Oceans of Fire Read online

  Jurgen put in his earphone and ordered his computer to start scanning frequencies. “How can this have happened?”

  “I don’t know.” Marx sat and began to think furiously. She really needed Jurgen’s workstation. “Let me see the communications logs of the past twenty-four hours.”

  “What? Why?” Jurgen grew agitated, but he never looked up from his screen. “I would have known about any communications! There are no open lines! We have been dark for twenty-four hours! Work the security suite like Herr Deyn said! I will check the logs!”

  “As you say.” Marx searched for a weapon. Jurgen wasn’t the physical specimen that Forbes, Mahke or even Deyn was, but he was still a man and outweighed her by thirty pounds. She wasn’t going to win a wrestling match with the communications officer. The control shack consisted of monitors, metal tables and chairs. Marx picked up a metal chair and folded it. “Pull up the last hour.”

  “There were no communications in the last hour!”

  “The security computer was fooled. Your computer might have been fooled, as well. I have an idea.”

  “What idea?” Jurgen didn’t sound convinced but his fingers rapidly pecked keys. He looked up as he pulled up the log. “What idea—Franka!”

  The top of the chair back hit Jurgen’s head edge-on. He screamed and fell out of his chair, clutching his split scalp. Marx raised the chair and slammed it down, bending it across Jurgen’s upper back and skull. He went to his hands and knees still screaming. Panic swept through the woman. She raised the chair and swung again. Jurgen put up a hand and partially blocked the blow. His fingers curled around the chair frame. Marx heaved, but Jurgen wouldn’t let go. He got a foot underneath him and grabbed the chair with both hands. “You bitch! You dirty bitch! I’ll—” Jurgen suddenly got his priorities straight and began shouting at the top of his lungs as they played tug-of-war with the chair. “Help! Help me!”

  Marx let go of the chair and Jurgen toppled backward. She ran for the door and stopped. There was nowhere to go and she still had to get a message out. She yanked the fire extinguisher off of the wall rack and advanced on Jurgen. The communications man rose shakily to his feet. He held the chair in one hand and pushed at the blood streaming into his eyes with the other. “Help me! Hel—”

  Marx swung the fire extinguisher like an Olympic hammer thrower. The metal rang dully against Jurgen’s skull, and he dropped to the floor. Setting the extinguisher on the communications desk, Marx sat shuddering with adrenaline reaction. Her hands shook as she began overriding the “gone dark” security communication protocols.

  Her first instinct was to contact German intelligence, but the BND would take time to verify her identity, then they’d take days to investigate before they took any action. For that matter she had no idea where she was or whether Germany had any assets deployable. Even contacting the CIA or U.S. military intelligence would waste valuable time. Akira’s words came back to her. Stick to the plan. He swore his organization could act within hours if they could locate the platform. With Akira’s capture they would have changed their codes, but they would still have cutouts monitoring for traffic on the old ones for some time.

  Marx hammered keys.

  She didn’t have a phone, and taking one from Forbes or Mahke would be problematic. A computer communication would be almost impossible for Akira’s people to trace back without attacking security, and she didn’t have time for that. An open radio communication would have to serve, and she prayed she could keep the line open long enough for Akira’s friends to triangulate.

  Marx’s hands flew as she overcame Jurgen’s protocols and unlocked the radio control and turned off the jammer.

  “What are you doing?”

  Marx jumped in her seat. She hadn’t heard the door being unlocked or opened. She hadn’t heard Alexsandr Zabyshny walk up behind her. She frantically kept working. “The prisoner! He was here!”

  “The prisoner?” Zabyshny lowered his machine pistol slightly. “Here? In control?”

  “Yes, he and Jurgen fought! Jurgen was hurt, and I hit the prisoner with a chair when he got on the computer!”

  Zabyshny took in the bent folding chair and Jurgen’s bleeding and unconscious body. “What are you doing now?”

  “Trying to assess what kind of damage the prisoner has done. I do not believe he was able to communicate.”

