by Larry Bond
He’d been paralyzed two years ago as well, but then not by a bullet but by fear. More than fear: by the certainty that he was going to die.
They all saw it. And they all felt the same thing, except James.
James, the guy who was just there to write about them, just along for the ride. He jumped up, bounded onto it, saved them all.
And it didn’t explode.
This one did, but it fell on the other side of a huge pile of sand Rankin had fallen behind. As dirt flew everywhere, Rankin pulled up the Uzi and fired back in the direction of the man who’d shot at him. The man tumbled to the ground.
Rankin struggled to get up. His vest had protected him against the bullets that hit his side, but two bullets had hit his leg, both in his calf, and it collapsed under him. He rolled against the dirt, off balance and dazed.
On the other side of the yard, Guns worked to get behind the forklift. The driver was slumped against the wheel, and there were other bodies on the ground near it. Two Iraqis turned the corner behind it, moving cautiously forward, unaware that he was behind them. He waited until he had good shots on both, then fired, cutting them down. The marine climbed up on a stack of bricks, peering around to make sure no one was hiding in ambush. Not seeing anyone, he jumped and ran to it, throwing the dead driver to the side and jumping on. Climbing in behind the wheel he accidentally got his foot on the accelerator and the truck jerked forward. He let it go, steadying his speed—the engine didn’t move very quickly—and wheeled down the next aisle. The wall of cement blocks on the front provided good cover, but it was impossible to see without peering to the side. He turned again, heading in the direction of the sideless building where the missile was being readied.
The front of the vehicle began to shake. Guns realized he was being fired at and jumped off the back as the fusillade intensified. A machine gun—an M60 set on a bipod—joined the four Iraqis firing M16s from near the building, chewing the bricks into dust.
Guns got to the next aisle, ducking behind a pile of bagged stone. As the gunfire continued, he climbed up and burned a box of bullets before the machine gunner managed to return fire. As he slid down to the ground he heard a rumble and thought it was the AC-130 approaching.
It wasn’t: the missile had been ignited and was building pressure to launch.
~ * ~
32
THE RED SEA
Thera took a swig from the water bottle, letting the cold liquid run down the sides of her mouth. The heat was already building; it was going to be a hot, muggy day.
“How much farther?” she asked Ferguson. He was up at the how, listening over the phone as an aide hack in the Cube told him what they saw on the new satellite photos.
“Ten more minutes,” he told her, taking his glasses and studying the horizon.
They’d passed two medium-sized oil tankers and a host of small dhows. The interpreter had spotted a boat that looked somewhat like the Sharia; he couldn’t tell because it had a tarp covering the rear deck.
Not a good sign.
Ferguson was just about to put his phone back in his pocket when it began to ring. He saw an odd string of numbers on the face and opened it carefully, as if it might explode.
“Ferguson.”
“Hey, Ferg.”
“Michael. How’d you get the number?”
“I persuaded an old friend that it was important.”
“OK.” The only old friend it could be, Ferguson knew, was the general. “What’s up?”
“Aaron Ravid’s wife and son were killed by Islamic extremists eighteen months ago by a suicide bomber. He was taken out of service, but for some reason they called him back.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid that you would have to take that up with someone else.”
Ferg could guess: it must have had to do with Meles. The Israelis didn’t have too many agents with good access in Syria. New faces were one thing; a deeply planted, well-experienced agent was something else. They’d weighed the risks and called him back.
“Michael, thank you,” said Ferg, ending the transmission.
~ * ~
33
NEAR AL FATTAH
Rankin began shooting at the building, pouring the rest of the Uzi’s 9mm slugs at the steaming cylinder. He fired until the magazine was empty, fired even as the missile began to lift off the pad.
Then a sharp crack split the air, and he heard the sound of metal being torn apart. A ball of flames shot across the ground to his left. Before Rankin could do or think anything else, he felt himself being pushed backward as the building exploded. A fireball shot up from the truck that had been used as a launcher, the flames catching the tail of the modified Scud. Even as the missile pulled away from the ground through the hole in the roof, it had begun to veer off course.
Lying on his back, Rankin saw it twist to the right. A black finger curled around the side and then it keeled over, moving sideways through the air like a kid’s balloon that had just gotten a pin it. The warhead exploded with a tremendous thunderclap. The framework of the building was on fire, ignited by the same flame that had run up the fuel line from the train car. Thick black smoke furled out across the yard.
“Guns! Guns!” yelled Rankin. “That was a great idea. Guns!”
“Over here,” said Guns, opposite where Rankin expected him to be. The marine fired a fresh burst at the spot where the machine gun had been, but the Iraqis had retreated as soon as the missile launched and were now running to escape. The AC-130 droned in the distance, an angry bee late to the picnic.
