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  It had been regarded as a logical, convenient, and secure place for the Japanese and American governments to store the spare keys to many of Seawolf's encrypted operational systems, including those which controlled its Advanced SEAL Delivery System — or ASDS — docking hatches. These would allow a fully pressurized mini-sub containing from eight to twelve special-op divers to launch and recover its personnel during insertions requiring long-distance, deep-submergence transport. As planned, when the SEALS returned from a mission aboard the sixty-five-foot ASDS vehicle, the computers aboard their vessel would signal the Seawolf's control systems to open the ASDS hatch so that the crew and passengers — and their equipment — could reenter the submarine via its docking chamber, and move from there onto its main decks.

  Nga Canbera did not know, and would never know, precisely which Japanese government official had passed this information on to the Inagawa-kai, which had in turn relayed it to him through Omori.

  And what difference does it make? he thought, sitting in his den now, watching the SEAPAC ribbon-cutting ceremony on television. He had remained home from the office to watch it undistracted, putting on his finest silk robe for the occasion. So far — given his knowledge of what would happen once the dignitaries were under way— it was proving to be quite a source of amusement.

  For him the challenge of the game was the important thing, and though Nga had experienced his moments of apprehension lately, he felt the play would have been meaningless without an edge of danger. Today he would put aside his worries and enjoy himself. Could the Sea-wolf be tricked into swallowing a poison pill? After all, it was in theory only a matter of putting the right keys in the wrong hands — wrong from the American and Japanese standpoint, that is. And while Marcus Caine's failure to deliver the command-and-control keys had been a setback, it had in a sense only added to the excitement. Once Kersik got his hands on the Sandakan keys, Omori's divers would still be able to open the ASDS hatch. After that, they would simply have to put greater reliance on force than finesse, and use guns and bullets rather than keystrokes and passwords to take the submarine.

  And maybe, if he were very fortunate, there even would be a little bloodshed to make things more interesting.

  His eyes wide with disbelief, U. S. Secretary of Defense Conrad Holden looked at the telephone receiver in his hand as if it had been invaded by an evil poltergeist… albeit one that possessed the voice and speech mannerisms of Roger Gordian, someone he'd known for many long years.

  "Roger, are you certain?"

  "I'm telling you it's going to be Sandakan, Conrad.

  And it will roughly coincide with the sub's embarkation. They won't want to give us time to disable the key-codes."

  "But the sub's launching in a half an hour—"

  "Then get off the phone with me and call somebody who can stop this from happening!"

  Hotter and sweatier than he was accustomed to feeling, Luan was about to change his shirt when he heard it: the regular thup-thup-thup of rotors beating the air, rapidly getting louder and closer.

  He looked across the room to where Xiang and his bodyguards had been throwing a pair of dice.

  "What's that sound?" he said, already knowing the answer. The army helicopters had been ubiquitous when he was driven from the hills of northern Thailand.

  The pirate tossed down the dice and turned abruptly to his fellows.

  "Get your weapons," he grunted. "We're being attacked."

  Leaning out the door of the Bell Jet Ranger chopper, Nimec extracted shells from his utility webbing, slapped them into his 12-gauge and pumped the forestock to chamber the first round. Like Osmar and the other three Sword ops in his team, he had on a pullover cowl, gas mask, and black Nomex Stealthsuit. The Zylon body armor underneath his shirt was both lighter and stronger than Kevlar.

  Nimec gestured for the pilot to lower the chopper to a stabilized hover, and peered at the wooden structure below. There were a number of windows on all sides. He chose one of them as his target and pulled the trigger of his pump gun.

  The finned CS bomblet disgorged from its muzzle in a train of propellent vapor, punched through the window, and burst open to release a cloud of tear gas.

  Nimec chambered another round, fired, and loosed a third at the Thai's hideout. Billows of white smoke erupted from the windows.

