“My pleasure, sir. Not to worry. Our doctor is very good.”
“Of that I am certain. We were lucky you were in the area.”
“Join me in my cabin? We can have some coffee while we await the doctor’s diagnosis.”
“You are very kind.”
Stein turned the bridge over to Danny, led the way to his cabin, and seated his guest. They chatted about the weather until the bulkhead phone rang.
“Ah .. . word from the doctor,” Stein said, grabbing the handset. “Captain.”
“First officer, sir. Uh, sir, we have a situation.”
“What is it, Danny?”
Stein heard muffled voices in the background. “Uh … sir, they say your guest will explain everything.”
“They?” said Stein. “Danny, who—”
The phone went dead.
Stein felt the first shiver of fear. He turned around and found himself staring at the barrel of a gun. He jumped to his feet.
“Sit down, Captain,” said Mustafa al-Baz.
“What is this?”
“Sit down.”
“I will not. I want to know—”
“Sit down!” al-Baz shouted. The gun remained steady.
Stein complied. They sat in silence for thirty seconds and then from below, Stein heard the clatter of automatic weapons, followed by screaming and shouting. Then silence.
“My God, what are you doing?” Stein said. “We tried to help you—”
“Captain, if you speak again without being spoken to, I will shoot you.”
A few minutes passed, then the bulkhead phone rang. Al-Baz picked it up, listened, said something in Arabic, then hung up. “Captain, your ship is under our control. The engine room, radio room, and the bridge belong to us. As we speak, your passengers are being gathered together in the main dining room. Those officers and crew not on duty have been locked inside the signal bridge. Do you have any questions?”
“Have you hurt any of my passengers or crew?”
“Not so far.”
“What do you want?”
“All in good time, Captain. First, to the bridge.”
Al-Baz prodded Stein from the cabin and up the ladder to the pilothouse. Danny, the helmsman, and the navigator were being held at gunpoint by a trio of men in black wet suits.
Danny said, “Captain, what—”
“It’s all right. Just do as they say.”
“Wise advice, Captain,” said al-Baz. “However, it has been my experience that people in your situation are not so easily convinced.” Al-Baz turned. “You there. Danny, is it? You are the first officer?”
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“Don’t,” Stein whispered. “Please, don’t. He’s just a boy.”
Al-Baz offered Stein a cold smile. “We were all boys once, Captain.”
Al-Baz raised his pistol and shot Danny in the forehead. Danny stumbled backward two steps, teetered for a moment, then crumpled the deck.
“You bastard! You rotten bastard! There was no reason for that.”
“I have your attention, do I not?”
“Yes, damn it—”
“Then it was worthwhile.” He handed Stein a slip of paper. “Read this over the ship-wide intercom.”
Eyes fixed on Danny’s lifeless body, Stein grabbed the intercom handset. His hand was shaking; he steadied it with his opposite hand. He keyed the microphone.
“Attention passengers and crew of Valverde. This is the captain. I have been instructed to tell you this ship is now under the control of the Arab Liberation Command. …”
55
Beirut
Armed with Safir’s map, Tanner slipped from the hotel and began walking west. Aside from a few late-night strollers, the foot traffic was light, so he made good time and soon reached the Omari Mosque. Its minarets towered above the surrounding ruin, pristine white in the darkness.
At Maarad Street, a quarter mile from the Green Line, he ducked inside a bombed-out grocery store and hunkered down to watch the street Several cars and pickup trucks filled with gunmen passed by, but none more than once. He saw only one pedestrian, an old woman carrying a bag of potatoes.
Was it in fact Azhar who had taken Asseal, or some group with a grudge, he wondered. He hoped it was the former, but there was another part of him—the voice of a thirteen-year-old boy—who was praying for the latter.
After another ten minutes, he slipped back onto the street and started east again.
As he neared the Green Line, he could hear the chatter of automatic weapons and the crump of grenades. He sprinted across Martyr’s Square, found another alley, and kept going, heading deeper into Christian East Beirut.
