by Bob Finley
"What’s going on?" Jambou wondered aloud.
"NOT GOING ON...GOING UP," Kim's voice came from the speakers. "YOKO, ARE THE BALLAST TANKS CHARGED?"
"67%, Kim-san. I should have a full charge in approximately 17 minutes."
"OKAY. WHEN YOU REACH NEUTRAL BUBBLE, DON’T TRIM BALLAST. USE THE EXCESS FOR SURFACING."
"Roger, Kim-san. VIKING is ready for maneuvering."
"VERY WELL. JAMBOU, DO YOU COPY?"
"Do I...what?"
"ARE YOU LISTENING?"
"Well, yes, but...it sounds like...I mean, what are..."
"YES?"
"You tricked me!"
"YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET. NOW...SIT WHERE YOU ARE. DON'T MOVE. I'M GOING TO BRING YOU UP. IT’LL PROBABLY TAKE ABOUT FORTY MINUTES. WHEN THE SHIP SURFACES, STAY IN YOUR SEAT UNTIL YOU'RE TOLD TO GET UP. YOKO?"
"Yes, Kim-san?"
"IF HE GETS OUT OF THAT CHAIR BEFORE I TELL HIM TO, GAS HIM."
"Yes, Kim-san."
"What?! Gas?! You don't..."
"JAMBOU. YOU CAN TRUST ME ON THIS ONE. IF YOU GET OUT OF THAT CHAIR BEFORE I TELL YOU TO, SHE’LL DROP YOU BEFORE YOU GET SIX FEET. YOU’RE MINE, NOW, BABY. NOW...SIT THERE, SHUT UP, AND ENJOY THE RIDE. IT’S MORE THAN YOU DESERVE."
Just before Matsumoto closed his microphone, Jambou heard a great roar, like the beginning of a huge crowd cheering at a South African soccer game. Then there was a click and he was left alone to contemplate his future.
He was well on his way up, passing through 7000 feet, when he noticed the clock on the console. He looked again. That couldn’t be right. It had reset itself...automatically, he supposed. But it showed a date and time that was less than twenty-four hours later than it had been when the VIKING went to the bottom. How could that...? He felt a rush of anger and lashed out at the console with the heel of his hand. Then he pounded the padded arm of the chair. He’d been conned on a grand scale. And he’d fallen for it! He thought about that until the depth gauge rolled past the mile mark. And, finally, he laughed. Yes, he had been conned. They’d made a fool of him for sure. But at least he had the Johannesburg success to fall back on. And he had gotten rid of Justin. They couldn’t take that away from him. And...who knows? Somewhere, sometime, there was always the possibility of escape.
He sat and watched as the blackness diluted and gray ghosted in. And then deep blue. And green. And...there was SUNLIGHT! Real sunlight!! He’d never thought he’d see it again. And then there were waves up there, up there where there should be a ceiling!
He felt the ship lurch and realized that it was braking, slowing down its rate of ascent. The sound of water jet thrusters intermittently firing sounded throughout the ship. And then...
The VIKING broke surface, the water rolling off her back in great rushes, cascading, pouring. And she was back from the other world.
Seconds later, overhead, was the sound of helicopter rotors, their beat changing as the pilot transitioned to hover. The roar increased. There must be more than one up there. It got suddenly louder and there were several muted THUDS somewhere back in the ship. The TRAP team had won out over the SEAL team that had competed for the honor of completing the job by being inserted by chopper onto the roof of the sub, now awash in the sea. He heard a hissing sound and sensed that there must be someone inside. The chopper overhead moved to a position just in front of him. He could see part of the rotors. But he wasn't prepared for the two black-suited divers who dropped from it and landed practically in his face, just five feet from the acriliglass wall in front of him. They were pointing some kind of stubby automatic weapons straight at him. While he was still reacting to them, someone grabbed him from behind, holding him in a choker while someone else grabbed him roughly by the right wrist. He was dragged/thrown from the pilot's chair and slammed face-down into the thick carpet while his other wrist was wrenched up behind his back. He felt the sharp bite of plastic restraints on his left wrist and then he was jerked erect by at least two people. A huge .45 automatic pistol was jammed against his forehead by a scary looking man all dressed in black, including his face.
