The Gift of the Dragon (33 page)

“The gift that can’t be named,” José said woodenly.

“Right. Do you know what time it is?”

“I do, Ian. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

Ian smiled and put his arm around José’s shoulder. “Walk with me awhile, José.”

José and Ian got the missiles loaded and the plane ready for takeoff. Ian was just starting to worry about the time when the pilot drove up in an ancient black Porsche.
 

Ian bounced up to the dark-haired pilot wearing a goofy grin and with his hand out. The first thing he noticed was how short the pilot was in person, short but built like a fireplug. Ian didn’t like using the brass knuckles in his pocket. However, the pilot looked as though he could put up a struggle, and a fair fight would not be a good thing to conduct in the cockpit of a plane. Once the pilot was out, José would use the syringe Ian brought, the one loaded with an Ativan/Haldol knockout mixture good for a few hours of dreamless sleep. “Hey, so glad you could make it! We got the missiles loaded. Don’t they look sweet?”

The pilot squinted up at Ian as if he were a bug or a fence lizard. Out of the side of his mouth, he said, “They’re fakes. Duds. Don’t matter how sweet they look. They’re junk.”

Ian smiled even more widely. “Heck, a lot of guys’d love shooting blanks in Florida. You could be over in the Sandbox getting shot at by jinglies!”

The pilot looked angry. “What do you fucking know about it,” he squinted at Ian’s name tag, “Dave?”
 

“Oh wow, sorry, man. Look, no harm, no foul, okay? I am just here to do my job, same as you.”

“My job’s not shooting fracking blanks at a swamp. My job is back over there.” The pilot gestured vaguely to the East.
 

“Okay, so, hey, let's start over here. I’m Dave. Dave Lightman.” Ian stuck out his hand.
 

The pilot looked at his hand as if he were checking it for something dirty. Finally he took it. “Tom Current.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Tom.” Ian introduced José.

“Now that we’re all friends, why don’t you two get situated while I complete my pre-flight?”
 

“Sure, no problem.” Ian gave Current a friendly punch in the shoulder, feeling solid muscle under his knuckles.
Have to give him a good hit when the time comes
. Ian and José went to the sliding side door of the Cessna. Pausing, Ian looked around at this dark, empty part of the base, lit only by the runway lights. “What, no cheering crowds?” Ian said to José. “Mark my words, though, friend. Tonight will not be a waste of time.”

It might be, though. Ian’s father suspected that once Callan got to Miami, he would start working on his plan right away. If Grant decided to enjoy the beach for a few days before taking out Northwin, there was a contingency plan to hide the plane, but having known about Grant almost as long as his father, Ian agreed that taking no chances would be the safest course.
Especially with what is at stake!

They took off uneventfully, with Ian next to Tom in the copilot seat, looking over the high dashboard at the dark night. The plane smelled of fuel, stale sweat, and spilled coffee.
Apparently we do not spend much of the refurbishment budget on cleaning the cabin.
 

The big engine just in front of them roared. They wore heavy earmuff-style headphones and throat mikes in order to communicate. Heavy clouds and thunderstorms hung along the coast, but the weather cleared up as they moved inland. They stayed low as they flew south over Tampa Bay to keep below the commercial jets, and then they went west to pass over the mostly empty farmland along the Alafia River. As they were simulating military flight to test the night capability of the sensors and targeting radar, they flew at about five hundred feet.
 

As they headed south toward Avon in central Florida, Ian said, “Hey, Maverick, what’s down there?”

“Don’t call me that!” Current banked the plane sharply, jerking Ian sideways against his belts and nearly throwing José off his seat.

“Okay, okay, Mr. Current, sir. What is your call sign anyway?”
 

“You don’t need to know.”

“Ha.” Ian keyed his microphone. “MacDill Tower, this is Cessna 907A. Hey, what is my driver’s call sign?”

“Cessna 907A, you are flying with Friendly.”

Ian looked over at Current. He casually dropped his right hand down alongside his seat, out of Current’s line of sight. He slipped on the brass knuckles. “As in Friendly Fire?”

