For good measure Linc put two bullets through the front of the hood and gave a satisfied nod when steam erupted from the mangled radiator.

Adams brought the Robinson over the road, keeping just behind the dying limousine, and when it finally came to a stop, he had the skids on the macadam. Even before the machine had settled onto the road, Cabrillo, Linc, and Tory Ballinger were rushing ahead. Linc and Juan carried M-4A2 assault rifles while Tory had borrowed a Beretta semiautomatic pistol from the Oregon’s armory.

The team had covered half of the twenty yards when the driver heaved open his door. He was out and around it before anyone could get a shot off. From his covered position behind the door, he sprayed the roadway with fire from a machine pistol. The driver was panicked, and his shots went wild, but still the trio fell to the ground. Linc opened up with his M-4, concentrating a withering stream of 5.56mm into the open door. The high-powered rounds ricocheted off the armored door and turned the bulletproof glass opaque.

Having assumed that the big Mercedes would be armored, Juan fired under the door. His first burst missed the driver, but the second tore apart the calf and ankle of one of his legs. As he fell the door closed, exposing him to a double tap from Tory’s Beretta. The impact threw him bodily into the car’s fender before he slid to the ground in a disjointed heap.

Juan checked the Mercedes’s rear door. Locked. He loosed his nearly full magazine into the glass at point-blank range. The first dozen bullets couldn’t penetrate the tough laminate, but by clamping the barrel tightly he was able to bore a hole through the pane. Linc stepped up as Juan backed away to reload and expanded the hole, sending chips of glass arcing though the air like glittering diamonds.

Once Juan had his weapon reloaded, he tapped Linc on the shoulder to cease firing.

“Singh, I’m giving you three seconds to place both hands outside the window.” There were no sounds coming from inside the vehicle. “One. Two. Three.” Linc and Juan opened fire at the same instant. Bullets passing through the shattered glass started to disintegrate the opposite window. Several imbedded in the seat back, and a couple pinged off the armored plating and rattled around the back of the car until burying themselves in a soft target. A sharp cry of pain cut above the rifles’ chatter. Both men held fire.

“Singh!”

“I’m shot.” His voice remained strong. “Oh, praise to Allah, I am going to die.”

“Put your goddamned hands outside the window now, or I throw in a grenade.”

“I cannot move. My legs, you have paralyzed me.”

Juan and Linc exchanged a look, both certain they couldn’t trust the Sikh but knowing they had no alternative. Juan reached his hand into the car and opened the door with Linc in position to cover as much of the interior as he could. As the door came open, the interior lights came on. Singh was on the floor and as soon as he could draw a bead he fired with his own machine pistol. His aim was even worse than his driver’s. The stream of bullets plowed into the armored door, saving Linc’s life. The former SEAL did what tens of thousands of hours of training had instilled in him. As he dodged out of the way he put two rounds into Singh’s face, one below the eye and the other straight down the man’s throat. His turban uncoiled like a striking snake, and the back of his head came apart in a blooming flower of blood and tissue.

Linc cursed, twisting away in frustration and self-recrimination. “Damnit, Juan, I am so sorry. It was just —”

“Instinct,” Juan finished for him, peering into the car to survey the carnage. “You had no choice. I would have done the exact same thing.”

Tory shouldered past them and stepped into the back of the stretch Mercedes. Ignoring the blood she patted down Shere Singh’s corpse, handing out his wallet, a leather billfold. She plucked a briefcase from where Singh had wedged it into a seat cushion, looked around to see if she’d missed anything, and backed out once again.

“Well, lads, this turned into a dead end, eh?” She wiped her hands on the seat of her pants and gestured up the road behind the idling Robinson helicopter. “It won’t take long for more of Singh’s forces to get organized and come looking for their boss. Discretion being the better part of valor and all that, I think we should get the hell out of here.”

As they started for the chopper, George Adams added power in preparation for takeoff, choking the air with fine grit and forcing them to bend double. Juan tapped Tory on the shoulder and jerked his thumb back toward the Mercedes limousine.

“Just an investigator for Lloyd’s?”

Tory intuitively knew what he was talking about. She gave him a cocky grin. “Before that I was employed by Her Majesty’s government.”

“Doing what?”

She placed a hand on her holstered Beretta. “Troubleshooter.”

22

JUAN Cabrillo slouched in the master’s chair on the Oregon’s faux bridge. Although the tall seat’s leather was torn to make it appear as old as the rest of the tramp freighter, he’d had it custom fit so it was perhaps the most comfortable on the ship. Any watch officer was expected to use the central workstation in the op center, but this chair was reserved exclusively for Cabrillo’s use.

The sun was sinking fast to port, a dramatic play of color and light made more intense by the stratospheric curtain of volcanic dust billowing from peaks far to the north on Kamchatka Peninsula. The heat of the day lingered on the bridge. Metal was still warm to the touch, and the band of Juan’s shorts was damp with perspiration. He wore no shirt and had only boat shoes on his feet. With the speed the Oregon was making over the water, opening a door would have invited a hurricane into the bridge, so the room remained hot and stuffy.

Rather than risk running up through the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan, where shipping traffic was as thick as a Los Angeles rush hour, he had decided to vector to the east once they cleared the northernmost of the Philippine Islands and race along Japan’s Pacific coast. Shipping lanes were more regulated, so he didn’t have to worry about other vessels reporting a ship steaming through the region at over fifty knots. With their radar jamming on active mode, it was visual reports that concerned him. In another few hours they would cross the Tokyo shipping lanes, and traffic would drop precipitously, ending their need to steer around car carriers, container ships, and the dozens of other vessels plying the Pacific routes.

They lost only a few minutes whenever they had to detour, but time was the one thing that Juan could no longer afford. Eddie was another two days away, and already the scant reports coming from the Russian volcanologists trapped in the capital city of Petropavlovsk were disturbing. The peninsula was being rocked by nearly continuous earthquakes, and three volcanoes along the same chain were belching ash and noxious gas. So far there had been no reports of deaths, but most of the settlements on Kamchatka were so remote it might take weeks to get word.