He stopped beside a burnt-out Renault and rechecked the GPS: The red square was one block north of him on Tripoli Road.
It took another twenty minutes of moving and checking until he found the correct building, an abandoned factory surrounded on three sides by vacant lots. On the fourth side stood a boarded-up building overlooking the factory. He found a back entrance and climbed six floors until he found an open window. He squatted beside it and peeked out.
On the street below were two vehicles: a pickup truck and a gray Volvo.
There was a glimmer of light in a third-floor window. Flashlight or lantern. He watched for a few more minutes, saw no lookouts, then headed downstairs.
After a quick look up and down the street, he sprinted across, slipped into the alley, and circled to the rear of the building. A long line of fire escapes stretched into the darkness. Moving slowly, his feet crunching on broken glass, he began checking them.
The first four were either so rusted or in such bad repair that his touch set them shaking. The fifth one seemed sturdier. He stepped onto the bottom rung. The scaffolding vibrated but held. He took a deep breath and started upward.
At the second floor he found some rotted boards covering the window, so he carefully pried them free, then slipped inside. He crouched down, listening and waiting for his eyes to adjust. Through the ceiling he could hear the sound of muffled voices. Silence. Shuffling footsteps. He found a stairwell and started up.
The third floor was divided by a central hallway with rooms on either side. The floor was littered with chunks of plaster, and in the dust Briggs could see a trail of footprints leading to the last room on the right.
He moved forward. The muffled voices grew louder. Three or four men, he guessed, all speaking in Arabic. He heard a sharp slap—flesh striking flesh—then a moan. He slipped into the adjoining room and pressed his ear to the wall.
The conversation was too rapid to follow, but he managed to catch a few words: Warehouse … move … And then another word that set his heart pounding: “Abu.” “Inform Abu. …”
Did they mean Azhar? In addition to being a popular Arabic name, Abu is a common alias among terrorists, who often convert the literal translation of father to mean leader.
A door banged open. There was a brief scuffle, followed by footsteps. He pressed himself to the wall. One by one, four shadows walked past the doorway. The last two were dragging a man between them. Tanner caught a glimpse of the face: Hossein Asseal. His face was bloody and bruised. The footsteps pounded down the stairs and faded.
A minute later, a pair of engines roared to life and tires squealed.
Tanner pulled out the Palm Pilot and called for an update.
The red square was moving northwest toward the docks.
Following cues from the pilot, he found himself at the city’s old wharf. According to Safir, these had long ago been abandoned in favor of the newer docks, but Like so much in Beirut, they would likely remain until they crumbled into the harbor. Through binoculars he spotted the Volvo parked beside a corner warehouse.
He found a partially collapsed bait shack across the road, crawled into the basement, made himself comfortable beside the window, and called Nourani.
“I was becoming worried,” Safir
said. “Where are you?”
Tanner told him. “Are your boys willing to do some watching?”
“Most certainly. I’ll send one immediately.”
Briggs hung up and refocused the binoculars on the warehouse.
Twenty minutes later, Ahmed arrived. “Good morning, effendi,” he said.
“Morning. You’re fast”
Ahmed beamed. “I know many shortcuts.”
“I’ll bet you do. See that warehouse … the one on the corner? After the car leaves, I’m going inside to look around. I should be back in an hour. If I don’t, or something bad happens, leave and go find Safir.”
“Yes, effendi.”
Tanner checked the sky: almost two hours until dawn.
An hour later, the door of the warehouse opened, and four men came out. Asseal wasn’t among them. They piled into the Volvo, pulled onto Tripoli Road, and drove off.
He patted Ahmed’s shoulder and took off.
He sprinted across the road, into the ditch, crawled up the other side, and dashed across to the docks. He mounted the walkway beside the warehouse and followed it to the seaward wall, where he found a back door. He tested the knob: locked. A few feet away he found a small, tarnished window.
