An informer in South Yemen had reported a coastal schooner transferring cargo to the Tarala as the freighter coursed through the Gulf of Aden, bound for the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Under surveillance by the Mossad, the Tarala did not turn north as expected for the port of Tripoli and the armories of the Syrians occupying northern Lebanon, but instead continued due west through the Mediterranean. British counterterrorist units had taken over the surveillance, expecting the freighter to attempt to deliver its cargo to the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
But the Tarala continued west, cutting a course for the United States.
International law allowed for customs inspection when the Tarala neared the coastal waters of the United States. However, customs and Coast Guard commanders knew that the crew would offload the cargo for pickup by speedboats before customs inspection.
Even if the Tarala did not evade interception, seizure of any weapons aboard would not lead to the identification or capture of the terrorists expecting the delivery. Restraints on both the FBI and the CIA prevented direct action by antiterrorist officers. Therefore the CIA called in Stony Man.
A straightforward mission. Except that the men of Phoenix Force knew they could not search all the ship's holds and cargo containers. Hundreds of weapons, tons of explosives could be hidden anywhere on the freighter. Only a meticulous, lengthy examination of every compartment and crate could reveal expertly hidden contraband. And no search would discover the identity of the terrorists who intended to use the weapons.
Gary Manning, the Phoenix Force member with the most training and experience in counterespionage and electronic surveillance, decided to place micro-transmitters throughout the ship. The microphones would allow Stony Man to monitor any attempt to transfer the cargo. The Coast Guard would wait at a distance, ready to strike when terrorists attempted to take the shipment.
To accomplish the boarding, Rafael Encizo had requisitioned scuba gear and a Sea Horse II. Encizo and Manning had used the Sea Horse Swimmer Delivery Vehicle (SDV) once before, when they intercepted and boarded a Soviet SSG submarine in the course of a mission against a "Jeddah" dragonnade.
Yakov had originally thought that this latest mission—boarding an anchored freighter under cover of ink-black darkness—would involve a few hours of leisurely infiltration. Then the freighter had been eight hours late. If they went in now, at four in the morning, they would be racing dawn.
Yakov slammed the pilothouse door shut. Limping down the steel stairs, he shouted at Encizo and Manning. "Why aren't you ready? Into your suits!''
"Inmediamente, Colonel!" Encizo answered as he and Manning rushed into the deck cabin.
As the two younger men stripped to their Speedo trunks and pulled on their wet suits, Yakov explained the change in plans. "No time for a quiet approach. We will tow the Sea Horse to within a few hundred yards of that scum bucket. You'll cut loose while we continue past. That'll save thirty minutes."
"And what about the exit?" Manning asked. "If it's daylight when we duck out—"
"You sound like him up there." Yakov pointed his artificial hand up toward the pilot's deck. "You worry too much."
"I will worry, and I'll worry now, thank you, sir!" said Manning, belligerently but without disrespect. "If they put a burst in our backs, I won't ever be worrying again."
"Then I should advise you that you may need two hours on board. At light, if you have not left the ship, we will create a diversion. Speedboats, shooting, sirens. Like television, but no pretty girls. This diversion will occur to the west of the Tarala . You will proceed east, into the rising sun. Do you understand?"
"No matter," said Encizo as he checked the Velcro closures on his knife sheath and the holster of his silenced Beretta 93-R. "We will not need the excitement. This will be a very simple thing. A swim in the moonlight."
Minutes later, Encizo and Manning slid the Sea Horse into the water, then followed it themselves.
The foul, freezing seawater splashed over them as they strapped themselves into the SDV's open cockpit. Manning spit out a mouthful of scum. He felt cold water wash over his face with a slap of pain. Then the water penetrated his neoprene suit at the ankles, the wrists, the neck. His muscles spasmed against the chill. He began subtle isometrics to warm his muscles. He felt the conflicting sensation of cold water intermingling with the sweat that coated his tightly suited body.
"Moonlight swim, my ass!" he cursed. "Like swimming in frozen crap."
