Jonah scowled. “Fifteen,” he said. “And that’s dependent on you staying out of the way of my crew.”
“Deal. Don’t worry. This’ll be a milk run.”
CHAPTER 4
The Augusta-Westland AW139 soared over the South China Sea, bleeding velocity as it slowed from a 191-knot cruising speed in preparation for landing. Losing altitude, the helicopter tilted, panoramic passenger windows dropping to show the moonlit coastline of Okinawa to starboard. The lights of subtropical Naha City and the sprawling American airbase twinkled below as they began the final turn towards to the harbor and the faint silhouette of a waiting superyacht.
Freya Weyland unzipped her orange neoprene survival suit, securing the loose arms in a knot around her waist. Near as they were to their destination, she had not finished her nightly pushup regimen — the exercise driven more by boredom and compulsion than necessity. At five feet ten inches, and with a MMA fighter’s build, Freya’s muscles were impossible to hide, even under the bulky neoprene. She grimaced as she flexed, one arm straining against gravity, white knuckles grinding into the soft carpet of the helicopter’s deck. The other hand was held behind her back, the toes of both feet digging into the seat of her plush leather chair.
Although the luxurious helicopter was designed for a dozen passengers, it held only two, with access to the cockpit blocked by a thick bulkhead covered with elegant brass and burlwood inlays. Her mute minder sat across from her, nearly immobile as he watched one repetition after another, barely blinking as she switched arms and started the count again.
The minder amused her, as did the confluence of cultures surrounding her. He was a slight Japanese man in an expensive Italian suit watching an American woman from his seat on a British-designed, Russian-manufactured, French-appointed helicopter. The sumptuous interior couldn’t help but confirm her belief that luxury and technology had become tediously generic and indistinct. The economic flattening of the earth turned the rich into an army of clones — driving the same cars, carrying the same handbags, vacationing at the same ritzy hotspots, wearing the same designer clothes — and destroying the same planet.
Her minder wasn’t much for conversation. She’d tried English, Dutch, even German, all to no effect. Freya sighed, drawing herself up from the exhausting one-armed pushups and slumping into the soft seat, not bothering to secure the belt as she rolled and stretched her powerful shoulders.
The helicopter couldn’t land soon enough — comfortable as it was, she was ready to get out and walk, hell, she would have swum if the pilots had let her. She’d spent twenty hours onboard, the flight beginning as she was plucked from a patch of open ocean south of the Solomon Islands — where exactly, she didn’t know. And then it was on to Papua New Guinea, across the equator to the Philippines, and finally towards the southernmost island of Japan. The stops along the way were a quick affair, the engines barely slowing to accommodate a well-coordinated refueling by waiting teams at each remote airstrip.
Her Japanese minder was brave — she’d give him that, at least. Most men were intimidated by her physicality, to say nothing of her commanding height, gauged earlobes, tribal tattooing, and long, platinum-blonde dreadlocks. She was used to the stares, the whispered, “Hey, bro check that out.” Her mere presence somehow posed a threat to masculinity everywhere. Surprisingly, the minder had only averted his eyes when she’d changed out of her oily, salt-encrusted sports bra and into a clean white t-shirt, his eyes meeting hers again the moment she was once again dressed.
But brave or not, she could still easily break him in half if she wanted.
The helicopter slowed to a shuddering crawl as it hovered over the bow of a superyacht, wheels emerging from the undercarriage as they prepared to land on the well-lit pad. Little more than an angular shape on the green moonlit waters, the metallic-grey ship was longer than a football field, constructed of seamless aluminum and hardened steel, interrupted only by black privacy glass. But unlike any other ship she’d ever seen, the entire aft third of the yacht was encased in clear glass, the greenhouse within an immaculately terraced artificial landscape of thick vines, flowering plants, and tropical canopy.
The engine and blades barely changed their pitch as the helicopter touched down on the gently rocking pad. Her minder moved, perhaps for the first time since dangling an articulated winch and high-tensile synthetic rope out of the craft as he plucked her, shipwrecked, from the waters off eastern Australia. A hidden motor whirred, opening the sliding door — the minder, with a single outstretched finger, pointed for her to get out.
Thankful to be moving again, Freya stepped down from the helicopter, the bulky orange survival suit still bunched around her waist. Hidden lights flickered to life beneath her feet, guiding her along the length of the bow and towards an open exterior door. She turned to look back at the aircraft, but the engine had already begun to increase in pitch as it rose once more into the dark winter air.
Pausing to take in the cool breeze, the last thing Freya saw before ducking into the well-lit interior were six American fighter jets on maneuvers over the harbor, the screams of their glowing engines splitting the sky.
Now inside, she could see that the heart of the megayacht was an immense, open chamber that ran nearly the entire length of the craft, with steep bulkheads that met at the ceiling to form a perfect triangular apex sixty feet above, their surface made of glinting, machined aluminum. And yet, it all felt so timeless, the space-age design a modern reinterpretation of ancient Japanese architecture. Freya could scarcely believe the scale of the windowless chamber. The length of it ran from the raked bow all the way to the distant stern, almost as if the entire vessel was a shell for this single room. The interior was like nothing she’d seen before, hundreds of glass-encased artifacts and museum pieces displayed under soft LED lighting.
A small part of her brain tickled as she remembered the two art history classes she’d taken in college before her expulsion, but she couldn’t identify any of them. She gazed intently at each in turn, passing Dutch-marked artillery, late nineteenth-century bayonet-affixed infantry rifles, ships’ bells, brass-encased marine telescopes, the uniforms of Japanese generals and sailors alike. The carefully curated collection surprised her as it eschewed any of the samurai martial instruments antiquarians had come to prize. Even so, there were no photographs or paintings of any variety. All of the artifacts were constructed of indelicate metals and woods, with a sort of blocky tactile sensibility that defied the typical holdings of a museum.
A soft, commanding voice echoed from the far end of the chamber, its speaker lost to the darkness.
“Remove your shoes, please.”
Freya stopped dead, weighing her options. The survival suit didn’t have leg cuffs; the neoprene was designed to wrap all the way around her boots to prevent the outflow of body heat. There was no easy way to remove them without removing the whole suit. But what option did she have? She nodded in reluctant agreement, peeling off the lower half of the neoprene to her ankles, then awkwardly pulling the thick rubber free of one foot, then the other, leaving her dressed in the clean T-shirt, she’d donned in the helicopter, and ratty, rolled-up khaki cargo shorts — all she owned in the world. She dumped her heavy black combat boots next, untying the fraying red laces and abandoning them to a salty puddle on the immaculate bamboo flooring. Barefoot, Freya rose to stand.