America jtf-2

by David E. Meadows

  “Long enough. I can’t say it will stop the nausea, but it will eventually take their minds off the rolling and tossing of the ship. What matters is they will be able to do their jobs when we arrive.”

  He plunged the hypodermic into Qasim’s arm. Tamursheki saw the biceps contract as the needle traveled over an inch before the base of the hypodermic stopped it. A groan escaped. Ibrahim pulled the needle out and patted the huge man on the shoulder. “There, there, my gentle giant. That should do you. Just lay there and let the shot take effect,” Ibrahim said with a chuckle. “Nausea will no longer be your worry in a few days,” he said quietly to himself.

  Ibrahim laid the needle on the cabinet shelf. “You’re next, Tamursheki. Roll up that sleeve,” he said, pointing at the leader of the terrorists.

  Tamursheki saw the men staring at him. They wanted to see if he was going to take the shot. He straightened. The ship slowly rolled a few degrees to port, stayed there for a few moments, and then returned level for a couple of seconds before the opposite roll began. He waddled across the moving deck to where Dr. Ibrahim had prepared a needle. His lower pushed against his upper lip, and he stared with narrow eyes at the Palestinian as he rolled his sleeve up.

  “Now you, Doctor?”

  Ibrahim shrugged and turned his back to the terrorist leader, hiding the sweat that broke out on his forehead. “Don’t need it. I have spent so much time at sea that I’ve grown used to how the ocean sometimes displays its displeasure at those who sail upon it.”

  “Maybe we should give this medicine to our guests?”

  Ibrahim looked up, his mind alert. Did Tamursheki know what was in the shots he had just given? Something had alerted the terrorist leader, or else Abu Alhaul had entrusted the information to him.

  Ibrahim lifted the cover to the metal container. “I have enough to take care of their nausea as well.”

  Qasim pushed himself up to a sitting position on the table. “Doctor, I feel better already. What is that stuff?”

  “It is a placebo for nausea.”

  The men mumbled in appreciation, none of them knowing what placebo meant but all able to tell by the name that it was something medical.

  “Well, this placebo is very good. I am hungry again,” Qasim added, rubbing his stomach.

  “When are you not hungry?” Ibrahim offered, his voice tense.

  “Has everyone received their shots?”

  “Yes. You were the last. And you were the one most deserving.”

  “Get your stuff together. We will go see our guests and take care of their nausea.” Tamursheki looked at Qasim. “Are you well enough to visit our guests?”

  Qasim pushed himself off the table and stood up straight. He weaved for a moment, the deck tilting forward as the ship rode down a wave. He grinned, balancing himself with both hands on the table behind him.

  “You four, come with us.”

  “You should shave the back of those hands, Qasim,” Dr. Ibrahim remarked as he picked up the chest. He started after Tamursheki, stopped suddenly, and put the medicine chest down. “Wait a minute,” he said.

  The leader of the Jihadists stopped halfway through the hatch. The ship rolled to starboard. He jumped back as the door slammed shut. A moment of hesitation and he would have had his fingers broken — possibly cut off. He hated these mercenaries Abu Alhaul had hired. Had they become so small that they couldn’t find the skills needed within their own organization?

  “What is it?” he demanded, his voice curt and harsh.

  Dr. Ibrahim grabbed a couple of aerosol cans and held them up, just as the roll of the ship changed directions. “Take these and toss them into the compartment. It’ll render them unconscious and easier for me to examine them and, if you so decide, give them a shot for their nausea like you have for your men.”

  “Let them suffer,” said Qasim. “They are heretics. Worse yet, Americans. Let me slit their throats like the sheep they are.”

  Tamursheki shook his head. “You will get your chance, Qasim. We will take the videos we need when I am convinced that we have no use for them.”

  Qasim pulled his dagger and drew the back of it across his neck. “What use could we have for them?”

