Cooper. The word is that the Ocean Tigers are prowling those waters these days and they aren’t like normal pirates.”
“Who are the Ocean Tigers?”
“I don’t really know who they are—no one does—but I do know that they are a patch of bad that you don’t want to get pricked by.”
“Are they the kidnapping kind?”
“They have ransomed some. But if it’s them, then you may just as well save yourself the trouble of coming. Decent pirates treat their prisoners like they would treasure, because this is how they make their money. The Tigers, they only ransom a handful of their prisoners, and then they still play games, making people pay and pay. The rest they toy with, making demands no one can meet, then executing them as some kind of political statement. Military and law enforcement ignore them because they’re too dangerous to tangle with and have too much money. Not like the Somali pirates at all.”
“Hence the need for an operation, Bashir. I’m going in before they have an opportunity to execute this particular hostage.”
“Does this one hold state secrets or something? Diplomat’s daughter?”
“Bashir, I’m about to change the operation target to you.”
“Fine, fine, what do you need?” he asked. “If it’s not too outrageous, you’ll get it.”
“I’ll get everything I need because your life—twice—has to be worth at least that,” he growled.
Faizal laughed again, and agreed to get him whatever he needed.
Bolan ran through his list and hung up the phone with Faizal before he could ask him more questions. He picked up Daniels’s picture and ran his finger along the side of it again. He couldn’t put his finger on why this mission was nagging at him until he thought about how much Peterson cared about the young woman. He sighed as he put the picture down.
Emotions got a person killed; he’d seen it time and again. He pulled his Desert Eagle out of its holster, popped out the clip and worked the slide, ejecting the bullet from the chamber. As the bullet popped into the air, he reached out and snatched it, smiling.
Maybe he was just fast enough to save them all.
THE POUNDING ON THE DOOR came earlier than Bolan had expected. He glanced at the glowing lights of the clock brightly telling him that it was a mere 4:30 a.m. He rolled off the bed and didn’t bother putting on a shirt to go with blue Navy SEAL sweatpants. He glanced through the peephole, but knew before he looked that it would be Peterson. She was motivated, he’d give her that, and he wondered if she’d slept at all.
He pulled open the door, the bright light from the hallway spilling into his dark hotel room.
“It’s about time, Colonel Stone,” she said as she marched past him and into his room. “Though I expected a military man like yourself to be dressed and ready to roll by this hour.”
He smiled at the Secret Service light outfit. Black slacks, black dress boots with a two-inch heel and a dark blue long-sleeved shirt. He had yet to meet a Secret Service agent who didn’t look proper all of the time, and he couldn’t help but notice that she filled out her clothes in all the right places.
Bolan ran a hand through his hair and walked over to the coffeemaker in his room. He could hear her pacing behind him and smiled to himself as he filled the reservoir and pressed the start button.
“We don’t really have time to mess around,” Peterson said.
“Are there armed gunmen coming down the hall?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
“Bomb in the building and it’s about to go off?”
“No, don’t be ridiculous,” she said.
“Then we have time for coffee,” he said.
He watched as she sat primly on the edge of the small love seat. He sat in the high-backed chair next to her and propped a foot up on the coffee table, rocked his head back and closed his eyes. He smiled again when she let out a long sigh.
“Listen, I hate to wake you, but I’ve got the information that we really need, and I can get us on a flight out of the country in an hour. I already have my cover documents and alternate identification. I just need to know if I’m getting cover documents for you, as well. And I have the latest intelligence from the State Department. But we have to hurry to make the flight.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, not bothering to open his eyes just yet.
“Yes, we do. I talked to the pilot on my way over. He wasn’t happy about being woken at this hour, but he owes me a favor.”
“I wasn’t talking about the flight. I have no doubt that you could have Marine One on top of this hotel in thirty minutes if you put your mind to it. I meant that you don’t hate waking me or you would have waited for the sun to rise before trying to save the world.”
She stared at him in disbelief. Her face flushed and she pulled together her purse and the stack of documents that she’d sat on the table.
“I told the President that I should go this mission alone. I should have just left without you last night…” she muttered.
Bolan reached out his hand, catching her by surprise, and pulled her back down to the love seat. Her eyes narrowed as she pulled her hand away.
“Hold on, Michelle, and take a deep breath. I haven’t seen your intel and whether you like it or not, I’m not going to go charging off into Malaysia until I’m certain of my target. That’s not the part of the world where going in unprepared will serve you. Why don’t we start with what you’ve got so far?”
She relaxed slightly and opened one of the file folders. “The local government there is still trying to get their legs after putting down the LTTE. With such a diverse population and the influences from India and the other Asian nations, they fight to hold on to what they have, so we don’t believe that there is any official government agency involved. They’d like that influx of cash, but aren’t prepared to have the Western world descend on their doorstep with this kind of action. The best lead we’ve got is a new pirating operation going by the name of the Ocean Tigers,” she began, but he cut her off.
“That’s our best lead, too, at the moment, but it’s not enough.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I spoke with some of my contacts. This Ocean Tigers group is hard-core and what I’m hearing is that if they are the ones that have Heather, it’s possible they’ll collect the ransom and kill her anyway. Worse, no one knows where their base of operations is located. The best resources in the area are hard-pressed to keep track of anything with the ever-changing political climate. For all we know it’s a dissenting faction of the government trying to wrest control and install a new leader. If we charge in there without knowing everything we can then we’re likely to get a lot of people killed, including us.”
She nodded, but didn’t show any other reaction to that news. Bolan was pleased that she didn’t respond and appeared to be taking the information in and processing it. Too much emotion in a situation like this would be deadly to them both and probably Daniels, too. If she couldn’t keep it together he would have to find a way to ditch her and go in alone. It was really his preferred method, anyway. It was tough enough to watch his own six without needing to watch someone else’s.
“You seem pretty gung ho to leave here, so where is it you intend to go?”
“Same as you do with any missing persons case—where she was last seen. Singapore. You’re shaking your head, you disagree? I don’t want the trail to get cold.”
“The trail is already cold. If that’s all we can come up with, then we could start out that broadly, but that’s like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. And Singapore is a cesspit. We’re doing some