But Cole was sure of one thing; he had found the pirates’ hideout, the lair of Liang Kebangkitan.
Now all he had to do was find out if the Fu Yu Shan and its crew were still inside.
The cave itself was illuminated by high-wattage floodlights which ran on huge portable generators, and Cole knew that he wouldn’t be able to surface without being seen. After ditching his SCUBA gear on the far bank — fearful it would leave a tell-tale stream of bubbles rising to the surface as he entered the cave — Cole swam back across the river with just his fins, submerging as he neared the entrance.
He knew he didn’t have a lot of time, but slowed down as he entered anyway, careful to check for underwater booby-traps or surveillance devices. He swam over some steel netting which was designed to trap a submersible, but otherwise passed into the lair without a problem.
He tried to keep to the darkest, most shadowed parts of the water, knowing that if he was seen, he would be dead — and the pirates would be able to carry on keeping their hideout undiscovered.
Cole paused, his powerful lungs allowing him to stay submerged for minutes at a time, and slowly let his waterproof portable periscope break the surface of the still waters of the inner dock. He fitted his eye to the rubberized seal of the eyepiece and had his first real look at the base of operations for Liang Kebangkitan.
The cave was immense, a vast cavern in the hillside; Cole could see a variety of portacabins across the far side of the dock, leading deeper into the cave. In front of them was a row of marine craft including several fast RIBs, and what looked like a fairly large sailing yacht.
But on the other side — its vast bulk covering the inner channel in the shadow in which Cole was hiding — was the immense cargo ship, the Fu Yu Shan.
As the periscope tracked across the docking bay, Cole depressed a switch which activated an internal camera in the viewfinder, taking shot after shot after shot of the pirate’s lair.
Finally he let the periscope come back under and propelled himself silently further inland, until he could feel the rough steel hull of the ship under his hands. He slipped around the ship until he was between the hull and the wooden dock, and — covered in shadow — finally allowed himself to come to the surface.
He took in a sweet lungful of tropical air, careful not to make any noise as he did so, knowing that a sharp gasp would soon bring people running, and assessed the situation. He had found the ship, but he still didn’t know whether the hostages were here too, or had been shipped out to some other location. Before he contacted the US government, he had to be sure that the crew was here too.
There was only one thing for it; he would have to go ashore.
Just over two hours later, Cole was back on the far side of the river, wearing dry clothes and watching the cave entrance through military-grade night-vision binoculars.
His time in the cave had been short but adrenalin-fuelled, as he crept through the shadows, securing his special equipment in several hard-to-detect places.
Since slipping back into the warm river waters and swimming back to his observation post on the opposite bank, Cole had already learned a great deal more about the lair, and was ready to make his call.
He pulled the encrypted satellite phone towards him, and dialed the number for the White House.
‘I need to talk to the president,’ he said when the call was answered, careful to keep his voice low.
He was rewarded by a laugh at the other end of the line. ‘Take a number pal,’ a young man’s voice said with heavy sarcasm. ‘Everybody wants to speak to the president.’
‘Tell her it’s about the Fu Yu Shan,’ Cole said as calmly as he could, impatience building within him; here he was opposite the pirate hideout that the entire world was looking for, and he was being dicked around by a kid with a chip on his shoulder.
‘The what?’ the voice asked.
Cole’s patience snapped suddenly; he didn’t have time for this. ‘The fucking cargo ship that was hijacked and everyone in the entire world is looking for!’ he whispered violently. ‘Now get me the fucking president on the phone, now!’
The authority in Cole’s voice caused hesitation on the other end of the line, and Cole knew the man was weighing his options.
‘The president is busy,’ he said eventually. ‘She can’t take unsolicited calls. Who is this? I’ll make an appointment for you to call back when she’s free.’
‘Trust me, she’ll take my call,’ Cole assured him, not wanting to play this card, not wanting anyone to know that he was still alive. But what other choice did he have?
‘Tell her that it’s the Asset.’
Ellen Abrams’ blood ran cold as she heard the words –
I’ve got a call here from someone calling himself the Asset, claims to have information on that hijacked ship, the Fu Yu Shan.
The Asset.
Mark Cole.
A man from the past, a man who had saved her twice; recently, when her own bodyguard had tried to assassinate her, and once a long time before, back when she’d been a senator visiting Iraq on a fact-finding mission for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Mark Cole had still been known by his real name.
Mark Kowalski — a SEAL team member from Hamtramck, Michigan; before that treacherous bastard Charles Hansard had got his claws into him and destroyed his life.
Kowalski had been recruited by Hansard directly from SEAL Team Six into a new group that was being formed, based on the unit known as the Intelligence Support Activity but with an even lower profile, and an even broader remit.
Only two years into active operations for Hansard’s coyly-named Systems Research Group, Kowalski had been caught on a mission in Pakistan and imprisoned for over a year in a hellish jail in the remote Northern provinces. He had eventually been found — entirely by chance — by Hansard, who’d been visiting the prison on other business entirely.
Kowalski had already been declared KIA — Abrams herself had spoken at his funeral — and Hansard had made him an offer a patriot like Kowalski found impossible to refuse; become an off-the-books ‘contract laborer’, unconnected to the US government but entrusted with the most dangerous, the most secretive, and the most vital missions in existence; jobs that nobody else was capable of.
Abrams didn’t know the exact details, but much of the work involved assassinations; apparently Kowalski had learned some form of method while in prison that allowed him to kill without detection.
But to be completely unconnected to the US government, military, and intelligence services, Kowalski had to be reborn; and so Mark Cole had come into existence, his appearance altered through plastic surgery and a completely new life created for him to fill.
‘Mark Cole’ was a diving instructor from Phoenix, Arizona, who lived with his newly-wedded wife Sarah at a beach house in the Cayman Islands; a man whose real job as America’s spearhead covert operative meant that he could be called into action at anytime, anywhere in the world.
Nobody in the US government who used his services knew who he was; they just knew that if they needed a job doing, they went to Charles Hansard and asked for use of the Asset.
The Asset.
A man who had lost his wife and two children and had then disappeared, assumed dead in an inferno that engulfed a house in the Austrian village of Kreith.
A man she owed her life to.
She smiled. So she had been right all these months; he was still alive.
When all those people, part of Hansard’s violently reactionary group known as the Alumni, had perished in that ‘accidental’ fire at the hotel in Mexico, Abrams had wondered if Cole had somehow managed to survive, and had gone on to exact his revenge.