Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
Release Date: November 12, 2024
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thrillers / Espionage
Special Agent Alex Martel is thrown back into a deadly world of deception when a series of attacks threaten to incite World War III in this action-packed thriller.
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While sailing across the Mediterranean, the megayacht Aurora is rocked with explosions, taken under siege by unknown assailants. On board are some of Europe’s wealthiest and most powerful political players, including the secretary general of Interpol, a high-ranking Finnish diplomat, and Special Agent Alex Martel—whose lethal sniper skills kick in to bring them safely to shore.
Someone is waging a ruthless campaign of attacks against Finland, one of NATO’s newest members, in an attempt to throw the Alliance into turmoil. Teaming back up with CIA agent Caleb, Alex is thrust into the middle of the fray, pursuing the villains from the waters off of Monaco to the Baltic Sea and home to American soil.
As the US is pulled deeper into the conflict, a global catastrophe seems inevitable. But who is really responsible for these escalating attacks on Finland? The Russians, or someone much closer to home? As new allies surface and old enemies reappear, Alex has no way of knowing who to trust—and she might only have one last shot to keep the world from going to war.
Out in the Cold is the second installment in author Steve Urszenyi's Special Agent Alexandra Martel series. Martel, who was dismissed from the FBI for insubordination because of her actions in saving Paris, now has a new job, new bosses, and a new mission to save the world from powerful entities who are intentionally trying to manipulate world events to create a War between adversaries, US and Russia. While sailing across the Mediterranean, the mega yacht Aurora is rocked with explosions, and taken under siege by unknown assailants.
On board are some of Europe’s wealthiest and most powerful political players, including Martel's former boss Madame Celeste Clicquot, the secretary general of Interpol, a high-ranking Finnish diplomat who is NATO's Finnish representative, and Special Agent Alex Martel whose lethal sniper skills kick in to bring them safely to shore. Someone is waging a ruthless campaign of attacks against Finland, one of NATO’s newest members, in an attempt to throw the Alliance into turmoil.
Teaming back up with CIA agent Caleb Copeland who lured her away from the FBI because of her past as a combat medic, and Army sniper, Alex is thrust into the middle of the fray, pursuing the villains from the waters off of Monaco to the Baltic Sea and home to American soil. A global catastrophe seems inevitable as the US is pulled deeper into the conflict. But who is really responsible for these escalating attacks on Finland? The Russians, or someone much closer to home? As new allies surface and old enemies reappear, Alex has no way of knowing who to trust—and she might only have one last shot to keep the world from going to war.
The one thing all thrillers have in common is that the protagonist cannot or refuses to follow orders which leaves them out in the cold. Such is the case when Alex puts, what is possibly, her only friendship, above all else to protect Madame Celeste Clicquot from whoever seems to be targeting her. The book leans on Alex’s sniper skills, as well as her penchant for attracting trouble as she battles enemies on all fronts, and one enemy becomes an unlikely ally. One of the more interesting things that happen in the book is a meeting of enemies, who become unlikely allies thanks to the political manipulations that have pushed two powerful nuclear-capable countries to the brink of a war that nobody wants, well, except powerful warmongers in the US Congress, and Defense industries.
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CHAPTER 1
THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, OFF THE COAST OF THE FRENCH RIVIERA
Alexandra Martel turned, spotting her approaching quarry weaving through the crowd.
Got you now.
All around her was the smell of the sea, the briny scent cutting through the cologne and perfume of the well-heeled guests aboard the luxury megayacht Aurora as if to remind them that, for all their wealth and refinement, the sea was more formidable. Aurora and all she represented were merely transitory things bobbing on its undulating and unforgiving surface.
As her target breezed past, Alex exchanged her empty glass with a new flute of champagne from atop his tray. Mission accomplished. She sipped as the tuxedoed waiter smiled and moved on. Her mood was light, buoyed by the atmosphere of celebration and, perhaps, the champagne.
The spacious enclosed salon pulsed with music as multicolored lasers slashed through the darkness. Fog machines belched mist from an elevated stage. An ornate starfish mosaic encrusted with thousands of LED fibers seemed to scuttle across the dance floor as she strode through a pair of sliding glass pocket doors into a much quieter corridor.
The guests had boarded the ship at its home port in Antibes, France, the coastal town situated on the Mediterranean Sea between Cannes and Nice. At 148 meters—more than 485 feet—Aurora wasn’t short on private spaces. Somewhere in one of the many salons on this deck, Alex would find the person she was actually looking for.
Madame Celeste Clicquot, secretary general of Interpol, had excused herself twenty minutes ago, telling Alex she had to meet with someone. But she had been evasive when Alex inquired further. That was out of character for Clicquot, who, since the events in Paris in the early summer, had been more open and forthright with Alex about her work affairs.
Alex opened a door into a lavish sitting room filled with plush velour settees, Persian rugs, vases, and sculptures from the Far East. Across from her, a man emerged from a doorway to what appeared to be a small private salon. He was older and unfamiliar to her, wearing a business suit that gave him the air of an outsider on this boatful of merrymakers. Stepping out from behind him was Celeste. Alex thought better of calling out to her and instead receded into the darkness. She watched as the man turned and shook Clicquot’s hand, then hurried down a hallway toward the vessel’s bow.
When Clicquot had taken a few steps in her direction, Alex stepped out of the shadows into the salon, taking a long sip of champagne for effect.
Clicquot spotted her and called across the room. “There you are!”
“Oh, hey! I thought I’d never see you again,” said Alex.
“It is this boat, my dear. It’s so massive.”
She took Alex by the hand and led her back toward the dance hall. They emerged into the crowd of guests showing off their moves on the dance floor, where Clicquot found another waiter and relieved him of two fresh glasses of bubbly.
“I’m still working on this one,” Alex protested, shouting to be heard above the din.
“Who said either of these is for you, my dear?” Clicquot replied, draining one in a single gulp.
Oh, what the hell. Live a little, Alex thought.
She polished off her own glass and seized another from the waiter’s tray.
“You are a devil,” Clicquot said conspiratorially. “Come. Follow me.”
She led Alex up a highly polished chromium spiral staircase, her midnight-blue silk dress billowing in the breeze like the spinnaker of a grand sailing vessel as they climbed the stairs.
