Targets of Deception (22 page)

“Well then?” the red-haired Englishman asked quietly.

“I don’t like it.”

“The setup?”

The American nodded. “Bow to stern. Too open. And spring lines. We make a move to board, he’ll feel us as soon as we step on deck.”

The Englishman nodded. They were standing face to face, a hundred feet beyond the forward railing of the
Winsome II
. Even so, they spoke in a whisper.

“And we don’t know what he has rigged up.”

“What about blowing it?”

The American shook his head. “No good, not unless we know for sure he’s inside. We can’t be sorting through the pieces afterwards.”

The Englishman frowned. “Agreed.”

THIRTY-THREE

When a soldier spends enough time in active combat, he develops auxiliary senses. Awake or asleep, he becomes alert to sounds that do not quite fit with the character of other noises. Even an unusual silence can snap him to attention.

Jordan asked a question, but Andrioli was listening to something else. He held up his hand and rose slowly from his seat.

Sandor immediately sensed it also. He stood, turning to Christine, his finger to his lips.

There had been two sets of footsteps, shuffling by the boat, disappearing into the night. Then they heard the footsteps again, coming back the other way, not really conscious of them until they came to a stop.

Jordan moved next to Andrioli, who was checking to see that the blackout drapes on all of the portholes of this main salon were pulled shut. “You have any other guns here?” Jordan whispered.

Andrioli nodded, pointed to the aft cabin, holding up one finger.

“Get it,” Jordan breathed in his ear.

Andrioli stepped quickly to the rear of the vessel, quietly unlatched the door to that cabin, went inside, and then emerged with a Browning 9mm.

The footsteps had ended somewhere near the bow. Andrioli pointed in that direction and Jordan responded with a brief nod.

Sandor saw that Andrioli was holding two extra clips for his Browning. Jordan held up the H&K with its long silencer and motioned to Andrioli’s hand.

Andrioli disappeared into the aft cabin again and quickly returned with a box of 9mm shells. He handed it to Sandor. The two men were side by side, straining to hear what was going on above deck.

“They’re either going to board us or blow the boat,” Jordan said in a barely audible voice, his mouth close to Andrioli’s ear. “We’ve got to move now.”

Andrioli nodded. He tapped Christine’s shoulder and gestured toward the rear cabin. It would be the safest place for her, he said, once the action began.

Christine turned to Jordan. The steely look in his eyes told her not to debate the instruction.

As she started to move, he whispered, “Keep down, no matter what. Don’t come out unless one of us calls you.”

Christine hurried into the aft cabin, and Jordan closed the door behind her.

Andrioli held up two fingers.

Sandor nodded his agreement. There were two men. They were at the front of the boat right now, but would doubtless split up. Jordan knew that he and Andrioli were running out of time, but if they acted too soon, or moved in the wrong direction, they might be cut down before they had a chance to mount a counter-attack. He reached for Andrioli’s arm and drew him toward the short stairway that led to the wheelhouse. “Open the latch as quietly as you can. I’ll go forward, make some noise there. Just get it unlocked then stand aside. When I come past, I’ll blow through the hatch. You follow me out.”

Andrioli nodded.

“There’s no margin for error. Shoot to kill.”

Andrioli nodded again and watched as Jordan moved forward to the salon.

The red-haired Englishman finished rigging the two explosive devices and handed the larger one to his partner. He fastened the C-4 near the railing of the bow, while the American stepped to the outside of the quay, taking a circuitous route to the rear of the boat where he attached the main charge to the aft hull, just behind the wheelhouse deck. Their plan was simple. The first, small explosion would bring Andrioli out. If they couldn’t finish him off with a bullet, they would ignite the second charge, and Andrioli and his boat would be history.

The Englishman stepped away from the bow, choosing a vantage point near a thick wood piling where he would have a clear shot at anyone coming through the main cabin or out through the hatch on the foredeck. He had his automatic in hand, keeping it under his jacket as he waited for the American to finish.

