“Go after him. Now,” croaked Desh as loudly as he could, but it came out as little more than a whisper, and couldn’t be heard over the noise of the helos and the Pacific. He began to shiver as the men wrapped jackets around him and secured him in a gurney that had been lowered from one of the helicopters.
As soon as Desh was lifted into the aircraft he motioned feebly for a set of headphones.
“What time is it?” he said into the microphone when the headphones had been placed over his head.
The mercs looked confused by this question, but one of the men told him.
Desh nodded. Frey had now been enhanced for almost twenty-five minutes. “Go after him,” he whispered. “But keep your distance. Just keep him in sight. Exactly forty minutes from now, board the ship and take him out.”
“Why wait?” asked one of the mercs. “Let’s end this asshole.”
Trying to board the Codon while Frey was still enhanced would be suicide, regardless of the number of men or their skills. But once Frey snapped back to normal he’d be unable to take another gellcap for at least a few hours. The brain had a remarkable plasticity, but making it toggle from amped to normal to amped again in rapid succession was too much to ask of it.
“Forty minutes,” insisted Desh as forcefully as he could manage. “Not a minute less. Cheat on this and he’ll kill us all. Guaranteed.” And with that, Desh’s eyes slid shut and he drifted into a troubled unconsciousness.
***
Desh awoke five hours later with an IV in his arm and the hole in his side stitched closed. One of the mercenaries had kept watch over him while he was out, an Israeli named Ari Regev, who had been a member of the Mossad.
Desh turned his head toward the Israeli. “What happened?” he asked, feeling much better than he had expected.
“After you passed out,” said Regev, his Israeli accent unmistakable, “I flew you directly here. To a medic friend of mine who doesn’t ask questions. We figured one helo could easily do the job.”
“And the target?”
The olive-skinned mercenary frowned. “While I was bringing you here, the team boarded his boat, which was still traveling at full speed. They waited forty minutes like you asked.” He shook his head. “They went through every inch, but didn’t find anything alive, not even a jook.” He waved his hand, searching for the English equivalent. “Um . . . cockroach.”
“Impossible. He was too far out to swim it. Not this guy.”
“I agree. From the air, he looked like he’d have trouble making it across a swimming pool. But the chopper executed a search pattern and didn’t spot any swimmers.”
“So how? I disabled his jet ski. Could he have met up with another boat?”
Regev shook his head. “No, nothing around for miles. He scubad out.”
“Impossible. No scuba gear in his boat.”
“When the team couldn’t find a swimmer, they tore the ship apart. Literally. That bonus you offered had everyone very motivated. They found a hidden compartment, with molded containers in the shape of two oxygen tanks, fins, and two powered propulsion units. One set was still there—the other gone.”
“Shit!” said Desh, picturing Frey in scuba gear, calmly holding on to a propulsion unit as it pulled him rapidly toward shore, at a depth that would make him invisible from the air. “Now that bastard will go to ground. He wanted me to find him this time. Next time won’t be so easy.”
“Look on the bright side,” suggested Regev.
“The bright side?” repeated Desh, raising his eyebrows.
“Yes. You should be dead. The path of that bullet was just right. You took a very clean hit that missed anything vital. We pumped some blood back in, sealed you up, and you’ll be good as new in no time. You’re a very lucky man, my friend.”
“It wasn’t luck. He needed me alive and flailing on the waves. If I was clearly dead, you’d have bombed the shit out of him before he could don his scuba gear.”
The Israeli shook his head. “I saw how quickly he fired. Without aiming. It was a random shot. It was just dumb luck that he missed anything vital.”
“If you say so,” whispered Desh wearily.
49
Desh had Regev assure the rest of the team they would get their full bonuses for a job well done, despite the outcome. He had made the mistakes, not them. Besides, he wanted to use this group again, and if you had unlimited funds, overpaying was a good way to ensure loyalty.
After Regev left, he put in a call to Kira, using a secure Skype function on his specially-made phone, which hadn’t been affected at all by its immersion in the Pacific. He quickly described his encounter with Eric Frey. She listened with great interest and then filled Desh in on her conversation with Jake, letting her husband know that Matt Griffin was in a military supplied jet en route to South Africa.
“After the initial conversation,” said Kira, “I told Jake to call me back in a half hour. Then I took a gellcap and locked myself in the enhancement room so I could be a lie detector. The colonel was telling the truth about everything. He didn’t exaggerate the nanite threat at all.”
“Too bad,” said Desh. “Because that is some scary shit.”
“Tell me about it. I thought it might have been a ruse, but no such luck. And he’s telling the truth about the truce as well. He’ll honor it. And he’ll let Matt go his merry way when he’s done.” She paused. “I gave Matt more gellcaps than he could ever use. Given how ugly he gets, that’s a big risk. But Jake is right. Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures. We have to know what these nanites are doing here. And even enhanced Matt will realize it’s in his best interest to figure it out.”
“How many people aboard Copernicus will know about Matt and the gellcaps?”
“Jake and two others.”
“You vetted Jake when he couldn’t lie to you. But what about these other two? You sure they’ll be able to withstand the temptation of knowing there’s a supply of gellcaps within easy reach?”
“I let Jake know the pills will be in a specially made stainless steel bottle that will only open for Matt. Only his thumbprint on the top of the canister, and his fingerprints around the side, at an exact pressure unique to Matt, will do the trick. Anyone else tries to open it and the pills will be destroyed. And if Matt is coerced, the canister will detect an increase in his pulse and destroy the contents as well.”
Desh whistled. “That’s quite the upgrade from the single-pill key ring container. When did you have the time to design that?”
“I didn’t,” replied Kira with a wide grin, her blue eyes sparkling with an incandescent radiance that only she could generate. “It’s a total bluff. You can save a lot of time that way.”
Desh laughed. “Very true.”
“And I’d bet my life they’ll buy it, too.”
“No doubt about it,” agreed Desh, but a moment later the smile vanished from his face. “That will prevent the theft of Matt’s pills. But what about releasing him when it’s over? Given what you’ve said, we can trust Jake. But again, the other two he’s told.” He paused. “Not so much.”
“Unfortunately true,” admitted Kira.
“I think this may have been a mistake,” said Desh. “Matt could have studied these nanites from headquarters. We’ve got all the equipment we need. He could communicate anything he learned to Jake on the Copernicus. Our government wouldn’t keep it a secret. Not for something like this.”
“We can’t be certain of that. And this way, Matt will have a team of nanotechnologists and software geniuses to draw on.”