Into the Crossfire (5 page)

trust me."

Harry gimped his way out of the office, a half smile on his face. It had been

worth it being teased, to see Harry smiling. Sam wasn't much of a smiler himself,

but Harry had been to hell and back. This was the first lighthearted exchange he'd

had with Harry since he'd been blown up in the Hindu Kush.

Maybe it was the Nicole Pearce Effect. God knows, she had an effect on

him, a massive one. Harry said he'd been mooning over her, which was crazy. Sam

didn't moon. But he had been...interested. Real interested.

He'd timed his comings and goings to get a glimpse of her. Christ, just

watching her walk down the hallway toward him had been enough to give him a

boner he could use to hammer a nail into the wall.

He knew the basics about her, thanks to her website and Google. Daughter

of an ambassador, grew up all over the world, attended the University of Geneva

School of Translation, translated from French and Spanish, knew basic Russian

and some Arabic.

That really impressed him. Language training was intense in SpecOps. Sam

had aced just about everything in training except languages. He had a tin ear for

languages, and it had been a real drawback. Still was, as he was starting to have

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foreign clients.

Though she was an ambassador's daughter, Nicole Pearce didn't live like a

woman of privilege. She lived in a house that was worth about half the value of

Sam's condo on Coronado Shores. Her income was one twentieth of his. She had

founded her company only a year earlier, when she had moved to San Diego to

live in the house her maternal grandmother had left her, operating the business out

of her home until she'd moved into his building a month ago.

Before opening her own business, she'd worked as a translator for the UN

in Geneva.

When, out of curiosity, Sam had looked up the job description, there'd been

the income for her UN civil service pay grade. He'd whistled. In Swiss francs, tax

free. It was an enormous amount of money. Why had she quit that to open a small

business in San Diego, taking a huge cut in income?

She was single, which floored him. Never been married, either, which was

even harder to believe. Actually, it seemed insane to him. Had she only lived in

places where they put saltpeter in the water? Where all the men were gay? What

was wrong with the men she came across? Because if he hadn't first seen her in the

middle of an op when he couldn't break opsec, he'd have been on her tail the

instant he caught sight of her moving in across the hallway.

Grew up abroad, owner of new business, single. Those were the facts he

was able to find on her in public records. But what the facts on file didn't say was

how mind-blowingly beautiful she was. She was the kind of woman who should

probably come with a warning sign--danger ahead.

The Googleable facts didn't hint at just how fucking classy she was, either.

The lady packed a double whammy Sam had never seen before. Throw-on-the-bed

sexy and ice princess classy. Elegant, graceful, poised. He'd had to make a cage of

his neck muscles not to swivel his head every time she walked by and had had to

stop himself, through sheer will power, from sniffing after her like a dog, she

smelled that good.

And shit, did she have the princess-to-peon thing down pat. One

fulminating look out of those large, uptilted cobalt eyes with the ridiculously long

dark lashes, and she could reduce any male to a whimpering mass of protoplasm.

On days when he'd looked particularly reprehensible, he got looks that would have

killed a lesser man.

But Sam was a tough guy. He liked challenges.

A corner of his mouth tilted upward.

Mostly because he always won.

Grand Port Maritime

Marseilles, France

June 28

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Jean-Paul Simonet, an aging, lowly clerk in the back office of the Port of

Marseilles, knew the shipping company Vega Maritime Transport well. It was a

small one, running only three ships, if that's what you could call the rust buckets

flying Liberian flags that plied the seas in its name. The company's ships were

known among the port staff for cutting safety corners, sailing understaffed, even

smuggling in crates of contraband goods. Cigarettes. Twice, arms shipments.

Once, packets of white powder.

Which meant there was always money to get port authorities to look the

other way.

The shipping company was owned by a consortium of shady dealers who

would close the company down and disappear in a heartbeat if one of their rust

buckets ever caused an accident.

Today, the Marie Claire was in port. The Marie Claire's crew had changed

numerous times over the years. It currently had a Turkish captain and crew from

twenty different countries, and it was on its last legs. Somewhere, in some office

in some third-world country, a group of men around a table had decided that they

could wring some more profit out of these rickety single-hulled ships, reckoning

that if they stopped paying for maintenance, they could run the ship until every

last penny could be squeezed out of it, and when it was no longer seaworthy, it

could be scuttled at night in the middle of the ocean, out of sight of surveillance

satellites, and they could collect the insurance money.

Profit all around.

Simonet's boss, that merde Boisier, always looked the other way when

Vega Maritime's ships came into port.

Simonet had no loyalty to the Port Authority. He was underpaid, was a year

from retirement, and was heart-broken over the loss of his family. He didn't give a

shit one way or the other.

He got the trickle-down effect from Boisier--ten cartons of Marlboros, a

box of men's sweaters made in China, once a dozen bottles of Glenfiddich. He

knew it was nothing compared to what Boisier pulled in to look the other way, to

not raise a fuss over any safety inadequacies and to expedite the shipping

company's passage through Marseilles. That con Boisier drove a brand-new

Mercedes S class on a civil servant's salary. Simonet drove a fifteen-year-old

Citroen.

The way of the world was right there.

Taking care of the Vega Maritime shipments was Boisier's concern, but he

wasn't here today. A violent case of the grippe, Simonet had heard. Served le con

right.

The only thing was, expediting the company's ship's transit through the port

was now his concern. The captain of the Marie Claire had failed to file an F-45

and Simonet had to go out to collect it because the captain wasn't responding to his

cell phone. Without the form, the next port of call wouldn't accept the ship.