The deck they entered was open to the sea and as dark as its murky depths. A warm breeze wafted over the ship’s gunwales as it steamed ahead. Clicquot guided them to a terrace overlooking the vessel’s stern and dropped into a cushioned rattan deck chair. A glass-bottom swimming pool two decks below in the ship’s beach club shimmered like sky-blue plasma. Behind them, a ribbon of luminous white foam split the sea, illuminated by a waxing gibbous moon hovering over La Baie des Anges—the Bay of Angels.
Clicquot continued to sip her champagne, staring ahead blankly, looking pensive. Maybe it was the champagne, but tonight she seemed troubled by some unspoken angst—one moment, she was a lively flame; the next, a smoldering candle doused by some foreboding from within.
“Madame—”
“Madame?”
Oops. Not a flame—a flamethrower.
“I’m not your boss anymore, Alex. And outside of office hours, I cease being the secretary general of Interpol. Well, mostly. So tonight, here on this boat, I am simply Celeste.”
Alex waited a beat before speaking. “Celeste, is everything okay?”
Clicquot leaned back in her chair and stared out to sea, taking another sip of champagne. Finally, the edges of her mouth curled up slightly.
“You are an impressive woman, Alex. Before Interpol snapped you up—borrowed you from the FBI—you had already established yourself as a formidable investigator. And, of course, your military accomplishments are legendary. But we still had no idea what we were getting into when you signed on to your secondment.”
Alex leaned back against the pillowy seat cushion and kicked off her boat shoes.
“Despite your actions being what your former FBI handlers called insubordinate, what you did in Paris helped establish Interpol as a preeminent policing organization, not merely one that acts as an administrative liaison among its member agencies. You single-handedly advanced global policing by a decade. We’re going to miss you, Alex. In fact, I already do.”
For what the FBI had labeled insubordination, Alex’s employment was terminated, and, with it, her secondment to Interpol had ended. The Department of Justice didn’t subscribe to her exigent circumstances defense or appreciate the Machiavellian methods she had employed in Paris. For Alex, though, a morally imperative goal justified any means to achieve it. And a soon-to-explode nuclear warhead fit within that definition.
Alex wanted to ask her friend what was going on, but sensing the looming question, Clicquot silenced the thought with a gently waved hand.
“Chief Bressard lobbied hard to bring you into the organization,” Clicquot continued. “I am indebted to him for his foresight. From the outset, I had reservations about your hard-charging methods. But despite my more conservative inclinations, Martin convinced me you would be a strong asset to Interpol. You have proved him most perceptive.”
“Well, I’m glad. Chief Bressard became like a second father to me. I never wanted to leave Interpol, but my actions had consequences.”
“Who knows? Maybe you’ll be back one day.”
Madame Clicquot’s mood was lifting, so Alex quelled the urge to ask about it further. And though she was curious, now wasn’t the time to ask about her downstairs secret rendezvous with the stranger.
All in good time.
The lights from shore off their port side shone in the distance. Higher above, the shape of a rocky peak capped in shimmering lights stood backlit against a star-filled sky.
Clicquot followed her gaze. “Everything is more beautiful when seen from the deck of this incredible yacht. My dear friend Valtteri, her owner, asked that I invite you and Caleb aboard for this little party following your investiture into France’s Legion of Honor.”
“I’ve yet to meet the elusive Valtteri.”
“Tonight, you will. I promise.” Her face lit up in a devious smile. “He’s quite something. And as you can see, he is very successful.”
Looking around them, that might have been the understatement of the evening.
As if on cue, a man’s voice drifted in out of the darkness. “There you are. I thought I’d never find you again.”
“Valtteri! Finally,” Celeste replied. “I thought you might never break free.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, stepping from the shadows. “Investors.”
“Ah, yes. The important people,” she teased.
“None more so than you.” Valtteri bent and kissed her on the cheek. He perched on the arm of Clicquot’s chair and took her hand in his. This wasn’t the same man Alex had seen her friend with moments ago.
So, if this is Valtteri, who was the other guy?
* * *
Caleb Copeland leaned over the ship’s railing, looking on as the trio below sipped champagne and chatted under a string of lights that offered scant illumination. Alex was half turned away from him, looking remarkable in a summer dress, her tanned, bare shoulders drawing him in like a moth to a flame. The allure was intoxicating and impossible to ignore. Her pull on him was undeniable, whether she wore a ghillie suit, tactical gear, or a bare-shouldered dress.
They first met on a mission in the Netherlands involving a high-octane helicopter chase where he witnessed firsthand her world-renowned sniper skills. He was there in his capacity as a CIA paramilitary operations officer and branch chief, offering tactical support on a matter of national security deemed to be of the highest priority to the United States. To that end, he was there to enlist Alex into the Central Intelligence Agency and onto his team. She was an FBI special agent on loan to Interpol and a decorated soldier. He needed her unique skill set, so was determined to alter that arrangement. But Alex being Alex, she had rebuffed his recruitment efforts.
At the time, no one could have predicted that Alex would become the central figure and hero in a story fit for Hollywood. Most of the details of that operation would remain classified for decades to come, but the hunt for a stolen thermonuclear bomb had almost ended with the destruction of one of the world’s greatest cities. Paris was still recovering from its near miss with catastrophe. If not for Alex’s stubbornness and disregard for her personal safety, the powerful nuke would have detonated below the City of Light. Not only would Paris have been obliterated, but the global order would have been forever altered.
Alex, he learned, was a force of nature greater even than the nuclear weapon she had saved Paris from. Following the incident, his recruitment of her to his team within Ground Branch had been a success, even if it had taken some secret backroom brokering from CIA deputy director Kadeisha Thomas to finish the deal.
Alex was now a CIA contractor, a paramilitary operations officer on Caleb’s elite team inside Ground Branch. And yet there she sat—her inner warrior concealed beneath the camouflage of a floral dress.
Reality is merely an illusion.
Madame Clicquot sat to Alex’s right: the shepherd dog next to the lamb. Who was who depended on the circumstances. The man with them was Clicquot’s boyfriend and the multibillionaire owner of Aurora. Caleb had yet to make his acquaintance but recognized Valtteri from his file.
