Act of War (44 page)

After the fishing poles were placed, the captain climbed back up to the bridge and began piloting the boat parallel to the Keys, not south toward Cuba. Cheng wasn’t in the mood.

Climbing the ladder, he whistled to get the captain’s attention. “You’re wasting time. I’m sure there are plenty of fish en route to Cuba.”

“And you’re pissing me off,” the captain replied, placing his cigar in the ashtray. Looking past Cheng, he yelled to his hostess, “Angie, bring me a rum runner.”

“Aye, aye, skipper!” the slutty woman responded from below.

Cheng had had enough. “Let me explain something to you.”

“No,” the captain interrupted, “let me explain something to you. I know what I’m doing. This is my boat, my rules. You need to relax.”

“I’ll relax when we get to Havana.”

“You need a drink,” he replied. “Angie!” he yelled down to his hostess again. “Get our guest a drink.”

“What I
need
,” said Cheng, “is for you to explain exactly how this is going to go. I don’t want any surprises.”

Rolling his eyes, the captain snatched up his cigar, chomped down on it, and yelled for his mate. “Jimmy!”

“Yes, skipper?”

“Come up and take the wheel. I need to review the nav charts with our guest.”

“Aye, aye, skipper,” the mate said, and as he waited for Cheng to step down from the ladder, he motioned to one of the students to take his place, dig in the bucket, and keep tossing out the chum. Once Cheng had moved, the captain climbed down and the mate was able to climb up.

“Heading?” he asked.

“South,” the skipper replied, locking eyes with Cheng. “Our guests are in a hurry.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” the mate said.

Cheng hated the nautical-speak, he hated their boorishness, and he hated that his fate and the fate of his mission were in the hands of these idiots. He wanted to place bullets in all of them.

To add insult to injury, he saw the captain lose his balance as they entered the salon. The man recovered quickly, but it hadn’t escaped Cheng’s practiced eye.

“What can I get you to drink?” the hostess asked. “Rum runner?”

“No,” Cheng snapped. “No more alcohol, for anyone.”

The hostess looked at the captain, who waved the retort away. “Give us a minute, will you, Angie?”

The woman stepped out onto the rear deck with the princelings and closed the glass door behind her.

“My crew work for me, not for you,” the captain then said. “You don’t tell them what to do.”

The man had stepped on Cheng’s last nerve. Pulling out his pistol, he grabbed Medusa by his shirt, yanked him closer, and placed the barrel right under his nose. It sent bolts of pain through his injured shoulder, but it was a necessary show of force to earn the man’s respect. “Until we safely arrive in Cuba, this is my boat, and all three of you are my crew. Is that clear?”

The captain put up his hands, palms out, and replied, “Crystal clear.”

“I want you to sober up. Is that also clear?”

“I’ll have Angie put on coffee.”

“Good,” Cheng said, letting him go and reholstering his pistol beneath his shirt. “Now, I want you to show me our route, as well as the contingencies. Heaven forbid anything should happen to you, I want to make sure the rest of us will make it.”

“Heaven forbid,”
the captain repeated, fully grasping the threat that had just been made. “Let me get Angie started on the coffee.”

He waved the hostess back in and pointed Cheng toward the bedrooms, one of which functioned as his office with all of his charts.

“No,” Cheng insisted. “After you.”

Shaking his head, the captain turned and led the man down the narrow gangway.

His office was dominated by a large map table with barely any space to maneuver around it. He signaled for Cheng to enter, but Cheng opted to step only halfway in and lean against the door frame.

“Suit yourself,” said the captain.

He turned up the marine radio so he could listen in on the traffic and then selected a map from one of many hung upon a rack bracketed to the wall.

Splaying the map on the table, the captain grabbed a pencil as well as a protractor, and was about to indicate where they were in relation to Little Torch Key when he heard a noise from the hallway and saw the panic in Cheng’s eyes.

T
he roar of the shotgun blast was deafening, even out on the aft deck where the princelings were watching the frenzied sharks gathered off the stern.

