by Greg Dinallo
“Grips secured, wrists crossed,” the instructor had exhorted with authority born of experience. “Then over-and-pull with a decisive snap; a tactic that when properly executed will neatly sever head from torso.”
Any doubts Reyes might have had were quickly dashed by the fountain of blood that erupted from atop the helmsman’s shoulders and the sickening thud of his cranium against the steel deck.
Reyes led the way down to the captain’s cabin just aft of the bridge. Accustomed to engine vibrations and the rush of water against the hull, the rotund Palestinian had sensed the quiet and awakened. He was swinging his legs over the side of the bunk when Reyes slipped into the cabin, clamped a hand over his mouth, and put a knife to his throat.
“Tell your men not to resist,” Reyes whispered tensely in phonetic Arabic.
The groggy Palestinian glanced to the gleaming blade and nodded repeatedly, eyes wide with fear.
Reyes dragged him out of the cabin and down the corridor to where the hostages were quartered. He approached the first cabin slowly, quietly, imagining their relief, their joy at having at last been rescued; he turned the latch, opened the door, and peered inside. It was empty. As was the next and the next. Indeed, all he found were a handful of sleeping seamen, who heeded their captain’s warning and offered no resistance.
“They’ve got to be here!” Reyes barked. “Check the stores and engine room! Look for secret compartments!”
The SEALs proceeded to rip up floor hatches and tear out bulkhead and ceiling panels. They nearly dismantled the Zhuk’s interior before finding the blind panel in a passageway, the panel that invisibly sealed the compartment where the hostages were held, the panel that when opened explained why it had been so easy, why the captain had been so cooperative—there wasn’t a single hostage aboard.
25
“COME ON, the fucking boat never made port!” Kiley exploded when informed about the hostages. He charged out of his chair and circled toward Larkin. “They’re not there; they’re not in Beirut; what the hell happened? They vanish into thin air?”
“It looks like they were transferred to another vessel en route, sir,” Larkin replied, reddening.
“No shit?” Kiley snapped sarcastically. “Shepherd’s still on the loose; Fitzgerald is who the hell knows where. Not a very impressive performance, Colonel.” He crossed to a sideboard and scooped some ice into a tumbler. “What’s Duryea’s game plan?” he rasped, spinning the cap from a bottle of well-aged Dewar’s.
“He’s requested a KH-11 review for openers, sir,” Larkin replied apprehensively. He knew the need to search videotapes on which spy satellite data was stored—tapes on which the rendezvous between vessels in the Mediterranean had been hopefully recorded—went to the heart of a gritty dispute between intelligence agencies and would further annoy the DCI. Though CIA could request specific KH-11 surveillance, the storage and analysis of raw satellite data was an NSA function.
Kiley groaned, as Larkin expected, and buzzed his secretary on the intercom. Going outside the Company had always been an anathema to him, more so under the circumstances. “Set up a meeting with Lancaster,” he ordered grudgingly. “I need him as soon as possible.”
Barely a minute had passed when the DCI’s intercom buzzed. “He’s available right after lunch, sir,” his secretary reported, “but I’m afraid he’s insisting it be in his office.”
“Fine, fine,” Kiley barked impatiently, the gravity of the situation overriding territorial imperatives.
Several hours later, Kiley and Larkin arrived in the Old Executive Office Building across the street from the White House on 17th and Pennsylvania.
Despite his own conservative tastes, Kiley had always found Lancaster’s office unbearably stuffy and wasted no time in getting down to business. He made no mention of the air strike or debacle in Tripoli harbor in his briefing, explaining only that CIA had learned the hostages were aboard a PLO gunboat and had been transferred to another vessel, thwarting a rescue attempt. “The bottom line is we need a KH-11 fix on the second vessel as soon as possible.”
Lancaster nodded thoughtfully, his dour expression hidden behind a cloud of pipe smoke. The hastily arranged meeting had made him suspect the DCI had been up to something; but being cut out of a hostage rescue operation was well beyond anything he had imagined. “I’ll arrange it,” he finally said.
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Not acceptable,” Kiley replied sharply.
