Betrayal

by Tim Tigner

  The bartender gave him an odd look—half smile, half inquisitive stare—but did not comment. Odi turned his back to her and picked the phone receiver off a table.

  “Ship’s operator. How may I help you?”

  “The Balmoral Duplex, please.”

  “One moment please.”

  After three rings a woman voice greeted Odi. “Hello.”

  “Good evening, Mrs. Marshall, Would you kindly hand the receiver to an agent of the Secret Service?”

  Mrs. Marshall did not reply at once. She paused, then said, “Just a minute.”

  Odi heard the scrunching sound of a hand covering the phone followed by muffled voices.

  “Who’s calling please?” Said a different voice, a voice Odi recognized.

  “Good evening, Senator. My name is Odi Carr. I’m a Special Agent with the FBI. Is there a Secret Service Agent with you?”

  “If you are who you say you are, Agent Carr, then you should know the answer to that.”

  “I know that you’re not usually under guard, Senator, but tonight should be different given the threat.”

  “I’m always under threat, yet here I am. Tonight is no different.”

  Odi felt the walls closing in around him. This virtually confirmed his worst fear. Cassi had either not been believed, or more likely had not gotten through. At least Ayden had not yet gotten to the Senator. Or had he? Had the Senator’s voice sounded strained? Odi was not sure. “I’ll call you back in a minute, Senator.” Without waiting for a reply, Odi hung up.

  He ran up the six flights of stairs, ignoring another series of murmurs and stares. He hoped that the body heat this generated would help him dry off. He wished he had a gun.

  He kept his eyes peeled for Ayden the whole way, but did not know what he would do when he saw him. Attack like a dog, he supposed. Once he reached Marshall’s suite, he stood to the side of the door. He reached over to knock, but paused. If Ayden was in there, he realized, he would shoot on sight. “So be it,” Odi muttered. He had no choice.

  He knocked.

  “Who is it?”

  Odi recognized the Senator’s voice. “Senator, it’s Special Agent Carr.”

  “Hold your ID up to the peephole, Agent Carr.”

  “I’m under cover, Senator. I don’t have my ID. I don’t have my firearm either, sir.” Odi backed up, raised his arms, and spun slowly around. “Senator, it’s crucial that we talk. Thousands of lives depend on it—including your own.”

  The Senator opened the door. He held a nickel-plated automatic in his hand and wore an expression that made it clear he wasn’t afraid to use it. “You’ve got sixty seconds.”

  Chapter 71

  The SS Queen Mary 2

  AYDEN CLUTCHED HIS sweating beer glass in both hands as he watched the picture shift from the news anchor to the amateur video. His first reaction was surprise. The video was shot from inside a plane. The oxygen masks were down and flailing as wind whipped through the cabin with hurricane force. Although no hole was visible on screen, the Creamer had obviously blown through the fuselage.

  The picture was bobbing left and right, the camera obviously held by a trembling hand. No surprise there, Ayden thought. The operator panned left from the oxygen masks to expose a crowd of writhing men. The elbow of the nearest one, a crew-cut bull with his back to the camera, kept popping up into the air. Though the view was blocked by his rocking back, the crunching sound clarified his unseen movements. He was pummeling someone’s face. After a dozen wallops the beating ceased. The bull stood up and hefted a limp form over his shoulder. Despite the bloody nose and swollen bruises, Ayden recognized Khalid’s unconscious face. He felt as though he had been kicked in the gut. They had found out one of his bombers.

  The camera panned wider to expose an open exit door and the ground a couple thousand feet below. The bull approached it and flopped Khalid forward. Another large passenger took Khalid’s hands while the bull retained his feet. Then the cabin grew silent but for the billowing wind and the two burly passengers heaved Khalid out into space. The instant Khalid hit the jet stream his body disappeared from view behind the ship. A fight attendant closed the exit door and the passengers began to cheer.