As he watched the threesome chatting below, he heard someone approaching from behind.
“Are you ready, Mr. Copeland?” a man said. Caleb nodded. “I’ll give you that tour now, starting with the security office and armory. My boss tells me that’s what you were hoping to see first.”
“It is,” Caleb replied.
“I’m Jocko. Mr. Street mentioned you’re Special Forces.”
“Ex, but that was a long time ago.”
“And now?”
“And now I’d be very interested in looking around this amazing vessel.”
The security officer nodded. Caleb acknowledged his discretion with a smile and a clap on the back. “Lead on, Jocko.”
* * *
“Alex,” said Celeste. “I’d like to introduce you to Valtteri.”
His bearing was bold, confident. A breeze tousled his wavy blond hair, and his smile revealed shallow dimples and laugh lines that gave him an amiable appearance. As he leaned forward, the patio lights illuminated his fiery eyes.
“It is great to finally meet you, Alex. Celeste has told me so much about you.”
“I’m afraid she has kept you a secret until now.”
“Not a secret,” Celeste corrected. “We’re just being discreet.”
“Celeste detests the mere whiff of a scandal,” said Valtteri.
“And would this be one?”
“Not in the least,” said Celeste. “But one’s personal life should be just that—personal.”
Alex couldn’t have agreed more.
“Shall I refresh our drinks?” Valtteri asked, raising a bottle he held at his side. But before he could refill their glasses—
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The ship rocked as a series of concussive blasts echoed across the sea.
CHAPTER 2
Champagne flutes tumbled as multiple explosions jolted Aurora. The ship shuddered as her active stabilizers seemed momentarily confused by the irregular shockwaves and labored to compensate for the unanticipated disruption to her equilibrium.
“What was that?” asked Celeste.
Alex said nothing, but even with the din of the music from the deck below, she recognized the cracking resonance of military-grade high explosives. A gray-blue cloud of smoke rolled over the ship’s gunwales, engulfing them in a pungent, slightly sweet odor that she tasted as much as smelled. It brought with it a long-ago memory of a grape hut on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan.
She caught a flash of light out of the corner of her eye. “Incoming!” she shouted. “RPG! Get down!”
A fiery streak of light illuminated the deck as it passed. The projectile’s path ended in another cracking explosion somewhere on a deck above them, confirming her suspicions.
What the hell?
She ran to the side of the ship and saw the shadowy outlines of multiple rigid-hulled inflatable boats—RHIBs for short—not far from the megayacht.
“What’s happening? Why are we under attack?” Celeste’s questions weren’t directed at anyone in particular.
The what was easy—multiple bogeys were assaulting Aurora. The why was less important for now. All that mattered was getting Madame Clicquot and Valtteri Lehtonen to safety.
“Do you have a panic room?”
Valtteri stared straight ahead, wide-eyed, mouth agape, but he didn’t answer.
“Valtteri!” She raised her voice to punch through the fight-or-flight response his autonomic nervous system was eliciting.
Around them, lightning flashed, except it wasn’t lightning. More explosions thundered from below. Panicked screams from the ship’s guests, who until a few moments ago had been enjoying the percussive beat from the DJ’s playlist, filled the night.
“A panic room,” Alex demanded again, finally catching Valtteri’s attention. “You must have a secure room on a ship like this. Where is it?”
They had to get moving. They were sitting ducks out here in the open. She grabbed Celeste by the hand and pushed Valtteri toward the ship’s bow and the staircase they had ascended earlier. Another flash of light appeared off the side of the ship. She recognized it as the blowback of an RPG launch from one of the small boats encircling them.
“Get down!” she yelled.
They hit the deck as a rocket-propelled grenade shot past, impacting less than a hundred feet behind them before exploding in a blinding splash of fire and melted steel. The overpressure wave hit her in the chest like a Lennox Lewis punch. Her sinuses hurt. Her ears were ringing. She kept Celeste and Valtteri on the deck long enough for the debris to finish showering down around them.
“Anybody hurt?” she asked, checking them over for shrapnel injuries, seeing none. “Let’s move,” she said, calmly but with urgency.
“Not that way,” said Valtteri. “Belowdecks, aft of the crew mess. There’s a citadel room there.”
He led them rearward along the vessel’s port side, beyond where the RPG had impacted and detonated. They dodged burning debris on the way to the staircase, Alex tiptoeing to avoid having her bare feet shredded by fragments of jagged shrapnel. She felt a sharp stab in her right foot but pressed onward. Smoke billowed as Valtteri pulled open the door. A large man spilled out, hacking and coughing, a pistol extended. Alex grabbed his arm and deftly locked up his gun hand, then flipped him onto his stomach. Still in control of his wrist, she relieved him of his firearm. She was about to strike him in the back of the head with the butt of his SIG Sauer when Valtteri called out.
“Wait!” he shouted. Alex paused, her arm cocked in midair. “He’s the head of my security team.”
“You couldn’t have mentioned that sooner?”
She climbed off him, straightening her dress. The man gave her a once-over as she covered her exposed thigh. He seemed perturbed that a woman in a tropical print halter dress could have bested him.
Valtteri added the requisite introductions. “Alex, this is Iain Street. Street, Alex.”
Just then, two men wearing dark, unmarked military uniforms and carrying rifles appeared from behind a bulkhead twenty meters away. As they leveled their guns at the group, Alex dropped into a low crouch and fired two shots past Street, dropping the lead tango. The head of security pushed Celeste and Valtteri to cover as the second tango fired a burst that struck the door to the stairs behind them. Alex dove out of the way, coming out of her somersault behind a steel pillar and returning fire. Her first shot missed, but the next two found their mark, and the second tango dropped like a heavy sack next to his companion.
She covered left, right, then to her rear to ensure there were no more surprises.
“Street?”
“We’re good,” he said.
She glanced over her shoulder at him while keeping the gun trained to her front. “Give me more, Street. What’s happening?”
He hacked again from the smoke he had taken in. “We counted four Zodiac RHIBs. Not sure where they came from.” He spoke with a pronounced accent—Scottish, she thought. “By the time we picked them up on the ship’s radar, it was too late to establish their origin before the fireworks began.”
