Ark Storm (39 page)

He edged out. The NVG showed no sign of a human crouching or retreating. He bent over the bodies, went through the pockets. No IDs. Pros in that respect, anyway.

He eyed the waves. They would reach the cave that night. Of that he was sure. He moved up to the other two bodies, dragged them into the cave, pulled in the second two. He returned the Makarov and
Š
korpion to their dead owners. Then he grabbed Gwen’s pocketbook and moved silently and quickly away from the cave and its carnage.

He ran through the darkness, cautious, hyperaware, but he saw no one. When he got near to his parked car, he stripped off his bloodied clothes, turned them inside out. The rain sluiced down on his body, chilling him to the bone. He felt it rain on him, washing away the blood, knowing that nothing would ever wash his mind.

He pushed down the images and ran for his car. He removed the cover of foliage, unlocked the door and grabbed his kit bag. He stashed his bloodied clothes and leather gloves in a special sealable bag, pulled on the sweatpants and t-shirt he kept spare and slid into his car.

He took Gwen’s pocketbook, fingers probing, removed the tracking device concealed in the stud. He threw it into the bushes.

All he had to do now was find Gwen. He drove up the track, heating on high, hands steady on the wheel, mind numb.

105

THE SUPER-YACHT,
ZEPHYR
, MIDNIGHT

Ijaz stood before the Sheikh. He was covered in dried blood. The Sheikh eyed him with disbelief.

“All dead? All four of them?”

Ijaz bowed his head. He might as well have gone after them, died on duty, but sheer terror had made him run. When all comms had gone silent, he’d hidden in a hollowed-out space under a bush, waited, finally crept out from the foliage toward the cave, seen the carnage within, and run again. The pilot had picked him up a half hour ago, battling the winds to get him.

“And no sign of who did it?”

Ijaz shook his head.

The Man had been picked up too. He looked on grimly, and in disbelief.

“So neither Jacobsen nor Boudain were there,” he said, voice dripping scorn. “Just four dead bodies.” He paused. He sounded almost admiring now, but not of Ijaz. “One neck broken, one throat slit, the other two shot with Jaffar and Ashgar’s own weapons.” He held up his fingers as if ticking off an inventory.

“Correct,” replied Izaj hoarsely.

The Man turned to look at Al Baharna. The Sheikh stood rock still. The rage pumping off him was palpable. A vein was pulsing in his right temple. The Man subtly moved backward.

With a spasm, the Sheikh seemed to crack. “Who the fuck is this guy?” he screamed, whirling round, pacing from The Man to the blood-soaked Ijaz. Neither answered. They both just stood still, inuring themselves to whatever would come. On the rare occasions when the Sheikh lost his temper, he could and did strike out with whatever weapons came to hand—fists, bottles …

Al Baharna turned away. He circled, came back, but stood more than arms’ length from the two men, visibly attempting to control himself.

“A
journalist
did this?” the Sheikh continued, voice lowering. It came out like a hiss.

The Man thought this was no time to say he had thought all along that the cave was a trap.

“It would appear that Jacobsen is more than he seems,” he said.

“And that you did not research him deeply enough,” said the Sheikh, voice dipping as though he were passing sentence.

The Man nodded. That much was true. And fair.

The Sheikh paced away. He stopped at the black windows, braced his palms on the glass, stared out into the darkness. The yacht was really beginning to pitch and toss now, despite its huge length. Baharna picked up his walkie-talkie.

“Get the captain down here.”

Blaine Shaffer appeared one minute later. He was stocky, dark, competent-looking. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a crisp white uniform. He studiously avoided looking at the blood-stained man.

“Sheikh Al Baharna,” he said with a slight bow.

“This weather.…” posed the Sheikh. “Is it getting worse?”

“The forecasts suggest it is. The National Weather Service has issued an updated Advisory winter storm warning in the last hour; it’s in effect until further notice, which means they think it’ll be a storm of some duration.” Shaffer was South African. He spoke in a staccato rhythm, emphasizing the last word of each sentence. It made his words portentous at the best of times.

The Sheikh nodded. “What do they say,
exactly
?”

The captain consulted his log, an old-fashioned leather-bound book, which he carried everywhere. He looked down, read from his notes. His glasses slipped a fraction down his nose. He ignored them.