  The screen cut back to the news anchor as Ayden felt the floor dissolving beneath his feet. “That remarkable scene took place just minutes ago after authorities learned that a passenger had swallowed a bomb that was set to go off before the plane could land. Sources in the Department of Homeland Security have confirmed that suicide bombers are believed to have targeted twenty-four planes. In fourteen other cases, the bombs—secreted in miniature Baileys Irish Cream bottles—were confiscated before being armed. As of this moment, we have no reports that any of the remaining nine bombs have exploded. I repeat ...”

  Ayden looked away and saw that talking heads now filled every monitor. He took a step back—onto the lizard-skinned boot of a barrel-bellied man. The man did not notice. Like everyone else in the room, his attention was riveted to a monitor. Everyone in G32 had converged on the monitors and the crowd now penned him in. Ayden began to panic. He turned back toward the talking heads and tried to pull himself together. He had to decide exactly what this meant.

  The conclusions crashed down on him like falling boulders. The assassination of the SASC was a bust. There would be no grand public investigation. The martyr videos would never be played on the air. The defense budget would not be publicly examined. A billion swords would not be beaten into plowshares. Nothing would change. He had failed the children.

  Ayden suddenly felt much older than his thirty-nine years. Arvin’s words came back to him as he stared at the depressing report on the screens: “I want to be able to say that I was there with Ayden Archer on 10/12.” Ayden felt ashamed. He could sum up his startling new predicament in a series of No’s. He had no money, no job, and as of this evening, no friends. He had eliminated Odi, but not soon enough.

  His depression mounted until it became too much to bear. A better world had been yanked from his grasp. He could not face the old one. He was ready to take a dive off the bow when he remembered his alternative plan. Hope lifted the rocks from his heart. Desperation lent him courage. He felt born again as he pushed his way through the crowd. 10/12 could still eclipse 9/11.

  Chapter 72

  Asgard Island, Chesapeake Bay

  NO SOONER HAD Cassi locked the Ping into the crook of the rail than she felt its shaft flex and heard Stuart’s startled shout. She released the quivering club and popped her head out from beneath the stairs in time to see his airborne body begin to tumble. Stuart must have been sprinting, she decided, because his trajectory was taking him well beyond the steep staircase’s base. She watched him windmill his hands in a fruitless attempt to halt his forward somersault as he plummeted through twenty-five feet of empty space. He careened face first into the iron dock, his outstretched arms snapping like twigs beneath the momentum. A fleshy thud and the sickly sound of snapping bones met Cassi’s ears as Stuart’s terrified scream transformed into an agonized howl. Stuart was tough, Cassi thought, but he was no match for cast iron. “That’s for Masha and Zeke,” she said with grim satisfaction.

  Cassi made a visual inspection of Stuart’s hands to confirm that neither held a Beretta before gingerly pulling herself up onto the stairs. Noting that his agony made her own pain easier to ignore, she descended the stairs with slow, measured strides. Stuart looked helpless as a two-pound kitten in a fifty-gallon drum, but she kept the Ping driver cocked back over her head just in case. She was not going to end up like a movie chick.

  Her eyes drank in the climactic scene as she descended. Both of Stuart’s forearms lay splayed at grotesque angles as though he had been born with a freakish extra joint. That illusion shattered a second later as she watched. While Stuart squirmed a white bone ripped through the black wool of his sweater to glisten like the Grim Reaper’s only tooth.

  Cassi stood over him, club still poised. She met his eye, and smiled.

/>   With an effort that exhibited tremendous power of will, Stuart brought his wailing under control and began to mutter. “You bitch. You bitch, you bitch, you bitch ...” He continued to wriggle belly down on the dock as he cursed. When Cassi made no reply his words degenerated into moans.

  She lowered the club. He was no threat. He seemed unable to move his head but he continued to look up at her with one beady eye. She stifled the impulse to poke it out with the butt of the Ping, choosing to set the club down instead. She used her one good hand to reach into his right pants pocket. Finding the yacht’s keys, she pulled the ring out and gave it a jingle. Then she stepped over Stuart’s wrecked body and hopped onto the prow of the yacht.

