Azhar’s gaze remained fixed on the wall.
Bucket dragged Tanner to the opposite chair, plopped him down, and placed a glass of water before him. It was only then that Briggs noticed the leather wrist straps bolted to the tabletop. The wood beneath was scarred and flecked with brown stains.
“Drink,” Azhar said.
Tanner didn’t hesitate. As he drank, he could feel the scabs on his throat splitting open. When he was done, Bucket took the glass away. They’re very careful, Tanner thought. No potential weapons, no missteps.
“How do you feel?” Azhar asked. “Are you in pain?”
Tanner saw no point in lying. “Yes.”
“If you want it to end, you will answer my questions. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“If you do not answer, things will go worse for you. Do you understand?”
Tanner nodded.
“Why are you here?”
Against all his training Tanner had already decided his course:. If he had any chance to not only survive this but to also stop Tsumago, he had to go straight at Azhar. “I came to find you,” Tanner said.
“Why?”
“Not with the others here. Order them out, and I’ll tell you.”
“You think I am stupid?” Azhar said. “They stay. What do you know of me?”
“Dismiss them, and I’ll tell you,” Tanner said.
Azhar half-bolted from his chair. “Answer me!”
“Once we’re alone. Why does that frighten you? What can I do?”
Azhar sat back down. Through the hood’s eyeholes, he could see Azhar’s left eye twitching. He barked a command.
Bucket grabbed Tanner’s hands, forced each of them under a leather strap on the tabletop, and tightened the wing nuts until his palms were pressed flat.
Azhar barked another command. The word sounded vaguely familiar to Tanner, and it took several moments to place it. Oh, God …
Bucket stepped forward. Clenched in his right hand was a hammer; the head was flecked with what looked like blood and matted hair.
“I order you again,” said Azhar, “answer my questions.”
Tanner took a deep breath. “When we’re alone.”
Azhar nodded to Bucket. With an evil grin, he splayed Tanner’s left little finger apart from the others and pressed it to the wood. Tanner felt his stomach boil. He swallowed hard, and he kept his eyes locked on Azhar’s.
“Well?” Azhar asked Tanner.
Tanner shook his head.
“Break it.”
Tanner inhaled and set his jaw. As if seeing it in slow motion, he watched the hammer arcing downward. He heard a dull crunch-pop. White-hot pain exploded in his hand. He screamed and doubled over. Bile filled in his mouth. He swallowed it, tried to take a breath. In his ears he heard what sounded like distant cannon fire, and it took him a moment to realize it was his own heartbeat.
Bucket pushed him upright.
“You have an hour to decide,” Azhar said. “After that I will break all your fingers, then move to your ankles, and then your knees.”
Bucket released Tanner’s hands, cuffed them behind his back, and shoved him against the wall. Tanner barely felt the noose slip back over his head. Black spots danced before his eyes. He heard the rope creaking, then felt the noose bite down.
Azhar looked up at him. “I will get what I want,” he said. “I promise, before this day is over, you will answer my questions.”
Tanner stared back into Azhar’s eyes. As before, he saw nothing. Like a doll’s eyes, Tanner thought. Empty.
Azhar turned and walked out.
They returned an hour later, but to Tanner it could have been minutes or days. He felt fuzziness creeping back into his thought processes. His shattered finger throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and he could feel it pressing against his other hand, swollen and hot. Sights and sounds dimmed around him. A breeze blew through the window. It felt cool.
Stay alive! You’ll either reach him, or you’ll die. But talk only to him … no one else. If he managed to turn Azhar, there was no telling who in his group would stay loyal and who would rebel.
The door creaked open. He kept his eyes closed. The noose slackened. Rough hands untied him, pushed him into the chair, and shoved his wrists under the straps. He opened his eyes and saw Azhar sitting across the table.
“Have you had a chance to reconsider?”
“I’ve been preoccupied.”
Azhar said nothing; he gestured to Bucket.
Bucket stepped forward, splayed Tanner’s ring finger apart from the others, and smashed it with the hammer. Briggs screamed and hunched over. Bucket shoved him upright.
