The Skorpion Directive (41 page)

The muzzle of his pistol remained steady, but his manner was softening. “Where do you get your information?”

“I’m SAS. We’ve been chasing a group of Serbs across the Med. They’re connected to a company called Cobalt Hydraulic Systems. Has Cobalt made
any
changes to your system lately?”

“Yes,” he said, the muzzle dropping down. “They have upgraded us to what is called a microdroplet system. There are pressurized tanks located all over the mosque. Two of their men are in the control hub right now monitoring the—”

“Take us there now. Please. And get this mosque emptied.”

 

 

 

MANDY
and Micah were coming in the main gate of the mosque when the doors at the base of the tower opened up with a loud crack and men began to spread out into the courtyard and the cloisters along the perimeter walls, their voices harsh and urgent and tinged with panic and alarm. One running boy, his eyes glancing over at Mandy’s uncovered hair, stopped Dalton and said, “Sir, you cannot go in, there is a fire alarm,” but Dalton brushed by him, Mandy close behind.

Inside the mosque, as they fought their way through the crush, they saw two guards, weapons at the ready, standing in the central hall. The guards both reacted as soon as they saw Dalton’s blond hair, one of them stepping forward quickly.

“You are Captain Dalton of the U.S. Army?”

“Yes—”

“We are to take you to the control—”

They all jumped at the sound of gunfire, distant, muffled, but unmistakable. They heard men shouting orders, then more gunfire. Then Dalton’s cell phone rang.

“Fyke?” he inquired.

“We’re in the control hub. Two bad guys down. Levka’s hit. This place is under control, but they’ve got pressurized tanks all over the place. Supposed to be a fire-suppression system. They’re all filled with ethylene oxide—”

Dalton got it in one take.

“Christ. An FAE?”

“Yeah. A fuel-air explosion. They have the tanks wired with computer-controlled triggers. I think we’ve got most of them shut down here at the hub. But if even one of those tanks lets go, the whole place will be misted up with the stuff. One spark—it’s like a barn full of hay—this entire building and everybody in it are gonna go way up high and come back down as pink rain—”

“Where do you want us?”

“The boat, Mikey. Out on the water side. Stop that boat.”

Dalton shut the phone off, turned to the guard.

“This mosque, part of it’s over the water, right?”

“Yes, sir. The prayer hall extends right out over the ocean. It has a glass floor. You can see the water below.”

“Show me!”

Four of them—two guards, Dalton and Mandy—went down through the archways at a flat run, one of the guards blowing a shrill whistle and shouting at people in French and Arabic. Although the place was clearing out fast, there were still hundreds of men—confused, frightened, or angry—milling about the huge central hall. As the four cleared the third archway, something popped on the far side of the hall, and a cloud of white mist began to fill the area, hissing like a pit full of vipers.

“Don’t breathe in,” said Dalton to the others as they ran past it. “Don’t get near it. Even if it doesn’t go off, it’ll kill you.”

Another tank in a far corner, concealed behind a carved wooden screen, popped and began to hiss. One of the guards stopped, pulling out his pistol.

“No guns!” said Dalton. “No radios. No spark of any kind!”

They reached the final arch and ran out into a wide, soaring space filled with a rippling blue-and-green light. The glimmer of waves rolling under the floor, illuminated by floodlights, reflected up through thick glass panes set into the mosaic floor and turned the entire space into an underwater cave.

“There,” said the guard, pointing to an arched, onion-shaped gate with a large carved doorway that was open to the sea.

Beyond the open door, a faint shadow floated on the water. It was lit only by the lights shining on the walls of the mosque. It was a long, slender boat, its windshield reflecting the lights of the mosque as it cruised slowly past the façade. The
Blue Nile
, running dark.

Dalton, followed by the two guards and Mandy, ran through the doorway and out onto a wide stone terrace built over a wall of barrier rock. The ocean was crashing up against the wall, spray flying up, the night air filled with the immense roar of the sea.

