hundred thousand people dead, maybe less—Lake Buena Vista or whatever it’s called is twenty miles away from town.”
“And the one in the Everglades?”
“Backup. The point is the bombs are the key that opens the door. It’s going to make nine-eleven look like a house fire.” Sinclair raised her glass. “The bombs are the rationale for an invasion that should have succeeded fifty years ago.
“They’ll rewrite the Patriot Act; they’re going to be hiring private police forces, shoot-to-kill border patrols. Think of it as one big business opportunity. Those bombs are the keys to the magic kingdom, Max, and we’ll be the ones sitting on the royal thrones.”
“No, you won’t,” said Joseph Patchin, entering the study. A nine-millimeter Glock 19 was held firmly in his right hand.
“How the hell did you get in here?” Kingman said, half rising from his leather chair.
“I’m the director of operations at the CIA, you fat old bastard,” answered Patchin. “I’ve still got a few chops.”
It was clear to Kate Sinclair that Patchin was at least as drunk as Kingman. She calmly opened the bag on her lap, took out her lighter and cigarettes and lit one. “Perhaps you could enlighten us on the reason for your presence here.”
“Sure, Ms. Psycho Sinclair, you crazy bitch.” Patchin closed his eyes for a second or two and swayed slightly. “There’s been a Pinnacle Nucflash alert for Orlando. Where do you think that came from? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count. It’s your old goddamn pal Holliday—that’s who. The president, in all his great fucking wisdom, has asked for NEST teams to descend on Florida like locusts. The signal traffic between the American Interests Office at the Swiss embassy in Havana is burning up the airwaves. The jig is up, as they used to say. I think what it really means is we’re screwed. We’re all going down.”
“NEST?” Kingman asked, his face slack and his brow furrowed, not quite getting it.
“Nuclear Emergency Support Team,” said Kate Sinclair. “They find lost atomic bombs and the like.”
“Full marks, sweetie.” Patchin grinned drunkenly.
“But…but there must be something we can do!” Kingman said.
“Sure there is,” said Patchin. “We can die.” He fired two quick shots, one into Kingman’s chest and another into his throat, killing him instantly and blowing him back even more deeply into his chair.
Remarkably his drink stayed firmly gripped in his hand. Blood began to spread across his starched white shirt and bubble from his mouth in little pops and burbles as the life drained out of his body. Patchin watched for a moment, fascinated, then swung around to face Kate Sinclair. “Your turn now, Lady Crazy, and then I’ll join you in hell myself.”
“I’ll take a rain check, Mr. Patchin.” She slid her little Khar PM45 pocket pistol from her purse and shot Patchin once, taking out his left eye and blowing his brains out through the door and into the hall outside the study. Patchin collapsed like an empty suit of clothes.
Sinclair stood, walked over to Patchin and took the handkerchief from the breast pocket of the man’s suit jacket. She wiped off her own handprints from her pocket pistol, then went and placed the weapon in Max Kingman’s dead right hand, squeezing his index finger into the trigger guard and pressing his other fingers around the grip.
She took the Scotch glass from his other hand and put it on the table beside him. She finally retrieved her own glass, emptied its contents back into the Scotch decanter, then wiped and dried the glass before putting it into the bar cabinet with a dozen or so others just like it.
Sinclair looked around the room, nodded once, then left the room, careful to step over the mess Patchin’s brains had left in the front hall. She paused at the front door, took out her cell phone and made a quick call.
“File a flight plan for Zurich. I’ll be there in half an hour.” She closed the cell phone, put it back into her purse. Using Patchin’s handkerchief, she turned the doorknob and stepped out into the muggy evening air. She closed the door, put the handkerchief into her purse.
“Goddamn it to hell,” she said quietly, then headed for M Street and a taxi to take her to the South Capitol Street Heliport.
So far the growing storm had kept the Zhuk at bay, the high, choppy waves throwing both the patrol boat and the Corazon de Leon around like a kid’s bath toys. She had come abreast of them but was standing about a mile away, the red, angled stripe on her hull occasionally visible as she rode the crest of a wave.
Every ten minutes or so, there would be the popping, tearing sound of the twin forward and aft machine-gun turrets, but so far they hadn’t done much more than blow off the upper portion of the mast and boom and splinter a few of the piled lobster traps on deck.
Eddie was at the wheel while Geraldo and his son were belowdecks checking out the boat’s sluggish response to the helm. Will Black was in the galley trying to prepare them something to drink and eat while Holliday stood beside Eddie, staring through the binoculars.
Carrie was clutching a bulkhead and trying to keep her feet under her as the bow of the lobster boat smashed into a wave, then rose to the crest and then dropped into the trough on the other side. The sky was black and what they could see of any horizon was dark gray. The rain beat down furiously, drumming on the deck and the roof of the wheelhouse.
“I don’t understand,” yelled Carrie, raising her voice above the bluster of the storm. “She’s been over there for an hour. Why haven’t they blown us out of the water?”
“The machine guns can only traverse to a certain angle. If she got any closer she’d be shooting over our heads,
Eddie hauled over on the wheel as they hammered into another wave, then rode it upward. On the downward slide he hauled in the other direction, trying to keep the Corazon de Leon from slewing broadside into the next wave. “Besides, they are probably afraid, as well. They are a long way outside Cuban waters.”
“Pretty soon they’ll figure out that the only way they can deal with us is to ram us, and that’ll be that,” said Holliday, lowering the binoculars.
“Brew up!” Will Black called as he staggered out of the wheelhouse, somehow managing to balance a tray of mugs in one hand. He began handing them out. “Coffee, strong, hot and sweet.”
“Shit,” said Holliday.
“That bad?”
Holliday shook his head and pointed to the windscreen of the wheelhouse. The rain was streaked with shades of pink. “The paint is coming off the roof. We’re done.”
Geraldo stumbled into the wheelhouse through the starboard-side hatchway. He spoke to Eddie in rapid-fire Cuban.
“Well?” Holliday asked.
“The boat is leaking badly,” translated Eddie. “Ricardo is trying to make repairs, but we’re taking on a lot of water.”
“Double done,” said Holliday.
Suddenly the storm clouds above them split wide, casting down a huge, golden swath of dying sunset light and blue sky like something out of a Rembrandt painting or one of the apocalyptic horrors of a John Martin canvas. It was simultaneously beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
“He is changing course!” Eddie said as they topped another wave. It was true. As well as it could, the Zhuk was angling itself slightly across the breaking seas, her bows taking a terrible pounding, spray flying far above their bridge. It would take a while, but within no more than ten or fifteen minutes they would be on a collision course and that same steel bow would crush the Corazon de Leon into splinters.
“Bloody hell!” Will Black said.
“What can we do?” Holliday asked Eddie.
“Nothing,
