The Socotra Incident

by Richard Fox

  “Two minutes!” he yelled, his voice barely carrying over the din. The crew chief turned and reached for the sleeping Mike.

  Ritter dropped the airsickness bag and grabbed a handful of the crew chief’s vest before he could make a painful mistake. Ritter jerked the man back and shook his head as he pointed at his own chest. The crew chief shrugged Ritter off and went back to the fore of the aircraft.

  Ritter rose to his feet and took a few tentative steps toward Mike, one hand across the narrow aisle holding on for balance. Ritter picked up a foot and gave Mike’s knee a quick kick.

  Mike’s hand snapped out, a naked blade glinting in the wan sunlight. Mike’s head snapped from side to side, his Applegate-Fairbairn held in a reverse grip in front of his chest. He’d slept like that for as long as Ritter had known him. Carlos, who’d known Mike for a few years longer, had never explained why the quiet man had such a reaction to being woken up.

  Ritter held up a finger and mouthed, “One minute.”

  The Osprey thumped onto the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan, and the rear hatch lowered with a pneumatic whine. Air whirled through the cabin as the Osprey’s blades churned through the air. A sailor in a blue vest ran up the ramp and waved for Ritter and Mike to follow him.

  To an untrained eye, the deck of the Reagan was chaos. Sailors in different-colored vests ran between F/A-18 fighters crowding the edges of the deck. Steam hissed from a catapult built into the deck as it retracted toward the aft of the flight deck.

  An elevator, nothing but a floor, raised another Osprey onto the flight deck. The wings rotated ninety degrees over the craft, and the blades folded to save space in the cramped holding decks below. A three-barrel, belly-mounted Gatling gun beneath the aircraft was a marked difference from the craft that had delivered Ritter to the Reagan.

  Ritter kept his eyes locked on the sailor as he followed him into the ship. They descended into a stairwell and past the cavernous hangar deck, where sailors readied more aircraft amid carts carrying laser-guided bombs.

  “What’s going on?” Ritter asked their guide.

  “Nothing, sir. Normal day of flight ops,” the sailor said as he twisted open the handle on a hatch.

  The sailor pointed into a dimly lit hallway toward a single hatch surrounded by warning placards and a spinning red light.

  “This is as far as I can go. They’re expecting you,” the sailor said.

  Ritter stepped into the hatch and made his way to the closed door, which opened before he could knock on it.

  A sailor in fatigue pants and an Under Armour T-shirt stood in the doorway, six inches taller and probably fifty pounds heavier than Ritter; all the additional weight was muscle. He had a jet-black head of hair with a short goatee and pale-green eyes.

  “Come on, we’re almost done with the briefing,” the sailor said. He led Ritter and Mike past racks of weapons and open lockers full of deflated Zodiac boats and ropes.

  The briefing room was full of SEALs, most sporting just enough facial hair to mark them way out of navy grooming regs, practically flaunted their privilege to break the rules for normal sailors. A dozen SEALs stood and sat in a semicircle around a big screen TV bolted to a bulkhead.

  A man with a gold fig leaf rank insignia on his uniform took his attention from an old photo of the Opongsan. He was whipcord thin but looked like he was made of steel cable; he had close-cropped blond hair, and nearly invisible stubble covered his face.

  “Ah, our ‘specialists’ have arrived,” the lieutenant commander said.

  “Maybe they can tell us what we’re really doing,” said one of the SEALs.

  “I’m Lieutenant Commander Devereaux, this is team Red Five. Would you care to introduce yourselves?” Devereaux said with false smile.

  The hostility was expected. No serviceman liked charging into a fight blind or with lousy intelligence to guide him.

  “I’m Eric. He’s Mike,” Ritter said. “You should have the target packet for Kamal Mustafa, already.”

  “Sure, we’ve got it. Thing is, we aren’t quite sure what Kamal is doing on board a North Korean fishing boat.” Devereaux clicked on a laptop and brought up the photo of Kamal, who was actually a random detainee in Iraq who’d loaned his picture to the target packet.

  “Great question. Why don’t we ask him?” Ritter said.

