The Gift of the Dragon (32 page)

“Only Northwin should be on the ship, maybe with a few guards. We have good intel that both Grant and Sangerman will use the opportunity to meet with him alone. We don’t know what for.”
Lies to field agents come easy after you have been driving a desk for a while.
Price laid down a file with a picture of an armed boat. “The Coasties are loaning us a forty-five-foot Response Boat with two M240B machine guns. The crew will be armed, and you’ll have your SWAT weapons. We’ll have Miami PD standing by on the shore also. I don’t think Laird Northwin will risk a sea battle in Miami Harbor.”

“Why can’t Miami PD just pick him up?”

Price sighed. “Northwin is a major donor to Max Handwell’s campaign.” Seeing Achille’s raised eyebrows, he explained, “The guy who defeated Luke Campbell to become the mayor. Of Miami. There’s concern Northwin might be warned if we involve the locals.”

“So we come in from the sea quietly?”
 

“Right. You should drop some fire teams on the shore, to watch for runners. We do
not
want Alice Sangerman or Callan Grant to escape.”

“What if they aren’t there?”

“We have a man on the inside. With Sangerman. He’ll signal us when everything is set. We’ll tell you to go in then.”

“What if they won't come off the ship? We won't start shooting up yachts in Miami harbor, will we?”

“You would need to get the okay from me before using heavy weapons. Get close enough so that they know how you are armed.”

“What if they fire first? Do we know what they have?”

“The sitrep says automatic weapons may be on board. They may have RPGs.”

“Jesus, Ed. RPGs in Miami?”

“You are authorized to return fire with your standard service and SWAT weapons. But you will still need permission from me for the M240Bs.”

“Great. You’ll stay by the phone?”

“Yes, Nate. Don’t sweat it. I will be on the line with you the entire time. This has a good chance of going SNAFU. I need you there to keep that from happening.”
 

“All right, Price."

"Nate, your HRT guys—they are pretty good?”

“Studs.”

“Northwin is a bad guy, Nate. Get him.”

“Yeah, Ed, we’ll get it on.”

Callan

Callan pulled up at Miami City Yacht Basin in downtown Miami and found a berth. It had been a long trip in the Fountain, but coming by boat let him bring everything he needed more easily than coming by road. The diving and underwater construction tools made more sense on the fishing boat than they would in one of his vans, and in his Fountain 38 with its three engines, he made it to Miami almost as quickly as he would have if he had driven. Dressed in a blue polo shirt and black jeans, he walked into the Hard Rock Cafe next to the Yacht Basin for some food. About an hour later, Callan strolled south through Bayfront Park. He could see the towers along Chopin Plaza ahead as he passed by a tiki hut-themed floating bar, along more piers, and then down a wide, tree-lined sidewalk.
 

A pleasant sea breeze blew off Biscayne Bay to his left, and, glancing out over the water, Callan saw Dodge Island and the big ocean liners at the Port of Miami. The walkway narrowed along the low seawall and a higher hurricane wall decorated with whimsical art installments, a neon blue waterfall in one place, made of plastic tubing that emerged like twisted steampunk roots from the cement. A few young girls were climbing them, giggling. In a few minutes, he rounded the small point where the Miami River flowed into the bay, and there stood the tower of the Epoch Hotel and the masts of the
Endurance
beneath it. Callan walked casually forward, seeing another, smaller mega-yacht parked in front of the
Endurance
with its stern pointing toward the
Endurance
’s bow. It looked a little run down. A very shiny Harley-Davidson crouched on the upper foredeck of the yacht, where there would usually be a dinghy. As he walked by the curved white hull, he saw a hair-covered, shirtless man sitting in a lawn chair next to the Harley, reading a book. Callan called out, “Nice bike!”

The man looked up. “Thanks.” He didn’t look happy.

“Hey, what’s the difference between a Harley and a woman?”

That made the man smile. “When I ride the Harley, we both get where we’re going at the same time!”

“And it doesn’t care if you forget its birthday!” Callan called back, laughing. “So why do you have that fine bike up there on the bimbo pad?”

“Hell, I got no money for gas.”

“Really? Got to have some money to be sitting there… or is it Britney’s boat?”

