Drone Command

When Margaret Myers called her in panicked desperation about Troy’s kidnapping, Tamar was only too glad to help in any way she could. So was Mossad, Israel’s feared security service. Pearce had been a great friend to her and Udi over the years, as well as to Israel, providing valuable assistance when called upon. Pearce’s CIA service in Iraq had earned him serious street cred within Israel’s intelligence and counterterror community. They were all glad to throw in to help out an old friend who never asked for favors, especially when the request came from the former president of the United States, another staunch ally of the Jewish people. Tamar welcomed the chance to pay back a few of her debts to Troy. Tonight’s gambit was a high-risk ploy and neither she nor Mossad were confident it would work with the elder Feng, but they all agreed it was worth the gamble because Pearce’s life hung in the balance.

“Nice try, Feng. Let’s see how cool you are after your baby boy here is bled out like a pig.”

Feng laughed. “A minor cut. A little blood. I think you’re gutless.”

“Feng, Feng, Feng. Words have consequences. Haven’t you learned that yet?”

Tamar reached over to young Feng and grabbed his scrotum in her gloved hand. She laid the knife blade at the base of the sac. Blood from his chest cut now spilled all over his face. He screamed.

Tamar raised the blade high.

“STOP! You win!” Feng shouted. Jianli was his only son. The Feng family name and fortune would pass through him. Vice Chairman Feng’s only sense of eternity was the family bloodline. If his son should die or, worse, be castrated, the family line would perish and so would a hundred generations of his family name. Pearce wasn’t worth it. He would have to find some other way to get his vengeance for his nephew Zhao. He never really cared for the arrogant and insufferable young fool anyway.

Tamar kept the blade held high. “Make the call now. Release Pearce immediately. I want him on a plane within the hour, heading for Japan. When I receive confirmation that he’s arrived safely, I’ll release your son. Until then—”

Tamar swung the blade hard. The rope split. Young Feng hit the floor with a howl.

“I’ll be sure nothing else happens to your son.”

She cut the transmission, silently breathing a sigh of relief.

Young Feng whimpered, curled up at her feet.

She kicked him in the ribs to get him to shut up.

He did.

A door opened. Another masked figure stepped in. Tossed Feng’s clothes onto the floor.

“Get dressed and be ready to move,” the blonde said.

Now they had to wait for the vice chairman’s confirmation.

Tamar prayed the Chinese hadn’t somehow managed to track their location. If they did and sent a team to snatch the boy, Pearce was dead.

And so were they.

FORTY-EIGHT

EAST CHINA SEA

SOUTHWEST OF NAGASAKI

16 MAY 2017

The big fish flapped lethargically in the bottom of the net as Yamada spilled him out onto the deck. He reached down and pressed his finger against the smooth rubbery skin and flipped a switch. The robo-fish stopped flapping. Yamada and his team used a wide variety of sensors to detect, measure, and, in some cases, retrieve radioactive elements in the water, including the autonomous robo-fish. His research mission was to determine the range and extent of contamination resulting from the Fukushima disaster. So far, the tip that had sent him and his crew out here hadn’t panned out, which was strange, because his anonymous sources had proven utterly reliable before.

Yamada lifted the four-foot-long robo-fish and hauled it belowdecks for processing in their miniature lab. Its software was programmed for autonomous swimming, diving to specific depths at regular intervals, and recording data as it went. The young woman running his onboard IT department would handle the data download and analysis. Part of the robo-fish’s skin provided data collection — a kind of flypaper for chemical elements, including cesium-137. Samples would be drawn and analyzed by another grad student when they got back to the mainland. But for now, Yamada would subject it to a simple scan to see if any radioactivity could be detected. He wanded the robo-fish’s entire body with a handheld Geiger counter. Nothing. He began to think the whole trip out this way was a wild-goose chase. Maybe the bad guys had fed him a false lead to get him away from the real evidence he had been gathering earlier.

“Kenji, report to the bridge.” The voice on the loudspeaker was urgent — one of his grad students was piloting the boat today.

Yamada dashed up the ladder and made his way to the enclosed cabin above the main deck.

“What’s wrong?”

The bearded young man pointed to the northeast. A fishing trawler. “Been tracking him on our radar scope. Getting awfully close.”

The rusted trawler ran a parallel course. Looked like it would pass by, but with little room to spare. Their research ship was dead in the water, waiting to retrieve several other submersible sensors, including two more robo-fish.