Thomas Greanias - The Atlantis revelation

"Sorry to disappoint you, Omar. But we can't go storming in like Rambo if there's any chance they've got some kind of nuclear device. We've got to take them by surprise." She unfolded her schematics of the sewer tunnels. "No radios," she instructed them. "We stick to light signals until we get to the warehouse, and then it's hand motions."

She looked up and locked eyes with each man as she spoke. She wanted to make sure they understood her perfectly.

Standing around in their black-on-black Texas Ranger baseball caps, flak jackets, and special night-vision hazmat masks, the Azerbaijanis could pass for one of her old U.S. special forces teams. Wanda had gotten her start years earlier in Tora Bora and Baghdad, crawling through caves and bunkers and sewers ahead of American troops in search of al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and, later, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Bomb-sniffing dogs had the noses to find explosives, but they didn't have the eyes or sense to look out for trip wires in the dark. So she was always the first one in. Later on she was recruited by the U.S. Capitol Police to establish a special recon and tactics squad, or RATS, to police and protect the miles of utility tunnels beneath the U.S. Capitol complex. "Queen Rat," they called her.

But Omar and his friends weren't at that level of professionalism yet. They were inexperienced in these kinds of operations, a political necessity for a "joint" American-Azerbaijani mission that was anything but. Tonight was a baptism by fire.

"This outhouse is connected to an ancient sewer that pipes into the modern one under the warehouse," she told them, pointing to the map. "We come up from beneath, use a camera to get a readout, and then we hit them and secure the package."

She double-checked to make sure they had properly inserted the translucent magazines of their laser-sighted G36 machine guns. Their short-stroke gas systems enabled them to fire tens of thousands of rounds without cleaning, perfect for these guys. Then she proceeded to unbolt one of the rusty metal latrines from the concrete floor to reveal a big black hole.

Omar could only stare in horror as the mission she described on the schematic finally sank in. "This is a shithole!"

"That's what we Americans do, Omar. Climb through shit-holes all over the world to make it a safer place."

He shook his head in horror. "I cannot fit through that," he said with disdain. "My shoulders are too wide."

Which was true. A man's shoulders were often the limiting factor in this kind of work. For women, it was their hips; Wanda's were unusually slim. But while women could do little to narrow their pelvis, men had other options.

"Dang, Omar, you're right. Here, let me take a look," she said, and with an open palm made a powerful thrust to Omar's right shoulder. The blow dislocated his shoulder, and it dropped like a hanging outlaw in an old western. "Oops."

"You American bitch!" he cried. "You broke it!"

"I can fix it when we get out. But now you can squeeze in."

He opened his mouth to protest, but she gave him her angry-black-woman death stare until he calmed down. She then strapped her grenade launcher to her back, slipped on her mask, pushed aside the metal latrine, and dropped into the sewer.

It was cool and dark in the tunnel as she crawled on all fours through the river of filth and oil. One spark and they'd all burn to a crisp. It had been in a crumbling, asbestos-lined tunnel much like this one that she had first met and shot at Conrad Yeats. Yeats had been America's most-wanted man at the time. Now he was Europe's most-wanted man. Or he would be once news got out that he had blown up billionaire Roman Midas's mega yacht and allegedly killed his French media scion girlfriend.

But General Packard had been proved right again: The sight of Yeats had been enough for Midas to double-check his operations and, in so doing, betray the location of the package she was after. The breakthrough had come when the tail sign of Midas's twin-engine G650 was caught over the Black Sea by the cockpit cameras of an unmanned Israeli G550 AWACS, or airborne early warning aircraft, equipped with the Israeli Phalcon radar system and satellite data links. The Israeli plane's onboard SIGINT equipment then captured and analyzed the pilot's electronic transmissions and traced them to a cell phone owned by Roman Midas.

Wanda followed the schematics to reach the end point under the warehouse. She snaked a fiber-optic camera through the grating of a drain and got a visual on the van sitting on the loading dock.

She signaled her team, and they took up positions beneath the grating. It was the size of a manhole cover back in the States. She poked it with the barrel of her AG36 and found it heavy but movable. She slid it slowly across the concrete floor and climbed out into the warehouse, followed by Omar and his buddies, who looked like rats on a drowning ship coming up for air.

Omar's arm was dragging. Wanda put her slimy hand over his mask and, staring into his wide eyes, hammered his shoulder back into place while she muffled his cry. They moved out quietly, awaiting her signal.

The van sat there in the dark with a driver behind the wheel while the sound of a motorboat grew louder. She looked through her nightscope and saw two flashes from the sea. The van replied by flashing its headlights twice. A minute later, a boat pulled up, and four black-clad men jumped out.

The van door slid open to reveal the driver and a crate. The driver stepped out to meet the men but then dropped to the ground as one of the seamen slashed a knife across his throat. The killer silently kicked the body into the water and walked to the crate and hauled it over. He flashed a sign. Now four men appeared. He cracked open the box and lit a cigarette.

Wanda squeezed the trigger, and Mr. Marlboro crumpled to the ground. By the time his companions saw, it was too late. A hail of bullets from the Azerbaijanis rained down on them and riddled the van with bullets.

"Stand down!" she shouted, and ran over to the crate while the others jogged after her. "It's a miracle you didn't blow us all up!"

She broke open the crate to find a dead dolphin on a block of dry ice. The stench was rank. She heard something behind her and turned to see one of her boys puking out his last meal: lula kebab with walnuts. She was about to call this red herring in to Packard, but he had already seen everything from her head camera and was cursing loudly into her ear.

She ripped off her earpiece and looked at Omar, who had helped himself to the Marlboro of the dead man and was smiling. "You see something funny here, Omar?"

Omar started laughing.

She repeated, "I asked if you see something funny here."

"You," Omar said, pointing the cigarette at her as he blew a perfect ring of smoke. "You have shit on your face!"

Midas couldn't help but note all the sale items on display in the storefront windows along an empty Bond Street in the early morning as Vadim drove the Bentley toward the worldwide headquarters of Midas Minerals amp; Mining. The golden glass tower was designed to look like a stack of gold coins overlooking the River Thames. But the global financial depression had come into full force by the time it was finished, making it a symbol of excess from an earlier gilded age.

His beloved mega yacht was another symbol of that era, and the Times of London had taken the liberty of printing two pictures-before and after-on the front page by the time Midas had landed after his unplanned early departure from Corfu two hours ago. Below the fold was a smaller story about the murder of Mercedes.

That goddamn American. Yeats left me no choice.

Midas hated losses, and to take them at the hands of a two-bit pirate like Conrad Yeats was doubly humiliating. He hated feeling like he was cornered.