Death Ship

by Joseph Badal

  “Mike,” Bob said as he pulled the sleeve of his son’s slicker.

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  “The way I see this is that there are two ships or boats we should be concerned about. One is the tanker and the other is whatever vessel is about to meet the tanker somewhere up ahead. I would guess the guy who made the call the NSA intercepted—Ahmed, or whatever his name is—plans to leave the tanker and board the second vessel. It would be nice to locate both of them, but the tanker should be our top priority.”

  “If there are explosives on that tanker, I agree with you. I also agree that the two vessels are up ahead of us, but in this weather we’ll be damned lucky to locate either one. Even as big as the tanker is, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack in this storm.”

  “Unless we knew exactly where the tanker was.”

  Michael frowned at Bob. “That’s sort of stating the obvious.”

  “No, I mean, we can probably calculate the location of the tanker. We know when the cell call was made and the exact coordinates of where it was made.” Bob looked at his watch. “It was exactly sixteen minutes ago.” He whipped around and shouted for Nick Vangelos. “Nick, what’s the top speed that a large ship can make in the bay?”

  “The rule is ten knots in perfect weather. In this soup, probably something less.”

  “Can a ship divert from its course in the bay?”

  “No way,” Nick said. “The big ships have to form a queue and follow one another out of the bay and out to the sea. Otherwise there’d be chaos.”

  Bob turned back to Michael. “So the tanker left the site of the phone call about sixteen minutes ago and has traveled at, say, eight knots in a straight line. We should pretty well be able to estimate the tanker’s current location. We should also be able to anticipate where it will be every second thereafter.”

  Michael yelled at the bosun’s mate, “Get Admiral Wyncourt on the radio. NOW!”

  When Wyncourt’s voice boomed over the radio, Michael passed on Bob’s theory but adjusted the time since Ahmed’s cell call was made to eighteen minutes. “I need you to project the tanker’s location based on the assumptions I just gave you.”

  “Hold on, Mike,” Wyncourt said.

  The men on the launch barely breathed, let alone talked or moved while they waited for Wyncourt.

  “Mike,” Wyncourt said two minutes later, “we just sent a text message to your satellite phone with the projected locations of what we presume is the tanker on a minute-by-minute schedule.”

  “Thanks, Silas, we’ll—”

  “Sorry to interrupt, but we think we might be able to narrow down your search. Although there’s a lot of possibility for error in the assumptions we made. I mean, the ships could be moving faster or slower than eight knots. But allowing for a slush factor, we searched AIS data and found four vessels that fall into our estimated range. If we take them in the order of farthest from you to closest, the first and second ships are tankers, as is the fourth. The third is a cargo ship.”

  “What if our target disabled its AIS?”

  “That’s a problem, and the satellites are blind because of the storm, so we can’t see the ships. But I don’t think our tanker would move inside the bay with its electronics shut down. It would be dangerous.”

  “Okay,” Michael said. “I’ll be back in touch.”

  Michael looked at Wyncourt’s text message and showed it to the bosun’s mate. “Let’s input the coordinates for fifteen minutes from now. Then I want you to take us on a bee line to that location.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “What’s your name, sailor?”

  “Angus Wallace, sir.”

  “Well, Angus, how fast can this thing go?”

  “Faster than you probably want it to in this crappy weather.”

  Michael said, “Don’t worry about us landlubbers, Angus. Crank her up as fast as she’ll go.”

  Wallace smiled. “I’ve always wanted to do that, sir.”

  Boukali sheltered in a recessed part of the tanker’s superstructure under the pilot house. It was cold and wet there but he didn’t want to be in the pilot house with Fouad. He wanted to avoid questions from the captain about when Boukali would bring his crew on deck. He was afraid Fouad might get sentimental and want to say goodbye to his men. He waited until he felt the tanker’s engines rumble, indicating that Fouad had backed them off. Then he sprinted across the deck to the ladder that dropped from the edge of the deck to halfway down the starboard side of the ship. He paused after he’d descended three steps and glanced up in the direction of the pilot house. He could barely see the ship’s superstructure; the pilot house was completely shrouded in fog and rain.