  He slung the weapon over his shoulder — he also had an MP5K against his side — donned his gloves, and signaled his companions to the door.

  A moment later the rope line was dropped from its hoist bracket. One after another in quick succession, the men gripped the line and fast-roped to the boardwalk like firefighters sliding down a pole.

  Submachine-gun volleys erupted on the ground almost the instant they alighted — stuttering from inside the house, from the dwellings around it, and from the wooden walkway that ran the length of the canal.

  His head ducked low as his teammates laid down a lane of covering fire, Nimec raced around to the front of the hideout.

  A man surged into his path from the gushing smoke of the building, bringing an FN P90 up in his direction. But he was half-blinded from the CS, and Nimec was quick to react. He jogged out of the way as the pirate released a stream of 9mm rounds. Nimec raked him across the middle with a burst from his MP5K, then kept dashing for the entrance without a backward glance.

  He paused in front of the heavy plank door, sprayed the lock with bullets, and kicked it in with the flat of his foot. With his peripheral vision he could see Osmar running up on the left.

  He looked over at him, signaled a crossover entry, and ticked off a three-count with his fingers.

  Together they rushed forward into the house.

  Minutes after the ribbon-cutting fanfare concluded, the delegation of world leaders was ushered across the gang, over the black anechoic tiles covering Seawolf's hull-like rubber flagstones, and then down into the sub by its executive officer. President Ballard dropped through the hatch first, followed by Prime Minister Yamamoto and the Malaysian and Indonesian heads-of-state.

  The press contingent came next, Alex Norstrum at the back of the line, straining to see past a tall, broad-shouldered Canadian reporter who had been directed to board ahead of him.

  As the group filed through a passageway toward the control room, Ballard felt as if he were about to step into the set of a Hollywood space opera, something about star-ships and wormholes in the space-time continuum. And in a sense he was entering a time machine, one which was capable of hurling him back through the accumulation of years and distance that had brought him to middle age, stripping the overlay of political cynicism and calculation from his face, and briefly revealing the excited countenance of a ten-year-old orphan from the Mississippi boondocks whose dreams had fueled a long, difficult journey from poverty to the Presidency. He goggled at the equipment and status boards filling up every corner of the brightly lit space with open wonder, his wide eyes no sooner landing on one piece of gadgetry than getting snagged by another of equal or greater fascination.

  The sub's commanding officer, Commander Malcolm R. Frickes, USN, was saluting his guests from the control room entry way.

  ''It is my honor and privilege to welcome you all aboard," he said, stepping aside to let them enter.

  Ballard enthusiastically returned the salute, swallowed, and gestured toward the periscopes on a raised platform in the center of the room.

  "Do I get to look through one of those)" he asked.

  Frickes smiled.

  "Sir, you're the Commander-in-Chief," he said. "And that means you get to do anything you wish."

  General Yussef Tabor, commanding officer of the Malaysian Army's 10th Parachute Brigade, could scarcely believe the orders that had just come down the line. He was to deploy his three airborne battallions — almost three thousand men — to Sandakan at once and assist the regular key-bank guard units in defending the beachhead.

  Against who or what it was to be defended was unclear — but he at last saw an opportunity
to be a true soldier. As the closest element of Malaysia's Rapid Deployment Force, stationed in Sabah less than thirty miles from the city, his would be the first of the support units to arrive. And that sat just fine with him.

  After a decade of hunting illegal immigrants like a dog-catcher chasing down helpless puppies, it was high time for a mission he could be proud of.

  Overcome with tear gas, his face tomato-red, Khao Luan was uncontrollably retching and coughing as Xiang tried to drag him into the barn. Gripping him under both arms from behind, the pirate opened the door and started to back his way through, but was still trying to maneuver his boss's weight when Nimec and Osmar burst into the house.

  Osmar thrust his weapon out.

  "Hold it!" he shouted in Bahasa. "Both of you!"