“These aren’t your men, I take it?”
“That pair of numpty ballbags? No way.”
Yup, Scottish for sure. “How many tangos?”
“Thermal showed four badgers in each boat—three assaulters and a driver.”
“Badgers?” Alex asked.
“Badgers and doves, Alex. Old SAS terminology for bad guys and their hostages or victims.”
So, out of sixteen men attacking the ship, there could be as many as twelve already onboard, minus these two.
“And then there were ten,” she mumbled.
“Are these pirates?” asked Celeste.
“Once upon a time, maybe,” she answered. “But here and now on the Mediterranean Sea, kitted out like that? These are no Barbary Coast privateers, ma’am.” Then to Street, “What about your men?”
“Down to eight, including myself. They’re engaging the ones that boarded.” The sound of muted gunfire from somewhere else on the ship punctuated the air. “But I’m afraid we’re outnumbered and probably outgunned.”
She nodded, handing him back his pistol.
“I’ll get these two to the panic room,” he added. “You good for now?”
“I will be.”
“Good.”
“Go,” she said.
Valtteri’s arm was already around Celeste’s shoulders, steering her toward the stairwell.
“Wait,” Celeste said, pulling free. “Alex, what are you going to do?”
She shrugged.
“No, Alex. You don’t even have any shoes, let alone your gun. And look, you’re bleeding!”
Alex glanced at her feet, where a small puddle of blood had formed. She had kicked off her boat shoes earlier and been padding around barefoot since the ship came under attack.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. She tore a long strip of material off the bottom of her dress, wound it around her foot, and tied it off with a square knot. “Street, get them to safety. Do you have comms?”
He nodded. “Take this.” He was about to throw her his radio.
“No, keep it. You’ll need it to coordinate with your men.”
“If you get to the bridge,” he said, “there’s a room at the back, behind the charting table. Grab a radio from there.” He turned and herded the couple toward the stairs. “We declared a Mayday and activated our ship security alert system, including the multi-frequency EPIRB—the emergency position-indicating radio beacon,” he called over his shoulder. “But out here, it could take twenty, thirty minutes at least for someone to get to us, if at all.”
Guess we’re going it alone, then.
She glanced at the Rolex Submariner on her wrist: 9:52 P.M.
The three disappeared down the stairs as Alex stepped to the corpses she had created, relieving the first of his rifle, an FN SCAR-L.
She rolled the fallen assailant onto his back with her knee and took two spare mags from the load-bearing vest he wore over his body armor, slipping one into a slash pocket in her dress. She’d have preferred to take the whole vest, but prying it off him would have left her defenseless and exposed for too long, validating her maxim that a dress without pockets was about as useful as retroreflective camo.
She stepped behind the bulkhead for cover while she inspected her new weapon. The firing selector was pointing to A for full auto. She ejected the magazine that was half full of ammunition and swapped it out for one of the full thirty-round mags.
Send me, she thought.
CHAPTER 3
When the first explosion hit, Caleb immediately recognized the moment for what it was: Aurora was under attack. Jocko had been slower to react, and his hesitation almost cost him his life.
“Get down!” yelled Caleb as the second RPG cut across their path and impacted the ship’s superstructure twenty meters away. He tackled the younger man, and they fell together behind the cover of a center support wall.
“What the fuck is going on?” Jocko asked.
“Armory. Now!” yelled Caleb, pushing him forward.
Jocko snapped into battle mode. “Come on,” he said, drawing his sidearm.
They ran up a flight of stairs, arriving at the back of the bridge at the same time as a pair of tangos appeared.
“Get down!” shouted Jocko.
Caleb ducked as Jocko fired half a dozen rounds at the two tangos, dropping one while the other took cover. It bought the men enough time to enter the ship’s command center. The officer of the watch and the other men on the bridge had taken cover inside, behind the level 8 bullet-resistant ballistic glass. Two security officers appeared from a back room, their arms filled with rifles and ammo.
“Here!” said one, handing Jocko a carbine and extra magazines.
Jocko made sure it was ready to go before pointing Caleb into the room.
“Grab what you need. Make sure you take extra ammo.”
Caleb emerged from the armory carrying an AR-style tactical rifle and extra mags.
“All good?” asked Jocko as he stepped out.
“I still have a pulse,” he said. “So yeah, all good.”
Knowing that the bridge would be defended by others from the ship’s security detail, Caleb was antsy to get moving. The best defense was a strong offense, so he and Jocko needed to take the fight to Aurora’s attackers and link up with Alex, who would do what Alex does.
The two men hurried to the door on the port side of the pilothouse. Caleb took the lead and, flinging it open, immediately came under fire. He ducked down and fired back, permanently preventing those tangos from accessing the bridge.
* * *
Alex peered through the rifle’s holographic sight as she moved out from behind the bulkhead. She paused, listening for sounds that might give away the location of other attackers. Two were down. That left maybe ten tangos unaccounted for somewhere aboard the ship, not including the four driving the RHIBs.
The music on the deck below had been cut off. Occasionally, screaming from the guests would punctuate the salty air. The revelers aboard Aurora were her canaries, signaling not the presence of carbon monoxide or other harmful gases but the ship’s attackers. The sound of gunfire was sporadic, telling her that whoever they were, they were here for a defined objective and not just to rack up a body count.
The deck in front of her was clear, but not being familiar with the ship’s layout was problematic. Forging on, she soon came to a TV-sized touchscreen panel on the wall next to another stairwell. A few taps later, her location on the front half of the fourth deck popped up on the display. The massive Aurora had seven decks in all.
The crew quarters and mess were shown below the beach club. While not marked, that was the most likely location of the panic room if she was interpreting Valtteri’s description correctly. Aft of the crew mess, he had said. She hoped that would be where she’d find them or where she’d send rescue crews.
The bridge was on the ship’s sixth level. Tactically, did she make her way there and maybe link up with some of Street’s security team? And where was Caleb? Is that what he had done? The pull to find Caleb was formidable, but lone wolf had always been Alex’s preferred operating style, as evidenced by her two previous Army occupations—combat medic and sniper—so her decision to pursue the badgers solo seemed preordained.
Find Celeste.