"Would you like to surrender?" the man asked.
Jambou couldn’t answer because he couldn’t breathe, with the grip someone from behind had on his windpipe, so he just nodded "Yes".
"Pity," Strickland said, reluctantly taking the gun from between his eyes. "I was hoping you wouldn’t." He started to turn around, then said, "Oh, by the way..." He turned back so quickly Jambou didn’t see it coming and rammed a fist elbow-deep into his belly. When Jambou curled over, breathless now for a different reason, Strickland stood looking at him. "That's for Slater," he said. Then he turned and walked away.
"JAMBOU, YOU CAN GET UP NOW," Kim announced over the speaker as the TRAP team dragged/pushed Jambou to the elevator and off-loaded him from the VIKING.
The transfer from the VIKING to one of the three Navy choppers flying cover was fast and efficient. And the quarter-mile lift over to the deck of the Washington was over in less than a minute. His grand entrance though, was hampered considerably by the leg irons someone on the TRAP team had had the forethought to include. Those and the chain-gang-style fetters wrapped around his waist and by which he was led across the flight deck drastically diminished the regal arrival he’d hoped for.
The size of the crowd, though, was satisfying. It looked like every person who could find an excuse to be topside was there to get a first-hand look at the most notorious mass-murderer since Hitler. It was the mood that seemed wrong to him. A somber spell seemed to have been cast over the crowd, as if they were watching an alien being disembark from the aircraft. Jambou defiantly made eye contact with every person he passed. They stared at him, gave way before him, as he shuffled along, his wrists now cuffed in front and the leg irons restricting his stride to baby steps. A low muttering closed in behind him in the wake of his passing. Hostility thickened the air and made him wary, here among these professional warriors.
Then he spotted his ticket to safety...a video camera. He steered toward it and was rewarded to see the camera crew also boring in on him. Jackie Darlington pushed to the forefront, her cameraman tethered to her by the microphone she wielded like a scepter. Just behind them was a Hispanic man with a smile on his face. He hadn’t stopped smiling since he’d shoved a promissory note on CNN letterhead to the bottom of his deepest pocket. Jackie thrust the microphone in his face, her eyes searching his.
"Mr. Jambou, I’m Jackie Darlington, the CNN correspondent you requested to cover your story."
Jambou stopped before her, almost a foot taller than she, and regarded her with as much dignity as he could summon.
"Yes, I know," he acknowledged in a slow, cultured voice. "I’m pleased to meet you, though," he raised his cuffed and chained wrists languidly toward her and the camera, "I had not anticipated that we would meet under these...unpleasant conditions." He inclined his head to the side, a gesture that somehow conveyed civilized tolerance for injustice.
"Mr. Jambou, would you please tell our audience what's most on their minds...would you have actually blown up all those nuclear bombs and killed millions of people around the world?"
"No..." he said.
Jackie Darlington drew a breath to continue.
"...if I had been killed while honorably defending my country from these invading barbarians," he looked coolly around at the faces that surrounded him, "my death would have triggered those devices purely in self-defense, and those people would have, by taking my life, been completely responsible for their own deaths...mass suicide, as it were." He stared straight into the camera lens and almost frosted it over with his smile.
"Suicide?" Jackie parroted, caught momentarily off guard by his self-centered logic. "How can you call it suicide when you’ve already admitted responsibility for the bombing of South Africa?"
He swiveled his shaven head back to rivet her with his attention. "That," he said calmly, "was personal. This..." he raised his chains again, "...was business. Just
business."
"So, are you saying that you would have blown up all those bombs you planted?"
"You're not listening. I said that if they had blown up, it would have been because the countries where they were located chose to go to war instead of allowing the birth of one small, innocent nation."
"And yet," she pressed, shifting the microphone closer to his lips, "when you had to make a choice between your own life or death, knowing that your death would have also killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, you chose to live. Does this mean that you were bluffing all along?"
Jambou's eyes narrowed. "No," he said slowly, "it means that I am a survivor, Ms. Darlington. It means that a lot of people who criminally violated my rights by trying to murder me got lucky. This time."
