by Rich Johnson
A tiny giggle from outside caught the attention of the two snuggling couples. “Cadee, is that you?” Nicole yelled.
“Yep, it’s me. But I can’t come in there with you guys doing all that mushy stuff.”
“It’s okay, honey,” Dan called out. “We’ll be good.”
Cadee stepped into the room, a slight blush on her face. “Jacob just told me the news.” She bounced, excited. “Maria Elena and I can hang out together for another couple of weeks.”
“That’s right,” Dan said. “I’ve got a little sail repair to do, and I want to scrub the bottom of the boat, and well, we’ll wait for the weather to improve even more than it has.”
“And besides that,” Nicole piped in, “some of us women want to avoid any bad weather that might still be lurking out there. Isn’t that right?” She smiled as she cast an accusatory glance at Dan.
“Well,” Cadee said, “I’m like the weather to be kind of calm and nice.”
“Good for you,” Nicole put her arm around her daughter. “We women will stick together.”
“Yeah, well,” Cadee giggled, “looks to me like you and Dad stick together pretty well, too.”
Dan moved in and threw his arms around Nicole and Cadee. “No man was ever luckier than to have two women like you in his life. We’ll all stick together like this.” He squeezed them in a bear hug and growled. “I love you guys.”
“We’re not guys, dad. We’re girls.”
Chapter Fifteen
October 15 – The Desdemonda, two days out of Manila …
As far as Captain Eric Sleagle was concerned, the day could not have been more perfect. Beneath an empty blue sky rolled an equally empty blue ocean. Farther than the eye could see from the height of the bridge deck, there was nothing except slowly rolling liquid azure that flowed in every direction to the distant curve of the horizon. The 48-mile radar showed the shipping lane empty ahead and behind, and the giant Desdemonda stood out like an island on an uninterrupted sea. She was, in fact, larger by far than many of the coral atoll islands that dotted some parts of the vast ocean. From the waterline to the top of her array of antennas above the bridge, she measured 118 feet. From bow to stern she was 887 feet, with a beam of 92 feet at the widest part. Two football stadiums could be built on her deck, with room left over for hot dog stands.
Her size was an advantage for deep ocean passages. With a grid of container cells in the cavernous hold below decks, most of the heavy cargo was carried low in the hull, which added stability to the ship and damped her motion on the water. Even so, once at sea, it didn’t take long for the ship to begin her dance to the rhythm of the swells. Under fair conditions, the motion was gentle; a slow rise and fall of the bow, a peaceful roll to port then starboard; the kind of motion that put sailors to sleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow, like babies being rocked in a cradle.
In spite of her size there were times when typhoons turned the ocean into a nightmare of steep waves that sent green water over the bow of a ship – even one this large. When that happened, life aboard the Desdemonda was pure misery, as she bucked over mountainous waves, slammed into troughs, sending a thunderous shudder through the hull that sounded as if it were about to tear apart. In fact, that was a possibility. Large ships the size of Desdemonda sometimes ended up straddling waves, with nothing but air to support the hull in the area of the trough. More than one cargo ship had broken its back that way, straining the structure past the failure point, splitting the hull open, spilling her guts and then falling like a stone to the ocean floor.
But there was no such possibility today. Captain Sleagle stood at the helm and stared at the horizon ahead. Nothing but blue sky and gentle seas. He glanced at the gauges in the instrument panel, then picked up his pencil and made notes in the ship’s log, indicating that the gauges were showing performance right where it should be, and everything about the Desdemonda felt perfect. He checked the GPS readings for latitude and longitude position, speed over ground, and course made good. He verified the course being maintained by the autopilot then stepped to the nav table to make notations of their position on the paper chart.
On Sleagle’s ship, there was no such thing as depending entirely upon electronic navigation. Every half hour, whoever was on watch was required to annotate the chart, dead reckoning style, so the next man on duty would be able to track the ship’s progress. It was a procedure as old as man’s voyaging over the sea, and it was the best insurance against getting lost if the electronic navigation equipment failed – which it sometimes did.