They won’t stop. They’ll keep going until I die or I break There had to be a way to reach him. Then he remembered. “My lugg—” The sound stuck in his throat; he coughed and tasted blood. “My luggage,” he rasped.
“What?” asked Azhar.
“My luggage. Have you searched my room?”
Azhar looked at Bucket, who shook his head.
“The Commodore,” Tanner whispered. “In the side pocket of my duffel, you’ll find a black box. Bring it.”
“I have no time for games—”
“No games. Get the box.”
“If you’re lying, you’ll wish you were dead.”
“I know.”
Azhar was silent for several moments. The cloth sucked in and out, in and out. “Go to the hotel, bring the box. In the meantime, put him back on the wall.”
For the next hour, perhaps two, Tanner stood against the wall gasping for breath, his ankles and legs burning. Azhar sat at the table and stared straight ahead, not even flinching as mortar rounds exploded outside.
Tanner could feel a knot of fear in his belly. What if I’m wrong about him? If this gambit failed, Azhar would surely kill him. He imagined Abu placing the gun against his skull and felt tears welling in his eyes.
The door swung open. Bucker walked in, whispered to Azhar, and placed a small black box on the table. “Get him down.” Once Tanner was again secure in the chair, Azhar asked, “Is this it?”
“Yes. Open it.”
Azhar looked at Bucket, who said, “It is safe.”
Slowly, Azhar drew the box to him, unhooked the clasp, and lifted the lid. For a full thirty seconds he stared at the contents. His eyes blinked once.
Using both hands, Azhar lifted out the carved cedar camel. Across its hump was draped a square of turquoise cloth. The bit was made of a tiny gold nail, the bridle of gold chain. Azhar cradled it like a wounded bird.
“My name is Briggs,” Tanner whispered. “Briggs Tanner. You gave that to me. It had been in your family for ten generations. You told me it was carved from the same cedar that was used to build your ancestral home in Afqa …”
Staring at the camel, Azhar shook his head.
“Yes, Abu! You know me.”
“This is a trick! You are lying!”
“No!” Tanner said. “When you gave it to me you told me—”
“Shut up!”
“—that it had been given to you by your father, and to him by his father—”
“No!” Azhar pounded the table. He returned the camel to the box and closed the lid. “Put him back up.”
The guards grabbed Tanner.
“No, Abu! You know me! My father’s name is Henry. He taught at American University. My mother is Irene. We lived here, on the Corniche! You know me!”
“Shut up! Silence him!”
Bucket slammed his rifle butt into Tanner’s groin. The air blasted from his lungs. He dropped to his knees. Another guard stuffed a rag in his mouth, pulled him upright, and slammed him against the wall. The noose was cinched tight.
Azhar turned in the doorway. “We’ve wasted enough time with him,” he said. “Beat him. Beat him until he pisses blood.”
64
Beirut
Full-scal
e battles involving hundreds of faction soldiers and militiamen had erupted across the Green Line. Artillery duels sparked fires in dozens of districts and they burned out of control as responding fire crews found nearly every street barricaded. Camille and Safir spent the day picking their way through the rubble-strewn neighborhoods, probing the few falaches in her network. No one had seen Tanner. Camille felt hope slipping away.
Late in the afternoon, she met Safir in the Atlas Hotel’s coffee shop. As he sat down, she saw his clothes were torn and he was limping. “Are you all right?” Camille asked.
“Yes. I had trouble at the Museum Crossing. The fighting is very bad.”
Just then the windows of the coffee shop rattled from a nearby explosion. Several people ran past on the sidewalk, several of them women clutching babies.
“Everyone is shooting at everyone. The PLO against the Maronites; the Phalange against the Shiites; the Shiites against the Lebanese Forces. I have never seen it like this.”
“Worse than eighty-two?”
“Very much worse.”
A smiling waitress came and took their orders.