  Stuart managed to roll his head so that he could keep her in sight. Apparently he was not paralyzed, Cassi noted. That was just as well. He parted his mouth and looked as though he wanted to say something clever, but neither the wit nor the energy were present. He remained silent.

  In stark contrast, Cassi knew exactly what she wanted to say. “You can spend the rest of your life in a six-by-eight cell, or you can roll a few feet to your right and drown. I don’t give a damn either way. I’m done with you.”

  Chapter 73

  The SS Queen Mary 2

  ODI PULLED A fire axe from the wall as he entered the engine room. One way or the other, he knew it would all end here.

  It was a different world from the glorious one he was leaving. Dim lighting bathed the pale green walls. The air was thick with the smells of grease and diesel. The temperature was at least ninety degrees. Odi found it hard to hear himself think over the mechanical noise. The only pleasant surprise that side of the sealed door was the absence of workers. He realized that technicians must be monitoring everything remotely from an engineering room. “So much the better.”

  Odi had gained admittance to the lower decks by using Kostas’s card-key ID, which had yet to be cancelled. He was not sure how Ayden had gotten into the restricted area, but he knew that his traitorous friend was here. He felt it in his bones.

  Twice he had tried to lure Ayden to Marshall’s suite by ordering pots of coffee. But his nemesis had failed to appear and both times the cream that accompanied the order was normal. That was when Odi concluded that something bigger was up. It did not take him long to figure out what that would be. Or at least where. On a ship, bigger was most likely found in one direction.

  Convincing the Senator to put down his big nickel-plated gun and let him go was not so easy.

  They had spent a few very tense minutes together while Senator Marshall verified his story. Three questions into the interrogation, Odi understood that the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee had an excellent technical grasp of weapons. Apparently he actually read the briefs and stayed awake during meetings. Realizing that, Odi shifted gears immediately and gave a detailed explanation of how his invention worked. Between the Creamer’s chemistry and its creator’s conviction, Marshall was convinced.

  Once sold, Marshall got the Director of Homeland Security on the phone without further delay and dictated his marching orders. Odi was impressed.

  “The SASC Senators are all flying home at this moment,” Marshall said. “The planes they’re on are all carrying bombs. These are very special bombs, so listen close. They’re disguised as mini bottles of Baileys Irish Cream. Looks like each terrorist has four.

  “While you bring each plane down immediately for an emergency landing, you’ve got to have the air marshal aboard make an announcement over the PA. He’s got to recruit every passenger to help him find those four bottles. If the Baileys is found before it gets drunk, you’re in the clear. If not, the situation becomes more complicated.”

  Odi nodded as the Senator spoke, reassuring him that his understanding was correct.

  “Once the contents of one or more Irish Cream bottles gets ingested, the drinker becomes a very powerful chemical bomb—with a timer of less than thirty minutes. If you can’t land within ten minutes of the first sip passing lips, you’re going to have to throw the imbiber off the plane—mid-flight.”

  There was a pause while the Homeland Security Director questioned what he had just heard.

  The Senator said, “I’ve got the man who built the bombs with me here. He says there’s no other way. I believe him.

  “If you don’t find the Baileys bottles right away, or you find any empties in the trash, you need to have everyone look for a passenger developing blue fingertips. That symptom is your warning, but it only appears shortly before detonation, meaning that once you find it you will only have seconds to act. If you see blue you’ve got to get that person off the plane immediately, or everyone is lost. Have the air marshal open the cockpit door, and throw the bastard into Allah’s arms.”

  Despite what he and the Senator had watched transpire over the next hour on TV, Marshall had held Odi under arrest. The Director of Homeland Security had informed him of the APB. When neither Ayden nor his Creamer materialized during that time, Odi had insisted on hunting him down.

  When he finally stood and moved toward the door, the Senator did not shoot.

