“Excellent.”
“What’s happening?” asked Warda.
“We’re after a woman who’s very important to us.”
“Will you kill her?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why is she so important?”
Brent smiled, unable to tell her, of course. “She came to the Seychelles for a reason. Maybe the same reason you’re here. Who’s Manoj?”
She pursed her lips and studied him again, as though trying to decide if the color of his eyes made him trustworthy. His gaze grew more emphatic, and he began to nod. “Warda, please, there isn’t much time.”
“There never is. I used to say that to my father all the time. But he never believed me…”
Suddenly she told him everything: who Manoj was, his plans for her country, and the fact that her brother was set to be Dubai’s next heir. She told him in rapid fire, as though slowing down would change her mind. He thought he should have recorded the conversation, that it all came at him so quickly he might forget a significant detail. He repeated it to himself: Manoj Chopra was heading to London to make contact with Hussein Al Maktoum, a young man he’d been searching for since the nuclear exchange.
The Snow Maiden was connected to the royal family and connected to Manoj Chopra and Dubai. It was no coincidence that all three were in the Seychelles… and Haussler, of course, had come for the party, charged with capturing the Snow Maiden.
Was the Snow Maiden after Warda? Or, perhaps, the young sheikh? Or maybe she was after Chopra, the finance man. He wanted to turn over the bank accounts to the sheikh.
Maybe she wanted the money? Interesting. She had to be working for another entity, but Dennison’s intel had turned up nothing on that organization thus far.
After a long sip of water, Brent said, “So you’ll come back to London with us — or if you’d like I can arrange to have you taken to the United States, along with your sisters. Maybe you could work things out with our government.”
“I’ll go to London to be with my sisters. That’s where I belong.”
“You’ll need more protection — better than what you have. They’ll use you to get to your brother.”
“I know.”
“Then let me help with that.”
“Okay.”
Muffled gunfire from above sent Brent’s gaze toward the door.
“More trouble,” Warda said.
“Stay here.”
Brent rushed up to the deck, where he cried, “What do we got?” as gunfire ripped across the yacht and he dropped behind the gunwale.
“Couple of punks still on the cigar boat,” said Lakota. Brent stole a look out across the starboard bow, where the cigar boat was rising slowly on the waves.
“Gas ’em and board.”
Lakota relayed the orders to Daugherty and Heston, who fired CS gas grenades that plopped into the cigar boat’s cockpit, hissing and creating a thick column of smoke that sent the thugs leaping overboard. Brent asked the navy boys to bring the yacht up alongside the cigar boat, after which his people climbed onto the sleek craft.
“Sorry, Captain,” said Daugherty after a minute’s worth of searching. “Looks like another decoy.”
EIGHT
Within twelve hours Brent and his team were onboard a V8-99 Sphinx, the next generation of V-TOL troop transport/fighters. According to the Sphinx’s designers, many of the problems that had plagued the old V-22 Osprey had been solved, and this new bird was a composite of multiple designs and a complete retooling of that old aircraft.
Despite that, Brent held his breath during the take-off. That this death trap didn’t look much different from the old Osprey further unnerved him. There’d been one particular hard landing in the mountains of Afghanistan that had left him wearing his breakfast. Ah, the good old days…
With noise-canceling headphones pressed tightly to his ears and a small boom microphone at his lips, he stared down at the computer screen built into the seat ahead and positioned just above his knees. He said hello to Colonel Pavel Doletskaya.
The gray crew cut, barrel chest, and broad shoulders were stereotypical for a man who’d spent most of his life in the Russian military and intelligence services. A keen sense of competition and pride kept most of those individuals in top shape, more so as they got older because they wanted to prove they were still agile and transformed themselves into athletes comparable to colleagues half their age. That visage of power and prestige was, however, deflated by the baggy orange jumpsuit with a prisoner number emblazoned on his breast. Dennison sat beside him, and it appeared that the conference call was being held in the colonel’s prison cell somewhere within JSF headquarters in Tampa. The room was windowless, with a small bunk positioned in one corner and a large stack of books piled ten or twelve high, as though Doletskaya were plowing daily through a ton of material. Access to electronic texts must have been forbidden or limited.
The old Russian cocked a brow. “Hello, Captain. It’s my understanding that you came very close to capturing her.”
Brent carefully measured his words and his tone. “Not close enough, sir, but I’m confident we’ll bring her in.”
“Pride cometh before the fall, Captain. You won’t get her without my help.”
Brent repressed a shrug. “I will say she’s one of the best escape artists I’ve ever seen, except for a few muhajadeen I met while in the ’Stan. She knows how to misdirect and set up those decoys, that’s for sure.”
“Oh, I can assure you, Captain, she’s much better than anyone you’ve ever met. You’ll see.”
“I hope I don’t. We’ll get her in London. What’s she after? The boy? Maybe we can get two steps ahead and set up an ambush.”
The Russian turned to Dennison and grinned darkly. “You’ve sent a butcher to capture an artist.”
“No, I’ve sent an unconventional thinker. Now then, Captain Brent, we know that Chopra is trying to find Hussein. And we think the Snow Maiden may be after the boy as well. Find the boy and we find the Snow Maiden.”
“It’s that simple,” Brent said sarcastically. “Now what about Warda? She give us anything else?”
“She won’t tell us where her brother is, and I don’t blame her, so we’ll have to tail Chopra. We have to assume he’s gone undercover as well, so it’s going to take me a while to pick him up. Once we do, you’ll need to move quickly.”
“I understand, but that seems to preclude any chance of an ambush. We need to get ahead of them, not chase.”
“In a perfect world, Captain,” snapped Dennison. “At least the Voecklers will arrive in London ahead of you. They’ll remain with Warda and her sisters until we pick up Chopra. I’ve worked out a deal with the Brits to provide a security force for Warda and her sisters, once we’re gone.”
Brent nodded and directed his gaze to Doletskaya. “Colonel, is there anything else you can tell me about our target? I mean something not in the files, something you think might help us catch her?”
The old colonel simpered. “If she’s going to London, you might find her at a little pub called the Bread and Roses on Clapham Manor. It’s run by a trades union council and associated with the Workers’ Beer Company. They raise money for workers’ rights causes. She always fought for the little guy, donated money to lots of causes, cancer research, and many others. She’ll be in the big beer garden out back.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?” Dennison asked the colonel.
“It didn’t occur to me until he asked.”
Dennison shook her head in disgust. “Brent, I’ll get some people there a-sap.”