Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Janson Option (Paul Janson) Page 8

  “You’re kidding.”

  Last they had heard, the dictator’s son whom Janson and Kincaid had rescued last year had ended up in a villa on Sardinia.

  “When?”

  “Daniel doesn’t know. He only found out by accident from some tourists who rented the villa. Apparently it had been empty for a while.”

  As Janson got off the line and started to dial Case, he caught Kincaid’s eye. She was wearing her headset and was repeating words in Somali. Janson mouthed, “Guess who wants me to call him back.”

  “Doug Case,” she said aloud. She pulled off her headset to add, “I don’t trust him.”

  “I’m keeping an eye on him. Guess who flew the coop?”

  “Denny Chin?”

  “Yousef.”

  “Oh, man. That’s all we need. That little weasel going home to lead a counterrevolution courtesy of Catspaw.”

  “If he is, we’ll have to go looking for him. I told Quintisha to put out feelers. Meantime, Mrs. Helms takes priority—OK, go back to your Somali. I’ll do Doug.”

  Doug Case, American Synergy’s president of Global Security, was the first burned-out covert intelligence agent the Phoenix Foundation “rescued” from homelessness and addiction. Janson, Kincaid believed, had dangerously mixed feelings about the former assassin, who had been second only to the Machine at Consular Operations. Her own feelings were not at all mixed.

  Case answered on the second ring, “Well, well, well.”

  Janson pictured him. ASC’s president of security was a rugged man about Janson’s age, corporately smoothed over with a $200 haircut, a $4,000 suit, and English shoes like Kingsman Helms. But the soles of his shoes would remain forever shiny. Doug was stuck in a wheelchair—a tech-heavy six-wheel electric “superchair” with enough buttons and dials to launch a moon shot, and outriggers that extended when he used the hydraulic seat to lift him to eye level with a standing man—but still a wheelchair.

  Case was a Cons Ops veteran too, of course, and they had been through the wars together. Janson knew that there wasn’t a covert officer, active or retired, himself included, who didn’t ask of that wheelchair, Why him? Why not me? When is my turn? That a failed suicide jump had put Doug in that chair was a relief only to those with little imagination.

  “I had hoped,” Case said, “that you would make it down for the grand opening of my latest gangbanger haven.”

  Whatever Janson’s misgivings, whatever his suspicions, the rehabilitation homes that the wheelchair-bound Case had set up for Houston teenagers crippled in gang shootings were unalloyed good work.

  “I had hoped too,” said Janson. “How did it go?”

  “Swimmingly, thank you.”

  “How’d your operation go?”

  “Better than the last. Docs popped in a new stimulator. Damned thing’s smaller than a dime and charges wirelessly.”

  To alleviate the pain that radiated from his shattered spine, Doug had had numerous spinal-cord-stimulation implants, which consisted of a titanium-alloy-clad mini charging coil, battery, and electrodes. He replaced them repeatedly as they grew smaller and more sophisticated.

  “How’s the pain?”

  “Pretty good. When it hurts, I wave my magic control wand, all I feel is a tingle. Most of the time.”

  “Congratulations.” This latest model, Janson knew, had doubled the number of electrodes; the “magic wand” let him adjust the intensity and frequency of the pulses via an inductively coupled controller.

  “It beats heroin,” Doug said.

  “You called. What’s up?”

  “I understand that my least favorite rival at ASC hired you.”

  “I don’t discuss clients.”

  “Aren’t we prickly.”

  “I’m going to need a good reason not to end this conversation,” said Janson.

  “I’m not asking for information. I am merely stating that I know that Kingsman Helms hired you to rescue his stunningly gorgeous wife.”

  “Then why are you calling me?”

  “Professional courtesy. To let you know what I know. Which is to say that various people know everything going down. Including what transpired at your job interview.”

  Janson was not surprised that Case had heard about the shooting. American Synergy’s PR department might have kept Helms’s name out of the news, but word would be flying around inside the company, spread by the same publicists who kept it from the media. That meant, Janson surmised, that Doug either did not know exactly what went down, or he did know what went down and wanted to hear what Janson knew about it. Or he feared that while Janson tried to rescue Helms’s wife, Helms might spill information that ASC Security didn’t want Janson to know.

