Whichever trooper was operating the engine cranked it up, and the shuttle, built to hold sixty people and only half full, moved away from its moorings against the barge. The motion got worse. Anybody who was prone to seasickness was going to be giving up everything they’d eaten for a month. Fortunately, that wasn’t one of Michaels’s afflictions.
The boat rocked and shook, pitched dangerously, but with its back finally turned to the wind, straightened out a little. It was still a long way to the ship.
As the boat slogged through the four-foot seas, Michaels’s virgil buzzed against his hip. He’d left it on vibratory mode. Good, since he’d never have heard it in this wind and rain. He grabbed the unit. The caller number ED didn’t mean anything, and the little screen was blank, no visual. He held it to his ear so he could hear better.
“Hello?”
“Alex, it’s me.”
Toni!
“Babe, what-?”
“Where are you?” she cut in.
“On a boat heading for the ship,” he said. “We’ll be there in five minutes.”
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“Thank God. Listen, I’m on a public phone. Jay was right, about everything. The balloon goes up tomorrow. I’ve got all the details. I’ll call again later, but right now, I’ve got to go. I love you.”
She discommed.
A malignant worm roiled in his gut.
“What?” Howard said.
“Toni. She’s in some kind of trouble. Enough to risk calling on an open line. She says she’s got the evidence we need.”
“My God,” Howard said.
“Hurry this thing up,” Michaels said.
Howard made a hand signal. The boat’s engine roared louder, but it didn’t seem to move any faster.
Santos couldn’t figure it out for a second when he saw Keller lying on the bed. What, had she screwed him stupid? He was just lying there, no shirt, in his pants, curled up in a ball. Was he afraid Santos was going to beat him again?
“Keller. Keller!”
The man whimpered. “Don’t! I didn’t mean to!”
Santos strode to the bed, reached down, and grabbed Keller by the hair, jerking him up. “What are you whining about?”
“I didn’t mean to!” he said. “She beat me. She made me tell her!”
Santos turned to look behind him. “Tell her what?”
“About Omega!”
Santos let go of Keller’s hair and slapped him with his free hand, but only once, then ran back to where he had left the woman.
She was gone, of course.
He looked out into the hall. No sign of her.
Santos pulled his com from his belt and thumbed the emergency button. ‘This is Santos,” he said, when security answered. “There’s a woman on board, short, black hair, maybe twenty-eight, thirty, calls herself ‘Mary John
A
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i son.’ Dressed in jeans, running shoes, a black T-shirt, fend her. Find her now!”
| The officer at the boat moorage was amazed. He looked tat the boat with its drenched tourists. “You must be crazy |to come across in weather like this! Somebody’s head is \gonna roll!” He looked at the boat’s pilot. “And who the ^fcell are you? Where is Marty? This is his shift.”
The pilot grinned and shoved his Walther pistol into iJlhe officer’s belly. “Marty got sick. If you behave your?self, you won’t catch what he’s got.”
The officer froze; his face went white under his rain hat.
“Let’s move it, people!” Fernandez said.
Michaels was first up the ladder.
Toni had solved the problem of where to hide by running past doors until she found one that was open. She slipped into a passenger cabin, saw a maid cleaning the room, and stepped into the bathroom before the woman got a good look at her.
In Spanish, Toni said, “Hey, you can leave that,” she called out. “Come back later please, okay?” The maid said, “Esta bien, Senora,” and left.
Once the maid was gone, Toni checked out the cabin. No computer, so she couldn’t try to upload the disc into a Net Force receptacle, or even some friend’s mailbox. Damn!
She couldn’t stay here long, she knew. Santos would have put out an alarm by now. If somebody asked the maid if she’d seen a none americana, maybe Toni’s speaking Spanish would throw them off. Maybe not But the ship was rigged with surveillance cams all over, and she didn’t want to let one of those see her. Alex had said he’d be here in a few minutes. If they were about to start some kind of operation, all she had to do was stay hidden until it was done.
That was all.
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Michaels looked at his watch. In ten minutes, everybody on the assault team was supposed to be in position. In fourteen minutes, everybody would put on their specially augmented LOSIR headsets, and sixty seconds later, they would pull guns, fire off explosive charges that would blow open secured doors, and, in theory, take over the ship before anybody could wipe the computers. He had already slipped his headset from the bag John Howard had given him, and had it tucked away in his shirt pocket, ready to go.
But-where was Toni?
Michaels went belowdecks, and wandered the halls, looking. There were some security types with headcoms of their own moving around purposefully, and he was sure they were looking for Toni. Or maybe they were looking for tourists carrying bags. He slipped the bag with the gun in it behind a potted plant as two of the men approached him.
Unfortunately, one of them spotted the bag. “This yours?”
Michaels looked at them. “What? Never saw it before.”
One of the guards picked up the bag.
Alex didn’t want them opening it. Quickly, he said. “Hey, you looking for a little brunette?”
The man about to open the bag stopped so suddenly he almost fell. “You’ve seen her?”
“Yeah, she came out up on the deck. Back by the swimming pool.”
“Thank you, sir.” The man took off, talking into his com.
That would help, Michaels thought. As long as Toni wasn’t hiding out at the swimming pool. But this was bad. He looked at his watch. Twelve minutes.
Santos didn’t know what was going on, but he knew the little secretary was not what she pretended to be. He should have known. Those legs didn’t belong to some
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1 who sat on her butt all day. This woman had moves, was getting stupid to trust what he saw. He had to find her. She was a spy, and if Keller had lied over and given up the operation, it could mean big ouble. And as much as he hated to do it, he had to tell
sy.
When he found her in her office and did, she was not leased.
“What?! Are you sure?”
“I left Keller lying on his bed curled up like a baby, bing,” he said. “He gave it up.” “We’ve got to find her before she can get any of this ffoff the ship!”
“My men are all looking. Somebody saw her by the
swimming pool.”
Missy shook her head. “Why would she go there? She fcan’t get off the ship there. She can’t hide there. Shut off I all the outgoing communication.”
“Already done.”
“The swimming pool, no, that doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe she isn’t alone,” he said. “Maybe she’s meeting |somebody.”
“Find her, Roberto!”
| Howard looked at his watch, then at Jay Gridley. “Stay |behind me,” he said.
“Don’t worry about that.”
Howard adjusted the spider silk vest under his still-wet Hawaiian shirt. It was too tight. But that’s what he got
for letting Michaels have his and using one of the spares.
He loosened the side tabs a little. Better.
On the minute, Howard and Jay both pulled their augmented-LOSIR com headsets from their packs, designed especially to work indoors and around corners, and i slipped them on. “Don’t forget your nose plugs,” he said. Jay nodded, touched his nostrils. Already in. “This is Howard. We are still on.” Howard stepped to the card reader, put a strip of plastic
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explosive onto it, and waved Jay back. He looked at his watch, counted down the seconds.
“-four… three … two… one … now!”
The card reader flashed like a strobe and exploded.
After a beat, the door slid open and two armed guards jumped out, waving pistols.
Howard sprayed them with emetic foam, a burst that looked as if a can of shaving cream had exploded. Thick white billows of the stuff enveloped the pair. They both screamed, and both started retching. Great night for reverse peristalsis, he thought.
It would have been safer to have shot them, but they didn’t want to kill anybody if they didn’t have to.
Even as the guards fell, he was moving. “Go, go!”
Jay was right behind him.
\J
37
Michaels heard Howard over the headset, then felt the small explosions through his- shoes, and knew the teams had begun their assault on the computer decks. It would take only a few seconds, and with luck, they’d be able to shut down the computers before they destroyed their information.