“Guns?” Rankin, hobbled by his wounds, pushed in his direction.
“Down!” yelled Guns, spotting a figure with a pistol. He fired his M4 too late; the other man ducked as he fired.
Rankin went down. The bullet had missed, but the jerk to his knee was too much and he lost his balance. He dropped his gun as he fell. Before he could roll onto his stomach and retrieve it, the other man kicked it away.
It was Vassenka. The Russian extended his pistol slowly. “I hate Americans,” he said, taking aim, “but I love watching them die. Slowly. With great pain. I do this for free.”
A shot rang out from behind Rankin, then another. The bullets hit Vassenka in his chest. Staggering, he looked up, surprised.
James fired twice more. Vassenka sunk to his knees, then fired his own gun, striking James in the chest before collapsing.
Guns ran over and kicked the pistol from Vassenka’s hand. All four of James’s bullets had struck the Russian, but they were .32 caliber, small slugs in a big body. One had hit him close to the neck, and blood pumped steadily from the wound.
There was a chance he might live if someone stopped it from bleeding quickly. Guns took his weapons, stuffed them in his belt, then left him to die.
Rankin crawled over and cradled his friend’s head in his arms. “James?”
“Hey, Stephen. I got tired of waiting, man. I hope you don’t mind that I set the thing on fire. I figured you guys were in trouble.”
Unlike James’s gun, Vassenka’s pistol fired a large, thick slug. Blood was surging from the wound into James’s lungs and chest cavity.
“You saved my life,” Rankin told him.
“You should have thought of that, Stephen. Just set the damn thing on fire. You’re a bright guy. You should’ve thought of it. Not me.”
“I should have thought of it, James. You’re right.”
“I thought it was going to explode.”
“The rocket? It went off course.”
“The grenade,” said James, remembering. “I really thought it would go off.”
“So’d we all.”
“I wanted to die, man. That’s why I went with you guys. I just wanted to be gone. And since that time, so many times, I might have done something worthwhile, but what am I?”
James began coughing.
“You’re a hero. You saved my life,” Rankin told him. “You saved a lot of people’s lives.”
James closed his eyes, slipping away. “I really thought the grenade was going to explode.”
~ * ~
~ * ~
1
THE RED SEA
Ferguson could see the Sharia about a mile ahead. The yacht sat dead in the water, not moving. Nor was there anyone topside. A large tarpaulin flapped on the deck at the stern, covering several large crates. So maybe Birk hadn’t sold the missile after all, or at least hadn’t gotten around to delivering it.
“You sound disappointed,” said Thera as Ferguson described what he saw.
“Not necessarily,” he told her. “Come up slow. Remember, the guy who owns that tub is an arms dealer. He could have anything short of a nuke aboard. He might even have that.”
“You sure we should go aboard ourselves? Why don’t we just call in backup?”
“Who are we going to call?”
“The navy comes to mind.”
“It’ll be next week before they can spare someone.”
Ferguson picked up his shotgun, deciding to stick with nonlethal bullets as his first choice. But he strapped on the waterproof backpack with the MP5N just in case.
They circled around the Sharia without seeing anyone. The anchor line was extended into the water.
“Let me get off, then you pull away,” Ferguson said. “I’m worried about booby traps.”
“If you’re worried about booby traps, why don’t we just wait for the navy?”
“If we wait and then this turns out to be nothing, how would I show my face at the next bar fight?”
Ferguson went over to the side, watching the yacht. He stepped, up then swung over the side, jumping across to the platform at the fantail. Once on the deck, he looked at the tiedowns to the tarp, trying to find booby traps. He couldn’t see any, nor did the detector find any bugs or radio devices. Ferguson walked up to the bow, then went back along to the cabin area.
“Birk?” he yelled. “Yo, guess who.”
No one answered.
“Hey, you dumb Polack, what are you doing?” Ferguson shouted. “Did you ever hear the joke about the Polish guy and the Irish guy and pig?”
Ferguson stepped down into the galley area and through the enclosed space to the ladder that led down to Birk’s suite of living quarters.
“Birk!”
The door to Birk’s cabin was ajar. Ferguson could see part of Birk’s bed, its covers taut and neat.
He pushed the barrel of his shotgun into the crack and edged the door open. Mildly surprised not to find Birk’s body on the bed, he slipped into the cabin. It looked pretty much exactly as he remembered from the other day.
Back topside, Ferguson took out a knife and hacked off the lines holding down the tarp. The two crates below the plastic were empty.
