Allah's Scorpion

by David Hagberg

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Director,” he said. “Mr. Rencke is waiting for us in the conference room.”

  “Were you able to come up with what I need?” McGarvey asked. Kraus’s left eyebrow rose a notch, as if the question was a personal insult. “Of course.”

  The doors to most of the R & D labs and testing facilities were secured with retinal print identification devices that would open only into safe boxes that acted like air locks aboard a spaceship. The inner door to the facility itself could not be opened unless the outer door was closed and locked.

  The wing was a beehive of activity, but no one spoke above a whisper. This place and the people who worked here, dreaming up toys for field operations officers, had always struck McGarvey as science fiction, something out of the old Mission Impossible.

  “Just in here, sir,” Kraus said at the conference room next to his office at the end of the corridor.

  Rencke was sitting cross-legged on top of a long table, fiddling with what appeared to be an ordinary satellite telephone. Beside him was a small leather case, about the size of a thick notebook.

  He looked up, his eyes bright like a kid with a new toy. “Oh, wow, I just finished programming the third Keyhole, and nobody will be able to detect what I’ve done.”

  “You know that we have a serious limitation in size,” McGarvey said.

  “We’ve taken care of that for you, Mr. Director,” Kraus said. “Actually we’ve been working on the technology for a few years now, even before you left the Company.”

  “What have you come up with?”

  Kraus zippered open the leather case and took out one of four hypodermic syringes, each about a quarter-filled with a milky solution, and handed it to McGarvey. “It’s nanotechnology.”

  The opening at the business end of the syringe was larger than most needles, and was covered by a plastic sheath. “What is it?”

  “That’s the good part. The liquid is actually a derivative of sodium thiopental—truth serum. But also contained in each syringe is the GPS transmitter you wanted, no bigger than a grain of sand.”

  McGarvey held the syringe up to the light, but he could not make out the device. “It can’t have much range.”

  “That’s why I programmed three satellites,” Rencke said. “The Keyhole will be able to pick up the signal only if the transmitter is almost directly beneath it. It’ll show up on the sat phone, but the signal will be intermittent, depending on a satellite pass.”

  “How do I activate the phone?” McGarvey asked.

  “Four syringes, four GPS transmitters. Enter three ones and pound, and the phone will display the latitude and longitude of the first transmitter. Three twos and pound, gets you the second unit, et cetera.”

  “There’s another downside,” Kraus said. “Battery life. Best we can do is seven days, so you’ll have to be quick about it. The good news is that the batteries won’t go active until they’ve been exposed to the subject’s body heat for sixty to ninety minutes.”

  “We’re giving you four of them so Weiss won’t be sure if you and Gloria came back just because of al-Turabi,” Rencke said. “It’s all going to depend on how quickly he can get them out of there and into the hands of Cuban intelligence. Since the last break, Gitmo has been locked up tight.”

  “He’ll manage,” McGarvey said. “Al-Turabi is just too big a catch.”

  WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA

  It was about two in the afternoon when McGarvey got down to the CIA’s training facility off I-64 outside Williamsburg. Located in a remote section of Camp Peary Naval Reservation on the York River, it was where recruits were taught basic tradecraft that field operations officers needed, and it was also where old hands went to hone their skills or to pass along things they’d learned, usually the hard way.

  McGarvey’s daughter Elizabeth and her husband, Todd Van Buren, had taken over as camp commandants shortly after 9/11 when recruitment levels were at an all-time high. They were young enough that the recruits could relate to them, but experienced enough that the recruits had respect for them.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Director,” the guard at the gate said. “Mrs. Van Buren is expecting you up at the office.”

  “Thanks,” McGarvey said, and he followed the long drive through the woods to the collection of rustic buildings that housed the camp’s headquarters, classrooms, and the POW center where recruits were subjected to rigorous, sometimes even brutal, interrogations as if they were spies captured by a foreign power. The mess hall, dayrooms, and housing units were also located in the administration area.

