Deadly Cargo: A chilling naval terrorism thriller

by Rich Johnson

  He shook off the snow, removed his mittens and the parka and hung them on a hook against the wall. With no shoes to wear, he kept the mukluks on his feet. He was sure he would be back out in the cold and snow soon enough anyway, trudging to his frigid quarters, so he didn’t bother to bring his shoes.

  Down the hall, a soldier with a rifle slung over his shoulder stood outside the office door where Sorgei needed to go. As he stepped in front of the soldier, the man came to attention and asked to see his ID. Sorgei pulled out the card from inside his shirt, where it hung around his neck on a piece of string. The soldier inspected the card, looked Sorgei up and down and then returned the card to him.

  This is ridiculous, Sorgei thought. Who else would be up here in this frozen Siberian purgatory pretending to be me? The soldier moved aside; Sorgei turned the door handle and stepped into the warmth of the commandant’s office. His glasses immediately steamed up, temporarily blinding him behind a gray fog.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Sorgei said as he removed his glasses and wiped them dry with a handkerchief. “It’s the warmth. Marvellous!”

  Commandant Schmernov didn’t notice what Sorgei was doing, because he didn’t even look up at the man as he entered the office. “Take a seat,” the commandant barked. “This won’t take long.” He continued to write for another minute before setting his pen aside and raising his eyes to meet the scientist’s gaze. The great bulk of the base commander filled all the space behind the desk. His red face and veined bulb nose told of too many years under the influence of a vodka bottle.

  How do men like this end up in command of anything? Sorgei wondered. They can’t even take control of their own lives. One thing he was thankful for was that the Groschenko family did not allow alcohol in their home. His father taught the children that vodka was poison for the brain, and Sorgei took that to heart. Not being an athlete for the state, he knew that if anything were going to move him up the ladder of success, it would have to be his brain, so he made sure he never poisoned it.

  Sorgei took the seat, as commanded, and waited to find out why he had been summoned.

  “I’ll get right to the point,” the commandant said. “You’re out of a job.”

  The news took Sorgei’s breath away. “Wh– what?” was all he came up with.

  “Moscow wants you out of here immediately. I will take all your papers. A car is waiting outside. You are dismissed.”

  It took a moment for it to sink in. Sorgei felt suddenly weak all over, and a wave of nausea swept over him. As he spoke, his head was spinning. “What am I to do?”

  “I don’t care what you do,” the commandant barked. “Just leave that satchel and get out of this office. I have work to do.”

  Almost too weak to stand, Sorgei gripped the arms of the chair and lifted himself to his feet. The commandant motioned to the soldier through the glass pane in his office door, and the guard came and took Sorgei by the arm to escort him out. “I don’t understand,” Sorgei whimpered to the soldier, “I just don’t understand.”

  “Get him out of here,” the commandant yelled. The guard hauled Sorgei down the hall to the door leading outside, took the parka and mittens off the hook and handed them to the scientist, then opened the exit door and pushed him out into the cold. Sorgei heard the door slam behind him, then heard a car engine start. Headlights came at him from the right, and the car stopped directly ahead. The rear door opened, and someone pulled him inside, then the car sped away into the night blizzard.

  Inside the commandant’s office, the big man in charge pulled down the privacy shade to cover the glass panel in the door. He ripped open the satchel and dumped the contents onto the floor. “What a shame,” he muttered. “Months of work. Groschenko was supposed to be the most brilliant biologist for this kind of thing. I hope Moscow knows what they’re doing.” He picked up the first piece of paper, studied it long and hard, as if he hated to let it go, then he fed it into the shredder.

  Twenty minutes later, the commandant picked up the phone, pressed a speed dial number and waited. When the line picked up, he said only three words, “It is done.”