  “Do you have any idea why the ship is heading due east from its last anchorage?” Devereaux asked.

  “No. Last I heard it was off the coast of Somalia, perfectly still,” Ritter said.

  SEALs grumbled at the answer.

  “Three hours ago the Opongsan started moving. We’ve had a drone on it since it weighed anchor. There’s no activity anywhere above decks or radio transmissions. Do you know what’s due east of Somalia?” Devereaux asked.

  “A whole lot of nothing until you hit the Maldives islands,” Ritter answered.

  “Correct,” Devereaux said. “Which makes no sense, as that ship will run out of fuel long before that happens. So what is going on here, Eric?”

  Nothing like getting put on the spot to ruin his day. Sticking to the spirit, instead of the letter, of his orders seemed like the best play.

  “We believe Kamal has arranged to deliver a supply of nuclear material to the Iranian navy. One of their submarines will rendezvous with the Opongsan well away from shipping lanes and take on the material. So unless we want to deal with a crew of smugglers and an Iranian sub that doesn’t want to be messed with, I suggest we get going,” Ritter said. Why tell the truth when a lie will do?

  “No one said anything about radioactive material,” one of the SEALs said, a ginger-haired man in his mid-twenties.

  “Fitz is our explosives tech. He’s a bit more jittery than the rest of us,” Devereaux said.

  “I’m jittery about my rod and tackle falling off if I stand next to the wrong connex for five minutes,” Fitz said.

  Men shifted and grumbled. Fighting a foe you could see was easy for them; a silent poison like radioactive material, however, wasn’t something that could be beaten with bullets.

  “If the Iranians get this material, it will shave years off their nuclear weapons program. We can kill this monster in the crib or wait for it to start eating cities,” Ritter said. “If it means anything, Mike and I will be right next to you when you board the ship.”

  Ritter dangled the shared danger in front of the SEALs. There was a marked difference between how warriors reacted to a leader saying, “Go get ’em” versus “Follow me.”

  “And what expertise are you bringing to this operation? You don’t look like the DS&T geeks or some NRC mouth breather who’d handle fissile material,” Fitz said.

  “Who handles tactical questioning?” Ritter asked the room. A SEAL with a pockmarked face raised his hand.

  “What rules are you operating under?”

  “FM 34-52, the Detainee Treatment Act, some fucking UN mandate the Secretary of the Navy thought was clever.” The SEAL’s eyes crept up and to the right as he tried to remember the rest of the governing documents that would restrict how he could question anyone they found on the Opongsan.

  “We’re the interrogators, and we have no rules,” Ritter said.

  Natalie pressed her key against the door lock and walked into her hotel room. Technically, the room was under the name Gloria Steinerman, an import/export logistics specialist sent to Austria to smooth out issues with a shipment of Mozartkugel chocolates to the American market just in time for Christmas.

  She shut the door and scratched under the faux scalp of the shoulder-length blonde wig Shannon had given to her that morning.

  “Can I take this thing off?” she said.

  “How many ways can I say no? Stick to your cover until this is done,” Shannon said through her earpiece. At least the wig concealed the plastic nub deep in her right ear.

  The room was dark hardwood furniture and mirrors. The king-sized bed boasted one thousand-count Egyptian cotton sheets and the latest in Swedish foam mat
tress technology. The receptionist had taken the time to explain the “sleep enhancements” the Hapsburg Hotel had added to the rooms in their last renovation. She shut the window blinds featuring 99 percent sunlight blockage. She didn’t need an audience from the high-rise across the street.

  Natalie hefted her carry-on onto the duvet and unzipped the bag. A hotel room that specialized in great sleep—what a concept, she thought. She put a surgical mask over her mouth and snapped on a pair of latex gloves.

  “Ten minutes to auction,” Shannon said.

  “Then I’m two minutes ahead of schedule,” Natalie said. She looked at the ceiling and found the panel third from the wall and second from the easternmost window. She dragged a round table under the panel and took a plastic box from her carry-on.

  “Not to rush you, but hurry,” Tony said.

