Greene's Calling: Seventeen Book Three (A Supernatural Action Adventure Thriller Series 3) (38 page)

Fresh fear formed a hard lump in Conrad’s throat. He gazed blindly at the cell, the Frenchman’s words ringing in his ears.
What the hell would the Rajkovics want ballistic missiles for?

‘Did he get his hands on any?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Yes,’ replied the agent. ‘The arms dealer said Kadir had appropriated scores of disused Scud-Bs and Cs over a period of ten years or so.’

‘Shit,’ Anatole muttered dully.

‘That’s all I’ve got for the time being,’ said Moreau. ‘I’ll let you know if we come up with anything else.’

‘Thanks,’ said Laura. She ended the call, her face pale.

‘Now what?’ said Stevens. The agent had a haunted look.

Conrad glanced at him distractedly, stunned by this latest news. ‘We let the White House and the other countries know.’ He could not fathom the Rajkovics’ need for the missiles, not when they had Hagen’s powerful explosive at their disposal.
We must be missing something.

Laura had taken the seat at the onboard computer. She opened the video link to the Sit Room. The window blinked into life. Connelly and Donaghy appeared in the middle of the screen. They stood in close conversation, their expressions grave. The place was teeming with agents and White House staff.

Connelly turned when the video connection pinged. ‘Oh!’ She crossed over to the conference table. ‘I was just about to call you.’

Donaghy followed in Connelly’s footsteps.

‘Ridvan Kadir has been buying Scud missiles on the weapons black market since the late 1980s,’ Laura announced in a hard voice. ‘French Central Intelligence just heard from Mossad.’

Connelly and Donaghy looked at each other.

‘We know,’ said the CIA agent with a dark expression. ‘Petersen told us.’

‘You caught him?’ exclaimed Conrad.

Donaghy’s lips twisted in a bitter smile. ‘Yes. Bastard was boarding a plane to Alaska. Airport security scanned his face and tipped us off.’

‘It seems Petersen was in it purely for the money, Greene,’ said Connelly in a level tone. ‘He had no other links with the Rajkovics.’

Conrad grasped the silent message behind her words. Petersen was not of the Ottoman-Crovir lineage. ‘Has he talked?’

The two women exchanged guarded glances once more.

‘We had to cut a deal,’ Connelly admitted, her voice tight with anger. ‘Life imprisonment rather than the death penalty he justly deserves for treason.’

Conrad’s heart pounded dully inside his chest. ‘What did he say?’

‘He admitted to passing on Westwood’s security details for the FedEx Field fundraiser event
and feeding the Rajkovics particulars of the investigation, which came as no real surprise to anyone,’ said Connelly.

‘No, the humdinger was this,’ said Donaghy. She leaned toward the camera. ‘He also gave them comprehensive reports on the locations and blueprints of US military bases here and abroad.’

Conrad stared at her blankly for a couple of seconds. His brain finally made the connection. Ice filled his veins. ‘The Scuds.’

‘Yes, the Scuds,’ said Connelly. ‘It would be virtually impossible for the Rajkovics to dig tunnels under an established army base; they would have been spotted a mile away. Instead, Petersen helped those bastards identify sites free from our geospatial intelligence’s scrutiny, from which they could launch their ballistic missiles against our armed forces. Most of them are abandoned barns and isolated woodland.’ She bit her lip. ‘We have to assume they’ve done the same in other countries.’

‘That traitorous son of a bitch!’ Laura hissed in the stunned silence that followed.

‘They’re going to take out cities and military bases at the same time,’ muttered Stevens, his face waxy.

Conrad’s fingers dug into his palms. This was even worse than he had imagined. ‘Did Petersen give you the details of those locations?’

‘He said he wasn’t sure which ones they’d decided on,’ replied Donaghy with a disgusted grimace. ‘He gave them the list a few years ago.’

Connelly’s face darkened. ‘I’ve spoken to the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense. We’re going through them one goddamned site at a time.’

Fear flooded Conrad. He suspected they would be too late to prevent the loss of more human lives.

‘Petersen overheard snatches of a conversation when he was on the phone to Zoran Rajkovic last week,’ said Donaghy. ‘Nadica Rajkovic was talking to someone in the background about satellite-linked remote controls she was going to pick up.’

Conrad went still. Images of the incident in Paris flashed across his vision.

‘The briefcase,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Nadica Rajkovic escaped with a metal case that Ridvan Kadir had given her!’

Shocked comprehension washed across the others’ faces.

‘They must be for the laser detonation devices,’ said Stevens.

