Free Deadly Straits (A Tom Dugan Novel) by R.E. McDermott

slumped in the driver’s seat. He’d just decided the Yank was making a night of it when Dugan exited the building and turned up the walk. I overestimated him, thought Braun. When he’s gone, I’m sure the bitch will enjoy having a real man.

Chapter Eight
    M/T Asian Trader
ExxonMobil Refinery
Jurong, Singapore
4 June
    The chief mate tensed at the console, focused on the rising level in the last cargo tank.
    “Stop,” he barked into his radio, commanding the terminal to stop pumping. The load was complete, and at a nod from the chief mate, Medina left to check the drafts.
    It was a relieved Medina that rushed down the gangway. They’d taken minimal ballast for the short transit to the refinery; water hadn’t even risen to his plugs. The ballast tanks were empty now, and the plugs had held as powerful fans pushed inert gas into the empty cargo tanks, displacing oxygen-rich air before gasoline surged into the tanks.
    He’d been terrified that the gas pressure—slight though it was—would unseat the shredded bits of Styrofoam cup he’d packed into the tiny holes. He’d paced the deck, alert to telltale whiffs from ballast-tank vents or the loud keening of gas whistling through an unplugged hole.
    But they all held, praise be to Allah, high on the bulkheads, submerged now under a foot of gasoline on the cargo-tank side. It wouldn’t take long for the cargo to dissolve them.
    But it would be long enough.
    Offices of Phoenix Shipping
London
    Braun smiled. Sutton had hacked backdoor access to several porn sites, making tracking his communications like looking for a needle in several thousand haystacks. Only the logic of the method had convinced Motaki to disregard his revulsion at accessing the sites. Braun’s smile widened. Perhaps this might expand the Iranian’s horizons a bit.
    He opened an encrypted file. Motaki had done well. The Chechens looked European, and below each picture was age, height, weight, and hair and eye color. Braun printed the pictures and erased the file before typing the Web address of the Baltic Maritime Job Exchange, to begin his search for unemployed ex-Eastern Bloc mariners resembling the Chechens.
    Anna Walsh’s Apartment Building
8 June
    Joel Sutton, dressed in a British Telcom uniform and with toolbox in hand, rang Anna Walsh’s doorbell. Showing his face was a risk, but he’d confirmed Dugan and the bitch were at work, and no one else would know him. When no one answered, he picked the lock and went to work.
    He hid transmitters in the phones and throughout the small apartment and a tiny receiver on a high closet shelf, tapped into a spare circuit in the existing phone wiring. Satisfied, he left things as he’d found them and rode the elevator to the lobby, leaving his toolbox there as he went to the van. He returned with a heavy shopping bag, its handles biting into his hand, to collect his toolbox and ride the elevator to the basement.
    The telephone box was well marked and he set to work, stepping back twenty minutes later to survey the results. Concealed under a stack of boxes and connected to the panel by a hidden wire sat a lead-lined wooden box with a near-invisible antenna wire run to a high window. The box was soundproof, with a speaker inside echoing any sound from the apartment. Inches away was a cell phone, voice activated to dial at any sound. There was no connection between the devices but sound waves, eliminating a trace. The outgoing cell signal was detectable, but isolating it would be difficult. Difficult became impossible as the audio was relayed through two identical boxes, both hidden far away in high-cell-traffic areas.
    All the phones were untraceable, purchased for cash, and modified with long-life batteries. Each box held enough plastic explosive and white phosphorus to destroy the contents and anyone opening them without first calling the phone inside and entering a disarming code.
    Sutton dialed Anna Walsh’s number on another throwaway phone and