by Fritz Galt
“Hold it right there. Delayed grenades? Are you saying that we could toss a grenade onto the bungalow grounds, have it delay long enough to give the guards a chance to approach it and inspect it, then have it blow up in their faces?”
“Yeah, we can set it to delay for any length of time.”
“That’s dirty pool.”
“Down, men,” the master sergeant said.
A car was approaching. It was a cab.
Camille paid and stepped into the light of the front gate. She stood knock-kneed in her tight red dress as the cab sped off. Then she spoke to the watchman.
The man reached for a phone and called somebody. A full minute passed before the gate slid open and let her pass.
Alec picked up his radio.
“This is Team Three. Camille has just entered through the front gate. Over.”
“Prepare a diversion,” Mick said. “Don’t begin until I give the word. We’ll only attack if she gets in trouble.”
“Roger.”
At exactly nine o’clock, her stomach growling with hunger, Natalie descended to the dining room.
The candlelight was dim and servants smiled at her as she approached the formally set table. Abu was already seated there beside a radiant young lady whose breasts were overflowing from a tight red dress.
Natalie smiled. “Hello, Camille. Am I interrupting you two?”
“Not at all,” Abu said. “We’re catching up on old times. Please sit and join us.”
She took a seat opposite Camille, and a servant’s gentle hand guided the chair under her.
“I wasn’t aware that you knew each other,” Abu said.
Camille blushed.
“We go way back,” Natalie said, although she had never met the striking young woman in her life. Mick’s warning of Camille’s arrival certainly helped establish her credibility. But who was this Camille anyway?
“Please continue your conversation,” she urged.
Over a low bouquet of flowers, she studied the woman, who conversed with Abu in a low tone with a French accent.
“So Osama said to me,” Camille was saying, “‘As long as you’re in India, you must look up my good friend Mr. Khan.’”
Camille’s arms and face gleamed with a natural darkness, unlike the dusky tone of those with tanned or weathered skin.
She looked up at Natalie. “Naturally, since I don’t know India, I didn’t know where to find you. Then I received a call from you,” she said, smiling across the table.
Natalie detected a conspiratorial glance during the smile. She reciprocated with a warm grin.
Camille continued, “She said, ‘I’m at Casa do Rio. Come and join us.’”
Camille leaned toward her, the dress straining to control her ample bosom.
“Did Osama tell you that I was here?” she asked Natalie.
Natalie took a long drink of water and watched Abu. The young man sat back with a calculating look.
“No,” she said. “I was at Abu’s parents’ lovely house in Monchique. I was listening to his mother describe some new piece of jewelry when someone phoned Mr. Khan to pass the word on to me that you would be here.”
Abu raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“Of course I had no idea at the time where I was headed. Only later did I learn that I was going to Goa. Then suddenly the phone number he gave me made sense. It was a local Indian call.”
Camille leaned a shoulder against Abu. “You’re lucky I was in my hotel room when she called,” she said.
Abu’s eyes tilted down toward her round breasts. “I am a lucky man.”
Two speedboats rocked quietly beside Casa do Rio’s short pier.
“I’d better disable them,” Captain Savage whispered to Mick as their heads bobbed just above the river’s surface.
“Okay. Go ahead, but keep your radio on,” Mick said. “I’ll watch from here and radio you when it’s safe for you to surface.”
“Roger.”
Mick inserted his ventilator between his lips and submerged for a minute. Dispersed in the water alongside the bungalow were two handfuls of divers, poised to attack the bungalow.
“Ready with the boat?” Mick whispered into his built-in microphone.
“In position,” Savage said.
“Let me check.” Mick reemerged cautiously and removed his facemask. In the moonless night, he saw little more than darkness and the soft glow of light from the bungalow’s windows. Using a night scope, he made out two guards, each at a point where the wall met the river. They were resting cross-legged.
“All clear,” he whispered. “Disable the boats.”
Captain Savage climbed into one boat and began to disconnect the ignition wiring.
Mick submerged and waited for word from Savage.
A minute later, he heard a water-magnified plunk as Savage splashed into the river.
“One boat disabled,” Savage said.
“Uh-oh,” a voice said through Mick’s tiny earphone. “One of the guards heard you dive back into the water.”
“What do you see?” Mick asked the Special Forces diver.
“I’ve got a periscope on him now. He stood up and looked at the boat, then reached for the phone.”
“Snuff him,” Savage said.
A moment later, the diver came back over the earpiece, “Got him too late, I think. He already placed the call.”
Mick lifted just out of the water. A guard lay in the grass, the receiver swinging from the telephone.
The guard on the opposite side of the lawn hadn’t yet changed his position. Perhaps he was asleep.
He thought for a moment. He didn’t want the men to attack, but he had to get the women out.
“Team Three come in,” he said softly into his microphone.
“Team Three here,” Alec came back.
“We’ve been discovered. Start your diversion.”
“Roger. Will commence diversion.”