“Fast-moving Pacific storm; wave warnings, precipitation warnings, wind warnings … They’ve added a ‘precautionary/preparedness warning.’”

“Meaning?”

“It’s related to coastal areas, warning of extra-high waves, of potential wave damage, to stay out of the sea or to exercise extreme caution if at sea. They’re also warning of heavy rains making driving conditions hazardous. They’re saying, stay off the roads, and stock up on any essentials.”

“Do you think they are covering themselves?” asked the Sheikh.

“No. If anything I think it’ll be worse than the forecast,” the captain replied definitively, ramming his glasses back into position on his nose. “I would like to motor south through the night. With all dispatch,” he added crisply.

“How bad do you think it will get?”

“It’s early in the season for a really big storm, but I don’t like what I’m seeing. I didn’t like the color of the sky today, the color of the sea.”

“Not very scientific,” observed The Man.

The Sheikh shot him a speculative glance. He looked away.

The Captain ignored him, spoke just to the Sheikh, his voice milder than his words. “I could give you the scientific parameters if that would make you happier. I find, that in thirty years of experience on the seas, that personal observation is as often valuable as the science.”

“And sometimes much neglected,” added Al Baharna, looking levelly at The Man. “Do you think?” he continued, “that this could be the fabled ARk Storm 1000?”

The captain waited a while before replying.

“USGS and the National Weather Service do not think so. They would have gone into Major Alert mode if they did.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” replied Al Baharna, spacing his words.

“They could be wrong,” conceded the captain. He shrugged. “As I said, it’s early in the season for a huge storm. But it could be. It’ll be a big storm, an ugly one. Of that I am sure. Whether it will develop into an ARk Storm, let alone
the
ARk Storm … we shall have to wait and see. Preferably from hundreds of miles away.”

“We stay here. For now,” declared the Sheikh. He felt, along with the fury at a mission botched, the soar and the pulse of adrenaline. Standing in the path of a storm was an almost sexual feeling. Delaying, staying not running, was the sweetest kind of self-denial, like choking off oxygen prior to an orgasm. It intensified the feeling when you did run. Besides, they couldn’t run. They still had outstanding business.

“With our top speed of sixty-odd knots we should have time to outrun any storm, no?” the Sheikh asked the captain.

“In theory. Perhaps. But I would rather not put it to the test. And in these conditions we cannot go that fast. A lot can happen at sea.”

The Sheikh smiled. “We are all in God’s hands. If he wills it, and if the power of our engines allows it, we shall escape.
Insha’Allah
,” he added, palms raised, eyes glancing upward to the only power he recognized as greater than his own.

106

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, WEDNESDAY MORNING, 6:00 A.M.

Art Graffenburg threw up his hands in despair. His two co-heads, Bridget Riley and Jon Hendrix, were going at it like cats and dogs, as always. They’d all come in ultra-early. Big storms did that. The weather didn’t sleep.

Lack of sleep had done nothing for their sense of diplomacy. They’d started fighting at the get-go. Co-heads never worked. Bad idea, bad execution. Egos, philosophy, interpretations, and visions clashed and it was ugly. Graffenburg had left the meeting. Now he stood silently outside the door, like a bodyguard.

“The parameters aren’t there,” Hendrix was insisting. “Yeah it’s a big AR, but the variables suggest it won’t precipitate when it makes landfall.”

Inside the meeting room, Bridget Riley and Jon Hendrix faced off across a Styrofoam-laden conference table. There were no windows and the heating was set high. Both were sweating. Their faces were red with the heat and mutual exasperation.

Riley jumped to her feet and began to pace the conference room, taking short staccato steps that matched her voice.

“Look, Hendrix, let’s recap, shall we, see what we got?”

Hendrix folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair, attempting a look of nonchalance.

Riley kicked off. “Right! We have Sat images of an atmospheric river hurtling toward us at speeds estimated to be upward of eighty kph. If we could get one of NASA’s Hawks up there we could make better estimates
re
speed and severity. So first off, I want to put in the call, if you’re amenable?”

Hendrix nodded. “Go for it. It’s their dollar.”

Riley hid her distaste, just nodded back. “Will do. This AR is scheduled to hit, at its current speeds, tomorrow, maybe at noon, let’s say around twenty-four hours from now, give or take. The rain we’re seeing now is just the outrider of the storm. This is the warm-up.”

