Holding the door wide, the man said, “Someone wants to talk to you.”

Austin didn’t take kindly to orders from rude strangers. He smiled. “If you don’t take that toy badge out of my face, you’re going to end up eating it.”

Austin expected a hostile reaction, but, to his surprise, the man laughed, then he spoke to someone in the SUV. “You’re right,” he said. “Your pal is a hard case.”

A loud guffaw issued from the vehicle’s interior. A voice Austin hadn’t heard for a long time called out: “Don’t get too close or he’ll bite you.”

Austin peered into the car and saw a large man seated behind the steering wheel. He was smoking a cigar and had a wide grin on his broad-featured face.

“Oh, hell, I should have known it was you, Flagg. What brings you here from Langley?”

“Folks at the very highest levels of government asked me to collect you. Get in. Jake here can follow in your NUMA car.”

Austin tossed the keys to his Jeep to the other man and got into the Yukon. He had worked with John Flagg on a number of CIA assignments but hadn’t seen his former colleague in years. The Wampanoag Indian from Martha’s Vineyard worked behind the scenes as a troubleshooter and rarely came to the surface.

They shook hands, and Austin said, “Where are we going?”

Flagg grinned and said, “You’re going on a boat ride.”

NUMA 7 - The Navigator

Chapter 21

THE MOVING VAN ARRIVED at the Smithsonian warehouse twenty minutes after Austin had departed in the Yukon. Carina was relieved to see the unmarked truck back up to the warehouse. She had seen firsthand the ingenuity and determination of the ship hijackers.

The truck’s rear doors opened and two men dressed in generic gray uniforms and matching baseball caps climbed out. One man activated the tailgate-lifting platform and the other unloaded a wheeled dolly and a large wooden box. The driver got out of the cab and came around back with a fourth man.

“You must be Ms. Mechadi,” he said in a slow Southern drawl. “My name is Ridley. I’m in charge of this gang of gorillas. Sorry we’re late.”

Ridley was a husky man with a blond marine brush cut. He and his crew carried sidearms in belt holsters and had portable radios clipped to their pockets.

“No apology needed,” Carina said. “I just finished wrapping the statue to be transported.”

She led the way into the warehouse. Ridley chuckled when he saw the figure swathed from top to bottom in padding and tied with rope. “Whooee! Kinda looks like a big sausage.”

Carina smiled at the apt comparison. “The statue is more than two thousand years old. It’s already been damaged, and I wanted to do whatever I could to protect it.”