He heard Encizo laugh. They buddy-checked each other's air tanks and valves. The battery-powered electric motor started up and churned the surface water for a moment. Then the SDV's buoyancy chamber blew out air and the miniature fiberglass submarine settled horizontally in the water. They jammed in their mouthpieces and signalled to Yakov.
The tug eased forward. Soon, at the end of a nylon line, they were trailing a hundred yards behind the churning screws. Planning through the choppy wake, they watched the lights of Tarala . The two men touch-checked their regulator hoses for kinks, then soaked their face masks to prevent fogging.
Designed for a maximum speed of three knots, the Sea Horse bucked and throbbed as the tug reached a speed of ten knots.
Suddenly a swell hit from the side and flipped it. The SDV spun like a lure on a dragline in the turbulent black water, and only the cockpit straps kept Encizo and Manning from falling free. Finally, another swell slapped the Sea Horse and stopped the spin.
Manning peered through his mask, hugging the curved fiberglass deck as his senses reeled. His stomach was heaving. He did not pretend to be an underwater expert.
He felt an elbow nudge him, then the Sea Horse suddenly slowed. Encizo was emptying the buoyancy chamber, and the SDV began to slip below the surface as he pushed the control stick forward.
In the calm, undersea darkness, they heard the tug's screws fade into the distance. Encizo watched the luminous needle of the compass that was set into the SDV's deck and maintained a course toward the Tarala .
At the count of three hundred, he eased the control stick back to slowly fill the buoyancy tank. He kept the SDV below the ocean's choppy surface and arched his back to raise his head above water.
A steel wall loomed above him. Pushing the control stick hard to the right, Encizo brought the SDV parallel to the Tarala's hull. Manning finally looked up. Encizo pointed to the prow. Manning nodded.
The SDV's electric motor pushed them silently through the water. Encizo kept the miniature submarine a foot below the water. The surface chop slapped and buffeted their heads as they watched for the anchor chain.
The hull curved over them and protected them from observation. Any crewman at the Tarala's deck would need to lean far over the rail and look straight down to notice them. From time to time, patterns of pale illumination from the ship's lights touched the two black-clad fighters. They ducked beneath the chop, surfaced only when darkness returned.
When the craft reached the freighter's anchor chain, Encizo stopped the SDV and blew air from the buoyancy chamber. As the SDV sank, he unsnapped his safety strap and slipped a line through a chain link. In seconds he had secured the SDV. It drifted six feet below the surface, tethered by the line.
Manning freed himself from his safety strap. They helped each other shrug out of their tanks, then swam the few feet to the chain.
Choppy waves slapped at them as they watched the deck. An amber bow light lit the Tarala's prow. They would be climbing into the full glare of the light. Anyone on the deck or bridge would spot them.
"What do you think?" Manning asked Encizo.
"Maybe I don't get paid to think," the Cuban expatriate answered as he started up the chain, climbing hand over hand on the slick iron, using the chain links like he would rungs on a ladder.
From the water, Manning watched Encizo near the rail, the amber light on him like a spotlight.
THROUGH HIS BINOCULARS, Yakov Katzenelenbogen saw nothing moving on the decks of the Tarala .
He saw vignettes of shadow
and drab color around lights, the jagged silhouettes of superstructure and antennas black against the stars. Water sprayed from a mid-ship scupper, but Yakov saw no crewmen, no sentries, no Phoenix Force commandos.
The pilothouse door slammed open behind him. "Sir!" one of the Coast Guard men called out to him. "Message on your radio."
Yakov strode into the warmth of the cabin. The monitor of his portable long-distance radio buzzed again and again. He unlocked the console, keyed his identification code.
A voice, denatured and made monotonic by the radio's electronic encrypting, came from the monitor. Yakov recognized the voice as that of April Rose, Mack Bolan's woman and Stony Man's resident electronics and communications specialist. "Phoenix One. I am relaying a message from Stony Man One. Repeat, Stony Man One."
Yakov switched off the monitor and plugged in the headphones. "Continue."
"Suspend operation. Return to Stony Man. Stony Man One has issued call for all members of your team to assemble at Stony Man Farm. Stony Man One inflight from Middle East, ETA eight hours. Repeat, suspend operation. Return to Stony Man. All members of your team."
