The Gift of the Dragon (34 page)

Callan spent an hour or so wandering along the waterfront, snapping pictures, playing tourist. Using a telephoto attachment for his iPhone, he casually took shots of the
Endurance
and its surroundings from several angles. He saw the guards pretending to lounge. To his practiced eye they looked to be in a relaxed alert mode, not actively expecting anything. As he jogged back by the
Folie
, he saw with satisfaction McReady working the ship’s crane, lowering his Harley to the sea wall. Callan went into the nearby Miami Chophouse restaurant and ordered a steak and a club soda. After a bit, he heard the throaty roar of the Harley starting up and watched from the window as McReady rode off in a puff of smoke.
 

“Money well spent,” Callan said to himself as he finished his steak. Then he left a hundred-dollar bill on the table and headed back to the City Marina. He walked to his Fountain with the bounce in his step of a happy man as he whistled Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida.”

A little bit after sunset, Callan started the motors of the Fountain and eased it out of the City Marina. He idled the big black and white fishing boat back along the path he had walked on foot earlier, past Bayfront Park, around the towers at Chopin Plaza, and up the Miami River. Hidden by the dark night, the Fountain now carried two large, dark nylon bags on the fiberglass top over the cabin. One hundred yards behind the
Folie
, with the bulk of the yacht shielding him from the view of the guards on the
Endurance
, Callan turned on his Raymarine autopilot, and it began to execute a course he had carefully set. As the precision GPS steered the boat, Callan climbed up on the hardtop, nine feet above the water. The three outboards grumbled quietly as the Fountain idled up alongside the
Folie
. Callan smiled to see that McReady had left minimal lights going on the big yacht. Maybe he hoped she would get stolen so he would have an excuse to move on from his unhappy nest.

As Callan’s boat came amidships on the silent
Folie
, Callan tossed the bags up. He heard them thump softly on the upper deck. Then he leaped down, cut off the autopilot, and, taking the wheel of the Fountain, he turned sharply back toward City Marina.
 

It took Callan twenty minutes to get the boat squared away and walk slowly back to a spot near the
Folie
. Everything looked quiet. Then he walked all the way past the
Folie
and the
Endurance
, staying to the far side of the wide sidewalk along the water’s edge. Even at the late hour, many pedestrians were still about, traveling from one of the waterfront restaurants and bars to another. It satisfied Callan to see no alarm raised and no one investigating the bags he had left on the
Folie
. A few shapes moved around on the
Endurance
’s deck, but for the most part she lay still, with lights shining from several cabins. A warm wind blew softly from the ocean, bringing the scent of living and dead things into the city.
 

Callan followed a crowd of college age kids leaving a restaurant called Zuma and walking along the waterfront, admiring the moored yachts. He noticed that one of the kids wore a Miami Marlins shirt. “Hey, how do you think the Marlins will do against the Reds next week?”
 

“They’re going to dominate the Reds!” The kid smiled at Callan. “Well, they will if they can get on base. Who are you for?”

“Marlins, of course! The Reds are going to get killed!”
 

This led to a lively discussion of the players and how Cincinnati would not be able to stand the heat, giving Callan a good reason to keep his head turned away and be in the thick of the crowd as they walked past the
Endurance
.
 

Callan let the conversation lapse and hung back as the group passed the
Folie
. He quickly ducked into a deep shadow behind the large hedge that grew where the waterfront sidewalk turned back toward the land. A sign on the narrow path behind the hedge read, “Walkway for marina customers and their guests only.” He dodged around that, seeing the other side was blank.
That is the side meant for me!

Glancing quickly around and seeing no one paying attention, he crouched down and then leapt quickly up, vaulting himself over the
Folie
’s midship rail and onto the vessel.
 

Ducking low behind the solid splashguard that ran along the rail, he waited for any alarm or the sound of someone shouting.

Nothing. “Thank you, Mr. McReady,” Callan whispered. He loved it when people were predictable. He remembered from his study of the boat’s layout that access doors opened into the main cabin on either side. Staying low to stay in the shadows of the splashguard, he moved to the ocean-facing side, where no one could see him work.

