by Larry Bond
~ * ~
A
s the tanker came in sight, Ferguson coiled a long nylon rope around his arm, adjusted the mask and snorkel, then slipped off the edge of the diving boat. The line unfurled until he was about ten yards aft and to the starboard side of the craft, then tugged and began pulling him forward through the water. He waited until he could see the bow of the tanker, I hen untangled his hand and let go of the rope.
As the diving vessel continued northward, Ferguson swam toward the ship.
Neither Thomas nor the photo interpreter who’d looked at the satellite pictures earlier had said that the small boat near the tanker was the boat that had been rented with Thatch’s credit card. Ferguson was actually just guessing, though when he saw the name painted at the stern was Jericho lie figured his guess had been pretty good.
Ferguson had put on flippers, but he was also wearing a Kevlar vest beneath his wetsuit, and though it was considered relatively light for the protection it offered, it still slowed him down. As he swam toward the boat, he heard voices floating down from the tanker. The Jericho itself was empty. A metal ladder for swimmers was bolted at the stern. He climbed up over it and into the vessel, then unzipped the MP5N from the waterproof pack he’d lugged on his back. He clipped a pair of the smoke grenades in the belt from the pack at his chest and took out the Beretta pistol as a backup. He stuffed two extra magazines for the MP5 in his pockets and prepared to say hello to whoever was above on the tanker.
One line fore and another aft held the Jericho in place against the ship. Ferguson went to the line near the bow, tugged gently, then began hauling himself up the tanker’s flank.
Out on the diving boat, Thera cut her speed and turned toward the channel, making a slow, lazy turn back south. She couldn’t see much on the tanker from where she was, though she did see one sailor at the side watching her.
She had to do better than that. Letting the boat drift, she went to the forward deck and peeled off her outer clothes, revealing her bathing suit.
The rope holding the Jericho to the tanker came off the side through an oblong opening about a foot high and two feet wide. When Ferguson reached it, he craned his head toward the ship, trying to peer through, but the metal structure prevented any view of the deck. He had to go over blind.
Ferguson took a breath, then pulled himself up over the side.
Thirty feet to his right, a stubby, aircraftlike missile sat in the middle of the deck. Two men were working on one of the wings.
Ferguson lifted his MP5N and fired a brief burst into the air.
“Hello! What we want to do is move away from there,” he shouted. “Back up! Now, boys.”
The men threw up their hands. Ferguson glanced toward the super-structure of the ship. There were two or three people there, and at least one other sailor near the rail on the opposite side of the ship.
“Who are you?” yelled a man.
“That’s my Siren missile,” said Ferguson. “I want it back.”
“Where exactly do you want it?” said Ravid, emerging from a hatchway on the deck to Ferguson’s right.
“Raise the pistol at me, and I’ll shoot the missile,” Ferguson warned, guessing—correctly—that Ravid had a weapon in the hand he had down by his side.
Ravid held the gun up but not aimed at him. “You would die for Islam?”
“I don’t quite look at it that way,” said Ferguson. He kept the MP5N aimed at the missile. “You really think it would be a good idea to drop a Siren missile on Mecca?”
“It’s a start. I only wish it were a nuke.”
“Because some crazies killed your wife and son?”
“She was a Muslim,” said Ravid. “It didn’t save her.”
“I’m sorry. This isn’t good, though. You can’t just kill people, right? The people there are as innocent as your wife and kid.”
“No, they’re not.”
“God wouldn’t want you to kill innocent people.”
“There is no God,” said Ravid. “So you’ve dogged me the whole way?”
“Not the whole way. Tell me you didn’t blow up Thatch.”
Ravid frowned.
“Just an accident?” Ferguson took another sidestep on the deck. He’d been working to try and get close enough to Ravid to roll and knock him off balance, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
“There are no accidents.”
“Oh, sure there are.” Ferguson took another half step. “People die in bathtubs all the time.”
“You won’t.” He raised his gun.
“This isn’t going to make you feel better.”
“Oh, yes, it will.” He fired, striking Ferguson in the chest and side, the bullets piercing his wetsuit.
Ferguson, protected by his bulletproof vest, pitched himself downward and fired his gun. His bullets caught Ravid across the chest as well, twisting his aim wide and sending him back in a stagger.
Revenge would be so sweet, thought Ravid. All these years he had pretended to be one of them, and now he would have his revenge.
He fired his gun and gave the order to fire the missile. But his last shots were unaimed, and the words a bare whisper. Ferguson fired another burst, striking him in the head. Ravid tried to talk but choked, his last thought dying on his tongue: So sweet, revenge.