  Someone on the other end of the line spoke, and the commandant listened. “Da. I will do that.” He hung up the phone, emptied the shredder into a plastic trash bag, tied the top and carried the bundle out of his office. The soldier came to attention and saluted as the commandant left his office, turned left and walked down the hall toward the back of the building. He opened the door to the furnace room, and stepped back as the heat of the coal-fired boiler rushed at him. Then he stepped inside, opened the furnace door and tossed the bag into the flames.

  Moments later, he placed another call and spoke the same three words as before.

  ****

  Two days later, after a midnight flight from Yakutsk in an old DC3 propeller-driven airplane that had the appearance of being rescued from the scrap pile, Sorgei Groschenko found himself standing on the frozen streets of Moscow. He had no job and no place to go. There would be no fame, no fortune, no peer adulation, no heritage, and no monument in Red Square. Worst of all, there would be no vacation in the sun on the Black Sea. The Soviet Union was being dismantled in favour of a new Russia. The old Soviet military, along with its secret efforts to develop ever more deadly strains of germ warfare, was finished. Not only finished, but it was under orders and scrambling to destroy all evidence that it was ever working on biological weapons of mass destruction. All his research, all his effort – it was all gone, shredded, burned, destroyed to hide it from the probing inquiries of the United States and her allies in Europe.

  For the first time in his life, Sorgei Groschenko and a vast number of other scientists were out of a job. He was on his own, and he didn’t have a clue how he was going to support himself. If it weren’t for the cursed United States, none of this would have happened, he reasoned. All his life, he knew that America was the enemy of his homeland, but now it was more personal. Now America was his own enemy. Her interference cost him his career, his future, and he hated the USA now more than ever.

  ****

  For the next eight years, Sorgei Groschenko worked two part-time night jobs; one in the late evening sweeping out a grain warehouse, and one during the early morning hours restocking shelves at a store. He slept during the day in a room in an old, rundown hotel in a poor section of the city, paying by the week and hoping to afford the next rent payment. Most of the time, there was no heat for his dreary room.

  During the long winter months, he wore a sweater and thin wool gloves all the time, even when he slept. The dull yellow walls were stained brown where water had leaked from somewhere above. The floor was rough wood, but that didn’t matter much because it was so cold that he rarely took off his shoes. There was no lock on the door, but he didn’t worry because he owned nothing worth stealing. Down the hall was the only bathroom on the entire third floor, and it was shared by thirty-one other residents of the hotel, both men and women, each having to wait to take their turn. Finding the bathroom unoccupied was rare, so Sorgei found a discarded one-gallon tin can and kept it under his bed for emergencies.

  One bitter winter morning in February 2000, after leaving work at the store, he walked to a coffee house he used to frequent when he was studying at the university. A tiny bell above the door announced his arrival as he stepped inside, and it seemed that every person turned to look at him. In their eyes he sensed the despair. A political change of this magnitude had reached deep into society and rocked the lives of many of the most educated. Men and women who once had bright futures were now wondering how to make their way through life.

  He took a seat at the counter and decided to spend a little of what he had left. “Black, please,” he said to the waiter. Soon, the steaming cup appeared, and he gripped it with cold fingers, then pressed it to his lips. It felt good going down. He closed his eyes and savoured the feeling of the warm liquid melting its way into the cold cavern of his body.

  An olive-skinned man took a seat on the
counter stool next to him and spoke in a quiet voice. “Are you Sorgei Groschenko?” It was a voice with a foreign accent – an Arab accent, if Sorgei were not mistaken.

  Chapter Three

  May 1984 – Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan

  The western horizon was red as embers, the colour coming from a combination of dust-filled sky and setting sun. In the east the moon would rise soon, appearing, as it were, out of the ground full and round and red. It was an omen; at least it seemed like one to Najia, as she lay sweating on a table in a little room, waiting for the midwife.

