With the South African distracted, Skyler came out of his concealment and covered the space between him and the pile of weapons. He grabbed a shotgun and then backed away into the darkness. Knebel returned to the middle of the room — a carryall bag lay beside the guns. He bent to pick it up, but froze.
“The inside of a glacier is a very cold place.” Skyler stepped from the shadows.
A momentary look of surprise flashed across Knebel’s face. But it faded back to an expression of disregard. “You’re more resourceful that I imagined.” He straightened — the gun at his side in one hand and the carryall in the other.
“And you are a ruthless murderer.” Skyler aimed the shotgun.
“This was strictly business — nothing personal.” Knebel smiled crookedly.
“Tell that to the families of those men.” Skyler nodded at the mangled heap of dead bodies.
“I’m a professional. I have a job to do and I do it.” Knebel glanced over his shoulder for an instant toward the containers, then back to Skyler. “I suggest you drop your weapon and surrender. You’ll never leave here alive if you don’t.”
“There is one other option.”
With a thud, the carryall hit the floor. As the South African pulled the barrel of the machine pistol into a firing position, Skyler’s shotgun boomed. The blast slammed into Knebel’s face, ripping it into torn flesh and splintered bone.
Knebel squeezed the trigger of the machine pistol sending a white-hot stream of bullets arcing into the air. The second blast of Skyler’s shotgun crushed Knebel’s head and his body dropped into a heap on the ground. With a final twitch, his muscles convulsed, then stilled.
Skyler stood over the body pointing the 12-gauge at the dead man — a trail of smoke snaked from the barrel. Knebel’s own mother wouldn’t recognize him, Skyler thought, looking at what was once a face. He was about to slip back into the shadows to find Gates when a voice called out.
“Don't move!” It was deep and authoritative, and filled the hollow emptiness of the old cannery.
Skyler stiffened and tightened his grip on the shotgun.
“Drop your gun,” the voice commanded.
It slipped from Skyler's hands and hit hard on the dirt floor.
“Put your arms up and turn around slowly.”
He did as he was told. In the dim light of the lantern, he saw five men dressed in naval-style uniforms, each aiming a weapon.
The leader stepped forward until he was only a few feet away. He glanced at the body on the floor — steaming blood still oozing from the wounds. Looking at Skyler again, he walked over to the bullet-riddled bodies of the Inuits. After a moment, he returned, this time his gun lowered. “So, Mr. Knebel. I got your message that you would be eliminating the Inuits as soon as we arrived, but who is this one?” He gestured to the body.
Hesitating only a second, Skyler said, “That's what's left of the Director of OceanQuest, Matt Skyler.”
TIGER SHARK
“Escandoza has a second sub, sir.” White House Chief of Staff Nathan Templeton stood in front of the President’s desk. “It’s disappeared in the North Atlantic with the korium on board.”
The President stared back in silence, his hand stopped writing his notes. “My God. This is confirmed?”
“Yes, sir.” Templeton tensed.
“Satellite surveillance tracked the sub leaving the coast of Greenland before it submerged,” said Thomas Lancaster. The Secretary of the Navy had accompanied Templeton into the Oval Office. “Our SOSUS listening stations along the continental shelf are trying to establish contact.”
“How in the hell did he get a second…?” The President wiped his hand across his chin, already knowing the answer — just another business expense for the richest man in the world. “We should have said screw you to Denmark and gone into Greenland with a company of Seals to protect OceanQuest.”
“And caused a major international incident,” Templeton said.
The President stared at him. “I can assure you, Thomas, if that sub makes it to Colombia, I’m not going to ask anyone’s permission to go in and crush Escandoza.”
“We hope it won’t come to that, sir,” Lancaster said.
The President sighed. “Why didn’t you know about it? Destroy it before it even got to Greenland?”
“We had no clue that Escandoza had a second boat. Nothing in our intelligence led us to consider that possibility. We just weren’t looking in the right direction.”
“Then start looking in the right direction, Thomas. Either capture or sink it.”
“It’s not quite that cut and dry, Mr. President.” Lancaster eased down into one of the two chairs in front of the President’s desk. “We're talking hundreds, perhaps thousands of commercial surface vessels between Greenland and Colombia, and possibly dozens of submarines. Some are from the former Soviet Navy, the same type as the pirate sub. Confronting the wrong one would lead to a serious problem or embarrassment. To be honest, sir, finding and destroying any modern warship is difficult. But our strategic sensors are focused on that task. We’ve formed a 100 kilometer circle around the last known position and started dropping sonobuoys along the expected route. We’ve laid out a search pattern that will provide the highest potential for pinpointing the sub’s location. Our land-based ASW aircraft are ready to concentrate on any contact before the sub has a chance to escape.”
“I don’t like that word — escape.” The President felt his patience wearing thin.
“It’s a relative term, sir,” Lancaster said.
Slamming his hand down on the desk, the President said, “Hunt the damn thing down and destroy it. Is that understood?”
Templeton gave Lancaster a quick glance before saying, “There’s something we haven’t told you, sir.”
The President glared at the Chief of Staff.
“Matt Skyler is on board.”
The Carupano plowed through the heavy swells of the North Atlantic, black smoke pouring from its funnel. Registered to a Panamanian shipping firm, the 142-foot freighter carried diesel tractors and road graders manufactured in the United Kingdom along with irrigation pumps from Portugal. Its captain, a bull of a man named Sampson, watched from the bridge as the dark storm swept in, churning the ocean. Rain pelted the windows and the wind howled like a wounded animal. Sampson steadied himself as the deck rolled. He looked at his first officer beside him. “We’re in for a rough ride.”
“We’ve seen worse, captain,” the smaller man said with little enthusiasm as he tried to sip his jiggling cup of coffee.
Sampson shrugged and walked away. “I’ll be in my cabin if you need me.”
Ten minutes later, the captain lay on his bunk watching “Confessions of a Call Girl” on his iPad. He had watched it a dozen times since leaving port and no longer felt an arousal at the sight of the women spreading themselves before him. As he turned the tablet off and stared at the ceiling, he wondered why he had been ordered to leave Liverpool so quickly with two major cargo shipments still sitting in the warehouse. And why the ridiculous route across the North Atlantic, an area of the ocean he detested? He must travel thousands of miles out of the way costing him wasted days. It made no sense at all. But there was one consolation: triple pay. The first time the company had ever offered it. For that kind of money, the captain admitted before drifting off to sleep, he would sail to Colombia by way of Sydney.
The knot in the pit of Skyler’s stomach tightened as he stood in the control room of the missile submarine watching the activity around him. Surrounded by the enemy reminded him of the huge capture-the-flag games he played at the academy. The game covered acres of Maryland backwoods — one team's flag on a small island surrounded by a frigid creek, and the other in a deep, rocky gorge half a kilometer away. In the championship game of his senior year, Skyler had switched jerseys with a captured soldier and sneaked into the opposition's camp, stole the flag and won the trophy for his classmates. He felt that same knot in his stomach as he stood on the bridge of the pirate sub.