By the time Ferg got to his feet, the others had scrambled for cover. He ran past the missile launcher to the other side, looking first for them and then examining the launcher, trying to think of how he might disable it. A thick wire ran off one side of the metal base. As he reached into his pocket for his phone to call the weapons expert, the missile ignited. Surprised by the rumble, he turned and emptied his gun into the billowing smoke, but it had no visible effect; the missile shot off the ship.
“Use the SA-7,” he yelled to Thera. “The SA-7!”
Then he dove headlong into the water below, arcing down to the waves.
Thera had already sighted the Siren with the weapon even as Ferguson dove. The surface-to-air missile leapt from the launcher, trailing the thick oval of flame and smoke heading toward land.
As an early cruise missile, the Siren had one great vulnerability: it was basically a slow and lumbering airplane, and presented a fat and juicy target to even a rudimentary air-to-air missile such as the SA-7. But Thera had given the siren too much of a head start. After a few hundred yards the SA-7 stopped gaining on its target; it began to steer right, then faltered and disappeared.
“Jesus,” said Thera.
Something flashed in the distance. There was a loud thunderclap, and then a bright finger of flame and a plume of black smoke rose from the shoreline.
“It blew up! It blew up on its own,” said Thera as Ferguson climbed aboard the boat.
“No,” said Ferguson. “Listen.”
It began as a whisper in the distance, but within a few moments the throaty roar of a pair of F-15s boomed high overhead. The missile had been shot down by an Israeli interceptor.
“Helicopters,” said Ferguson, pointing behind him. A pair of Sikorsky Vas’ur 2000 (improved H-53s) and a quartet of Bell Tsefa gunships roared over the water from the north. “They’re going to want us to lay flat with our hands out. Nice thong, by the way. Wicked Weasel?”
~ * ~
4
THE RED SEA
Tischler was with the troops who roped down to the tanker. He took his time coming to the diving boat. By then Ferguson had been searched by several Israelis—it was obvious Thera was unarmed—and allowed to get up off the deck. Ferguson went below and retrieved a beer from the ice chest. He was drinking one when the Mossad supervisor came aboard.
“Why’d you wait so long if you knew what was going on?” Ferguson asked him.
“I didn’t know what was going on. We followed you.”
“You couldn’t have found Ravid on your own?”
Tischler didn’t answer. They could have, certainly, though they might not have thought to if the Americans hadn’t raised questions.
Or at least that’s what Ferguson thought. Tischler wasn’t the type to say.
“The operation was always to get Meles,” said Ferguson. “And you tipped us off about Khazaal as a matter of courtesy. Am I right?”
Tischler shrugged.
“But Ravid wanted more. He didn’t tell you, but he’d probably been looking at getting more for quite a while. Did he stumble across Seven Angels, or did they come to him?” asked Ferguson.
“I assume he ran into them in Syria. There are all sorts of crazies there.”
“The sister ... is she on the boat?”
Tischler shook his head. “I would have told you if she was. There are no Americans. Probably Ravid killed her.”
“So he used Thatch’s credit card, not her,” said Ferguson.
“I would believe so.”
Ferguson thought so as well.
“Ravid took Khazaal’s jewels and used Coldwell to buy the missile, because Birk might not have sold it to him. And you just watched?” said Ferguson.
“We would not have let that happen if we had been in a position to observe it.”
“You expect me to believe it?”
“You missed it as well. You were there, Ferguson. It happened under your nose.”
“True enough.”
“I wish that the outcome were different. He was a valuable man.”
Ferguson thought about the words Tischler chose: not a good man but a valuable man.
“Listen, Tisch. I have one question that I absolutely need an answer to,” said Ferguson. “You give it to me, or you give it to Parnelles. Either way, we get an answer: The suicide bomber who took out Thatch . . . coincidence?”
“Coincidence. Unfortunate,” added Tischler. “It would have been useful to see who he spoke to.”
“And Ravid being in Tripoli when the attempt was made on Alston . . . was he there because of the rocket fuel? I know Meles was actually the one who set that up and that there have to be more Scuds than the one Rankin got, but I want to know about that attempt on Alston. Was it a coincidence? Or did he arrange that, too?”
“He was en route to Syria. He had to make contact with Meles in Lebanon. One believes in coincidences, or one doesn’t. You’re free to go.” Tischler turned to go back to the small boat he’d used to come over from the tanker.
Ferguson went over to the side. “Hey.”
Tischler turned around.
“I’m sorry about Ravid,” said Ferguson. “I heard his wife and kid died. If that had happened to us, we would have pulled him. In the old days, you guys would’ve, too.”
“What you would do is of no concern to me, Ferguson. I told your father that a long time ago, and I tell you that now.”