  The difficulty with trying to figure out what Doug Case wanted was that Case had been taught duplicity by the same Consular Operations instructors as Janson had. Case was as good a chameleon, as good an actor, and almost as good a liar.

  “Thank you for that information.”

  “Paul.”

  “What?”

  “Helms’s problem is not ASC’s problem.”

  “That’s between him and ASC.”

  “ASC will not pay you, you know.”

  “I’m doing it pro bono.”

  “What?”

  “That was a joke.”

  “Good one. Pro bono! I love it. What’s he paying you, if you don’t mind me asking you?”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Enjoy Somalia. And don’t forget, just because the poor woman is married to Helms doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to be rescued.”

  “Any idea who would send a sniper after Helms?”

  “Me.” Case laughed. “If I thought I could get away with it.”

  Janson did not respond.

  “Seriously?” asked Case.

  “Seriously.”

  “No one. Kingsman Helms is a jerk businessman. He’s not sniper bait.”

  “What about me, Doug? Am I sniper bait?”

  It took Case a moment to answer. The half breath that a top-notch liar would interject to indicate innocent shock at the suggestion. Exquisitely timed? Or genuine? Tough call, although Janson leaned toward exquisitely timed.

  “What are you talking about?” More baffled than indignant.

  “What if they weren’t aiming at Helms, mistakenly or otherwise, but at me and Kincaid?”

  “Then you’d be dead.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “If they were gunning for you, they wouldn’t send amateurs.”

  “These weren’t amateurs.”

  “They missed, didn’t they?”

  Janson had reviewed the attack on the pier, repeatedly. It was tough to tell for sure about the sniper’s intentions at four hundred meters, but the strollers who came around the corner had murder in their eyes for Helms and Helms only. On the other hand, those store labels still basted to their jacket sleeves were an odd oversight.

  “Interesting idea, Doug. A whole new wrinkle.”

  “Glad to help. Watch your back. And if you need anything in Somalia, don’t hesitate to ask. We’ve got terrific access through Somali expat communities in Nairobi and Dubai.”

  “Thanks,” said Janson, and hung up, saying to himself, “I’ll bet you do.”

  Kincaid removed her headset. “What was that all about?”

  “Doug sniffing out what Helms is up to.”

  “Beyond trying to get his wife back?”

  “He suggested the sniper was aiming at us, not Helms.”

  “Bullshit—Paul, what was that about Isse connecting with Abdullah al-Amriki?”

  “I told him not to.”

  “Isse is troubled,” said Kincaid. “Didn’t you think?”

  “Or just a romantic from the suburbs.”

  “Something’s bugging him,” Kincaid insisted. “Troubled young Muslims turn to clerics. It could get him killed.”

  “Let’s hope that when Isse sees Amriki face-to-face he’ll realize the ima
m is more murderous terrorist than holy cleric.”

  Janson reached for his phone. “Quintisha? Would you put someone to work on Mrs. Helms’s background, please?…By the way, as soon as Mr. Helms sends you a photo of his wife, get it straight to me, please. Thank you.”

  He rang off and looked at Kincaid.

  Kincaid nodded. “She’s Italian.”

  “A countess.”

  “Some kind of a quote ‘Italian’ is shaking up things in Mogadishu. And Somalia was an Italian colony. And the shooter we nailed was Italian. I still say we file it under ‘Far-fetched.’”

  Janson went back to the phone for a round of heads-up calls to people he knew personally in East Africa. He concentrated on Army officers from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia on the theory that the first contact should be made before help was needed. Then the panic call would not come out of the blue.

  Quintisha broke in. A Navy lieutenant with whom Janson had spoken earlier—an old friend from a night landing on the Iranian coast—had news. “Looks like the yacht is heading for Eyl. It’s a pirate city at the southern end of Puntland.”

  “Will they land in the harbor or anchor off?”

