Jack Du Brul - River of Ruin

“Damn,” Harry remarked. “This must be what Sly Stallone’s dressing room looked like when he made Rambo. ”

“Rambo! Rambo!” the gun dealers parroted when they heard the name.

“Lauren, what are we paying for these?” Mercer asked, keeping the bag full of cash close to his body.

“The pistols are two hundred, M-16s are a thousand. Ammo and combat harness are negotiable.”

Harry had already blown three thousand dollars at the casino so there was twelve thousand in the bag, more than enough to outfit the Special Forces in addition to him and Lauren. Foch had arms left to provide for his men. Mercer asked if he needed ammunition.

“We could use some 5.56mm rounds for our FAMAS assault rifles,” Foch answered. “We’re okay with 9mm for our H amp;Ks.”

Lauren purchased eight pistols and rifles, and spent the remaining money on ammo and combat vests. The Panamanians seemed pleased with the transaction and joked with her as they packed up the weapons they didn’t sell.

Mercer moved to her side so he wouldn’t be overheard and asked, “How do you know they won’t go straight to the police when they leave?”

Lauren laughed and translated the comment to the arms dealers. They laughed even harder. One of them reached into his wallet and showed off his ID. He was a cop. They all were.

“Call this cross-agency cooperation,” Lauren explained.

“I promised Freddie here the arrest of anyone involved in the plot once we’ve stopped the Mario diCastorelli . In fact, he’s going to take Maria Barber off our hands tonight.”

“But he’s still charging for the guns?” Harry quipped.

“Beesness es beesness,” the Panamanian cop said in a thick accent. He turned to Lauren. “ Vaya con Dios, gringa .”

“I’ll call you tomorrow morning when the dust settles,” she told him in Spanish, and they shook hands. One of Foch’s men left with the officers to hand over Maria.

“Now we have soldiers, weapons, a boat, and one of the vans we’ve been renting.” Bruneseau accepted a cigarette from Harry.

“And a target,” Lauren added. “So far, so good.”

“Then why do I feel like we’ve missed something?” Exhaustion had turned Mercer’s voice gravelly. Part of him wanted a drink to relax and another part craved caffeine to keep him going. He settled on bottled water.

“We’ve been over it a dozen times.” Lauren sat on the couch next to him and casually took a sip from his bottle. It was such a familiar gesture that Mercer had to fight not to smile. Her leg was tight up against his and it would be so easy and right to put his arm over her shoulder. She seemed to be swaying into him as if inviting the touch.

“I can’t think of anything we’ve forgotten.” Roddy looked like he was sinking into one of the overstuffed chairs opposite them.

“That’s what bothers me.” Mercer rubbed his eyes and noted the time. Midnight. “We should all get some sleep. Meet here again at six? Will that give us enough time to get in position?”

Everyone nodded. Roddy and the Frenchmen made their way out of the suite while Lauren claimed woman’s prerogative and scooted into the bathroom first. Harry had just come from there so he bade Mercer a good night with a dismissive wave and closed the door to his bedroom.

Mercer remained on the couch, trying to pull together his fragmented thoughts. He gave up quickly, and sat there with his eyes closed.

“You awake?” Lauren whispered a short time later. She was so close he could smell toothpaste on her breath.

Mercer levered open an eye. She was bent over him, dressed in a T-shirt that just reached the top of her thighs. Her unrestrained breasts were at the level of his head and he had to drag his gaze upward. Her dark hair was brushed back from her face and her skin looked luminous from being washed. “If you heard me snoring,” he said, “then I was asleep. If not, I was silently cursing Harry for taking the second bed again.”

“Poor baby,” she cooed. “If it weren’t for tomorrow I’d invite you into mine.”

Mercer managed to keep up the flirting despite his racing heart. “If it weren’t for tomorrow you’d still be disappointed. I’m whipped.”

She smiled. “In that case, why don’t you come with me. I’m warning you that if you snore, I’ll make you sleep with Harry.”

“I’d do the same to you, but the old bird isn’t as much of a gentleman as I am.”

Her eyes danced. “I think I could trust either of you for one night.”

“What happens if I get a chance for another?”

Lauren took his hand. “You won’t be able to trust me.”

Captain Wong Hui watched critically as deckhands secured heavy manila ropes to his ship. The other end of the lines were wound around diesel-powered capstans at the far end of the dry dock. Powerful lamps attached to the enormous shedlike building spread a glare of white light across his ship and the black waters that lapped against the newly built structure. The massive doors were open and in moments the four-hundred-foot refrigerator ship Korvald would be drawn into the enclosed dock and her long trip from Shanghai would be finished.

He muttered a few terse words to the helmsman as he felt his ship move against the sluggish tidal surge. Athwartship thrusters adjusted her heading, lining her up perfectly with the narrow, concrete-lined berth. His walkie-talkie crackled and an operator at the far side of the building indicated he was ready to engage the winches.

Wong knew that his ship had been chosen by COSTIND, China’s military-industrial combine, because she carried a sophisticated cooling system that usually kept her cargoes of meat frozen, but also because her superstructure was low enough to fit into the dry-dock chamber. Still he kept a wary eye on the roof of the building as the capstans slowly drew the ship past the doors and into the dry dock. From where he stood, forty feet off the water, the span of the ceiling trusses were another fifty feet above him.

Even with fifteen feet of clearance on each side of the Korvald , Wong paced from wing bridge to wing bridge watching to see that his vessel stayed in the exact center of the dry dock. He looked aft in time to see her fantail clear the steel doors and the heavy gates begin to close. She was in. The winches hauled the reefer ship another one hundred feet to the front of the building until her graceful bows loomed over the quay and a pair of forward ropes dropped almost vertically to mushroomlike bollards.

The veteran seaman gave no outward sign that reaching Panama had reduced the tension that had robbed him of sleep since leaving China. He remained erect and aloof, fitting a cigarette between his lips and lighting it from a match. Just because he’d delivered his cargo didn’t mean the danger was past, thanks to the coded orders he’d received en route from General Yu. It would be at least another day before the large overhead crane, normally used to pull heavy machinery from disabled ships, would haul away the Korvald ’s load of eight DF-31 medium-range missiles.

The solid rocket boosters were fifty feet long and weighed nearly nine tons without their nuclear payload. The Korvald had undergone modifications to her hatches while in Shanghai so the missiles could be removed safely. He recalled that when the train carrying the rockets had arrived in Shanghai from the Wuzhai Missile and Space Center near Beijing, it had taken six hours for the workers to settle the boosters into the special cradles deep in the hold. Without the distraction of so many hawkish politburo members watching the work, he was sure the men here could cut that time in half. Once the canal was disabled, he wanted his ship out of Panamanian waters as soon as possible.