by Jack Mars
Ed nodded. “Naturally.”
“All right, boys,” Luke said. “Hard and fast today. No slacking. No bullshit. And drinks are on me tonight.”
*
Omar stood on the upper deck of his giant yacht.
He was a king. He was a modern sultan. He was… a prophet?
Dance music boomed from the speaker system, and his body moved gently from the waist up. Most of the movement was in his shoulders. He held a half-full glass of rum in his hand, from which he took a sip now and again. He didn’t have a high tolerance for alcohol, so he always drank a few sips at a time.
He had a nice buzz on. It made his thinking very pleasant. It was a bright day, with sunlight dappling on the vast blue waters all around them. The sun heated his skin, deepening the brown color. He could feel it happening.
Near the horizon, the white high-rise hotels of Varadero, the center of Cuban beach tourism, shimmered like a city in the sky.
Everything, to put a word on it, was beautiful.
The girls were especially beautiful today. Young girls, mostly dark-skinned lovelies, with fantastic, nubile bodies they loved to show off. Some wore bright yellow or white bikinis against their black skin—the effect drove Omar wild. They wore high-heeled stiletto shoes, they wore high-heeled sneakers, they walked around in bare feet with sheer wraps around their bodies and nothing else on at all. They chatted, they danced, and they laughed. A few drank rum and got very wild. Most drank Pepsi and stayed sober.
Whatever they chose to do, Omar loved these girls.
They were jiniteras, a Spanish word that Omar also enjoyed. It meant “horse-riders,” and Omar of course had a deep affinity for horses. Jiniteras were the Cuban version of party girls. Were they prostitutes? Maybe. Were they young mothers with boyfriends and husbands at home? Maybe. They were more like girlfriends for rent than anything. The Cuban people seemed to have few of the judgments around sex that other societies were burdened by.
Omar smiled, and the smile reached his very soul. This life of his, it was the only life worth leading. Yes, he was a flawed example of a Sunni, and he was a long way from a dedicated Wahhabist. Some might even say he was a hypocrite.
On his trips abroad, he drank alcohol, he smoked pot, and he snorted cocaine. He was surrounded by half-naked young women, none of whom he had married, and he would have sex with as many of them as possible. He encouraged vice, both with his money and by his example. The mujahideen he funded, if they learned of his lifestyle, might seek to kill him.
He threw his head back and laughed. He was flawed, yes. But he was a prophet himself, wasn’t he? He nodded at the truth of it. He had been sent here by Allah to bring the Crusaders to their knees, and restore the ancient Caliphate. He was sure of it. Recent days had proven it to him. He had prayed, for untold years he had prayed, and now he had received a sign so clear, it was unmistakable. An unstoppable weapon had been placed in the palm of his hand, and no one else’s.
He had a Quran verse he often thought of. Chapter 9, verse 88. But the Messenger, and those who believe with him, strive and fight with their wealth and their persons: for them are all good things: and it is they who will prosper.
He fought with his wealth and his person. And that meant all good things were for him. He pulled two sexy girls close to him now. The three of them danced, their bodies just inches apart. He was becoming very drunk.
So many girls, so little time.
“Omar,” a man’s voice said.
Omar turned, and one of his bodyguards stood there. He was a man in a white suit. Omar could not think of his name. The man had pulled a gun, a squat, ugly automatic weapon. More men were moving to Omar’s side.
The first man pointed at the sky.
A dark speck approached from the northwest. It moved fast, growing ever larger as Omar watched. In two seconds, it had resolved itself into a helicopter. A second later, it was much closer than before. In fact, it was almost here.
“We could have trouble,” the bodyguard said. “You should come inside.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Go!” Luke shouted. “Go! Go! Go!”
Two ropes descended from the doorway of the chopper. Luke was last of his four-man team to go. He hit the green START button on his stopwatch. Right before he left, he looked at Ed in the opposite doorway.
“Keep us alive down there, brother.”
Ed raised a hand from the top edge of the machine gun. “I’ll keep the rest of them alive. I ain’t seen a thing on Earth that can kill you.”
