“Sure you do,” Kelsey said. She continued to flip through the file, then gave up and handed it to the second agent, who began studying it himself. “You’re going to be extradited to the United States to face over two thousand counts of murder and conspiracy, Yusuf. I can pretty much guarantee you the death penalty. In fact, I don’t think we’re going to bother with going through an extradition—we’re going to hog-tie you like the murderous pig you are and just take you back with us. Your first stop will be Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Have you heard of it? Let’s go.” The second agent collected all the folders into a backpack while the first secured Gemici’s hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs.
“Wait! I will tell you all you want to know!” Gemici said. “But the real records of what Boroshev was doing are on board my ship, not here.”
“Ahmed?”
“Nothing in the files like addresses or phone numbers,” the second agent, an Arabic translator, said. “Looks like a payment sheet, maybe receipts. Hard to tell.”
“You better not be lying to me, Yusuf,” Kelsey said, “or I hope you can swim with your head bashed in.” She had the plastic handcuffs cut off. “Move out.”
They left the office and crossed over to the other side of the wharf to where the King Zoser was docked. There was one watch stander at the top of the gangway, who exchanged words with Gemici as they started up the ramp. The watch stander lit a cigarette and nodded, obviously not concerned that the captain was coming on board so late at night with four foreigners.
About halfway up the gangway, when the Arabic-speaking agent reached out to grasp the handrails with both hands as the ramp got slippery, Gemici saw his chance, slid under the handrail, and dropped about twelve meters into the harbor. “Ilha’uni!” Gemici shouted in Arabic when he surfaced. “Utlub el bolis! Ilha’uni!”
The watch stander reacted immediately, flicking his cigarette overboard, raising a small rifle, and shouting a warning to the rest of the crew. Several floodlights snapped on in the wheelhouse and somewhere on the bow. DeLaine, Ray Jefferson, and their agents were caught out in the open halfway up the gangway.
“Kelsey…?” one of the agents asked. “What do we fucking do now?”
“Let’s jump for it,” the other agent said. But at that instant the watch stander opened up with a short burst of machine gun fire and shouted something in Arabic, and the four Americans could do nothing else but raise their hands and remain still. More crewmen started rushing up on deck, converging on them, weapons at the ready…
Suddenly the searchlight up on the pilot’s arch near the wheelhouse went out in a shower of sparks, and they heard the sound of ripping metal, a scream, and then two splashes as something—or undoubtedly someone— dropped from the pilot’s arch into the harbor. As the terrified crew members ran over to the section of the rail to try to see what had gone overboard, there was another loud bang, the sound of crunching metal, and the searchlight on the bow went out.
“Move, everybody!” Jefferson said. He led the way up the gangway, drawing his sidearm.
“Wa’if! Haelan!” the watch stander shouted, then opened fire. One of the first rounds hit an agent in the leg; he screamed and dropped to the gangway. The other shots missed, but the watch stander kept on firing. Jefferson and DeLaine went back to help the injured agent to his feet, drawing their weapons and preparing to return fire. The watch stander had them all in his sights and was ready to squeeze the trigger…
…until he heard a loud thud! right beside him. He looked up and saw a massive figure standing beside him, as if he’d appeared out of thin air! The figure, a cross between a man and a machine, snatched the rifle out of his hands like a parent taking a noisy rattle away from an infant, then crumpled it up in his right hand as if it was nothing but a stick of cinnamon. Then its left hand snapped out, grasped the man by the throat, picked him up with ease, and casually dropped him over the side.
“Bolton, what are you doing up there?” Jason Richter radioed from inside CID One. He looked toward the bow and saw Carl Bolton in CID Three, the newest model, climbing down from the bow lookout. “Get down here and let’s secure this tub.”
“I can’t get the hang of this thing,” Bolton complained. He finally got the nerve to just jump the ten meters down to the deck and found the landing much softer than he expected. “I don’t know how Moore did it.” He and Jason stood guard at various places around the vessel, staying out of sight but still prepared to fight off any response from police or port security. DeLaine, Jefferson, and the two agents were belowdecks for about fifteen minutes. Soon they were back on the wharf, folding and stowing the CID units and hurrying away in a rental truck. They could see the police starting to arrive in the rearview mirrors as they sped away.
“We didn’t find anything in Gemici’s cabin, and we couldn’t find Boroshev’s cabin,” Kelsey said. “But we did find several folders of notes. Looks like we’re going sightseeing, guys.”
A Secret Location
Early the next day
“We were raided!” Yegor Viktorvich Zakharov screamed into the secure satellite phone. “You sonofabitch, we were raided!”
“Shto ty priyibalsa ka mn’e, Yegor?” the voice on the other end of the connection known as the Director asked in passable Russian. “Calm yourself.”
“They had a firefight with Gemici’s men on his ship—with two of those damned robots!” Zakharov shouted. “They’re here, right now. You knew about it, and you said nothing!”
“Don’t give me that bullshit, Zakharov!” the Director retorted. “I told you to stay out of the United States. Instead you engineer another attack! Now look at what you’ve accomplished: the fucking President of the United States has gone before Congress and asked for a declaration of war on you! You brought this on yourself!”
“What do you intend to do about it?”
“ ‘Do?’ I’m not going to do a fucking thing!” the man insisted. “You’ve got one more job to do out there, and then you’re out. You’ve already been paid half the cost of the last job—you’d better finish it. After you’re done, you should take your money and go back to Brazil or the Caribbean or whatever rock you intend to hide under, and disappear. Stay that way.”
“The mission was, Kingman dies,” Zakharov said. “He’s managed to escape every time.”
“The mission was: you do as I say, when I say it, and you get paid,” the Director snapped. “I never wanted you to strike inside the United States. If I told you once, I told you a dozen times: attack Kingman everywhere but the United States. No one is going to care if you blow up a trillion dollars’ worth of oil infrastructure in Nigeria or a power plant in Brazil, but blow up one oil head in the United States and they’d send the Marines out after you. Now you’ve got something even worse than the Marines—this lousy little task force. The attack in San Francisco was a waste of time and resources. I told you he wouldn’t be there, and blowing up that building hasn’t stopped his operation even for one day! The only thing you’ve succeeded in is enraging the Americans, turning most of the world against you, and driving Kingman even deeper belowground.”
“You’re nothing but a fucking coward!” Zakharov shouted. “I knew what you wanted: you wanted to see Kingman dead…”
“Wrong, you idiot. I want Kingman bent, broken, humiliated, bankrupt, and defeated—then dead,” the Director said. “But you’re not going to do it by blowing up his headquarters in San Francisco. You’re turning him into the aggrieved party—people are even starting to feel sorry for the conniving bastard!”
“If you’d give me all the money I need, I could have his entire worldwide operation in flames in a year!”
“You’re being paid very well,” the Director said. “These added expenses caused by your escapade in San Francisco are coming out of your pocket. Finish this one last job, then go on your way. I never want to speak to you again.”
“What about this task force?” Zakharov asked. “What about those robots? What am I supposed to do about them?”
“Sounds to me like you might need a lot more men,” the Director said. “They’re your problem. It would definitely be in your best interest to smash them, before they get any more support or funding. Use every weapon and every man you can scrape up, but take them down once and for all.”
“I need more information on them,” Zakharov said. “You can get me the data on their technology I need to destroy them.”
“I’m not your messenger boy, Zakharov…!”
“You’re involved in this as much as I am,” Zakharov said. “You can get the data. I’m busy doing your dirty work—you can sit back in your comfortable office, push a few buttons on your computer, and get what I need, and