‘Wow.’ Anatole shook his head in amazement. ‘You gotta admire them. The bastards are going to blow up the world by remote control.’

‘One more thing,’ added the grim-faced CIA agent. ‘Petersen heard an air horn just before the call ended. He thought the Rajkovics might have been at sea.’

A flicker of hope burst into life in the depths of Conrad’s soul. ‘Do any of the companies the Rajkovics own have links with the shipping industry?’

‘Not that we know of,’ said Connelly. ‘We’re checking them out anyway for connections to any kind of ship.’

Conrad swallowed a wave of disappointment. ‘That’s great. Let me know as soon as you find—’

A voice suddenly shouted excitedly somewhere off-screen.

Connelly’s head whipped around. ‘What is it?’ She stared over her shoulder. A man jogged into view. It was the Sit Room analyst.

‘You know how we put a call out to all the agencies investigating those forty-odd businesses we think the Rajkovics own?’ he said breathlessly.

‘Yes. What about it?’ said Connelly, impatient.

The man grinned. ‘FBI just came back with a doozy. They found an electronic fuel receipt at an abandoned brokerage firm yesterday. It was for a luxury yacht called “
The Ariana
.” She stopped over in Crown Bay on St. Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands.’

Conrad’s pulse speeded up. ‘When was this?’

The Sit Room analyst glanced at the paper in his hand. ‘Two days ago!’

‘Can we get satellites over the area?’ said Conrad urgently. ‘We need to find that boat. They probably have those remote controls on board!’

‘Already on it,’ said the Sit Room analyst with a sharp dip of his head. ‘We should have images coming through in the next few minutes. We’re checking to see if the yacht has an automatic identification system. It should be easy to locate them if they do.’

It turned out
The Ariana
did not have the tracking system installed.

Conrad paced the Learjet cabin while they waited for the NGA to work out a search grid based on the information they had obtained on the vessel’s average speed and a forty-eight-hour window from St. Thomas. Laura called Victor on her cell and asked him to put the immortals’ own satellite network into play.

It was almost an hour before a sharp-eyed Bastian intelligence analyst finally picked out the super yacht.

‘They’re in the Sargasso Sea, about 850 miles northeast of the US Virgin Islands,’ announced Victor.

They were in a conference call with the White House. Conrad stared unblinkingly at the white and navy-blue shape moving seamlessly against a cobalt background on the enhanced satellite video. A buzz of anticipation flared into life inside him.

‘Laura, can you ask the pilot where we are in relation to that yacht?’ he said quietly. He saw her startled reaction out of the corner of his eye.

‘Okay.’ She disappeared in the direction of the cockpit.

A slow grin lit up Anatole’s face. ‘Time to have some fun.’ The red-haired immortal’s gleaming gaze matched the thrill dancing through Conrad’s veins.

There was a sharp intake of breath from the Sit Room video link.

‘Hang on a minute!’ Connelly blurted. ‘You’re not thinking of intercepting them, are you?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m going to do,’ Conrad affirmed with a dark smile.

Connelly gaped at him. ‘You’re in a Learjet thousands of feet in the air over the bloody North Atlantic! How the hell do you think you’re—?’

‘We’re about seven hundred miles northeast of them,’ interrupted Laura as she came down the aisle.

‘Your closest land mass is Bermuda,’ said Victor crisply on the second link. ‘Connelly, I believe the US Navy has a Nimitz class aircraft carrier in the vicinity. They could have a Seahawk helicopter waiting at the airport on St. David’s island.’

Shocked silence came from the White House. Conrad suppressed a smile. Victor Dvorsky could still surprise him.

Connelly opened and closed her mouth soundlessly. She turned to the Sit Room analyst. ‘Is that true?’ she asked stiffly. The man tapped a couple keys, checked the data on the screen, and nodded sheepishly.

Connelly’s gaze shifted to the camera. She glared at Victor before letting out an exasperated sigh. ‘Shit. I don’t even want to know how you know that.’ She chewed her lip as she mulled over the Bastian leader’s suggestion. ‘Goddammit!’ she finally snapped. She looked to the Sit Room analyst. ‘Talk to the Navy.’

Laura twisted on her heels and headed back to the cockpit.

They landed in Bermuda just over an hour later and taxied toward a gray Sikorsky Seahawk helicopter squatting at the edge of the tarmac. Conrad had just exited the Learjet when the pilot called out to him from the top of the steps.

‘There’s an urgent video call from Vienna!’ he shouted.

