Spy ah-4

by Ted Bell

  “I’m going back in the water?”

  “Damn right. You’re going over the transom. Soon as you give Papa the gun. You’re going crawl astern, get your ass up and over that transom on the double, and then you’re going to start swimming like a one-armed bandit, get as far away from this boat as possible.”

  “What about the mako?”

  “Screw the mako.”

  “You’re messing with me, man. Right?”

  “How else you think we’re going to draw his ass out so Papa can shoot him?”

  “I’m already hit once. How many times I got to get shot today?”

  “That’s the whole idea, Sharkey. That’s how we’re going to draw him out. Get him to reveal his position. It’s the only way your old man has a chance of getting a shot off without getting his head blown off.”

  “Aw, shit, Stokely, man, I dunno about this. Can’t you think of another plan?”

  “We haven’t got a lot of time for tactical discussion here, Luis. You might have noticed I’m slowly bleeding to death. You wanted to get involved in this stuff, now you’re involved in it. Welcome to my world. You’re tuned into the Stokely channel now, brother. All shit, all day, all the time. This is not unusual. Shit just exactly like this goes down all the damn time. All the time.”

  “Jesus, I don’t know, Stoke.”

  “Luis! Pay attention. You can do this. Now snake your one-armed ass over to that ladder and hand your old man the damn rifle. Okay?”

  “Yeah. Fuck. I’ll do it.”

  “Gimme your hat first.”

  “My Yankee cap? For what?”

  “Another idea. I’m going to stick it on top of this rod and jiggle it up and down while you’re crawling. Help distract him.”

  “This sucks, man,” Luis said, handing him the cap.

  “You’re going to be good at this shit, Luis, I’m serious. You’ve got all the right components. Trust me. I’ve seen ’em come and I’ve seen ’em go.”

  “Lots of turnover on your personal life channel? Is that right? Jesus.”

  Luis muttered the whole way across the deck. He snaked along using the rifle in his good hand and his left arm fin for propulsion. It looked a little weird but it was effective.

  Stoke looked up at the flying bridge. Luis Sr. was crouched up there, staring down at him, screwing the cap back on his bottle of Triple X. His eyes were bright and he had a huge smile on his face. He wasn’t drunk. He just knew damn well what was going on. And he had faith.

  Stoke took heart.

  The old man of the sea was into it.

  Papa reached down for the butt of the rifle when his son managed to raise it high enough for him to grab hold. Once his father had the gun securely in his grasp, Shark dropped back to the deck and instantly started crawling aft. Sharkey was scared but Stoke could see he was going to do the thing, go over the stern and swim away from the boat even though it was the last thing on earth he wanted to do.

  Stoke had moved himself aft, crouched in the corner of the cockpit on the port side. He had Sharkey’s faded Yankee baseball cap on the end of the fishing rod and now, his eyes on Papa up on the bridge, he raised the navy blue cap above the gunwale, jigging it up and down a few times.

  Shots rang out instantly and one of them put a neat hole in Sharkey’s Yankee cap. The cap spun but stayed on the rod. The guy could shoot. Stoke scrambled forward a few feet, bouncing the hat around and the rounds kept coming. Luis was huddled by the transom, waiting for Stoke’s signal.

  “Go, Sharkey, go, go, go!” he said to Luis.

  Sharkey didn’t say anything, he just did it. He pushed up off the deck and over the transom, hitting the water with a big splash, kicking and using his good arm to paddle furiously away from the stern. Stoke kept moving the cap around as best he could, holding the shooter’s attention until the guy figured it out which Stoke knew wouldn’t take much longer.

  He looked up at Papa on the tower. The old man looked ready and now was as good a time as any. Most of the rounds were aimed at the Yankee cap and a few were zinging off the stern, going into the water aft where Sharkey was once more unfortunately swimming for his life.

  “You see the shooter?” Stoke shouted up to the old man. “You know where he is?”

  “Si, señor, yo se!” Papa said, a huge smile on his face. “I got this fish in my sights. In the bushes beneath the coconut palm tree.”

  “You got the angle? You ready?”

