The Asset (31 page)

“What if he isn't working with Lentz?” Kennedy asked.

“Then we just rolled snake eyes,” Mitchell said.

“Bogus GPS signal is working great,” Nuri said. “Coast Guard thinks we're on a hundred-and-eighty-degree magnetic course heading due south for Nassau, with a point-four-three-degree easterly correction for current. Engines trimmed at twenty-five knots, arrival time estimated at six-point-three-seven hours.”

“Roger that,” Mitchell said. “Another ten miles or so on this heading and we can have a come-to-Jesus with the guru.”

Two hours later, when it was dark, Noah Kruz was tied to a fishing chair on the bow. The back of the chair was tethered to a cable from the boat's hydraulic deck crane. Next to the chair sat plastic buckets full of stinking chum. The deck lights were off, and Kruz was lit with military infrared floodlights. As Kennedy watched Mitchell interrogating Kruz—panicked, as Kennedy had been back in the meat locker at the Hôtel de Crillon—he was terrified they might be wrong.

“I told you, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about,” Kruz said to Mitchell. “I'm a fucking motivational speaker, for chrissakes! Why would I put my career and life in jeopardy to harbor a terrorist?”

“Hoist him up,” Mitchell said to the mercs.

They started up the crane, which reeled in the cable and lifted the fishing chair off the deck. The crane boom swung laterally and telescoped out so the fishing chair was hovering above open water.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Going fishing,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell dumped a chum bucket into the water below Kruz. Within
seconds, it was boiling with a twisting mass of tiger, bull, and hammerhead sharks. He lowered the chair a foot. Kruz screamed.

“I'm not a professional interrogator, so you'll have to forgive my crass methods. The thing is, I don't really have the time to try to gain your trust, play good cop/bad cop, knock your pride and ego down, or whatever else is in the handbook. So, I'll just go with the naked truth. No one knows you're out here. You're going to talk to me or you're going to die,” Mitchell said.

He lowered the chair another foot. Splashes from the feeding frenzy soaked the bottom of Kruz's khakis with seawater and fish blood. He screamed again.

“Screaming isn't talking,” Mitchell said.

He lowered the chair another six inches.

“Stop! Stop! I said I don't know shit!”

“I know what you said,” Mitchell said calmly. “But let's see if you say something different when they get hold of your feet. Oh, and so you don't bleed to death, the boys have a blowtorch to cauterize your wounds. It will be the most agonizing pain you've ever experienced, but I'm pretty sure we can keep you alive all the way up to your balls if we do this right.”

“Please. This is insane,” Kruz said, hanging his head in exhaustion.

Kennedy couldn't take it anymore. He was sick and tired of playing a guessing game with so many lives at stake. He remembered how Alia had been when she fired him. She didn't have time to fuck around with his feelings, and neither did they now with Kruz.

“Not as insane as trying to play tough guy and keep your mouth shut,” Kennedy said as he doused Kruz with a full chum bucket.

Blood and grisly hunks of rotting fish covered him from head to toe. He vomited from the smell, dry-retching when there was nothing left to puke.

“Looks like bad cop just showed up,” Mitchell said.

“Send it down,” Kennedy said with authority.

“Yes, sir,” Mitchell said, nodding to the mercs.

They lowered the chair to the edge of the waves. Sharks were gulping pieces of fish inches from Kruz's feet. He was whimpering something.

“What's that?” Kennedy asked.

“I just can't believe this is happening.”

“Put him in the fucking water,” Kennedy snarled.

“No!” Kruz yelled.

“Take it easy,” Love said.

Kennedy moved the merc out of the way and grabbed the crane control. Mitchell eyeballed him tensely. Kennedy had no intention of killing their only link to Lentz, but at that moment, no one on that boat knew it. He had seen Israelis interrogate suspects, and it was all about commitment. The suspect needed to feel important, but ultimately expendable.

“I'm going to give you one last chance to tell us what we want to know, or I'm going to let the sharks take your legs and watch you bleed out.”

Kennedy lowered the chair. Kruz's feet were in the water. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. A bull shark tore his shoe off, gashing his foot. Kruz screamed bloody murder. Love joined him.

“I work for Lentz! Let me up! Now!”

Kennedy raised the chair just as three sharks breached, snapping at Kruz's feet and barely missing them.

“Prove it or you're going all the way in!” Kennedy yelled.

“I'm his travel cover! He chose me because I'm not like other celebrities. I have a clean record with the FBI and DEA and my fans at TSA and Homeland gave me special status. They hired me to speak at their fucking holiday party!”

“What's he got on you?” Kennedy asked.

Kruz tried to answer him but just started sobbing, his whole body shaking.

“Bring him up,” Love said to Kennedy.

N
oah Kruz sat in a
deck chair with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. One of the mercs was dressing the wound on his foot. Once they pulled him up, he'd been more than happy to spill his guts about how Lentz coerced him into service.

“He knew things about me . . . things I was certain I had buried. And he threatened to expose them. He kept saying he was going to show people I wasn't the man I said I was. Unless I helped him. At that point, I had a shelf full of best sellers and more money than I knew what to do with. I didn't want to fuck that up.”

“What was he blackmailing you with?” Love asked.

“It doesn't matter,” Kennedy said. “We need to know his plans.”

