Midnight, Greek Daylight Savings Time.
The Athena had been blacked out, all lights doused. As far as any onlooker could tell—if there had been anyone close enough on the water to wonder—all the inhabitants of the boat were fast asleep, enjoying the aftereffects of a full evening repast of sea trout and ouzo.
Not so. In fact, there were four sailors rather than three, and all four were wide awake with the contents of two pots of coffee to ensure that they would stay that way for as long as needed.
One was on top of the yacht. He had opened up a tripod with a camera fastened to it. The camera had a lens attached to it that was long enough to make a swordfish green with envy. It had to be: the pictures that were to be taken were nearly half a kilometer away, and in the dark. Through the miracle of technology, Bob Brown expected to make it happen. It required technology just recently out of the experimental lab and it required a power source, but it was going to happen.
Beside him, Jonas Blane kept watch with a set of high-powered night goggles. There were a number of large creatures swimming in the waters around the yacht, but Jonas had learned to separate the sea creatures from the land mammals by the way they moved through the water. Side to side were the sharks, hunting for prey. Up and down were the dolphins. Neither one tended to use a flutter kick with two feet for propulsion.
Those were just two of the yacht's temporary owners. The other pair were on the main deck, their attention likewise focused on the same ocean acreage. Like Brown, Gerhardt had a tripod set up but this one didn't support a camera. This one braced a rifle with a barrel long enough to drill for oil.
This particular weapon had started life as a standard M24 before Gerhardt began his 'improvements'. Several of those improvements were currently undergoing testing in certain secret facilities across America with an eye toward providing them to other soldiers, but that didn't slow Gerhardt down. This was his baby. 'When it positively, absolutely has to be killed overnight,' was his motto for this baby, and when this mission called for a single shot to be dead center, this was the weapon that was going to do it. There weren't going to be any second chances. There weren't going to be any allowances for the boat constantly riding the waves up and down. All the automatic this and that's weren't going to be able compensate for the fact that this was going to be a damn difficult target to hit. Hector Williams, beside him, had tugged that hunk of iron in with him, and Mack Gerhardt had spent a good two hours after dinner making sure that no salt water had gotten to his pride and joy.
Williams himself had a second pair of night goggles aimed at the target zone, backing up his team leader. "Boat coming out from the shore," he murmured.
"That our target?" Mack readjusted the scope yet again. Nerves, more than anything.
"Looks like it." Williams didn't take his eyes away from the dark water.
"Look alive," Jonas hissed from on top of the yacht. "We have bogies at eleven o'clock." He turned to his man on the camera. "You getting this, sergeant?"
"In my sights," Brown murmured, his attention on getting the focus to come clear. Click: Lovely picture of the small boat rowing its way out from the shore. Click: the sole man in the rowboat was dressed in dark clothing unsuitable for this time of the year but very in keeping with someone not wanting to be seen. Click: close up facial shot, suitable for framing and for placement on Interpol's Top Ten Most Wanted List if this didn't go the way they wanted it to. Click: the Delphine, a sixty-footer that was quietly headed toward the rowboat from the open sea, its engines muffled and yet still audible across the waves, her name painted in white across the bow. Click click click: at least three men manned the larger boat, one gesturing to the others, in charge and paying the bills. Brown took another couple of portraits of the head honcho. They couldn't afford to let that one stay unidentified.
Jonas kept his night goggles trained on the scene. He saw the three from the Delphine hand down four crates to the man in the smaller boat, saw the man adjust the positioning of those crates so that the smaller boat didn't tip over. Jonas noted how the smaller boat suddenly required more water to stay afloat, how heavy the crates were to cause the water level to rise against the wooden edge. He tightened his lips. If he hadn't been certain of his intelligence before, he was now. Those crates contained weaponry, heavy arms that would end up in the hands of people who didn't much care about the rights of others. That small boat certainly wasn't taking on four crates filled with down from a duck. Not with that much weight.
