carbon dioxide at the moment. This will clean the air.”
“Roger that.”
After Zack’s tired voice instructed Court through turning on the O2 system and activating the sub’s laser collision avoidance feelers, Court piloted the sub to the east for another minute, getting the feel of the craft. Once confident he had the hang of it, he called back to Hightower again, “How am I doing?”
“You suck. You can’t drive cars for shit; you can’t fly planes for shit. You’ll probably steer this thing up a whale’s ass in a minute.”
Court could hear the relief secreted in the injured man’s admonitions.
Two hours later, Court felt certain they were well out in international waters. He could hear soft moaning and an occasional wheeze from the man behind him. Zack babbled incoherently at one point. Gentry knew Hightower could still die from his wound or from an infection, even if he made it to top-flight medical care in the next hours. Sir Donald would have to come through big time to rescue them.
The irony was not lost on the Gray Man. He’d saved Sir Donald a few months earlier, told himself he’d never trust him again, and now the portly knight was Court’s very last hope.
The sub finally surfaced at eight fifteen in the morning. The sun was well up now, straight off the bow of the little vessel. Gentry used it to orient himself as the HUD was difficult to read with the bright daylight penetrating the cockpit. Court activated the FM beacon and waited.
They bobbed up and down on the open sea.
A little after ten he saw the ship. It was a huge tanker, and as it loomed above the submarine, loomed above Gentry’s head right at the waterline, it seemed as high as a skyscraper and menacing with its jet-black hull. The ship took nearly a half hour from first sight to the point at which a ladder was lowered to the sub and Court popped his canopy. He called out for help, and two men came down on separate ladders, secured Hightower in a harness, and had him lifted three stories up to the railing.
Court climbed up the ladder under his own power, though his shoulder burned with the strain, and he vomited in the heat as the huge ship rose and fell with him hanging on alongside. He’d nearly made it to the top when he passed the big letters on the port side bow. He had to lean back to read the name of the craft that rescued him.
“LaurentGroup Cherbourg.”
“Perfect,” he said. Court had had dealings with LaurentGroup, the huge multinational corporation that had tried to kill him the previous year. He never thought he’d willingly climb aboard one of their vessels but, again, desperate times called for desperate measures.
Court continued up the ladder to the railing and was pulled over the side by a crew of Indonesians.
Zack was laid out on a stretcher and rushed hurriedly away. Court himself fell to the deck, was lifted by his arms and legs, and then more dragged than carried into a cool hallway in the superstructure of the ship. Within minutes he asked for morphine, a syringe appeared, and shortly thereafter, he was out.
When he awoke, he’d already been transferred to another boat, a tall sailing ship owned by a Welsh media tycoon and, as it turned out, a friend of a friend of Sir Donald. Court asked about the condition of the man brought aboard the tanker with him, but the crew of his new vessel had no information.
Four days later, they made port in Alexandria, and Court Gentry slipped ashore and away. The crew of the sailing ship never saw him leave.
They just awoke one morning and found him gone.
EPILOGUE
Of all the eighty nations around the globe to which Rosoboronexport sold arms, Il-76 senior pilot Gennady Orloff most enjoyed his layovers in Venezuela. It was not because of Caracas’s nightlife, which had taken a hit with the austere Communist demagoguery that President Hugo Chávez had advanced in the past few years. And it was not because of the natural, rugged beauty of the country, as Gennady rarely had more than one day until his turnaround flight back to Russia and therefore insufficient time to leave Caracas proper, the smoggy urban jungle of five million.
No, Gennady enjoyed Venezuela because of a woman. One woman, which was hardly the norm for a bon vivant such as Gennady Orloff. On his flights to Bolivia, in contrast, there were three women from