She pulled open the door to the stairwell and stepped in, sweeping her rifle left and up. The diamond-tread metal floor felt cold against the soles of her feet as she descended the stairs to the level below. She pushed the door open a crack and found three badgers standing in the middle of the Orient-themed room, their backs to her. Wedging the door open with her bare foot, she braced her rifle on the jamb.
“Howdy, fellas.”
They turned her way in unison, the middle badger’s gun coming up first. Alex pulled the trigger and shot him center mass, but her rifle jammed on her next shot.
Shit!
Bullets from the other badgers’ weapons sprayed the doorway, sending metal shrapnel and sparks flying all around her as she ducked back into the stairwell, falling backward in the process. A flaming dagger of pain sliced through her cheek as something embedded into her skin.
“Fuck!” she yelled, pulling a thin metal shard from her cheek.
She ran her tongue along the inside of her mouth. Clear. Grateful the shrapnel hadn’t penetrated through, she tossed it away and wiped blood from her face with the back of her hand.
She cleared the jam and slapped a new magazine into the magwell, hoping this was a one-off failure. She tapped the magazine, partly for good luck. Having lost the element of surprise, popping the door open again was a less-than-desirable option, but she needed to reengage.
She breached the room for a second time only to encounter one dead badger. Pushing his rifle out of reach, she helped herself to two more mags from his load-bearing vest—his LBV. Her dress was getting weighed down, pulling heavily at her neck. Hell with this, she thought. She pried the badger’s vest off him and donned it, transferring the mags from her dress’s pockets to the LBV. She picked up her rifle and moved forward.
Back to work.
THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, OFF THE COAST OF THE FRENCH RIVIERA
Alexandra Martel turned, spotting her approaching quarry weaving through the crowd.
Got you now.
All around her was the smell of the sea, the briny scent cutting through the cologne and perfume of the well-heeled guests aboard the luxury megayacht Aurora as if to remind them that, for all their wealth and refinement, the sea was more formidable. Aurora and all she represented were merely transitory things bobbing on its undulating and unforgiving surface.
As her target breezed past, Alex exchanged her empty glass with a new flute of champagne from atop his tray. Mission accomplished. She sipped as the tuxedoed waiter smiled and moved on. Her mood was light, buoyed by the atmosphere of celebration and, perhaps, the champagne.
The spacious enclosed salon pulsed with music as multicolored lasers slashed through the darkness. Fog machines belched mist from an elevated stage. An ornate starfish mosaic encrusted with thousands of LED fibers seemed to scuttle across the dance floor as she strode through a pair of sliding glass pocket doors into a much quieter corridor.
The guests had boarded the ship at its home port in Antibes, France, the coastal town situated on the Mediterranean Sea between Cannes and Nice. At 148 meters—more than 485 feet—Aurora wasn’t short on private spaces. Somewhere in one of the many salons on this deck, Alex would find the person she was actually looking for.
Madame Celeste Clicquot, secretary general of Interpol, had excused herself twenty minutes ago, telling Alex she had to meet with someone. But she had been evasive when Alex inquired further. That was out of character for Clicquot, who, since the events in Paris in the early summer, had been more open and forthright with Alex about her work affairs.
Alex opened a door into a lavish sitting room filled with plush velour settees, Persian rugs, vases, and sculptures from the Far East. Across from her, a man emerged from a doorway to what appeared to be a small private salon. He was older and unfamiliar to her, wearing a business suit that gave him the air of an outsider on this boatful of merrymakers. Stepping out from behind him was Celeste. Alex thought better of calling out to her and instead receded into the darkness. She watched as the man turned and shook Clicquot’s hand, then hurried down a hallway toward the vessel’s bow.
When Clicquot had taken a few steps in her direction, Alex stepped out of the shadows into the salon, taking a long sip of champagne for effect.
Clicquot spotted her and called across the room. “There you are!”
“Oh, hey! I thought I’d never see you again,” said Alex.
“It is this boat, my dear. It’s so massive.”
She took Alex by the hand and led her back toward the dance hall. They emerged into the crowd of guests showing off their moves on the dance floor, where Clicquot found another waiter and relieved him of two fresh glasses of bubbly.
“I’m still working on this one,” Alex protested, shouting to be heard above the din.
“Who said either of these is for you, my dear?” Clicquot replied, draining one in a single gulp.
Oh, what the hell. Live a little, Alex thought.
She polished off her own glass and seized another from the waiter’s tray.
“You are a devil,” Clicquot said conspiratorially. “Come. Follow me.”
She led Alex up a highly polished chromium spiral staircase, her midnight-blue silk dress billowing in the breeze like the spinnaker of a grand sailing vessel as they climbed the stairs.
The deck they entered was open to the sea and as dark as its murky depths. A warm breeze wafted over the ship’s gunwales as it steamed ahead. Clicquot guided them to a terrace overlooking the vessel’s stern and dropped into a cushioned rattan deck chair. A glass-bottom swimming pool two decks below in the ship’s beach club shimmered like sky-blue plasma. Behind them, a ribbon of luminous white foam split the sea, illuminated by a waxing gibbous moon hovering over La Baie des Anges—the Bay of Angels.
Clicquot continued to sip her champagne, staring ahead blankly, looking pensive. Maybe it was the champagne, but tonight she seemed troubled by some unspoken angst—one moment, she was a lively flame; the next, a smoldering candle doused by some foreboding from within.
“Madame—”
“Madame?”
Oops. Not a flame—a flamethrower.
“I’m not your boss anymore, Alex. And outside of office hours, I cease being the secretary general of Interpol. Well, mostly. So tonight, here on this boat, I am simply Celeste.”
Alex waited a beat before speaking. “Celeste, is everything okay?”
Clicquot leaned back in her chair and stared out to sea, taking another sip of champagne. Finally, the edges of her mouth curled up slightly.
“You are an impressive woman, Alex. Before Interpol snapped you up—borrowed you from the FBI—you had already established yourself as a formidable investigator. And, of course, your military accomplishments are legendary. But we still had no idea what we were getting into when you signed on to your secondment.”
Alex leaned back against the pillowy seat cushion and kicked off her boat shoes.