"Impossible. Repeat, impossible. Insertion of personnel achieved. Operation in progress."
"When can personnel withdraw?"
"Unknown. No contact since insertion. No visual contact, no radio communication. This member very concerned."
"Withdraw personnel first opportunity. Stony Man One has cancelled all operations. On command of America One. Repeat, America One."
Yakov did not speak for a moment. All operations cancelled at the command of the President of the United States. . . What had happened?
He could think of only one reason to assemble all the Stony Man soldiers. War.
Yakov's religion and patriotism conflicted with his professional commitment to Mack Bolan, a man and a warrior he respected with all his heart. If the United States came under attack by the Soviets, the Arab hordes encircling Israel would launch a unified assault on his country. That would be the war his people had always feared—the Jihad.
As a citizen of the one democracy in the Middle East, a Jew, and an ex-officer in the Israeli Defense Forces—though maimed and middle-aged--he knew his duty. He calculated the flight time between New York City and Tel Aviv. How long until the war? Hours? Days? His nation of three million men, women, and children would face the combined armies of all the Arab and Muslim nations on Earth as those armies stormed Israel in waves of infantry and armor and aircraft, driven on by lies and hatred as the Muslim fanatics attempted to annihilate the Jewish state, to devastate the cities, to scorch away the achievements of generations, to leave only bones and sand and broken stones where the desert had flowered with orchards and farms, to destroy all things that represented the twentieth century, to return the Middle East to the Dark Ages, when Arab kings and their prophets ruled empires of slaves and impoverished, obedient subjects. It would be Armageddon.
"Phoenix One, are you there?" said the disembodied voice of April Rose.
He started to speak. The words caught in his dry throat. He coughed, turned to see if any of the Coast Guard men could overhear him. He whispered into the microphone, "Is it War Number Three?"
April's voice hesitated. "Maybe."
God grant my people mercy, he thought.
LIKE SHADOWS WITHIN SHADOWS, they crept along the deck, Encizo first, Manning ten steps behind him, their feet silent in their thin neoprene socks.
Encizo wore only his wet suit and weapons. Manning carried the pouch of micro-transmitters.
The Tarala stank of human filth and rot. Moving through the containers stacked on the freighter's foredeck, another smell assaulted the men: an acrid, vaguely nauseating stink from the cargo inside the eight-by-eight-by-ten-foot-long steel boxes.
Encizo paused beside a cargo derrick. He pointed at the control box and stood watch as Manning placed a micro-transmitter near the operator's phone. If and when the crew used the derrick to offload cargo, the microphone would catch the operator's voice and the voices of the men around the controls.
Gary Manning paused to examine the controls. Unlike the other rusting, salt-encrusted equipment on deck, the control panel gleamed, factory-new. The phone line and power cables flexed in his fingers, the plastic showing no cracking from ultraviolet exposure. He examined the deck where the panel was bolted to the steel. Even in the faint light from the bridge and crew's quarters at the other end of the deck, he saw the scratches and burr marks of recent installation.
Rafael Encizo nudged him. The Cuban motioned him on. But Manning shook his head. Continuing his examination, he saw cables leading to a heavy pumping unit.
When he had worked in civil engineering, Manning had used high-pressure pumps. Later, as the head of his own security company in eastern Canada, his accounts had included maritime and freight-handling firms. The pump in front of him exceeded the requirements of an old ship like the Tarala. More suitable for a fire boat or an oil tanker, the pump could suck fluid through six-inch-diameter pipes at a volume of thousands of gallons a minute.
Properly valved and plumbed, the pump could quickly fill or empty a tanker's holds, or shoot water hundreds of feet. This unit had been installed for a use that Manning did not understand.
The six-inch-steel output line went to the derrick mast. There, an assembly of steel fittings and a cast-iron valve reduced the output's diameter to only one inch. The one-inch line went straight up the mast. At the top of the mast—though he could not be certain because of the poor light—he thought he saw the pipe bend at a forty-five-degree angle. The pump would shoot an ultrahigh-pressure stream of fluid far from the freighter.
