The Patriot Threat (Cotton Malone 10)

He fired three shots into the screaming turbine just below the rotor’s hub.

The engine sputtered.

Flames poured out of the air intake and exhaust pipe. Airspeed diminished. The nose went up in an effort to stay airborne.

He glanced down.

They were still a thousand feet up but rapidly losing altitude in something of a controlled descent.

He could see an island ahead of them. Scattered glows defined its rectangular shape just north of Venice. He knew the place. Isola di San Michele. Nothing there but a couple of churches and a huge cemetery where the dead had been buried since the time of Napoleon.

More sputtering.

A sudden backfire.

Thick smoke billowed from the exhaust, the scent of sulfur and burning oil sickening. The pilot was apparently trying to stabilize the descent, the craft jerking up and down, its control planes working hard.

They overtook the island flying close to the dome of its main church. At twenty feet off the ground success seemed at hand. The chopper leveled, then hovered. Its turbine smoothed. Below was a dark spot, but he wondered how many stone markers might be waiting. Hard to see anything in the darkness. The chopper’s occupants surely knew they still had company. So why land? Just head back up and ditch their passenger from the air.

He should have shot the turbine a few times more.

Now he had no choice.

So he let go of the skid.

He seemed to fall for the longest time, though if memory served him right a free-falling object fell at the rate of thirty-two feet per second, per second. Twenty feet equaled less than one second. He hoped that the ground was soft and he avoided stone.

He pounded legs-first, his knees collapsing to absorb the shock, then rebounding, sending him rolling. His left thigh instantly ached. Somehow he managed to hold on to the gun. He came to a stop and looked back up. The pilot had regained full control. The helicopter pitched up and maneuvered closer. A swing to the right and his attacker now had a clear view below. He could probably limp off, but he saw no good ground cover. He was in the open, amid the graves. The Asian saw his predicament, hovering less than a hundred feet away, the downwash from the blades stirring up loose topsoil. The helicopter’s hatch slid open and his attacker one-handedly took aim with the automatic rifle.

Malone propped himself up and aimed the pistol using both hands. There couldn’t be more than four rounds left in the magazine.

Make ’em count.

So he aimed at the engine.

The Asian gestured to the pilot for a retreat.

But not before Malone fired. One, two, three, four shots.

Hard to tell which bullet actually did the trick, but the turbine exploded, a brilliant fireball lighting the sky, flaming chunks cascading to the ground in a searing shower fifty yards away. In the sudden light he spotted hundreds of grave markers in tightly packed rows. He hugged the earth and shielded his head as the explosions continued, a heaping mass of twisted metal, flesh, and burning fuel erupting before him.

He stared at the carnage.

A crackle of flames consumed the helicopter, its occupants, and $20 million U.S. in cash.

Somebody was going to be pissed.

TWO

PORT OF VENICE

11:15 P.M.

Kim Yong Jin stood on one side of the bed, holding the intravenous bag. His daughter Hana watched him from the other side.

“I imagine this is something you have seen before,” he quietly asked her in Korean.

By this he meant the strong asserting themselves over the utterly weak. And yes, he knew she’d borne witness to that too many times to count.

“No comment?” he said.

She stared at him.

“No, I suppose not. The fish would never get into trouble if he but kept his mouth shut. Right?”

She nodded.

He smiled at her intuition, then returned his attention to the bed and asked, “Are you comfortable?”

But the older man lying before them did not reply. How could he? The drug had paralyzed every muscle, numbing nerves, freeing the mind. A tube from the IV bag Kim held snaked a path down into a vein. A valve allowed him to control the flow. No danger existed of anyone ever knowing that it had been administered since their captive was a diabetic, one more needle mark hardly noticeable.

“I don’t suppose it matters if he’s comfortable or not,” he said. “Silly question, actually. He’s not going anywhere.”

Indifference in the face of dominance was a trait he’d inherited from his father—along with sparse hair, excess weight, a bulbous head, and a private passion for decadent entertainment. Unlike his father, who managed to succeed his own father and lead North Korea for nearly a quarter century, Kim had been denied that opportunity.

And for what?

Visiting Tokyo Disneyland?

Two of his nine children had wanted to go. So he obtained false Portuguese passports and tried to gain entry. But an observant border officer at Narita International Airport caught the deception and he was detained. To secure his release, his father had been forced to personally intervene with the Japanese government.

And it cost him.

He’d been disinherited, dropped from the line of succession.

Where before he’d been the eldest son, entitled to the reins of power, afterward he was disgraced. And twelve years ago, when his father finally died, Kim’s illegitimate half brother had taken his place as head of the military, chairman of the National Defense Commission, and supreme leader of the Workers’ Party, wielding absolute control over Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

What was the wisdom?

Only a bad plowman quarrels with his ox.

He glanced around at the suite.

Not as luxurious as his penthouse two decks above, but still way above average. He and Hana had just spent ten days cruising the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas, stopping in Croatia, Montenegro, Sicily, and Italy, waiting for t

he old man lying before them to make a move.

But nothing substantial had occurred.

So now, on the last night, as the ship sat docked in Venice and the several thousand on board were ashore enjoying the sights, they’d come to pay Paul Larks a visit. All it had taken was a knock on the door and Larks had been easily subdued.

“Mr. Larks,” Kim said in a congenial voice, “why are you on this trip?”

“To right a wrong.”

The voice was strained, but the answer definitive. That was the thing about the drug. Truth was all the brain could reveal. The ability to lie ceased to exist.

“Which wrong?”

“One my country has done.”

Another annoying aspect was that usually only the question asked was answered, nothing much was ever volunteered.

“How long have you possessed the documents that right this wrong?”

“Since I worked for the government. I found them during that time.”

This man had once served as an undersecretary of the American Treasury Department, having been quietly forced out less than three months ago.

Kim asked, “Was that before or after you read the book?”

“Before.”

He, too, had read The Patriot Threat by Anan Wayne Howell. Self-published two years ago, with no fanfare or notoriety. “Is Howell correct?”

“He is.”

“Where is Howell?”

“I’ll meet him tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“I was told he would find me after I left the ship.”

“Did you not come here to meet with Howell during the cruise?”

“That was the original plan.”

A curious reply. “Were you to meet anyone else?”

“The Korean. But we thought it best not to do that.”

“Who is we?”

“Howell and I.”

He was puzzled. “Why?”

“It’s better if we keep this among Americans.”

Now he was agitated. He was the Korean. “Where are the documents that right the wrong?”

Larks had carried a black Tumi satchel around since the first day of the cruise. On deck. To meals. Never had it left him. Yet it was nowhere in the suite. Hana had already searched.