  A bitter cramp gripped her abdomen and she cried out, but muffled her scream with her own hand cupped across her mouth. No one must hear her anguish. It was too dangerous. Already, her father was waiting to catch her if she came home. But she was not going home. She had not been near her family’s house for more than three months, ever since her pregnancy started to show. Unwed mothers were not only a burden, they were also a shame in this society – a dishonour that was made to disappear. It happened before; she heard the stories. They were called honour killings, and they were normally carried out by the father, brother or uncle of the offending girl. The usual method was to slit the throat, a form of blood sacrifice that was meant to restore the lost honour to the family.

  The midwife was an older girl, a friend of a friend who agreed to see her through the birth. Najia was thankful for her friends, even though she could not stay with them because they were known to the family and their homes were the most obvious places to look for Najia. It would place them in danger if they were caught harbouring an unwed pregnant girl. So it was friends of her friends, older girls who were out on their own, who shared their rooms and food with the unlucky Najia, quietly pitying her for the terrible situation she was in.

  These girls were a true blessing. They were all at risk, if word of this got out, so everything had to be done in secrecy. The one who would be her midwife had been through this very thing herself, giving birth to a child when she had no husband. An older woman helped her through the ordeal, just as she would now help Najia. Even though it was illegal, even though it was forbidden and considered immoral, there was a covert sisterhood among the women that reached beyond what was socially acceptable. Nobody spoke of these things, yet when the need arose, there was always someone there to lend assistance.

  The room was an empty storage space at the back of an old machine shop that went out of business. It smelled of grease and oil, and the dirt floor was stained black from years of soaking up spilled fluids. Najia was told that this was the place, and so she had come. She waited for more than an hour, lying alone with her pain and fears on a table that was nothing more than a scrap of oil-stained plywood laid over some old wooden boxes. It was the longest hour of her life as she lay waiting in the dark corner of this hidden room on a backstreet of Lashkar Gah – waiting for the girl, her midwife, hoping she would not abandon her just as the baby’s father had.

  A shadow crossed the doorway, and a black shape stepped inside. The girl said nothing as she walked to the table and removed the veil from her burkah. Najia smiled at first, then grimaced and clasped her hand across her mouth as another contraction swept over her. The girl rested her hand on the swollen abdomen and spoke soft words of comfort. “You will get through this. I will help you. Relax and let the baby come to us.”

  Outside, the end of the day had come. The sky turned a deeper, darker red.

  On the table, blood and water spread across the bare plywood and spilled onto the floor. Najia struggled through the pain. The baby began to come, then seemed to hesitate, and the young mother gasped for breath, but it was as if there was not enough air.

  In the west, the sun died at the very moment that the moon appeared in the east.

  ****

  “We will name him Husam al Din,” the old man said, as he took the baby in his arms. “Sword of the Faith – it is a good name, and we will train him to fulfill his destiny for the faith.”

  “It is a tragedy,” the girl said. “To be alone in the world without mother or father. He will be in good hands here at the madrassa orphanage.”

  “Husam al Din,” the old man smiled. “Yes, it is a good name. I can see it in his eyes. Too bad his mother died in childbirth, after losing her husband in battle with the Soviets, as you said.” He probed the girl’s face with his eyes.

  “Yes.” She turned her eyes to the floor in an attempt to hide the lie. “Yes, that is a tragedy.”

  “And no other living relatives, you say?”

  “None.” She regained her composure and looked him straight in the eye this time. “The madrassa is the only chance for him.”

  “Then he will have his chance,” the old man said. “I will personally see that he has the best education.”

  “Thank you, Imam Waziri,” she said, “may your life be blessed.” Then she turned and left.

  ****

  Five times each day, the call to prayer brought everyone to his knees. From the time he was old enough to walk, Husam al Din had his own prayer rug, and he kept it rolled and close to him at all times. The worst thing he could think of was to be caught without the prayer rug when the call to prayer was sounded. The mat kept him clean as he stood and knelt, placing his hands and his forehead on the ground. Being clean for his prayers was an absolute necessity.