  “Si. Es muy perfecto.”

  “Do it.”

  PAPA SHOWED HIMSELF then, stood right up, bringing the rifle up into firing position and aiming it even as he got to his feet. He swung the barrel to his left and started firing furiously on semiauto into the mangrove bushes. The rounds were aimed at the base of the tiny island’s lone coconut palm tree, splintering it and sending debris into the air.

  “Aieeee!”

  A scream came from the island. A long dying wail. Papa kept firing, expended the whole mag, and then the screaming stopped for good.

  “Bueno, amigo!” Stoke said, hauling himself up to the gunwale so that he could see for himself what the hell was going on. Smoke was rising from the badly shot up mangrove.

  “You think I did it?” Papa asked, grinning. “Es muerto?”

  “Yeah,” Stoke said, grinning, “I think he’s muerto all right. We’ll know soon enough.”

  “Luis!” Papa cried out, waving his arms at his son in the water about twenty yards astern. “It’s okay! It’s okay! Come back!”

  He nudged the throttles, backing down slowly toward his son.

  “Your boy was very brave, Papa. Help me get him aboard.”

  “What we do now, señor?” the old fella said coming down the ladder with the rifle.

  “We got to reel in your catch over there. Identify what make and model he is. Then we put him on ice in the fishbox and take him back to the dock.”

  “No catch and release, señor?” Papa said with a smile.

  STOKE FELT LIKE he was going to puke or pass out getting to his feet and taking the boathook from its holder underneath the gunwale to help Papa fish Luis out of the water. He stood there a minute, watching Sharkey approach the boat. His head seemed to clear and he thought maybe he was going to be okay here, long as he didn’t try to do too much.

  “We did it,” Luis said, climbing into the boat, smiling his ass off. “Hey, Papa, you are some action hero, man!”

  “De nada,” the old man said, still holding the rifle tenderly.

  “OK, Luis. Now you get up on the bow and get the hook up. Let’s go see what we caught.”

  Papa went inside to the lower helm station and ran the boat right inside the little cove going ahead dead slow. As soon as the bow touched sand he killed the engines. Stoke figured they were in about four feet of water. Sharkey stood on the bow, swinging the hook, and heaved it into the mangroves where it snagged in some thick roots. He jumped in, started wading ashore, headed for the smoking palm tree.

  Ten minutes later Stoke was bending over the copilot. He had a couple of holes in his light blue uniform, flesh wounds. He was still alive. Barely. Stoke leaned in close to see the patch on his shoulder.

  It bore the emblem of the FAV.

  The Fuerza Aérea Venezolana.

  The Venezuelan Air Force. That’s who was buying the missiles.

  Now why the hell would Venezuela be doing that? If the wounded guy lived, he’d just have to ask him that question.

  Suddenly, the guy shuddered. His eyelids fluttered and his lips started moving, too, but nothing was coming out. Stoke bent down, but all he could hear was garbled Spanish.

  “Luis,” Stoke said, “put your ear down here and tell me what this guy is saying,”

  Luis leaned over and listened for a few seconds, a puzzled look on his face.

  “He says ‘Thank you.’ ”

  “What?”

  “Thank you very much, that’s what he’s saying.”

  “That’s a first,” Stoke said. />
  27

  LA SELVA NEGRA

  K illing Americans en masse,” Dr. Abu Musab al Khan told Muhammad Top, “will be mere child’s play. I am assuming, based on endless reports and assertions by you, that all our military assets are firmly in place and that the phalanxes soon to be moving up into the Mexican mountain range have the ability to achieve this objective.”

  “Yes.”

  “All is in readiness with the convoy?” he asked, stroking his beard. “Our friend in Caracas is very nervous.”

  Muhammad Top had been impatiently awaiting this question since Dr. Khan’s arrival the day before.

  “Yes. The assets are in place north of the border. Mexican units, loyal to our cause, await your orders as to when to release the vehicles. As you will soon see, we are fully prepared to strike on all fronts, Dr. Khan,” Top said, locking his eyes on Khan’s. “God willing.”