Lancaster stared at him blankly for a long moment, drawing on his pipe. “The colonel will be handling liaison?” he finally asked, ignoring Kiley’s reply.
Kiley nodded, bristling with frustration.
Lancaster shifted his look to Larkin. “Tomorrow; Fort Belvoir; oh eight hundred,” he said, rapid-fire. “My people will be expecting you.”
A short time later the DCI’s limousine was on the Beltway, heading back to Langley, when the mobile phone twittered. Kiley sat trancelike, letting it ring, his mind fixed on his old friend Fitzgerald and on the infuriating mystery of the hostages’ whereabouts.
Larkin saw he was preoccupied and answered it.
“Colonel Larkin . . . Yeah, yeah. You bet I’ll tell him.” He hung up and turned to Kiley. “Surveillance reports Mrs. Shepherd booked a flight to London. She leaves tomorrow.”
Kiley’s eyes brightened. “Everything in place?” he asked, savoring the thought that it might soon be over.
“Yes, sir,” the colonel replied, thinking it had been weeks since he had seen the old man smile.
26
BRITISH AIRWAYS flight 829 from Dulles made a big looping turn over the Buckingham countryside, coming onto a heading for London’s Heathrow International. The time was 2:37 P.M. when the jetliner touched down and taxied to a stop at a terminal 4 boarding ramp.
Stephanie Shepherd deplaned with a carry-on bag, cleared passport control, and hurried down the green-walled corridor for those not involved with customs.
She didn’t notice a casually attired man in the crowd assembled behind the barrier. He appeared to be meeting arriving passengers and didn’t stand out. Stephanie had no way of knowing that he was waiting for her nor that he would easily recognize her from a CIA-procured snapshot that he palmed.
When certain of her identity, Applegate pocketed the snapshot and nodded to the two Special Forces agents backing him up that he had spotted her.
Stephanie paused to get her bearings, then followed the signs to the taxi queue along the west facade of the building. Moments later, she was tucked inside one of the boxy black cabs heading toward London.
A sedan with U.S. military insignia affixed to the visor came from the restricted parking area adjacent to the terminal. Apple-gate accelerated around a bus that blocked his view and followed the taxi into the thickening stream of vehicles exiting the airport.
About an hour later, Stephanie checked into the Hilton on Park Lane opposite Hyde Park in London’s fashionable Mayfair district. She tried to nap but couldn’t fall asleep and spent the remainder of the afternoon reading in the plainly furnished room. Her mind kept drifting and she was staring out the window at the park far below when the phone rang, startling her.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Shepherd?” Spencer asked, in his mild cockney. He was calling from a street corner booth, which he had done several times daily for the last three days—a routine Shepherd had worked out in the event Stephanie arrived in London prior to the earliest possible date he had estimated. “I’d like to confirm that you called for a taxi?” Spencer prompted.
“A taxi?” Stephanie answered cautiously. She sensed this might be her husband’s way of making contact, but was uncertain how to respond and decided to be truthful. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t believe I did.”
“Actually it was a gentleman who rang me. He gave the name Viper, he did; said to say, Happy anniversary.”
Stephanie’s heart fluttered, any misgivings she had vanishing. “Oh yes, yes, now
I remember.”
“Good. The taxi will pick you up at the Hertford Street entrance at precisely six o’clock this evening.”
“Yes, six o’clock,” she replied, her pulse surging. “Hertford Street. I’ll be waiting.”
In the room directly below, Applegate glanced to a CIA communications technician and smiled. Shepherd’s tape had alerted them to where Stephanie would be staying; she had made the reservation at the Hilton prior to departure, and they had had more than sufficient time to learn which room she had been assigned and tap the phone.
Applegate took the elevator to the lobby, crossing to a bookshop off to one side of the entrance. Its open facade afforded a clear view of the entire lobby area.
“She’s been contacted,” Applegate said to the agent stationed there, who was browsing casually through a rack of magazines. After reviewing the details, Applegate left the hotel via the Hertford Street entrance and briefed the second agent, who was stationed in the doorway of a building across the street; then he went to his car, which was parked just down the hill, and waited.
