The Art of War: A Novel by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online Page B

evening it was a very slow go westbound. The Bay Bridge funnel was just something he had to live with, one of those things you can’t do anything about.
    If he hadn’t bought this place years ago for a very modest sum when he was a colonel, he wouldn’t buy it now. It was too difficult to get to on those rare free weekends and would be too expensive. His wife had loved the cottage by the water. Loved to birdwatch and do her watercolors, many of which decorated his office at Langley and his condo in town. She had died of cancer some years back. Still, he saw her presence everywhere at the cottage on the shore, the little house with a lawn that ran down to the water’s edge and a small pier where water lapped nervously.
    Tomazic was a retired army four-star, a “terrorism” expert according to the press, and that so-called credential and his record in Iraq had gotten him nominated for the CIA job by the president. He hadn’t wanted the job, but when the powers that be wanted him for something important that needed to be done, he didn’t have it in him to refuse. The military does that to you. Regardless of your personal desires, when the boss gives you a task you say “Yes, sir” and do it to the very best of your ability. That attitude becomes ingrained.
    He was up at dawn this October Saturday morning. His daughter and the kids were still asleep, and would be for several hours. He’d had had a nice visit with them last night when they arrived, and now they were sleeping late. Tomazic couldn’t have slept past 5 A.M. if his life depended upon it. Hadn’t done so in forty years.
    He drank a cup of coffee and watched the dawn peep through high clouds. A little wind, but not much. He ate a protein bar for breakfast, got his fishing rod and tackle box, then slipped out of the house and pulled the door shut behind him. Walked across the lawn the seventy-five feet to the pier.
    God, it was a beautiful morning!
    His boat was a sixteen-foot aluminum thing with a tiny outboard motor, one he wouldn’t use this morning. He would just row out into the river a bit and drift down to where it emptied into the bay. That lightly churning water was a good place to find hungry fish.
    Mario Tomazic checked the boat out, saw that it had ridden well since he put it in the water and got it ready to go yesterday evening. He loosened up the lines, put his gear on the dock where he could reach it and started to step aboard.
    He never made it. The boat shot sideways away from the dock about a foot, to the limits of the ropes holding it. Something grabbed an ankle and he was pulled into the water between the boat and the pier. Tomazic whacked his head on the side of the boat as he fell in.
    Woozy, shocked and confused, he found himself being dragged under the water by two strong hands.
    Tomazic immediately began struggling. The hands shifted. One was on an arm and the other was on his back, pushing him down. Tomazic twisted, saw a faceplate in the murky water. A scuba diver! His free fist shot out and hit the plate, shattering it.
    The hands were ruthless. They spun him and pushed him face-first deeper into the water, almost to the muddy bottom.
    He couldn’t breathe! Couldn’t get a grip—couldn’t get free. He struggled with all the strength of a drowning man, which he was, as the panic and terror swept through him … to no avail.
    It was all over in less than half a minute. Involuntarily Mario Tomazic tried to breathe, which filled his lungs with water.
    When he stopped struggling, the diver held him under another minute, just to make sure, then released the body. He checked his wrist compass, then swam away underwater.
    *   *   *
    It was four in the afternoon when Jake Grafton joined the deputy director of the CIA, Harley Merritt, two very senior FBI agents, and the chief of the county police on Tomazic’s pier. The driveway was jammed with police and FBI cars, plus a mobile crime lab in a panel truck.
    Tomazic’s body was