Brotherhood and Others (22 page)

O'Hara never had the chance.

He heard an explosion and then nothing ever again.

The helmsman lowered the pistol he'd taken from the body of the dead American. He dug in his pocket for his own radio and said in dialect, “Tell him to stop singing. Bridge is clear. Deck controlled. I'm disabling SHIPLOC.”

*   *   *

Agnes Lawton heard the rattle of gunfire even though her room was two decks below the bridge. She'd been drowsily preparing to sleep, but now, wide awake, she threw on a jogging suit.

A sharp rap came at the door followed by a guard, saying, “Mrs. Lawton?”

She opened the door. The guard said, “We're under attack.”

Agnes Lawton's hand went to her throat. “By whom?”

“Unclear. They have forces aboard. Parachuted in. They've jammed our communications. We've lost some people topside, but are moving reinforcements into position.”

“Have you—?”

Shooting from a deck above cut her off.

Going stony, the guard said, “Do not under any circumstance open this door to anyone but me.”

He yanked the hatch door shut before she could reply, leaving her to fight a sense of growing terror. She cursed the insane secrecy surrounding her mission and her decision not to bring a satellite phone with her.

Throwing the deadbolt on the hatch door, Agnes Lawton looked to her laptop, open and glowing on the bunk. She tried to call up the Internet, but got no connection. She stared at the wireless icon. It had shown strong reception not ten minutes—

An explosion roared in the hallway on the other side of the stateroom door. If Lawton had not been seated, she would have been thrown off her feet. The force of it pulsed through the door, leaving her shaken and disoriented.

How was this possible? No one knew she was there. Well, a handful of people, but they were more invested in this meeting than she was, or the Chinese, or the Indian.

The hallway went silent, revealing the ringing in her ears. A man's voice barked orders in an unknown language. If this man was calling the shots, then her bodyguards were—

She looked around wildly, spotting the fire extinguisher and a small ax in a compartment recessed into the near wall. A key slid into the door lock.

She grabbed the ax, lifted it, and then drove the blade into her computer again and again, splintering the case, the screen, and the hard drive.

Behind her, a man's gravelly voice said in thick English, “Drop it.”

She froze, clutching the ax as if it were a very unstable ladder.

“Drop it, or I shoot you, make mess,” he commanded, in a strange accent.

Agnes Lawton set the ax on the bed amid the destruction of her computer. No matter what calamity she had faced in her long and remarkable life, she'd never given up. Not once. And she wasn't about to start. She threw back her shoulders, and turned to face her captor.

Wearing a hood, he was sweating and breathing hard as he glared at her over the barrel of a shouldered machine gun. He wore green cotton pants, black high-top sneakers, and a sleeveless shirt. He had ropey, hard muscles, tribal tattoos, and deep reddish brown skin, as if stained by the juice of darker berries.

But it was his eyes that held most of Agnes Lawton's attention. Wide, glassy, fervent, and quivering, they were dominated by irises as black as night. Whatever his cause, he was a fanatic. She knew it in an instant and almost showed fear.

“Turn the round,” he snarled. “Hands behind you.”

He took a step toward her.

Agnes Lawton glared right back at the gunman. “Do you know who I am? Do you know what a nightmare you're about to bring down around you?”

He was blindingly fast, sweeping the butt of the gun down, forward, and up so quickly she had no time to react. The gunstock caught her flush under the chin and drove her back and onto the floor.

Dazed, Agnes Lawton felt him grab her arms and haul her to her feet.

He spun her around and cinched her wrists behind her back.

“Don't you know who I am?” she protested.

He hauled her to her feet saying, “Of course we know who you are. You were prophesized, weren't you?”

Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a matchbook. He tossed it in the corner, and lifted the hood with his thumb, exposing a bearded chin. He spit out something ghastly red. It flew through the air and splatted against the wall.

PART ONE

A Thief, a Scoundrel, a Prophet, and a King

Chapter One

Tuesday, October 30, 1:00
A.M.
Eastern Standard Time

The pilot of Marine One curled the helicopter around the Washington Monument and hovered to a soft landing on the south lawn of the White House.

Inside the blue-and-gold chopper, a big athletic man with smooth features yawned and unbuckled his seatbelt. In the navy blue suit, starched white shirt, and silver tie, he could have been anyone from a visiting foreign dignitary to a favored political donor.

“Are you ready?” asked Dr. Willis Hopkins, a shorter, older man wearing black-framed glasses and a tweed jacket that made him look more like a math professor than the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“As ready as you can be for this sort of thing,” the bigger man replied. The side door opened and the staircase lowered. He followed Dr. Hopkins off the helicopter.