The
Blue Nile
was drifting about fifty yards off the shore, and in the glow from the mosque they could see a figure on the bow, steadying some sort of long weapon with a fat, spear-shaped tip. It was an RPG. The wind ripped at Dalton’s coat as he lifted the Anaconda, aiming at the figure on the bow. He heard a faint electronic beeping, and then there was a red flash from somewhere inside the boat. The boat seemed to lift up out of the water, riding a billowing red-and-gold flower of light and fire, cracking like an eggshell, pieces of boat went flying off into the night. Then they heard and felt the thudding concussion of the explosion. It hit them all like a physical blow, heat flaring on their faces and hands. They saw a big man, in the water, on fire, struggling in the oil-covered sea. Pieces of the boat and crew began to fall back to earth, flaming splinters, metal, chunks of meat, landing with a hiss on the roiling surface of the water, setting alight the diesel-and-oil slick spreading out from the explosion. A large roller covered with a sheet of flaming fuel picked the man in the water up, driving him toward the shore. Already soaked in fuel, now he was literally a human torch in a lake of fire. His upper body was a molten mass of flames, his mouth a round hole inside a billowing globe of fire. They could hear him screaming—a thin, agonized gull’s cry—almost drowned out by the crashing roar of the ocean, the thunder of the surf on the rocks.

They watched the man burn for a while. There was nothing to be done for him. And nothing that
should
have been done either. Aleksandr Vukov was going back to the death that should have taken him in Podujevo, a self-inflicted execution by fire that was long overdue. They continued to watch in silence, grimly fixed on the sight, each person alone with the vision.

It took quite a long time before Vukov, a large man, finally burned down into a small, fiery ball, sinking into the water like a small sun setting, a tongue of fire flaring up at the end. Then he was gone, and there was only the yellow flames rippling across the black seas and a few sticks of smoldering wood bobbing in the surf.

Dalton turned to Mandy, staring out at the ruins of the
Blue Nile
, her face set in hard lines, as she watched what was left of it drifting on the petroleum-soaked waves. She was holding her cell phone in her left hand, down at her side, the way someone holds a weapon.

She moved closer, looked up at him, put her hand on his arm.

“I remembered it,” she said with a shaky smile. “Levka’s cell phone. In the engine room. He said there was a problem with the gas fumes building up. I guess he was right.”

“You took a chance. We all ran through that mist.”

“We were outside. All I had was the phone. I thought it was worth a try. Next time, I’ll make sure I have a gun.”

Dalton and Mandy turned and looked back out at the water.

“Poor Dobri,” said Mandy. “I killed his boat.”

The great Saint Lawrence River flowed majestically into the east under a starlit sky. The last traces of an indigo twilight were fading into night, the pink veil of the Milky Way stretching out across the pine-covered islands and rocky shoals of Thousand Islands country. Across the broad back of the river, to the north, the mainland of Canada showed as a wall of forest broken here and there by the lights of a cottage or a small village. The air was cold and clear, the water rippling in silvery curls around this scattered archipelago, around literally hundreds of islands ranging in size from bare rocky outcrops less than a yard across to huge, shaggy green mounds, granite rimmed, with one, two, sometimes three private cottages or estates set out on high points or on cleared land down at the waterside.

Old Money lived on these islands, Old Money came from the mainland on sleek Art Deco motor cruisers or sailing yachts, and Old Money sat warming itself by crackling wood fires, sipping single malts, while the northern night rose up and covered it all with silence, peace, comfort, certitude.

At the little supply village of Clayton, on the U.S. shore, a whippet-thin, sharp-featured woman of indeterminate age with a
Damn Yankees
air of cranky self-confidence about her, her hair a shining bell of blue-black hanging down, cast off the ropes of her motor launch and turned around to speak to the harbor mate.

“I’ve got enough for a week, Simon,” she said in a carrying voice, glaring at Simon, a young man with a round pasty face and darting, nervous eyes. “See to it I’m left alone. You sure Gabe had the wood-shed filled up and the generator checked?”

“He did, ma’am. I loaded the gas cans up myself. Gabe checked the house, opened it up. Being shut all winter, it needed an airing. But everything’s fine. You might have a squirrel in the mudroom. But, other than that, it’s all ready for you.”