Stephanie was excited and shaken by the message from the mysterious caller. She showered, dressed, and, at exactly 5:55 P.M., slipped into a raincoat and went to the lobby.
The agent in the bookshop saw her leave the elevator. He palmed a small walkie-talkie and clicked it on. “Target is moving,” he reported softly.
Applegate smiled and lifted the microphone from the sedan’s dash. “Hertford Street?”
“Affirmative.”
“Okay. Stay on her,” Applegate instructed. “The taxi may be some kind of diversion.”
Stephanie spun through the revolving door and walked tentatively to the curb. There was no taxi waiting. It seemed like an eternity, though barely a minute had passed before the clatter of a diesel rose and she saw the headlights coming up the hill.
The agent across the street backed into the darkness as the cab rumbled to a stop next to her.
“Please step in, Mrs. Shepherd,” Spencer urged. Shepherd’s description and Stephanie’s clearly anxious demeanor had made her easy to recognize.
“Walt?” she blurted as she opened the door, hoping to find him tucked in the backseat. Her spirits plunged on discovering he wasn’t.
“She’s getting in the cab,” Applegate said into the microphone. “Better move it.”
Stephanie pulled the door closed and perched on the edge of the seat. “My husband, he’s okay?” she said, leaning anxiously toward the driver. “You’ve seen him? He’s alive?” she went on in a rush.
“He most certainly is,” Spencer replied, going on to introduce himself and give Stephanie a note.
Friday, 24 April. Welcome to London, Babe, it began. Stephanie brightened at the sight of Walt’s handwriting. In an economy of words, the note confirmed that Spencer was a friend and outlined precisely what she was to do.
“Shouldn’t we be going?” she prompted, her heart thumping from the surge of adrenaline.
“Soon as I’m sure we won’t be leaving that car behind,” Spencer replied, eyeing the rearview mirror.
Stephanie turned to the window and saw two men getting into a gray sedan down the street. As soon as the doors slammed, the taxi drove off slowly.
The sedan pulled away and followed.
As the taxi made its way south on Park Lane, Stephanie was taken by the glittering cityscape, a tableau of centuries-old buildings that defied the soaring towers of glass and steel. Spencer swung east into Piccadilly, taking Shaftsbury through the theater district to the Holborn Viaduct, which bypassed the City, as London’s financial heartland is called, angling across the boroughs of East Cheapside and Fenchurch, skirting the forbidding streets of Whitechapel, finally turning north into Bishopgate, where the russet colonnade of Liverpool Street Station loomed like a Victorian backdrop.
“Ready?” Spencer asked, as he cruised to a stop in front of the ornate turn-of-the-century edifice.
“Yes, yes, I think so,” Stephanie replied hesitantly.
“You’ll do fine. It’s that one right there,” Spencer said, pointing out one of the many arched entrances. “The one with the big clock.”
Stephanie got out of the taxi and approached the facade of finely pointed brick at an easy pace, easy enough to be followed, as Shepherd’s note had instructed.
The train station was alive with weekend travelers hurrying beneath the delicate latticework of steel and glass that spanned slender cast-iron columns. The space below the rhythmic vaults was brightened by lush ferns cascading from baskets hanging above the platforms.
Stephanie entered beneath the clock, heading for the endless rows of tracks. She was aching to see Walt, wondering if she ever would, her heart thumping so loudly she could almost hear it over the public address announcements that echoed through the cavernous station:
“Miss Moore, Miss Tessa Moore, please meet your party at track twelve . . . Mr. Colchester, Mr. Nicholas Colchester to a courtesy telephone please . . . Your attention please, the six-forty express to Cambridge will be departing from track eighteen this evening . . .”
Shepherd was on a pedestrian bridge above the Bishopsgate colonnade, his eyes riveted to the arched entrance below the clock. The anticipation had been building since Spencer reported he had made contact with Stephanie.
The clock read 6:34 when Shepherd saw her striding beneath it. His head filled with the memory of her scent; he had an impulse to dash down the staircase and embrace her. The sight of Applegate and the two Special Forces agents snapped him out of it.
