Maden Mike - Tom Clancy Firing Point

“No. You’ve told us the most—and that wasn’t a hell of a lot,” Ryan said. He leaned forward. “No idea at all who’s behind this?”

Logan shifted around in his chair.

“I’ve thought long and hard on this. Could be a political group. Could be a religious outfit. Or it might just be your run-of-the-mill, greedy-ass pirate. They all have the same motive: money. The question is, what do they want to do with that money?”

“Something tells me you’ve ruled all of those out,” Ryan said.

“Motive ain’t enough. You gotta have the means, which tells me we’re talking about a blue water navy. As I’ve noodled on it, I think we’re talking about the Russians.”

“Why the Russians?” Arnie asked. “That seems like a real stretch.”

“Is it? The South Pacific is a far piece out in the middle of nowhere. Who else has the reach? North Korea has a navy, but mostly coastal vessels, and their deepwater stuff is mostly secondhand Cold War crap from the Russians. China has the reach but it’s all tangled up in Hong Kong right now and their navy is playing footsie with us in the South China Sea. And last I heard, there sure as hell ain’t no flip-flop-wearing Somali pirates running around in the Cook Islands.”

Logan leaned forward. “But the Russkies have eight deepwater surface vessels and eighteen-plus submarines just in their Pacific Fleet—hell, they got more subs in their navy than we do.”

“I’ll grant you they have the means,” Ryan said. “But what’s their motive?”

“That’s what I can’t quite figure out. Maybe they’ve had some kind of breakthrough in their underwater operations or their hypersonic anti-ship missiles and they’re running real-world tests. Any Russian-flagged ships sunk?”

“No.” Ryan wondered if Logan was onto something. “Not U.S.-flagged or Chinese-flagged, either.”

“But you’re missing the obvious, Buck. They hit you up for cash,” Arnie said. “That’s not a military operation.”

“Are you kidding me? Russia is run by the world’s richest gangsters. They love money, the dirtier the better. What better way to hide their testing program than to pretend it’s a piracy operation—and make some serious bank on the side doing it?”

Ryan and Arnie exchanged another look. Maybe Logan wasn’t crazy after all.

“You said you think you have an insider on your hands. What are you doing about it?” Arnie asked.

Logan shifted around in his chair again, unable to get comfortable. It was obviously a losing battle.

“I’ve got my most trusted security people sniffing around to find out who the backstabbing sumbitch is, but no luck so far.”

Arnie held up the blackmail threat. “Your IT people must have searched for the source of this e-mail? Chased down the Dark Web bank account address?”

“Jumped right on it. But you know that computer stuff—VPNs and firewalls and such. They couldn’t find anything we could grab ahold of. And we all know how good the Russians are at that kind of thing.”

“You never struck me as a man who left his fate in the hands of others,” Ryan said.

Logan grimaced, obviously in some discomfort. “Believe me, I’m not. I’m going on the offensive and putting my security team on this. I’ll find the bastards who did this, come hell or high water, and God help them when I find them.” Buck pointed a meaty finger in their direction. “You two gents have to color inside the lines, I don’t.”

“If it really is the Russians, you’re taking on a helluva risk,” Arnie noted.

“No worries on that account. I have a few arrows in my quiver I’m not afraid to loose.”

“We can’t sanction any illegal activities,” Arnie said.

“No, we can’t,” Ryan said. He stood, ending the meeting. “But if you do find out anything, Buck, you be sure to let us know.”

Buck smiled and winked. “Will do, Mr. President. Will do.”

16

PHILIPPINE SEA

The Don Pedro was lashed by heavy rains in a rolling sea, making a steady five knots beneath a hard gray sky. The wiper blades slapped away the salt water sheeting the bridge windows where the captain stood, joking with the first officer. It was a powerful storm by any measure but according to the weather radar would pass within the hour. The large, purse-shaped tuna nets were stowed away and the booms secured while the deck crew huddled dry below playing cards, grabbing shut-eye, or cleaning weapons, waiting for it to pass.

Héctor Guzmán was no sailor but the rise and fall of the boat in the running swells had no ill effect on him as he sat in his small, private cabin, staring at a laptop screen.

Dark, beardless, and with a long sharp nose that flared at the base, Guzmán’s looks favored his mother’s purely Indian ancestry. But he was a head taller than anyone in his village, and stronger than any man by the age of fifteen, the genetic gift of his father’s mixed Spanish and German heritage. His badly pockmarked face was puckered with divots and irregular scars, like a rotted orange skin punctured by shoe spikes. With such a face, he paid double for whores who would have him willingly. The whores who wouldn’t he took by force and made them pay dearly in other ways.

The men under his command both on and off the water assumed his facial defects were the product of battle—a shotgun blast to the face, or perhaps even burns. It added to his reputation as a fearsome and indestructible fighter, both of which were true. But in fact, the scarring was merely the aftermath of a virulent skin condition from his childhood.

Guzmán examined the photo on the laptop intensely, a pair of wireless AirPods stuck in his ears. It was the blue eyes and dark beard in the photo that caught his attention.

“Who am I looking at?” Guzmán demanded. “He looks like an operator.”

“According to our contact at the CNI, he is an American by the name of John Patrick Ryan, Jr.,” the operator said through the AirPods, his throaty vowels betraying his Russian accent. “He goes by the name of Jack. Works as an analyst for a privately held financial services firm, Hendley Associates, owned and managed by an ex–American senator by the name of Gerald Hendley. Apparently, Ryan was an acquaintance of Moore and that is his interest in the case.”

Guzmán scowled at Ryan’s picture. He had only just learned about van Delden’s death secondhand, and that a man matching Ryan’s description was involved. He doubted it was possible this Ryan guy in Spain was the same guy who killed van Delden in South Korea, but his instincts told him to pay close attention.

The Russian operator’s name was Bykov, one of Guzmán’s smartest. He had a real genius for killing. Munitions and remote-controlled detonations were his specialty. The Slav’s deep-set hazel eyes and flat face were offset by his crooked nose. Bykov was concerned enough about the situation in Barcelona to reach out and that was worrisome. Ryan had been in touch with the American consulate, twice met with an agent of the CNI, and made contact with Moore just before the explosion.

“He’s not an operator? Not with any agency?”

Guzmán’s own English was superb, and nearly without accent, taught to him by a spinster Baptist missionary lady who served in a nearby village when he was a child.

“We did not find anything else on him in our database, which is extensive.”

It was extensive, Guzmán agreed. And expensive. One of his best investments. If this Ryan character wasn’t on it, it was possible he had been scrubbed. That made Ryan even more problematic.

The boat yawed violently beneath Guzmán. “That’s all you have on him?”

“I have his home address in Alexandria, Virginia. His driver’s license says he’s one hundred and eighty-seven centimeters tall, and weighs eighty-nine kilograms, and by the looks of him, I’d say that was all muscle.”