He wrapped the tip of his knife in his kaffiyeh and pressed it against the pane. The glass spiderwebbed. He stopped, listened. Nothing.
One by one, he began picking out the shards until the hole was large enough. He reached through, unlocked the window, opened it, and climbed inside.
The interior was empty. Moonlight pierced the overhead shutters and cast stripes on the floor. There’s nothing here. He spotted a trapdoor in the far corner. He walked over, grabbed the iron ring, and lifted. A ladder descended into the darkness.
At the bottom he found a dimly lit passageway bordered on each side by three wooden doors, each padlocked and equipped with a viewing slit. The air was thick with the stench of stale urine. Hanging from a hook on the wall was a key ring.
He took it, walked to the first door, and peered through the slit. It was an empty stone cell, complete with shackles bolted to the wall and a wooden waste bucket in the corner. The hair on the back of Tanner’s neck stood up. This place looked all too familiar. Keep going, Briggs, he commanded.
He found the next three cells empty as well, but inside the fifth was Hossein Asseal; he sat naked and shivering in the corner. Briggs’s hand was halfway to the padlock when he stopped. You can’t. If Asseal disappeared, they would abandon the warehouse. His stomach boiled at the idea of leaving the man behind, but there was no other way. Goddamn it.
The inside of the sixth cell was almost pitch black, so it took several seconds for his eyes to adjust. What he saw made him jerk back involuntarily. He fumbled with the keys, dropped them, found the right one, and slipped it into the lock.
The door swung inward.
Tanner had only seen the man’s picture once, but there was no mistaking the face. Hanging from the overhead beam, his neck stretched to twice its normal length, was Jusef Khoury, the agent known as Marcus.
He’d been dead for several days. His eyes bulged like Ping-Pong balls; flies buzzed in his nostrils and ears. Tanner stared at the feces-stained floor, the overflowing waste bucket, the shoe scuffs on the wall beside the body, and suddenly felt his stomach heave. He gulped hard. God, what a way to die. What a place to die.
He closed and locked the door, then stood against it for a moment, eyes closed. Keep going, stay focused. … He returned the key ring to the hook, then scaled the ladder, slipped out the window, and left.
Leaving Ahmed with a canteen of water and orders to watch the warehouse until noon, Tanner made his way back to the Commodore.
He opened the door to his room and slipped inside. The curtains were half-open, bathing the room in gray light. He stopped. Something was wrong. It was nothing apparent, nothing his senses could latch onto, but the alarm in the back of his mind was insistent. Someone was here.
He drew the Glock and stepped into the main room.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
The voice came from a figure sitting on the bed. Tanner saw the bleach blond hair and the gaudy red dress. Lena.
“Stand up slowly,” Tanner ordered. “Hands out to your sides.”
She hesitated.
“Do it!”
She rose from the chair and extended her arms.
“Move in front of the window.”
She stepped to her left until he could see her silhouette.
“What do you want?” he said.
In answer, she reached up, pulled off the blond wig, and tossed it onto the bed.
Tanner’s heart lurched into his throat.
It was Camille.
56
Aboard Trolley
Cahil glanced up as the red cabin lights flashed. There was a pause, then two more flashes. Nine minutes from drop.
The loadmasters went to work, connecting safety harnesses and pushing the team’s sleds to the ramp. Bear flexed his fingers to keep the circulation going. The cabin temperature hovered around forty degrees.
The loadmaster turned and gave him a thumbs-up.
Cahil stood and signaled for final check. Each man began checking his swim buddy’s personal loadout: H&K MP-5 suppressed assault rife, Magellan nav box, wet suit, radio, grenades, first aid kit, flashlight, combat knife, and chem-light sticks. Including an airfoil parachute, each man was carrying 125 pounds of gear.
The cabin lights blinked again.
Six minutes.
Cahil felt the floor angle beneath his feet as the pilot began his descent. One of the loadmasters opened the aircraft’s side door. With a whoosh, the interior decompressed. Wind whipped through the cabin. The ramp groaned down a few inches to reveal a slice of black sky.
