So:
Kalashnikovs never jam.
And yet, this one did. It was my second AK47 jamming in a little more than a week. What are the odds? And how does Murphy play them so dramatically?
The hijacker stared at me. I looked at him. I prayed for another sharp dive of the bow or a hard rock to port and swing to starboard, but we were in a momentary lull.
The raghead calmly lifted his rifle and pointed in my direction. I tried to take a step back, but my way was blocked by the rail. The bastard grinned and squinted his eye to focus his aim through the iron sights.
His head exploded before he could press the trigger. Doc had come down through the control room.
“You owe me a beer,” snapped Doc. “And dry-cleaning money. I got gore on the cuff of my pants.”
“That’s why you should never wear cuffs,” said Larry, trotting up.
“Did you power up the remote?” I asked Doc.
“No.”
“Well, turn it on and let’s take over the ship.”
“There’s something you have to see first.”
* * *
Hearing what they suspected were gunshots above the hum of the engines, Chalker and Doc had entered the control room and quickly dispatched the hijackers to their private paradise. There was surprisingly little blood on the control consoles, which made sorting out the high-tech screens and control widgets that much easier.
But even if it had been drenched in blood, one unit would have stood out immediately—a suitcase-sized box of radio transmitters that were set up as detonators. The hijackers had apparently placed plastique explosive charges around the ship.
“That’s easy to deal with,” I said, inspecting it. It was homemade from several remote radio controllers, clever but not overly innovative. An ambitious thirteen-year-old with a screwdriver and soldering iron could have done the same. “We’ll just power it down and decommission it.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Doc. “Then I found this.”
He led me across the compartment to another console used to monitor the turbine. The panel at its base was loose. Doc pulled it away—gingerly.
“Two packets of Czech C4,” he said, pointing down at a small but extremely powerful bomb. “Vintage stuff. Looks like it’s wired right.”
The most interesting—or alarming—part of the bomb wasn’t the radio connection that would allow it to be detonated from a distance, but the extra circuitry to a watch face.
“Timer backup,” said Doc. “I’m just guessing, but I think those numbers mean we have about twenty hours to the failsafe boom time. That gets us to the coast and a little beyond. But check this out.” Doc bent down. “There’s a second timer wired into the master circuitry. It’s set for twenty seconds. And it has its own battery. It’s another failsafe—a tamper safety. Boom if somebody tries to disable it and does the wrong thing. To get rid of it you’ll have to know what you’re doing.”
“That leaves you dumb ol’ bastards out,” said Larry, strutting over. “Let me take a look.”
He bent down and examined it. The frowns grew deeper the longer he stared.
“I need a penknife. A beer wouldn’t hurt either.”
Doc supplied the penknife. No beer was available. Just as well, though—Larry has been “dry” for well over ten years. Truly a miracle when you consider how long he’s been working with me: he survived SEAL Two, SEAL Six, Red Cell, and Red Cell International. (Rest assured, he does more than just hang around getting into trouble with yours truly; he’s a partner in his own company, Training Resources International, or TRI, where he works on anything that goes boom.)
Larry gently pried two small and tightly twisted wires apart at the edge of the circuit board. I felt my heart jump into my throat as the knife slipped and Larry winced, and picked up the knife.
“No boom, no foul,” he said. “I’ll try again. Hold your breath and pray. Not you, Dick,” he added. “God hears you praying he may have a heart attack.”
Larry flicked his wrist. The knife point jerked against the wire. There was a spark.
Then nothing.
Not the big nothing. Just … nothing.
“Whew,” said Doc. He laughed. “See? Nothing to it.”
“Yeah—nothing,” said Larry sarcastically. He showed us the second clock face—it had counted down to thirteen.
“The problem isn’t dealing with the bombs,” Larry explained, rising with the device in his hand. “The problem is finding them all. From the looks of that panel, there could be as many as a hundred of the damn things. Miss the wrong one, and one of those turd brains who took over the ship can put a pretty good-sized hole in it. These can be detonated by any radio device that knows the frequency, and I’m sure they have more than one.”
I went over to the control console. Besides the array of instruments and devices for checking every system on the ship, there were also displays that duplicated the navigational units up in the wheelhouse. We could see not only our present position, but where we had been, and, more importantly, where we were going. I rechecked the course. We were still on the same line we’d been on earlier.
“Norfolk,” said Doc, looking over my shoulder. “Blow the ship and block the channel.”
“Mmmm. Failsafe won’t go off for a few hours beyond that.”
“Gives them a margin for error.”
Sinking the cruise ship near the harbor at Norfolk would certainly cause a serious pain in the rumpus for the navy, but that wasn’t the way these types generally thought. They liked flash and sparkle, along with civilian casualties.
Economic disruptions. Panic that leveraged the damage of the event itself.
Headlines.
Like the sort you would get if you went past Norfolk and kept going all the way to the Liquefied Natural Gas Port at Cove Point.