  Natalie kicked off her shoes, climbed on the table, and opened the box. A metal and plastic clamp, with tiny steel needles that looked more delicate than dangerous and made the device almost look like a set of fake vampire teeth used in Halloween costumes, rested in a bed of foam. This vampire clamp was connected to the local 4G cell phone network and the supercomputers Tony had at his disposal. Once she had the bug put on the wire running into Bronislava’s room, they’d see everything going in and out of her computer. Shannon would know all the other bids and edge out the rest of the competition by a reasonable margin.

  She reached up and moved the ceiling panel aside slowly and deliberately.

  “Get the clamp on the hard line. Thick, green wire,” Tony said. Natalie shifted the panel over and considered half a dozen insults for Tony. She’d been over this implant operation a hundred times in the last day and had trained for this exact mission when she was in Virginia. She put a lit penlight in her mouth and looked up.

  What she didn’t train for was what to do if the wire was missing.

  “It’s not here,” she said, her words garbled from the light. The space above the ceiling panel was bare but for a few wisps of spiderwebs.

  “No, that can’t be right,” Tony said.

  Natalie grabbed a chair and set it atop the table. It wobbled as she climbed up and got her head into the space between the panels and the true ceiling. The first thing her light found was a desiccated mouse; then she saw linear shadows in the distance.

  “I’ve got it. It’s...maybe twenty feet to the east,” she said.

  “The next room over,” Shannon said.

  Tony protested, “The blueprints and schematics the hotel filed with the city the last time they—”

  “Natalie, take the EM key and your kit. Get to the other room now,” Shannon said.

  Natalie let the penlight drop from her mouth into her hand.

  “There anyone in there?” she said as she knelt down. The chair on top of the table wobbled like Jell-O as she reached for the chair back.

  “No, we’ve had the security feed on the hallway since this morning. No one’s come or gone,” Shannon said.

  Natalie tried to step on the table, and that’s the moment when the chair decided to slip out from under her. She tipped over and fell onto the bed with a squeak. The chair clattered against the floor. Natalie looked up at the ceiling and marveled at how comfortable the bed was.

  “What was that?” Shannon asked.

  Natalie pushed herself up and picked up a can of hair spray from her carry-on.

  “Nothing. Going next door with the implant and the skeleton key,” she said.

  “Seven minutes,” Tony said.

  Natalie didn’t bother to put her shoes back on as she raced out of the room. After a quick glance up and down the hallway to see whether anyone was watching, Natalie proceeded to walk calmly and purposefully to the next room down the hall. Always act like you belong, her training had demanded. Not like you’re about to commit a felony.

  She held the can of hair spray against the card key lock of the room and waited. A half second later, something whirled inside the can. The locks of most hotels used key cards and magnetic locks on the doors. With a powerful enough magnet, like the one hidden in the false bottom of her hair spray, most hotel doors would unlock.

  The door lock clicked, and Natalie pushed her way in. The room stank of cigarette smoke and stale food. The bed sheets were a twisted mass, and an open suitcase was on a folding luggage rack. There was no sound from anywhere in the room.

  Natalie shut the door without a sound and peeked into the bathroom. Empty.

  No one was on the unkempt bed either.

  “Okay, unoccupied, but there’s definitely someone staying here,” she said.

  “Hurry!” Shannon said.

  Natalie had to move a room service tray with half-eaten eggs, bread crust and a smashed cigarette butt from the round table. She took a mental picture before she moved it; everything would have to go back perfectly once she was done, or she’d risk alerting the occupant that he’d had a visitor.

  She set the table under the target panel and got a knee on it.

  “Natalie, a man just got out of the elevator and is heading your direction,” Shannon said.

  Natalie’s heart started pounding, and a cocktail of adrenaline and fear poured into her blood. This wasn’t what she needed to hear.

  She got up on the table and knocked aside the ceiling panel, heedless of the dust and particulates sprinkling down. She put the penlight in her mouth. A mass of wires ran though the plenum space, bound together by black zip ties into a fasces.

  “Irene, get his face in the system. Is he known?” Shannon said.