Without the proper nozzles and swivel joints, such apump would be useless to fight an on-board fire.
And it had no utility whatsoever for unloading a liquid cargo. As installed, the pump could only spray the cargo into the sky.
Manning hissed to Encizo, "Here! Come here!" The Cuban slipped back silently. "What?"
"What is this?" Manning pointed at the pump, at its six-inch output, at the thin line running up the derrick mast.
Looking at the pump, then the lines, then the huge pump again, Encizo shook his head. He went to the base of the unit. Two six-inch pipes emerged from below decks to enter the pump. Each line had an electric solenoid valve. Encizo only shrugged, motioning Manning to move on.
They continued to the superstructure. Voices stopped them.
Frozen in the shadows, they listened as men argued in Arabic. Encizo crept across the deck to the yellow circle of a porthole. The Cuban sneaked a glance inside, then motioned Manning to join him.
Through the filth-streaked glass, they saw several men crowded around a television. Two appeared to be Arab, three others Hispanic. Beer bottles and video cassettes littered a table. The two Arabs were struggling to insert a cassette into a video player. The others were glancing at one another, smiling. Finally, one Hispanic turned the cassette over. The video deck operated. A pornographic scene flashed onto a color television. The men clapped, whistled. One Arab shoved the other away.
The shoved Arab sulked. He wrapped a keffiyeh around his head then took something from the wall beneath the porthole and left the crew room.
Kalashnikov rifle in his hands, the Arab walked past Encizo and Manning. They waited until the sentry disappeared into the deck's shadows before moving to the deep darkness beneath a flight of steel stairs.
Encizo keyed his hand-radio and whispered, "Phoenix Two and Three. On board."
"Acknowledged." Yakov's voice came through their earphones. "Transmission received from Stony Man. This mission cancelled. Evacuate objective immediately."
"Negative," Encizo spit. "Arab putos spotted."
Manning hissed into his own hand-radio. "Something's going on here. Not just weapons smuggling."
"Mission cancelled on orders of Stony Man One. Return immediately. Pick up point one mile due west of objective. Repeat, one mile due west. We will show lights."
/> No one argued with Mack Bolan. Encizo sighed. "We come back. Inmediamente, mi coronel."
"Damn!" Manning cursed. "Back in that filthy ice water."
"There is no hurry," Encizo told him. "First, we finish our job. Then we play in the ocean."
"No objection here."
They listened for a minute, heard only the wind and creaking steel as the old freighter swayed with the swells.
Slipping from concealment, Encizo took the lead, creeping silently up the stairs.
On the next deck, they froze as footsteps passed on the walkway above them. A steel door squeaked shut. Encizo pointed to the right and left, to the rows of doors and dark portholes on that deck. Manning shook his head, no. He pointed up, to the bridge. Encizo continued up the stairs.
Following his Cuban friend, Manning glanced down to the main deck to see the sulking Palestinian hunched against the wind, staring out at the Atlantic, his Kalashnikov slung over his back. Among the stacked cargo containers, another sentry's cigarette lighter flared. Manning went low on the stairs and began to climb with his hands and feet, his back lower than the handrail.
A hiss stopped him. Flat on the walkway, Encizo pointed to the bright circle of a porthole. As they watched, a silhouette crossed the window.
To their side, a door handle clicked. Encizo moved fast. He disappeared. Manning crept off the steps and pressed himself against the bulkhead.
Their neoprene-black bodies were jammed into the right angle where the superstructure's wall and walkway met when Encizo and Manning heard the door open. The interior's brilliant light bathed the walkway and handrails. A figure in green fatigues that were tucked into black leather combat boots stepped from the doorway, hand groping for the railing.
The walkway went dark again. The boots went past their faces, then down the steps. They caught ,a glimpse of a keffiyeh-wrapped head and an AKM muzzle before the Palestinian descended to the lower deck.
Manning slowly rose to his feet. He went to the porthole and peered inside. He saw radios, electronic consoles, shipboard telephones, a door in the opposite wall. He scanned the room. He saw no one, only an empty chair in front of the radio.
Super Bolan - 001 - Stony Man Doctrine Page 6