Sting of the Wasp

by Jeff Rovin

  “I volunteer for that,” Rivette said with a knowing chuckle. “Also,” he lay down one gun and reached into his robe, “got a few potatoes if you don’t mind raw.”

  Williams smiled as Rivette tossed them to Grace.

  “I’ll come with you to get the water,” the lieutenant said, picking up two empty cans that once held peas and shaking them out. Dark particles dropped to the floor. “I’d save some matches, commander. We should boil before drinking.”

  He nodded in the flickering light, then sat back.

  “I can’t tell you anything more,” he said to Breen, holding up the phone as the others moved cautiously to the grocery. The statement was half-explanation, half-apology.

  “As long as it doesn’t impact Black Wasp directly, I don’t need to know,” Breen assured him. “But you look a little more relieved than I’ve seen you.”

  “If you could apply that word to anyone at the Alamo or waiting to cross the Channel on D-Day—yeah,” Williams laughed. “My liaison did something good for someone I used to work with. Probably for others as well.”

  “Good to know,” Breen said, without prying. “I’d hate to be partnered with a dick.”

  Williams noticed that the major had said “partnered with” and not “working for.” Breen was an attorney, careful with his words, and that was an important distinction, a useful reminder as they awaited what might be a final showdown—and their last day on the planet.

  Working in Washington, at Op-Center, it was easy to forget the old World War II rallying cry, “Why we fight.” This operation was not for Matt Berry or President Midkiff or the future of Chase Williams.

  It was for the American people.

  Just then, Rivette bounded back inside, taking all the steps in a handrail supported jump.

  “Grace is upstairs—we got company.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Al Luḩayyah, Yemen

  July 24, 11:20 p.m.

  Crouched in the doorway where the door no longer existed—it was just a metal frame with tiny glass shards along one side—Grace Lee watched the brightening sky to the west, then heard the beat of the helicopter.

  That information about the Houthis and their stronghold explained why it was here. The team had avoided the roadblock, abandoned the potato truck, killed Houthi fighters and stole their truck—which had been described, most likely in a radio communication. Now it had been spotted. The helicopter rotors did not have the familiar, deep beat of a military vehicle; most likely it was a repurposed police chopper without built-in armaments.

  Still, they would be able to call for ground support.

  She raced back down the stairs where the others were already on their feet.

  “We have to get into the sea,” she said.

  “Now?” Rivette asked.

  “Now. The chopper is going to pin itself on the pickup we took and rally the troops. We can’t be here.”

  No one disagreed and they raced upstairs just as the helicopter arrived. As Grace had predicted, a spotlight fixed itself on the abandoned vehicle. Fortunately, the vehicle was far enough away so that the grocery store was not an obvious next step.

  “West along the road, into the nearest rowboat,” Williams said.

  He left the fire burning; stamping it out would produce and spread smoke that might be spotted. It would go out on its own in a minute or two.

  Following Rivette, the team left the grocery through a shattered side window, opposite the hovering helicopter. There was a paved road that was dark and had to be crossed slowly; it was covered with debris from the store and they did not want to make any noise. There was a light drizzle, which seemed to amplify every sound, at least in their vicinity. The drone from the helicopter was loud, but somewhat muted on this side of the grocery. They did not know who might be in the abandoned, three-story brick building ahead. The goal was to put more distance between themselves and any team that might be directed from the helicopter.

  The team hugged the front of the brick building and crossed the street toward the concrete dockside area one at a time: Breen, Williams, Grace, and finally Rivette. It was up to the two with guns and, more importantly, recent firing-range training to cover the others. Reunited, they crept to the row of six wooden wharfs that were in various stages of neglect and disrepair.

  Williams ushered them to a boat he had noticed earlier. It was an old wooden rowboat with seven-foot paddle oars. There was a broken mast but no sail just behind the pointed bow and, aft, a squared transom with the end of the boom jutting a foot beyond. It seemed to be in good repair and was probably used by arms smugglers; the tools onboard, a crowbar and hammer, as well as removal of the center thwart suggested a cargo of small crates.