  “Inshallah. I am looking at the clock above the monitor. Some kind of countdown, I presume?”

  “Yes, Doctor. The countdown was initiated this morning.”

  Top made sure his eye contact with the diminutive scientist was solid for good reason. Khan was now the second most powerful man in the global Islamic terrorist movement. He had known this man for many years. He knew that those shrewd black eyes didn’t just see you, they penetrated your very soul.

  “I bring greetings and prayers for your success from on high.”

  “Please assure the sheikh I am prepared to do my sacred duty. The aggressors will trouble us no more after the Day of Reckoning.”

  Top tried desperately to conceal his surprise at Khan’s mention of Osama. No one in the terrorist community was sure whether or not the sheikh was even alive. A recent tape had been played on al-Jazeerah, but there were doubts as to its authenticity.

  The true leader of the movement, the almost mythical prince Osama, had not been actually seen, publicly or privately, in nearly three years. Not since December of 2004, when he had released his last video. He called for his jihadist warriors to strike Persian Gulf oil supplies and warned the apostate House of Saud that they risked a popular uprising. Then he disappeared. Now, rumor had it, Khan was preparing to succeed the long silent leader.

  The Western media were strangely silent too. The media simply didn’t know what had happened to the man who’d ignited the worldwide Islamic jihad. They didn’t know if the much-vaunted prince of darkness had simply gone deeper into hiding as the American troops closed in on him; or, perhaps, he had simply died. It was still entirely possible he was only lying low, lulling the West into a false sense of complacency while planning some great Armageddon.

  In truth, even so important a figure in the global movement as Muhammad Top did not know the answer to that puzzle. But he knew that it was Abu Musab al Khan who had recently stepped into the media limelight as the “brains” of the organization. If Khan didn’t hold the reins of power, surely he was in the business of seizing them. Top knew that his own success in this current initiative would consolidate Khan’s position in the Arab world.

  And, so did his esteemed guest.

  In any case, Khan was not a man to be trifled with. He was clearly capable of running the movement’s global terror operations. Besides, it was common knowledge that Dr. Khan had personally eviscerated men on the spot for failing his particular kind of eye test. It was said that Khan secreted a viciously curved scimitar within the folds of his robes for just such a purpose.

  For all of Top’s judicious planning, his guest had arrived two hours late. He had been delayed by bad weather, a storm front moving over Buenos Aires. After a good deal of hand-wringing over arrangements to receive them, the man had finally arrived at the jungle compound.

  After his arrival at the landing strip, and travel to the central village, Top escorted him to his temporary guest quarters. He enjoyed the man’s reaction as they climbed into a sturdy woven basket to be lofted upward to the large two-story guesthouse situated some two hundred feet up in the treetops. Shortly afterward, the new arrival had descended and begun a guided tour of the bustling complex.

  Top had decided to start the tour with the subterranean Command and Communication center secreted in the very heart of his compound. Even Dr. Khan could not fail to be impressed by all the stunning long-distance warfare technology he would see this day. Already Top could sense that Khan was secretly delighted with the Swiss-clock workings and precision perfection of the teeming terrorist enclave.

  The two men were now standing before an array of surveillance monitors, their upturned faces bathed in incandescent blue. Each of the flat screens carried a live digital satellite feed from the cameras of Muhammad Top’s fleet of tiny UAVs now circling above Manhattan and Washington, DC.

  On site pilots flew the two-foot-long birds, using joysticks and input from sensor operators seated next to them. Each ground control workstation received feeds via a Ku-Band satellite data link for beyond line-of-sight flight.

  Khan smiled his approval. He had designed these UAV systems and it was the first time he’d seen them in a war-footing operation.

  The large central monitor was currently dedicated to lower Manhattan. The Staten Island Ferry was just nearing the wharf and lights were coming on in the office towers near the Battery. A row of smaller monitors to either side showed aerial views of Washington, the Chicago lake-front, the port of Miami, and central Los Angeles. Beneath these screens, a secondary grouping of monitors showed views of various border towns along the Texas-Mexico borderline.