"Mr. Jambou," Jackie tacked, "you managed to escape the volcanic explosion in the submarine belonging to Marcus Justin. How did you..."
"I managed to slip past those killers who were sent after me and slip aboard the ship just before New Victoria was destroyed. Fortunately, I had enough skills to figure out how to operate the submarine so that I could get away before the explosion. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough skills to keep it from sinking. If I had, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation." He smiled coldly.
"But what about Marc Justin? How could you..."
"I’m sorry to say that the last time I saw Mr. Justin, I was being shot at by that...what do you call them...the TRAP team...? If I hadn't ducked into a ventilator shaft, I would have been killed then and there. As Mr. Justin probably was. And, of course, so would a lot of other people, because of my death. So, you see, everyone should be very glad that I survived at all. As for Mr. Justin, I suppose if those killers didn't get him, then the volcano did. A pity."
"Actually, Mr. Jambou, there are a couple of things you might not be aware of, having been trapped down there on the bottom of the ocean."
"Oh? And what would that be?" he asked condescendingly.
"First, that those bombs wouldn’t have gone off even if you had died. Kim Matsumoto, Mr. Justin’s associate, wrote a computer program that overrode your own computer’s programs, and that fooled your computer into thinking that you were still alive, even if you weren’t. So, if you had been killed, no one else would have been."
Jambou's eyes blazed. He tried to control his anger but it seethed to the surface like hot lava.
"I don't believe that," he hissed. "There’s no way he could have..."
He was suddenly aware that there were people pressing in on him. Alarmed, he broke off his tirade and focused his attention on them.
Bill Layton, Cy Wojecki, Janese Cramerton and Frank Sheppard stood there, shoulder to shoulder, just three feet away. They were all dressed in matching navy coveralls. And they all had malice in their eyes.
And then Kim Matsumoto moved up to join them, sliding in between Janese and Cy, and putting an arm around each of their shoulders. He smiled the smile of a winner. Confident. A little on the gloating side.
"You can believe it, Jambou," Kim said, conviction in his voice. "Leo was no match for Yoko. When it comes to computers, Leo brought a slingshot to a gun fight. Even if the volcano hadn’t blown up, you would have lost anyway."
Jambou took a menacing step toward Kim. The TRAP guard jerked him to a halt with the chain, but Kim stood his ground defiantly. Jambou leaned down like a praying mantis over its victim and his words were venom dripping from his lips. The cameraman bumped his way clear and moved in on the confrontation, never removing his eye from the eyepiece. Anticipating the drama, Jackie Darlington slid in close and got the microphone as close as she dared. The air around the two was electric with hostility.
"I may have lost something here today, little man," Jambou rasped through clenched teeth, "but I’m not the only one who lost something, am I?" They glared at each other for three or four tense seconds. Then...
An arm extended through the group of ex-hostages. A hand closed around Jambou’s shirtfront. He was shoved forcibly back away from the group and the man behind the arm stepped through them. Jambou’s mouth fell open and his eyes went wide.
"Justin!" The word came out as an explosion, dying quickly away.
"Yeah."
"But, you...I..."
"You said it yourself once, remember? You said we’re both survivors. But you were wrong about something, too. Only one of us is a loser."
A Lieutenant Commander stepped up to the two. "Are you Bereel Jambou?" he asked.
Jambou looked over at the officer, squinting into the sun, now well up, that silhouetted him.
"Yes, I am THE Bereel Jambou," he announced regally.
"Then it is my duty as an officer of the United States Navy and as a sworn representative of the United States of America, and at the request of several nations who accuse you of criminal acts, to place you under arrest and to detain you until such time as you may be transferred to the safekeeping of the proper authorities. Master At Arms!"
"Yes, sir!" A marine captain stepped forward and saluted smartly.
" Read this prisoner his legal rights, be sure he understands them, and escort him under armed guard to the brig. You will establish a twenty-four hour triple guard. No one...I repeat...no one is to communicate with the prisoner unless you see and hear me personally authorize it. Is that clear?"