“Despite your actions being what your former FBI handlers called insubordinate, what you did in Paris helped establish Interpol as a preeminent policing organization, not merely one that acts as an administrative liaison among its member agencies. You single-handedly advanced global policing by a decade. We’re going to miss you, Alex. In fact, I already do.”
For what the FBI had labeled insubordination, Alex’s employment was terminated, and, with it, her secondment to Interpol had ended. The Department of Justice didn’t subscribe to her exigent circumstances defense or appreciate the Machiavellian methods she had employed in Paris. For Alex, though, a morally imperative goal justified any means to achieve it. And a soon-to-explode nuclear warhead fit within that definition.
Alex wanted to ask her friend what was going on, but sensing the looming question, Clicquot silenced the thought with a gently waved hand.
“Chief Bressard lobbied hard to bring you into the organization,” Clicquot continued. “I am indebted to him for his foresight. From the outset, I had reservations about your hard-charging methods. But despite my more conservative inclinations, Martin convinced me you would be a strong asset to Interpol. You have proved him most perceptive.”
“Well, I’m glad. Chief Bressard became like a second father to me. I never wanted to leave Interpol, but my actions had consequences.”
“Who knows? Maybe you’ll be back one day.”
Madame Clicquot’s mood was lifting, so Alex quelled the urge to ask about it further. And though she was curious, now wasn’t the time to ask about her downstairs secret rendezvous with the stranger.
All in good time.
The lights from shore off their port side shone in the distance. Higher above, the shape of a rocky peak capped in shimmering lights stood backlit against a star-filled sky.
Clicquot followed her gaze. “Everything is more beautiful when seen from the deck of this incredible yacht. My dear friend Valtteri, her owner, asked that I invite you and Caleb aboard for this little party following your investiture into France’s Legion of Honor.”
“I’ve yet to meet the elusive Valtteri.”
“Tonight, you will. I promise.” Her face lit up in a devious smile. “He’s quite something. And as you can see, he is very successful.”
Looking around them, that might have been the understatement of the evening.
As if on cue, a man’s voice drifted in out of the darkness. “There you are. I thought I’d never find you again.”
“Valtteri! Finally,” Celeste replied. “I thought you might never break free.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, stepping from the shadows. “Investors.”
“Ah, yes. The important people,” she teased.
“None more so than you.” Valtteri bent and kissed her on the cheek. He perched on the arm of Clicquot’s chair and took her hand in his. This wasn’t the same man Alex had seen her friend with moments ago.
So, if this is Valtteri, who was the other guy?
* * *
Caleb Copeland leaned over the ship’s railing, looking on as the trio below sipped champagne and chatted under a string of lights that offered scant illumination. Alex was half turned away from him, looking remarkable in a summer dress, her tanned, bare shoulders drawing him in like a moth to a flame. The allure was intoxicating and impossible to ignore. Her pull on him was undeniable, whether she wore a ghillie suit, tactical gear, or a bare-shouldered dress.
They first met on a mission in the Netherlands involving a high-octane helicopter chase where he witnessed firsthand her world-renowned sniper skills. He was there in his capacity as a CIA paramilitary operations officer and branch chief, offering tactical support on a matter of national security deemed to be of the highest priority to the United States. To that end, he was there to enlist Alex into the Central Intelligence Agency and onto his team. She was an FBI special agent on loan to Interpol and a decorated soldier. He needed her unique skill set, so was determined to alter that arrangement. But Alex being Alex, she had rebuffed his recruitment efforts.
At the time, no one could have predicted that Alex would become the central figure and hero in a story fit for Hollywood. Most of the details of that operation would remain classified for decades to come, but the hunt for a stolen thermonuclear bomb had almost ended with the destruction of one of the world’s greatest cities. Paris was still recovering from its near miss with catastrophe. If not for Alex’s stubbornness and disregard for her personal safety, the powerful nuke would have detonated below the City of Light. Not only would Paris have been obliterated, but the global order would have been forever altered.
Alex, he learned, was a force of nature greater even than the nuclear weapon she had saved Paris from. Following the incident, his recruitment of her to his team within Ground Branch had been a success, even if it had taken some secret backroom brokering from CIA deputy director Kadeisha Thomas to finish the deal.
Alex was now a CIA contractor, a paramilitary operations officer on Caleb’s elite team inside Ground Branch. And yet there she sat—her inner warrior concealed beneath the camouflage of a floral dress.
Reality is merely an illusion.
Madame Clicquot sat to Alex’s right: the shepherd dog next to the lamb. Who was who depended on the circumstances. The man with them was Clicquot’s boyfriend and the multibillionaire owner of Aurora. Caleb had yet to make his acquaintance but recognized Valtteri from his file.
As he watched the threesome chatting below, he heard someone approaching from behind.
“Are you ready, Mr. Copeland?” a man said. Caleb nodded. “I’ll give you that tour now, starting with the security office and armory. My boss tells me that’s what you were hoping to see first.”
“It is,” Caleb replied.
“I’m Jocko. Mr. Street mentioned you’re Special Forces.”
“Ex, but that was a long time ago.”
“And now?”
“And now I’d be very interested in looking around this amazing vessel.”
The security officer nodded. Caleb acknowledged his discretion with a smile and a clap on the back. “Lead on, Jocko.”
* * *
“Alex,” said Celeste. “I’d like to introduce you to Valtteri.”
His bearing was bold, confident. A breeze tousled his wavy blond hair, and his smile revealed shallow dimples and laugh lines that gave him an amiable appearance. As he leaned forward, the patio lights illuminated his fiery eyes.
“It is great to finally meet you, Alex. Celeste has told me so much about you.”
“I’m afraid she has kept you a secret until now.”
“Not a secret,” Celeste corrected. “We’re just being discreet.”
“Celeste detests the mere whiff of a scandal,” said Valtteri.
“And would this be one?”
“Not in the least,” said Celeste. “But one’s personal life should be just that—personal.”
Alex couldn’t have agreed more.
“Shall I refresh our drinks?” Valtteri asked, raising a bottle he held at his side. But before he could refill their glasses—
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The ship rocked as a series of concussive blasts echoed across the sea.
