End of Enemies

by Grant Blackwood

  Azhar sat in his room—a spartan affair with a wooden table and a cot—and stared at the box. The figurine seemed so familiar, as did the American’s name: Tanner … the ghost of a memory from another life. “My father is Henry. … You gave that to me. … You know me!”

  “How can I know you?” Azhar whispered.

  He’d approached but never crossed this threshold many times. He would see a familiar face on the streets of Beirut, and a distant voice would whisper a name or recount a party or a vacation. But he would dismiss it and walk on. Rarely did those former friends recognize him, further proof the whispering voice was wrong.

  “My name is Briggs! You gave that to me. … It had been in your family for ten generations … carved from the same cedar. …”

  “Afqa,” he murmured. “Afqa.”

  How could the American have known his birthplace? If in fact he was CIA, they would have done their research. They are like that, the Americans, with their computers and spy networks and conspiracies. They found out about the ship, invented this fantasy, and sent this man to stop him.

  Azhar reached out and touched the box. A silly trinket, nothing more. But the whispering voice was still talking to him: “My name is Briggs Tanner. … My father is Henry. … You know me! You …”

  “No,” Azhar said. He slid the box away from him. “No.”

  65

  Beirut

  Despite all his previous self-assurances, Tanner now realized that, in his heart, he’d never been sure he could kill Abu Azhar. But with each passing minute, as he stood half-hung, gasping for every breath, his legs sticky with his own urine, he realized he had no other choice. The Azhar he knew was gone.

  But would he get the chance to do it before they killed him? They’d almost succeeded earlier. Four of them, each armed with a sand-filled radiator hose, had taken turns on his back and legs until he passed out.

  He slowly flexed his body, searching for damage. His breathing was wheezy, and with each breath he felt a stab of pain in his side. They’d broken a couple of his ribs. He felt a dripping sensation on his legs. He craned his neck down. The stone beneath his feet was puddled with pink urine.

  They were killing him. With that thought, everything snapped into focus.

  He would gather his strength and watch and wait until they got lazy. The moment would come, he knew, but it would be very brief, and he would have to be very fast. All he would need was a few seconds.

  The door’s bolt clicked back, and it swung open. From the corner of his eye he saw a single figure standing on the threshold. It was Azhar. The hood was gone.

  Tanner hardly recognized him. Though the same age as his father, Azhar looked twenty years older. His hair was coarse and white, as was his mustache. He seemed shorter as well, stooped like an old man. Tanner was most surprised by his eyes. Seeing them through the hood’s eyeholes had been deceptive; they were not merely emotionless, there was nothing there at all.

  Then Tanner noticed the knife in Azhar’s hand. He felt his heart stutter. This was it. He’d failed; Azhar was going to do it himself. He steeled himself for it.

  Azhar walked forward and stopped in front of him. He studied Tanner’s face. Without so much as the trace of an expression, he pressed his palm under Tanner’s chin and pushed his head backward. The knife came up. Tanner felt the blade against his throat. He sucked in a breath, held it, closed his eyes. There would be little pain, he knew, just a sting and then a flood of warmth, and then—

  Azhar’s arm flashed forward. Tanner heard a twang and then he was falling. Azhar caught him and lowered him to the floor.

  Azhar left and returned with a first aid kit, a towel, a clean white dish-dash robe, and a basin filled with warm water. He sat at the table and stared at his hands while Briggs—still cuffed—stripped off his clothes, then washed and dried himself.

  Tanner felt a dozen emotions at once: relief, confusion, sadness. He was too numb to sort them out, so he finished drying himself and slipped on the dish-dash.

  Azhar gestured him to the chair. “Please sit.”

  Tanner hobbled over and sat down. Azhar opened the first aid kit and went to work, starting first with Briggs’s two shattered fingers, which he splinted with stiff surgical tape, then moving to the cuts and abrasions on his face, legs, and back. There was nothing to do about the bruises or the swelling that had closed one of Tanner’s eyes, so Azhar taped his broken nose and closed the kit.