"Sir, yes sir!" Another salute. The cameraman ate it up.
"Very well. Carry on."
Six armed grunts fell in around the prisoner and, led by the captain, marched him away, the assembled group giving way before them. Marcus Justin watched him go. He watched until they disappeared through the hatchway. And then he turned and walked across the huge expanse of carrier deck to where he could see his ship. A motor launch had been dispatched and had taken her under tow. He could see that she was being maneuvered gradually under the Washington’s protective lee side to keep her from drifting. A deckhand stood amidships her hull, keeping watch. He knew it was time. He threw the VIKING a salute and, smiling, headed back toward the island. There were a couple of details he had to take care of before he could get back where he belonged.
Chapter 107
He finally found Kim down below in the cavernous hanger deck. The TRAP team was readying its helicopter for a flight into the British naval base at Gibraltar. Assembled for this operation, the team would deploy to their individual units from there. Seventy-five feet further aft, Kim was checking out the glistening white Sarah Dale that had rescued Marc and then had flown the Lazarus recovery package out to the Washington. He and the rest of the former hostages would be flown to Puerto Real, where they would board a company jet for the flight to Miami.
Marc stopped off long enough to thank the TRAP team personally for rescuing them. Coventry...‘trigger’...whatever his name was, had already slipped away as back seat to a fighter jock sometime the night before. Matt Strickland stuck his head out the starboard hatch. Marc gestured to the chopper.
"You fixin’ this one up to fly or blow up?" he chided, smiling.
Strickland squatted down in the hatchway and grinned. "I’m looking it over now to see if anybody’s hidden a bomb on board. You checking out?"
"Yeah, I’ll be under way in a few minutes. I just wanted to thank you and your guys for gettin’ us out in one piece."
"Nothin’ to it. That’s why they pay us the big bucks."
"Yeah, right," Marc laughed. "But, speaking of ‘bucks’, how ‘bout lettin' me make you an offer you can’t refuse?"
The marine major cocked his head to one side and scrutinized him. "Like what," he asked skeptically.
"You boys ’ll be in port one night before you ship out, won’t you?"
"Yeah, the Brits are puttin’ us up tonight."
"There’s a place just off base, in La Linea, called Morena’s. You know it?"
"Who doesn't?"
"Well, I know the family who runs it. I’ll give ’em a call. Whatever you and your boys want, it’s yours. Tonight’s on me." There was a ra
ucous cheer from inside the chopper. Justin stepped closer and motioned Strickland in closer.
"One other thing...the man you lost?"
"Slater...Slater Franz."
"Yeah. Family?"
"Wife. Son about fourteen, I think. Why?"
"Find out what they need. Call me." He handed the marine a business card.
When he got to Kim, the rest of the group had arrived. Except one.
"Where’s Janese?" Marc asked, leaning over to peer into the helicopter’s interior.
"I dunno. Oh, yes. She said she was going to try to borrow some civvies from one of the ladies on board."
Justin said his good-byes to each of the men with whom he'd lived through the recent ordeal and they agreed to arrange a reunion somewhere in a couple of months, especially after he offered to fly them in and foot the bill. They watched the TRAP team’s helicopter being towed onto the elevator by an Eagle USATS-8 aircraft tug and waved as it rose toward the deck to prepare for takeoff. Theirs was next in line. Just as Marc was about to check again on Janese Cramerton, there was a sudden flurry of oohs and aahs and applause across the hanger. Surprised, Justin turned to see what was going on.
Captain Jerry Carruthers, looking sharp in his dress whites and gold braid, was sauntering jauntily toward them. But he wasn’t the reason for the appreciative audience. On his left arm, her arm curled around his, was Janese Cramerton. She was wearing a borrowed red dress who’s cleavage was making a serious effort to connect with the short hemline. Her long dark hair bounced silkily to and fro as she walked and shone like glazed chocolate when she passed through shafts of sunlight filtering in from outside. She was stunning. The captain seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself, knowing that his proximity to such beauty aboard a navy ship couldn’t help but improve his reputation.
Justin remembered her arrival aboard the VIKING and how disconcerting his first look at her had been. Those eyes! But, this...this...