Brown was taking almost constant pictures now, filling the camera with additional photos to make a damning case against someone. Blane very much doubted that those pictures would ever see the light of judicial day, not with the orders he and his team had been given. Once their part was over, those photos would be given to intelligence analysts who would devise the next objective to be carried out in the war against terror. Not his problem.
"Got enough?"
"Had enough five minutes ago. Working on the next gigabyte of data," Brown grunted.
"Put it up. Mack, you're on."
Down on the main deck, Gerhardt felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, accepted it as part of the adrenalin that would sharpen his senses as far as they could go. "Talk me in, Hector."
Williams began to murmur, soft and soothing. "Last crate, Mack. No more. Man is stowing it away, right in the center of his little row boat. Big yacht turning, heading back out to sea; it'll be out of reach in three minutes."
"Don't care about that bastard. Talk to me about the little guy."
"Putting the oars into the locks. Sitting on the bench. Taking the first stroke."
The wake from the Delphine slapped gently against their own yacht, causing it to rise up and down.
"Boat's not moving fast; too much weight. Hanging low in the water, Mack."
"Maybe it'll sink, and I won't have to do this," Mack growled irritably. He stared through the scope, hands rock steady. Waiting for the right moment. Waiting for everything to come together. Timing was everything.
Crack!
The dark figure in the boat slumped over. The rowboat stopped its forward movement.
"Clean," Jonas reported from on top of the yacht. He finally lowered his night goggles. "Let's go home."
Any other time, darlin', and I'd be all over you.
Charlie Grey sighed, and let another hot chick slip away into another man's more than willing grasp. There were several of them; there was a singles' cruise in port and nearly half of the passengers, bored with the other half, had poured into the little Turkish seashore village of Komkoy in search of more attractive prey.
This one had been just begging for him. Blonde, tall, with enough leg to wrap around him twice and then some. French, too, and half drunk on ouzo. He could have taken her up to her room on board the cruise ship and hidden out in comfort for the next two days while waiting for his bosses back home to get their collective ass moving.
No screwing around on this trip, hombre, he reminded himself. Not unless you want to end up with more hands on your ass than just hers. He had that damn digital memory card to protect and while he could cover it over with a swimsuit, butt-naked was going too far. Counting on the ouzo to fade the memory was a little more risk that he was prepared to take.
He leaned back in his chair, watching the people around him, taking refuge in the darkest corner of this bar and wondering how long it would be before his Euros ran out and he'd have to steal some more. He didn't look forward to it; he was good at it—picking locks was a joy unto itself—but every time something got reported to the local police, another signal ended up heading toward the big boys who were looking for him.
So far he'd been lucky. He'd picked his way into an unused hotel room for the night, waking up before the maid in order to shave and shower with more purloined goods and head out to hide in plain sight.
'Plain sight' was important. His people would be looking for him, and the advantage that Charlie had was that they knew what he looked like. The Russians and their stoolies only had the verbal reports of Mutt and Jeff or, as Charlie had come to think of them in his own mind, Alexi and Dmitri.
Maybe he could get in one more check before turning in for the night? Worth a try. Despite the beautiful scenery, foliage and human, Charlie's nerves weren't allowing him to enjoy his surroundings.
He ambled out into the night, taking note of which of the street lamps were working and which weren't, heading past the building that served the majority of the governmental needs for the little town of Komkoy. It was a large and square facility, topped with a Byzantine dome that shone in the sunlight but merely dimpled politely to the moon now that it was nearly midnight. Charlie took note of the various markings that decorated the front steps. Sure, some of it was seagull droppings but others were signals from various intelligence agents to one another. None looked fresh, and Charlie surmised that whoever had left them had completed his mission several months ago. Charlie corrected himself; his own mark, the blue scrape on the third step from the top, was fresh although he'd taken pains to make it blend in with the rest. When his own contact arrived, the contact would put another mark nearby to suggest a meeting.
Charlie sighed. His blue signal remained a singleton.
The story of my life, dude. He ambled away down the road, trying to decide which hotel to break into for the night.