  “I would use them as hostages,” Tamursheki said. “I would kill them one at a time if the Americans should discover us. No, we must care for them as we would our own,” he said, feeling no remorse in lying to a follower. Lies were okay in the eyes of Allah as long it furthered his word. “I may even allow the leaders of these Americans to live.” He looked at Ibrahim. “So they may carry the fruits of our fight for us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Tamursheki grinned. He reached up and slapped Qasim on his broad chest. “It is not for you to understand, my friend. It is for you to obey as Abu Alhaul has directed.”

  * * *

  Lieutenant Maureen Early braced her back against the aft bulkhead of the compartment. She shifted her legs farther apart to help keep her body steady, bending her knees so she could push against the vessel’s movement. She had already fallen twice, and getting back up with your hands tied behind you was nearly impossible. She had had to wait until the ship rocked to the other side and then shift her body with it to roll upright. It was like doing a sideways sit-up.

  “Must be some storm,” Senior Chief Leary said, his deep voice carrying through the shadows of the compartment. “How is he?”

  “Hard to say,” Lieutenant Scott Kelly replied. “If we had more light than what’s getting through that small porthole on the hatch, we might be able to tell something.”

  “His breathing seems fine,” Early offered, looking down at the body lying on the deck between her and Kelly.

  The ship creaked as it started another roll. The deck tilted to starboard for several degrees, rested a moment, and then rolled to port.

  “Win!” Early called. She moved her foot left and pushed Forrester’s leg. No response. The young mission evaluator had been unconscious since their captors had hit him upside the head the day before. The faint light shined on the caked blood that matted his hair all along the right side of the man’s head.

  “Where do you think they have the others?” Scott asked.

  “I think they’re in one of these compartments on this deck,” the Senior Chief said. “At least some got away.”

  “Let’s hope they did. I didn’t see the life raft deploy on the other side of the aircraft.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but the aircraft stayed afloat longer than I thought it would. If they got out, maybe they stayed close until we were taken and then deployed it.”

  “I doubt it,” Kelly said. “They would have deployed it as soon as they hit the water just as we did. If they got away, it will have been luck, seas, and Neptune looking over them.”

  “I would think they would have seen it from the height of the deck.”

  “I thought they were going to shoot us when they came alongside.”

  The ship creaked and rolled to starboard again. This time it took a few seconds longer to right itself. The lights flickered in the passageway outside the darkened compartment.

  “I think that was what they intended,” Kelly said. “I think it was only at the last moment that they threw the rope ladder down and ordered us to climb aboard.”

  “What do you think they want?” Early asked.

  “Probably film us as they cut our throats,” Senior Chief Leary said. “I knew I should have gotten a haircut before we took off.”

  “Just what I need. More worry,” Early replied.

  “How many did we have in the life raft? How many of us do they have?”

  “Ten — maybe a few more, I didn’t get an accurate count before we were captured.”

  Senior Chief Leary sat across the compartment from them. She could see his flight boots flat on the deck in the faint path of light coming through the porthole. His legs splayed out on the deck like hers, he, too, was trying to maintain balance.

  “Maureen, if I haven
’t told you, that was a text-book ditching you did yesterday,” Kelly offered.

  “Was it yesterday? Seems a lot longer.”

  “Any landing you walk away from is a good landing,” Leary said, repeating an aviation mantra.

  “In this case, we swam.”

  “I think you’re right. They were going to shoot us. I wish I knew what changed their minds. I don’t think it’s, as the Senior Chief offered, to film our throats being cut, though terrorists in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa have been doing that. No, they have something else in mind.”

  “It can’t be any worse than the thought Senior Chief Leary has provided, Maureen. Do you think we got the word out before we ditched?”

  “No, sir,” Senior Chief answered. “Not a snowball’s chance in hell. We had no communications. The last message, according to Mr. Forrester, was the one giving the contact information on the ship heading north — the car smuggler. Unless someone picked up our distress signal, there’s no way they’ll know where we are. Lieutenant Jenkins would have been on the other life raft, and he is the one who would know.”