Luke glanced below him. All was clear, and he went over the side. A second later, maybe two, he touched down on the deck of the boat. He looked around, getting his bearings. His team was ahead of him, moving fast.
He unslung his M-16 and started running.
“Down!” he shouted. “Caer el suelo!”
All around him, scantily clad women dove to the floor. The women screamed as he ran among them. Up ahead, the Navy SEALs sprinted up a small flight of stairs. They pushed people to the ground as they ran. Luke sprinted up the stairs behind them.
On the top deck, three men shoved a fourth through a doorway. Luke caught a glimpse of Omar’s red shorts and bare skin. The metal door clanged shut.
Dammit! Omar was inside. The men faced out from the doorway, automatic weapons ready.
POP! POP!
Two of them fell. The SEALs dropped them without slowing down.
The third man managed to reach his trigger. He released a blat of automatic gunfire. Women shrieked. The man fired wildly. Luke kneeled, drew a bead on the man. He was a big man in a white suit.
BANG! A dark red circle appeared on his chest. Almost instantaneously, three more appeared.
The man slid bonelessly to the floor. A SEAL reached there a second later. He shoved the body out of the way with his foot, then tried the door. It was locked. It was a big heavy iron door. Luke reached there, almost within the circle of men.
He checked his stopwatch. They’d already been on the boat nearly a minute.
“Blow it,” he said. “This is taking too long.”
A SEAL kneeled by the door. He ripped open two plastic pouches and popped out two incendiaries. He stuck them to the door near the hinges, punched in a quick four-digit code on each, and leapt back.
“Hot stuff coming!” he shouted.
All four men darted back, hit the ground, and covered up.
BA-BOOOM. Two explosions went off almost as one.
Luke climbed to his feet. The door was so heavy, its iron hinges so thick, that it had merely fallen down sideways. It rested on the floor, still upright. It mostly blocked the doorway, the lock still engaged at the clasp. A SEAL tried to wrench the door off, but to no avail. It would take three strong men five minutes to move that door out of there.
“Blow the lock,” Luke said. “Let’s go, let’s go.”
The mega yacht was built for pleasure, but retrofitted for security. Of course it was. The new vogue was billionaires worrying about piracy on the high seas. If Omar had a panic room, and he made it there, they would have a hard time getting him out.
Luke had too many things on his mind, and he hadn’t thought of everything. He had slipped.
“Come on!” he said. “Move it.”
The SEAL knelt again. He stuck three incendiaries on the door, then four, then five, all clustered around the lock mechanism.
“I’m gonna kill this thing,” he said.
Just then, a new burst of automatic fire erupted. It came from behind them. Luke spun. On the deck below, three men had emerged from a side door, guns blazing. They fired toward the helicopter, toward the Rangers holding the drop site.
In the first instant, a Ranger was hit. Luke saw it. He watched the red mist blow out from the exit wounds, and the skinny Ranger do a death dance before dropping. Then the other Rangers were on the deck, taking cover.
“Oh, no.”
A burst from a heavy weapon came. The three men who had come from the
side door blew apart, legs and arms and heads flying in a spray of blood and bone and gore. Luke caught the line of fire. He followed it up to the chopper, to where Ed had just ripped them up.
The Rangers were screaming. Luke couldn’t make out what the words. A second later, a voice became clear. “Man down! Man down! Shit! It’s Charlie Something. Oh my God.”
The man down was the only one not screaming. Charlie Something. He was already dead.
“Dammit!” Ed’s voice shouted in Luke’s ear. “Dammit!”
“It’s gonna blow!” a SEAL shouted from behind him.
Instinctively, Luke hit the deck. The explosions sounded like a string of M-80s on the Fourth of July. BAH-BA-BA-BA-BOOOOOM.
His face was pressed to the rubbery footing on the deck. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. In his mind, he saw the young Ranger take the hits again. He saw the blood spray, the mist rising.
He shook his head. Jesus. But there was no time to think about that now.
