To his employees, the ship's owner was known as "the director." He was a large, tall man with a full head of dark hair that was turning gray at his sideburns, the tanned skin of one who spent too much of his life outdoors, and eyes of a green so deep they seemed to speak of the ocean's depths. His gruff mannerisms were well suited to one who had begun his career as a Special Forces Officer and later made a vast fortune providing discreet services to elite clientele.
He was a soldier of fortune to some, a facilitator of the illicit to others. To those who sought to right perceived wrongs and injustices, he was God's just instrument. In truth though, he was none of those things. He was simply a man who understood the dangerous dynamics of wealth, power and inevitable iniquity.
He provided services for a price, often in support of causes he believed in. He built his reputation as one of the best in the business on three basic tenets.
Never take a job you do not intend to see through to the end.
Never pass judgment on those who hire you.
Never reveal your client's identity.
Never. Never. Never.
The director had lived up to those tenets for over two decades. His clients knew his firm handshake that sealed every deal was an absolute guarantee that not only would the job be done, but it would be done exactly to the specifications negotiated.
This afternoon, as he walked along the sundeck and stared out at the vast expanse of sea before him, he felt a deep disquiet that was settling in his bones and he knew there was nothing he could do to ease it.
He'd had contracts that had gone wrong before, contracts that he'd regretted, but he'd always seen them through and made things right. His years of successes had made him many powerful friends and allies. Friends and allies who would do anything for him. He had only to ask.
Today, however, as he stood out under the hot afternoon sun and stared at the endless sea, he felt utterly alone and broken. Almost as if it were Judgment Day and he was standing naked before God. It wasn't that he was Godly person, rather it was because of the weight of his conscience on his every waking thought.
Contrary to what his detractors said, the director wasn't soulless or without conscience. He didn't only take jobs to expand his fortune and influence. He did in fact try to follow a moral and ethical code-a code he'd just broken and perhaps irrevocably, even if not knowingly.
He only knew the truth of the events because Alexis had broken protocol and reached out to him. He pictured the lithe, short-haired operative. She'd been with him for many years and he'd chosen her for this mission because she was one of the best. A flawless marksman. A perfect commando.
Except she'd missed her target, not once but twice. Her first error she claimed was the result of plain old-fashioned bad luck. The target had unexpectedly ducked behind a riot shield as she fired on him with her 7.62mm semi-automatic rifle. His own ship had a sizeable armory, anti-missile weapon systems, a hidden radar-guided 20 mm Gatling gun, but not a single riot shield. Who has the foresight to bring riot shields onto a ship anyway?
Her second error was due to someone else getting in the way. A red-haired woman, who had jumped ship with the target and had gotten clipped in the shoulder instead of the target. No matter, collateral damage was to be expected. But two lost opportunities were not to be expected, nor were they the result of bad luck. He'd simply chosen the wrong operative and now it was too late to do anything about it.
The director realized he was obsessing over details-details that no longer mattered. What mattered was what else Alexis had told him when she'd broken the golden rule of radio silence until mission complete. Something that made him certain that whatever part of his soul wasn't already blackened was now as dark as the rest.
He'd spent hours trying to figure out how to correct her mistake, how to distance himself and his enterprise from what had happened. After all, he had not known what was going to happen. He'd been hired to do a job-a simple termination of a rogue asset.
According to Alexis everything had gone sideways quickly and things had been done that couldn't be undone. Knowing what had happened and how it had happened, he felt used. It was a terrible mistake, an oversight, but there was nothing he could do to change choices already made.
His only remaining tack was a clean and burn. He needed to clean up the loose ends, to make it so it was if he and his organization never had any connection to what had happened. He needed to disappear his operative once she was no longer of use. After all, what was done was done and there was no way to undo it.
Chapter 5
A master chief pushed his way into the briefing room. From the wide berth given and insignia, Scott assumed the man was the ship's Command Master Chief. "One more," the chief announced. "SAR inbound now. That makes six."
The statement was short and simple but it was met with reserved cheers that quickly spread throughout the operations room. To Scott, inbound search and rescue and "one more" meant hope. Search and rescue teams were still finding survivors and pulling them from the dark waters of the Mediterranean. But how many more would they find? How far off was sunset? Or had the sun already set? And why were there so few survivors?
"Thank you, Command Master Chief," Captain Howard said. "Any status update on the others?"
"Cooper's still in surgery. He was tore up pretty bad, but I hear the field medic did a damn fine job. Damn fine job. Saved Cooper's life for sure."
Being the unnamed field medic, Scott stood a little taller and some of the day's weariness fell away. His thoughts went to the USS Harry Truman, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier that was the heart of the strike group. Truman was a floating city: 1092 feet in length and 252 feet abeam, with about 6,000 crewmembers aboard. In addition to 90 fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters aboard, Truman had three radar-guided 20 mm Gatling guns; two short-range anti-aircraft and anti-missile weapon system; and two infrared homing surface-to-air systems.
No doubt, USS Harry Truman could take care of herself, but the job of USS Bulkeley, USS Mason, USS Gettysburg, and USS San Jacinto was to ensure nothing and no one got close enough to cause any actual damage to the floating city. All four warships carried a standard complement of about 350 crewmembers.
While the destroyers were 509 feet long and 66 feet abeam, the cruisers were 567 feet long and 55 feet abeam. Like the aircraft carrier, all four warships had top speeds of 30 knots or more-the equivalent of 35 miles-per-hour-which was pretty impressive considering the warships had displacements of around 9200 long tons and even more impressive when the 103,900 long-ton displacement of the USS Harry Truman was considered.
USS Bulkeley and USS Mason were Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyers that carried big guns and batteries of missile systems. USS Gettysburg and USS San Jacinto were Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers that carried so many big guns and missile systems of so many different classes that they were essentially floating armories.