The captain was satisfied with their progress. In the day and a half since leaving Manila, they had traversed more than 800 miles of the 8,944 nautical miles to Panama. He paused to think. The calculation came to him as easily as a simple sum. “Fourteen days to go,” he mumbled to himself. “I can hardly wait to hit the Papagayo. I’m thirsty already.”
Captain Sleagle looked forward, across the containers stacked and lashed down six high and eight wide on the cargo deck of the Desdemonda. The ship rolled gently on the swells, and the top of the stack swept back and forth in a wide arc across the horizon. The motion was unrelenting, but the captain loved the movement of a ship on the water. He was never more comfortable than when he felt the ship plunge and roll and yaw in ceaseless movement that brought a smile to Sleagle’s face and put his heart at peace.
Sleagle had no clue that his ship was to be the carrier of a deadly virus. But Husam al Din was a man of the desert and mountains. He had no desire to be on a ship any longer than necessary to carry out his mission. He had insisted that the container in which he was concealed be loaded last, so it would be one of the first to be unloaded in Miami. That was the way he wanted it, and covert al-Qaeda operatives working at the dock made sure that it was done. But being loaded last put the container at the top of the stack on the foredeck, the spot farthest from the center of the keel, and that placed him precisely where the greatest movement was felt as the ship pitched and rolled and yawed. It was something he failed to consider.
Inside the blackness of the container, Husam al Din suffered a kind of sickness he had never known before. His mouth was dry as ash, his head spun, his gut cramped and his throat was raw from the continual retching. The smell of vomit hung in what little air there was in the trailer, and gagged him with every breath.
Chapter Sixteen
October 16th – Western Waziristan
A bitter wind howled past the entrance to the small cave where Josh sat looking out at the bleak landscape of rock and sparse forest that was just becoming visible in the cold light of dawn. The sky was brown with blown dust, and Josh couldn’t help but think that it looked like a smoggy day in Pasadena – one of those days when you couldn’t see the San Gabriel mountains a mile away. His gaze swept a distant ridge that was only barely visible through a thousand yards of dust-laden air. He and Sorgei had come over a shallow saddle in that ridge the night before, and finally took refuge from the bone-chilling wind in this small cavern among the rocks.
Suddenly, his eyes caught on something moving. A small puff of dirt, then another, rising from the ground behind the ridge, then blowing away in the wind. Strong and steady as the gale was, it would not raise individual puffs of dust like those he was seeing. Josh knew that something other than the wind was disturbing the ground. Then a round, black image topped the ridge, moving slowly with a steady back and forth motion. Then he saw another, and then a third.
“Sorgei.” Josh shook the sleeping Russian’s shoulder. “Sorgei, wake up. We’ve got to move.”
“Whaa?” Sorgei opened his eyes slowly, rubbing the sleep away with his palms. “What is wrong?”
“Trackers.” Josh pointed out the mouth of the cave toward the ridge. “Three men, black turbans. Taliban. They’re hunting us.”
“Are you sure?”
Josh looked at the Russian in disbelief. It was a stupid question, but he decided not to answer it directly. “You’re a scientist. You know chemistry a
nd biology. I’m a soldier, and I know how war is fought. These guys are after us. Just look at the way that one is studying the ground, searching for the next footprint while the other two are watching the rocks, looking for us. They’re not out here for a pleasure hike.”
“What are we going to do?”
Josh pointed at the men in black turbans. “Those two are watching for any movement among these boulders and caves. The other one is the tracker. See how he never takes his eyes off the ground? We need to get out of this cave and vanish into the boulder field. But we have to wait until those two are looking the other way. Gather your stuff and be ready to move on my signal.”
Sorgei grabbed the cloth bag that held his extra clothing. The food he had saved on the last day at the compound was gone, but the bag of clothes made a good pillow and it was all he had to his name. “I am ready whenever you say.”
