During that moment of desire, he fell asleep.
Renard dreamt.
He appeared in his favorite childhood place atop Mont Sainte Victoire in France’s southern Provence region. The summit made famous by Paul Cezanne’s impressionist renderings had gained an observatory and living post since Renard’s childhood climbs, but his dream respected his early memories by showing him a peak void of all clutter save his favorite statuesque symbol, the Cross of Provence.
The shining summer sun yielded to storm clouds, and Renard tumbled through space and time until solid steel confines held him in stasis. His subconscious mind told him that the American Trident missile submarine USS Colorado served as his dungeon.
The walls closed in, and fire engulfed the compartment. Gasping for air, he felt his life ending until a door materialized and brought hope. But when the door opened, Jake Slate walked through it with a dagger sticking from the shirt of his naval uniform. The smoke had cleared, but Jake, his eyes wide with pain and anger, instilled terror in him.
“You got me into this!” Jake said.
“I have only tried to help you,” Renard said.
“You exploit people!”
“I help those who need and deserve it.”
Wincing as both his hands grasped the dagger, Jake withdrew the bloodied weapon from his belly and lifted it over his head.
“Who made you God?” he asked.
Renard raised his palms to protect himself from the downward stab, but he knew his arms would give under the former naval officer’s strength.
Remaining captive to his dream, the Frenchman appeared in the passenger seat of a car made unidentifiable by the black smoke rising from its engine compartment. Beside him, Jake somehow drove the vehicle with his hands clasped on the hilt of the dagger that had rematerialized in his gut.
The Frenchman felt the car achieve impossible speed.
“Where are we going, Jake?”
A sly expression supplanted Jake’s visage of pain and fear.
“I’ve told you before in countless dreams.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’re going to die.”
The vehicle disappeared, and Renard felt himself falling beside a canyon wall. As the desolate ground rose to impact him, he found himself inside the control room of a warship that resembled a blended memory of several classes of submarines. Old friends he had recruited from the French Navy, Antoine Remy, Henri Lanier, and Claude LaFontaine, knelt, their arms bound behind them.
“What’s going on?” Renard asked.
In silence, his colleagues bowed their heads.
Jake appeared behind them, wearing khaki pants and a white dress shirt instead of his naval officer’s uniform. He pointed a pistol at Remy’s head.
“Let’s do this,” Jake said.
Crimson splatter exploded from Remy’s forehead. Jake then disappeared and reappeared behind the other two kneeling Frenchmen, putting rounds through their heads before Remy’s corpse hit the deck.
“Why, Jake?”
“It’s better than the fate you’ve sentenced them to.”
“We’ve together survived the Chinese, a rogue Pakistani submarine, and a hijacked Israeli submarine,” Renard said. “Why do you accuse me of sentencing them to horrors?”
“Because you’re playing God again,” Jake said. “And this time you screwed it up.”
Renard awoke to the sound of his phone ringing. As he placed it to his ear, he scanned the streets and saw empty sidewalks. Ahead, he saw midgrade hotels and realized that he would spend the night in a safe and quiet part of the city beyond the reach of President Gomez.
“Hello,” he said.
“I’ve got a status from the Falklands,” Olivia said.
“Yes. I’m all ears.”
“Lieutenant Anderson damaged the Orion enough to stop it. The Ambush is safe.”
“This is excellent news.”
“In fact, the Orion requested an emergency landing at Mount Pleasant. Apparently, the Argentine crew trusts the British enough to treat them humanely.”
“And why wouldn’t they?” Renard asked. “Both sides shared medical assistance in the prior conflict. They are not bitter enemies but people caught on opposite sides of an argument.”
“This could erupt, or this can end peacefully, depending on what I can get Ramirez to do.”
Something burned in the pit of Renard’s stomach that felt like unfinished business.
“What of Lieutenant Anderson?” he asked. “Do you know if he survived? I’m not sure how I would react if I talked him to his death.”
“Good news, Pierre. The Argentine Orion crew confirmed the parachute. There’s a good chance you’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
CHAPTER 16
Jake lowered a cup of coffee to the table and surveyed the Specter’s wardroom. As a formality, he had invited the senior Taiwanese member, a short and plain-looking engineering chief petty officer, to join his group of French colleagues. But the charismatic Kang served as his countrymen’s ambassador to Jake’s inner circle.
Each of the six men that filled the room’s chairs sat in silence digesting Jake’s oration of the latest radio download. Renard had sent confirmation of Gomez’s betrayal, but his French mentor’s failure to foresee his client’s behavior hurt more than the duplicity itself.
He had considered Renard invincible. His clients never dismissed him, and they never operated outside of his will. But now that it had happened, Jake expected a stronger response from the Frenchman, who remained indecisive.
“That’s it?” Kang asked. “He wants us to wait for instructions in the morning? We can’t wait that long. We need to take action now.”
“I agree,” Jake said. “But first things first. Our mission together officially ended three hours ago when we put limpets on the Ambush. I was supposed to be on my way home to my wife tonight, and if I can convince myself that cleaning up this mess is someone else’s problem, I stick to our original schedule and point our bow toward Rio de Janeiro just like Renard planned.”
Jake’s provocative words combined with his banishment of cigarettes from the wardroom caused Claude LaFontaine’s wiry frame to quiver in a combination of protest and nicotine withdrawal.
“Whatever it is that you decide,” LaFontaine said, “I demand that you be honest with your intentions. You cannot leave us in the midst of a campaign.”
“I left you in Taiwan because I had a bout of selfishness,” Jake said. “I’ve already admitted that was wrong, but in my defense, I knew you’d be okay, which you were. But there’s too much uncertainty here for me to leave this ship. I’ll stick around until our business together is done.”
“I believe you, Jake, if for no other reason than the water is too uncomfortably cold for you to swim to shore without a wetsuit.”
Jake appreciated the levity of the Frenchman’s half-joke.
“I’ll consider that a practical vote of confidence,” Jake said. “Good enough. So now that I’m stuck here with you guys wondering what the hell I’m supposed to do, we need to agree if we’re still a crew.”
“Count me in,” Kang said. “Count all of us in from Taiwan. We need all the training we can get.”
“That goes for us, too, Jake,” Henri said. “Pierre has made all of us millionaires many times over by these missions. Some of the new recruits may do it for the money, and I’ve given them my word already that Pierre will compensate them fairly for extending this mission. But the rest of us do it because this is what we do.”