Maden Mike - Tom Clancy Firing Point

“What is this—”

Phan’s last words were choked off by the razor-sharp wire garrote that sliced through his windpipe.

Before the other three surprised Marines could react, Järphammar’s knife stabbed with lightning speed, like a needle on the end of a runaway sewing machine. All four men fell into a bloody heap on the rusted steel deck.

The men and women working on the floor hardly looked up.

Guzmán watched Järphammar wipe the blood off his Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, a double-edge stiletto designed for surprise attacks, first made famous by the British commandos in World War II.

Guzmán nodded with an approving smile. “You are fast with that blade, amigo .”

“You should see what my wife can do with it.” The big Swede laughed, referring to the brunette “cook” who was now on the other boat.

And definitely not cooking.

—

The TALL BLONDE peeked around the corner of the door into the patrol boat’s bridge and called out, “Hello?”

The XO stood by the helmsman, trying to reach his commander on the radio. When he heard her voice, he turned around, frowning.

The blonde flashed a big toothy smile and came out fully from behind the wall holding out a bottle of chilled beer with her right hand, her left hand held casually behind her back.

“Commander Phan wanted you to have this.” She tossed the bottle at the Vietnamese officer. He instinctively reached out and caught it.

The bottle exploded in his hands as the frangible nine-millimeter round plowed through it and into his gut. The lead bullet dragged microscopic shards of glass along with it as it shredded his bowels. Two more shots barked out of the blonde’s cold, wet pistol as he fell backward.

At the same time, thirty .45-caliber hollow-point slugs tore around the confined space, ripping into the unprotected flesh of the helmsman and three other crewmen, their eyes wide with shock.

The bridge quickly filled with bitter blue gun smoke, the ice-chilled grip of the Heckler & Koch UMP machine pistol clutched in the brunette’s hands. She stood just behind the blonde, a wisp of smoke still curling from the crown of her SIG 365XL pistol.

The blonde’s ears rang from the deafening noise. She touched her own cheek with the barrel of her SIG, telling the brunette, “You’ve got a little blood . . .”

The brunette reached up and wiped off the arterial spray that had splattered on her face after knifing the young Marine escort and the killing spree belowdecks that followed.

“Call it in,” she said to the blonde. The Don Pedro ’s assault team had boarded the Vietnamese vessel after the first shots rang out in the galley. The assaulters killed the rest of the crew as the women worked their way toward the bridge.

The blonde radioed over to Guzmán on her comms. She shouted loudly, nearly deaf from the ringing still in her ears. “We’re clear. Send the sappers.”

One of the Don Pedro ’s assaulters scrambled up behind the brunette, breathing hard, his carbine in hand, his face anxious.

“What’s the problem?” the brunette asked.

“Your man Sablek. He’s gone.”

—

Later that night, Guzmán leaned over the rail on the stern of the ship, smoking one of the fat Cohibas, the copper blades of his boat’s single propeller frothing the dark water behind them like a ribbon of light.

Järphammar stood next to him with his pipe, nursing a beer, commiserating.

“These things happen in war, my friend. He was a good soldier and died doing his duty. That’s an epitaph I’ll take any day.” The Swede took another puff on his pipe.

The thin moonlight exaggerated the deep puncture scars in Guzmán’s round face, making them look like shadowed craters on a brown, fleshy moon.

“Sablek was just a kid. And we’re not at war.”

“He was a 2nd REP para with the Legion”—the French Foreign Legion—“and tough as nails. He knew what he was getting into when he joined with them. And he knew what he was getting into when he joined with us.”

“He was only twenty-six.” Guzmán took a long pull on his cigar and exhaled. The blue smoke wafted away into the dark behind them. “That’s too young to die for money.”

“He didn’t die for money. You know that. He died for us, as we would have died for him.” Järphammar took another swig. “We were his family. That means something, doesn’t it?”

“Not to his widow.” Guzmán examined the stub of his cigar, turned up his nose at it, and tossed it overboard. “I will see to it she gets a double share for his trouble.”

“That’s good of you, patrón .”

“A family takes care of its own.”

Järphammar worried for his boss. He’d seen these dark moods before in his years as his number three in the Sammler organization. He knew not to try and talk him out of his despair.

“Still no word from Bykov?” Guzmán asked.

“No, sir.”

Guzmán was now certain that Ryan was connected to van Delden’s death. Bykov had been sent to kill the big American for that but he hadn’t reported back in. This was worrisome as well.

Guzmán took the loss of one of his people like it was the loss of one of his own children, of which he had none. But van Delden’s death hit him hardest. The big Dutchman had been Guzmán’s first European recruit and a close friend.

“Did Harte make the AIS swaps?” Guzmán asked for the second time in the last ten minutes.

The Swede didn’t know if his boss was being extra cautious or if he was just distracted by his grief. It wasn’t like him to repeat himself.

“As you ordered. He swapped ours out and put it on the Vietnamese boat and killed their VDR before we scuttled it. The world will think the Don Pedro sank with all hands lost somewhere in the South China Sea.”

“And our new AIS is online and broadcasting?”

“You are now the proud owner of the Lupita, under a Panamanian flag.”

“And what did you do with the Vietnamese AIS?”

“Harte decided to put a battery on it and launch it on a weather balloon. At last report, it was traveling due east at fifteen knots.”

“A weather balloon? Won’t that be a problem?”

“AIS doesn’t measure altitude. It’s strictly GPS. Longitude and latitude only.”

He clapped Guzmán on the arm as his broad face broke into a wide smile. “But it would be funny if the Vietnamese thought their patrol boat was sailing along at seven thousand feet.” The Swedish captain swore that a small grin was tugging at Guzmán’s troubled face but in the dark it was hard to know for sure.

“I’m heading for my bunk. Notify me when we reach the next waypoint.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Järphammar watched Guzmán climb the ladder toward the bridge and his private stateroom. The Swede polished off the last of his beer, then tossed the empty into the churning wake behind him, knowing it would sink eventually somewhere out in the dark.

OCTOBER 29

53

BARCELONA, SPAIN

Jack’s ankles were cuffed and shackled to the steel chair bolted to the floor. His hands were cuffed and shackled to an iron bracket in the middle of the steel table, its top scratched with graffiti. He wondered if the jailhouse artists got their justice, whatever that was.

His wrists hurt where they cuffed him, a little too tight—on purpose, no doubt. Jack had taken a swing at the first cop who approached him in the alley with a drawn gun, not realizing it was a cop. Thank God he only put the man on his ass instead of on an autopsy table. The other cops that swarmed him didn’t seem quite as grateful. They rang Jack’s bell pretty good, putting him on the ground and cuffing him, even after Jack had surrendered and apologized for hitting the other cop.