  “I think a couple of my ribs are broken,” Tanner said.

  “Lift your shirt.”

  Tanner did so, and Azhar wrapped a bandage around his chest The relief was almost immediate. Briggs took a breath. The pain was bearable.

  “I’ll be back,” Azhar said. “Please stay here.”

  He returned a few minutes later with a bowl of lentil soup, a loaf of bread, some pieces of cheese and fruit, and a pitcher of milk. He handed Tanner a pair of white tablets. “Aspirin. For the pain. It is all we have.”

  Tanner started eating and didn’t stop until the tray was empty. Azhar took it and placed it on the floor. He sat down.

  “I am sorry for what I have done to you,” Azhar murmured, still not looking at him. “I didn’t … I didn’t realize …”

  Tanner held up his cuffed hands. “What about these?”

  “They stay on. After this is over, I will release you. You have my word.”

  “Once this is over? With the ship, you mean.”

  For the first time, Azhar looked him in the eye. “You know about the ship?”

  “That’s why I’m here. To stop it.”

  “By killing me?”

  “If that had been my intention, I would have already done it.”

  Tanner was surprised to see a smile spread over Azhar’s lips. It was a sad smile, but a smile nonetheless. He’s still in there somewhere, he thought.

  “Even as a boy you were very tactful, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “You remember, then?” Tanner asked. “All of it? My father, our time here—”

  “Those times are gone. But, yes, I remember you. You have not answered my question. If it had became necessary, you would have killed me. You still would, if you had no choice.”

  Tanner nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then we are enemies, you and I.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  Azhar shrugged. “It is what it is.”

  Tanner was torn. There was so much he wanted to ask, but time was short. “What happened to you, Abu?”

  “How did I become a … terrorist? That’s what you call people like me, isn’t it?” From the pocket of his dish-dash he pulled out the cedar camel and placed it on the table. “I gave this to you?”

  Tanner nodded. “You told me it’d been given to you by your father. Because you and Elia couldn’t have children, you …” Tanner trailed off. “It was one of my prize possessions.”

  Azhar slid it across the table. “It’s still yours.” He stood up and walked to the window. “Two years after I gave that to you, Elia found herself pregnant. The doctors said it was impossible, but the hand of Allah intervened. Nine months later, our little girl was born. We named her Amarah. She was healthy and happy. A joy.

  “When she was two years old, the war was very bad, so I took her and Elia back to Afqa. I thought they would be safe there. The Israelis had other ideas.

  “They got a tip that Afqa was a PLO haven. Early one morning, we heard helicopters. By the time I got outside, the soldiers were already on the ground, running from house to house, shooting and throwing grenades. I was knocked unconscious—I never remembered how—and when I awoke, the village was burned to the ground. Bodies lay in the streets. Elia had been shot in the back. Her spine was shattered.”

  “Is she—”

  “She’s still alive. She is paralyzed.”

  “I’m sorry, Abu,” Tanner said. “What about Amarah?”

  “For
three days I looked for her. I thought she’d been killed. … There was so much fire, I thought perhaps …

  “A year later, I found out she was alive. The soldiers had taken her back to Tel Aviv where a Jewish couple adopted her. My child. They kidnapped my child and gave her to someone else … to the same people who destroyed my village and crippled my wife.”

  “She’s still there, in Tel Aviv?”

  “Oh, no,” Azhar replied. “You see, the authorities didn’t bother to investigate the couple. A few months after they adopted her, she got colic, and as colicky children do, she cried a lot. One night the woman got tired of listening to it, so she put a pillow on Amarah’s face and smothered her.”

  “Oh God,” Tanner murmured. “Abu, I’m sorry.”

  “God has nothing to do with it, Briggs.”

  Tanner suddenly understood. They’d taken everything Abu had. His heart, his soul, his miracle. Grief had hardened into anger, which had boiled into rage. His revenge had been twenty years in the making, and now it was coming to an end.