CHAPTER 2
Champagne flutes tumbled as multiple explosions jolted Aurora. The ship shuddered as her active stabilizers seemed momentarily confused by the irregular shockwaves and labored to compensate for the unanticipated disruption to her equilibrium.
“What was that?” asked Celeste.
Alex said nothing, but even with the din of the music from the deck below, she recognized the cracking resonance of military-grade high explosives. A gray-blue cloud of smoke rolled over the ship’s gunwales, engulfing them in a pungent, slightly sweet odor that she tasted as much as smelled. It brought with it a long-ago memory of a grape hut on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan.
She caught a flash of light out of the corner of her eye. “Incoming!” she shouted. “RPG! Get down!”
A fiery streak of light illuminated the deck as it passed. The projectile’s path ended in another cracking explosion somewhere on a deck above them, confirming her suspicions.
What the hell?
She ran to the side of the ship and saw the shadowy outlines of multiple rigid-hulled inflatable boats—RHIBs for short—not far from the megayacht.
“What’s happening? Why are we under attack?” Celeste’s questions weren’t directed at anyone in particular.
The what was easy—multiple bogeys were assaulting Aurora. The why was less important for now. All that mattered was getting Madame Clicquot and Valtteri Lehtonen to safety.
“Do you have a panic room?”
Valtteri stared straight ahead, wide-eyed, mouth agape, but he didn’t answer.
“Valtteri!” She raised her voice to punch through the fight-or-flight response his autonomic nervous system was eliciting.
Around them, lightning flashed, except it wasn’t lightning. More explosions thundered from below. Panicked screams from the ship’s guests, who until a few moments ago had been enjoying the percussive beat from the DJ’s playlist, filled the night.
“A panic room,” Alex demanded again, finally catching Valtteri’s attention. “You must have a secure room on a ship like this. Where is it?”
They had to get moving. They were sitting ducks out here in the open. She grabbed Celeste by the hand and pushed Valtteri toward the ship’s bow and the staircase they had ascended earlier. Another flash of light appeared off the side of the ship. She recognized it as the blowback of an RPG launch from one of the small boats encircling them.
“Get down!” she yelled.
They hit the deck as a rocket-propelled grenade shot past, impacting less than a hundred feet behind them before exploding in a blinding splash of fire and melted steel. The overpressure wave hit her in the chest like a Lennox Lewis punch. Her sinuses hurt. Her ears were ringing. She kept Celeste and Valtteri on the deck long enough for the debris to finish showering down around them.
“Anybody hurt?” she asked, checking them over for shrapnel injuries, seeing none. “Let’s move,” she said, calmly but with urgency.
“Not that way,” said Valtteri. “Belowdecks, aft of the crew mess. There’s a citadel room there.”
He led them rearward along the vessel’s port side, beyond where the RPG had impacted and detonated. They dodged burning debris on the way to the staircase, Alex tiptoeing to avoid having her bare feet shredded by fragments of jagged shrapnel. She felt a sharp stab in her right foot but pressed onward. Smoke billowed as Valtteri pulled open the door. A large man spilled out, hacking and coughing, a pistol extended. Alex grabbed his arm and deftly locked up his gun hand, then flipped him onto his stomach. Still in control of his wrist, she relieved him of his firearm. She was about to strike him in the back of the head with the butt of his SIG Sauer when Valtteri called out.
“Wait!” he shouted. Alex paused, her arm cocked in midair. “He’s the head of my security team.”
“You couldn’t have mentioned that sooner?”
She climbed off him, straightening her dress. The man gave her a once-over as she covered her exposed thigh. He seemed perturbed that a woman in a tropical print halter dress could have bested him.
Valtteri added the requisite introductions. “Alex, this is Iain Street. Street, Alex.”
Just then, two men wearing dark, unmarked military uniforms and carrying rifles appeared from behind a bulkhead twenty meters away. As they leveled their guns at the group, Alex dropped into a low crouch and fired two shots past Street, dropping the lead tango. The head of security pushed Celeste and Valtteri to cover as the second tango fired a burst that struck the door to the stairs behind them. Alex dove out of the way, coming out of her somersault behind a steel pillar and returning fire. Her first shot missed, but the next two found their mark, and the second tango dropped like a heavy sack next to his companion.
She covered left, right, then to her rear to ensure there were no more surprises.
“Street?”
“We’re good,” he said.
She glanced over her shoulder at him while keeping the gun trained to her front. “Give me more, Street. What’s happening?”
He hacked again from the smoke he had taken in. “We counted four Zodiac RHIBs. Not sure where they came from.” He spoke with a pronounced accent—Scottish, she thought. “By the time we picked them up on the ship’s radar, it was too late to establish their origin before the fireworks began.”
“These aren’t your men, I take it?”
“That pair of numpty ballbags? No way.”
Yup, Scottish for sure. “How many tangos?”
“Thermal showed four badgers in each boat—three assaulters and a driver.”
“Badgers?” Alex asked.
“Badgers and doves, Alex. Old SAS terminology for bad guys and their hostages or victims.”
So, out of sixteen men attacking the ship, there could be as many as twelve already onboard, minus these two.
“And then there were ten,” she mumbled.
“Are these pirates?” asked Celeste.
“Once upon a time, maybe,” she answered. “But here and now on the Mediterranean Sea, kitted out like that? These are no Barbary Coast privateers, ma’am.” Then to Street, “What about your men?”
“Down to eight, including myself. They’re engaging the ones that boarded.” The sound of muted gunfire from somewhere else on the ship punctuated the air. “But I’m afraid we’re outnumbered and probably outgunned.”
She nodded, handing him back his pistol.
“I’ll get these two to the panic room,” he added. “You good for now?”
“I will be.”
“Good.”
“Go,” she said.
Valtteri’s arm was already around Celeste’s shoulders, steering her toward the stairwell.
“Wait,” Celeste said, pulling free. “Alex, what are you going to do?”
She shrugged.
“No, Alex. You don’t even have any shoes, let alone your gun. And look, you’re bleeding!”
Alex glanced at her feet, where a small puddle of blood had formed. She had kicked off her boat shoes earlier and been padding around barefoot since the ship came under attack.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. She tore a long strip of material off the bottom of her dress, wound it around her foot, and tied it off with a square knot. “Street, get them to safety. Do you have comms?”
