Zale calmly felt for a pulse, and finding none, he tied a rope around Wong's ankles that was attached to the boat's anchor, a large tin can filled with hardened concrete. Then he dropped the anchor over the side and pushed Wong's body after it. He watched indifferently until the bubbles stopped rising to the surface.
The fish was still flopping in the bottom of the boat, but its struggles were rapidly diminishing. Zale tossed it over the side to join Wong.
"Sorry, my friend," he said, staring into the green water, "but failure begets failure. When your senses dull, it is time you be replaced."
Becoming impatient, Fred Ames walked cautiously toward the lake, staying hidden in the trees. When he reached the shoreline, he stared over the water at the lone fisherman rowing back toward the waiting limousine.
"That's odd," he muttered to himself. "I could have sworn there were two of them in that boat."
34
Members of the reorganized Viper team, now led by Ono Kanai, had timed the change of the security guards on the Egan farm, tracking when the new shift drove in the gate and the earlier shift left for home. Then by using aerial video photography they'd been able to follow the guards to their hidden locations. The next step was to gain entry by dressing as sheriff's deputies and driving an auto painted like a county patrol car. After killing the unsuspecting camouflaged road guard, they'd entered the house, seized Josh Thomas and then called in the rest of the guards for a meeting ostensibly to talk about new security programs.
Once the guards arrived at the house, they were unceremoniously shot and their bodies thrown in a storm cellar under the barn.
When Ono Kanai arrived at the nearby airport in a private unmarked plane belonging to Cerberus, he threw a sedated Kelly into the trunk of his car and drove to her father's farm, now secured by his mercenary team. He carried Kelly through the front door and dumped her on the floor in front of Josh Thomas, who was bound and gagged in a desk chair.
Thomas tried to struggle against his ropes and muttered incomprehensible curses through his gag, but only incurred the laughter of the five men in the room, who had cast aside the fake deputy's uniforms and changed into their standard black work outfits.
"All went well?" asked Kanai.
A mountain of a man, who towered six and a half feet tall and weighed nearly three hundred hard pounds, nodded. "Egan's guards were not very high caliber. They bought the phony sheriff's story hook, line and sinker."
"Where are they?"
"Disposed of."
Kanai looked into the crooked grin of his efficient colleague and at the scarred face complete with broken nose, missing front teeth and cauliflower ear, and nodded in satisfaction. "You do nice work, Darfur."
Dark evil eyes flashed from under a thick black mane. Kanai and Darfur had worked together for many years since they'd first met while eliminating a terrorist group working out of Iran. The big Arab gestured at Thomas.
"Please observe. Not a mark on him, yet I believe he has been sufficiently softened up to tell you what you wish to know."
Kanai studied Thomas and saw the twisted expression of pain that came from a beating to his body. He didn't doubt that Darfur had broken the scientist's ribs. He also noted anger in the scientist's eyes at seeing Kelly lying drugged and semiconscious on the floor. Kanai smiled at Thomas, before stepping over and viciously kicking Kelly in her stomach. An expression of torment flashed on her face, along with a pathetic wail, as her eyes flicked open.
"Come awake, Miss Egan. It's time for you to persuade Mr. Thomas to reveal your father's oil formula."
Kelly rolled into a ball and clutched her stomach, gasping for breath. The pain was unlike any she'd ever suffered in her life. Kanai was an expert at inserting his boot toe in exactly the right place to induce the most agony. After a minute, she struggled to raise herself on one elbow and gaze at Thomas. "Don't tell this scum, Josh-"
She spoke no further. Her breath was cut off as Kanai shoved his boot against her neck and pressed her head against the carpet. "You are an obstinate young lady," he said coldly. "Do you enjoy pain? Because you will surely receive it."
One of Kanai's men entered the room, holding a portable radio. "A car is reported approaching the front gate. Should we refuse it entry?"
Kanai thought a moment. "Better to let them enter and see who it is than turn them away and arouse suspicion."
Okay, mastermind," said Giordino, yawning, still tired after the hurried flight from Miami. "How do you plan to open the castle gate?"
"I punch in the code," answered Pitt, sitting behind the wheel of an old Ford pickup truck they'd rented from a farm appliance dealer.
"Do you know it?"
"No."
"You drag me up here less than an hour after I carry you off the Golden Marlin under the cockamamie notion that Kanai took Kelly to her father's laboratory, and you don't know the security code?"
"What better place to force information out of her and Josh Thomas? The formula has to be hidden in the lab somewhere."
"So what clever device do you use to gain entry?" asked Giordino, studying the massive gate and the high wall.