  Grace boarded first, being the lightest, most agile, and least likely to make a sound. The boat was slick in the rain, and rocking in the wind, and she pulled in the mooring line to help steady it. Breen got in next; Rivette last. The major had already taken up the oars and Grace released the rope. Williams took his Sig Sauer from his robe and sat on the port side of the stern athwart, watching the men pulling up around the glow of the helicopter spotlight. Rivette covered their retreat from shore by sitting at the stern. Grace sat starboard, opposite Williams, her sharp eyes backing up Rivette. Williams’s heel kicked up against something under the seat. It was a long, rubber-surfaced box with a drop-down front panel. It was most likely waterproof, possibly for food but most likely for weapons. He opened it, was not surprised to find it empty. He returned to watching the retreating shoreline.

  For Williams, the Red Sea no longer had a sense of majesty; it was a disagreeable body of water, instantly and completely impacted by the wind and rain. He could not help but think that a strong wind might, in fact, part the waters.

  That would certainly make our passage easier, he reflected.

  The water was not rocky enough to make them seasick, but the air was cold enough to make everyone but Breen shiver.

  The shivering increased when Williams noticed the spotlight suddenly turn from the car as the helicopter moved out over the water.

  Maybe they decided we did go out to sea, he thought unhappily.

  Rivette saw it, too, and turned, aiming his guns in that direction.

  “No!” Williams said. “The men on shore will pick us off.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Give me your guns.”

  “Oh no,” Rivette said. “I—”

  “There’s a locker—under you too, probably,” he said quietly but urgently. “Put them in there. We have to flip the boat, get under, play dead.”

  The team was fast, economical motion. Breen made sure the oars were secure in the locks then handed Williams his own gun and went over the side. Grace dropped off the back, unconcerned about her knives. After securing the firearms and SID phone, Williams and Rivette went into the water. Breen and Grace had already organized that they would tip the boat toward starboard and the others joined them from both sides. They pulled and pushed, but the boom and two surviving feet of mast helped to center the rowboat, making it difficult to invert; Williams finally pulled himself partway from the water, grabbed the boom, and dropped back down causing the hull to roll. As soon as the boat was keel up, the four got underneath. Breen and Grace held on to the front thwart, Williams and Rivette grabbed the boom. Williams took a moment to fish out the mooring line and force it up to the surface as if the wind had knocked the boat loose.

  “Nice one,” Grace said.

  “There sharks in this water?” Rivette asked.

  “It’s an inlet of the Indian Ocean, so probably,” Breen said. “Try not to move.”

  “How much air you think we got here?” the lance corporal asked.

  “About fifteen, twenty minutes if we don’t kick and we don’t talk,” Breen calculated.

  The four hung in silence, fighting the added weight of their waterlogged robes and occasionally knocking their heads against the boat when they were raised by swells.
At least, thought Williams gratefully—after being baked all day by the summer sun—at least the damn water was mild.

  The searchlight threw a moving white circle on the sea. It crept toward them like a luminous jellyfish, creating an eerie light under the surface as it suffused and writhed in the currents of the water below. The team saw fish for the first time, more than they had expected. The sound of the chopper was amplified by the water and by the hull; it stopped when it was directly above them.

  “Please God don’t shoot,” Rivette said.

  “They won’t if they’re well-trained,” Breen said. “There could be explosives in the lockers.”

  Only then did it occur to Williams—helped by a critical look from Breen, illuminated by the subsurface glow—that those lockers could have been booby trapped.

  The helicopter hovered for what seemed far too long. Either they were getting ready to lower someone or calling HQ for instructions. Whatever the reason, the battering of the rain on the hull had picked up steadily and that, it seemed, was finally what turned the helicopter back to the west, to Harad.

  The sea was once again dark—the air under the hull decidedly warm and rank.