My God, just another day in Beirut, Camille thought. Like the waitress, the shop’s patrons seemed perfectly at ease, laughing and joking as they ate, oblivious to what was happening outside. She suddenly felt a surge of admiration for these people. What strength it must take to live here.
“I found someone who claims to know where Briggs is,” Safir said.
“What? Where?”
“Karm el Zeitoun. The man claims he saw a gray Volvo pull up to a building and drag a man inside. The description sounds very close.”
Karm el Zeitoun was a neighborhood in East Beirut near the Beirut River. And the gray Volvo … Was it the same one that followed her and Asseal? she wondered.
“There is a problem, however,” said Safir.
“What?”
“He’s already passed along the location to your people.”
Oh God. “Do you know this neighborhood?”
“Yes.”
“Take me there.”
Tsumago
For a long time after the murder, Cahil sat in the ladder shaft and stared out the hatch at Slud’s body. It lay there for an hour before two of the crew appeared, lifted it between then, and heaved it over the side. One of them gave a comical wave as the surging water took it away. Slud. …
Finally, Cahil crawled back down the ladder and forced his mind back on track. Where was the bomb?
He closed his eyes and tried to recall what he knew about Tsumago. Certainly the cargo holds were the most likely hiding places, but then again, the bomb was probably no larger than a footlocker. It could be anywhere.
An image drifted into his mind. During his and Tanner’s search, the forward hold had been half-covered with cables and scaffolding. Even so, Cahil distinctly remembered the layout: Six inset holds in a three by two pattern, all seated inside a larger hold. Six inset holds …
He scrambled up the ladder and peeked out the hatch. The main hold—whose hatch sat on a raised combing about ten inches off the deck—dominated the center of the forecastle, leaving only a small walkway around its edges.
“That’s it,” Bear whispered.
Instead of six inset hatches, there were only four. What had happened to the other two, and what were they doing with the space?
Tel Aviv
“We have a location,” Sherabi told Stucky. “A building in East Beirut near the river. We’re moving tonight.”
Stucky nodded solemnly; it was all he could do to keep from smiling. Payback is a bitch, ain’t it, Briggs? His only regret was he wouldn’t be there to see it. That would be the icing on the cake. Otherwise, things were working out perfectly. They would get Azhar and stop Tsumago … and Tanner would die in the fireworks.
“Who’re you sending?” Stucky asked.
“It depends. The chief of staff may make that decision.”
“Bullshit, Hayem. It’s your op.”
“We’ll see. Who knows, with luck we may be able to even rescue your agent.”
Asshole. The Jew was playing games. If an IDF unit such as Sayeret Golani or Flotilla 13 were sent instead of Mossad’s own Unit 504, Sherabi would have no control over their orders.
“He may still be alive, you know,” Sherabi said.
“Could be,” Stucky replied. “Either way, I’m sure your people will do the right thing, just like I did the right thing when you needed help. You’re not forgetting that, are you?”
“Nor have I forgotten you failed to warn us about the bomb.”
“Jesus Christ, I told you: I didn’t know!” Stucky put his palms on Sherabi’s desk and leaned forward. “Let’s stop fucking around. Do you know what’ll happen to me if my government finds out I’ve cooperated with you?”
“It would be bad for you.”
“No shit. But not just for me: For us. My getting nailed would put a real damper on our future relationship.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Glad to hear it. You just make sure it’s your people who go tonight.”
White House
The President strode into the room. “Let’s see it, Dick.”
Mason aimed a remote at the wall-mounted TV, and the screen filled with an elevated view of Tsumago’s bow. In the background they could hear the beating of the helicopter’s rotors. Two men walked onto the forecastle, followed by a second pair dragging Sludowski’s inert figure.
“Al-Baz?” the president asked.
“Yes, sir.”
In five seconds it was over. Mason clicked off the TV.
“Did he have a family?” the president whispered.
“A wife and a little boy,” replied Cathermeier. “Four years old.”
“Do they know yet?”
“The CNO is on his way to see them personally. Hopefully, he’ll get there before the footage goes public. It’s already getting a lot of play in Europe. By evening, the whole world will know what’s going on.”
