“Go,” she mouthed.
He squeezed her hand one more time before reluctantly letting it go. It was time to get to work.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hook-2-Long—fifty-five-foot fishing boat
Three miles south of Nassau
Max Oswald switched to generator power and asked DeLarue to disconnect the shore power cables and stow them in the aft compartment of the 2004 Viking 55 Convertible. The docks and slips were well lit, allowing his men to work without their flashlights. Max turned the ignition switch for the starboard engine, which sparked to life in a small cloud of blue smoke and began its cadenced thudding. He repeated the process with the port engine, then asked his men to start casting off the dock lines.
Max gently tapped the joystick. It was enough to push the big fishing boat forward. Once the swim platform had cleared the slip, Tay gave him a thumbs-up, and Max put the starboard drive in forward and the port drive in reverse. The boat began a ninety-degree rotation in front of the slip. When it was pointed in the right direction, Max moved the port drive into forward and steered the boat toward the marina exit. Left and right, scattered among the multimillion-dollar yachts, were ragged sailing yachts and rusty motorboats for sale. Once they were out of the no-wake zone, Max throttled the engines up to full power and felt the bow come up as the speed increased. The boat rose out of the water, and in no time they were traveling at thirty-five knots. At that speed, they’d reach Norman’s Cay in less than two hours.
They had traveled less than five nautical miles and had just navigated past the southeastern tip of New Providence when Tay tapped him on the shoulder.
“What is it?” Max shouted to be heard above the deep growl of the engines.
Tay pointed toward the stern. Max glanced in that direction and saw the navigation lights of a helicopter at low altitude.
He inadvertently held his breath, half expecting the helicopter to sink them.
“Go get the launcher,” Max said.
“I don’t think they’ve seen us,” Tay replied. “Or if they did, they don’t care. This is their second go around that neighborhood.”
Then it came to him. Max yanked the throttles back, bringing the engines back to idle. Almost immediately, the bow sank into the ocean. They glided for about one hundred feet, and then the boat came to a stop.
“I know where the helicopter is going,” Max said.
Max let go of his NVGs and let them hang from his neck. He hadn’t anticipated his mother returning to Hunt’s place, but it made sense. She wasn’t in any danger, but she had no way of knowing that. It was to be expected that she wouldn’t want to go to one of the two large hospitals in Nassau. With only four marines stationed at the embassy, there was no way they could have attended the ambush site and secured the emergency room of a hospital.
The US had no permanent air assets in the Bahamas, so Max was confident that the Seahawk helicopter he had witnessed landing in front of Hunt’s townhome came from the USS Jason Dunham, an Arleigh Burke–class guided missile destroyer. If Max was to believe the latest reports from the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Dunham was operating roughly one hundred miles north of Havana. Its mission was to closely monitor a new Russian frigate that had entered the Caribbean Sea via the Panama Canal ten days ago. The same reports indicated that the Russian warship was preparing to make several port calls across the Caribbean, a tactic to project the power of Russia in international waters. The ONI believed the Russian ship was armed with a new weapons system designed to successfully counter night-vision devices, laser range finders, and other electro-optical sight systems.
Yeah, thought Max, the navy’s right to keep an eye on these bastards.
He became conscious of footsteps behind him. He turned and saw Aidan Wood smoking a cigarette. The former New Zealand SAS trooper joined him on the aft deck.
“Seems like your mother is getting premium treatment, isn’t she?” Wood said, a taint of jealousy in his voice. Or was it contempt? Max couldn’t tell.
“Looks like it,” he replied.
“No expenses spared, right?” Wood pushed on.
Max understood Wood’s frustration. Wood wasn’t breaking international laws and his oath to his country to enrich himself. He was following Max for one reason: to provide financial assistance to the families of the New Zealand Special Operations Force operators who had died on clandestine missions but whose deaths had never been compensated or acknowledged. The same was true for Chiang Tay and Thomas DeLarue, though they were doing it for the military operators of Singapore and France. Every single one of his men was a former special forces operator who had witnessed how ludicrously their governments treated combat veterans upon their return from the battlefield. Some would call the men mercenaries, but Max didn’t like the stigma attached to the term. His men were more than guns for hire. They believed in his cause.
Like Max, all of them had colleagues who had made the ultimate sacrifice fighting for what they thought was freedom, while others had lost limbs, only to be spat upon at home by the same people who had sent them to fight their wars in the first place.
And for what?
During his first combat deployment, it hadn’t taken long for Max to understand what he was really fighting for. He wasn’t fighting for the politicians; he was fighting for his brothers-in-arms. His loyalty was to the men and women fighting next to him, not to the political establishment back in Washington, DC. Max was done with their empty promises—especially after the tragic event that had taken his wife away from him. He had begged for assistance to go after the men responsible, but his plea had been denied by the risk-averse bureaucracy the CIA had become. But the worst thing, the thing that angered him the most, was that he’d known all along that once he returned to the US, no one would even acknowledge what he’d been through. After all, he was a NOC, a shadow warrior, right? He was supposed to deal with the pain and know how to suppress his heartache and misery. Even his mother had simply assumed he’d get over the loss of his wife and unborn child in no time.
Well, he hadn’t. And as his mentor had pointed out, if someone like him couldn’t do it, how could the government expect the widows and children of special warfare operators to overcome their grief with the limited resources offered to them?
Max had thought about different scenarios for getting his hands on $250 million. With that much money, he’d be able to help most if not all of the families in need. None of these families would get rich with that, but at least there would be enough money to give their children an education. Max would give them back their dignity.
He’d run a multitude of simulations, but the only option that made any sense was to extort the United States government. And recent events in Venezuela provided the perfect opportunity. When he’d gotten word that the narco-terrorist Jorge Ramirez was hiding out in Turkey and looking for a buyer for the intelligence he had on Colonel—now President—Carlos Arteaga and his link to the CIA, Max had known he had to seize the opportunity. If it became public knowledge that the United States government had supported Arteaga with arms and funding despite knowing that he had tortured and killed American agents operating clandestinely in Venezuela, there would be years of inquiries and investigations. People would lose confidence in their government—it could even cripple the economy, or at least perturb it greatly.