  Several cars were parked in front of the main office, and across in the parking lot a blue bus with U.S. Air Force markings had pulled up and fifteen or sixteen new recruits were piling out, to be greeted by several instructors dressed in BDUs.

  Elizabeth, who was slender, with a pretty round face and short blond hair, practically a twin of her mother at that age, came out of the administration building as McGarvey pulled up. Like the instructors she was dressed in army camouflage, her boots bloused. In addition to running the camp she and Todd also taught many of the classes, including hand-to-hand combat, night field exercises in the swamp, and demolitions. She liked to blow up things as much as her husband did.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said, and she and her father embraced.

  “How are you, sweetheart?” McGarvey asked.

  “Just peachy,” she said. She linked her arm in his. “Let’s go for a walk.” She seemed brittle, on edge.

  They headed down a dirt track behind the administration building that led eventually to the outdoor firing range, and beyond that the demolition training bunkers and urban warfare village.

  “Everyone can pretty well guess why Dick Adkins called you back,” she said. “We’ve had no luck at all finding bin Laden. You’re the only one who’s come face-to-face with him and lived. And the fact that they tried to hit you at Arlington pretty well proves he knows that you’re gunning for him.”

  “That could work to my advantage, when the time comes,” McGarvey said.

  Elizabeth suddenly stopped and looked up into her father’s eyes. “Were you aware that Gloria Ibenez is in love with you?”

  It took him completely by surprise. “No.”

  “Well, she’s been telling anyone who’ll listen that she is,” Elizabeth said. “So if you’ve come here to ask her to help you, just be careful, Daddy. She’s an intelligent, beautiful woman, and I think she’d do just about anything to seduce you.”

  McGarvey had to smile, despite the seriousness of the situation. “Is this a subject that a daughter should be talking to her father about?”

  Elizabeth wanted to argue, but after a moment she lowered her eyes and nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m going back to Guantanamo Bay, and I want Gloria along to put pressure on the ONI guy she’s already had a run-in with,” McGarvey said. “When I find out where bin Laden is hiding, I’m going after him alone. I’ve always worked that way.”

  Elizabeth looked up. “That’s another part I don’t like,” she said. “You’re getting too old for this kind of stuff.”

  McGarvey shook his head ruefully. “Too old for fieldwork and too old to turn the head of a pretty woman. Good thing I’m going back to teaching when this is over. And it’s even better that I’m in love with your mother.” He smiled. “She’s practically ancient too, you know.”

  Elizabeth laughed lightly. “You make a good pair,” she said. “A dotty old bastard and the only woman on earth who can tell him what to do.”

  FORTY-THREE

  SS SHEHAB

  Captain Tariq Ziyax leaned against the chart table in the control room of the aging Foxtrot diesel-electric submarine, studying the medium-scale chart of the Mediterranean Sea from the Libyan coast across to the island of Sicily. It was coming up on 2200 Greenwich mean time, which put it at midnight local, eighty-five meters above on the surface.

  The Shehab had left her base at Ra’s al Hilal three days ago on wh
at the crew had been told was a routine patrol mission, but no other Libyan ship had accompanied them, nor since reaching their patrol station two hundred kilometers off Benghazi had they participated in any torpedo or missile drills, and the crew was getting restless. Only Ziyax and a dozen of his officers knew the real orders.

  He was a small man with narrow shoulders, and a sad face that was all planes and angles, like someone out of a Goya painting. His eyes were puffed and red because he’d not slept well since he’d been handed this troubling assignment by Colonel Quaddafi himself four days ago, and his nerves were jumping all over the place, especially now that they were at their rendezvous point.

  He wanted nothing more at this moment than to be home with his wife and three children, rather than here in the middle of the Mediterranean, carrying four anthrax-tipped torpedo-tube-launched cruise missiles.