He nodded. “Take this.” He was about to throw her his radio.
“No, keep it. You’ll need it to coordinate with your men.”
“If you get to the bridge,” he said, “there’s a room at the back, behind the charting table. Grab a radio from there.” He turned and herded the couple toward the stairs. “We declared a Mayday and activated our ship security alert system, including the multi-frequency EPIRB—the emergency position-indicating radio beacon,” he called over his shoulder. “But out here, it could take twenty, thirty minutes at least for someone to get to us, if at all.”
Guess we’re going it alone, then.
She glanced at the Rolex Submariner on her wrist: 9:52 P.M.
The three disappeared down the stairs as Alex stepped to the corpses she had created, relieving the first of his rifle, an FN SCAR-L.
She rolled the fallen assailant onto his back with her knee and took two spare mags from the load-bearing vest he wore over his body armor, slipping one into a slash pocket in her dress. She’d have preferred to take the whole vest, but prying it off him would have left her defenseless and exposed for too long, validating her maxim that a dress without pockets was about as useful as retroreflective camo.
She stepped behind the bulkhead for cover while she inspected her new weapon. The firing selector was pointing to A for full auto. She ejected the magazine that was half full of ammunition and swapped it out for one of the full thirty-round mags.
Send me, she thought.
CHAPTER 3
When the first explosion hit, Caleb immediately recognized the moment for what it was: Aurora was under attack. Jocko had been slower to react, and his hesitation almost cost him his life.
“Get down!” yelled Caleb as the second RPG cut across their path and impacted the ship’s superstructure twenty meters away. He tackled the younger man, and they fell together behind the cover of a center support wall.
“What the fuck is going on?” Jocko asked.
“Armory. Now!” yelled Caleb, pushing him forward.
Jocko snapped into battle mode. “Come on,” he said, drawing his sidearm.
They ran up a flight of stairs, arriving at the back of the bridge at the same time as a pair of tangos appeared.
“Get down!” shouted Jocko.
Caleb ducked as Jocko fired half a dozen rounds at the two tangos, dropping one while the other took cover. It bought the men enough time to enter the ship’s command center. The officer of the watch and the other men on the bridge had taken cover inside, behind the level 8 bullet-resistant ballistic glass. Two security officers appeared from a back room, their arms filled with rifles and ammo.
“Here!” said one, handing Jocko a carbine and extra magazines.
Jocko made sure it was ready to go before pointing Caleb into the room.
“Grab what you need. Make sure you take extra ammo.”
Caleb emerged from the armory carrying an AR-style tactical rifle and extra mags.
“All good?” asked Jocko as he stepped out.
“I still have a pulse,” he said. “So yeah, all good.”
Knowing that the bridge would be defended by others from the ship’s security detail, Caleb was antsy to get moving. The best defense was a strong offense, so he and Jocko needed to take the fight to Aurora’s attackers and link up with Alex, who would do what Alex does.
The two men hurried to the door on the port side of the pilothouse. Caleb took the lead and, flinging it open, immediately came under fire. He ducked down and fired back, permanently preventing those tangos from accessing the bridge.
* * *
Alex peered through the rifle’s holographic sight as she moved out from behind the bulkhead. She paused, listening for sounds that might give away the location of other attackers. Two were down. That left maybe ten tangos unaccounted for somewhere aboard the ship, not including the four driving the RHIBs.
The music on the deck below had been cut off. Occasionally, screaming from the guests would punctuate the salty air. The revelers aboard Aurora were her canaries, signaling not the presence of carbon monoxide or other harmful gases but the ship’s attackers. The sound of gunfire was sporadic, telling her that whoever they were, they were here for a defined objective and not just to rack up a body count.
The deck in front of her was clear, but not being familiar with the ship’s layout was problematic. Forging on, she soon came to a TV-sized touchscreen panel on the wall next to another stairwell. A few taps later, her location on the front half of the fourth deck popped up on the display. The massive Aurora had seven decks in all.
The crew quarters and mess were shown below the beach club. While not marked, that was the most likely location of the panic room if she was interpreting Valtteri’s description correctly. Aft of the crew mess, he had said. She hoped that would be where she’d find them or where she’d send rescue crews.
The bridge was on the ship’s sixth level. Tactically, did she make her way there and maybe link up with some of Street’s security team? And where was Caleb? Is that what he had done? The pull to find Caleb was formidable, but lone wolf had always been Alex’s preferred operating style, as evidenced by her two previous Army occupations—combat medic and sniper—so her decision to pursue the badgers solo seemed preordained.
Find Celeste.
She pulled open the door to the stairwell and stepped in, sweeping her rifle left and up. The diamond-tread metal floor felt cold against the soles of her feet as she descended the stairs to the level below. She pushed the door open a crack and found three badgers standing in the middle of the Orient-themed room, their backs to her. Wedging the door open with her bare foot, she braced her rifle on the jamb.
“Howdy, fellas.”
They turned her way in unison, the middle badger’s gun coming up first. Alex pulled the trigger and shot him center mass, but her rifle jammed on her next shot.
Shit!
Bullets from the other badgers’ weapons sprayed the doorway, sending metal shrapnel and sparks flying all around her as she ducked back into the stairwell, falling backward in the process. A flaming dagger of pain sliced through her cheek as something embedded into her skin.
“Fuck!” she yelled, pulling a thin metal shard from her cheek.
She ran her tongue along the inside of her mouth. Clear. Grateful the shrapnel hadn’t penetrated through, she tossed it away and wiped blood from her face with the back of her hand.
She cleared the jam and slapped a new magazine into the magwell, hoping this was a one-off failure. She tapped the magazine, partly for good luck. Having lost the element of surprise, popping the door open again was a less-than-desirable option, but she needed to reengage.
She breached the room for a second time only to encounter one dead badger. Pushing his rifle out of reach, she helped herself to two more mags from his load-bearing vest—his LBV. Her dress was getting weighed down, pulling heavily at her neck. Hell with this, she thought. She pried the badger’s vest off him and donned it, transferring the mags from her dress’s pockets to the LBV. She picked up her rifle and moved forward.
Back to work.
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