  “If they make it, they’ll probably stand offshore. But if they follow pattern, they won’t anchor. They’ll keep her moving so we can’t sneak up on her with swimmers.”

  A flat, distant note in his tone ratcheted Janson’s instincts to high alert. “What do you mean ‘if they make it’?”

  “A guided-missile destroyer has them in her sights. She sent helos up with assault teams.”

  “Do they know who they’re facing?”

  “Affirmative. An aptly named Mad Max.”

  “Good luck to them,” said Janson.

  “Good luck to Mad Max.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not to mention the hostages.”

  Janson sat up straight. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s not our destroyer.”

  “Who the hell’s is it?”

  “PLAN’s.”

  “China? Jeez-us!”

  “The People’s Liberation Army Navy contributes ships to the international patrol. Not to mention waving the Chinese flag off the coast of East Africa.”

  “Let’s hope their assault team knows what it’s doing.”

  “Oh, they know what they’re doing, all right. It’s how they do it that worries me.”

  Worried was putting it mildly, thought Janson. Dictatorships like China operated under cruel standards. Order was paramount. Pirate suppression trumped hostage health.

  “What are you going to do, Paul?”

  Janson glanced bleakly around his airborne study: Jessica curled up in her big red leather chair with her eyes closed, intently mouthing the Somali words she was hearing in her headset while repeatedly stripping and assembling a new mini pistol that had caught her fancy; he sprawled comfortably in his green chair, drinking in the information from the computers while the silver cocoon of the Embraer swept them in near silence 42,000 feet over the ocean and 8,000 miles too far away to do a goddamned thing to help.

  * * *

  MAXAMMED STARED AHEAD, desperate to make landfall before they were seen. Unlike southern Somalia’s monotonous coast of white sand and shifting dunes, the Puntland coast was backed by stone escarpments as the land reared westward toward the mountains of Ethiopia. He would see the foothills before he saw the beach, but at the moment all he saw was blue sky overhead and haze where the land should be.

  One of the keen-eyed younger men he had stationed on the roof of the wheelhouse shouted that he saw a ship. Praying it was not a naval vessel, and cursing the captain again for blinding his radar, Maxammed scrambled up the stairs for a better look. Thirty knots covered distance quickly. The ship hardened up in the long, low silhouette of what could only be a warship.

  They had started the turbines in the nick of time, Maxammed thought. With any luck, the powerful yacht could outrun the naval patrol. But in moments, helicopters were tearing through the sky.

  “Get the women.”

  NINE

  7°59' N, 49°51' E

  Off the Coast

  Eyl, Somalia

  The attack helicopters bearing down on Tarantula were so close that Maxammed could see snipers strapped in the open doors. In that same instant, the stone fortress at Eyl suddenly sprang into view—a dusty brown windowless pile baking in the sun. The haze had lifted so quickly and unexpectedly that Maxammed thought in his panic that the helicopters had somehow blown it away with their powerful rotors. Impossible. They were only machines and the sky was huge.

  He had a split second to make a decision that would save his life or end it. Every fiber in his body was screaming, Get inside, get under cover. He hesitated, frozen in place.

  Lead rained down around him, splintering the planked surface of the wheelhouse roof, screeching across the carbon fiber beneath. He could not believe they would shoot without warning, and now he knew that as much as he wanted to hide, this was his last chance to resist or it would all be over.

  “Farole! Bring the women,” he shouted, praying to God that Farole would have the courage to drag them into the storm of fire. High-powered rifle slugs crackled past his head.

  “Maxammed!”

  It was Farole, eyes wild with fear, yet burning with the same determination Maxammed felt coursing through his veins. Farole was dragging two women onto the roof, the old one and the countess. Maxammed sprinted toward them, flung one powerful arm around the countess’s waist, and raised her up in front of him like a shield.

  * * *

  ALLEGRA HELMS WAS ASTONISHED by the pirate’s strength. He was swinging her like a doll. Bullets cracked the air with a noise so loud they hurt. It was a miracle they missed. But they could not keep missing for long.