Natalie watched a servant enter the dining room with a note in his hand.
Abu frowned and took it. He held the note just below table level, read it and pressed his lips together tightly.
“What is it?” Camille asked.
“Just a minor problem. My men will take care of it.” He took another helping of curried fish.
Camille resumed talking with Natalie in her buoyant voice. “You didn’t know this, but Abu and I go way back.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do say. We trained soldiers nearby each other in Afghanistan. His men were new recruits and my camp had some experienced trainers. So he brought his men over now and then. Remember that?”
Abu smiled. “We had many things in common. We were caught betwixt and between Interpol and unfriendly Muslim regimes. Afghanistan was our only safe haven then. Now, with many thanks to Osama, we’ve expanded our circle of friendly nations.”
Camille shook her head in disbelief. “Can you imagine all those coups he pulled off around the region?”
“That’s nothing compared with what will follow in India,” Abu asserted.
“Oh, really?” she asked coyly.
Suddenly, a man’s cry arose from the roadside entrance.
The two women looked at Abu.
“Excuse me for a moment,” he said with an embarrassed smile. Then he threw down his napkin and abruptly left the room.
“This is Team Three,” Mick heard his brother say over the radio.
“Come in Team Three.”
“I just drove past the bungalow,” Alec said. “I tossed a time delayed grenade onto the grounds and made sure the watchman saw me.”
“How did he react?”
“He let out a scream. Now he’s shouting into his phone.”
“Okay,” Mick said. “Sit tight and stay out of sight. Report if they come charging out after you.”
He rose to the surface. He could see the one guard waking up, jumping to attention and picking up the telephone. A moment later, the man grabbed his rifle and spri
nted to the other side of the bungalow. Three more guards emerged from inside the house, rifles poised, and jogged around to the road.
“We’ve got their attention now,” Mick said into his mike. “They’re circling around front. I counted four guards heading that way. Savage, go ahead and disable the second boat.”
When Abu left the room, the servants followed.
Alone, Camille leaned toward Natalie, and whispered, “They’ve got a dozen Navy Special Ops divers out there,” she whispered. “I arrived with them from Diego Garcia. They planned to create a diversion by the front gate if we got into trouble. Something must have gone wrong. We’d better leave by way of the river. They can pick us up there.”
She threw down her napkin.
“That wasn’t an explosion,” Natalie said.
“Maybe it was a dud.”
“I can’t leave under cover of a dud.”
Camille stood up from the table.
“Where are you going?” Natalie asked.
“To find the vial and then get the hell out of here.”
“I’m with you.”
Camille led her out of the room, and said over her shoulder, “I suspect it’s in the kitchen where there’s a refrigerator.”
The chef jumped back in horror as his guests entered the kitchen.
Camille pushed him aside and opened a large refrigerator.
“Where’s the vaccine?” she asked the man.
He was a tiny man who shook his head in confusion.
Camille grabbed a carving knife and repeated herself, threatening the poor man.
He held up both palms. “There’s nothing in the refrigerator,” he said.
“Is there another refrigerator?” Natalie asked.
His eyes rolled toward a set of stairs leading below ground.
Mick watched as a man in a dinner jacket jumped out the door with an assault rifle.
Without breaking pace, the man sped around the bungalow toward the front gate.
“What do you see?” Mick asked, polling his nighttime audience over the radio.
“I’ve got a good angle,” one diver said. “The guards are studying a grenade lying on the ground. They’re keeping their distance. The man’s shouting at one of them to pick it up and throw it back. He’s not getting any volunteers.”
“How’s the boat going?” Mick asked.
“Damn wires are all internal,” came Savage’s labored voice. “I’ll have to shoot the assembly apart.”
Mick swung around and looked at Savage. Just then, he heard something whistle, followed by a massive explosion.
“What was that?” he whispered.
“I think it was a mortar, sir,” came a diver’s voice. “Too big for a grenade.”
“Are they shooting at us, or are we shooting at them?”
“Looks like it was aimed at the wall, sir. I see a lot of smoke and what looks like a hole in the compound wall. Part of the house got hit, too. The top floor of the house seems to be on fire.”
“Any survivors?”
“Looks like the man in the dinner jacket and several guards are getting up. The man is entering the house.”
Natalie leaned heavily against the stair railing and felt close to panic. The explosion had rocked the house and everything in it, and she had nearly fallen down the stairs.
“That would be the explosion you were looking for,” Camille said in a cool voice.
“What should we do?” she wondered aloud. “We haven’t found the vial.”
“Run for the river,” Camille said. “That’s Mick out there, trying to save your skin.”
“But we’re getting close. It might be in one of these refrigerators or freezers.” A row of four units built for restaurant use lined the far wall. She took several steps toward Camille at the bottom of the stairs.
The smell of burned wood and wiring began to impregnate the house.
“Run, girl,” Camille insisted. “Now.”
Natalie took one last look at the row of refrigerators. Inside one of them was the key to her daughter’s recovery.