  Five minutes later, Odi was scanning a dim jungle of churning metal in search of Ayden. Due to the time constraint, he did not have the luxury of sneaking around. He had to walk the aisles, exposing himself to fire. He had no doubt that Ayden would shoot him on sight. He just hoped that his old friend did not have a gun.

  The glowing flicker of a flare caught Odi’s attention, coming from a dozen steps ahead and twenty feet to his left. It came from the far side of an iron tank the size of a submarine. As Odi read the label he cursed under his breath. Ayden had targeted the ship’s thermal oil boiler.

  Odi knew the mechanics of how ships like this were powered, having studied petroleum chemistry ad infinitum. The heavy oil they used was virtually non-reactive at room temperature. It was the rough equivalent of asphalt. To turn heavy oil into the combustible fuel the ship could use for power, it has to be primed—heated over many hours to liquid form at a temperature of six-hundred degrees. Six-hundred degrees, Odi repeated to himself. This was not going to be pretty.

  He peeked around the edge of the thermal oil boiler, and spotted Ayden there. He was sitting in the narrow service passageway between the boiler and the hull. Oddly enough, one of his hands was handcuffed to a feeder pipe. He held a burning flare in the other. Odi saw that he had a dozen more flares gripped between his thighs. He was in the process of lighting them.

  Odi stepped halfway out from behind the corner.

  “Hello Odi. Did you decide to join me? I’m afraid I drank all the Creamer myself, but if you sit close,” he shrugged, “what’s the difference?”

  “I’m not into suicide.”

  “This isn’t suicide. It’s a mission of mercy. The thousands who die today will save millions of lives.” He produced the key to the handcuffs as he spoke and then placed it ceremoniously on his tongue as he finished. He swallowed.

  Odi could not help but notice the maniacal look in the eyes of his former friend. He did not know what to say.

  As it turned out, Ayden was not finished. “In a few minutes the Queen Mary 2 will be rechristened Titanic 2, as she sinks with most of her thirty-nine hundred souls. Oh, some will survive on lifeboats, I’m sure, but given the speed she’ll go under it won’t be a thousand. 10/12 will still eclipse 9/11. As the media sifts through the wreckage, world attention will finally be brought to focus on the issues that matter most. The money will follow.”

  “You’re only going to kill yourself, Ayden,” Odi said, shaking his head. “Heavy oil won’t explode.”

  Ayden scoffed. “Coming from the man who invented Creamer, your thinking is surprisingly conventional. I’m not counting on blowing a hole in the hull, even though there is that possibility—I did down a whole pint. No, my friend, I’m going to burn one.” Ayden gestured with the flare.

  “A whole pint!” Odi sputtered, unable to contain himself. That much actually might blow a
hole through the hulls if the boiler banked the energy of the explosion just right. Ayden’s stomach now held the Newtonian equivalent of sixteen hand grenades. Odi dwelled on that image until he remembered the last part of Ayden’s sentence. He was counting on burning a hole through the hull.

  Odi thought aloud. “When you explode, you’ll rip open the side of the thermal oil boiler. Ten thousand gallons of superheated oil will gush out, hit the flares and ignite. In that quantity, the oil will burn at a temperature of around three thousand degrees. Iron melts at twenty-eight hundred ...”

  Ayden looked at him and smiled. Then he held his lit flare to the tip of another and it too burst into flame. The extra light revealed the blue tinge of Ayden’s fingertips.

  As if reading Odi’s mind, Ayden shook his left arm, rattling the handcuff against the pipe. “Sorry. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’m sorry too,” Odi said, bringing his right hand into view. “But I must insist.”

  Ayden dropped his jaw as Odi hefted the axe.

  Chapter 74

  PoliTalk Studio, Washington, D.C.

  WILEY WAS ON top of the world. Tonight he would solidify his position as America’s go-to man on terrorism at the very moment that terrorism returned to the pinnacle of American attention. His move to the White House was but a hop, skip, and jump away.