Current flushed red, clicked on the autopilot, and turned off the radio so the tower would not hear what came next. “You better drop that attitude, or you will not believe what I do to you.” Current’s eyes peered though mostly shut lids and his jaws clenched as he spat out, “Even while it happen—”

The brass knuckles hit Current’s forehead just below his helmet, slamming his head back. He went out like a light. Ian quickly turned the radio back on.
 

“Cessna 907A, you okay out there?”

“Yes, MacDill, no problems. Friendly just hit the radio button by accident. We’re all set now. Cessna out.” Ian looked over his shoulder and motioned to José, who gave Current his dream shot. José then handed Ian a box with a plug on the end, an MP3 player with Ian’s voice and voices that sounded much like Current and José conducting a routine mission. Ian plugged the box into the control panel and pushed a button marked play.

Nate

Nate Achille looked over the FBI team on the Response Boat. They had volunteered for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. They believed they were fighting the good fight against terrorists, drug dealers, and enemies of the state. They trained all day long, all year long for missions like this. To say they were ready for action would be an insult. They were well beyond ready.

“All right, people, we have a hard-case arrest. There may be armed guards.” Despite Ed Price’s assurances that there would only be Laird Northwin and maybe a few others on the
Endurance
, Nate preferred to prepare for the worst. “Good ones, former military. It may be up close and personal. You all read the briefing folders on the plane.” Silence. “You
all
read them, right?” They were standing on the back of the Response Boat at the dock at Miami’s ship harbor.

Munificent cruise ships lay docked around them, with one sailing out of port, blowing its horn, distracting his men. Achille would have preferred to have this briefing in a quiet room, but according to Price the meeting between Grant, Sangerman, and Northwin would be taking place tonight.
 

A chorus of affirmatives came back from the team.
 

“Okay, well, then you know this Northwin is holed up on a big yacht. It’s a converted German Navy corvette. That means one-and-a-half-inch steel hull. We know they have automatic weapons, and brass
thinks
they might have RPGs.” Nate spat as he said the word think. “They are to be considered armed
and
dangerous. Many of his people are former military.”

“
US
military?” Braden said that. A good man. Talkative, always wanted to get more information.
 

“Many are, yeah. Most of them honorable discharges. We are
hoping
they will cooperate with us.” Achille sat down. Himself, he didn’t have much faith in hope. “It gets worse. We are expecting two of the most unwanted will be on board: Callan Grant. Alice Sangerman. Bad people.” As some of the men spoke, Achille held up his hand. “This is the working plan. We’ll drop fire teams one and two on the shore first, here.” Achille pointed at his map, at a spot on the Miami River seawall below the Intercontinental Hotel. “Braden’s team will set up off the front of the
Endurance
. Howett’s team will set up off the back.”
 

“Stern, sir.”

“Yeah, to the former squids and members of the yacht club like Howett, the stern. For us mortals, the back.”

“I’m just a simple fisherman, sir.”

“Right.”
Fanatical
would better describe Howett’s passion for catching and eating fish.
Someday, I have to take up his offer to go out after striped bass.

“Once the shore teams are in place, we’ll come up alongside Northwin’s yacht and announce our presence. I’ll be on the horn. I’m going to ask them to lay down their weapons and turn over Northwin, Sangerman, and Grant. The Coasties will have gunner’s mates on their MB240s, but we won’t be using those unless we encounter serious resistance.”

“A two-forty won’t penetrate that boat’s hull anyway.” That from Brown, a former SEAL. He would be leading the onboard fire teams.

“Yeah. Well, I don’t think it will come to that. Before I tell Northwin to surrender his boat, I’ll check with the shore teams. Howett, send me two clicks when you are in position. Braden, three.” Achille looked around at his twenty men. “Keep alert. This should be a simple in and out with the perps. Northwin’s men are all paid good salaries but not enough to go to jail or die for their boss. Everyone on board is a suspect. Grab them, cuff them, and let me and God sort them out. We’ll move in at o-dark-hundred. Any questions?”

There being none, Achille gave the Coast Guard chief petty officer the OK signal. The crew cast off the mooring lines, and the Chief blew one long blast on the horn as he left the dock for the two-mile journey from the Coast Guard station at Terminal Island to the mouth of the Miami River.

