Page 113 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

We?Juan shook his head. Plata’s arrogance was only matched by his inferiority complex.

“Grabbing those flags should be easy enough,” Juan said. “Davis and I must still navigate a minefield, but the rest of you should not face any opposition. Still, take all necessary precautions.”

“I’m giving the orders, Mendoza. Not you,” Plata said. “Everybody stays on mission. When you capture your flag, get back to the rally point ASAP. After that, we’ll have to see what other tricks the Vendor might have up his sleeve. Understood?”

The others signaled they heard their orders and would comply.

“Mendoza out,” Juan said and killed his radio. He turned to Linc.

“We’ve got a date with a minefield.”

“Too bad we couldn’t use one of those drones you scrambled.”

“We’ll head back to the armory and see how we can MacGyver our way out of this mess.”

58

Washington, D.C.

Banfield’s face was flushed red, partly from the booze she’d been drinking, but mostly in reaction to the texts she’d been exchanging with the Vendor. She’d never met the man before and had no idea of his true identity.

Over the past few years, she had allowed herself to fantasize about him, picturing a roguishly handsome and dangerously mysterious European royal who would someday magically appear at her door and whisk her away to his mountain castle. All of those childish notions were suddenly crushed beneath his vicious barrage of nasty exchanges questioning her intelligence and usefulness.

Wilting beneath the Vendor’s scalding criticisms, she found herself on the verge of groveling, something she loathed even more than the man’s gross ingratitude. She had risked her career and even prison in order to help his business escape unwanted scrutiny. And now she was an idiot for working late and discovering Overholt’s texts hours after the fact?

Her ego told her to resign then and there, but the prospect of more tax-free cash was too great to ignore. She swallowed her pride as he laid out more demands. He finally ended his digital tirade with the simple text command:

IF YOU LEARN ANYTHING MORE ABOUT THEOREGONCONTACT ME IMMEDIATELY!!!

Her eyes welling with tears, she tossed her encrypted Vendor-only phone aside. She’d never been so humiliated. But what bothered her even more was the vague but unmistakable subtext beneath it all that sent shivers down her spine.

For the first time in their long and profitable relationship, she finally realized he could very well murder her.

?

The Island of Sorrows

The Celebes Sea

The Vendor paced the control room, fuming. TheMak?ihad been destroyed, the drones grounded, and the cameras shut down. But what infuriated him most of all was the prospect of the hatedOregonlooming somewhere out at sea.

That idiot Banfield should have been more attentive. As soon as he recruited a suitable replacement he would eliminate her. He had bigger problems at the moment.

Why had theOregonrequested a quick response force at his island, and then suddenly canceled it? The Vendor tasted the bile in the back of his throat. Without a doubt, that saucy, one-legged fellow who had downed his automated airplane had something to do with it. But what? There was no one-legged man on the island—

“Keiko!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Pull up the image of that brigand that sabotaged flight 252 and put it on my screen.”

“Here it is.”

Cabrillo’s photo capture in the plane’s cargo space appeared on the display.

“I’ve enhanced the image as best I could. The onboard cameras were low resolution.”

“Quit making excuses. Keiko, pull up the facial photos of themercenaries we brought to the island and run a comparative facial recognition analysis with the brigand. I’m trying to determine if he is one of the mercenaries on the island.”