“Ha! You got that right, and Britney pays the dock fees but hasn’t paid me jack in two months.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah, I’ve got my master captain’s license, and I can sail this scow around the world, but the owner treats me like a damn deck monkey.” The man looked more closely at Callan. The thinning hair jutting out from under the Rays cap on his head was shot with gray. “You sound like you know boats yourself?”

“Some. I came up this way from the Gulf. I’m over at the City Marina. Mine’s nowhere near as big as this beauty, though. My name is Mike. Mike Weston.”
 

The man emerged from the lawn chair. Now Callan could see faded blue shorts, brown sandals, and more hair from his shoulders down to his belly, also partly gray. He knelt down and stuck out his hand. Callan noticed broken fingernails with dirt or grease under them, and smelled fresh sunscreen and old beer. The man’s nose looked red and a little bulbous. “Matt McReady is what my ma called me. I’m also called Headbanger when I ride.”

“Hi, Matt. Hey, could I come up and check out your ride? I love old Harleys.”

McReady looked around. “Sure. Just don’t tell Britney, okay?”

“If I see her, I’ll get all tongue-tied.”
 

“Ha! That will be good. My Britney’s a dude, though. Old, fat, gold chains.”

“I’ll watch out for him, then.” Callan grabbed the rail and vaulted up onto the deck of the yacht. McReady seemed a bit taken aback. “Shit, Mike, I was going to open the dock access gate for ya.”

Callan laughed. “No worries, Matt. Helps me keep in shape!”
Also helps me judge how hard it will be to get up here quickly later.

“Welcome aboard the Hammond’s
Folie
.”

“Great name.”

“Yeah, Fred Hammond is the owner. He originally named it after a restaurant his wife liked, called Folie Douce, but that means ῾crazy happy.’” McReady made air quotes with his hairy hands. “He got divorced, so he shortened it.”

“How sad for him. Hey, your bike is even nicer close up. Rolling sculpture!”
 

McReady smiled. “I got nothing to do but shine the old girl.” He showed Callan some of his customizations. They looked at the bike and chatted about its internals.

Then Callan asked, “So the owner of the boat really doesn’t pay you?”

“He pays me when he wants the boat moved. I was up in New York, and then two months ago he wanted me to bring it down here because his kids were coming down. Then they changed their minds. Decided Miami got too hot in September. Shit, I could’ve told them that! But now I’m stuck here until they want it somewhere else.”

“You clearly have skills, Matt. Why not find another boat?”

“Well, I haven’t found one yet. I got no money to move on since my ex-wife took my house, kids, and bank account. All she left me was Scarlet here. That’s what I call the bike.”

“Good name.”

“Thanks. Yeah, I guess I could save up when they do pay me and move on. But, when I get money, I like to party. I drink a bit.”

“Hey, the meter's running. Might as well live it up!”

“You got that right! It’s always five o’clock somewhere.”

“So do you worry about someone messing with your bike? Keeping it out on the deck? This boat must have all sorts of alarms, I guess.”

McReady squinted his eyes. “Nah. If the bike’s here, I’m here. Me and my Louisville Slugger. There are alarms in the cabins and the bridge deck and, of course, on the hawsers.” McReady spat over the side. “Last thing I need is for those old lines to break and send me drifting out while I’m sleeping. Getting this tub run down by a ferry is not the way I want to make my exit!” McReady wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm. “Between you and me, I don’t turn the bridge alarms on much. The navigation equipment on this old girl is all pretty outdated. And freaking heavy. Not really worth stealing.”

“Ah, gotcha. She looks good from shore, but now that I’m here, not so much.”

“Yeah, well, Mr. Hammond, he doesn’t like to pay for maintenance. He prefers to buy new things when the old things break.”

“Sounds like a real winner.”

“He did good in the bubble. Got out at the peak, just before the crash. But he’s not smart about boats.”

“It’s hard to find a good boss these days.” Callan grinned. He thanked McReady, wished him luck, and jumped down from the
Folie
.

Ian

Ian leaned back in the luxurious seat of the Gulfstream G6 executive jet and went over his father’s plan. He sniffed when the plane hit a bit of turbulence. He keyed the intercom to the cockpit. “You boys need help up there?”

“Sorry, sir. Just bumped into the jet stream.”