It was the hottest day of the year so far, with 100 percent humidity. It was

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almost half a kilometer from Simonet's air-conditioned office in the customs house

to the bulk terminal where the stinking, rusty Marie Claire was waiting. For a

moment, Simonet was tempted to just let it go. Fuck it. Fuck them. He could have

a heart attack walking half a kilometer along the dock in the broiling sun, unless

he could grab one of the electric carts the fonctionnaires used.

But if he didn't go, Boisier would miss out on his bribe and take it out on

him. Boisier was a master of bureaucratic rules and could make Simonet's life

miserable in any number of ways. Simonet was retiring in December, all he

wanted was to keep his head down. So, okay, he'd make the trek out to the end of

the dock, make sure the captain filled out the form and come back. He'd let Boisier

know what he'd done. Boisier could pick up his bribe next time around and he'd

better be grateful to Simonet.

Simonet only found a cart about a hundred meters from where the Marie

Claire was moored. He stopped the cart on the dockside and looked up with

disgust at the Marie Claire. It was a miracle she hadn't already sunk under the

weight of the rust. She was scheduled to sail out at 1600 hours. Her entire crew

should have been on deck, preparing the ship for departure, but Simonet couldn't

see a soul.

Merde, he was going to have to do this the hard way. Grumbling to himself,

he walked up the broad gangplank, looking around when he reached the deck. He

was aft, near the forecastle, and completely alone on deck.

This was strange, and slightly eerie. Ship decks just before departure were

hives of activity. Time was money, and docking at the harbor unnecessarily was

expensive.

Simonet walked along the side of the ship, next to the huge containers that

filled the mid-ship line. Doubtless there were double the number of containers

belowdecks.

He finally reached the stern section, the radar tower and stack rising high

above him. He still had not seen anybody. Simonet eyed the ladder leading up to

the bridge and the chart room with loathing. It was steaming hot and this was way

beyond the call of duty. Fuck Boisier.

But then again, Boisier definitely had the ability to make his life truly

miserable in the remaining six months on the job. With a huge sigh, Simonet

started climbing and was dripping with sweat and feeling faint by the time he got

to the chart room, where most captains spent their time while docked.

Empty. Merde.

It was perfectly pointless calling out, because of the noise of the overhead

cranes. He'd simply have to go through the ship looking for the captain.

Simonet found the ladder down into the hold and scurried down it,

welcoming the slightly cooler temperature belowdecks. There was some noise at

the end of a long corridor and he followed it, making no attempt to soften his

footsteps. Men's voices, low and sonorous, concentrating on a task. He heard the

sounds of hammers striking metal. Probably trying to repair the rust bucket

26

themselves, without calling in the shipyard crew.

Simonet reached the end of the corridor--and froze. He took in at a glance a

scene that sent ice through his veins, understanding it instantly. Heart thudding

with fear, he backed slowly away, the form fluttering unnoticed to the deck.

He couldn't be seen! These men were heartless, utterly ruthless. Unworthy

of the name of human beings. They didn't hesitate to massacre women and

children. A low-level clerk was nothing to them.

Where he'd walked down the corridor without any attempt at quiet, he now

flattened himself against the bulkhead, wishing he could simply melt into it,

through it.

Oh God, he had to get out without being seen.

The longer he stayed, the greater were his chances of being discovered.

Simonet moved as fast as he could back down the corridor, throwing frantic

glances behind him. The men he'd seen were armed. He was totally defenseless in

this steel corridor, an unmissable target. He had no idea what kind of noise he was

making because he couldn't hear anything above the thudding of his heart in his

ears.

By some miracle, by the grace of God, Simonet managed to make it up on

deck and down off the ship without being seen. He found the electric cart where

he'd left it, and ten minutes later, he was locking his office door behind him,

sweating profusely, gulping in air, totally terrorized.

Oh God, oh God.

This was ten million times worse than cigarettes or contraband goods or

even cocaine. This was terrorism. This was what had taken his two daughters,

Helene and Josiane, on that ter rible day in Madrid. March 11, 2004. Nine hundred

and eleven days after 9/11. The day his world ended.

He could still remember frantically calling the French Embassy in Madrid

because his two daughters, his two treasures, were visiting Madrid, thinking--my

two darlings will call me and tell me they've been out shopping or visiting a

museum or flirting with handsome young Spanish men.

But it wasn't to be. Josiane and Helene had been on the train coming into

Atocha Station, and had been blown apart. Someone had pressed a detonating

device that turned human beings into human hamburger, including his beloved

daughters.

Simonet had travelled to Madrid and brought his daughters home in body

bags that contained small body parts instead of bodies. And he'd come home to a

wife whose broken heart had simply given out during the night.

The jihadists had cost him everything he held dear, everything he had in the

world, and he made it his business to study everything about them. He bought

books, read magazine and newspaper articles, watched Al Jazeera, attended night

courses on the history of Islam. Over the past few years, he'd become an expert on

Islamic terrorism.

So Jean-Paul Simonet had understood immediately the significance of what

27

he'd seen in the hold of the Marie Claire. If he closed his eyes, he could see it as if

he were right there again, standing terrified and quaking in the doorway.

Ten crew members working on the door to a secret cavity that had been cut

out of one of the holds. Simonet could see into the cavity, see the air mattresses,

the stock of bottles of mineral water and several large canisters with the black-andyellow international biohazard sign.

And most terrifying of all, at least forty men, prostrate at prayers just inside