  “Good.” Zabyshny flipped open his phone and glanced out the window. “Mr. Deyn, we have a—”

  Marx swung the fire extinguisher into the back of the Russian’s head, and he sprawled to the floor. She scrambled for his fallen phone. She could hear Herr Deyn shouting on the other end of the line. Marx clicked it shut and rapidly punched in the phone number Akira had given her. A woman’s voice answered on the first ring.

  “Hello, how may I direct your call?”

  “My name is Franka Marx! I am with Akira Tokaido! We are on an oil platform! I do not know which ocean. Laurentius Deyn is here! You must trace this call!”

  “Stay on the line.”

  A frantic moment passed and then a man answered. “Miss Marx, where is Akira Tokaido?”

  “I helped him escape from his cell. He is creating a diversion so I can make this call.”

  “Are the nuclear devices on the platform?”

  “I—”

  Zabyshny popped to his feet. Marx swung the extinguisher one-handed, but he caught the blow in his palm with ease. The Russian moved with liquid speed. The woman didn’t even see his fist move before he buried it into her gut. Every ounce of air blasted out of her lungs. The fire extinguisher fell from her hand with a clang as her knees turned to mush. The Russian took the phone from her palsied hand and killed the call. He punched in another.

  “Mr. Deyn?” The security man watched bemusedly as Marx pushed herself, wheezing and gasping, back to her feet and reached for the folding chair. He took a step forward and backhanded her over the communications console. “Mr. Deyn, as I was saying, we have a problem.”

  Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  “WE GOT THAT!” Aaron Kurtzman bellowed. “Tell me we got that!”

  The Computer Room was a frenzy of activity. Computers crunched while high above in space NSA communication, command and control satellites dissected the phone transmission and tried to find its router and vector its source. Hunt Wethers grimly watched his monitor. “It was short, Aaron.”

  “Give me anything, Hunt.” Akira was alive. That was all that mattered. The game was still on and the oil platform confirmed Kurtzman’s worst suspicions.

  “Carmen, I need a map with every offshore oil platform on earth. I need it now. Hunt?”

  “We got a partial. We have the initial router. It’s in the western hemisphere.”

  “Cut that list by half, Carmen.”

  Wethers looked up from his screen. “This could be a feint, Aaron, or a trap. Hell, it could be a nuclear Trojan horse. We haven’t faced anyone this slick in a while. I’m not putting anything past them.”

  Kurtzman nodded. Despite his excitement all of that had occurred to him, as well. “Carmen?”

  “She was breathing hard, but she sounded professional, and scared. Of course if someone put a gun to her head you could get the same reaction.”

  “Gut instinct.”

  “I think she’s for real.”

  “Send the tape to NSA for voice analysis, but we’re operating as if this is gold until proved otherwise. Have Able and Phoenix prepare for amphibious operations.”

  Kurtzman turned back to his workstation. Akira was alive, and on the loose.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Tokaido ran for his life. There weren’t a lot of places to hide on an offshore platform, and he was running out of them. He squatted breathlessly between two pallets of fuel drums. Armed men were running back and forth across the platform while others scrambled up and down ladders. They were all shouting at one another.

  “Crews quarters, secure!”

  “Boat landing, secure!”
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  The helicopter pad was ten yards from where Tokaido crouched. The helicopter sat on it, guarded by two men with automatic rifles.

  “Command and control, clear!”

  The young computer genius popped the magazine in his pistol. He had six rounds in the clip and one in the pipe. He shoved the magazine back in and considered the end game. He was dead, and he knew it. He gazed hard at the helicopter. He couldn’t fly it, but disabling the aircraft might actually slow whatever the bad guys were up to. Hell, if he could just start it up and get it a foot off the ground, God only knew the damage he could wreak on the platform. He glanced at the communications array at the top of the platform tower. For that matter, the helicopter would have a radio, and Franka just might have disabled the radio jammer by now.

  It was a poor plan, but it was a plan, and it beat hell out of being the last man out in an armed game of hide-and-seek.