“You figured you could ride Ravid one more time, right? To get Meles. Because Meles was worth it.” Ferguson smiled, because he could tell from the slight twitch in Tischler’s face that he had hit the mark. “Would you have felt that way if he had destroyed Mecca and every Arab in the world descended on Israel?”
“You’re wrong, Ferguson. What happened here is something completely different. American extremists wanted to cause Armageddon. They attacked Mecca, and he died stopping them.”
“You think anyone’s going to believe that?”
“It’s the truth,” said Tischler flatly. “Or perhaps it wasn’t crazies. Perhaps it was a CIA plot from the very beginning.”
“What are you going to do with the people on the tanker?”
“They’re my prisoners,” said Tischler. “They’re Israelis. They’re coming back to Israel.”
“You have charges that will hold them?”
“We have a number of charges, beginning with currency transfers that were in violation of Israeli and international banking laws.”
“You recover the jewels?”
“Not yet.”
“You might want to look on Birk’s boat, south of here,” said Ferguson. “Those people are going to stand trial, right?”
“That’s not my decision.”
“I could arrest them and turn them over to Saudi authorities,” said Ferguson. “They were targeting Saudi territory.”
“You seem to lack authority to make an arrest stick.”
“I could call the Saudis.”
“By the time they get here, we will be gone. In any event, this will be a matter for the courts to consider ... if it gets that far.”
“The Saudis know what their target was.”
“They’re my prisoners, Ferguson. You’re as obnoxious as your father was and twice as stubborn.”
“I take that as a great compliment.”
~ * ~
D
o you think they’ll put them on trial?” Thera asked after Tischler and his men left.
“They want to keep this quiet. They’ll come up with some BS charge to keep them on ice, like we would do a plea bargain in the States. There’s no way they’ll risk any sort of serious leak.”
“That’s why you told Corrigan to call the Saudis on an open line,” said Thera. “You thought the Israelis were listening in. You think they set this up, and they only intervened because they thought it would come out.”
“I was just hedging my bets in case I was wrong,” said Ferguson. “I figured they were tracking us, but I couldn’t be sure. Probably they meant to take out the ship all along, and we just happened to be in the right place at the right time. We were in the wrong place with Meles and Khazaal. Things even out.”
“If you believe in coincidences,” said Thera.
“Look at it as God’s work, if you want. Of course, then you have to decide whose God it was.”
“God doesn’t work that way.”
“How would you know?”
Ferguson laughed at her frown, steering the boat back toward its home port.
~ * ~
~ * ~
SUBURBAN VIRGINIA
TWO WEEKS LATE
Just in from his morning rounds visiting the shut-in members of his parish, Father Tim Casey sat down at the kitchen table in the rectory. The pain today was a little more intense than the day before, which itself was more than the day before that. But it was the Lord’s pain, he told himself, and he could manage it. He would push himself until the end: hardly a struggle at all, as long as he caught his breath.
How he would tell the children that the parish council had vetoed the winter basketball program—now that was a problem he couldn’t resolve. It was the sort of secular matter that had to be left to the council, truly, but it would break the kids’ hearts, and a few of their parents’ as well. That pain he couldn’t bear; he was too weak to see others’ distress.
He’d put it off another day at least.
Casey picked through the mail. Most of it was junk, advertisements and the like. There was an electric bill and a belated card on his anniversary as a priest that he recognized from a former student, a conniving no-good liar, now a rich banker in Boston, God forgive him.
There was an envelope from the morning mail addressed to him and marked personal in large red letters, with a stamp he didn’t recognize and no return address. He picked it up and tore open the end as his housekeeper came in.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Father? An everyday miracle.”
Mrs. Perez was in the habit of exaggerating, and she could very well have been talking about a new cleanser for the kitchen floor, father Casey gave her only part of his attention, reserving the rest for the envelope. There was an odd book in it, the sort that the priest associated with raffles.
It was only as he flipped through them that he realized they were airline tickets. And a hotel. Transfers between them. And a bus tour.
All for Jerusalem.
Nonrefundable, according to the script.
“Anonymous,” said Mrs. Perez.
He’d find a way to get these exchanged, he thought. They would fund a quarter of the basketball season, if not more.
Still, if he couldn’t. . .
God was tempting him. He
would do the right thing. The priest felt a twinge of guilt as he looked up.
“He spoke to the treasurer himself. The money was wired into the account,” said Mrs. Perez.
“What are you talking about?” he asked the housekeeper. “Who spoke to the treasurer?”
“A parishioner who wishes to remain anonymous. He funded the basketball season—the entire season—And asked for not so much as a God bless you in return. He must be a saint, father. A true saint.”