House Divided. Джек Марс

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СКАЧАТЬ As much as this plane crash is a terrible thing, the chatter we’re privy to suggests that this isn’t the actual attack. It’s a magician’s sleight of hand, designed to get us looking in one direction, while the real trick takes place elsewhere.”

      “What evidence do you have to support that?” Susan said.

      The general shook his head. “Madam President, I’m not at liberty to discuss our top secret intelligence, or its sources, in a meeting like this one. I think you must know that.”

      Susan looked sharply at the general. “General Loomis, as you must know, it’s my prerogative to declassify intelligence on a whim, if I so desire. I’m obviously not going to do that. But in the interest of getting people in this room moving, it might be helpful if you would at least share where and when the real attack might take place.”

      The general shrugged. “Madam President, if I knew that, you’re the first person I would tell.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      12:01 p.m. West Africa Time (6:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time)

      125 Nautical Miles Southeast of Lagos, Nigeria

      Gulf of Guinea

      Atlantic Ocean

      “It’s sitting up high, baby,” the gunman to Crazy Eddie’s left said.

      “Yo, Killem, we gonna be eating good tonight,” the man to his right said. “Fine young chicken.” The men around them laughed.

      Killem. That was one of Eddie’s nicknames. Short for Killem Dead – not just a nickname, but also his personal motto.

      The men were riding in a small armada of speedboats – a dozen old go-fast Cigarettes. The boats were like something from a Mad Max movie, if it took place on the water. They were tricked out with racks of giant 350-horsepower outboard engines, and plated with welded-on scrap steel. There were no windshields – the driver of each boat watched the sea ahead through narrow slits cut in the metal. One of the boats, the slowest and biggest of the group, had a flying deck welded on above it – mounted on top was a heavy machine gun liberated from a Nigerian military depot.

      The sun beat down, its harsh glare reflecting off the vast ocean waters.

      “They gonna fight for it?” the first man said.

      Eddie glanced around at his speedboats. Every one of them had six men on board, and every man was bristling with weapons – AK-47s and Uzis mostly, but also a couple of grenade launchers. Everyone had handguns, everyone had knives or machetes. The men themselves were rock stars, stone killers, and they looked the part. Kevlar body armor, wraparound aviator sunglasses, Stars & Stripes bandanas tied on their heads.

      “Better not,” Eddie said.

      Up ahead, maybe a mile away, was the object of their affection. An ancient freighter ship moved slowly, on a heading to the north and west. The thing was big, looming ten stories high, lumbering along like a derelict. It was an indeterminate color – mostly a mix of rust orange and the tattered remains of a dark green paint job it must have had decades ago. The speedboats approached from the rear, and thick white lettering was barely legible along the stern —LADY JANE.

      Lady Jane was sitting up very high in the water indeed. To some, that would suggest the freighter was empty of cargo. But to others – people like Crazy Eddie Killem Dead – it suggested something else entirely. Lady Jane had been docked in an unregulated Congolese port for a long time. Now it was on the move with empty holds.

      What was it carrying?

      What sort of cargo found its way out of the lawless, war-torn bush in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and into the hands of smugglers on the coast? Precious metals like coltan and gold, certainly, but some things were even better than that.

      “Diamonds,” Eddie said under his breath, not realizing he was going to speak at all.

      “Yeah, baby!” the man next to him said. “Yeah!”

      Diamonds were small, and they were light. A pocketful was worth a lot of money. A couple of pounds hidden inside a false wall on an old freight ship might be worth tens of millions of dollars. More than that? Eddie didn’t dream that big.

      No. It would be a couple of pounds, if that. Getting the crew of the ship to show you where they were hidden – that was the trick, wasn’t it?

      Eddie smiled. He had convinced people to talk before.

      The ship loomed. Closer now, much closer. The speedboats slowed as they approached the massive freighter. The boat with the flying deck moved to the right, training the heavy machine gun on the upper decks of the Lady Jane. So far, there was no movement up there.

      There was an emergency ladder bolted to the stern, about two stories above the water. Below there, the ladder had been cut away to discourage pirates – pirates like Eddie and his men. That was okay. Each one of these speedboats had an extendable aluminum ladder that would reach the bottom of the emergency ladder. From there, it was another two-story climb to the first deck. Easy, if the occupants were agreeable.

      If not…

      Eddie lifted a bullhorn to his lips. He flipped the ON switch with one finger, and a few seconds later, his voice boomed across the water.

      “Lady Jane, Lady Jane, lay down your weapons and prepare for boarding.”

      On the very top deck, two dark hands appeared from behind a metal parapet. The hands waved a large white fabric – maybe a piece of bed sheet – meant as a surrender flag. Eddie didn’t trust that flag. Not yet.

      “All unarmed men will be spared,” he said into the bullhorn. “Anyone who fights will be killed. Do not test us.”

      A voice boomed from the ship. They had a bullhorn of their own.

      “We have nothing you want.”

      Eddie grinned broadly. Nothing?

      “We will see for ourselves.”

* * *

      If there was going to be a problem, it would happen now.

      The first speedboat had tied up to the ship. Eddie watched from about a hundred yards away. The speedboat looked like a children’s toy next to the freighter.

      A silver aluminum ladder extended from the speedboat to the sheared-off bottom of the freighter’s emergency ladder. The seas were calm – bounding a little bit, but easy enough for climbing.

      One man went up the silver ladder, then another, both moving like spiders. By the time the first man reached the emergency ladder, AK-47 strapped to his back, a third man had climbed onto the silver ladder, and was on his way up.

      Three men high in the air. Three men out over nothing, perfectly exposed.

      “Steady now,” Eddie said into the bullhorn. “Don’t do nothing stu – ”

      Suddenly, a man popped up from behind the low metal wall ringing the lowest deck. He leaned over the top of it with a machine gun. The ugly blat of automatic gunfire ripped through the quiet of the day.

      DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH. DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH.

      The СКАЧАТЬ