Gideon stared out at the sea, above which hung a low and leaden sky. Huge waves were pounding the jetty at the edge of the bay. But there was no rain, and the wind was not too bad. “Thank you, sir.”

“Good luck,” the president said, and disconnected.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Gideon clapped the phone shut, handed it back to Simpson....

“This boat?” The captain tossed his cigarette into the ocean. “Wherever she goes, I go.” He was already pulling up to the dock on the far side of the canal. Several SMDF soldiers jumped aboard. One of them was a medic, and he began compressing Simpson’s leg.

As the soldiers carried him out of the boat onto the SMDF vehicle, Simpson nodded weakly to Gideon, bidding him Godspeed. Before Gideon could reciprocate, the captain firewalled the throttle and the boat tore away from the pier.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE NOISE OF THE engines was deafening as the big boat barreled out of the bay and into the mountainous waves of the South China Sea.

The captain drove with one hand and dialed a knob on the radio with the other, a freshly lit cigarette perched on his lower lip. “Put the headphones on, sir,” he said.

Gideon pulled on a pair of green headphones.

“Transmitting now.”

Gideon thumbed the button on the edge of the microphone. “This is Gideon Davis hailing the Obelisk. Do you copy?”

Gideon re="1 T‡leased the button. He could barely make out the sound of static over the roar of the engines and the rush of the wind over the cockpit.

“Obelisk, do you copy?”

This time a voice came over the speaker, barely penetrating the static. “This is the Obelisk.”

“This is Gideon Davis. My brother is Tillman Davis. Who am I speaking with?”

The unidentified speaker answered with his own question. “Gideon Davis?”

Gideon heard the surprise in his voice. Whoever he was talking to probably assumed he was dead. “That’s right.”

“What do you want?”

“I’ve been authorized by the president of the United States to negotiate directly with my brother. I’m requesting permission to board the Obelisk.”

The long subsequent pause was filled with static.

“Do you copy?” Gideon repeated.

“Permission granted,” the voice said.

“Who am I speaking with?”

“You’ll have safe passage to board the rig. Over.” Again, the voice had avoided answering Gideon’s question. But before Gideon could ask anything more, the transmission was cut off.

Gideon took off the headphones. The boat captain was regarding him expectantly. “Okay,” Gideon said. “My brother says I can board the Obelisk.”

Timken smiled as he set the radio microphone back in its cradle. He turned to Chun and said, “Bring up Mr. Parker. I need to talk to him.”

Two minutes later, Parker entered the room.

“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news,” Timken said.

“Stop smiling like a Cheshire cat and tell me the bad news first.”

“My men never got to Gideon Davis. I don’t know how, but he’s still alive.”

Earl Parker’s gaze was stony. “What’s the good news?”

“Guess who the president is sending to the oil rig to negotiate with Abu Nasir?”

Earl Parker’s left eyebrow rose slightly.

“Sir, Gideon Davis is heading out here on a speedboat as we speak. He’s been given . . .” Here Timken couldn’t stifle an ironic grin. “He’s been given Tillman Davis’s personal guarantee of safe passage.”

Earl Parker nodded. “Well done, Timken.”

“I assume you want—”

“Of course I want him dead. The moment he’s in range, take him out.”

“Understood.”

“You said that before, Timken. And here we are.” Parker turned to Chun and said, “Take me back to thet="ဆ cabin.”

“Sir, there’s something else. That typhoon’s about to hit us.”

“That’s good news,” Parker said. “It means we don’t have to worry about another assault dropping on our heads.”

“Yeah, except that engineer I took out, Cole Ransom? He was coming here to check on the damping system that keeps the waves from tearing this rig apart.”

Parker waited for more.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

“Haven’t you been hearing that noise? It’s gotten worse...

“This is a billion-dollar rig. It’s not going to fall apart.” But Parker saw that Timken wasn’t mollified.

As if on cue, the floor shook, and deep noise welled up through the rig.

Parker conceded with a grudging nod. “Get the rig manager up here and talk to her about it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Parker started to leave but paused in the doorway. “Just make sure you don’t screw up this time with Gideon Davis. He was supposed to be dead before this operation started.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

AN HOUR HAD PASSED since she’d been returned to the cabin, and Kate once again found herself being escorted to the upper deck by masked men. She felt the same nauseating buzz of fear. Although her wrists were cuffed behind her, she felt some small consolation that they hadn’t covered her face with a hood this time. It wasn’t much, but she was grateful to have her bearings and to be spared the indignity of bumping into rails and pipes she couldn’t see.

The jihadis prodded her forward, into the control room, and her chest tightened at what she saw through the windows. Yesterday, when the rig had been seized, the sky had been a bright cheerful blue. Now it was low and leaden, and a heavy rain pounded the windows of the control room. To the left of the stairs was the weather station—rain gauge, digital thermometer, barometer, and a wind speed gauge. Its propellors were a blur, spinning so fast she couldn’t see the individual blades.

Below the rig, the waves were looking nastier. She couldn’t tell if they were actually higher than they had been—but the wind was shredding the tops, capping them with crests of white foam. It was a steady, hard wind now, blowing west-southwest without the slightest deviation. Just the sort of wind that made for big waves. Night had not yet fallen, and there was enough light that she could see darker clouds and a heavier sheet of rain bearing down on the rig.

She heard footsteps ringing on the metal deck. Striding toward her, the wind snatching at his uniform, was the American jihadi—Abu Nasir or Tillman Davis, or whatever his name was. The anger and frustration and fear that had been building for hours suddenly erupted from her.

“What did you do with my people?” Kate shouted at him. “I want to see them!”

One of the jihadis slammed her in the kidney with a rifle butt. The pain ran up her side, so sharp it made her nauseated. She lost her balance and fell to one knee. The American said something in a language she didn’t understand, and the jihadi who’d hit her hoisted her to her feet.

“That’s not going to happen, Ms. Murphy. The reason I brought you up here, I’ve got a couple questions about the damping system. I keep hearing that clunking noise, and I want to know if I should be concerned.”

Kate looked at him point-blank and said, “Yeah. You should be.”

“How concerned?”

“Very.” Kate gave him a brief history of the problems with the damping system. She nodded out the window toward the horizon. “That typhoon may take down the rig if we don’t fix it first.”

She was hoping to rattle him, and she could see that she had. But before he could ask her anything more, Abu Nasir was interrupted by a big Asian guy who looked more Korean than Mohanese. “Gideon Davis is hailing us again.”

“What does he want now?”

“Confirmation that you’re giving him safe passage.”

Abu Nasir nodded. “Tell him what he wants to hear,” he said.

The Asian guy ran back down the stairs toward the drill deck. The Obelisk’s radio, Kate knew, was located in the control room on the drill deck.

Abu Nasir turned back to Kate. “Ever hear of Gideon Davis?”

Kate didn’t answer. She had, of course, heard of Gideon Davis. You couldn’t read a newspaper or turn on the TV without seeing Gideon Davis’s face.