it on. Kennedy switched it off. Belle tried to switch it on and Kennedy grabbed her hand. She pulled her hand free, lunged over him, and hit the call button again. The flight attendant walked up with an annoyed sigh. They couldn’t see her face, as she was backlit by the dim cabin light behind her. Kennedy stopped horsing around with Belle, instantly self-conscious about being so juvenile.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “No, that’s okay,” Kennedy said, “my sister accidentally—”

  “I want a drink.” Belle laughed.

  “No she doesn’t,” Kennedy said.

  “Will there be anything else?” the flight attendant asked.

  “No, thank you,” Kennedy said.