For once, Shepherd was relieved to see them. All along, he had anticipated that his adversaries would intercept the tape he had sent to Stephanie, and he had shrewedly counted on their zealous bent for manipulation and deviousness to use it against him. He knew that Stephanie would be surveilled until he had been terminated, knew that her watchdogs would let her lead them to him. Shepherd had made that the cornerstone of his plan. Now he knew it had worked.
On the other side of the station, Stephanie was approaching a row of ticket windows where people were standing in long queues. The two agents following her exchanged puzzled looks as she continued past, not buying a ticket as they expected she might. Applegate was in the lead, deftly slipping between travelers to maintain visual contact with her, when the public address announcer intoned, “Major Applegate, Major Paul Applegate, please come to a courtesy telephone. Major Applegate to a courtesy telephone please.”
Applegate stopped walking; no one knew he was there, not Kiley, not Larkin. “Don’t lose her,” he warned the others as he dropped off to take the call.
He had no doubt it was Shepherd.
The numerous courtesy phone locations eliminated the possibility that Shepherd might be waiting for him. Still, as a precaution, Applegate selected the one near the ticket booths, which was in an open area.
“May I help you?” a woman’s voice asked the instant he lifted the receiver.
“This is Major Applegate. I was paged.”
“Ah yes, Major,” she enthused cheerily. “You have a call; please hold. Go ahead, sir,” she said when the connection was made.
“Applegate, this is Shepherd,” Shepherd said in a hard, commanding tone. He was curled in a phone booth just inside the colonnade where Stephanie had entered the station. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Major, and I don’t want to know. I wouldn’t blow the whistle on you if I did. My point is—”
“Where the hell are you, Shepherd?” Applegate interrupted. “What do you think you’re—”
“Shut up and listen, dammit. The point I’m making is you have no reason to kill me. My wife and kids are all I care about. Now, I want you to bring me in; I want me and my family to be given new identities and relocated. You know, like they do with witnesses? That’s what I want. You arrange it?”
“I don’t know,” Applegate replied, caught off guard. “I mean, I’d have to clear it. My people would need assurances that—”
“Then let’s m
eet somewhere and work it out.”
“Sure, sure we can. How about—”
“Hard Rock Cafe in Mayfair,” Shepherd shot back, beating him to it. “Fifteen minutes.” He hung up and hurried from the booth.
“Shepherd? Shepherd, dammit!” Applegate groaned, slamming the phone onto the hook. He began shouldering his way through the crush of travelers in the terminal to the street, then he sprinted to his car and clambered behind the wheel. He was reaching for the microphone to contact the agents when his eyes darted to the rearview mirror, to the face that had suddenly appeared directly behind him.
“Don’t move, Major,” Shepherd barked, jabbing the pistol Spencer had given him hard against the back of Applegate’s skull. “Hands on the wheel and keep them there.” He reached around from the backseat, where he had been concealed, slipped his free hand inside Applegate’s jacket, and took the Baretta from his shoulder holster.
“What the fuck is this, Shepherd? You said—”
“I lied,” Shepherd retorted. He kept his pistol against Applegate’s neck and pushed the Baretta into his waistband, then leaned over the seat, grabbed the microphone cable, and yanked it out of the dash. “Get moving. Make a left at the next corner.”
“Fuck you; go ahead shoot; shoot me right here.”
“Listen up, Major. One of us is going to do the driving; if it’s me, you wake up with a nasty lump on your head and an even nastier headache. Your move.”
Applegate muttered an expletive, started the car, and drove off into the night.
27
THE F-111 that had once had AC MAJ SHEPHERD stenciled on the nose gear door was streaking down Okba ben Nafi’s south runway at 145 knots when the Libyan pilot eased back the stick and the sleek bomber rose into the balmy North African darkness. Its Vietnam-era camouflage had been painted over with a pattern of soft desert browns; all U.S. markings had been replaced by the bold green square of the Libyan Air Force.
“It would be best if they remained unmarked, sir,” General Younis had counseled when Qaddafi gave the order.