“Where is Tsumago now?”
“Two hundred miles southeast of Sicily. Twenty-two hours from Tel Aviv.”
“Is the exclusion zone in place?”
“I’ve ordered an SAG split from the battle group,” Cathermeier replied. “Two frigates—including Ford—a cruiser, and a Burke destroyer. They’ll be on station in a couple hours. If we need it, Indy’s Combat Air Patrol is only six minutes away.”
“We can’t have so much as a seagull getting inside that zone, General, or we’ll be fishing corpses out of her wake.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where’s the Indy group now?” asked Dick Mason.
“Running racetracks twenty miles off Beirut. We’re flying round-the-clock CAPs—Tomcats and Hornets—that can be over the beach in two minutes. As of an hour ago, recon flights show the Syrian exercise group still moving north toward Damascus.”
“The Bekka?”
“Quiet.”
“Good. Dutch, what about your man aboard Tsumago?”
“We expect him to make contact tonight, sir.”
USS Minneapolis
As cryptic as he’d found his new sailing orders, Captain Jim Newman complied and turned Minneapolis from its sector ahead of Indy and headed south. Best submerged speed for his boat was thirty-plus knots, so the 130-mile transit had taken just over four hours.
In his twelve years as a sub driver Newman had commanded plenty of attack boats, but none compared to this 688 Los Angeles boat, especially Minneapolis, which, as luck had it, was named after his hometown.
Minneapolis was known as an improved 688, having been refitted with vertical launch Tomahawk missiles to complement her Harpoon antiship birds, SUBROCs (submarine rockets), and standard MK 50 torpedoes. The 688 boats were the most feared hunter submarines in the world; they were fast, deadly, and so quiet they were known colloquially as “moving holes in the water.”
Minneapolis’s Tomahawks and Harpoons could destroy land targets, sink ships, crater runways, and if the worst came to pass, take out strategic targets. Of her fifteen Tomahawks, four were armed with tactical nuclear warheads, a fact never far from Newman’s mind.
After four hours of running a lazy ten-knot racetrack at 200 feet, Newman’s executive officer, Lieutenant Randy Stapes, walked over to the blue-lit tactical table.
“Flash traffic, Captain. Straight from the CNO.”
“Pardon?”
“I checked, sir. It’s legit.”
For Minneapolis to receive orders directly from the chief of naval operations, at least four separate commands had to have been circumvented, including the commander of the entire Sixth Fleet. Newman felt a sinking in his belly. He took the message, scanned past the header, and read:
MINNEAPOLIS TO LOITER IN DESIGNATED SECTOR (REF A) UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. USING COORDINATES IN REF B, ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN TRACK ON CARGO VESSEL TSUMAGO AND BE PREPARED TO SINK SAME WITH MULTIPLE HARPOON ATTACK UPON ORDERS FROM THIS COMMAND. UPON EXECUTE ORDER, MINNEAPOLIS TO ENSURE TARGET DOES NOT ENTER TERRITORIAL WATERS OF NATION OF ISRAEL. TARGET EXPECTED TO ARRIVE MINNEAPOLIS RANGE IN TWENTY (20) HOURS.
“Holy cow,” murmured Newman.
He handed the message to Stapes, who read it. “Sir, isn’t this the ship that—”
“Yes, it is.” Like the rest of the Indy group, Minneapolis had gotten the news about the hostages. “And now they want us to kill it.”
Beirut
Until the moment he’d opened the box Abu Azhar had lived two separate lives, one he hadn’t let himself remember for fifteen years and another he wished was over. The end of his first life and the start of his second had happened on the same day: the day he learned his little girl—their miracle—was dead.
Whether from grief or hatred or the ache that seemed to squeeze his heart a little tighter every day, Azhar went insane. Every memory was forgotten. Every person he knew was dead to him. Friends saw the change in him nearly overnight. His hair turned white, and his face turned to stone. The warm and gregarious teacher who laughed often and easily was gone, and in his place was a husk of a man.
End of Enemies Page 49