Blow the ship up at the right spot, and you might get a nice flare that could be captured for any number of prime-time news shows around the world. You’d also generate lasting publicity. Plans to expand the port were already controversial, and you could bet that an “event” would live on in the hearts and minds of many for decades. It would be another Three Mile Island—and not coincidentally, a free advertisement for al Qaeda and its far-flung worshipers.
To say nothing of the innocent lives that would be lost in the process.
“Could be,” said Doc. “Either way, we have to stop it. And that’s one hell of a storm we’re steering into,” he added, pointing at the huge red ball on the screen of the monitor to the right. “These waves we’re getting are only at the leading edge.”
As if to punctuate his weather analysis, the ship tilted abruptly forward. I grabbed the metal handhold nearby and held on as we pitched back the other way.
“Jackasses probably learned to sail in the air farce,” mocked Larry.
I had thought we’d disable the bridge control, radio for help, then take out the hijackers in small groups. But radioing or interfering with the controls would tip them off that we were here. Better to go after them systematically until they realized we were here.
It sounded like a good plan as the words came out of my mouth. But what’s the old saw about battle plans? They become obsolete the moment the first gunshot is fired.
This one didn’t even last that long.
“Two guys coming down the ladder,” said Chalker, ducking into the control room. “They’re only armed with pistols, but one of them has a walkie-talkie.”
3
(I)
Doc joined Chalker at the door, while Larry and I retreated back into the engine compartment, aiming to circle around and attack from the corridor. We moved quickly, but by the time we reached the compartment, Doc had already grabbed one of the hijackers as he came into the control room. The other had been shot through the neck by Chalker.
“Did he use the radio?” I asked Doc.
“I don’t think so. They’ll figure something’s up soon enough, though. It’s squawking with Chinese
.”
“Arabic,” said Larry, taking the radio. “They’re asking what’s going on.”
“Can you answer?” I asked him.
“My Arabic’s not going to sound that good,” said Larry. “It’s hard to sound like these guys. That’s the first thing you learn in language school.”
“Make it sound muffled,” suggested Doc. “Better ’n nothin’.”
We went into the engine room and gave it a try. With Doc making static noises in the background, Larry told the others that things were OK.
The other person on the line immediately asked where he was. Even louder static practically drowned out Larry’s answer that he was on the dog deck.
Dog deck?
“I thought it would confuse them,” he explained.
We moved the bodies into the engine room then returned to the control area to figure out what to do next. We could systematically go through the ship, but to do that effectively we’d have to leave the control room. Larry said he thought he could disable it without making it obvious. I told him to get to work on it.
“We need reinforcements,” said Doc, staring at the walkie-talkie. “What about the rest of the crew? Not all of them could have been plants. If we can find them, at least a few would be able to help us, don’t you think?”
“Hell, some of the passengers could help, too,” said Larry.
“Most of them are over the hill,” said Doc.
“No farther than you.”
Doc blinked. I’m sure in his head he’s still twenty years old.
It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best option we had.
“It’s not a bad idea,” I told the others. “As long as we do it the right way.”
“I agree,” said Larry. “It has to be planned out and executed just right.”
“Hell,” groused Doc, “why start now?”
(II)
Back in Washington, D.C., Junior had followed Habib—or rather, someone he was pretty sure was Habib—down into the bowels of the Metro system.
If you’ve ever been to the nation’s capital and taken the trains there, you know that the stations are large concrete tunnels done in a modern design. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I would never wax eloquent over a bunch of train tracks and aggregate, but the design attempts to remove the claustrophobic sense you can get underground.
The walkways along the side of the tracks in the tunnels are another story. They’re narrow, uneven, and without rails in many places. When a train shoots by, the wind feels like it’s going to sweep you below any second.
Two trains passed before Junior finally spotted a figure walking ahead, hugging the side of the tunnel wall with outstretched hands and moving extremely slowly. Junior guessed that he’d been spooked by the trains that had passed—a rather rational response.
Junior stopped at a railing, waiting for the man to get a little farther ahead. He crouched, hoping the light on the wall ahead wouldn’t show where he was. He needn’t have worried, as the man kept moving forward, albeit at a snail’s pace. Staring down at the tracks, Junior debated whether to continue. He’d been moving south in the direction of the Capitol stop, but he had no idea how far he had gone or how close the next station was. The man might not be Habib after all; he could just be a homeless derelict, looking for a place to flop for the night.
Something scurried down the middle of the tracks, running past him before ducking into the blackness farther on. Junior’s first thought was that it was a small dog. Then he realized it was a rat.
A slight but growing vibration announced that another train was coming. Junior wrapped his arms around the rail, then hung on as the light from the train grew, sweeping the narrow confines of the tunnel ahead, catching a dip and bend to the left. The rush of the train as it passed seemed to take all sound from his ears. He tightened his grip on the rail even though the last car was disappearing around the bend.
