The Janson Option Read Online Free Page B

Adler’s face. The slackness had vanished. Dead, he looked more like himself: aggressive, and confident that he was invulnerable. She was truly afraid for the first time since the attack began. With Adler dead and Captain Billy sent away in the boat, she could not imagine anyone else on the yacht who could protect them.
    The ridiculously imperious wife of the retired UN diplomat began to cry. Her husband patted her awkwardly on her shoulder. Hank and Susan, the New York couple, who were constantly holding hands, were gripping so tightly their fingers turned white. Poor Monique was biting her lips and shaking her head.
    The pirate spoke. “This is your lesson. Do what I tell you. No one makes trouble. No one else dies.”
    Allegra Helms stiffened. She had been afraid. She had felt useless. But suddenly she was outraged. “You didn’t have to kill him.”
    The pirate shouted back, “No more trouble, no more die.”
    â€œWhere could he run? You have his ship. He had no place to hide.”
    â€œNo more trouble, no more die,” Maxammed repeated. To Farole he said, “Punch in a course for Eyl.”
    â€œCan’t.”
    â€œWhy not? You said you have run ships.”
    â€œI have run ships. But the instruments are all dead.”
    â€œWhat about the radar?”
    â€œBurned up, it seems,” said Farole, who had studied electrical engineering. “I bet the captain fried it with some kind of electric surge.”
    â€œNo radar?” Maxammed echoed, his heart sinking. The radar was vital. They could steer by compass, and even without a compass the fishermen among his crew could navigate home by the shape of the swells and the light in the sky. But they needed the radar to warn them of the Navy patrols.
    â€œWhere is that boat?” he asked angrily.
    â€œDrifted away.”
    â€œFind it.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œRun it down! Drown that devil captain.”
    Farole laid a hand on Maxammed’s arm. “My friend, we must get the ship to Eyl. We have no time for revenge.”
    Maxammed’s face was tight with rage, eyes bulging, lips stretched across his teeth. Farole prayed to God that he would come to his senses before he exploded like a volcano.
    â€œHumanitarians, my friend. Remember?”

TWO
    48°9' N, 103°37' W
Bakken Oilfield
North Dakota, near Montana
    P aul Janson steered a drunk out of the path of an ambulance racing from the Frack Up Bar & Grill’s parking lot. Then he shouldered through a crowd of derrick hands, pipe wranglers, and rig mechanics who were cheering two men fighting in a cage made of chain-link fence.
    The night was cold and the air stank of diesel exhaust from the trucks men left running to warm up in between bouts. A hundred-foot pillar of fire burning waste gas off a flare stack behind the bar lighted the cage bright as day.
    The bigger fighter had blood dripping from his nose into his chest hair.
    A bare-legged woman in a short down jacket circled the ring with a cardboard marking Round Two. Phones flashed as fans took her picture. When she stepped out and closed the gate, Janson asked, “Where’s the sign-up sheet?”
    â€œNowhere. Dudes on law enforcement radar won’t write their particulars. You want to fight, get in line.”
    â€œWhere’s the line?”
    â€œThe end of it’s that truck driver getting his head stomped by the dancing Chinaman. Cranked-up dude put three in the ambulance. Everyone else decided to call it a night.”
    The “dancing Chinaman” was a rangy, six-foot-two Chinese-American bouncing in a frenzy on the balls of his feet. He had a head full of shaggy dreadlocks that he shook like a mop, and he was cranked up, indeed, his eyes yawning wide with crystal meth. But his body was rock hard, and he moved, Janson observed, with the lethal grace of a martial-arts sensei.
    He was showboating, playing to the crowd. A blazing-fast backflip drew cheers