“He never told me what he's doing,” Kruz said with conviction.

“Don't fuck with us,” Mitchell said. “We can strap your ass back on that chair.”

“I'm not fucking with you! Why would he risk it? He had me by the balls!”

“I've heard enough.” Mitchell pulled his gun.

“Wait. Listen.” Kruz was stuttering with fear. “Just because he didn't tell me anything doesn't mean I can't help you. I've been keeping notes about
everything
—where we've been, who works with him—”

“He's grasping at straws,” Mitchell said. “Fucking guy played us to get him out of the water. Now we're getting the half-truth two-step.”

“Noah, Lentz is planning a massive, coordinated terror attack in cities all over the country,” Kennedy said, “and you've been helping him.”

“What? Jesus . . .”

Kruz covered his face with his hands and started to cry again, but Kennedy slapped them away.

“We need to find him right now,” Kennedy continued. “Where is he?”

A low thumping sound was heard off in the distance.

“Chopper,” Mitchell whispered. “Stealth. Low acoustic signature.”

“He's here,” Kruz said, shaking. “He found us. He can't know I'm with you. He'll think I opened my mouth. I'm better off dead. Let me jump—”

“We can protect you,” Mitchell said. “Get him down belowdecks,” he said to Kennedy and Love. “Lock and load,” he said to his mercs.

He barely finished speaking when a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter appeared directly overhead without warning.

“Move now!” Mitchell yelled.

He and the mercs scrambled for their weapons. Kennedy and Love cut Kruz loose and Love took him down belowdecks. Kennedy was looking for Nuri when gunfire from the chopper rained down on the yacht. He took cover and saw her hiding under a lifeboat.

He pointed to the companionway door. She nodded and they both started crawling for it. An M84 stun grenade fell from the chopper and detonated twenty feet from them, rendering them both temporarily blind and deaf. When Kennedy was able to focus again, Nuri was gone. Black speed ropes slithered down from the chopper and commandos fell out of the sky, blasting the hell out of Mitchell and his men. They were quickly overwhelmed and Mitchell was wounded in the neck. Kennedy hauled him to his feet and helped him down the galley stairs. His wound was gushing blood and they were both soaked with it when they got to the stateroom where Love had taken Kruz. Mitchell was pale and shivering.

“Oh my God!” Love said when she saw them. “Where's Nuri?”

“I think she went over the side when the grenade exploded,” Kennedy yelled, barely able to hear himself. “Get the first aid kit!”

Love grabbed it and went to work on Mitchell. She tore open two clotting sponges and jammed them into the wound.

“Can you breathe okay?” Kennedy asked him.

“Yeah,” he said weakly.

Kennedy and Love covered him with a space blanket and wrapped
his neck in gauze. The bleeding had slowed, but he was still shivering and fighting to stay conscious.

“He's not going to make it,” Kruz said behind them.

“Bullshit, he's just in shock,” Kennedy said. “Hold on, Mitchell.”

“I said, he's not going to make it.”

Kennedy turned and yelled, “Shut the fuck up!”

Kruz was holding Kennedy's gun. He shot Mitchell in the head.

K
ennedy and Love stared in
disbelief at Mitchell's dead body.

“Remove his sidearm and slide it on the floor to me.”

Love slid Mitchell's Beretta across the tiles. Kruz expertly shucked the mag and jacked the round out of the chamber. His whole demeanor was different, cool and professional. At that moment, it became crystal clear to Kennedy why Lentz had always been so difficult to track.

It was because he'd been hiding in plain sight.

“You're Lentz,” Kennedy said.

Love looked at him, incredulous.

“I prefer my new persona,” Kruz said. “The old me was so clichéd, like some Eurotrash James Bond villain. It worked in the 1990s but I would rather walk a mile in Noah Kruz's shoes any day. And
he
doesn't have a target on his back.” He laughed.

Kennedy did the math. Noah Kruz's first book,
(R)evolution
, was published in October of 2000, the year the CIA said Lentz went dark and dropped off the intelligence grid. Belle had given it to him as a Christmas gift. She knew Kennedy was having a hard time breaking away from the influence of their father and heard the book was changing peoples' lives. It had changed his.

“All of this was—” Kennedy started.

“A very expensive roach motel,” Kruz said.

He motioned to the stairs.

“After you,” he said.

Kennedy and Love walked up the stairs with Kruz's gun at their backs. On deck, Kruz's commandos were chucking the bullet-riddled bodies of Mitchell's men over the side. One of them walked over and took off his helmet.

It was Juarez.

“Hi, guys.”

“Fuck. No.” Love was stunned.

“I guess you're not dead,” Kennedy said.

“Guess not. Although, I don't recommend skydiving at twenty thousand feet over Siberia.”

“You think you're going to ride off into the sunset with this asshole?” Kennedy asked.

“Translation,” Kruz said. “There's still time for you to do the right thing, Juarez.”

“There is,” Kennedy said.

“I've already done it,” Juarez said.

“How does betraying your country and killing millions fall into that category?”

“We're just taking advantage of a business opportunity before the competition gets too steep,” Kruz said. “Striking while the iron is hot, as they say.”

“A business opportunity?” Love asked.

“They believe if they destabilize the US, they can sell off its resources in a global fire sale and make trillions. Another James Bond cliché,” Kennedy said.