Looking through the cabin window, he noted the flashing red light of an alarm in standby mode in the dark cabin. McReady had turned on the interior alarm. Callan recalled from his research that the ship carried old-style Kirkwell alarms. These sent an outgoing call before activating the alarm system itself. The idea was to get the security company working on the break-in before alerting the thief. A problem with these systems was that if the call didn’t go through, the alarm didn’t go off at all. Since there were no phone lines connected to the
Folie
, and he hadn’t seen a satellite transmitter, the call would have to be made over a cellular network. Callan pulled out his XT6000 cell phone jammer and turned it on.
 

It took him a few minutes to get through the ship’s door lock. He watched the alarm for a while. It flashed but did not go off. He walked up to the control room and looked over the helm, nicely finished in polished maple, with a plethora of gauges and an old-style hooded radarscope. Twin engines powered the Folie, and each had a key of its own. Each engine also had separate Twin Disc electronic controls, meaning he could shift the boat into gear electronically.
Perfect!

Lying down on his back, Callan opened the access panels. His smile widened as he saw the simplicity of the wiring. People did not generally steal large yachts. At maximum speed the Folie could make about fifteen miles per hour. Not something you could take off in quickly. Also, an eighty-foot vessel is hard to hide. That left little reason to make a mega-yacht difficult to hot-wire.
 

Callan’s plan required the engines to run in gear for about five minutes and then shut down. That should prevent anyone from being alarmed; large yachts moored in saltwater would often run their engines for short periods to ensure the running gear worked properly and to clear it of marine growth. He pulled out a black box with connectors for wires. The box contained both a timer that would break a circuit after a set period and a radio-activated switch. He wanted to be in the water before firing up the vessel. Callan spliced connectors into the
Folie
’s wires so that he could start the engines using his modified Uniden waterproof radio. Once started, the timed switch in the box would keep them running for five minutes and then shut them down.
 

With the box all set up, Callan retrieved the rest of his gear from his bags: a wet suit and small scuba tank. A heavy-duty underwater welding kit with an Aqualance rod that could cut through two-inch steel in under a minute. A heavy battery for the welding kit. Big mechanical suction cups with handles. Air packs for the battery so he would be able to move it underwater. A kit of tubes, stoppers, and fast drying underwater caulking, and a small medical kit. He put this all in a rubber bag with bladders on it that he would inflate with air from his scuba tank to lighten the load. Staying low, he dragged this gear to the stern side of the
Folie
, facing the ocean. A few boats were passing by, but he could see their green and red bow lights coming from a distance and duck.

The last thing he took from his bag was a large cylinder wrapped in rubber padding. This he held very carefully. It contained dangerous stuff.
 

He studied the plastic-coated copy of the specifications from McAlister one last time. If McAlister had given him the wrong specs, then he would be drilling in the wrong place. Callan shrugged. “So it goes,” he whispered. Tonight he would either be rid of his adversary or finally be dead. Laird Northwin had chased Callan Grant, destroyed one of his most profitable business ventures, and served as McAlister’s cat's-paw to try to recover the tablet Callan took from Moore. Tonight, payment for all those things would come due! Northwin would be eliminated, and Franklin McAlister would learn that he needed to deal with Callan as an equal.
 

Or maybe as a boss!
 

In the metal cylinder, Callan had enough tabun gas to wipe out a brigade.
Slowly.
A nerve agent developed by a German company as an insecticide in 1936, it was a colorless gas with a faint odor of oranges. Callan had selected tabun for his plan because it incapacitated a person quickly but it killed slowly. And it had a known antidote. He needed Northwin alive.
For a while.
Callan needed to find out why Northwin hunted him and whether Faith had spoken truly when she had said that Northwin was holding Alice Sangerman on his ship.

If he held Alice, then either Northwin had the key or Callan could find it by questioning her. Callan would have almost half an hour to get an antidote into Northwin. The rest of the people on the ship would not be so lucky, however. They would drift slowly from unconsciousness to death with little pain.
Northwin will die slowly, with pain.
 