Immediately, the mate, Jimmy, cut the engines and when the students looked up at the bridge, they saw him looking at them with a pistol in his hand. Angie, the hostess, appeared in the salon with a sawed-off shotgun. From behind her, the captain came dragging the bloody body of their chaperone—the man who had collected them in Boston and was supposed to get them to Cuba so they could fly home. The man had never told them why, only that it was life and death, and that they were not to question his orders. While he bought their food or gassed up the van, they all whispered that it had to be because China was finally going to war with the United States.

The scene was beyond shocking. The men gasped. Daiyu screamed. The corpse was covered in blood and almost his entire face was missing. None of them had ever seen such a grisly sight.

If it weren’t for the clothing and the bits of jet-black hair that remained, they never would have even recognized him. Daiyu Jinping knew it was him, though. She could see the bandage beneath his shirt, on his left shoulder.

“Listen up!” the captain ordered, dragging the corpse onto the deck and dropping the legs with a thud. “There’s been a change of plans. Angie is going to hand each of you a cell phone. I want you to call your families
back in China and tell them you’ve been kidnapped. In the draft folder of each of those phones are wiring instructions along with a price. If your family pays, there’ll be no problem. If they don’t, then this is what’ll happen.”

The captain nodded at Jimmy, who came down from the bridge and tucked his weapon into his waistband. Together, they bent down, lifted the body, and threw it off the back of the boat. The sharks immediately went to work, tearing it apart.

“Tell your families they have one hour.”

The captain took the shotgun from Angie, who then removed five fully charged iPhones from a bag and passed them out to each of the horror-stricken princelings. They watched the sharks rip at their chaperone’s flesh and were unable to look away.

“The cameras on those phones don’t work, by the way,” said the captain, attempting to break the spell of the sharks, “so don’t get any bright ideas. Tell them your situation, send them the wiring instructions, and hang up.”

Looking at his mate, the captain then said, “Let’s take a little cruise, Jimmy. Not too far out. I want to make sure we remain within cell service, so our bank can let us know as soon as that money starts rolling in.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” the mate said as he bounded back up to the bridge and fired up the engines.

“Angie,” the captain called to the hostess, “I think I’d like that rum runner now.”

“Anything you say, Captain,” the young woman replied as she disappeared inside to fetch his drink.

The faces of the young Chinese were a mixture of shock, fear, and contempt. The captain smiled and motioned for each of them to hurry up and make their calls. One by one, they all started to dial home.

As soon as the calls had been placed, Angie collected the phones and the students were herded into the salon. After their hands and feet were bound, they were ordered to sit on the floor. While Jimmy piloted the yacht, Angie sunned herself on the rear deck and the captain sat in a comfortable chair near the students, shotgun across his lap, sipping his drink and watching satellite TV.

•  •  •

Forty-five minutes later, the mate slid down the ladder from the bridge, stuck his head in the salon, and said, “Captain, come quick. We’ve got a problem.”

Several of the princelings looked up hopefully.

“Angie,” the captain yelled, “get in here and keep an eye on them.” Handing her his shotgun, he added, “If they move or make a sound, shoot them.
All
of them.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” she replied and fixed the students with one of the coldest stares they had ever seen. The woman was obviously no stranger to violence and meant business. Not a single princeling made a sound.

From where they sat, with their backs against the couch, they could see out the opposite window. On the horizon a bright orange dot had appeared and was coming closer.

Soon enough they could not only see the U.S. Coast Guard chopper but hear the pounding of its rotors.

When it was almost overhead, there was a voice from the helicopter’s loudspeaker. “This is the United States Coast Guard. Drop your weapons and halt your vessel.”

From outside, the students heard two shots, and they exchanged terrified glances.

There were two more shots and then suddenly the engines went dead.

“You! Inside the vessel,” the voice boomed over the PA once more, “come out with your hands up!”

“Do as they say, Angie!” the captain yelled. “Do it now!”

“No!” she screamed back.

The helicopter could be heard repositioning outside and suddenly a heavy rope hit the aft deck. Seconds later, men in tactical gear with submachine guns slid down and stormed the salon and bridge.

The hostess tossed aside the shotgun just before being slammed to the floor by the Coast Guard team. Wrenching her arms behind her back, they FlexiCuffed her as two men raced forward to check the rest of the yacht.

