Drone

Pearce dashed back toward the motorcycle in the grass. He’d seen the key in the ignition. He prayed there was still enough gas in the tank. Dirt puffed next to his foot. Pearce pumped the kick-starter twice and the engine roared to life. He gunned the throttle hard, popping the clutch and shifting gears as fast as he could. The bike tore up dirt clods behind him as he raced toward the berm. He took the hill at an angle and jumped it easily, crashing both tires into the dirt road just a few feet behind the pickup, fishtailing ahead of him, racing away. The man in the back of the battered gray Dodge crashed to the steel deck, dropping his rifle in the bed. Otherwise he could’ve shot Pearce dead without even aiming.

The truck picked up speed, throwing dirt and rocks behind it. Pearce could feel the grit blasting against his face; his Oakleys saved his eyes. He kept the throttle full-on with his right hand while he slid the M-4 sling around with his left. He raised the carbine up and fired three three-round bursts, trying not to hit anyone.

Slugs sparked on the tailgate, then shattered the rear glass. The truck didn’t slow down—in fact, it kept gaining speed, but the man in back ducked down. The bike Pearce was on was only 125cc, too small to keep up with a big V-8 truck engine running full bore. He fired again, twice, aiming for the tires. He missed. Fifteen rounds left.

The shooter in the back of the truck sat back up, aiming his gun. Pearce ducked low as he swerved the bike side to side. The big semiauto rifle thundered.

Pearce felt the heavy rounds blow past his head even with the wind and the dust whipping his face. He raised his gun again, firing at the tires.

The left rear truck tire blew. It must have been a retread. The tire unwound like a strip of tubular dough and wrapped itself around the rear axle. The truck bucked and swerved as the driver lost control. The big Dodge plowed into a ditch on the side of the road and flipped over.

Pearce dropped his carbine to downshift. He was still a hundred yards back and didn’t want to come racing up to a hail of bullets. The rifle cracked again. Pearce ducked off the side of the road and dropped the bike, finding cover behind a rock. A bullet shaved a fleck of stone just above Pearce’s head. He shifted to one side of the rock and opened fire, emptying his mag.

WHOOSH!

The truck erupted in a cloud of fire and steel. Shrapnel whistled past. The pressure wave rocked the trees overhead.

“I SAID I NEEDED THEM ALIVE!” Pearce screamed.

“Wasn’t us, boss. Still haven’t armed the missiles,” Stella said. She had been on overwatch with an extended-range Reaper drone temporarily “borrowed” from an air force maintenance hangar. A $14 million favor, courtesy of Mike Early. Pearce wasn’t stupid enough to think he could handle the mission without a Hellfire angel on his shoulder.

Pearce tapped his earpiece as he raced toward the burning hulk. “Ian. Are we alone out here?”

“All clear.”

“Must have been a suicide bomb,” Pearce said. “Damn it.”

Pearce stopped. Stood as close to the flames as he could stand. No survivors. “Judy, how’s Tamar?”

“The bullet passed clean through the shoulder, but she’s in shock. I’ve stopped the blood flow and got her on a plasma drip. She’s stable for the moment, but she needs help now.”

“Ian, call in a medevac.”

“Already on the way,” Ian said. He’d notified a private air-ambulance service out of Veracruz on standby. “ETA two minutes.”

“Can she talk?” Pearce asked Judy, running back to the bike.

“She’s out.” But knowing Pearce, added, “I know she’d tell you this wasn’t your fault.”

He almost believed her.

Washington, D.C.

Britnev sat in one of the computer carrels at the Georgetown public library. He hated computers, at least for this kind of effort. He’d been trained in the early ’80s in the traditional methods of tradecraft—dead drops, brush passes, and one-time pads. Britnev believed that using any kind of electronic communications was the clandestine equivalent of walking around with his fly open. But in this case, it couldn’t be helped. His contact in Mexico refused to communicate with anyone but him and this was the best arrangement they could make.

After covering the PC’s webcam with a sticky note—he always assumed a computer’s webcam was hacked—Britnev logged in under his fake identity and pulled up a coded e-mail in his Dropbox account left there by his Mexican contact, Ali Abdi.

Britnev memorized the jumble of numbers and symbols in the e-mail message—they would have looked like gibberish to anyone passing by—then deleted both the e-mail and the Dropbox account.

He took a short but sweaty walk to a nearby Starbucks and ordered a venti black iced tea with lemon, no sugar, and took a seat in the back, away from the windows. Britnev pulled out a pen and deciphered the code in his head, scratching each letter onto a napkin. Ali had already informed him last week about the Castillo decapitation strike. What Ali hadn’t been able to find out was who was behind it.

Until now.

Britnev was a little queasy. The intel had come from the Israeli Ali had tortured and killed in Mexico. He knew what terrible things Ali had done to get it, but he pushed the butchery from his mind and finished the transcription. The first letters on the napkin spelled a name.

Troy Pearce.

Britnev transcribed the rest. A request from Ali for intel on Pearce and Pearce Systems. Britnev took a sip of tea, crumpled the napkin, and pocketed it.

Ali had found his trigger and handed it to Britnev. Now it was up to him to pull it.

31

Texas City, Texas

The Estrella de la Virgen was a privately owned twenty-five-thousand-ton Mexican oil tanker ported out of Veracruz but sailing under a Panamanian flag and captained by an American, Gil Norquist.

The Estrella had arrived at the Millennium Oil refinery on the Texas Gulf Coast loaded with a shipment of gasoline from PEMEX, the state-owned petroleum company of Mexico. Millennium was experiencing a shortage of summer-blend gasoline for its distributors and had made the emergency purchase after a recent spike in market price. It was a pretty standard run and the Estrella had made the exact same trip several times earlier in the year, though not always to the Millennium facility. BP, Marathon, Valero, and several other refineries were located in the Houston port area as well.

When Captain Norquist confirmed that his Grand Cayman bank account had received a deposit of $50,000, he gladly turned a blind eye to the twenty-eight unregistered civilian passengers and the unmarked crates of cargo they had hauled on board his ship. He assumed it was another drug and guns shipment; he’d had this arrangement with the Bravo organization for years. The Estrella had special passenger and storage compartments fitted out for just such transactions. The passengers always stayed clear of the crew on the short voyage, and the crew knew not to venture down to where the mysterious passengers were located. His ship was never inspected on the Mexican side because Bravo owned the Veracruz port authority. Clearing customs on the American side wasn’t much more difficult. It was just a matter of timing the unloading with the shifts of the customs officers who were on the Bravo payroll. Security on both sides had been something of a joke for years now.

A brilliant orange sunset greeted the Estrella as she docked in Texas. Once her lines were secured and the marine loading arms attached to the Estrella’s cargo manifolds, the unloading procedures began. The marine surveyor was already on board gathering samples from the cargo tanks to test for purity.

The captain stepped into the cargo control room along with his first officer and radioed in to the loadmaster