  “Even if they did get it, I don’t see them being able to launch a search-and-rescue until this storm lets up.”

  “Well, where we ditched may not have any storm activity. It’s been over twenty-four hours. At least that’s what I’m estimating,” Kelly said.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Senior Chief Leary said.

  “How? Our hands are tied. The door is probably locked, and we’ve seen them looking in every so often. And, if we do get loose, what are we going to do? Jump overboard?” Maureen Early asked, bunching her shoulders.

  “Ma’am, whatever we do, we need to do it soon. Whatever they plan won’t be associated with us living. We already have our legs free.”

  “Yeah, and our hands tied behind us with those plastic thingamajiggies I’ve seen riot police use,” Kelly said, pausing for moment before he added, “And, I lost feeling in mine a few hours ago.”

  Maureen shifted her legs. At least the compartment was warm. The dampness between her legs caused her skin to itch. She licked her dry lips. Water would be nice, she thought. She recalled her Marine Corps Drill Instructor during Officer Candidate School in Pensacola saying something about never going into battle with a full bladder or bowel. At the time, she thought the comment was crass and gross and meant only to embarrass the women in the company.

  Today, she understood the relevance of it. When the body is in danger, not only does adrenalin rocket through it to bring the senses to full bore, the body either rids itself of unnecessary waste or it seals off the sphincter to further business. The bladder, on the other hand, has no such sealing mechanism. It just lets go. Another thing Early had learned in the past twenty-four hours was that life-threatening events caused the body to use up moisture as adrenalin spun up reaction time. The others hadn’t had anything to drink either.

  The smell of urine whiffed about them. The Jihadists had separated them from the enlisted aircrew. They had tied the hands of everyone with plastic handcuffs and shoved them into separate compartments. No food or water. No sanitation facilities. To the captives, they were no more than sheep, waiting for sacrifice.

  “You’re right, Scott. Between the three of us that was a perfect ditch.”

  “Yeah, you got that right, Lieutenant,” Senior Chief said, a hint of amusement behind the reply.

  The ditching had been perfect, she told herself, allowing her head to drop onto her chest. So tired. Sleep had been in dribs and drabs of seconds complicated by the pain in the shoulders, arms, and hands and, as the storm picked up in intensity, the increasing tempo of rolls and dips of the ship.

  She had kept the wheels up. Never took her focus away from the control panel or the approaching sea but recalled hearing release of CO2 on the number-one engine where the missile had hit. The flight engineer would have done that without asking. She was blessed to have Senior Chief Leary as her flight engineer. A good flight engineer was worth his or her weight in gold.

  Moments such as this are truly moments of truth. How her flight crew performed determined whether they lived and whether they would be rescued. Even then, that “Old Man up above” had to be involved.

  The Navigator, Stan ‘the man’ Jenkins, would have hit the prerecorded distress signal while slapping his hand down on the button that would have inserted their position based on readings from four of the twenty-four Global Positioning Satellites. GPS maintain stationary orbits around the world. If a commercial or military aircraft or ship is within signal range, an onboard emergency receiver activates. Those emergency receivers give a relative heading to the transmitter, and military receivers would have printed out the coordinates. She could only hope that everyone had been doing their jobs as the ocean surface hurried to greet them. Otherwise, Recce Flight 62 would become just more grist on the History Channel mill for disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, even though they were at least one hundred miles from it. But far be it to let accuracy cloud a good story.

  Something blocked the faint light coming into the compartment. A face peered through the porthole. This happened every few minutes. She wondered what they could see looking into the dark compartment. They could barely see each other, and they had their night vision. When they looked through the small window into the compartment there was no way they could see what their captives were doing. The face disappeared, and the faint trail of light appeared once again along the center of the compartment.

  “Whoa, there,” Senior Chief Leary said as the compartment dipped and then rose again. “I think we hit a big wave with that one.”

  The creak of the watertight latch drew their attention.