"Watch out for the sharks, Hector my man." Gerhardt cuffed Williams on the shoulder good-naturedly. "I don't want to have to dig my scope out of some Great White's belly."
"Not to worry, Mack," Williams returned. "There aren't any Great Whites in this part of the ocean.
"You sure?" Brown looked up, raising his eyebrows.
"Sure, I'm sure. You think I'm going to swim somewhere where I don't know what's coming after me?" Williams chuckled.
"You just be sure you get to that tin can you came in on." Blane was still nervous. There was a large chunk of data in Williams's waterproofed pack that could get seriously damaged with salt water, and he wasn't talking about Gerhardt's prized weapon.
Williams nodded. "I will, Top. You?"
"We've still got ten days left on our 'vacation'," Blane reminded him. "It'll look odd if we come in much before that."
"Don't want to get tagged as anyone suspicious," Brown added.
Williams hefted his package. "You mean, like being found with a sniper special in your possession?" he quipped. He mock-saluted to his team mates. "See you back State side." He lifted his feet high to avoid tripping on his flippers, and jumped into the crystal clear blue waters of the Aegean.
"Good sailing," Blane called after him, dropping the waterproofed pack in after him.
Williams mock-saluted again from the water and then surface-dove under, a small trail of bubbles disappearing into the waves.
Brown turned away from the water. "That's that." He stretched, cracking his knuckles loudly. "What'd'ya say, Mack? Still think I can't fish? How about double or nothing?"
"Double what? You ate my fish, Brown. You brought in nothing but your pearly whites."
Blane suddenly perked up his ears, hushed them quickly. "You hear that?"
Instantly silent. "What, Top?"
It came again, a harsh static.
"The radio," Blane identified it, leading the way into the main cabin where their radio sat.
Brown seated himself in front of the box, picking up the mike. "SS Athena," he identified himself. This could be something entirely innocuous, perhaps the yacht's owner calling to check on them though at something slightly after midnight he tended to doubt it. "Go ahead."
"Tac four."
All three Unit members stiffened. This was not from a nervous yacht owner. This was why they had a super-charged communications unit hiding under the guise of something completely normal. Brown glanced up at the other two; what had gone wrong? They had kept completely to mission parameters, had done exactly what they had been told to do. Brown twisted the dials, and turned one more, a dial that didn't appear on any commercial radio. "Unit Alpha, over. Secure channel."
"Secure channel, Unit Alpha," the voice acknowledged. "Hold for the Terminator."
"Holding."
It didn't take more than three seconds for the familiar voice of Col. Ryan to come on. "Unit Alpha," he said crisply. "Mission status?"
Blane took the comm. mike. "Mission complete. Package en route to mama."
"Acknowledged. New mission. Acknowledge receipt."
"Receipt acknowledged. Define mission parameters."
There was a hesitant pause, and Jonas felt a small frisson of fear race through him. Colonel Thomas P. Ryan was not one to sugarcoat bad news and he wasn't one to hesitate over the truth. "Snake Doctor, we have located a missing man in your area, somewhere in Turkey, along the western coastline. Mission parameter priority one: obtain the data that he is carrying. Parameter priority two: retrieve the agent. Acknowledge."
"Mission parameters one and two, acknowledged." Blane exchanged a glance with the other two. What wasn't Ryan telling them?
"I will contact Mama Bear, instruct them to return Hammerhead to your team as soon as he passes on the package. I will also instruct him to bring back more forks and spoons for your use. Do you agree, Snake Doctor?"
Gonna have Williams bring back some heavy duty weapons? What did Ryan have in mind? Not that Blane objected; they would come in handy if a few wanna-be Captain Jack Sparrows showed up. "I agree, Terminator. Will he also be bringing details of the new package to be acquired?"
"Uh, that's a negative, Snake Doctor. More intel will not be needed."
"Sir?" That little bug bite in his gut was rapidly turning into a full fledged ulcer.
"Snake Doctor, the package is Betty Blue."
