Chapter One
Palm Beach, Aruba
From the swim platform of the thirty-six-foot dive boat docked in front of the Marriott’s Aruba Surf Club, the asset had a great view of Palm Beach in all its manufactured glory.
From the powder-white sand freshly groomed by tractors to the palm trees swaying like props on a set and the wall of hotels rising behind them, she scanned it all with contempt.
To her, it felt fake. All of it.
No charm, she thought. Nothing like Exuma.
Palm Beach was like a resort rendering brought to life, a place where influencers staged bikini photo shoots, where tourists drank watered-down cocktails with pastel-colored paper umbrellas, and where, today, two of the most corrupt men in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had come to play with their families.
“Welcome aboard, messieurs,” she said in French, helping the two men.
Her associate, Henry, stood at the helm, saying nothing. He wore sunglasses and a faded T-shirt, playing his part as just another quiet local helping the tourists burn through their money.
The first guest to step aboard, Destin Mpanga, was a former high-ranking officer with the Congolese National Police who’d become a powerful warlord within the Congo River Alliance, a rebel coalition whose main objective was to overthrow the DRC government.
Mpanga was in his fifties, bulky with muscles gone soft, and his gut pressed against the zipper of his half-donned wet suit.
The man was responsible for the deaths of at least a hundred civilians last year alone, and he had been accused of several war crimes, including enlisting child soldiers.
Behind him, Dr. Hervé Tchangana, a career politician and the current minister of land management of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was the second—and final—guest to board.
Tchangana was a parasite feeding on Mpanga’s chaos, bleeding his own people dry in the process.
Just like Mpanga and his family had done, Tchangana, his wife, and four children had traveled out of the DRC under assumed identities.
The asset watched as the wives and children of the two men boarded a second vessel moored nearby, a white catamaran flying a tour company’s flag.
The asset gave them a polite wave as the catamaran’s crew arranged towels and fruit baskets on the upper deck.
A minute later, the catamaran headed north for a three-hour snorkeling trip.
“Good morning, gentleman,” she continued in French. “Perfect weather for today’s dive.”
“Better be,” Mpanga said. “We’re paying five-star prices for this private excursion.”
The asset smiled politely, making sure to keep her disdain for the man out of her eyes.
For these two pricks, it was five-star everything.
She’d kept an eye on them and their families for the last three days.
They were staying in the most luxurious suites, eating at the most ridiculously expensive restaurants in town, and only ordering the most expensive Burgundy wines on the menu.
Nothing was ever too much or too expensive for them.
And all of it, of course, was paid for with government funds and money siphoned from foreign aid.
And while they do this, their countrymen drink river water laced with diesel runoff, she thought. Pigs.
“We’ll be diving the Star Gerren today,” she said, as Henry gunned the twin outboards and pointed the boat away from the beach.
“Star what?” Mpanga asked.
“The Star Gerren,” she replied over the roar of the engines. “A sunken cargo ship. It sank in August 2000. It’s not as popular as the Antilla shipwreck, but the upside is that very few dive tours go out there. And it’s perfectly safe. Trust me.”
“Private dive. Private wreck. I like it,” Tchangana said.
She had hacked into the diving platform app they’d used to book their trip three days ago. The men were convinced they’d booked a private excursion with the best-rated PADI-certified dive operator in Palm Beach.
Ten minutes later, they arrived at the dive site, and Henry put the outboards at idle speed.
The asset opened the storage locker and pulled out the diving gear.
She helped the two men don their equipment, adjusted their weighted belts, briefed them about the dive, then ran a final check on her own kit.
A minute later, they rolled backward into the sea.
Below the surface, the world changed. But today, the water was absurdly clear. The asset estimated the visibility at about eighty feet. She could see all the way to the bottom, where the 245-foot cargo ship had gone down, its bulk looming like a carcass on the seafloor sixty feet below.
She equalized her ears several times as she got deeper, then led the two other divers toward the shipwreck.
As they got closer, she could see that the barnacled hull of the Star Gerren was split along the port side, which created a ragged entryway into the submerged corridors of the ship.
She swam through the opening first, kicking lazily ahead with her fins.
Inside, weak beams of sunlight filtered through the rust-eaten portholes, and she saw a school of fish swim by in a silver blur.
She smiled. She was enjoying herself.
Behind her, the warlord and the politician paused to glance into the wheelhouse like curious children. She signaled to keep going. She had a schedule to keep.
They swam deeper into the wreck, past a collapsed stairwell and into what had once been the cargo hold of the ship. The visibility narrowed and the walls felt closer here. She turned on her dive lamp and directed the beam toward the two divers. She signaled for them to get closer to her.
Once both men were within three feet, she adjusted the beam to its highest setting, then directed the light into their eyes, blinding them. She switched off the light, plunging the cargo hold into total darkness, and pulled her dive knife from the sheath on her right thigh.
Then she struck.
She grabbed the back of the warlord’s head and shoved the knife into his neck. The man’s scream was all bubbles and terror.
Thirteen.
Because it was pitch black, she knew the politician had no idea what had just happened. Ultimately, she didn’t even need to worry about his whereabouts, because he touched her arm, as if seeking reassurance.
She stabbed him between the ribs, twice, but then he pushed her away and tried to swim upward before she could stab him a third time.
But he didn’t get far. She caught his ankle, yanked him down, and plunged her knife into his side.
She pulled the regulator out of his mouth and stabbed him one last time in the neck.
Fourteen.
Inside the cargo area, it would be hours, days maybe, before the two men were found.
But by then, the fish would have done their work.
She finned out of the hold and back through the hull breach.
After her safety stop, she surfaced. Henry was crouched near the stern, busy peeling off the SeaBeach Excursions decals from the fiberglass.
She grabbed the ladder and hauled herself aboard, then stripped off her wet suit and toweled herself dry.
She changed into a bikini and sat beside Henry, who was now in the process of starting the engines.
She stretched her legs, slid on the pair of sunglasses Henry handed her, then closed her eyes, tilting her head toward the sun, enjoying the moment.
As Henry opened up the throttles, she didn’t look back. Her job wasn’t to dwell on what she’d done. Her job was to clear the path for the greater good. And she was very, very good at it.
“Operations reached out while you were underwater,” Henry said over the roar of the outboards.
“Yeah? What’s up?” she asked, keeping her eyes closed.
“I need to get you to the airport ASAP,” he said. “You’re needed somewhere else.”