By all rights, he should have been exhausted; in the previous seven hours, he'd traveled by F-16 from his home in Patagonia to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. But the fifteen-minute ride in Marine One had left him feeling completely awake, as if he were hyper-caffeinated. He'd rarely felt this alert before. Then again, he'd never received a personal summons from the President of the United States before.

Two armed U.S. Marines stood at the base of the staircase as he exited into a crisp fall night, feeling and hearing the blades slowing above him. Waiting on the lawn was a blonde in a dark-blue business suit, pearl necklace, and black pumps. She looked harried and her breath smelled of mint trying to mask cigarette smoke.

“Well done, Dr. Hopkins,” she said. “The President's very pleased you could find and get him here on such short notice.”

“The least I could do, given the circumstances, Cynthia,” Dr. Hopkins said.

She turned to the other man, regarding him with great curiosity, as if studying some exotic specimen. He could almost hear her thinking: late thirties, six-two, two-ten, olive patina to his skin, a face that seemed drawn from many races and ethnicities, a man who could blend in almost anywhere.

“The infamous Robin Monarch,” she said.

Dr. Hopkins pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, saying, “Robin, meet Cynthia Blayless, White House chief of staff.”

She reached out. Monarch shook her hand, found it clammy, but said, “A great pleasure, Ms. Blayless. Dr. Hopkins said you needed some help.”

“We do,” she said, gesturing toward the White House. “Several people are waiting for you inside. They'll explain.”

As they walked toward the Rose Garden, Blayless said, “Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Monarch. Your resolution of the Green Fields affair last year was quite impressive.”

“I had a lot of help. Look, Ms. Blayless, I'm honored, but I don't work for the agency anymore. I have no real obligation to—”

“The President knows all that. We all know that,” Blayless said impatiently. “And we're glad you've at least come to hear our proposal. I think you'll find it quite rewarding.”

Monarch was torn. Over the past four years he'd become profoundly distrustful of government officials, any government official; and he tried to avoid them at all costs. For the past nine months, he'd been living a solitary life on a remote estancia in Patagonia. He had intended to stay there indefinitely, until Dr. Hopkins called him.

Two armed Marines stood at the far end of the colonnade in front of a pair of French doors. Blayless opened them and stepped inside.

Monarch was rarely intimidated, but he felt off balance stepping into the Oval Office. At a sweeping glance, he realized the President was not in the room. But he recognized the four people gathered under the watchful gaze of Abraham Lincoln, whose portrait hung over the fireplace.

The long, wiry man with the enormous head standing behind the sofa was Kenneth Vaught, the current Vice President and the nominee of his party in the upcoming general election. On the sofa in front of Vaught perched Elise Peck, the national security advisor, a fair-skinned redhead with a dancer's posture.

Across the coffee table from Peck, Richard “Ricky” Jameson, the florid-faced Louisiana-born secretary of Homeland Security, tapped a packet of Equal into a teacup. Beside Jameson, Admiral Philip Shipman, current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, studied the contents of an open manila file.

By the time Monarch had taken two steps, these four were scrutinizing him with sober, calculating expressions that made him want to crack a joke of some sort. He resisted the temptation.

“This is Robin Monarch,” Chief of Staff Blayless said. “Dr. Hopkins and the President thought it a good idea for him to be present at this meeting.”

“What's this all about?” demanded National Security Advisor Peck. “Who is he?”

Blayless and Hopkins hesitated.

Monarch cleared his throat and said, “I'm a thief.”

Also by Mark Sullivan

Robin Monarch Novels

Outlaw (coming Fall 2013)

Rogue

Other Novels

Triple Cross

The Second Woman

Labyrinth

Ghost Dance

The Purification Ceremony

Hard News

The Fall Line

With James Patterson

Private Games

Private Berlin

Private L.A.

About the Author

MARK SULLIVAN is the author of several internationally bestselling thrillers, including
Rogue
and
Outlaw,
as well as the coauthor with James Patterson of
Private Games
and
Private Berlin
. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.

These stories are works of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

BROTHERHOOD AND OTHERS: THREE ROBIN MONARCH STORIES.
Copyright © 2013 by Mark Sullivan. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

The stories in this e-book were originally published as individual e-stories in 2012.

“Brotherhood” copyright © 2012 by Mark Sullivan

“The Art of Rendition” copyright © 2012 by Mark Sullivan

“Escape Artist” copyright © 2012 by Mark Sullivan

www.minotaurbooks.com

www.marksullivanbooks.com

Cover design by Rob Grom

Cover photographs courtesy of
Shutterstock.com

e-ISBN 9781466842953

First Edition: August 2013