  The climb down the metal ladder was treacherous. Boukali gripped the hand rails with his bare hands and wished he’d brought along a pair of gloves. He had to bend forward to compensate for the weight of the backpack and thirty feet of three-quarter-inch nylon line attached to a large metal clip coiled over his right shoulder. The wind howled and seemed to want to drag him off the ladder. When he arrived at the bottom, still a good thirty feet from the water, he felt fear as he never had before. The climb down in the rain, wind, and cold, fighting the weight of the pack and rope, had exhausted him. What if the men he’d hired to transport him away from the tanker didn’t show? Would he have the strength to climb back up to the deck? And, if he did, what then? He wasn’t about to ride along with cancer-ridden Jalil Fouad, that twerp nuclear engineer Feramarz Alizadeh, and the dead bodies of Fouad’s eight crewmen to nuclear oblivion. It was fine to be a follower of the Islamic State, up to a point. But Boukali preferred earth-bound virgins to heavenly virgins.

  He carefully pulled the clip end of the line and affixed it to the step closest to his face, three steps up from the bottom step. This required him to hold on to the rail one-handed. Then he dropped his right shoulder and slowly unwound the line until it nearly reached the water. He guessed about four minutes had gone by.

  Although he estimated the temperature at no less than fifty degrees, he felt as though he were frozen to the bone. He had just about decided to climb back up to the deck when the sound of an engine cut through the heavy roar of the tanker’s engines. Then he found himself bathed in a bright ray of light.

  “About fucking time,” he muttered.

  A vessel that looked like a tugboat pulled up beneath him and bumped against the tanker’s hull. He stared down at four men.

  “Hold the end of the line,” he shouted.

  The Kerkira’s engines suddenly accelerated as one man grabbed the line. Boukali slid down toward the tugboat’s deck. His strength almost gone, he descended too quickly, rope-burning his hands in the process.

  “Are you okay?” one of the men asked.

  Boukali laughed. He thought: What’s a few rope-burns compared to becoming nuclear waste? “Get us to shore.”

  CHAPTER 78

  The launch from the U.S.S. Andrew Jackson had come up on the first of the four ships Admiral Wyncourt had identified as “possibles” within the estimated range.

  “Keep going,” Demetrius Stellides called out to Angus Wallace. “That’s the Salonika Rose.”

  “You sure?” Michael asked. “We can’t see her name.”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Stellides barked. “You see that big dimple on the starboard quarter? That happened when a forklift carrying a load of pig iron smashed into her. Happened . . . October, six years ago.” He scowled at Michael and said, “You want to know the time and day it happened?”

  “No, that’s okay,” Michael answered. Then he looked over at Bob who smiled at him and shrugged his shoulders.

  Wallace drove the launch like a madman. The boat alternated between flying over troughs and crashing into wave crests. Thankfully, the rain had stopped and a few rays of the nearly-set sun now showed. Wallace looked as though he was having the time of his life, which was the exact opposite of the way Master Sergeant Burt Winfield looked—green around the gills.
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  Michael moved over to Winfield and whispered, “You okay?”

  “I’m seasick and I’ve been shot in the ass. Just find me a couple terrorists, sir. I’ll take out my anger on them.”

  “We’re doing our best.”

  Michael was about to turn around, to check on the rest of his men, when Winfield asked, “Why the hell didn’t the tanker execute an attack when it had a full load of crude oil? That would have done a great deal more damage.”

  Bob, who stood next to Michael, said, “I’ve thought about that. We’ve never been certain what the terrorists intended. We’ve wondered about their target. What’s changed in the last twenty-four hours, or so?”

  “The carrier moved out of the bay,” Michael said.

  “That’s right, Mike. The terrorists expected the Andrew Jackson to be moored inside Piraeus Bay. My guess is that by the time they discovered it was outside the bay, it was too late to change course.”