There was no real trail for the Taliban trackers to follow – only the footprints of two men, one wearing boots with a combat sole, and the other wearing a pair of pirated knock-off Nike walking shoes that were popular in Russia. The two who followed the lead man, the one with his head down, carried Kalashnikovs at the ready, as if they were expecting to use their automatic rifles at any moment. The tracker’s rifle was slung across his back. He led the way, studying the ground as if searching for a lost gold coin, sweeping his eyes left and right, often squatting to allow the shadow of the low sun to show an edge of the next footprint. The other two followed a few paces back and off to either flank, being careful to avoid making tracks that might mix with the ones their leader followed.
It was slow work, and Josh knew that these men were sent to find him and Sorgei the morning after the escape, when it was time for the first meal and the prisoners were discovered to be missing. While he and Sorgei took breaks to sleep, or just to catch an hour’s rest, the trackers apparently kept to their work, doggedly pressing on without rest. With nothing more than the beam of a flashlight to help them see the small ridges and depressions made by footprints on dry soil, they persisted. One step at a time, moving from footprint to footprint across the vast wilderness, they came without stopping to rest, slowly gaining ground until they were now within striking distance.
“These guys are good,” Josh whispered. “Too bad they’re not a few hours later. Given more time, this wind would have wiped out our footprints.”
Sorgei watched them over Josh’s shoulder and nodded silently. Then he whispered, “They will find us.”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” Josh agreed. “We aren’t going to be able to sneak away, now that daylight is coming.”
“What are we going to do?” Sorgei asked with an audible quiver in his voice.
“Kill them.”
“I am not trained to do that.”
Josh stared at the Russian. “Maybe not one at a time, but you have been trained as a killer of men.”
Sorgei lowered his eyes and nodded. “Perhaps you are right. But this is different. I have not had to look into the eyes of the man I destroy.”
“I’ll do the wet work.”
“Wet work?” Sorgei asked, confused by the term.
“You’ll see. But I’ll need to have you distract their attention.”
“I can do that,” Sorgei said. “Tell me what to do.”
“Okay, I have to get outside and hide so I can move around behind these guys. I’ll let them approach the cave, and when they are in position I’ll toss a small stone in here. It will be your signal. That’s when you need to come out with your hands up, as if you are surrendering. I’ll do the rest.”
“Is that all?”
“If you’re on speaking terms with God, it wouldn’t hurt to pray.”
With the plan laid, Josh watched the Taliban move slowly along the trail. Puffs of dust rose with each footstep, then blew away in the wind as they plodded down off the ridge into a low swale before starting to climb toward the cave. From where he watched in the deep shadows of the cave, Josh saw that there was one short stretch of trail where the cave entrance was invisible to the three men. He waited and watched as the black turbans slowly disappeared from view. Without hesitating, he used that narrow sliver of time to sneak on cat feet outside and into concealment behind a jumble of truck-sized boulders only a few yards away.
In three beats of his heart, he was hunkered down, perfectly still and listening. He heard nothing. These men are good warriors, Josh thought. Great discipline. They move without sound. No idle chit-chat, just the business at hand. He knew the reputation of the Pashtun warriors of Waziristan. Fighting was in their blood, and had been their legacy for a thousand years. In recorded history, no one ever defeated them. After a hundred years of trying, the British finally gave up the effort, licked their wounds and retreated, leaving Pakistan and the rest of their former Asian empire to fend for itself. Out-gunned, out-manned and facing the most powerful military force in the world, the Pashtun warriors fought to the death for their homeland and their traditional way of life. And Josh knew the three men coming after him were of the same breed.
Over the sound of the wind, Josh heard a soft footfall. Very slowly, he peered around the edge of the boulder. Guns at the ready, the three men were coming up the trail toward the cave entrance. Josh reached down to the heel of his right boot, loosened a rubber plug and then pulled it backward. An inch-wide by six-inch long ribbon of spring steel slid from its hiding place inside the boot sole. Half the length of the steel blade was honed to razor sharpness, and a wrap of black cloth tape covered the remaining three inches, forming a handle for this concealed knife that also served as the boot’s shank.