Being heavier than air and relatively volatile, the tabun gas would sink to the deck of the ship’s interior and flow down into the bilges through the extensive drain system on the old North Sea–built ship within ten minutes of being put out from the ship’s ventilation system in an airborne mist. He would have to keep his mask on for that time, but then would be able to move about the ship freely.
First, I need to take out the three guards on deck.
 

Callan slipped quietly over the side of the
Folie
, swam about ten feet away from the vessel’s stern and turned the Uniden radio on. The
Folie
’s
twin diesels started up, filling the water with a soft throbbing. He keyed the Uniden twice and smiled behind his mask as the
Folie
’s engines shifted into gear and thrashed the water into white foam at her stern. McAlister’s specs showed underwater motion detectors and passive sonar sensors for detecting divers. Now the water between the
Folie
and the
Endurance
filled with foam and mud from the Miami River bottom. Callan pictured motion alarms going off on
Endurance
and being turned back off when the person on duty noticed the
Folie
testing her engines. Callan bet that Northwin didn’t expect an underwater attack here at one of the world’s most expensive marinas, right in downtown Miami.

If the alarms did not get turned off, Callan expected lights and shouts from the
Endurance
. He waited for them, but the ship remained silent.
Looks like I bet on the right horse – the lazy one!
 

Callan released the air from his dive vest, and his weighted belt brought him down to the bottom of the river. He hand-walked himself over to the cloud of mud and foam behind the
Folie
and let the wash from the engines push him until he made contact with the
Endurance
’s bow.
 

He located the two powerful neodymium magnets in his equipment bag by their handgrips and used these to walk himself down the slimy, steel hull of the
Endurance
until he arrived at the position he had memorized from the specifications. Callan fired up his underwater welding torch with the special tip, designed to drill through thick steel for underwater oil-rig and wreck-salvage work. The Aqualance quickly made a small hole in the steel hull of the
Endurance
. Callan shoved a high-temperature silicone plug into the rapidly cooling hole before much water entered the yacht. Then he pushed a large-gauge hollow needle through the half-inch-wide plug. The blunt end of the needle attached to a hose that went into his pressurized tabun tank. If McAlister’s specifications were correct, the needle was now poking into the ventilation system, which piped air along the underwater hull to reduce the amount of energy needed for cooling.
You should have put in a bigger fuel tank instead of playing with green tech, Laird!

He opened the valve. So far, the operation had taken three minutes. He attached the padded tabun cylinder to the two magnets and then dropped the rest of the equipment, stripped off his underwater welding mask, and let the current push him down along the
Endurance
’s hull, along the starboard side, where the hawsers ran down to the horn cleats on the seawall.
 

Callan stopped between the waist-thick fenders, which kept the
Endurance
’s hull from hitting the seawall. He put his knife in his teeth and slowly climbed up the fender until he could reach the hawser coming from the bow of the yacht. As his head rose above the seawall, he looked carefully around. At this hour, no one walked on the marina’s path, and a jasmine bush in a large pot mostly obscured Callan’s location. The white flowers smelled sweet.
 

Quickly he went hand over hand up the line and peered into the ship for the deck guards. The one patrolling the main deck should be on the port side now. Seeing and hearing no one, he flipped over the side and lay still. Callan pulled his Glock with its Gemtech silencer out of the dry bag he carried in a rubber fanny pack and screwed the silencer into the barrel of the gun. By now, the crew inside the boat should be passing out from the tabun. He needed to eliminate the night watch before one of them noticed their comrades inside the ship were down.
 

Laird

He sat in his ready room behind the bridge of the
Endurance
, reading on his laptop. Laird’s aide, Jordan, had pieced together a report on Thorn’s mission to Sugarloaf Key, from what they could reconstruct, once their response team had finally managed to clear the scene of local law enforcement. The report spoke of a disaster. Laird clenched his fist, breaking the pen he was holding, his muscles bulging up his arm. Thorn had missed targets before, but losing a whole team was unprecedented. Laird and Michel Thorn had thought differently in many ways, but the tasks of the Guardians, protecting Apple Creek’s many interests—and the one big secret—often required brutality like Thorn’s. At stake stood not just the financial interests of the corporation but also the much more important thing those financial interests protected.
We are the sword and the shield.