Parker spoke softly. “Nothing you can do, Al.”
Big Al knew he was right. There was not so much as a glimmer of humanity animating the man’s cold black eyes. Big Al clamped his lips shut and looked away as Abu Nasir continued his macabre introduction.
“Machined to the most exacting tolerances, it is the go-to bearing for dozens of applications.”
Timken was increasing the speed of the sock’s orbit, which made a soft swishing noise in the air. “I’d have to say, my favorite application is how effectively it delivers an excruciatingly slow and painful death to the enemy.” Suddenly Timken whipped the weighted end of the sock onto Stearns’s shoulder.
Thud.
The diplomat’s scream filled cabin B-14 and echoed throughout the rig. His arm went limp, hanging from his broken shoulder as he held up his remaining arm in a pathetic attempt to shield his face from the next blow. But the weighted sock folded his elbow backward against the joint at an impossible angle.
Thud.
The sickening craoulñ€†ck of shattering bones and joints was punctuated by the ambassador’s agonized cries. A third blow caved in Stearns’s cheekbone and the orbit of his eye, which popped out of its socket and dangled from a cord of blood vessels and cartilage. Another to the back of his skull sent Stearns to the ground for the last time. Timken continued pummelling the ambassador’s dead body, only stopping when the blood-soaked sock finally exploded, sending ball bearings flying in all directions, rattling off the portals and bouncing on the steel decking.
Timken was breathing heavily, waiting for the rolling and bouncing ball bearings to settle before he spoke. “You catch all that, Ms. Murphy?” He sighed theatrically. “Because you forced my hand. It’s your fault I had to end the brief and undistinguished diplomatic career of the Honorable Randall J. Stearns. But I needed to demonstrate my resolve. I’ve got plenty more ball bearings, and unless you come to B-14 and surrender yourself to my tender mercies, I will take off Alphonse Prejean’s sock and show him the same treatment I showed the ambassador.”
“Don’t listen to him, Kate!” Big Al shouted.
“You’ve got five minutes, Ms. Murphy. Ticktock.”
Timken switched off the amplifier, then turned to Chun, who’d had to look away from the carnage in order to keep from puking.
“I feel much better now, Chun. How about you?” Chun nodded. Tim-ken checked his watch, then looked down at the ambassador’s tangled and mutilated corpse. “Clean up this mess.”
Throughout the horrible broadcast of Randy Stearns’s murder, Gideon held Kate tight against him, her body wracked by deep choking sobs. Then she pulled away and wiped her tears. “I have to go,” she said with sudden resolve.
“No, you don’t,” Gideon said.
“Al Prejean is like a father to me, I can’t let that monster kill him—”
“He’ll kill you, too.”
“No, he won’t. Not as long as this storm keeps up. He’s worried about the damping system. That’s what we were talking about just before I got away.”
“You heard what he did.” Gideon’s voice was etched with anger. “Kate, please don’t do this.”
“I appreciate your concern, but this isn’t your call.”
As much as he wanted to protect her, Gideon knew she was right. He was surprised by the strong and sudden connection he felt with this woman, and he found himself unable to release his grip on her shoulders, until she placed her hands reassuringly on top of his.
“You need to disarm that bomb, and you need to do it now,” she said. “Since they don’t know you’re alive, you’ve got surprise on your side. Please.”
He fixed her with a look. “As soon as I do, I’ll come back for you.”
She nodded. “I need to go.”
“Wait,” he said. She regarded him expectantly, but it took Gideon a moment to find the right words. “I’m m tñ€†glad I met you,” he said finally.
Something caught like a fishhook in her gut. “Please don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“It sounds like something you’d say to someone you’re never going to see again.”
He moved his hands from her shoulders to the sides of her face. “Be careful.”
Suddenly, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. “You be careful, too,” she said, then walked past him toward the stairway that would take her to B Deck. He watched as she opened the door and turned back to him.
Gideon's War and Hard Target
“I know he’s still your brother,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
The door closed with a flash of auburn hair, and Kate was gone, leaving Gideon in a whirl of emotion. He forced himself to push aside his concern for a woman he’d met only a few hours ago and realized that he remained troubled by her insistence that it was Tillman who had murdered Ambassador Stearns. Gideon was willing to accept that his memory might no longer be the most reliable way to identify his brother. But even accounting for Tillman’s altered voice and misguided ideology, he still couldn’t believe that his brother would murder an unarmed hostage, especially not with the sadistic relish this man had demonstrated. Even more troubling, Gideon still couldn’t accept that his brother wanted him dead.
But if the man claiming to be Tillman wasn’t really Tillman, then who the hell was he and what did he want? And where was Tillman? More questions for which he had no answers. The only thing he was certain of was that he would never find those answers unless he got down to D-4 and disarmed the bomb.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THREE OF TIMKEN’S BEST men were dead because of the crazy bitch.
Before, when he ordered the rig manager to change into the yellow jumpsuit, she had eyed him like an insect, taunting him with her half-naked body. Despite his urge to tear off her bra and panties and teach her a lesson for looking at him that way, he had remained stone-faced. Timken had resisted the impulse then, and now he wanted to hog-tie her and do what he should have done before. But Parker warned Timken to leave her alone until they were sure they didn’t need her any longer. She was the only one on the rig who knew about that damn clunking sound, which seemed to be happening with greater frequency—once every ten minutes or so—and with greater intensity. You could feel it through the soles of your feet. Parker promised Timken that once they were certain they didn’t need her, he could do whatever he wanted with the woman.
Parker needed to make sure the rig remained standing long enough for the storm to pass, and to carry with it the obstructing cloud cover. The success of his plan depended on the Obelisk’s destruction being recorded by the satellites and surveillance planes that were being deployed over the South China Sea. If Parker understood anything, it was the power of the image.
Kate stumbled as the jihadis pushed her into B-14. The first thing she noticed was the blood—on the ceilings, on the walls, on the bedsheets— streaks of it everywhere. Although the ambassador’s body was nowhere ain t‡to be seen, she knew where the blood must have come from.
“Dammit, Kate, why didn’t you listen to me? I told you to stay away!” In the tangle of emotion in Big Al’s voice, the anger quickly gave way to relief. “Thank God you’re all right.”
“If they hurt you . . . I couldn’t have lived with myself.” She looked forlornly around the blood-spattered cabin. “It’s my fault he killed the ambassador.”
“Bullshit.” Big Al snorted. “They killed him. You had nothing to do with it.”
“Shut up.” The jihadi named Chun spoke with an American accent, which Kate thought was strange. He pulled her arms behind her while one of the smaller jihadis secured her wrists with plastic cuffs. Chun jerked his head toward the hallway and then followed his two men silently as they exited the room.
The door closed behind him. Kate waited another minute to make sure no one was listening at the door before she whispered to Parker and Prejean. “The president is sending a Delta team to take the rig back.”