  “I’ll go out and look around,” Williams said. “See if there’s anyone watching from shore.”

  “Hold on,” Breen said. “I saw the shadow of a derelict tanker on the sea bottom. Another minute or so and it’ll be between us and the shore. No one will see us.”

  It was another sharp call from Breen, and Williams gave an appreciative nod. As they continued to bob and drift, Williams found himself wishing they could stay where they were. Assuming they could right the rowboat, it was going to be a damn cold couple of hours.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Sana’a, Yemen

  July 25, 1:33 a.m.

  Ordinarily, Mohammad Obeid ibn Sadi found it easy to sleep. Sprawled in safety and comfort on his pillows, his soul at rest, having read from the Quran—there was no reason for a man to lack for peace. But tonight was different.

  It was not just the fact that he had Ahmed Salehi as his guest, or that within a very few hours Ali Abdullah would destroy the team that had been sent to apprehend him and post video of their remains on jihadi websites—adding a second fresh wound to the arrogance of the infidels.

  Sadi was aflame with the vision he had for Yemen, for his people. In 1881, Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah of Sudan had declared himself the Mahdi, the redeemer of Islam, and set about to oust foreign powers from the region—including the wicked English. He was not just a religious leader, but a military campaigner who succeeded in building a short-lived Mahdist state. Had he not died of typhus shortly after the fall of Khartoum, the history of the region—of the world—would have been very different.

  Others had tried and failed to emulate the Mahdi. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, doomed by Allah not to succeed. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had taken, then lost, a caliphate in Syria and the Levant. Osama bin Laden was another Sunni who was more interested in celebrity and sexual sin than in conquest. Even the pathetic ayatollahs in Iran were so caught up in preserving their power base against rebellious youth that they had lost their external vision.

  Rebellious youth! Sadi thought. They shatter the Ten Commandments of the prophet Mûsâ ibn ‘Imran and they are not punished!

  Sadi’s bony hand closed around an imaginary switch. His sunken eyes looked across the room, which was lit by a single lamp in the corner. He vividly remembered many of the sinful young who had been blindfolded and brought here and taught how to live a virtuous life. He remembered it not just with pride but with undiminished enthusiasm.

  Unlike his fellow Shia in Tehran, Sadi had the wealth to carry out his ambition. He had the ships that controlled the flow of oil, and when the Saudis and the Sudanese and the Americans were gone, he would command the Red Sea—the waterway that controlled the ships that carried the oil. Because he had wealth, he had also been able to grab, quickly, the man who would become the public face of his war. And while America and Europe chased him around the globe—constantly stymied by his resources—he would win his war at home, build and arm the military with resources from Iran, and then foment Shia uprisings everywhere, toppling the House of Saud and the Sunni nations of Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and, to the east, the former Soviet republics.

  While contentedly imagining a new map of the Middle East, Sadi was finally able to fall asleep.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  The Tanker Dima, Red Sea

  July 25, 2:12 a.m.

  Saudi captain Bandar Al-Sowayel became interested in the sea after reading about the proud biremes of the Ancient Phoenicians, the ancestors of the Syrians and the Lebanese, who were known to have traded with Egypt at least as far back as 1400 B.C.E. It was incredible that these peoples had cut cedar from their hills, constructed galleys with two tiers of oars, and cast themselves into the oceanic void.

  And yet, the fifty-year-old seaman thought, it was less treacherous sailing those millennia ago than it is today.

  The long-range tanker Dima was one of eighty or so ships to sail the Red Sea each day, a body of water 2.250 kilometers long and just 355 kilometers wide. Thanks to the sophistication of modern electronics, he could sail at night and in inclement weather with the same confidence as on a sun-bright afternoon; and with the same concerns, since Yemenis with RPGs had been equally adept striking targets day or night.