  Tokaido stood and aimed the Mauser with both hands. He put the white dot of the front sight between the farthest guard’s shoulder blades and fired. The M-2 barked three times in his hands. The man slammed forward against the fuselage of the helicopter and smeared it crimson as he slid down. The second man whirled. Tokaido turned his body like a turret the way Kissinger had taught him. The M-2 barked and cycled, and the guard’s rifle snarled off a burst. The young man flinched as the sonic cracks of the rifle rounds passed by his head. The guard fell face-first to the deck.

  The Stony Man hacker shoved his smoking pistol in his pocket and grabbed a fallen rifle. He yanked open the cabin door and leaped up into the aircraft. As he climbed into the cockpit, he could see armed men running out of the crew’s quarters toward him. Akira sat in the pilot’s seat and gazed across the instrument board. There was no keyboard or mouse. It was all gauges, switches and lights labeled with terse acronyms that didn’t mean anything to him. There was no key or ignition and he saw no immediate way to start the aircraft up.

  So much for crashing the helicopter into the command shack.

  The computer genius shoved the muzzle of the G-36 rifle against the instrument board and held down the trigger. Instrument glass and black plastic exploded in all directions and brass sprayed the interior of the cockpit. The chin window raddled with cracks and holes as he fired off the entire magazine. The rifle locked open on empty and he dropped it to the cabin floor. Tokaido smiled to himself. If he couldn’t use the helicopter, then neither would the enemy. It was time for Plan B, and he did have the basic knowledge of how to operate a radio.

  He put on the headset and tuned to the Stony Man Farm radio frequency. “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Akira Tokaido! Repeat, Akira Tokaido! I am on an offshore oil platform! Location unknown! Deyn, Forbes and Mahke are here! Location of packages unknown!”

  The young man sagged with relief as Barbara Price’s voice came back instantly. “Akira! This is Control! Received telephone communication from Marx! We are trying to triangulate your location! Keep this frequency open as long as possible!”

  “Copy, Control!” He watched as half a dozen men formed a ring around the helicopter and leveled automatic rifles. The young man stared into his firing squad. “Uh, Control, I’m—”

  He jerked and clawed at the headset as static blasted into his ear. The frequency jammer was back in business. Tokaido pulled the M-2 from his pocket as Forbes came out onto the platform with another four men behind him. The big man pointed an accusing finger. “You have no idea what I am going to do to your punk ass!”

  Tokaido was pleased to find that he was angry rather than afraid. He checked his pistol. The magazine was empty and there was one round left in the chamber. He considered trying to shoot Forbes, but the distance was twenty yards and he didn’t know if the bullet would be deflected by the crashproof cockpit glass or whether it would even go through it.

  His best option became very clear to him.

  They had Franka, they had him, and this was the end. In his young life Akira had never contemplated suicide. It was something he would never have the strength to do on his own, but the amphetamines jangling in his bloodstream bolstered his courage and he was feeling no pain. He made up his mind. They wouldn’t get any more information out of him. He would atone for giving up information about the Farm, and he would be good and goddamned if he let Deyn and his pet goons get their paws on him again. He locked eyes with Forbes, waggled his eyebrows, grinned and pressed the muzzle of the M-2 against his temple.

  He was pleased to see Forbes’s eyes widen in shock.

  “Herr Tokaido.” The radio crackled and Laurentius Deyn’s voice spoke with steely calm. “I have someone here who would like to say something to you. Franka, say something nice to Herr Tokaido.”

  Tokaido had never heard another human being scream in agony, much less a woman, and the sound of it made his whole body clench like a fist.

  “Herr Tokaido, in Berlin, I offered your superior, Herr Brognola, a deal. I will offer you the same. Franka has betrayed me, but she has no information that I need to extract from her. Surrender now and I will not have her tortured to death.”

  The young man’s pistol dropped down from his temple. He felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach. Forbes held a finger to the earpiece he was wearing. He was listening to the exchange and grinning from ear to ear.