  To be caught out here in international waters with such weapons of mass destruction, which actually had belonged to Saddam Hussein before the war, would mean certain arrest and imprisonment. It would also go very badly for Libya if it were discovered that Quaddafi had hidden Hussein’s weapons in the weeks before the Allied forces had attacked.

  The secret to leading men was never to allow a subordinate to see your inner fears. Remain calm in all circumstances. Be a man of iron. It was what he had been taught by the Russians at the Frunze Military Academy.

  This is especially true aboard a submarine where a man’s worst fears always hovered just a few meters away at the pressure hull.

  The Shehab was one of the last Foxtrot Class submarines that the Soviets had built in the early eighties, eight of which had been delivered to Libya. Because of shoddy maintenance practices by the Libyan navy, and because of a scarcity of spare parts since the collapse of the Soviet Union, only three of those boats were still serviceable, and the Shehab was most definitely on her last legs.

  But, Ziyax reflected, in an effort to steady his nerves, she was still a potent warship. Under the right command, with the right crew, she was capable of dealing a sharp blow whether to a sea or land target.

  At 91.5 meters on deck, Shehab displaced 2,600 tons submerged, and at cruising speed had a range of twenty thousand miles. She was fitted out with ten 533mm torpedo tubes; six forward and four aft. And she had been modified five years ago, two of her forward tubes modernized so that they could handle the ZM-54E1 missiles that had a range of three hundred kilometers, and could carry a variety of payloads, including normal high-explosive warheads, or air-burst canisters of anthrax. Even a small nuclear warshot with a yield of a few kilotons could be mounted to attack a ship or even a shore installation.

  Ziyax shuddered to think what the outcome would be if a Libyan submarine ever made such an attack. It would be the end of their nation, and certainly the same fate that Hussein had suffered would befall Colonel Quaddafi. It was why this assignment was so vitally important.

  “You will kill three birds with one stone for me, my dear Captain,” Quaddafi had told him. It was early evening, and they were walking in the desert, a half-dozen bodyguards trailing twenty meters behind.

  “I and my crew will do our best for you,” Ziyax had promised. He had graduated with a degree in electronic engineering, with honors, from King Farouk University in Cairo, and after two years working for Libya Telecommunications Corporation, helping build an all-new telephone system for the country, he’d been drafted into the navy. He was smart, he was dedicated to his nation, and knew how to follow orders as well as give them. After four years of intensive training in Libya and in Russia, aboard a variety of submarines including Kilos and Foxtrots, he’d been appointed as executive officer aboard a sister submarine of Shehab’s.

  He’d also gotten married and started his family, which made him want to finally quit the sea and return to his first love, electronic engineering.

  “When you have completed this assignment for me, I will release you from the navy, if that’s what you still want,” Colonel Quaddafi promised.

  Ziyax had felt a sudden flush of pleasure. “Yes, sir, but only to return to my old position.”

  “You’re needed there as well as here,” Quaddafi said.

  They walked in silence for a while, Ziyax thinking about regaining his old life. But then it occurred to ask what task he was being assigned to do. “The three birds with one stone, sir?” he prompted.

  “You have read the newspapers, seen the international television broadcasts, so you know that I have promised the West to reduce our military forces in exchange for new trade agreements. The boycott against our people has been lifted.”

  “Yes, sir.” Life in Libya, especially in the capital, Tripoli, had markedly improved over the past few years. The nearly universal sentiment held Quaddafi in high regard, even though it had been his arrogance in the first place that had landed them in so much trouble with the West.

  “You are to take your submarine into the Mediterranean, and so far as the world is concerned, scuttle her.”

  Ziyax’s breath had caught in his throat when he understood exactly what Quaddafi was telling him, and the reason for telling him out here in isolation where there was no possibility of prying ears. “If I’m not to scuttle my boat, what am I to do?”

  “You will make rendezvous with a civilian vessel so that your crew can be taken off and replaced by a scuttling crew, to whom you will turn over the boat.”