A chorus of “Clear! Clear!” rang out as they searched each room and
then returned to the salon. As they did, their colleagues entered and threw both the captain and his mate to the floor and made them lie, facedown, with their hands FlexiCuffed behind them.

Within fifteen minutes, two U.S. Coast Guard ships were on scene. Once the Chinese students had been transferred over to one of them, that vessel turned and headed back for land.

It was then that the head of the tactical team cut the boat’s “crew” loose.

“You boys play rough,” said Sloane as she rubbed her raw wrists.

The Coast Guard officer smiled. “You should have seen those kids’ faces. They were freaked out.”

“That’s nothing,” Chase replied as he sat up. “You should have seen their faces when we chucked that John Doe to the sharks. They’ll never look at shark fin soup the same again.”

“Don’t drop that,” Harvath said as two team members prepared to transfer the cooler containing the Nashville EMP device over to their vessel.

Standing up, he walked into the galley, removed his phone from the drawer, and called Nicholas, who was back at the NCTC working with the NSA.

“Did the Chinese buy it?” he asked.

“Hook, line, and sinker,” Nicholas replied. “When those kids phoned home, Chinese intelligence began tracing the calls immediately. Not long after that, Ho’s phone started ringing. Because Medusa was his asset, they blamed him for everything getting screwed up.”

“Good,” said Harvath. “As soon as we’re ready to allow the princelings to call home, I want Stephanie Esposito listening in. Let’s make sure we see this thing across the goal line.”

“You got it. Anything else?”

“Yeah, tell Ren Ho he’s one step closer to getting his son back.”

“Will do,” Nicholas replied. “Good luck interrogating Bao Deng, or should I say Tai Cheng?”

“Tell the Old Man I’ll call him once we have something.”

With that, Harvath disconnected the call and walked down to the master stateroom. Lying on the bed naked, except for his briefs, was Tai Cheng.

After Sloane had stepped into the gangway and Tasered him, Harvath had hit him with a syringe full of ketamine. They had dragged him into the master stateroom where they stripped off his clothes, including the bandage on his shoulder, put a piece of duct tape over his mouth, and hog-tied him with FlexiCuffs.

After dressing their disfigured, dark-haired John Doe corpse from the Miami morgue and splashing it with pig’s blood, Sloane fired a blank shotgun round and Harvath dragged the mutilated body out for the princelings to see.

As the middleman between the Second Department and the smuggler known as Medusa, Ho had indeed been helpful. He had provided more than enough intel for the FBI to arrest the boat’s owner and its crew.

Ho had in fact cooperated every step of the way, including giving up the locations of all the cell members in each city and explaining how the EMP devices worked. He had even detailed how they had been smuggled into the country and who had been involved. He had explained how China’s military intelligence division worked, who had been involved with Snow Dragon, and who had conceived of it. He talked at length about Colonel Jiang Shi and his mantra that they would turn out the lights and America would be made to bow to China.

Ho was an intelligence jackpot, and Harvath had been completely honest when he had said that for his cooperation, the man would get his son back.

Harvath had also been completely honest when he had promised Tai Cheng that he would see to it that he got to Cuba. But instead of Havana by boat, he’d be flying from U.S. Naval Air Station Key West to the GITMO detention camp at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.

T
WO
W
EEKS
L
ATER

H
arvath had balked at the idea of being picked up in a limousine, but the powers that be had insisted. It was out of his control, so he gave in and went along with it.

As he watched the world pass by outside his window, he reflected on everything that had happened. Cheng had been difficult to break, but he
had
broken, and once he did, Harvath had handed him over to the team at GITMO. Based on what the princelings had told their families, the PSC and therefore the Second Department believed that Cheng had been shot and fed to sharks in the waters off Florida. The intelligence he provided would be extremely valuable to the United Sates.

As Harvath had sent the GITMO team Ahmad Yaqub, Khuram Hanjour, and Tai Cheng all in the space of a week, the lead interrogator had thanked him and then suggested he take up some sort of hobby, fishing, for a while. The President, on the other hand, had other plans for him.