  “Herr Tokaido,” Deyn continued, “there are over fifty men on this platform. If you do not surrender, they will take turns violating every opening in Franka’s body, and when they tire of that they will take knives and flay her alive while you watch. Do not doubt me.”

  He didn’t doubt it at all. “And if I comply?”

  “You will not be tortured anymore. These last few moments have convinced me that the threat of torturing Franka will be far more effective in making you talk. You and I will have a discussion about your associates, their likely courses of action, and you will confirm the information you have already given Herr Forbes. Assuming I believe you, you and Franka will be killed humanely, with a single bullet each. This is the best deal you are going to get.”

  “I don’t believe you. My friends will be coming, and you’re going to keep me as a hostage.”

  “Indeed, you are correct,” Deyn conceded. “But that is neither here nor there. The only thing that concerns you at the moment is that the rape and living dismemberment of Franka will happen, whether you commit suicide or not, and whether your associates come or not. There is only thing that will stop it, and that is your immediate surrender and compliance.”

  Tokaido’s knuckles went white around his pistol.

  “Very well, but remember, Herr Tokaido, you can stop this. You can stop it at any time.” The door to the command shack opened and Franka Marx tumbled outside in a bloody heap. A lanky man Akira didn’t recognize stepped over her and opened a folding knife.

  Deyn’s voice crackled over the radio. “Proceed, Alexsandr.”

  Marx screamed as the Russian took a knee beside her and yanked her up by the hair. She screamed again as the shining blade pressed down against her neckline.

  “Stop!” The word ripped out of Tokaido’s mouth of its own will.

  The knife froze, poised between Marx’s collarbones.

  “The pistol, Herr Tokaido,” Deyn prompted.

  The M-2 clanked to the floor of the cockpit.

  “The knife!” Forbes boomed. “And the knife!”

  Tokaido numbly pulled out his switchblade and dropped it.

  “Herr Forbes.” Deyn’s voice oozed the cold pleasure of a reptile. “Collect our guest.”

  Clay Forbes’s eyes never left Tokaido’s as he strode to the helicopter. The smile on his face was sickening.

  Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  “WE’VE LOST CONTACT!” Barbara Price furiously worked dials on her board. “Akira’s signal is being jammed.”

  Kurtzman nodded. “Hunt, do we have a triangulation on the radio signal?”

  Wethers’s eyes were glued to his screen. “Oh, yeah, but we don’t need the signal. The radio
jammer is shining like a beacon. The coordinates are coming now. It’s…” His voice trailed off. “It’s close. Good Lord! It is very, very close.”

  “Close to what?”

  “Close to here.” Wethers shook his head. “Less than four hundred miles. South, just off the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard.”

  Price pressed a button on the intercom. “David, we have incoming information. What’s the status of Phoenix and Able?”

  “We’re fully armed and ready,” McCarter replied. “Two helicopters on the pad warmed up and ready to deploy on go.”

  “Stand by, David.” Price frowned as she swiftly scanned their list of offshore oil platforms and called it up on the world map. “Both the Marx woman and Akira said they were on an offshore oil platform.” No oil rigs were evident near the signal source. “Do we even have any oil platforms out there?”

  “No.” Wethers hit a few keys and overlaid a political map on the screen with the radio signal’s location. “The signal is just off Cape Hatteras. That’s national seashore. No one’s allowed to drill there.”

  “No…” A very chill wind began to blow through Kurtzman’s bones. “It’s a research station. Remember, a great deal of IESHEN Group’s early work was in undersea research and exploration.”

  Wethers’s fingers hammered keys. The cybernetic systems in the Computer Room were the most powerful search engines on Earth. “Bingo! Hatteras Ridge Research station.” The cybergenius smiled thinly. “No doubt made possible by a grant from the IESHEN Group.”

  “This is almost a best-case scenario. Able and Phoenix can assault the platform in less than two hours. SEAL Team Six is on standby in Virginia Beach. They could hit in under an hour.”

  Wethers let out a long breath. “For that matter we have warships and planes that can launch cruise missile strikes almost immediately once given the coordinates.”