  “Looks as if our hosts are returning.”

  “Hope they brought food and water.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  The hatch opened about six inches — wide enough for a hand to reach in and toss a long can into the center of the compartment. It rolled into the faint light. A cloud of spray spewed from the nozzle, carrying a fine vapor into the air.

  “Grenade!” Kelly shouted, rolling to the right.

  “It’s not a grenade. Hold your breath and shut your eyes!” Early shouted, knowing it was futile. They would have to breath sometime, and when they did, whatever was filling the compartment would fill their lungs.

  Minutes later the three of them collapsed on the deck.

  CHAPTER 7

  Tucker leaned against the door, fighting the wind trying to blow it open. The wind sent a keen whistle whipping around the edges of the heavy wood door. Rain blew almost horizontally, shooting through the opening, soaking him and the black plastic sheet someone had thrown on the floor at the entrance to keep others from slipping on the wet tile. St. Cyr dashed through the door, stopping a couple of feet inside, the rain beating against the Frenchman’s back. Nonchalantly, St. Cyr pulled his wet beret off, shook his head, sending water everywhere as it flew off his thick stock of black hair. He squeezed the beret, water dripping on the floor, and then tossed the head cover onto a nearby coffee table to the left.

  Tucker peered around the door, the wind and rain causing him to squint through closed eyes. Up steps, leading to two piers below, came the stocky outline of the Special Air Service Wing Commander, head tucked down with his chin against his chest. Tucker jumped back, holding the door against the wind, leaving it opened only wide enough so a person could slip through.

  Tibbles-Seagraves shouted his thanks as he more dove into the room than walked. Tucker pushed the door shut. Tibbles-Seagraves casually removed his rain slicker, picked up the Frenchman’s cap, and hung them on the coatrack to the side.

  “I say, chaps! Is this the Virginia weather for lovers I’ve heard so much about?” Tibbles-Seagraves asked, running a small linen handkerchief over and through the sparse strands matted across the top of his head.

  “Seen worse,” Tucker replied, struggling out of his raincoat.

  The Chief Petty Offi
cer standing behind the desk that doubled as the quarterdeck walked around the counter. “Morning, Commander,” he said, reaching out to St. Cyr and taking his rain slick from him. “I’ll put this over here with the others, sir.” The Chief turned to a young sailor who was leaning against the counter near the opened green logbook, reading a comic book. “Thompson, put that shit away and go grab the swab again. Get this water off the deck.”

  “Aye aye, Chief,” the young man said, hurrying over to the closet and removing a huge mop with a handle too big for the sailor to get his hands around.

  “And when you finish with that, Thompson, get your ass upstairs and see how the coffee situation is.”

  “Yes, Chief,” the young man grunted as he pulled the metal tub along the floor toward the front of the building.

  “Chief, where is the meeting?” Tucker Raleigh asked.

  “Most of them are already up there with the Commodore, sir. I would say it’s more of a free-for-all than a meeting — what with this weather and all.”

  The Chief glanced at the sailor swabbing the deck and pointed to a puddle on the other side of the door. Without missing a beat, the young man spun the mop, the cotton strands spreading out like a fan, and dropped it where the Chief pointed.

  “You have a friend here, too, Commander Raleigh. A Navy nurse who came in with the response team from Bethesda a couple of days ago. She’s in the wardroom.” The Chief smiled as he walked away, chuckling as he shook his head.

  “Ummmmm; must be nice, Tucker. Does each officer in your Navy have his own nurse?” St. Cyr asked, raising his eyebrows in amusement. “Of course, in France, they would bring a picnic basket”—he brought the tips of fingers to his lips and kissed them—“With a nice bottle of wine.”

  “Of course,” Tucker said, convincingly. “Why else would we choose such a dangerous job if we couldn’t get decent medical support?”

  “In England, we have the National Health Service…”

  “And I am sure some of the finest-looking nurses,” St. Cyr said.

  “It really depends.”