Ian

Ian smiled as the Cessna left the land behind, heading east over the Atlantic Ocean. He flew the fake flight plan of a private plane going from Fort Pierce to West End Airport on Grand Bahama. Meanwhile, Dennis Stepanof, Ian’s pet computer genius back at Apple Creek’s Information Security Division would make sure the Cessna was reported landing back at Tampa as expected.
 

The ISD had formed out of a need to protect Apple Creek’s digital infrastructure from hackers and other web-borne attacks. The ISD fought back by catching and then hiring the best black-hat hackers they could find. Not only were these people very good at devising ways to protect against the attacks of the sort they had once led, but they could also provide incentive to less-than-eager customers of Apple Creek’s computer security services when needed. Sometimes a well-timed shutdown of a company’s web presence with a massive denial-of-service attack was needed to convince a customer that ISD’s high-priced, secure web-hosting services were worth the money. Of course, those attacks had to be covered up so no one could trace their origin. In Stepanof, ISD employed one of the top experts at getting into information networks undetected and planting false data streams, erasing existing ones. He had become one of ISD’s most valuable people.
After I extracted him from his “employment” with the Russian mob!

Ian would fly part of his second flight plan, head out over the Gulf Stream, and then turn around, fly just above the waves, and head south for Miami. Once he made it outside US air-traffic-control space, Stepanof would work with an air traffic controller at West End who made much more money from Apple Creek in one night than his regular employer paid him in a year. No alarm would be raised.

Ian looked at the weather forecast. Even when there were no hurricanes, late summer thunderstorms often hovered around Miami as warm wet air rose from the hot waters of the Gulf Stream and hit cooler air above. On this night, there were several good-sized squalls. Though Stepanof would cover them if they were spotted by radar, to play it safe, Ian would follow the old path of smugglers coming into Miami in small planes, hugging the waves, and dodge from squall to squall.
Plus, it’s more fun this way!

In the pilot’s seat slept the plane’s original pilot. Rewriting the part of the plan that called for his death, Ian had decided to give Top Gun a chance at survival. He could use a good flier on the team he would need to build to take over physical security from Laird Northwin. José also dozed in the back of the plane. Ian popped several tabs of Modafinil, a “smart drug” developed by the Air Force to let aviators stay awake for several days. On a long mission, Ian ate them like M&Ms, crushing them up so they worked faster
.
 

This will be a long one.
After the two missions tonight, Ian would ditch the plane off Gun Cay in the Bahamas, fifty miles east of Miami. He and José and Top Gun would parachute down and be picked up by Ian’s boat. With Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money” roaring in his ears, Ian guided the Caravan down so close to the waves that the spray blowing off them meant he needed to turn on the wipers to keep the windshield clear.

Callan

Several hours after meeting McReady, Callan emerged from the cabin of his boat dressed in a white tracksuit, with a fake beard covering his jaw, and a blue gym bag. He had come to Miami prepared to spend several days or longer looking for the best way to get onboard the
Endurance
, but since he had found it right away, he sprang into action. Earlier, he had booted up his laptop, and researched the
Folie
. Most large yachts have a story on the web, and so did the
Folie.
Explorer Yachts built her in 1991 based on a standard design for an eighty-three-foot expedition yacht. He found the complete deck and cabin layout online, and that cemented his idea into an action plan.

Now he retraced his steps past the bow, where McReady appeared to be napping, and down to the middle of the boat, where the midships mooring cable emerged from her side and ended at an oversized cleat on the edge of the city sea wall. Callan knelt down and took out his folding Black Sable knife, one of the sharpest and strongest knives made. He quickly sawed partway through the cable until he hit the thin electrical wire of the hawser alarm. He cut that. Leaving his duffel bag, he then jogged off. He stopped at a distance and watched. The cut wire in one of the three thick hawser lines that bound the yacht to the shore should set off an alarm on the boat.
 

Soon he saw McReady put out the gangplank that connected the yacht to the seawall and hurry over it. Then he saw him kick the cable and pick up the duffel bag. Inside, Callan had placed a fifth of Jack Daniels and a thousand dollars in cash. McReady took the duffel bag and went back aboard the yacht.