Ian hated being a passenger, but he had things to go over. Besides, he’d be flying soon enough. Not so fly as a sleek G6, but his next ride would be armed! Ian grinned at the joke. Some days, even he felt one hundred years old, and on those days he would listen to rap. It energized him. Nicki Minaj, Eminem, Karmin, they woke him up. The Far East Movement’s “Like a G6” was one of his favorites to put on at the start of the third hour of a kickboxing workout.

Glancing back to the mission brief on his iPad, he read for the second time what he already knew well, that Apple Creek’s Guardian group worked along with Graywater Security on a contract for the CIA to resupply Predator drones in Afghanistan. Northwin’s teams served in the more dangerous locations that Graywater turned down. Throughout the later years of the war, as the drone missions ramped up, instead of adding new staff to handle the load, the CIA contracted out these support operations.
 

Some of the Hellfire missiles used to arm the drones went missing. “Oops,” Ian said under his breath.
 

In another contract, Apple Creek’s aviation services arm converted single-engine Cessna Caravans to carry and fire Hellfire missiles. After being tested at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, the planes were shipped to the Iraqi Air Force. The test flights carried dummy missiles without warheads, but the planes flew otherwise fully operational. Ian licked his lips.
 

Next he called up an article on the armed Caravans from
Aviation Week
’s electronic version on his tablet. He grinned when he read that the planes were often called “armed breadboxes,” and they did look boxy and old-fashioned with their fixed landing gear and high, wide upper-wing. Ian knew the plane as a stable and reliable platform. Tonight he would be flying a Caravan equipped with a full set of night operations gear, on a mission out over the Avon Park test range in central Florida. These test flights always went up with an Air Force pilot. That was one thing Apple Creek couldn’t control. “One of the few things,” Ian said aloud. An Apple Creek technician would ride along to run and test the equipment. Tonight, there would be a technician trainee also. When he had left Washington, his father had handed Ian a nicely worn ID badge and told him to dress casually. Ian carried jeans and a polo shirt with an Apple Creek logo in his carbon-fiber Henk luggage. He would have to change out of his custom-tailored white linen suit soon.
 

Ian opened the electronic manual for the Hellfire missiles and the targeting systems installed on the “breadbox.” His luggage included four fully-operational Hellfires packed up in fine wooden boxes with the words “Helicopter-Launched Fire-and-Forget Test Rounds” neatly stenciled below the Apple Creek Aviation logo.
 

Sighing, Ian put down his iPad and opened the paper folder with the printed service record of the man he would soon have to deal with. The pilot, a former hotshot, had gotten busted down to training missions because of some risky maneuvering in Afghanistan. He had saved a downed helicopter crew. He also had taken out a house with a family inside. “Good man—not a lucky man,” Ian said.

What the plan entailed for the pilot was a shame. Ian decided then to try to give him another chance.
A good warrior has no fixed plans…

The G6 landed uneventfully at Tampa International, and he changed on the plane into his technician’s clothes and trudged down to the rental cars. He rented a Hyundai van, making sure to ask the pretty girl at the counter if it were a safe vehicle. His face sported a fake nose and thick glasses, and he wore a red-haired wig, which he thought should be enough to keep his description from leading anyone back to him.
 

He drove the thirteen miles to MacDill Air Force Base, and once there his identification got him through the various checkpoints without a hitch. His directions took him around the main base to a group of hangers at the southwest corner. At each checkpoint, he showed the paperwork for the Hellfire missiles in his van. “Just dummies, test rounds for the flying breadboxes,” he explained a dozen times. The guards studied his eyes carefully when he said it. He smiled warmly back. No one took his brass knuckles.
 

The Apple Creek technician’s name was José, a navigator/gunner from the Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program, retired and come to work for Apple Creek. The pilot had not showed up yet. Ian pulled José aside for a chat.

“José, I’m Ian. Ian McAlister.”

“I heard you were going to be on this mission, sir.” José looked at him expectantly.
 

“You remember the oath you swore when you joined Apple Creek?”

Jose nodded. “Every word.”

“You remember the gift we gave you?” Ian hated the formality of invoking the oath, but he felt it necessary to put José in the proper frame of mind before telling him what they would need to do tonight.