  “So now you see,” Azhar said.

  Tanner nodded. “I know there’s nothing I can say to change what’s happened, but what you’re doing is—”

  “Wrong? Do not dare lecture me about right and wrong.”

  “So what’s it about? Revenge?”

  “No, not revenge. Freedom, Briggs. If Lebanon had been the country it was supposed to be, none of this would have happened. Not then, not now.”

  “If you go through with this, lots of people are going to die—”

  “If that is the price, then so be it—”

  “—including tens of thousands of children—children just like Amarah.”

  “What are you talking about? None of the hostages are children. We were—”

  “The bomb, damn it!” Tanner said. “We know about the hostages, we know about the ship, and we know about the bomb. We know, Abu!”

  “There is no bomb.”

  Tanner felt like he’d been slapped in the face. Suddenly, as sure as he’d been about anything in his life, he realized Azhar believed what he was saying. What did that mean? How could he not—A thought came to him. Could it be? Maybe, just maybe, there was a way out.

  Now he just had to stay alive long enough to make it work.

  Tsumago

  Cahil’s hunch about the cargo hold made sense. Everything about Tsumago was designed to either resist siege or confuse prying eyes: The gas turbine engines; the Kevlar-reinforced superstructure; the powerful radar and ESM array; and a well-trained and well-armed crew. The bomb’s location would be no different, he reasoned.

  If he were right, the inset holds were camouflage. The forward two were probably linked, forming a single space inaccessible except through an opening he’d yet to discover. Such a compartment would not only thwart a cursory search, but it would also delay an attacking force, forcing them into a bottleneck that could be defended by only a few men.

  Figuring out the secret had been the easy part. Now he had to find a way in.

  Just after sunset, he climbed the ladder, cracked open the hatch, made himself comfortable, and started watching.

  Approaching nine o’clock, there was still no movement aside from the roving sentry, so Cahil glanced out over the ocean. To port, far on the horizon, he could make out a faint black smudge. It was landfall, but where? He did a few mental calculations and decided it was probably Valletta, one of the Maltese Islands. If so, they were just passing Sicily, which put them not quite six hundred miles from Tel Aviv. At thirty knots, they’d be there in eighteen hours. Midafternoon tomorrow.

  From the foredeck he heard a scraping sound. He turned in time to see a figure standing beside one of the capstans at the edge of the hold. As he watched, the figure leaned the capstan over and rolled it like a barrel to one side. Beneath it was a hatch. The figure spun the wheel and lifted. A faint red light shone through the opening.

  “I’ll be damned,” Bear whispered.

  The figure slipped feet first into the hatch and disappeared. Cahil looked aft. The sentry was walking onto the forecastle. Come on, hurry it up. … The sentry paused by the hatch, then turned and started aft.

  Cahil began counting. He had ninety seconds.

  He crawled out and sprinted across the forecastle, using the pallets and winch drums to shield him until he reached the hatch. He looked down. A ladder dropped into darkness. Below, he could hear the murmur of voices.

  Forty two …forty three …

  He slipped into the hatch, descended until his feet were even with the end of the shaft, then turned himself on the ladder until he was hanging upside down.

  The compartment measured twenty feet by twenty feet Two crewmen stood talking together near the forward bulk-head. Between them, bolted to the floor was a square, waist-high cabinet made of crisscrossed pipes. Suspended in the center by spring-mounted cables was a stainless steel sphere about twice the size of a basketball. A bundle of wires ran from the top of the sphere, down the housing leg, to a black box, which one of the crewmen held.

  On the face of the box was a single red-lighted button.

  National Military Command Center

  Dutcher, Oaken, and others came and went as their schedules dictated, but as the hours passed and Tsumago edged ever closer to Tel Aviv, each found himself spending more time in the center, watching, listening, and hoping against hope.

