Maden Mike - Tom Clancy Firing Point

He realized he was hallucinating again. Was he even alive? Or in some perpetual watery hell for his sins?

He blinked his eyes, itching and dry despite the miles of ocean water surrounding him. He closed them for relief.

He was so tired. He felt his mind plunging toward a deep well of black, comforting sleep . . .

Aadhavan startled awake just as he heard a splash nearby.

Panicked, he turned toward the sound, ready to claw at the black eyes of the shark as it charged him. But he saw instead a young man, white like a fish, a smile on his face at the bow of a black rubber boat. Another man ran the outboard motor.

“Hey! You! Hold on!” the man in the bow shouted.

The sailor’s eyes ached as he cried, or tried to, with relief. He couldn’t believe his good fortune.

He had survived.

His wife and children would survive.

The sailor glanced up at his salvation. He shielded his eyes against the blinding morning sun. He could make out the shape of the great steel ship in the near distance. A fishing trawler. Men stood like shadows on the deck, leaning over the railing, staring in his direction.

The engine reversed hard and the rubber hull stopped on a dime near the sailor. The engine cut out.

The Tamil sailor reached up with one hand to grab the hull but there was no handhold. His fingers slipped away. He croaked in desperation as he released the ice chest and threw both hands toward the boat to save himself, but he was too weak.

Splash! The white man jumped in the water and grabbed the sailor from behind.

“Hold on there, fella! I got ya,” he said as he wrapped a nylon rope around the Tamil sailor’s dark, emaciated torso.

The other man in the boat pulled the rope toward him, lifting the near drowning man above the surface.

“You speak English?” the man in the water asked.

“A . . . little,” the sailor whispered.

“Any of your friends out here with you?”

“None . . . sir.”

“You sure?”

Aadhavan nodded, his voice spent. His eyes pleaded, Please haul me into the boat.

“Okay, then. If you’re sure,” the white man said, still supporting his torso in his strong arms. “Time to take care of you.”

The sailor managed a weak smile, thinking of his children. “Thank you . . . sir.”

His blinking eyes caught sight of the second man in the boat standing unsteadily by the motor, the sun behind his back. He lifted an anchor and tossed it over the side with a heavy splash. It sped toward the ocean floor.

Aadhavan was confused. The waters here were over four thousand meters deep. An anchor—

He felt the white man’s grip release from around his chest just as the nylon rope jerked against his flesh.

Aadhavan’s sickening cry was swallowed by the sea as his body was yanked beneath the surface.

The two men watched the last of the Tamil’s air bubbles break the surface a minute later.

“Helluva thing,” the man in the water said, reaching up a hand. “We need to call it in to el jefe and clear out of here.”

The man in the boat reached down and helped his shorter friend out of the water and into the Zodiac.

The taller one lifted a satellite phone to his ear as the short one cranked the big Suzuki engine. It was dirty work, but that was the job, the short one thought, the image of the Tamil’s screaming face dragged down into the deep flashing in his mind. He shrugged it off. They’d be back on the trawler in fifteen minutes, and Cookie would have hot coffee and donuts waiting for them in the galley.

OCTOBER 28

42

WASHINGTON, D.C.

THE WHITE HOUSE RESIDENCE

He had given up much of his privacy when he took the oath of office, but President Ryan drew the line at his bed.

The idea of a stranger’s hand shaking him awake as he lay next to Cathy in the middle of the night was abhorrent to him, a breach of matrimonial sanctity that he could hardly fathom. The few times it had happened it shocked him. He wasn’t a young boot at Quantico anymore; he was a grown-ass man, and the commander in chief. Wasn’t he entitled to this last, least bit of privacy?

Of course, he trusted the Secret Service detail with his life, and they had both the right and obligation to enter his bedroom and wake him under extreme circumstances. He’d defined “extreme circumstances” to SAIC Gary Montgomery, the head of the PPD, to mean war, or extreme loss of life, or anything involving his wife and children. Other than that, the door stayed shut until business hours the next morning, starting at six a.m.

But Ryan wasn’t so vain as to put his own personal comforts ahead of the national interest, and there were plenty of emergencies that needed to be addressed at the worst hours of the night. He gave Arnie van Damm and a few select others—his children, mostly—the right to call him on his private number anytime, day or night.

When his private cell phone rang with its distinctive Arnie van Damm ringtone at four a.m., Ryan’s eyes bolted open.

“Arnie?”

“Don’t shoot the messenger, boss.”

Jack rolled out of bed, careful not to pull the covers off his wife as he did so. He padded barefoot across the plush carpet and out of the bedroom, quietly closing the door behind him, and headed for the kitchen to make coffee.

“What’s up?”

“You said to call you the minute we heard anything. I just got word from Admiral Talbot that there’s been another sinking.”

“Where?”

“The Indian Ocean.”

Ryan shoveled scoops of Black Rifle Murdered Out extra-dark coffee into the paper filter.

“When?”

“Two days ago.”

“Why are we just hearing about this now?”

“Apparently it was out in the middle of nowhere, and the local port authority didn’t bother notifying anybody that it didn’t arrive until two hours ago.”

“Wasn’t somebody monitoring the AIS signals when it disappeared?”

“Somebody was out on a smoke break when it happened or it could have been a software glitch. We don’t know. Talbot’s on the warpath and running this down.”

Ryan stuck the glass carafe under the running kitchen faucet.

“This isn’t the way I wanted to start the day.”

“Not good news, I know. I thought you should hear it from me, and hear it right away.”

“You did the right thing.” Ryan sighed. He poured the pot of water into the reservoir and hit the start button, willing the machine to begin wheezing out the first drops of liquid black gold.

“What do you want me to do, boss?”

“Call the group together. We’ve got a real problem on our hands now. Bad enough this thing was running loose in the South Pacific. Now it looks like we’ll have to police the whole damn planet.”

43

BARCELONA, SPAIN

Brossa pushed through the heavy door of the CNI office suites. She was greeted with a round of applause from Peña and the rest of the administrative staff.

“There she is. Our hero!” Peña said, still clapping.

Brossa blushed with embarrassment but shook hands with or hugged the staff that came over to congratulate her. The story had broken on the news the night before, with overhead helicopter images of Brossa and her digitally blurred head charging toward the farmhouse just before it exploded. But everybody in the CNI office knew it was her, and proudly shared in her achievement.

Drinks and pastries were set out for the celebration.

“Everybody, please, enjoy!” Peña said, pointing at the small buffet. He turned to Brossa. “Something to eat or drink?”

“Just water, please.”

He handed her a bottled water and grabbed one for himself. He noticed the small bandage on her cheek. He frowned. “You were wounded?”