The Black Sea—roughly the same time
Chelsea Goodman leaned over the gunwale and let loose. Even though she hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and it was now well past nightfall, an amazing amount of half-digested food shot from her mouth over the side of the speedboat. Out of all the dangers she’d been warned of, by both her boss and the CIA people, seasickness had never once been mentioned. And in fact, she’d never been seasick before.
Chelsea liked new adventures. Vomiting, unfortunately, wasn’t on the list.
Clinging to the side of the boat, she slipped down off her knees, settling onto the deck. She made her breathing more deliberate, trying to relax her stomach. But the hard chop of the boat made that almost impossible, no matter what yoga slogan she repeated to herself. In less than a minute, she was back over the side, spitting and puking some more.
“It’ll pass,” said Beefy, laying his hand gently on her back.
“Uh-huh,” was all Chelsea could manage, leaning her face into the sea’s spray.
Tolevi, standing in the cockpit of the speedboat, fixed his eyes on the light at starboard. It shone from the stern of a small fishing boat anchored off the Crimea Peninsula, maybe a half mile from shore. The boat was owned by one of their contacts; if there were any Russian patrol craft in the area, the light would be joined by another at the bow.
So far, so good. They’d gone nearly one hundred miles in the past three hours, setting off from Sinop, Turkey, a little village on the southern shore of the Black Sea. Tolevi ordinarily didn’t ship from there—his wares were too bulky and his shipments too large—but the CIA liked the village for a number of reasons, including its proximity to an airfield. Tolevi suspected the Russians were well aware of this and kept the village and its varied ports under constant surveillance, but he was unable to persuade Johansen. And as in all things, when the Agency decided on something, it simply refused to change its mind.
Agency. It was an immovable entity beyond anyone’s ability to control. Pigheaded and obtuse, and full of automatons with far less reasoning power, in Tolevi’s opinion, than those packed away in Chelsea’s boxes.
He had four of its agents with him, not counting the speedboat “driver,” whom Tolevi recognized as a contract worker from an earlier encounter. The man in charge of the CIA contingent—he insisted on being called Paul White, though that wasn’t even the name on his phony Turkish passport—was supposed to be taking orders from Tolevi, or at least consulting with him; that was the arrangement, as Johansen had made clear. But from the moment they’d met in Turkey, it was clear that White thought he was in charge.
Frankly, Tolevi wouldn’t have had him as a driver, let alone a team leader. He was brusque with everyone he met, and while he did speak Russian, he tried to make up with speed what he lacked in pronunciation. This only emphasized how poor his language skills were.
He didn’t sound much like a Turk either. Tolevi had no doubt their cover story would sink quickly if they were stopped.
Which was why his heart rate bumped up when a second light appeared on the fishing boat.
“I have Puppet Master,” announced White, who was sitting in the cabin just below. “Confirming we’re good.”
“Turn the god damned radio off!” yelled Tolevi. “We have a Russian patrol boat out there.”
“Where?” asked White.
“Why don’t you take a better look at the god damned radar and tell me? That’s what it’s for.”
Bozzone helped Chelsea to the bench in the open area aft of the speedboat’s cockpit and cabin. Her stomach was still queasy, but at least it was empty.
“Water?” he asked.
“No. What’s going on?”
“There’s a patrol boat or something. We got a warning.”
“Where?” asked Chelsea.
“Got me. Ukraine’s on our left.”
“To port.”
“Aren’t you the sailor,” scoffed Bozzone.
“How long?”
“Assuming we get past them and into the Kerch Strait, three more hours. Don’t sweat it; these guys probably do this all the time.”
Tolevi saw the dark outline of the Russian vessel about ten o’clock to port, long and dark and low against the black shadow of land behind it.
It was a big ship, probably a frigate.
Good thing, he thought. They won’t be interested in us small fry.
Except they appeared to be. “Picking up speed, coming our way,” said Porter, who was lookout on the port side. He was an ex-SEAL, which Tolevi found reassuring—if the frigate cut them in half, he’d be able to rescue everyone in the water.
Tolevi jammed the throttle, hoping for a few more knots. The choppy water was cutting down on his speed; he was having trouble sustaining fifty knots.
Still, that was good speed, and he was easily outpacing the frigate.
Wasn’t going to outrun its radio, though. There would be other patrols up in the straits.
Maybe they’d be interested, maybe not. It wasn’t clear that they’d seen them, after all.
“You want to talk to Puppet Master?” asked White.
“No, for crap sake. Tell them we’re good and get the hell off the radio. I can tell you work for the government,” Tolevi added sarcastically. “You’d never make it in the real world.”