Conrad hurried back inside the plane, alarm shooting through him. He reached the onboard computer and saw Victor in the center of the link on the screen. The Bastian leader was standing at the desk inside his glass office, his expression grim. The command post below him was a hub of agitated activity.

Conrad’s stomach sank. ‘What’s wrong?’

Laura, Anatole, and Stevens appeared beside him, apprehension evident in their tense postures.

‘The investigators in Luxembourg found the primary borehole at the source of the disaster,’ Victor said darkly. ‘It was under a building belonging to one of the Strabo Corp. directors.’

Blood thumped dully in Conrad’s ears as he suddenly recalled Alison Williams’s words.
These wells are likely to be beneath buildings.
The Berkeley engineer had been bang on the money. They just hadn’t thought one step further.

‘Shit,’ he whispered leadenly.

Anatole swore under his breath while Laura scowled.

‘I can see from your expressions that you’ve reached the same conclusion I did,’ said Victor.

A digital map of the world flashed up next to the window. ‘These are the locations of all the companies owned by the Rajkovics.’

Conrad’s heart slammed erratically against his ribs as he stared at the display.

‘God! Most of them are in the middle of major cities!’ exclaimed Stevens, horror draining the color from his face.

‘Thirty-seven of them are, to be precise,’ said Victor. ‘That’s if you count Luxembourg as well.’

Conrad slammed his fist on the table. Frustration raged inside him. How could he not have foreseen this?

‘Franklin and the FBI mentioned that the premises they investigated in the last couple days were abandoned,’ said Laura bitterly. ‘The reason must be because the primary boreholes are underneath most of them.’

Anatole drew in a breath sharply. ‘Hey! Two of those sites are near the headquarters of the—’

‘I know,’ Victor cut in. He clenched his jaw. ‘I’ve already contacted the Crovir First Council. They’re sending teams out to the suspect location in Dresden to seek and destroy the laser device. We’re doing the same here.’ He glanced over his shoulder at the busy command center.

‘We’re clearing out anyway. There are hundreds of items pertaining to our cultural heritage stored underneath this facility, never mind the centuries’ worth of Bastian knowledge and intelligence data. We
cannot
let them be destroyed.’

The Bastian leader’s words were still echoing in Conrad’s head when they crossed the tarmac to the helicopter. The Seahawk’s tactical officer greeted them at the cabin door and ushered them inside the aircraft just as the rotors started up. The gunner nodded an acknowledgement and indicated the communication headsets hooked to the wall. The tactical officer’s voice came through their earpieces seconds later.

‘We’re tracking the yacht,’ he told them. ‘We expect to rendezvous in approximately thirty to forty minutes.’

The Seahawk lifted off and rose rapidly toward the azure sky. After checking their weapons and familiarizing themselves with the equipment they would use to drop down to the boat, Conrad and the others sat back in tense silence.

‘Harry, you going to be okay?’ Laura asked a while later.

Stevens had gotten steadily grayer over the half hour they’d been in the aircraft. He nodded shakily and wiped a film of sweat from his face, his eyes straying to the open cabin door and the ocean below.

‘He doesn’t do heights,’ Laura explained at Conrad’s questioning look.

Stevens made a heaving sound.

‘I don’t think he does Seahawks either,’ the door gunner muttered as the agent lurched past him and emptied the contents of his stomach into the sea. Anatole shook his head pityingly.

The words Conrad had been waiting for finally came over the headset.

‘Target in sight.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

T
he helicopter did a wide-arced swoop and bore down on
The Ariana
from the south. The vessel’s crisp lines came into focus, her navy blue hull gleaming in the sunlight. Powerful thrusters churned the waves in her wake, stirring up a foaming, white backwash.

Conrad frowned when he made out the black shape of the MD520N aircraft on the yacht’s sun deck. Figures appeared aft of the boat. A dim staccato reached them above the roar of the Seahawk’s rotors.

Anatole squinted. ‘Are they shooting at us?’

‘I’m afraid so!’ said the door gunner with a grin. He swung the barrel of his pintle-mounted machine gun, charged the weapon, and looked down his sights. ‘Ready when in range!’

The Seahawk dropped in altitude and reduced speed.

‘Two thousand meters!’ said the tactical officer.

Arcs of automatic gunfire greeted the helicopter’s approach. The bullets fell harmlessly into the water.

Conrad adjusted the staff strapped to his back and the M16 rifle slung across his chest. A familiar sense of calmness stole over him. He glanced at Laura and Anatole and observed the same cool composure in their eyes and the lines of their bodies. They were in battle mode.

‘One thousand meters!’ warned the tactical officer.