Read Online The Janson Option by Paul Garrison - Free Book Online

Janson turned right, glided through the pedestrian scrum, and appeared suddenly before Kingsman Helms, blocking his path with a pleasant smile.
    â€œSorry I’m late.”
    Jessica Kincaid appeared just as suddenly from the other direction, a sweatshirt draped over her shoulders and a handbag under her arm. Her hair was slicked back from a sweaty workout as if she lived in the neighborhood and showered at home. Like other young women walking by in yoga pants, she could have left her kids with the nanny, or perhaps she was just waking up from a late-night restaurant shift. Janson saw that she was on edge, her eyes hyperactive, not loving his choice for the meet with its myriad walkways crowded with civilians and the dense pack of cars in the shadowy parking lots under the pier shed.
    Janson took Helms’s elbow. “Let’s walk.”
    He steered him outdoors into the morning light. The pier thrust west two hundred meters into the Hudson River. There was a narrow walk between the two-story pier shed and the slip. The parking-garage doors were open to the breeze. The slip was filled with charter yachts and dinner boats moored alongside. Kincaid trailed, watching the cars and the boats.
    â€œMy wife’s family is pressuring the Italian government,” Helms said. “They have influence.”
    â€œTo do what?”
    â€œEnlist the military. What’s your opinion of Italian Special Forces?”
    â€œThey invented underwater commando tactics, back in the day. But they’re not SEALs. I’ll say it again, pirates are either a US Navy job, or you pay the ransom.”
    â€œIt’s too late for ransom. They killed the yacht’s owner.”
    Janson said, “We’ve learned that Mr. Adler was a hothead used to getting his own way. He made his pile taking huge risks trading currency. Hotheaded gamblers used to getting their way make fatal mistakes when they fall in with the wrong crowd.” He kept the “Mad Max” Maxammed rumor to himself.
    Helms shook his head impatiently, clearly uninterested in Adler beyond what his death augured for his wife’s safety. “You continue to fail to understand my point. I have seen you both in action. I know what I’m asking for. The best.”
    Janson raised his eyebrows and cast Kincaid a look as if he were asking, How do we get out of this? Kincaid was frowning at the dinner cruise boat Bateaux Celestial, where busboys and waiters setting tables for lunch could be seen only murkily through a smoked glass canopy.
    â€œYou’re not qualified to judge the best,” Janson said bluntly. “But if you’re hell-bent on going the private-enterprise route instead of using your considerable clout to engage the Navy, why not hire the president of your Global Security Division?”
    â€œDoug Case? He’s in a wheelchair.”
    Janson stopped walking. He held on to Helms’s arm, which stopped him abruptly. “You say you’ve seen us in action, Kingsman. You have no idea what you’ve seen. I have seen Doug Case in action. And I am qualified to judge the best. Even in a wheelchair Doug can outfight and outsmart any pirate on the Indian Ocean. And he’s got the contacts in East Africa, where ASC is exploring for oil, are you not?”
    â€œDamned straight we are. The East African rift is one of the last great oil and natural-gas deposits on the planet.”
    Janson shot an unreadable glance in Kincaid’s direction. “‘Rift’ is the operative word,” he said, and quoted from the Catspaw reports he had commissioned to prep for meeting Helms.
    â€œThere are currently three Somalias: Somaliland—a functioning state in the north; Puntland—a semifunctioning, clan-dominated state in the middle; and southern Somalia—a chaotic region supposedly governed by Mogadishu, the capital city, where the situation is fluid to say the least. Today they build a new hotel,