air tanks. The beach was in sight.
Sam nodded to Wolf and they sprinted across the sand. They lost the cover of darkness for that short distance to the sand, and then they were back in the welcoming arms of the sea. They touched water, waded in, and dropped below the surface. Out there in the blackness was their pickup team of three SEALs and a submersed SDV, a motorized underwater SEAL Delivery Vehicle that would take them another two miles to the very big, black, and bad USS Dallas. The nuclear submarine had become this war’s black ops flagship for assaults that sprung from the sea.
The swim was not a safe one. A few floating mines still hid along this coastline. The silence beneath the water was complete. Sam swam hard, relieved to be near the end of a successful mission. The tape would be worth this. That fact allowed him to push aside the reality that he was cold, hurting, and looking at another three hours before he’d be dry and warm again.
What was Darcy doing right now? He thought about her every time he went underwater, wondering if she’d changed her mind and learned to swim. It wasn’t easy to get in touch with her. He’d managed to call the number she had given him and left a message on her machine twice over the last months, but he hadn’t been in a place where she could call him back. He couldn’t just call the CIA and ask for a supposedly dead person, and he wasn’t sure mail would reach her. He missed her . . . intensely. He felt like he was fighting this war for her, for he knew that opening attack against agents on September 9 had probably been part of this mess, and she’d been one of the first hit.
Wolf touched his arm. He pointed to the beacon of the waiting team members. Sam nodded and they changed directions to intercept.
JANUARY 15
Tuesday, 8:35 p.m.
Madrid, Spain
Darcy had a secure office down the hall from Gabe’s in one of the military planning buildings NATO had built in the eighties and never fully occupied. It was a mix of both very high-tech equipment and cast-off furniture. The place was cramped, had no windows, and was probably going to be hot during the summer, for it was icy during the winter so that her toes froze when she walked around the office without shoes. She’d stuffed in three computer terminals and a reel-to-reel tape deck. She even squeezed in a couch. As a home away from home it wasn’t bad; if truth be told she loved the place. Tucked as it was at the dead end of a hallway, interruptions were minimized.
A secure Internet physically separated from the public network let her connect to classified Web pages at agencies around the world. She started with the U.S. Treasury Department to see how the hunt for Luther’s accounts was progressing.
The Treasury Department had spent years developing the software that could sort through millions of transactions and generate a graphic picture of the money flow. The money in Luther’s brokerage accounts had been routed out of the first accounts within hours, and it had been done in a systematic way. Only with the review of four months of history was the plan he had used apparent.
Luther believed in diversification. Within two days he had spread his bounty into a hundred different piles of about fifty thousand dollars in size. Then over a two-week period the majority of those accounts had shrunk to smaller amounts. What cash they had been able to trace had ended up in bank safe-deposit boxes and assets like diamonds and cars that could be quickly resold. Luther had done most of it by bank wire transfers. They had recaptured only about thirty-two million of what was known to be in excess of 550 million dollars.
Luther had taken a chunk of cash off the top and probably stuffed it in his mattress. He laundered a huge amount more, and the rest he moved around accounts between banks like a shell game, slowly hiding it behind walls. He probably rightly assumed he wouldn’t need to touch one of those accounts for at
Sam nodded to Wolf and they sprinted across the sand. They lost the cover of darkness for that short distance to the sand, and then they were back in the welcoming arms of the sea. They touched water, waded in, and dropped below the surface. Out there in the blackness was their pickup team of three SEALs and a submersed SDV, a motorized underwater SEAL Delivery Vehicle that would take them another two miles to the very big, black, and bad USS Dallas. The nuclear submarine had become this war’s black ops flagship for assaults that sprung from the sea.
The swim was not a safe one. A few floating mines still hid along this coastline. The silence beneath the water was complete. Sam swam hard, relieved to be near the end of a successful mission. The tape would be worth this. That fact allowed him to push aside the reality that he was cold, hurting, and looking at another three hours before he’d be dry and warm again.
What was Darcy doing right now? He thought about her every time he went underwater, wondering if she’d changed her mind and learned to swim. It wasn’t easy to get in touch with her. He’d managed to call the number she had given him and left a message on her machine twice over the last months, but he hadn’t been in a place where she could call him back. He couldn’t just call the CIA and ask for a supposedly dead person, and he wasn’t sure mail would reach her. He missed her . . . intensely. He felt like he was fighting this war for her, for he knew that opening attack against agents on September 9 had probably been part of this mess, and she’d been one of the first hit.
Wolf touched his arm. He pointed to the beacon of the waiting team members. Sam nodded and they changed directions to intercept.
JANUARY 15
Tuesday, 8:35 p.m.
Madrid, Spain
Darcy had a secure office down the hall from Gabe’s in one of the military planning buildings NATO had built in the eighties and never fully occupied. It was a mix of both very high-tech equipment and cast-off furniture. The place was cramped, had no windows, and was probably going to be hot during the summer, for it was icy during the winter so that her toes froze when she walked around the office without shoes. She’d stuffed in three computer terminals and a reel-to-reel tape deck. She even squeezed in a couch. As a home away from home it wasn’t bad; if truth be told she loved the place. Tucked as it was at the dead end of a hallway, interruptions were minimized.
A secure Internet physically separated from the public network let her connect to classified Web pages at agencies around the world. She started with the U.S. Treasury Department to see how the hunt for Luther’s accounts was progressing.
The Treasury Department had spent years developing the software that could sort through millions of transactions and generate a graphic picture of the money flow. The money in Luther’s brokerage accounts had been routed out of the first accounts within hours, and it had been done in a systematic way. Only with the review of four months of history was the plan he had used apparent.
Luther believed in diversification. Within two days he had spread his bounty into a hundred different piles of about fifty thousand dollars in size. Then over a two-week period the majority of those accounts had shrunk to smaller amounts. What cash they had been able to trace had ended up in bank safe-deposit boxes and assets like diamonds and cars that could be quickly resold. Luther had done most of it by bank wire transfers. They had recaptured only about thirty-two million of what was known to be in excess of 550 million dollars.
Luther had taken a chunk of cash off the top and probably stuffed it in his mattress. He laundered a huge amount more, and the rest he moved around accounts between banks like a shell game, slowly hiding it behind walls. He probably rightly assumed he wouldn’t need to touch one of those accounts for at
Similar Books