  Maxammed jerked her against him. She could feel his heart and could smell his fear. He was soaked with sweat. He staggered. She thought he had been shot and her hopes soared. But he kept his feet and she realized a bullet had passed so near it seared his skin and made him flinch.

  The shooting stopped.

  But the danger wasn’t over. It had just begun.

  The helicopters thundered lower, with soldiers poised to rappel down onto the yacht. When she tried to slide out of his arms, the pirate clutched her so tightly he bent her spine backward. Allegra cried out in pain.

  Maxammed drew his pistol, waved it in the air for all to see, and held it to her head. Farole repeated the action with his hostage.

  Allegra felt the barrel of his gun pressing to her head, hard and hot.

  I will die in an instant, she thought. It all will end and I will never even hear the gun that kills me. I will disappear and never hear the shot.

  * * *

  “KEEP TURNING!” Maxammed shouted to Farole. “Keep moving!” And they spun like dervishes so that only a madman or cold-blooded murderer would dare take a shot. Maxammed imagined the soldiers in the helicopter watching his every move. He waved his pistol in a wide arc—signaling, Move away! Get away from my ship!—and pressed it back to the woman’s head.

  The helicopters hovered, thundering, blowing wind. Then they slowly backed away, pivoted in the air, and raced back to their ship. Only then did Maxammed see the markings on their tail booms. When he did, his knees felt weak.

  “Chinese,” he said. Had I but known, he thought. “I might have lost my courage.”

  “Americans,” said Farole, pointing at another ship that had drawn within a mile, and how lucky they had been was suddenly so clear that Maxammed felt his stomach nearly give way. The Chinese were the most violent of the navies that patrolled the Indian Ocean, except for the Russians. They would have shot him and the hostages had the Americans not come along. Not that the Chinese feared the Americans. But they would know the Americans were observing and videoing their every move and they feared finding themselves gunning down hostage women on CNN and YouTube.

  “God is good,” Maxa
mmed told Farole.

  He dragged the woman toward the stairs.

  The yacht was close to land. He could distinguish individual buildings in Eyl, the old fish plant and a large half-built house of a clansmen who had been killed before it was finished.

  “Hurry up!” he called to Farole. “What’s taking you so long?”

  “Mine is dead,” said Farole. “It makes her heavy.”

  A bullet had pierced the older woman’s chest. But the methodical Farole had had the presence of mind to hold her head up to pretend she was still alive.

  “Well done,” Maxammed said. “It’s all working out. Here come our friends.”

  Skiffs were putting out from the beach, packed to the gunnels with fresh men to guard the hostages and finally let them sleep. In one was a sheep they would slaughter to feast. In another, bundles of green khat.

  Farole asked, “Will we go ashore?”

  Maxammed’s weary, bloodshot eyes narrowed. He had spotted a sight less appetizing than a fat sheep—three clansmen of Home Boy Gutaale, who were beaming covetously at the magnificent Tarantula.

  “Maxammed? Can we go ashore?”

  “We will see what we will see,” said Maxammed, keeping his options to himself, though in truth he had just vowed to himself never to leave the ship until he got the ransom. No way he would surrender his precious hostages to a relief crew. Neither did he intend to let anyone “borrow” Tarantula to act as a mothership for a pirate run. Not even Home Boy’s clansmen—especially not Home Boy’s clansmen. He would stay aboard until it was over.

  In the meantime, he celebrated. He had caught a great ship and landed it. The Chinese and the Americans would hang about for a while, but they had a huge ocean to patrol and many ships to protect. They wouldn’t stay long. The worst was over. He had stood unscathed in a sandstorm of bullets. Suddenly Maxammed felt invincible, as if God had enclosed him in his own hand that nothing could penetrate. He had survived explosions and blood. Nothing could touch him now.

  “You fucking coward!”

  He was still holding Countess Allegra.

  Allegra pushed away from him and knelt by the dead woman’s body. Her eyes were wide open, empty and ugly. Her husband came running. He knelt over her, pressed his white head to her bloody chest and wept as if he would die.