He jumped up, turned, and ran through the blown open and shredded doorway, half a step behind the third Navy SEAL. The doorway led to an iron stairwell, which circled down into the bowels of the ship.
The men clambered down, heavy boots on metal stairs. The skeletal stairwell shook with the weight of their bodies and their footfalls. This was what Luke didn’t like. Big men in a line, vulnerable in a tight spot. A shotgun fired from the bottom of the stairwell would do damage right now.
The stairs went down two stories and came to a door. The lead SEALs kicked this one down. Luke was half a second behind them.
All four men burst into a chamber. Across from them, two more shooters stood. Between them was Omar, crouched over a digital lock, feverishly punching in numbers. He stood in front of another heavy door, probably the door to the panic room. Once he got through that door, he would be sealed inside.
It didn’t matter now. He wasn’t going to make it.
The tall men on either side of him reached inside their jackets.
POP! POP! POP!
They were dead before they could pull their hands out again. Their bodies danced as the bullets pierced them. One man dropped instantly. The other put a hand on the wall behind him, tried to steady himself, then slid sideways and down. He left a red smear on the wall.
Omar gave up on the lock. He stood to his full height. The gesture seemed a bit out of place, considering his red satin shorts, and his bare chest and feet.
“You men are trespassing on my property,” he said in perfect cultured English. “You must leave now or face arrest under maritime law.”
Luke walked toward him. “Omar bin Khalid al Saud?” he said.
Omar nodded. “Who is asking?”
Luke punched him in the face, a hard right cross that swept across the man’s jaw. Omar’s head swung around to Luke’s left, his body corkscrewing beneath it. He fell to the floor, landing on top of one of his dead bodyguards. He sprawled there, breathing heavily.
“Bag him,” Luke said. “And let’s get the hell out of here.”
A shriek of static came through Luke’s headset. Then there was Rachel’s voice from the helicopter cockpit. Unlike Jacob, big strong Rachel wore her emotions right out on her sleeve. “Luke?” Her voice had an edge to it, an edge of fear.
“Yeah, Rachel. What’s going on?”
“Any chance you can hurry up in there? We’ve got incoming all around us.”
“What is it?”
“Two fighter jets just went by about a mile north of our position. We’ve got big choppers on radar, closing in east and west. We’ve got Cuban Navy patrol boats coming from shore. You name it, we’ve got it.”
Luke grunted.
“Try to make contact on the radio,” he said. “Tell them we have a prisoner and a man down, and we’re bringing both of them out. Ask them for an escort to American airspace.”
“We’ll try it,” Jacob said. “But I don’t know how that’s going to go over.”
“Let me know what they say,” Luke said.
“What would you say, if you were them?”
Two Navy SEALs had pulled Omar to his feet. A trickle of blood flowed from the corner of his mouth. His eyes were hard and angry. Evidently, he wasn’t accustomed to this type of treatment.
“You men are murderers. This is an act of piracy, and an aggression against a sovereign nation. The Cubans won’t let you take me. They’ll probably put you in jail.”
Omar was a little too verbal for Luke’s taste. Luke pulled his sidearm, a black Glock nine. He put the muzzle to Omar’s head.
“Where will the attack take place?”
Omar’s eyes went FEAR wide, but still he smirked. “What attack?”
Luke jabbed him in the forehead with the gun. Hard. But he still hadn’t gotten Omar’s attention. He could see it. Bad things just didn’t happen to Omar.
“You know what attack. The Ebola attack.”
Omar smiled now. “Oh. That attack. The one with the vial stolen from your laboratory in Texas. Is that what all this is about? What makes you think I know anything about that?”
Luke took a deep breath. On a good day, he didn’t like being taunted. This wasn’t a good day. A mouthy, funny nineteen-year-old kid had died for this. A bunch of Omar’s bodyguards had died as well. And Omar was treating it as a joke. It wouldn’t take much for Luke to send this smug jet-setting bastard to see Allah.
“You were in Galveston the night the vial was stolen.”
Omar nodded. “Maybe.”
“The person who stole the vial came directly to this boat after she stole it.”