  Because of the unrest between his nation and the one off his port side—and not as far off as he would like—there were few Yemeni ports where he could dock. Aden was not one of them, but it was on the way to the port of Trivandrum, India, which was his destination. Within five minutes of agreeing to the mission—which would appear to be spontaneous and accidental, the recovery of Americans at sea—his associate in Washington known only as Blackberry, had transferred $50,000 American to an account with the Al Rajhi Bank, an account that had personally been set up by their chief risk officer, Salman Al-Saud. The captain had immediately sent $5,000 of that sum to ship’s second officer Fareed El-Hashem, who spoke English and would handle the recovery.

  Captain Al-Sowayel had been instructed to watch for a rowboat that would be some five kilometers from shore. He had extra men on watch because of the rain, and he had personally remained on the bridge to scan the waters.

  “For Yemeni vessels,” he had told the bridge crew, which would give him an excuse to look for and find a vessel the size of a rowboat.

  The call from El-Hashem was made to the captain’s wireless phone on the command console.

  “Yes?”

  “We’ve spotted a rowboat roughly fifty meters from starboard,” the second officer reported. “There seem to be occupants—that is all we know.”

  “Full stop,” he told the first officer. Then, to El-Hashem he said, “Dispatch the rescue team. I’m coming down.”

  * * *

  Williams was shaken by sudden turbulence. Then, suddenly, there were hands moving here and there in the dark. Not his hands; those were numb. The hands belonged to people who were pulling him from the sodden bottom of the rowboat and placing him in another vessel. One that was upright and mostly dry, afterward a thermal blanket was placed across him. Other hands were helping and moving Grace, Rivette, and Breen—all of whom were conscious, though just barely.

  “The boat,” Rivette was alert enough to say. “We need the boat.”

  Williams heard Arabic words and a line was attached to the breast hook. Then they were moving again, pushed now by something other than increasingly uncooperative oars and even less cooperative currents. Upon reaching the tanker they were taken to sickbay where they were hydrated and given a quick checkup; Grace was brought to the medic’s office by a male nurse, where her examination was more cursory than the others.

  Upon the arrival of the captain and the second officer, everyone else was asked to leave. The sickbay door was closed. Grace came from the office on unsteady feet, having pulled a hand towel over her head—an imperfect but e
arnest show of respect to their rescuers. Williams and Breen were on examination tables; Rivette was on his feet, leaning against a well-stocked cabinet.

  The second mate introduced himself and the captain. The captain spoke and El-Hashem translated.

  “Captain Al-Sowayel wishes me to express that he is glad you are safe, but wonders how you came to such a state,” the second mate said.

  “We had to turn the boat over and hide under it to escape Yemeni officials in Al Luḩayyah,” Williams said. “It took—I don’t know how long, but a while to set it right in the wind and rain.”

  “Impressive,” El-Hashem said after he had translated for the captain.

  “How did you get us here?’ Williams asked.

  “A hydrofoil minesweeping sled,” he replied. “A necessity in these waters.”

  Mentioning the vessel reminded Williams of their own craft, the mission. “There are things we need in the boat—”

  “It has been lifted aboard and is safe,” the second mate assured him.

  The captain spoke.

  “It is thirty-five hours before we are in the Gulf and can put you ashore by motor launch,” said El-Hashem. “The captain recommends—”

  Williams sat up sharply. “That won’t work,” he said.

  “Your pardon?”

  “We have to get to Aden as quickly as possible,” Williams said, not sure he could even sit let alone stand, let alone participate in a commando assault.

  “But you have experienced—I think the word is ‘exposure’?” El-Hashem said.

  “That is true, and we still need to be in Aden.” Williams listened to what he was saying, could not believe he was willing to push himself and the team onward—though no one contradicted him. “How did you communicate with the man who engaged you?”

  El-Hashem asked the captain, listened, then answered.

  “A text,” the second mate said.

  “Then text him back—please—and tell him about my request. I am hopeful, I pray, you can think of something.” He looked at the captain when he said, “We have a rendezvous that, I believe, has a very short expiration date.”