With the blade in hand, Josh eased around the boulder to stay out of view as the three men moved past. From the debris of broken stone at the base of the boulder, he picked a pea-sized pebble. The backs of the three Taliban were toward him as the pebble whizzed past them and rattled into the cave. He heard a shout and a few seconds later Sorgei stepped from the shadowy depth of the cavern, arms raised, offering himself up as a prisoner.
While the three were distracted with Sorgei, Josh sprung from the cover of the boulders. He knew he had to be quick and agile to kill all three before they could kill Sorgei and then turn the guns on him. The sound of his movement was almost non-existent. Good as these Pashtun warriors were, Josh Adams was even better. Right now, he was fighting for a cause even more crucial than a homeland or a way of life … he was fighting for his very survival.
Before the man even knew Josh was behind him, the blade swept silently across the throat of the nearest Taliban, slicing deep enough to sever the windpipe and the carotid arteries. Almost in slow motion, Josh saw the muzzle of the AK47 coming toward him as the second man whirled at the sound of his dead comrade hitting the ground. Josh spun toward the weapon, stepped inside the arc of the rifle barrel, parried and clamped the fore-stock beneath his left armpit, and in the same motion thrust the razor up and across the throat of the second Taliban. In less than five seconds, two enemy were dead, their heads nearly severed.
The tracker was caught unprepared, his rifle still slung across his back. But at his waist was a dagger, and in a heartbeat it was in the man’s hand. Josh crouched and with arms wide he started to circle to his left, staring into black, hate-filled eyes framed by bushy eyebrows and a full black beard on the snarling face of his enemy. The man said nothing, only gripped the dagger and circled, his eyes wide with anticipation. Twice, he lunged, and both times Josh narrowly dodged the edge of the blade.
On agile feet, Josh stepped left, and while his feet were crossed, the Taliban rushed in. It was just what Josh expected, and he whirled to avoid the point of the dagger, then smashed his opponent with a spinning back elbow that caught the man cleanly just below the temple. Josh heard the crack, as his elbow crushed the man’s jaw, and the Taliban went to the ground.
Sorgei stood with his mouth agape, watching the two men fight. Not knowing what he should do, he did nothing – just stood there with his cloth bag
in hand, trembling with the adrenalin rush of fear and excitement. He had never been in a fight before, and didn’t really want to be in one now.
Josh was surprised that the Taliban fighter didn’t stay down after the crushing blow to his head. With the nimble movement of a trained martial artist, the man rolled and came back to his feet, dagger in hand and a darker look in his eyes. “Now you will die, kafir,” the man spit the Arabic words from lips that barely moved.
“I will die,” Josh replied in Arabic, “but not today.”
The Taliban lunged, and the point of the dagger caught Josh on the sleeve and sliced the fabric. White teeth glistened through the black beard, and the man circled again. “My dagger will find joy in your heart.”
“Your dagger will be found among your bones and the bones of these your brothers, after the vultures and wild dogs feast on your flesh,” Josh said, flashing a wild grin at his opponent.
They circled, hands wide but neither man making a move, and neither taking his eyes off his opponent. “You are a coward, kafir,” the Taliban snarled. “Allah hates cowards.”
“Then come ahead and send me to Allah,” Josh goaded, trying to lure the man into making a move that he could counter. “Or perhaps it is you who are afraid?”
His black eyes flashed, as the Taliban lunged. Josh sidestepped and parried, slicing the forearm that held the dagger as it went past. “Aghh,” the Taliban screamed, then instantly shifted the dagger to his left hand. When the warrior steadied himself, his back was toward the cave. Josh looked into the man’s eyes and saw only murder and hatred.
Behind the Taliban, Josh noticed movement at the mouth of the cave. It was Sorgei, coming out of the darkness, a large rock held in his uplifted hands. In an instant, the Russian brought the stone down in a smashing blow on the back of the black turban. Cushioned by the pile of cloth, the blow to the head rattled the man but failed to knock him down. The dazed Taliban growled and spun around to face Sorgei.