Smitty blew out a stream of vapor. “By the time we hit the water, it’s gonna seem downright toasty,” he yelled over the rush.
Cahil signaled the team to assemble.
They waddled down the ramp in a double stick—two columns of four men. The loadmasters—two for each stick—began hooking each man to his sled by a twenty-foot cable. Once done, the chief loadmaster gave Cahil the hooked-and-clear signal, then retreated to the main cabin.
The cabin lights flashed. Two minutes.
Cahil pulled out the Magellan and punched the keypad for a GPS update. Three rows of numbers flashed on the screen: Tsumago’s latitude, longitude, and course. On track. She was right where she was supposed to be.
With a whine, the ramp began opening. Now the real cold hit Cahil, ripping the air from his lungs. He turned the knob on his oxygen canister, heard the hiss, and took a deep breath; the air tasted metallic. He looked over his shoulder and got seven thumbs-up. Ready.
The ramp thudded to a stop. Cahil stared out into the blackness. Though invisible from this altitude, somewhere down there—five miles straight down—the ocean was waiting. He blinked hard, focused himself.
The lights blinked a final time: Ten seconds.
Cahil pulled down his goggles, gave the sled a shove, then ran after it.
National Military Command Center, Washington
Ninety seconds after Cahil and his team stepped into the void, the latest Keyhole update on Tsumago’s position arrived. “Put it on the main monitor,” Cathermeier ordered. The gray and black image flashed on the screen. “Tighten it up, highlight her course track.”
The technician did so, and the image contracted until it encompassed 100 square miles of ocean. Running diagonally across the screen was a dotted red line. At the end of it, where the white dot representing Tsumago should have been, there was nothing but ocean.
“I don’t see her,” said the president.
Mason murmured, “Where the hell—”
“Enlarge,” Dutcher ordered.
The image expanded. Northwest of Tsumago’s track were a pair of dots.
“Tighten on them and
run a match.”
The tech did so. “The southern one matches Tsumago.”
“Distance from original course?”
“Twenty miles.”
“That can’t be,” said Cathermeier. “Twenty miles in under a half hour … She had to be making—”
“Thirty-five knots,” Dutcher finished. “Gentlemen, I think we just discovered something else about our mystery ship.”
“The other ship is a cruise liner,” the tech reported. “The Valverde.”
“Home port?”
“Tel Aviv, sir.”
“Oh, good God,” muttered James Talbot.
“General, contact your teams,” the president ordered. “Tell them to abort.”
“Too late, sir,” said Cathermeier. “They’re already on their way.”
Southeast of the Canary Islands
Given Tsumago’s radar capabilities, Cahil and Jurens had decided against Sierra’s using a HAHO (high altitude, high opening) jump and opted instead to go HALO, which meant Bear and his team would free-fall from 29,000 feet and deploy their chutes 200 feet above the surface.
It was a wilder ride than any roller coaster in the world, but like the rest of his team, Cahil had little time to enjoy it. His attention was fixed on the glowing face of his altimeter. Falling this fast, his release window would be less than a second. Open your chute too high, and you become a radar target; open too low, and you hit the ocean like a watermelon crashing into a sidewalk.
Ninety seconds and two miles into the fall, he took his eyes off the altimeter and glanced below. He could see the ocean now, a black carpet interlaced with white ripples. It was hypnotic. Don’t watch it, he commanded. He’d seen three men die that way, hitting the water without even touching their chutes.
He refocused on the altimeter. 5,000 feet … 4,500 … Don’t forget reaction time. First the sled, then the chute, then hard on the risers …
Now!
At 240 feet, Cahil jerked the sled’s release, felt it drop away, then pulled his chute release. His testicles shot into his stomach. He reached up, grabbed the risers, heaved down. He sensed the surface rushing toward him. Feet together, deep breath … The chute flared out, lifted, then everything went dark.
End of Enemies Page 42