Only when the ledge below him stopped trembling did Junior stand up. He looked down the tunnel, but couldn’t see the figure he’d been following. Unsure what else to do, Junior began walking in that direction. The tracks were dark again, but there was enough light from the steel sconces on the wall to illuminate the narrow walkway ahead.
The man was gone.
Junior walked faster, bracing himself for the sight of the man’s body severed on the tracks. But he hadn’t fallen. There was an alcove on the right just ahead of the bend; behind it a set of transformers were nestled behind a fence. A metal door sat across from the fence.
Junior put his ear against the jamb, but could hear nothing through the block walls. He opened the door slowly, crouching behind the metal. A dim ray of light spilled onto the ground. He looked for shadows, saw none, then eased inside to a small landing with a metal stairway leading downward. He closed the door as gently as he could behind him and descended, holding his breath.
Two flights later, he came to an open workshop area. The place looked like a cross between a bomb shelter and an old salvage shop, with railroad parts and assorted machinery. It smelled heavily of oil and metal shavings. Three of the four walls were lined with shelves; the last featured a Playboy centerfold that looked older than I was.
Miss October still had it, though.
The room itself wasn’t lit, but a faint light came through an open doorway diagonally across from the one Junior had entered. He slipped across the room, then flattened himself against a shelf next to the door, listening as the people in the room beyond talked.
He heard three voices. They weren’t speaking English, but the voices were so muffled that Junior couldn’t be sure what language it was. They spoke for a few minutes; then suddenly there was silence.
He barely managed to get behind the workbench in the first room before Habib walked through. Junior caught a glimpse of him in the light, then ducked down, waiting until he heard the man’s feet on the steps above. Then he slipped into the room where the men had been talking.
Lit by a pair of yellow lights, the room was filled with dusty soda and snack machines. Two were open. Unlike the others, they were new and clean. A pair of toolboxes were tucked on the side. Junior looked at the machines but couldn’t see anything special about them, aside from the fact that they didn’t seem to belong with the others.
Beyond the other door was a foyer area flanked by a large service elevator and a door leading to a stairwell. As Junior opened the door to the stairs, he heard the elevator descending. He pushed inside, and watched through the narrow glass window as two men walked into the adjacent room. They returned a moment later carrying the two tool cases he’d seen, along with a handcart that had two heavy-looking boxes.
Junior moved back as the elevator doors closed, afraid they would glance in his direction and see him. But nothing looked nefarious—he seemed to have stumbled onto a late-night work crew. There were a dozen reasons Habib might have come to talk to them, and none had anything to do with a terrorist attack or even drugs.
Not wanting to walk along the side of the train tracks again, Junior decided to take the stairs. He expected that there would be a door out within a flight or two, but instead he went up eight sets before he came to a landing. The small window in the door showed that it opened into the basement of a large building; there were lights and a distant, beige wall across the wide expanse.
Junior hesitated, took a deep breath, then pushed the crash bar boldly, striding out as if he knew exactly where he was. He was standing in a large empty hall, part of an underground complex. The hall was large, long, and empty. Its floors were polished concrete, painted a dull but unscuffed gray—not fancy, but far different than those he’d been in downstairs. The tunnel was used by workers to get from one part of the government complex to another.
Junior had no idea where he was, and even less of a notion on how to get out. The elevator across from him gave him no clue. Faced with a choice—left or right?—he went right. One hundred feet, two hundred feet—the hallway was empty. Junior passed tw
o large desks, which looked like they might be used as security checkpoints, but they didn’t appear to have been used in years.
At the far end of the hall a metal gate partially blocked the way. Junior could hear voices and some noises inside, but the area dipped down and he couldn’t see anything beyond the metal gate. Slowing as he got closer to the gate, Junior spotted a hallway to the left just in front of the gate. There were more elevators there, along with doors to a pair of stairwells. Three vending machines stood across from them. With the voice growing louder, Junior ducked down the hall, moving to the far side behind the third machine.
He heard two men come out from behind the gate. They stopped near the intersection with the main hallway. One said something softly in Arabic—or at least what Junior thought was Arabic. He didn’t understand a word.
The men walked on, back in the direction of the stairs Junior had come up from. He waited a few minutes, then went out to the fence. It had been pushed closed but not latched. He started to push it open, but then heard someone coming and retreated back to the hall where he’d hidden earlier.
The man whistled as he walked. He clattered as well—Junior suspected it was a security guard. He thought of coming out from his hiding place and telling the guard—what, though?
The whistling grew louder. The whistler came over and used one of the machines to buy a soda. Then he went to the machine where Junior was hiding and made another selection for a snack. Junior saw his uniform pant leg—and a holster.
A candy bar or something similar plunked down in the machine. The guard started whistling again, walking back into the building. Junior went across to the stairwell, pushed through, and jogged up the steps. The door was glass; there was a guard at a desk a few feet away, watching a baseball game on a small television.
[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel Page 35