“How are we doing?” yelled Thera from the other boat. She’d cut her engine and was drifting toward him.
“Not so well,” said Ferguson.
“Should I come aboard?”
“No, I’m just about done here. Come up alongside. I’ll be right back.”
Ferguson went up to the bridge area, looking for a logbook or some other records. None were visible, and the only chart he could find was a generic map that looked as if it came from a geographic atlas; it surely wasn’t t he sort of thing a sailor would use to plot a long trip. Birk, who thought he was a real sailor, would surely have used real charts.
Ferguson looked around for a gun locker, interested in a grenade launcher or something large enough to stop another boat. Birk had stowed a variety of weapons on his first yacht, partly for defense and mostly to wow visitors. Most likely, thought Ferguson, he would have done the same aboard the Sharia.
There were lockers in a storeroom next to the main lounge. In one there was a kit for an SA-7. Designed as an antiair weapon, the lightweight shoulder-launched missile would home in on any heat source, and Ferguson thought he could use it against a ship if necessary. His credit was good enough that the arms dealer wouldn’t mind if he borrowed a few items.
He surely wouldn’t; his body had been stuffed into the longest of the lockers, right over a cache of grenade launchers.
~ * ~
2
BAGHDAD
Corrine watched the president as the audience of Iraqi government representatives rose to applaud. His gaze mixed confidence with just a touch of bemused awe, as if he were wondering to himself why everyone rose in his honor. The suggestion of humility had stood him well in politics, but it was not part of the polished act of being a politician; Jonathon McCarthy really was a humble man, or in his words, “one who knows where he stands in God’s eye.” It was a perspective, he had told her during his presidential campaign, that helped give him strength during difficult times.
That hadn’t made sense to her then, but now she saw part of what he meant. McCarthy could see himself as one small step in a long march toward a goal, a view that helped him persevere against great odds but a difficult one for a powerful man or woman to take. It must be nearly impossible if you were president.
“Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister, cabinet members, parliament,” said the president, beginning his speech. “It has been a long, difficult journey here since the dictator was deposed and incarcerated three years ago. There has been a great deal of suffering in this country and more pain than words can say.”
Corrine listened as he continued, talking about the hope of democracy and the need for Iraq and other countries in the Middle East to find their own path to the future. “Religion will play an important role, as it always has, throughout the world, not just in the Middle East but especially in the Middle East,” he said. “Islam is built on strong traditions of justice, of kindness, of strength, which are essential to the future. It also, like many religions, has given rise to fanaticism from time to time. So has Christianity. So has Judaism. Islam is not the destructive, backward-looking religion that some—in the West as well as the East—have tried to pretend. And the countries whose people embrace it must shun that path and look to a hopeful, positive future.”
The hall rose as one. Corrine watched the president savor the moment.
“The path will be a difficult and winding one, full of hard and bitter retreats and reversals,” he continued. “We must persevere. All of us—Iraqi and American, Muslim and Christian, Jew and nonbeliever—must persevere and put aside our differences, avoid the temptation to destroy, and instead build toward the shining future that lies ahead . . .”
~ * ~
3
THE RED SEA
“We missed it,” Ferguson told Thera back aboard the diving boat. “Either it’s in one of those tankers we passed, or it was delivered on shore somewhere.”
“Maybe Birk never had it. Maybe that’s why he’s dead.”
“Nah. Birk doesn’t lie. Especially about stuff like that.”
Ferguson took out his sat phone and called the Cube to talk to Corrigan. Rather than getting the photo interpreter to look at the satellite reconnaissance again, he asked for Thomas Ciello.
Corrigan gladly handed him off.
“Thomas, this is Ferg. I need you to pull out a series of satellite photos on the area where we are, going back say a week. Fifty miles one way or another. First I want to know if there are any ships that have been in more or less the same place over that time or at least during the last few days. Then I need you to look at the deck of the ship today; see if you see anything different.”
It took the analyst about five minutes to bring the photos up on his screen. In the meantime, Thera pointed the boat northward and set the throttle to full.
“There is a ship,” Thomas told Ferguson. “There’s an old tanker about five miles north of you that’s been anchored there for three or four days. There’s something on the shore side of it, maybe a small boat, but it’s hard to see because of the angle.”
“Get me a GPS location. Then give me Corrigan.”
Corrigan came on the line after Thomas passed along the reading.
&
nbsp; “I want you to call the Saudi military and the government,” Ferguson told him. “Tell them Mecca’s being targeted by a missile on a tanker in the Red Sea. Use the open channel to make sure it goes through. No scramble. Do it right now.”
“Are you sure, Ferg?”
“Do it, Jack. Now.”