  Five times each day, beginning at dawn and extending until about two hours after sunset, prayer was the pattern of life for him, and he had known nothing else since his birth. The ritual pleased him. It was comforting to have no question about what he was to do with his time, and to know that no matter where he went somebody kept track of the time and issue the call to prayer at just the right moment. Then all he had to do was to unroll his rug, place it on the ground with the niche facing in the direction toward Mecca and begin the Salaat, his ritual prayer.

  Before he began Salaat, there was much to do. His body and clothing must be clean, and he must perform wudu, the ritual ablution or washing. Then, standing erect but with his head down and hands at his sides, he recited his own personal call to prayer. “Allaahu Akbar,” it began, being rehearsed four times. “Ashhadu Allah ilaaha illa-Lah,” twice repeated, bearing witness that God is great and that there is none worthy of worship except God.

  The prayers themselves were memorised, and that also gave him comfort. He didn’t need to figure out what to pray about – it was all written down for him. There was no need for him to develop a personal relationship with his god, Allah, just repeat the mantra five times each day, like clockwork. There was no question about the rightness of the ritual – it was as natural a part of his life as was breathing or eating or sleeping.

  At first, it was difficult for him to get all the parts of the Salaat right, and there were many times when he was required to excuse himself from his prayers and exit the mosque, then re-enter and begin the process all over again. To err in the words was shameful.

  His daily existence was so regimented that it was unnecessary for him to wonder what he wanted to do with his life. From the day he learned to understand the spoken language, he was taught his mission – jihad – holy war.

  ****

  In his eighth year at the madrassa, Husam al Din was given a dagger made of fine polished steel. It had an edge like a razor and the sides of the blade were engraved with Arabesque geometric designs. The curved blade was protected inside an oiled leather scabbard. On one side of the hilt was engraved his name, and on the other side was the name of the madrassa.

  “Let this dagger remind you of your destiny,” Imam Waziri told him. “Until you are old enough to carry a sword to avenge the faith, let the point of this blade stir up your heart in eternal hatred against the enemy.”

  “Who is the enemy?”

  “Satan is the enemy. But the enemy is also anyone who is not of the faith, because they are an offence against Islam and are the agents of Satan,” his mentor said with great conviction. “There is only one true faith, and all who are not b
elievers are infidels. We must wage war against the infidels, first in our heart and then in whatever place we find them. Do not ever forget this, Husam al Din. It is the destiny of your life, indeed the destiny of your very name, to plunge the point of the sword into the heart of the infidels.”

  “How am I to do that, being only a child?” he asked.

  “You will find a way. It will be shown to you what you must do. But for now you must prepare yourself in every way.”

  “When must I begin?”

  “Begin today,” the Imam taught, “to train up your heart in anger and hatred against the infidels. When you are twelve years old, we will begin to train you in other ways.”

  “Then I will hate them already,” Husam al Din promised, taking the dagger from its scabbard and smiling at the gleaming blade. “Thank you for this wonderful gift. It feels good in my hand. And the hatred already feels good in my heart.”

  ****

  When he was twelve, al Din received the promised sword. It was a weapon of beauty, a Saif with a silver hilt patterned after the shape of a pistol grip, and an ornately tooled guard and pommel. The polished blade curved wickedly toward a deadly point, and a matching curved silver scabbard held a loop meant for a belt or waist sash.

  “This sword is after the fashion of the old Arab blades from the classic era when Arabia ruled the world,” Imam Waziri told him.

  “Arabia ruled the world?” Husam al Din asked, not as a challenge, but merely as a matter of awe.

  “Nearly so,” the old man said. “The Arabs established a vast empire, which in its classic period stretched from the Atlantic Ocean, across North Africa and the Middle East, to central Asia.” Then, with a faraway look in his eyes, he said, “The empire will rise again, one way or another. Out of Arabia came Islam, and Islam is destined to rule the world. And you, my son, for you are as a son to me … you will help that to happen.”