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“It’s an old name,” Declan said.“From the Afghan war.I had some Russian friends.We got into a bit of a disagreement.”He stared out the window, remembering the early days after Hunter had moved the FOB to a different location.He probably didn’t even know about Declan’s stint working for counterintelligence.
The door opened.
It happened so fast Declan almost didn’t move.Two shots, dimmed by a silencer.It took a full second after Ivan hit the floor for him to realize Steinbeckhadn’tjoined Austen on the raft.
The man burst into the room.“Let’s go.”
Where?He didn’t stop to ask as he followed Stein onto the sky lounge and down the stairs toward the bow deck.
“I hope you’re not too attached to your boat.”Stein paused in the dim lights of the deck.
“It’s sort of named after my mother, so maybe a little.”
“You’ll have to upgrade.”Steinbeck pointed toward the bow.“Let’s get to those lithium batteries.”
Declan nodded.“To be clear, once you start, you can’t stop the chain reaction.”
“I think that’s the point.”He motioned toward the front and Declan jumped onto the bow deck.
“Where’s Sergei?”Declan asked as the door lifted.
“Time-out in the head,” Steinbeck said.“But there are more roaming around the boat, so let’s move it.”
“Right.”Declan took the stairs down to the locker, where they stored the fenders and the lithium batteries.Entered the code to unlock the garage.
“I can’t believe you came back for me,” Declan said to Steinbeck as the door opened.
“It took me a while to pick up what you were laying down,” he said.“You were on the Cybernet op.”
“You know about that?”
“It was talked about as a textbook operation that destroyed a Soviet complex that was aggregating our information, selling it to the world, and reverse engineering our technology.I especially remember how it ended.”
“The lab was on a cargo ship docked in Vladivostok.Made a big boom.”
“They thought you were one of them.”
“That’s what happens when you have a Russian mother and speak without an accent.”Declan moved down into the storage bay, toward the batteries.“Apparently they haven’t forgotten.”
Steinbeck stayed in the bow.“So this whole operation?You’re still running a Dark Horse op?”
Declan nodded.
“I should have figured that out when I saw my cousin Colt in Barcelona.He wasn’t there to watch you.He was there to help you, wasn’t he?”
Declan had unlocked the battery compartment, revealing the ship’s lithium batteries—all twenty of them.
They would make a sizable boom too.
“I don’t know who Colt is, but I did work with a clandestine government agency that helped me make contact with the Russian Bratva.I leased them the Mariposa land and watched them.As soon as I realized they’d gotten their first shipment of obsidite, I came up with the shell game.”
“The three ships.”
“We’re down to one.They’ve been tracking theSanta Mariasince we left Cuba.”
“I should have trusted you,” Steinbeck said.
“Give me your gun.”