  Winfield said, “So they just maintained course, business as usual, and steamed to the refinery, emptied their oil, and reversed course.”

  “Right,” Bob said. “And they intend to get as close to the carrier as possible as they exit the bay and then will do whatever they plan to do.”

  “But what can they do?” Michael said. “The Jackson will blow them to pieces. Even if the tanker is armed with missiles, the carrier’s defensive weapons will blow them out of the air.”

  Bob said, “That’s right. But if the tanker carries a nuclear weapon and the terrorists trigger the device, the radiation will devastate the carrier’s crew. Their protective gear can only partially protect them. And have you noticed in which direction the wind is blowing?”

  “Shit!” Winfield said. “Right toward the mouth of the bay. Toward the carrier.”

  Michael called Silas Wyncourt and brought him up-to-date.

  “As soon as you ID the tanker,” Wyncourt said, “we’ll target her for destruction. If we can sink her before they can detonate a nuclear bomb . . . well, all’s well that ends well. But, Mike, there’s another possibility we need to consider. If there’s a nuclear device onboard the tanker, and it’s got a sensitivity detonator—rigged to explode on contact, the thing could blow anyway. We’d probably be far enough away to avoid damage and contamination, but if the wind shifts, the villages and towns along both sides of Piraeus Bay could be affected. When it was raining, the people on shore would have been fairly well protected, but now that the worst of the storm has passed . . . .”

  After Michael hung up with Wyncourt, he called Ray Gallegos.

  “What will you do?” Ray asked.

  “We have to board the tanker and prevent detonation.”

  “Mike, you don’t know how many men are on the tanker.”

  “Won’t be the first time,” Michael said. Could be the last, he thought. “I know this entire adventure could be nothing but a wild goose chase, Ray. But my gut says differently. What does your gut tell you?”

  After a couple seconds, Raymond said, “Be careful.”

  “Always, Ray.”

  Michael had just closed the connection with Raymond when Demetrius Stellides shouted, “That’s her.” Michael looked to his left and saw the enormous steel wall of a tanker surging like a great gray whale toward the open sea.

  “Look at the rust on her hull,” Stellides yelled. “See that long yellow streak down her side? She got that when she rubbed along a newly painted pier, back in 2012. I remember when that—”

  Michael tuned out Stellides and shouted, “Angus, how far to the carrier?”

  He watched Wallace check his instruments.

  “About ten miles, General.”

  “Sergeant Winfield, put guns on the edge of the tanker’s deck. Shoot at anything that moves.”

  “Wallace, can you put some light on the tanker?”

  Wallace said, “Yes, General, but someone will have to operate the controls. I can’t do it and steer the boat.”

  “Bring us up next to her,” Michael ordered. Then he looked for Nick Vangelos and said, “Man the searchlight.”

  Nick moved to stand next to Wallace who flipped a switch that illuminated the light and said, “Just toggle the light where you want it to go.”

  Nick sprayed the side of the tanker with a large round light beam.

  “Move it forward and then sweep it backward,” Michael shouted.

  The tanker was so long that the light barely illuminated its bow. But there was just enough light to read the name there: Tripoli Star.

  “Wallace,” Michael shouted, “call the carrier. Give them the name on the tanker.”

  Nick erratically swept the light along the tanker’s hull as the launch lurched in the huge ship’s wake. Water splashed in torrents over the launch’s gunwale. A foot of water sloshed in the bottom of the boat.

  “Right there, Nick,” Michael ordered. “Keep the light on the ladder.”

  Then Michael spotted a line whipping in the wind. The end of the line appeared to be just a little too high to reach.

  He shouted at two of his men, “Drag those storage lockers over here. Stack them.”

  Sergeant Morrell swapped his rifle for a length of rope with Master Sergeant Winfield. He climbed onto the stacked storage lockers and tied the length of line to the one hanging on the side of the tanker.