  Please shut up please shut up please shut up, Natalie thought as she dug through the wires. She found the only thick green wire and tugged it to the outer edge of the mass of wires. She took the clamp and sank the teeth into the wire. Lights lit up on the device.

  “Contact,” Natalie said. Something blinked deeper in the dark space, farther down the line of wires. Something else was attached to the wires. Natalie brought the penlight up to illuminate it.

  “Receiving, we’re tapped into the Russian bear’s feed. One minute to spare,” Tony said.

  “Natalie, you’re about to have company,” Shannon said.

  “There’s another wiretap,” Natalie said. “I can’t get it.” She put the ceiling panel back, leaped from the table, and shoved it back into place.

  The door beeped, and the handle rattled.

  Natalie ran into the bathroom on her tiptoes, the wiretap case and can of hair spray in hand. She shut the bathroom door as the door beeped again. Her magnetic skeleton key must have upset the inner workings of the lock.

  She heard the door open and stood in front of the mirror with the hair spray in hand.

  The door to the bathroom swung open, and a well-built, olive-skinned man in his late thirties, one hand undoing his zipper, stepped into the room.

  Natalie let out a blood-curdling shriek, and the man leaped a foot in the air.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” Natalie shouted.

  The man backed against the wall beyond the bathroom, looking at Natalie like she was an eight-headed Hydra and not a woman standing barefoot in his bathroom.

  “This”—he looked around and down at the key in his hand—“this is my room,” he said. His accent was Middle Eastern and not the Arabic accent she’d grown used to during her time in Iraq.

  “No, it isn’t.” Natalie stomped a foot for emphasis. “Get out right now before I start screaming, ‘Rape’!” She put her hands akimbo against her hips.

  “We’ve got a hit on him,” Shannon said.

  “Look, there is my suitcase.” The man pointed into the room.

  “What?” Natalie did her best to feign surprise. “I stepped out of my room for a second to look at the Belvedere Palace out of the hallway window and came back into my room. My room. Number six four three. Look at the door.”

  “This is room six four five. Look, ah, maybe my door was a little open. You came in by accident. Yes?” he said.

 
Natalie pressed the fingers of both hands over her mouth. “Oh. My. God. Am I really that much of an idiot?”

  “Here, look.” The man stepped deeper into the room and waved an arm at his mess.

  Natalie took a tentative step into the hallway and readied a finger on the hair spray cap.

  “He’s a known associate of Ari. He’s Israeli intelligence, Mossad,” Shannon said.

  The man looked over his bed, then saw the tray of food. Natalie hadn’t put it back on the table.

  He whirled around and reached for Natalie’s arm. She brought the hair spray up and blasted him in the eyes. Tony had designed the false exterior of his devices to function. The Mossad agent reared back, pawing at his face. She snapped a kick out and caught him square in the groin.

  The man doubled over, and Natalie swung an elbow into his temple. The blow smashed his head against the wall hard enough to dent the drywall. Natalie grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him to the floor. He lay on the ground, groaning.

  “Natalie! Say something,” Shannon said.

  “He’s down. Not sure for how long,” Natalie said. She looked around for a weapon in case he did get back up.

  “You need to keep him down until this mission is finished,” Shannon said.

  The man groaned. A leg flopped against the floor.

  “Um, okay,” Natalie said. She reached into the open suitcase and pulled out a belt.

  Shannon stood behind Tony at his workstation. Her arms were crossed, and one foot was tapping as she watched the time to submit her bid for the Club K tick away one second at a time. One screen showed all the incoming Internet traffic to Bronislava’s room. An e-mail popped up with a price and a buyer code.

  “Only one left besides us,” Irene said. “Top bid is thirty-two million.”

  “One minute to go. Who’s left?” Shannon asked.

  “My guess is Ari,” Irene said.

  “He’s watching this too,” Shannon said and tugged at her bottom lip. “Get ready, thirty-five-and-a-half-million bid.”

  Irene swallowed hard and typed up an e-mail. Her mouse cursor hovered over the send button.

  “Ten seconds until the deadline,” Tony said.