  Breathing hard, Xiang stared at him a moment through thick braids of CS gas. Then, still partially supporting the Thai with one hand, he whipped the other behind his back and brought a donut-shaped P90 around on its strap.

  The burst went wide, peppering a roof support, chewing out splinters of wood, Osmar got down into a crouch and fired back, intentionally aiming low. With Luan between him and the big man, he wanted to avoid shooting to kill, knowing the Thai might hold the answer to Blackburn's disappearance.

  Luan sagged, clutching his meaty thigh, blood spraying from his femoral artery. Xiang tried to keep him erect, but was unable to manage it, and he went down with a crash. Retreating into the barn, the pirate triggered his weapon, sweeping it in an arc between Osmar and Nimec. Glass shattered somewhere in the house.

  This time it was Nimec who fired back, squeezing off two crisp trigger pulls, brrrat-brrrat. He could hear sporadic exchanges of fire out on the walkway, and now and then a groan from one of the incapacitated pirates on the floor.

  "Cuff Luan and the rest of these bastards!" he shouted to Osmar through his gas mask. "I'm going after him!"

  Sea spray roiling up behind them, the four hovercraft scudded over the waves on pillows of air, flanked by dagger-shaped speedboats. They had covered nearly two thirds of the distance to the beach, and would be making landfall within a matter of minutes.

  In the forward deckhouse of his vehicle, Kersik lifted his binoculars to his eyes to scan the LZ. He had mustered a force of close to three hundred men, outnumbering the key-bank guard by a third, and with the further advantage of surprise—

  Kirsik blinked once, twice.

  His eyes widened and widened against the lenses of the binoculars.

  At first the dots he had seen against the fleecy backdrop of the cloud looked like insects. A sweeping, descending swarm of locusts.

  But he knew all too well what they were.

  Paratroopers.

  Hundreds of them. Thousands. Alighting on the beachhead.

  Had his ears not been filled with the deafening roar of the airscrews he might have heard the transports arriving sooner, heard them as he could now, buzzing, the buzz becoming a whine, the whine becoming a drone….

  He let the glasses drop from his trembling fingers and ran to the deckhouse radio, but by the time he'd transmitted his warning to the other vessels the incoming fire had begun, and the world was exploding all around him.

  Omori had hardly seen the small email notice appear on his LCD before he realized the message was not from Kersik at all, but his contact in the Japanese Diet… a member of the Nationalist minority whose leaking of top-secret intelligence about the Seawolf had been at the core of the hijack plan since its initiation.

  He opened the message and felt his stomach turn on itself.

  Though there was only one word on his screen, it was sufficient to make him realize his plans had just come to an abrupt and crashing end:

  YAMERU. ABORT.

  Omori dug his knuckles into his forehead and released a high mewl of anguish that instantly drew the attention of all four divers on the floating dock.

  He did not look at them, or say anything to them. They would know what had happened just from looking at him.

  Kersik, he thought, his fist pressing deeper into his brow.

  Kersik had failed.

  If he'd been holding a knife in his hand, Omori would have plunged it into his heart and brought the pain to an end then and there.

  A blow to the rib cage almost dropped Nimec the instant he plunged through the door.

  Stunned, scintillae whirling across his vision, he reeled against the wall of the barn, his MP5K sailing from his fingers.

  He clamped his jaws around the pain in his chest. Whatever hit him had felt like an iron mallet, and if he'd been running straight rather than angling through the door, would have probably caught him below the diaphragm and made him lose consciousness. But the muscles of his chest had absorbed enough of its impact to keep him on his feet.

  He gulped down a mouthful of air, struggling to get hold of himself—

  And saw the giant's fist coming at him barely in the nick of time. He rolled sideways, twisting his head to avoid its pile-driver force, then slipped another blow as the pirate came charging in at him, his arms raised to get him in a squeeze hold, meaning to crush him against the wall with his bulk.