“Maybe this rain is all there’ll be,” countered Hendrix. “The AR might not precipitate when it makes landfall,” he repeated, scowling.

“Then again, it just might. I want to up the severity of the warning. I want us to issue a Special Weather Statement.”

Hendrix shook his head. “No need,” he declared, pursing his lips.

Riley walked up to the man, bent over him, lowered her voice.

“You a gambler, Hendrix?”

“No. I’m a scientist.”

Riley cocked her head. “Really? ’cause it seems to me you’re more than happy to gamble with people’s lives.”

“Really? And it seems to me that you forgot to take your medication.” Hendrix spoke mildly, the barb so sharp a soft delivery still drove it home.

Riley did literally see the legendary red haze of rage. A dozen, terminal retorts rocked through her head. Instead, using up almost her last reserves of will power, she blinked, turned, and walked from the room.

107

HIGHWAY 1, NEAR BIXBY BRIDGE

The Man pulled over at the viewpoint, got out his cell, rang the Sheikh. He rubbed his hands over his face. He was exhausted. The chopper had flown him to Monterey at midnight and he’d spent the hours since driving around. In vain.

The Sheikh answered. They both completed the encryption process, and only then as the background beeping died did they speak.

“I take it the cops haven’t visited, or called?” asked The Man.

“They have not, so we can hope that Boudain did not make good her threat. Please tell me you’ve found her,” said the Sheikh, voice impassive, emotions under lockdown.

“I’m sorry, but we have not. No sign of Boudain or Jacobsen, not at their own homes, and nowhere else we’ve looked, and we’ve looked. No one slept last night. But we did find Boudain’s car.”

“Where?”

“Out by the airport in Monterey. I tuned into the cops’ frequencies, heard a concerned citizen call it in. It was crashed. Burnt out.”

The Sheikh raised an eyebrow. “As in fatally?”

“As in trash crashed. And burnt out. My guess it was stolen.”

“Maybe by Boudain’s and Jacobsen’s design, to lead you off the scent,” said the Sheikh.

“That’s my thinking.”

“Get the other guys to keep looking. I have another job for you. The main extraction. Get what you need to get. Silence the target. Make it look like an accident. Go now. Get him at home.”

The Man sucked in a breath. The endgame. “I’m ready.”

“You’d better be. This is your chance to redeem yourself. You do understand that, don’t you?” the Sheikh said softly.

The Man looked out across the gray sea. He knew. You supped with the devil, sooner or later you had to pay. He just needed a bit more time. If he could pull off this last big job for the Sheikh, pull off the endgame, then he’d get out his fake passport, the best his money had been able to buy, and head for Brazil, far from the reach of the Sheikh and his Shuhada’, or so he had to believe.

“I’ll send the copter now,” said the Sheikh. “It’ll be waiting at Monterey Airport.”

“I’ll get there as soon as I’m done. Should be ninety mins, max.”

The Sheikh clicked off the phone. They had got Jacobsen and Boudain wrong. Fatally underestimated them. Nothing seemed to be going to plan. Apart from the weather. That at least was promising to deliver Hell. And if the extraction plan worked, then Hell would be delivered.

108

MONTEREY, TUESDAY, LATER THAT MORNING

Gwen woke with a wicked hangover and the sense that something was very wrong. She lay still, listening to rain drumming against the window. The wind punched the house like percussion. Alarmed, she sat up and looked around blearily: Leo lay on a blanket in the corner, one eye open, regarding her carefully; Dwayne’s spare bedroom. His new crib. She pushed up, hair streaming down her back. She was wearing a huge black T-shirt and yesterday’s underwear. It all came flooding back through the tequila haze. Dan, his confession, her running, Dwayne’s house; the bottle, shared.

“Urggh,” she groaned. Knuckling her hair from her eyes, she swung her legs out of bed, walked unsteadily over to her dog. She bent down, ruffled his fur, then went to the window. She drew back the curtains to a vista of sheer gray. Rain sluiced down from a gunmetal sky. There was a big old oak filling most of Dwayne’s backyard. Its dark branches, stripped of all foliage, danced to the wind’s discordant tune. An array of small, broken branches littered the lawn. The weather mirrored her mood, and for that she was oddly grateful. She couldn’t have dealt with blue skies today.