“What did he do?”
“It was more what he didn’t do. Wick was the XO on a submarine in the US Navy, a little Sturgeon-class sub operating out of Diego Garcia, the US base in the Indian Ocean, doing patrols off eastern Africa.
“Anyway, a few years after the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, his boat intercepted an unregistered Kilo-class submarine en route to the private dock of a Somali warlord: Russian pirates in an old Russian sub, smuggling arms. Wick’s captain ordered him to take a boarding party onto the Kilo and sail it back to Diego Garcia.
“When he got on board the Kilo, however, Wick found a dozen crates of American Stinger missiles and one very pissed off CIA agent. Turned out the CIA was in the process of destabilizing east Africa by arming all the warlords.”
“So what did he do?” Lily asked.
“Wick did what he’d been ordered to do. With a small team, he secured the Russian pirates, took command of the Russian sub, and began sailing it back to Diego Garcia.
“But halfway there, he got a priority signal from Naval HQ, telling him to hand the sub back to the CIA man and forget he’d ever seen it.
“Wick was stunned. The big shots back home were actually supporting this operation. So he made a decision. He figured enough was enough, and since he no longer had a family to worry about, he’d do something. And so he stopped the sub in the middle of the Indian Ocean, threw all its crew—including the enraged CIA man—into a liferaft and set them adrift.
“Knowing a court-martial would follow, he offered all his men on board the sub the opportunity to leave— indeed, he encouraged them to do so, to think of their careers. Most did and he set them adrift as well, in life rafts with homing beacons.
“And so with a skeleton crew Wickkept the Russian submarine and has been using it ever since, conducting his own private patrols off the coast of Africa, using several old World War II submarine refueling stations as his bases. He was court-martialed in absentia for desertion and disobeying a direct order and sentenced to twenty-five years in a military prison. There’s still an outstanding warrant for his arrest.”
“So is he a pirate?”
“To the people of Africa, he’s a hero, the only guy who stands up to the warlords, by intercepting their arms shipments. He also brings the people food, free of charge and obligation. They call him the Sea Ranger. Unfortunately, he steals much of the food from western cargoes, so the US and British navies call him a pirate.”
Lily frowned. “When I saw him on New Year’s Eve, he seemed, I don’t know, familiar. Like I’d seen him before.”
“That’s because you have seen him before.”
“I have? When?”
“When you were very young and we were living in Kenya. You were just a toddler and Wick had only just started sailing his own private submarine. He was on the run, so I let him hide out with us for a while.
“He played hide-and-seek with you, peek-a-boo, that sort of thing. You loved it. Now that you’re officially my daughter, he’s officially your uncle. He lives mostly on the island of Zanzibar, off the Kenyan-Tanzanian coast. But wherever he is and wherever we are, we’ll always be family.”
And so life went on for Lily—at the farm with Jack and at school with Alby, and with Zoe and Wizard when they came to visit—until that fine summer’s day when the sky above the farm filled with parachutes.
K-10 SUBMARINE BASE
MORTIMER ISLAND
BRISTOL CHANNEL, ENGLAND
DECEMBER 9, 2007, 2145 HOURS
“DADDY!”
Lily leaped into West’s arms as he strode into the central lab of the submarine base, K-10, having taken three full days to get to England.
Situated on a windswept island in the mouth of the Bristol Channel, K-10 had been a refueling and repair station for US naval vessels in the Second World War. After the war, as a gesture of thanks to the Americans, the British had allowed them to keep using the island. To this day it has remained a US base on British soil.
In the American classification system, it is a Level Alpha base, the highest security level, and along with Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, is the only base outside of continental America to maintain and store SLBMs— submarine-launched ballistic nuclear missiles.
About a dozen people milled around the high-tech lab: Zoe and the kids; the twins in their “Cow Level” T- shirts; two Saudi commandos, guarding a small velvet case between them—Vulture went directly to them; and Paul Robertson, the American diplomat/spy they’d met in Dubai, who had arrived with a larger Samsonite trunk.
When Lily saw Wizard—his welts and cuts still pink—she released Jack and threw her arms around the old man.
Jack went straight to Zoe. “Hey. So?”
“We’ve been busy while we were waiting for you. The data from Stonehenge is absolutely mind- blowing.”
Jack glanced at Robertson. “He brought the Killing Stone of the Maya?”
“Arrived about an hour ago all by himself. With the Mayan Stone in his big case.”
“He didn’t bring a Pillar, too?”
“No. He said America didn’t possess one.”
“Hmmm. What’d he say about the Saxe-Coburg Pillar?”