“Was her name Aabha?” Omar said. “An exotic name, no?”
“Listen to me,” Luke said.
“No, you listen to me,” Omar said. “You’re an American, so you think you can rain death on Arab people, and on Muslim people, anytime and anywhere you like. I’m a messenger. That’s all I am. And the message is no. You can’t do it. And the way you’ll learn is when death begins to rain on your own people, like it will do this very afternoon. Death from the skies, just like the Americans do it. And even better, it’s going to be an American. A sick, twisted American, because your society is sick, and it makes its own people insane. I tell you all these things because you can never stop it now.”
“Where will the attack be?” Luke said again.
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”
The urge was there, to shoot the man in the head. He was frustrated enough to do it. But Omar was their only link to the stolen virus. If he died, the link died with him.
Luke grabbed him by the right wrist and pulled his hand up and away from his body. He pressed the muzzle of the Glock against the back of Omar’s hand. Omar tried to yank it away, but he was too slow, too weak. Luke pulled the trigger.
The bullet shredded a hole through the fragile flesh and bone of the man’s hand. The noise of the gun was loud in the close confines of the chamber.
Even louder were Omar’s shrieks of agony.
A couple of the SEALs laughed.
“Wait and see about that,” Luke said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They brought Omar up on deck.
Omar’s head was covered in a black nylon bag. His wrists were zip-tied behind his back. He sniveled and moaned in pain.
“Okay, drop him a minute. We’ve got trouble.”
The SEALs leading Omar let him fall to the deck. He lay curled in a ball.
Luke’s eyes were dazzled by the bright sunlight. He was even more dazzled by the swarm of about a dozen Cuban helicopter gun ships hovering in the air around them. They were dark blue. Luke recognized them as old, Russian-made Mi-24s. The Cubans called the Mi-24 el cocodrilo, Spanish for “the crocodile.”
Three American Apache helicopters would take out the whole lot of them, but Luke didn’t have three Apaches today, and he wasn’t going to have them. He had breached Cuban airspace, and he hadn’t let anyone know beforehand.
The Cuban women, in their flashy multi-colored outfits, still lay everywhere on the decks. Now, Cuban naval cutters approached from all sides.
“What are we supposed to do here, Luke?” Rachel said inside his helmet.
“Uh… stay steady, everybody,” he said. “I’m thinking.”
“I say we hole up,” the cigar-chomping SEAL said. “We’ve acquired the target. There’s food and water. We bring him down inside to the citadel, and we wait them out. Unless they sink us, the four of us could hold this ship for a month. Hell, we make the captain pull out of here, we head north, and dare the Cubans to sink us.”
The plan, audacious as it was, had some merit. Luke wanted to interrogate Omar. He could just as well do it here as anywhere else. “What about the chopper?” he said.
The SEAL shrugged. “They can either ditch in the water or run for daylight. It’s up to them.”
That had less merit. A run for daylight with a dozen crocodiles on your tail? They had already lost one man on this raid. Luke wasn’t going to lose Ed, Rachel, and Jacob as well. Not for Omar.
A Cuban Navy boat had pulled even with the yacht. At the rear, Cuban commandos began to board the bottom deck. With in a minute, two dozen of them were racing up the stairs between decks, weapons drawn.
“Now would be a good time to decide, boss,” the SEAL said.
The commandos swarmed and disarmed the three remaining Rangers. The SEALs drew their weapons and backed up into covered firing positions.
“Luke, what are you doing, man?” Ed said inside Luke’s helmet.
Luke had decided. No more loss of life. “We’re going to talk our way out of this.”
Half a dozen Cubans came up the final set of stairs. Their weapons were trained on Luke, and on the SEALs. Luke glanced back at the SEALs. Their weapons were trained on the Cubans. A shootout now would become a bloodbath.
The commandos were led by a tall, muscular man in a blue jumpsuit. He carried only a handgun, and he kept it holstered. He removed his helmet. His face was a warm brown color, his hair graying, crow’s feet around his eyes. He had been at this game a long time.