  “And how go the preparations for the Lone Star State?” Khan asked Top, his eyes fixed on a view of the International Bridge connecting Laredo with its sister city across the border.

  “The convoy is assembled, Doctor. It has moved north of the border.”

  The two men were certainly a study in contrasts. Khan was a small, modest-looking intellectual. Save the keen intensity of the black eyes, the Iranian would be indistinguishable at any gathering of Muslim elders in Tehran. Of less than medium height, he had a great beak of a nose, with tiny eyeglasses perched on the end of it. He had very small hands and feet that always seemed to be still. He was surprising only in that he had changed into jungle fatigues for the tour.

  “Listen carefully,” Khan said, taking a step backward and looking up at his giant host. His black eyes flashing with the reflections of America on the screens above, he said, “I am bringing you a message from on high. Killing Americans is secondary to our true mission. It is only icing on the pudding. Do you understand that?”

  “Doctor, with your kind permission, I must argue—”

  “Listen! Don’t speak! I am talking about attacking the foundations of the corrupt state these faithless pawns serve. God willing, I am determined to scrape America’s bucolic soil down to the tainted bedrock it is built upon! If you don’t agree, tell me now.”

  Top silently nodded his understanding. Patience was required. Khan was having trouble assembling a “coalition of the willing” in the Latin American capitals. More and more it looked as if Top’s righteous legions might be marching north alone. Top was willing to go it alone. But if Khan’s shaky coalition were convinced to step up, it would seal America’s fate.

  Khan, visibly tired by the long journey, removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was secretly fighting a crippling headache. He had been anxious to see his military field commander in the flesh. Everything was riding on this one man. As the final hour approached, Castro was waffling. So was Chávez in Venezuela. Both men needed to see if Muhammad Top’s brazen attack could succeed before joining the fray.

  Venezuela, in Khan’s view, could seal the victory over the Americans. Chávez, despite all Khan’s assuarances, was taking a wait-and-see attitude. If Tip and Khan succeeded, and brought down the U.S. command and central, Venezuela might decide to strike in the ensuing chaos. Chávez had been secretly building a powerful air force. He had amassed squadrons of the latest Russian fighter jets, the Sukhoi 27 Flanker.
Armed with the unstoppable Yahkont antiship missiles, Venezuelan fighter jets could destroy America’s vital oil shipments in the Gulf of Mexico.

  It wouldn’t be the end of America, but it might be the beginning of the end.

  Top alone, of all his commanders, had the best chance of finally bringing the Americans to their knees. Reports reaching his own mountain hideout from his emissaries were uniformly positive. They all indicated that Muhammad Top had at last built the jihadist juggernaut that would humble the world.

  Maybe.

  Khan also received monthly intelligence reports from leaders of his South American cells. They provided a more balanced approach to developments in the southern hemisphere. He had carefully monitored Top’s progress over the last few years from afar. Read reports from their brethren in Havana and Caracas and Lima. Now he was here to see for himself exactly what had been accomplished here at La Selva Negra.

  And what kind of man he had created in the person of Top.

  Papa Top had risen to power and prominence in the wake of the 1991 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. Top and Khan had both had a hand in the planning of this deadly attack. But it was Top’s brilliant execution that brought him to the notice of the early al-Qaeda leadership.

  After the early success of that Argentine mission, Muhammad Top and his followers had moved north. There, they melted into the Mata Grosso jungles surrounding the Falls at Madre de Dios. Once he had surveyed the jungle and picked his ideal location, Top, always with Khan’s guiding hand, began the long and exceedingly difficult process of building a great terrorist army. At the same time, work was begun in earnest on Khan’s very advanced robotic warfare technology and surveillance drones in complete secrecy.

  Khan was the wise and patient mentor, the man who had stolen Western technology and put it into the hands of North Korea, Pakistan, and his secret terrorist operation in the rain forest. Top was the able and willing protégé who worked tirelessly to build a massive fighting force of Holy Warriors. Khan only stole from the best. He studied Japanese work in robotics and applied their learning to military applications. His endless hard cash ensured a flow of information out of top secret U.S. Defense related firms as well.