There was a noise from inside the boat, up towards the forward hatch. He snapped his head in that direction, then gave a quick whistle to the American, who jumped back and pulled out his Sig Sauer.

Jordan had smacked his hand twice against the inside bulkhead of the forward cabin. Then he sprinted back through the main salon, vaulting the steps to the pilothouse in a single motion, slamming his shoulder hard into the door that Andrioli had unlocked, bursting through in a sideward roll, hitting the deck with a thud. He scampered behind the instrument panel tower just as the Englishman detonated the small charge attached to the front hull, the explosion sending a spray of fiberglass, teak and other debris into the air and across the dock.

The American saw Sandor first and, having the better angle from the rear, he opened fire immediately, sending three shots spitting through his silencer that shattered fiberglass and ricocheted inside the wheelhouse.

Jordan fired back at the American, who took cover next to the boat docked behind them.

Andrioli had emerged from below, diving to a position alongside the wheel and firing his automatic at the crouching American to their rear. His weapon was the only one of the four not equipped with a silencer, and the reverberating report of the Browning echoed inside the wheelhouse.

The Englishman, seeing Andrioli emerge, shot two rounds through the plastic windscreen, whistling just above his target’s head.

 A woman somewhere inside the sailboat to their stern let out a scream, and people along the canal began coming above decks to see what was going on.

In the noise and confusion, Sandor gestured to Andrioli to cover the forward shooter, then crawled on his stomach towards the transom. He climbed over the port railing on the water side and crept along the catwalk until he came to the end. There, he spotted the second explosive against the side of the hull. He couldn’t tell if it was set for remote ignition or timed detonation, but he knew that touching the charge might set it off either way.

He peered around the transom until the American, crouching behind the next boat, rose slightly to fire another shot. Sandor saw the man was holding something in his left hand and, figuring it was the remote, he leveled his gun and fired. The first shot hit the American in the arm. The second caught the side of his neck, spinning him around until he was in full view. Jordan fired again, striking him in the chest and dropping him to the ground, dead, before he could detonate the aft charge.

Sandor wondered if there was other plastique in place, or if the second shooter could set off the C-4 attached to the transom.

The first explosion had caused a fire to break out in the forward cabin, and Jordan knew they had little time before the flames on board reached the fuel tanks or another explosion was detonated. The smoke alone would eventually drive them into the open. He had no line of sight on the man up front, but continued to move along the stern of the boat until he was at the corner of the starboard side, at the dock. He heard Andrioli’s Browning send off three more shots in rapid succession and, using that cover to leap from the water deck onto the concrete path, he squeezed off two shots at the Englishman, who was squatting low behind a bulkhead piling. One splintered the pole. The second glanced off the man’s shoulder, turning him into a better line of fire.

As Sandor pulled the trigger on that last round, however, he heard the nauseating, metallic click of the slide snapping open. “Damnit,” he cursed himself for not keeping track of his ammunition.

The Englishman also saw what happened and righted himself for a shot at Jordan, who now jumped back towards the cover of the burning
Winsome II
, reaching in his pocket for more shells.

But Andrioli had also seen Jordan come up empty. He stood and fired off the new clip he had just slid into the Browning, driving the Englishman backwards with four bullets ripping into his chest and face.

Jordan peered above the aft railing and nodded at Andrioli. “Thanks, pal.”

“Any time.”

“Get Christine, my bag, anything else you need, and let’s get the hell out of here. There’s more plastic against the stern and there may be other charges. Don’t know if it’s on timers or what.”

Andrioli leaped down the four steps into the main cabin and rushed into the aft stateroom. Christine was standing there, terror in her eyes, her body rigid with fear. Andrioli pulled out an attaché case he kept in the locker below his bunk, then grabbed Christine roughly by the arm. As they raced through the salon, he picked up Jordan’s bag and made it above decks.

“Come on,” Jordan urged them. “Let’s move.”

A growing crowd inched nearer the scene, but Jordan loudly warned them back.

“Someone call the police. Call the fire department. Get the Coast Guard out here,” he yelled at the crowd. “And back up. This boat is going to explode.”