  Ziyax knew exactly whom the scuttling crew worked for, and his blood ran cold, but he didn’t give voice to his thought.

  “Since we have made an appeasement with the West, certain of our brothers in prayer have criticized us. This gesture will spread oil on the waters. The second bird.”

  Al-Quaida, the thought crystallized in Ziyax’s mind. Still he held his silence.

  “You may tell your officers the truth,” Quaddafi instructed. “It may be that you will have to remain aboard for a few days to familiarize the new crew, though I’m told their captain is English. A graduate of their Perisher school.”

  Ziyax could not have been more astounded at that moment. “I’m to turn over my submarine to an infidel?”

  “Precisely,” Quaddafi said. “Although the West, as well as your crew, will believe that your boat was destroyed and sunk.”

  “We will be asked why we didn’t simply dry-dock her and cut her apart for the steel.”

  “Because there was a dreadful, unforeseen accident,” Quaddafi shot back, somewhat irritated. “But that is diplomacy, my concern. Yours is to do as you are ordered.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ziyax replied.

  “Which brings us to the third bird, what has been an anchor around the neck of Libya since oh-four. Certain weapons will be loaded aboard Shehab. The exact nature of those weapons will be kept from your crew.”

  “Am I and my officers to know?” Ziyax asked.

  “There is no need, my dear Captain,” Quaddafi said. “And when you return home, your reward will be greater than you can imagine.”

  Ziyax had replayed his surreal conversation with Quaddafi over and over in his head, each time running up against the one flaw in the plan. The crew might be kept ignorant of what had actually become of Shehab, but he and his officers would know. Quite possibly that could mean their death sentence, no matter how it turned out. That fact alone he had kept from his officers.

  The sonar operator ducked his head around the corner. “Captain, I have a slow-moving target on the surface at our station, keeping position,” he said.

  Ziyax looked up out of his thoughts, catching the eye of his executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Assam al-Abbas. In addition to being a fine officer and a friend, al-Abbas served as the Purity of Islam officer aboard. Most of the men feared him.

  “What is his bearing and range, Ensign Isomil?” Ziyax asked.

  “Bearing two-six-five, range one hundred meters.”

  “What is he doing? Is he a warship? Are we being pinged?”

  “No, sir, it’s not a warship. I think it’s a fr
eighter. He’s making less than five knots.”

  “Are there any other targets? Anything we should be worried about?”

  “No, sir, my display is clear to ten thousand meters.”

  “Very well,” Ziyax said. He turned back to his XO. “Turn right to two-six-five, make your speed five knots, and bring us to periscope depth. Five-degree angle on the planes. I want this to go very slowly.”

  “Aye, Captain,” al-Abbas responded crisply and he gave the orders to the diving officer, who relayed them to the helmsman, and then turned to a series of controls at the ballast panel that blew air into a series of tanks. Immediately the submarine began rising to a depth of twenty meters.

  There was nothing about this assignment that didn’t worry Ziyax. At the very least he would do everything possible to prolong his life and the lives of his officers. Whatever it took. “Assam, if this is the wrong ship, I want to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

  “Aywa,” al-Abbas replied. Yes.

  “Prepare for an emergency dive to two hundred meters on my order, All Ahead Flank.”

  Al-Abbas repeated the order and the other crew in the control room glanced at their captain, but just for a moment, before they went back to their duties.

  Ziyax stepped over to the periscope platform and, as he waited the few minutes for his boat to reach the proper depth, he examined his feelings for the untold time since they’d left base. He trained his entire career in the navy to fire warshots. But so far he’d not done so. Praise Allah. But tonight he was expected to deliver this boat and her weapons to a group he thought were madmen, little better than savages, religious zealots who had done more harm to Islam with their stupid jihad than all the holy wars through history.

  “Two-zero meters,” al-Abbas called out softly.

  Ziyax raised the search periscope, and turned it to a bearing just forward of Shehab’s starboard beam. They were slightly behind the freighter and on a parallel course.