“I know what I’m looking for,” Camille said reassuringly. “I’ll join you when I find it.”
“You’re sure you can find it and get out of here?”
“Of course. Now you’re wasting time.”
Natalie took a few halting steps back up the stairs. Her heart was heavy, and she felt tears streaming from her eyes.
Suddenly a muffled explosion sounded just outside the house. The lights went out.
The generator. Mick had blown up the generator. He was trying to give her cover.
She crashed, blinded by smoke and tears and darkness up the stairs and through the kitchen. She couldn’t remember the location of the doors. She smashed into a closet, then a pantry, then stumbled over furniture in the dining room. Smoke had filled all the rooms, and she fell to the floor, feeling her way along the edge of a carpet.
A form rushed toward the door, shoes clacking on the wooden floor.
She caught a whiff of perfume and heard a woman cough.
Natalie’s chest heaved. Tears choked her throat. She had become completely confused.
“Good job, men,” Mick said in triumph. “You got the generator. The lights are out. Let’s go in and rescue them.”
He stood up in the waist-deep water and stepped out of his flippers. All around him, black diving suits rose from the river.
Suddenly a bright burst of gunfire shot out from the bungalow.
Two figures jumped off the front steps, automatic weapons rattling in their hands, bullets spraying randomly into the night. In the orange bursts of light, Mick made out a woman with a submachine gun clutched in one hand and light glinting off a vial in her other hand.
“It’s Abu, and Camille’s with him,” Mick shouted into his microphone. “Hit the deck.”
As stray rounds shot up plumes of black water around him, Mick saw Savage dive off the boat and disappear.
Abu and Camille began running for the pier, both guns blazing.
Mick hit the river with a thunk and dove for deeper water.
In the sudden quiet that ensued, his mind had a moment to clear. An awful thought was crystallizing. He drifted for a moment, unable to believe it. Camille had joined up with Abu.
And Mick had brought the two together.
Further out in the river, he broke the surface.
Abu was dragging Camille behind him. He hopped onto the nearest boat. While she unfastened the mooring line, he turned the ignition key. No response.
Mick grinned.
“The other boat,” Abu yelled.
The pair jumped from the pier to the boat that Savage had been trying to disable.
Abu turned the key. Pistons fired, water churned and blue smoke billowed from the stern. Camille flipped the line into the boat, jumped from the pier across the widening gap and fell against Abu as he steered the powerful craft away from gunfire on the shore.
The Navy frogmen stood waist-deep in the river. Some were firing at the house, others fired at the departing boat. Guards flattened in the grass and returned fire.
Savage slipped into the second boat and began to reattach the wiring.
Mick winced as bullets sprayed the Plexiglas hull. An anguished cry rose from Savage’s boat.
Mick took a deep breath, dove deep and propelled toward him.
When he came to the surface, the firing onshore had mostly subsided. He looked back. Guards had begun to scatter, heading for the gaping hole in the front wall.
An M4 under each arm, Alec stepped through the hole that his men had just blasted in the front wall. As the first footsteps approached from within the compound, he opened fire. The fleeing guards ran straight into his wall of fire.
He made sure that all the guards were flattened in the grass before he lowered the smoking guns.
“Come here, quick.” It was an urgent cry over his earphone. It was Mick.
Alec broke into a sprint for the other side of t
he bungalow. As he turned the corner, his boots slipping on the bloody grass, he saw a woman stumbling from the house.
“Natalie,” he shouted, and rushed to her side before her knees buckled beneath her.
“Camille took the vial,” she was saying through sobs. “She ran past me carrying the vaccine. She tricked me.”
Mick was yelling from the waterfront. “She went this way. Get over here.”
Alec peered through the gloom at the dark river. All security lights had gone out with the generator. He could barely make out a single speedboat, one man lying on his back in the cockpit, another standing over him.
He supported Natalie and ran with her down to the pier.
Sparks flew under the boat’s dashboard.
Mick squatted low holding the pier.
Alec helped Natalie step down to her husband, and then jumped into the boat. Mick steadied his wife and guided her gently to a cushioned bench.
“There,” came the voice from under the dash. It was Captain Savage.
The engine roared to life. Mick sprang for the controls and opened the throttle wide.
The boat fishtailed slightly and careened out into open water.
Within seconds, they were skimming over the water, scanning the horizon for the other boat.
Alec reached into a front pocket of his flack jacket and pulled out an infrared night scope. He held it to one eye and squeezed a button. A green image of the horizon appeared. Far to one side, he detected a speeding green dot.
“Hard to the port side,” he shouted. “They’re going up a tributary.”
“I’ll take the wheel,” Savage said, staggering to his feet. His blackened hands took the helm from Mick.
Alec watched his brother crouch for balance and make his way back to his distraught wife.
Dark, moist air rushed past. Dirty droplets of water sprayed over the bouncing prow.
The empty river was silent except for the hollow whack of their hull against water and the roar of their engine responding to Savage’s light touch on the throttle.