That sent the crowd moving backward.

Andrioli and Christine jumped onto the dock, even as sirens began to sound in the distance. Andrioli walked up to the Englishman he had shot. He was face down, so Andrioli turned him over with the toe of his boot. “I knew this dirty sonuvabitch. I recognize the other guy too.”

“You’ve got nice friends,” Sandor said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Koppel knocked on the door of the room in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. As instructed, he had come alone.

The man who greeted him was not at all what Koppel had expected. He was Koppel’s age, nearly sixty, but unlike Koppel he was tall and trim and had a patrician bearing. He looked more like a corporate executive than a government agent, and his piercing gaze made Koppel instantly uneasy.

“So good of you to come,” the man said, stepping to the side to allow Koppel inside.

Martin Koppel proceeded warily, having a quick look around, surprised to see that no one else was there.

Shutting the door behind them, the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency offered his hand and said, “I’m Mark Byrnes.”

Marty Koppel had seen better days. Back in the seventies he had emerged as a golden boy of American finance. He had run hedge funds that were among the darlings of Wall Street, helping to make any number of wealthy people wealthier. Whether he was financing dot com start-ups or investing in blue chip companies, Marty Koppel knew what worked.

Then Marty lost his touch.

The eighties had come and gone. And so did the bull market. Regrettably, Marty was not a man who took short positions. He had fought the new trends as long as his capital held out, then watched helplessly as his stock market investments shriveled up as quickly as a winning streak at a Vegas craps table.

By the time the nineties rolled around, his instincts had completely betrayed him, his golden sensibilities having morphed into a cluster of mistakes. The high-tech hedge funds he rode up the Nasdaq wave had all turned to dust, taking with them his assets—and those of his investors. Marty had become an instant dinosaur. A modern, up-to-the-minute, techno-age anachronism. He had leveraged everything he owned and lost it all. What was worse, he became a star in one of America’s greatest sporting events—witnessing the spectacular rise and disastrous fall of a celebrity. The people who had enjoyed his champagne and eaten his caviar now found him a pathetic boor, avoiding him with the same eagerness they had once expended to court his attention. All the while bearing witness to his slide into oblivion.

There was a sad irony to all of this, since Marty had taken pains not to make enemies as his wealth and fame increased. Having grown up poor in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, he was mindful of the admonition about the people you meet on your journey up and down the ladder of life. It was a puzzle to him, therefore, that so many took so much pleasure in watching his demise.

But recently, through a friend of a friend, Marty had been introduced to an opportunity for funding new investments. An admirer of his aggressive style was interested in teaming with Koppel on something new, something
au courant
.

There followed the mandatory string of telephone calls and lunch meetings at tony restaurants in New York. Then Marty was invited to meet a man named Robert Groat, the direct representative of a consortium of European investors. Or so he claimed. The principal money man, it was explained to Koppel, was a wealthy recluse who lived on a yacht in the Mediterranean. Mr. Groat had informed Marty that his client was particular about whom he met or spoke with, and that he regarded secrecy as the highest priority in his business dealings.

Koppel was not interested in the man’s social idiosyncrasies, nor was he curious about his religious affiliations, eating habits or sexual preferences. Koppel readily vowed his discretion, and made arrangements to travel to Europe to meet the money man.

It was only after those plans were made that Koppel was contacted by another party interested in his new opportunity—a representative of the United States government. Marty was invited to a meeting the next day, the intimation being that his presence was required, not requested.

You’re the guy I spoke with on the phone?”

“I am.”

“And we’re alone here?”

“Absolutely.”

“No tapes, no recording. Just you and me.”

“That’s right.”

“And you want to talk with me about what, exactly?”

Byrnes offered a tight smile. “I can see your reputation is well deserved. You’re a man who likes to come right to the point.”

“That’s me,” Koppel said, having another look around as if he expected a more lavish room to be provided for this meeting. “It’s not exactly a thrill to have the feds call you down to Washington, if you know what I mean.”