Chapter 38
Croatia
“What do you think Petra’s father did to afford such a yacht?” Song said, sitting beside Quinn on the plush leather settee. It was U-shaped and took up much of the spacious salon. She’d taken a shower as soon as they’d boarded the boat and her hair was still wet and shone like obsidian under the wall sconce above her head. Bursaw was up with his father-in-law, just visible through a narrow hatchway, eerie silhouettes in the muted red light of the wheelhouse as they steered the forty-seven-foot cruiser through the black waters of the Adriatic.
“He seems comfortable enough running at night with no lights,” Quinn said. “So I have a guess.” He sat on the long side of the settee, at a right angle to Song, knee to knee.
Quinn’s father had owned several fishing boats over the years. They were beamy things, working vessels, and they weren’t cheap, but compared to this one they looked like a wall tent next to a five-star hotel. Quinn guessed it was at least a million-dollar boat. Pricy for a man who helped his son-in-law tend to motorcycle tires. Quinn didn’t care.
Petra was in the forward cabin, down a short flight of stairs beneath the wheelhouse, trying to get her daughters to sleep after all the commotion. Quinn and Song had the salon to themselves.
Quinn rubbed his eyes, willing himself to stay awake. He’d always been fine when he was moving forward, running or riding toward a goal, but waiting sapped his strength more quickly than a fight. He looked at his watch. It was well after midnight. That put it after seven a.m. in China. It was no wonder he was exhausted. Including his time under anesthesia in the Kashgar hospital and the catnap he’d taken on the flight into Croatia, he’d gone over forty-eight hours on less than six hours of fitful or drug-induced sleep.
Song stared blankly across the interior of the boat, miles away and locked in thought.
“We have to check in at the airport in just over three hours,” he said. “Bursaw says we’ve still got a good two hours on the boat. You should catch some sleep.”
Locks of damp hair mopped the shoulders of the clean white T-shirt.
“Why do you do this?” she asked, still staring off into space.
Quinn raised a brow. “What do you mean?”
“You know . . . this.” Song waved both hands around in a flourish. “This thing we are doing.”
“I—”
“I do it because my government says I must,” she said. “I think you do it because you can.”
“Maybe,” Quinn said.
“Please forgive me,” she said, letting her head fall sideways so she was leaning back against the cushion but looking at him. “We Chinese can be very direct. What I mean to say is that you do this because you are capable.” A single tear had formed and then dried on her cheek, as if it had given up.
She stretched her legs, staring at her feet, still bare from the shower. They were small for her height and Quinn was surprised to see her toenails were painted a girlish pink. “I do not think I was cut out for this type of work.”
“You seem exceptionally good at it,” Quinn said.
Song took a deep breath and opened her mouth to speak before looking away as if she’d changed her mind.
“You played the violin in high school?” Quinn offered, hoping to get her to talk some more about her past, to learn more about this woman in whose hands he was placing his safety.
“I did,” she said, turning back to him and shaking off whatever funk had been about to overwhelm her. “And now I do not.”
Quinn started to mention her incredible performance at the Bursaws’ party, but decided it might open up old wounds. Instead, he changed his tack. “You promised to tell me more about the Black Dragon.”
“Indeed.” Song slumped in her seat, seemingly relieved to discuss anything but her past. “It’s a shoulder-fired weapon resembling one of your American Javelin or Predator antitank missiles. I cannot divulge the specifics of the design, but it delivers a warhead capable of fifteen times the destructive power of an equivalent weight of a conventional high-explosive charge.”
“Thermobaric?” Quinn asked, committing every word to memory so he could make a record later.
“I am afraid so.”
Having any sort of explosive shot at you was bad enough, but thermobaric devices were particularly unpleasant. An explosive charge dispersed a cloud of fuel—like fluoridated aluminum or ethylene oxide. Anyone near the ignition point would be obliterated as the vaporized fuel used existing oxygen in the air to explode. Thermobaric devices tended to burn a fraction of a second slower than conventional weapons. The pressure wave in any enclosed space, along with the vacuum that followed, took care of anyone else, rupturing lungs, crushing internal organs, and destroying the inner ear. Blindness was not uncommon, but as devastating as the small devices were, the shock and pressure caused little damage to the brain so the victims were left blinded and conscious for seconds or even minutes while they suffocated to death.
“What’s the size of the missile?” Quinn said.
She chewed on her lip, eyes twinkling in the diffused light of the boat. “Classified.”
“We’re past that,” Quinn said. “I need to know so I can figure out possible targets.”
“Approximately twenty kilos,” she sighed.
Quinn did the math. If the entire device weighed just shy of forty-five pounds, the warhead itself was likely to be well over twenty. The Marines had taken out entire mansions in Iraq with a single eighteen-pounder from a Javelin—and Song said this one was even stronger.
“What’s the fuel?”
“Really,” she said. “That is secret informa—”
“If we plan to stop this, I need to know what you know.”
“Beryllium,” she said at length. “This device is a prototype, but believe me, it functions even better than the designers had hoped.”
“I have to make a phone call,” Quinn said, checking the time on his Aquaracer. “It will take us almost a full day to reach Seattle. I have friends who can work on this from that end.”
Song sat up, hands folded at her knees. “If your government finds out that such a weapon will be used on US soil, I am afraid war is a forgone conclusion.”
“There’s a fine line between war and peace,” Quinn said, almost to himself. “We are bound to cross it many times before we’re done.”