  Only hours before, as lady’s Surface Action Group took up picket stations around Tsumago, the news broke of Valverde’s hijacking. Every network, newspaper, and wire service was running not only excerpts of the ALC’s ultimatum, but also footage of Sludowski’s execution.

  With the exception of Iraq, which had remained quiet since the ALC had drawn the spotlight on itself, most of the world’s interested nations—including Israel’s Arab neighbors—released statements condemning the hijacking. Syria demanded action against Iraq’s “obvious efforts to destroy the peace process.” Syria’s ambassador to the UN pointed to both Tsumago and the violence in Beirut as proof.

  As Tsumago sailed southeast away from the Maltese Islands and approached the coast of Tunisia and Libya, scores of fishing boats came to greet her. Horns whooping and crews cheering, the boats were intercepted and turned away by the SAG’s southern picket ships.

  Through it all, Tsumago never deviated or slowed, moving forty miles closer to Israel with each passing hour.

  “General Cathermeier, message coming in,” reported the NMCC’s comm chief.

  “On speaker.”

  “Coaldust, this is Sierra, over.”

  Cathermeier keyed the handset. “Roger, Sierra, go ahead.”

  “Sitrep follows: Kickstand confirmed, area three, type two point one.”

  Mason murmured, “Oh, God.”

  “What?” asked Talbot. “What’s all that about … type two?”

  “Understood, Sierra,” Cathermeier replied. “Say status.”

  “Operative but restricted.”

  “Stand by.” Cathermeier turned to Dutcher. “Leland, he’s your man. Do we order him out or leave him aboard?”

  “Get him out. There’s nothing more he can do. Can we send a rescue helo?”

  “Damn right we can. The moment he’s out of the exclusion zone, we’ll pick him up.” Cathermeier keyed the mike. “Sierra, you are ordered to exfiltrate. Angel is en route.”

  “Negative, Coaldust,” replied Cahil. “I am still operative.”

  “Sierra, I say again, you are ordered to exfiltrate at once.”

  “Negative, negative. Will remain aboard as long as possible. Sierra out.”

  The speaker filled with static. Cathermeier removed the headset. “You think he knows we’re going to sink her?”

  “He’s figured it out,” said Dutcher. “Well, gentlemen, I’d say our problem has just gotten a whole lot worse.”

  Talbot blurted, “Would somebody tell me what the hell’s going on?”
/>
  “We gave Cahil’s team a list of words to use when referring to the bomb … its location, type, that sort of thing. The good news is, we know where the bomb is.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “The type and trigger. We thought it would be a gun-barrel design. We were wrong: It’s an imploder.”

  “So?”

  “So, Mr. Talbot, instead of thirty kilotons, the yield is closer to fifty. If that thing goes off in Tel Aviv Harbor, the city will be flattened. And there’s a man with his finger on the trigger as we speak.”

  66

  Beirut

  The question on Tanner’s mind was no longer whether Azhar was behind the bomb but rather, now that he knew about it, what would he do? Would this Azhar he barely knew, armed with a weapon that could destroy the country that had destroyed his life, hesitate to use it? Tanner was gambling that he would not use it, but to find out, he first had to keep Azhar alive.

  He’d shared with Azhar his suspicion about the Israeli commando team. It had taken more explanation than he wanted to give, but he had little choice. As it happened, Abu’s paranoia worked in Tanner’s favor. Within minutes of hearing Tanner’s prediction, Azhar evacuated to a nearby abandoned apartment building.

  Now Azhar and Tanner—still handcuffed and under the watchful eye of Bucket—sat beside a window and watched Azhar’s old headquarters. Gunfire echoed in the distance, and every few minutes the skyline bloomed orange. In the brief intervals of silence, Tanner could hear screaming and the honking of horns.

  “Where are your people?” Tanner asked.

  “Nearby.”

  “They musn’t interfere with the assault.”

  Azhar looked at him. “Why?”

  Tanner hesitated and glanced at Bucket. Azhar ordered him out.