The Poseidon Initiative (19 page)

He squeezed off two more rounds, watching in grim satisfaction as the second gunman contorted in shock and dropped to the deck.

Only one enemy remained standing.

But the leader was already on the move, backpedaling to reach the cover of the boat’s console, instead tripping over Nay. Dante could hear Shah firing at the remaining opponent, but through his binoculars he could see that he missed his mark as a fiberglass door to the cabin shattered. And the Hofstad leader was pushing himself up off the deck…

…and turning his attention to Naomi.

Dante popped the fresh clip into his weapon and took careful aim, well aware that Naomi was in very close proximity to the intended target. He squeezed off four rounds, two of them missing but two snapping the terrorist’s head back in a whiplash motion.

Dante heard the whiny acceleration of the Zodiac’s outboard as Shah threw the boat into gear. He ate up the remaining distance to the Hofstad boat in seconds and jumped onto the larger vessel while Jasmijn remained in the Zodiac. Dante observed through the binoculars as Shah ran to the terrorist and kicked his auto-rifle away from him. He saw him reach out and place his fingers on the man’s neck, feeling for a pulse. Then Shah looked back toward the rig and drew his hand across his neck in a slashing motion.

Dead
.

That was five Hofstad men eliminated. It should mean that there were no more terrorists on the boat, but when your life depended on being right you didn’t make assumptions. Shah cautiously circled around the boat’s deck, carefully checking all areas, even lifting open storage compartments with his pistol at the ready. When that was cleared, he moved to the cabin. He yanked the door open and aimed his gun down inside. Then he descended slowly into the interior space. Dante watched and listened for signs of gunfire.

A couple of minutes later he emerged from the cabin, nodding his head and holding up his hand in the “okay” sign.

The boat was clear, the entire Hofstad squad dead.

Shah pointed in Dante’s general direction, off to his left.

Go to the ladder.

Dante made his way back through the rig’s catwalks and spiral ladders until he reached the steel platform at the top of the ladder. He heard the Zodiac approaching and when it was within sight he climbed down the ladder until he hung just above the water. Shah pulled up to him and he dropped into the raft, giving Nay and Jasmijn a hug. Then Shah took them back to the Hofstad boat where they boarded, leaving the Zodiac tied up alongside. After a few rounds of congratulatory talk and expressing thanks over being alive, Shah got down to business.

“We should sink this boat and the Zodiac and take the old fishing boat I came out here on back to port. But before we do we need to search it top to bottom — and the bodies — for anything that might lead us to the people pulling the strings.”

Jasmijn immediately volunteered to search the cabin, knowing there were no bodies there, and headed below.

“I’ll search the bodies,” Shah volunteered. “Dante, you search the rest of the boat topside. Nay — why don’t you go down below and help Jasmijn.” The two OUTCAST operatives nodded and went about their tasks. It was a good call, sending Naomi below. Jasmijn was a scientist, not a spook, and likely wouldn’t know what to look for unless it was blatantly obvious.

Shah searched the bodies of the two subordinates first and found nothing on their persons. He was a little surprised since one of the men he’d neutralized in the Zodiac had been carrying a wallet. So there were inconsistencies in the group, Shah mused. They were not a perfectly programmed machine.

He moved on to the body of the fallen, bearded unit leader who lay in a messy smear of blood near where Naomi had been held. The man was older, for this business especially — about fifty years of age. Shah had to admire that. He was about there himself. The jihadist’s eyes were open but rolled all the way back, showing only whites, so Shah closed them while softly intoning a quick Muslim prayer. Then he proceeded to rifle through the pockets of his casual outfit — slacks and a long-sleeved shirt with a wool pullover. He found a 9mm pistol with an extra magazine secured on a side holster — his backup weapon. Shah took the entire holster, removed his own jacket, put on the holster and then donned his jacket again. Later he would see if he might be able to trace the weapon, although he doubted that particular route of inquiry would come to anything.

He searched the man’s pants pockets and came up with a single item: a business card for a London yacht dealership. Shrugging to himself, Shah pocketed the card, adding it to the ID he’d found on the fighter he’d dispatched.

Dante returned from his inspection of the bow area and reported finding nothing of interest. Naomi and Jasmijn emerged from the cabin, also reporting no significant discoveries.

“Time to send this old scow to Davey Jones’ Locker,” Shah said in his best pirate imitation. His attempt at humor in the face of the grim situation was not enough to elicit a laugh from the group, so he simply set to work.

“Dante, take the Zodiac to the fishing boat…” He pointed off their starboard rail to where the old rental vessel lie adrift. “…and bring back the fishing boat and the Zodiac. Meanwhile I’ll get this thing ready.”

Dante nodded and jumped into the inflatable boat, started the outboard and motored away.

Shah then addressed Naomi and Jasmijn. “Go around the boat and gather up anything that might float — for example the life rings — and put them down in the cabin below. Before we sink her we’ll close that door so that there won’t be so many loose objects floating around to attract attention.”

It was best to be as discreet as possible. Leaving a floating ghost ship was a surefire way to trigger an investigation. There would likely be one anyway when people familiar with this vessel notice it hasn’t returned to its dock, but that delay was beneficial to OUTCAST’s operation.

Shah looked up at the sound of the approaching motor to see Dante returning with the fishing boat that would take them back to land, the Zodiac in tow. He had Dante simply remove the inflatable’s motor and drop it into the ocean. Then Dante used a knife to slash the boat’s air chambers. But even in that deflated state, the material the raft was made from wouldn’t sink, so he and Shah hauled it aboard the big boat and dumped it inside the cabin with the other buoyant items, and closed the door.