The woman nodded, unsmiling, already staring out at the water between her and the island where her great-grandfather had built his home one hundred and three years ago.

Although she knew these waters as well as she knew her own face, she had been delayed for two hours down at the 69 interchange, a tractor trailer accident. She’d had to take a side road damned near all the way to Oswego and hadn’t gotten back on to 81 until after Watertown.

So it was dark, dark as a pit, out on the river. And though she was an experienced waterwoman, the cruise down current to Long Rock Island involved some tricky shoal water. And the river was running fast tonight, a deep, cold rushing surge you could feel through the hull of the boat, a thrumming vibration in the ribs.

Well, this timid stuff wasn’t going to get her home. She hit the starter, and the little Grew coughed to life. Simon cast off her stern line as the bow came around into the current. She caught it with her left hand and flaked it neatly at her feet. In a moment, the lights of Clayton were falling back behind the stern, and the huge shapes of the islands out in the great river were looming up like freighters all around her.

She followed the navigation lights, steering past all the old familiar landmarks—Pine, Gull, Little Round, Big Round. Basswood Island was coming up. Looked like the Garlands had opened their place up early, lights all over the grounds. Looks like a damned lunar landing. So much for starlight and moonlight. The council had already sent letters to all the islanders, asking them to shut down their dock lights and floodlights so people could enjoy the stars and, every now and then, the northern lights. She heard a high, mournful cry—a loon—on the Canadian side. Closer in came a comical, blatting honk from a solitary Canada goose. Canada geese—a feathery, farting, crapping plague. They ought to shoot them all and feed them to the homeless.

She came slowly around and set a careful course between Basswood and Woronoco islands. She could hear the river current hissing along the granite edges of Woronoco. Little Basswood went by, a mound in the night. She edged the boat to port a little, aiming for the docks on the north side of Long Rock Island, her private island, freehold and clear title and riparian rights for over a hundred years. A rock in uncertain times.

The big house was dark except for the porch lights, and a single orange lamp marked her dock. Executing a practiced curling turn, she threaded back through the current and slipped in smoothly between the swing booms, gliding to a muttering coast in the moorings, finally bumping up against the deck, quickly stepping off with a line in her hand and snaking it in a running reef around the iron stanchion.

She looked down at the bags of food piled in the stern, sighed. She had wanted to be alone, had
insisted
on being alone, after these frustrating weeks, after all the
recriminations
, and so she was alone. She would have to make a couple of trips up to the house. She decided to take the scotch and the perishables first.

It was a long walk up a rocky slope to the side door. The house rose up before her, black against the stars, walls made of granite from the Canadian Shield, with leaded windows and peaked dormers. Hardly a
cottage
, she thought, more like a hunting lodge for a merchant prince. Which it had been. But that’s what they still called it, at least on her side of the family.

She punched the code into the security pad, the automatic interior light came on and the heavy side door slid open. She carried her bags into the mudroom, breathing in the smell of old pines, long-ago wood fires, her father’s pipe smoke . . . And something else? A darker scent, some sort of aromatic smoke? Gabe, she was thinking as she set the bags down and came down the hall to the main living area, still in the dark. If he’d been sitting in the big room smoking one of those cigars, she’d have his legs cut off at the . . .

There was a hard-looking young man sitting in a leather wingback next to the fireplace and facing the hallway entrance. A single reading lamp was burning at his shoulder, his long blond hair shining with amber highlights, his rocky face in darkness, a large revolver shining in his right hand, the muzzle aimed at her. “Miss Vale,” said Dalton, not rising. “You’re late.”

Mariah Vale turned, stepped to a hallway table, jerked the drawer open.

“Your little Smith is on the mantle,” said Dalton, standing in the doorway, smiling down at her. “Unloaded. I hope you don’t mind, but I made myself a drink. Would you like one?”

Vale turned around and glared at him, fear in her eyes and in the lines around them. Fear and something else. But she was fighting it. Dalton watched as she literally wrapped herself in an invisible cloak of federal authority. She even seemed to get a little larger.