  Five minutes later, all seven of Michael’s DELTA team and the three SEALs had either disappeared over the edge of the tanker’s deck or still moved up the ladder. Before Michael climbed up the line to the ladder, he went over to Wallace and whispered something to him. Then he followed his team.

  CHAPTER 79

  As soon as Michael reached the ladder, Wallace steered the launch away from the tanker.

  Bob felt a rush of mad anger. He rushed over to Wallace. “Where are you going?” he barked.

  “We’ve got to get away from the tanker’s wake or we’ll be swamped. We’ll troll along with the tanker while you all bail water. There are buckets in that locker over there. You work on that while I turn on the pump.”

  Bob asked, “What did the general say to you before he left?”

  Wallace smiled at Bob. “He told me to return to the carrier.” Wallace chuckled. “I think he’s worried about all of us getting blown up.”

  “You’re not going toward the carrier; you’re going away from it.”

  “Gee, I must be disoriented.”

  Bob met Wallace’s gaze and said, “So, you’re disobeying an order?”

  “Yeah. Since when do sailors take orders from grunts? Besides, if the bomb goes off, I won’t have to pay off my gambling debts.” He looked over his shoulder at Vangelos and Stellides. “And who cares if a few civilians go up in smoke?”

  Bob slapped the man on his back and said, “Thanks, Angus.”

  Admiral Wyncourt and his command team stared at the U.S.S. Andrew Jackson’s navigation screens. They tracked the path of the Tripoli Star on radar and on the AIS system.

  “They changed AIS data again,” one of the officers said. “The Tripoli Star is a real tanker. But according to what we just learned from Fleet Command, it’s been in dry dock for six months. Someone somehow stole its AIS transponder.”

  Another officer said, “She’s ten point one miles from our location. The closest U.S. ship to her is the U.S.S. Destry. Eight point nine miles.”

  “Just keep an eye on that ship,” Wyncourt said. He didn’t like what he was about to say next. But he knew he had no options, the Americans aboard the tanker, notwithstanding. “If it turns toward shore or comes within five miles of any U.S. vessel, I want her blown out of the water.”

  Wyncourt looked at his executive officer. “What’s the status on CBRN?”

  “We’ve broken out all chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear protective gear. The crew is in the process of putting it on. The medical team is on stations and prepared to go to work.” The XO pointed at a row of gear stacked in individual piles. “We should put our gear on, too.”

>   Wyncourt slowly turned a full 360 degrees and looked at each man and woman in the command center. “I want each of you to put on protective gear now. That’s an order.”

  “I’ll get yours for you,” the XO said.

  The storm had abated but that there was still enough cloud cover to hide the moon and most stars. Now after 2030 hours, night had set in. When Michael reached the tanker’s deck, he found Sergeant Morrell.

  “Any contact?” Michael asked.

  “Not a soul,” Morrell answered. “It’s eerie.”

  Michael called for a status report over the comnet. Two men responded from the ship’s bow; three from the stern; and four had taken positions under the tanker’s superstructure. None reported resistance or even human contact.

  Michael and Morrell sprinted across the broad expanse of the tanker’s deck and joined the four men—Lieutenant Campbell, Master Sergeant Winfield, Sergeant Toney, and Ensign Salazar—under the superstructure.

  “Any crew on this ship should be within the confines of the superstructure or in the mechanical area,” Winfield said. He pointed above his head and added, “The cabins, the galley, and the pilot house are above us.” He turned and jabbed a hand at a door twenty feet away. “That’s probably the entrance to the engines and mechanical areas.”

  “Campbell, you and Sergeant Toney check out below.”

  Campbell and Toney immediately moved to the metal door Winfield had identified, opened it, and disappeared inside.

  “Sergeant Winfield,” Michael said, “call in the men at the bow and stern. I want three of them to set up defensive positions around the base of the superstructure. You and three others will climb up to the cabin and galley level and take control there. Ensign Salazar and I will work our way to the pilot house.”