“That’s it!” Shah had Dante, Naomi, and Jasmijn board the old fishing boat while he walked to the stern of the Hofstad vessel. Jasmijn found an old bucket on the fishing boat, rinsed it out, filled it with seawater and then placed the anemones in it for the trip back to shore. Given the trouble they’d gone through to get them, she wasn’t about to let anything happen to them.

While Dante got behind the wheel of the fishing boat, Shah leaned over the transom and pulled the boat’s drain plug. Seawater began to pour onto the deck. It would take a while, but the boat would sink. What’s more, there would be no messy explosions or tell-tale holes bashed in the hull with some kind of implement to indicate foul play. If the vessel was discovered before — or even after it sank, as a wreck — the obvious assumption was that it was either deliberately scuttled for insurance purposes or else the plug had simply come out. It had been known to happen.

Shah took a last look around the boat to make sure they weren’t leaving anything behind. Satisfied all was in order, he leapt into the fishing boat and Dante pointed the bow toward port.

OUTCAST Facility

The lowly fax machine, that red-headed stepchild of modern information technology; somehow it found a way to remain in use in this age of wireless Internet, scanners and email. For OUTCAST it offered a couple of distinct advantages, which was why one occupied a space in the nether regions of Danielle’s workstation, presently spitting out a transmission.

For one thing, it was simply another way to communicate. When you had agents in the field the world over, options were desirable, regardless if they were little used. There were still a few places where there might not be computer access, but if not, a fax machine could often be found. For another, the mode of transmission itself was oftentimes more secure than a standard e-mail message or text. What made it not so secure for some people was that the printout could sit around in the machine until someone picked it up, but at the OUTCAST facility, Danielle would always be the first person to see it.

She snagged the paper from the machine and put it under a desk lamp, squinting in concentration as she discerned its meaning. After briefly examining the message header information as well as the content of the transmission, Danielle took the fax into the adjoining conference room where Tanner sat conversing quietly with Liam. Their mood had been somber since returning from their failed mission to Charleston, and Danielle hoped that this fax might contain a positive development for OUTCAST. Something they could use. She held up the printout as she entered and put it face down on the table in front of Tanner.

“This just came in by fax.”

“Fax?” Liam screwed his face into a puzzled expression. “What’s that?” The youngest of the group, he was kidding but liked to poke fun at the technology of the older generations.

Danielle smiled and shook her head. “It’s something created before you were born that actually works in a reasonably secure fashion.”

Tanner ignored their friendly bickering and picked up the sheet. “What am I looking at?”

“It’s a fax sent from a print shop in a small port town in Netherlands. I verified the headers and cross-referenced the business online. It checks out.”

“So it’s from either Shah, Dante or Nay.”

“Correct. As to the content, it contains only the two scanned documents: the Dutch driver’s license and the business card. No other messages of any kind.”

Liam leaned in over Tanner’s shoulder to get a better look at the man pictured in the driver’s license. It showed a thirty-year-old Dutchman with a shaved head.

Tanner looked up at Danielle. “You run this license yet?”

“No, it’s hot off the press, I wanted you to see it right away.”

“Go ahead and run it. And while you’re at it,” he added as she turned to leave, “see what you can dig up on this yacht dealership, too.”

Danielle left the room and Tanner stared at the fax for a few seconds more before letting it slide onto the table. He looked Liam in the eye. “You know what these documents are, right?”

He gave a solemn nod. “From a guy or guys they killed.”

“Bingo. I wish they would have given us more info but they must have felt the fax wasn’t secure enough for any more than this.”

“If they were there to guard Jasmijn in the lab, then something must have went down there for them to have come into contact with tangos.”

Tanner nodded. “And in another town, too. The lab must have been compromised in some way.”

“They had university police
and
our guys, though.” Liam looked puzzled. “Must have been some heavy action to get through that.”

“Seeing as how they’ve already killed masses of people in two different public crowd settings, I’d say that heavy action is something they’re used to.”

* * *

About thirty minutes later Danielle returned to the conference room with a laptop. She set the computer down on the table across from Tanner and Liam and took a seat in front of it.

“Based on the two items contained in the facsimile, I picked up some intel on the Internet that I think may be worth looking into.”

Tanner urged her to continue.

“Using the name on the driver’s license — Berg Minten — I was able to trace some interesting Web activity that indicates Minten is — or was, as the case may be — a Hofstad operator.” She held up a finger to indicate more was forthcoming. “Not only that, but following his name I came across specific details of an operation Hofstad apparently refers to as
The Poseidon Initiative
.”

“As in the Greek God?” Liam wanted to know.

“God of the Sea, that’s correct,” Danielle returned.

“What’s the objective of this initiative?” Tanner studied the driver license photo again.

Danielle tapped a key on her laptop and focused on the screen for a second before responding. “To…and I quote…’harness the power of the sea’s unique biochemicals to exact vengeance on enemies of a pure State.’“She looked up at Tanner and Liam.

“This was posted publicly under the Hofstad name for all to see?” Liam looked incredulous.

Danielle shook her head. “News site message board postings under an alias I tied to Minten’s real name. Minten is Hofstad, though, for sure, so on the chance that he was mouthing off about Hofstad’s future plans thinking it was safe to do so as long as he didn’t specifically mention Hofstad and used a message board moniker, I searched other known Hofstad members for web activity related to
Poseidon. ‘
You can spell
poison
from the word
Poseidon’
, one of them noted on a known anarchist website forum.”

“An anagram,” Tanner clarified.

Liam gave him a stare. “What are you, an English major? You pack a poetry book in your go-bag?”

Tanner gave him a mock punch to the shoulder, which Liam deflected.

Danielle interjected. “I also found several references — all under assumed names tied to known Hofstad members — to ocean-related inquiries, including red tides and the micro-organisms that cause them.”