  Nimec wasn't going to give him the chance. He could feel the strength flowing back into his legs and knew he had to move, stay out of the giant's reach, avoid going toe-to-toe with him at any cost. It had been his hand, his bare hand, that caught Nimec the first time. He'd have to make sure he didn't let it happen again.

  Waiting until Xiang was almost on top of him, Nimec cocked his front leg and kicked it speedily up and out at his solar plexus. He heard the slam of his foot against the giant's flesh, saw him lurch backward, and followed through with a second snap kick to the same area.

  Xiang staggered back another step and Nimec used the moment to scramble away from the wall, dancing on the balls of his feet like a boxer, getting a rhythm under him, working up some steam.

  But the pirate was quicker on his feet than his size would have indicated. Rounding on Nimec, he lunged forward, rushing him head-on.

  Nimec tried feinting sidweays, but was a hair too late. A sinewy forearm smashed across his lips and his head rocked back on his neck. He tasted blood, felt his knees weaken a little. Xiang hit him again, this time in the throat with his elbow. Nimec gagged, his eyes blurring.

  And then, suddenly, Xiang's massive palms clapped down on either side of Nimec's head, his fingers forming a cage around his jaw and cheekbones. Nimec raised his own hands, wedged them up inside Xiang's forearms, gripped his wrists, and tried with all his strength to pry them apart. But the giant only held on and began steam-rolling forward, carrying Nimec along with him, backing Nimec across the floor of the barn then ramming him up against the wall opposite the door with an impact that jarred him to the bone.

  He brought his face in close to Nimec, his features a quivering mask of rage, his breath gusting into his nostrils.

  "You want to fight, I'll break your fucking neck right here!" he bellowed, shaking Nimec, battering his head against the wall. "Right here like I did to that other American!"

  Nimec's eyes widened. His heart pounded and swelled within him until its beating seemed to fill the universe.

  Like I did to that other American.

  Groaning from exertion, he pushed against the pirate's wrists, pushed, pushed—

  Right here.

  That other American.

  Pushed—

  For an instant he thought the pirate's grip would never relent… and then, miraculously, it did.

  Shoving off the wall, Nimec brought his knee up fast, driving it into his crotch. Xiang's hands fell away from his head. Nimec hit him again, hard to the face with his fist, kept pressing. Threw another jab, another, another.

  The giant started to sag, but Nimec didn't let up. He just kept thinking that Max was dead, and this was the man who'd killed him.

  Two, three, four more powerful jabs, and then Xiang surprised him. He fell forward heavily, lumbering into Nimec and knocking him bac
kward.

  In that moment, as the two men separated, Xiang lifted his bloody face, his lips twisted into a sneer, and pulled his kris from its sheath.

  Nimec froze, staring at that long, wavy blade, but Xiang didn't give him time to react. The giant lunged forward, the knife flickering toward Nimec's throat.

  Nimec moved back a half step, pivoting on the ball of his left foot, and reached out. His right hand caught the back of Xiang's knife hand. His left hand slapped the inside of the giant's elbow, then turned and lifted the elbow up and out. Without pausing, Nimec stepped forward, pulling the giant toward him, and buried the knife deep into Xiang's chest, directly below the rib cage and angling up toward the heart.

  Xiang remained on his feet another few seconds, looked down at the knife jutting from the center of his rib cage with an expression of utter astonishment, and dropped onto his face.

  Nimec stepped back, breathing hard, the pain of his wounds rising up within him, and looked down at the fallen giant.

  It was, at last, over.

  EPILOGUE:

  "Just days ago, i sat here and explained TO someone how I knew about Marcus Caine's crimes without being able to prove them," Gordian was saying. He placed his hand on the wallet-sized digital recorder on his desk. "Now I've got proof, thanks to you."

  "And Max," Kirsten said from the seat opposite him. "If not for him, I'd never have gotten it. And to be honest about it, might have kidded myself into thinking nothing strange was going on at Monolith."