“Hello,” he said, dispensing with his official title. Anyone who had this number knew who he really was.
“Peace be unto you,” the caller said. It was Qasim Ranjhani, McKeon’s distant cousin and right-hand man. Though both men used prepaid “burner” phones, they were careful to keep from using names in their conversations.
“And peace be unto to you,” McKeon returned the traditional greeting.
“Our very good friend AK passed away during his recent struggle,” Ranjhani said, a faint tightness in his voice conveying the emotion at the loss. McKeon knew AK was Ali Kadir and the “recent struggle” was the prison break at Dera Ismail Khan.
“That is unfortunate,” the Vice President said, meaning it. Kadir was a trusted friend, dedicated to their cause — pious and unafraid.
“Indeed,” Ranjhani said. “But that is not my reason for calling. I received a message from a friend in Pakistan only moments ago. He saw a man today who resembles the American fugitive you have been looking for.”
“In Pakistan?” McKeon sat up straighter. The fugitive Ranjhani spoke of had to be Jericho Quinn.
“Yes, a short time ago in the mountains near Skardu,” Ranjhani said. “Gaunt, athletic, with the eyes of a killer.”
“That would be him,” McKeon said. “And he is in custody then?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Ranjhani drew a long, whistling breath through his nose, as he often did when he was about to divulge some new piece of great and important information. “He was last seen boarding a helicopter bound for China with my friend’s America-loving wing commander.”
“Does this friend of yours know where the fugitive was going in China?”
“Kashgar, he believes,” Ranjhani said. “I have a contact there who can help us put an end to this problem.”
“That would be welcome news.” McKeon drummed long fingers on the desk, thinking. “Any word on our shipment from China?” Of all the things that occupied his mind as the Vice President, the shipment of the Black Dragon was at the very top. Apart from being the trigger in his overall plan, the weapon would also take care of an extremely bothersome nuisance once and for all.
“Indeed,” Ranjhani said, the smile almost evident in his voice. “It is en route and on schedule. I do not anticipate any problems.”
“Good to hear,” McKeon said. His mind was already jumping back to the nagging problem of Jericho Quinn. “I have a thought. Your man in Kashgar should go forward, but we should not rely on him alone. This particular fugitive has proven too slippery for that. I’ll get word to the Chinese that they have a dangerous killer hiding out in the Western provinces.”
“The Chinese?” Ranjhani scoffed. “They do not trust anyone in your administration.”
“Back channels, my friend,” McKeon said. “Back channels. We’ll nudge our friends in Pakistan to make the Chinese government aware of this trained assassin. Even now he’s certainly plotting some evil terrorist act against their sovereignty and it’s our duty to make them aware. The Chinese may believe him to be an agent of the American government, or they may think he’s working in concert with the Fengs. I don’t particularly care as long as they hunt him down and kill him.”
Chapter 5
Dickey Ng leaned on the painted steel railing alongside the raised house of the 900-foot mega ship, watching a wispy line of black smoke twist up from among the stacked containers on the deck below. Off the bow of the huge vessel, the surface of the indigo water jumped with small, confused waves, as if Neptune held his great cup of ocean with a shaky hand. Ng stood still for a long moment, pondering his four rules, the inviolable laws that had kept him alive and in business for the last eleven years.
Rule One: Smuggle only one item at a time.
Rule Two: Never smuggle anything radioactive.
Rule Three: Never smuggle anything with a heartbeat.
Rule Four: Always accompany what he smuggled.
Rule Four seemed all the more pertinent considering the development of this new plume of smoke. He made his way forward, padding down the metal stairs toward the rows and stacks of multicolored metal containers that took up the bulk of the ship. They were known as TEUs — or Twenty Foot Equivalent Units — and the CCC Loadstar carried over 13,000 of these ubiquitous metal shipping boxes.
Dickey Ng only cared about one of them. He’d followed PVMU 526604-1 from the time it had been loaded with palletized tractor parts in Guangzhou. A little money in the right hands made certain he was the one charged with “stuffing” the container, to ensure that the contents could not shift during the movement of the ship while in transit — and thus the last person to see it before it was sealed. He didn’t know what was in the wooden crate marked with the red peony flower that he’d strapped to a wooden pallet of parts for small garden tractors, but he was fairly certain it was some sort of weapon. Weapons and art were his two most common assignments. There was no law against smugglers profiling their clients, and considering all the inshal-lahs and alaikums going on between the men who’d set up the transportation arrangements, he had a pretty good idea that he wasn’t moving a piece of art. He was being paid two hundred and fifty thousand US dollars to see that the crate was delivered safely to the United States. His four rules made sure that would happen.
Making his way forward the length of two football fields without drawing the attention of the bridge watch took time. Ng moved slowly, staying low and out of sight in the narrow walkways between the towering stacks of metal boxes. He told himself the smoke was nothing. Perhaps it was only one of the sailors hiding out to smoke a cigar, or even some vent in one of the ship’s systems that he was unaware of. He was, after all, a smuggler, not a sailor, and the only paying customer on the CCC Loadstar.
Flying the flag of the Marshall Islands, the mega ship operated with a crew of twenty-six but kept four cabins open for world travelers and adventure seekers. Ng had signed on in Guangzhou, staying out of the way during the frenetic first few days of the journey as the ship stopped to load more TEUs in several more Chinese ports, then Hong Kong, and finally Kogo-shima in southern Japan before heading out to open sea. For the last ten days, life on the ship had settled into a comfortable routine of watches and chores for the crew — made up of primarily Malaysian sailors — and cigarettes and boredom for Ng.
Raised in the teeming streets of Singapore, Dickey Ng found it difficult to breathe with all the fresh air of the open sea. While it wasn’t exactly quiet, the sounds were far too one-dimensional for him. He missed the frantic honk of traffic and the constant buzz of people milling in the back streets. Singapore was a nanny state, but it was his nanny state. Even in a place where nearly everything was against the law, there were so many people stacked on top of each other that a person could blend in, get lost in the crowd.
This was the same sentiment — and the reasoning — he used to complete every job he accepted.
There were plenty of people who could fill a shipping container with plastic dolls that were stuffed with Korean Ecstasy or teddy bears packed with Baggies of uncut heroin. Flat crates of Russian AK-47s fit perfectly in the hollow walls of refrigerated containers.