The Final Crusade td-76

by Warren Murphy

  The Final Crusade

  ( The Destroyer - 76 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  Eldon Sluggard, the TV evangelist whose god was greed, had converted Remo to his renegade religion and enlisted him in his unholy war of conquest. Victoria Hoar, the curvaceous creature who made the minister her puppet by pulling his sexual strings, was out to turn Remo into a plaything of perpetual pleasure. The Destroyer was in the hands of this terrifying twosome body and soul, and unless his Oriental mentor Chiun could loosen their diabolical hold, Remo was going to hell in a hand basket-and taking the world with him...

  Destroyer 76: The Final Crusade

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Prologue

  On the day the Ayatollah died, a rocket launched by the Mujahideen Khalq struck the square called Maydan Sepah, in the heart of Tehran, narrowly missing the shop of a wizened old rug merchant named Masood Attai.

  When the dust cleared, Masood breathed a prayer to Allah. The prayer turned into a muttered imprecation when he noticed the lightninglike crack that had appeared on the rear wall. The portrait of the Ayatollah, which Masood had only an hour ago rehung with black crepe, lay on the floor, its glass front shattered.

  He looked for the nail. It could not be found. Masood walked out into the settling dust, pinched his flared old nostrils with cracked fingers against the smell of the burning cars, and sought a nail in the rubble. After nearly a decade of war with Iraq, and now harassment by Iranian counterrevolutionaries, even common nails were at a premium.

  He found a nail-a thick one with a large square head-amid the ruins of the Museum of Iranian Art and Archaeology. He carried it back to his shop and, using a wooden mallet, drove it into the wall in a new spot.

  He was hanging the portrait of the Ayatollah when the Western woman walked in. Masood knew she was a Westerner because, contrary to Islamic law, she wore no face-concealing chador. Her skirt hung well below her knees, but shamefully, her ankles and calves were bare. Masood found himself staring. It had been a long time since he had seen a young woman's naked legs. Not since before the Revolution.

  To his surprise, the woman inquired of his health in impeccable Farsi.

  "Salaam. Hale shoma chetore?" she asked.

  "Khube," he replied "Shoma?"

  When the woman replied that she was fine, he stepped down and asked her if she sought a special rug.

  The Western woman shook her head, saying "Na, na."

  "I have many fine rugs," Masood repeated in the same language.

  Her eyes sought the hanging portrait.

  "Such a large nail," she ventured, "for such a small portrait."

  Masood frowned. "The Imam deserves the best," he said.

  "And very old."

  "I found it in the rubble of the Archaeology Museum. It is a crime. So many fine artifacts in ruins."

  "In the Archaeology Museum, you say?" Her black eyes were thoughtful. "It could be anything then. Even a relic."

  "A nail is a nail," Masood Attai said, shrugging expressively.

  Reluctantly the woman turned to a fine Ghiordes prayer rug. She knelt, showing the trim line of her thighs. She was a very fine woman. A thoroughbred, Masood thought. She tugged at the corners with expert fingers.

  "Have you any Mamluks?" she asked upon returning to her feet.

  "Alas, no," Masood said. "Not since the fifth year." The woman did not ask the fifth year of what. She evidently knew that in modern Iran time was measured since the Revolution.

  "I will come again, then," the woman said. And she clicked out of the shop and into the street without a sign of fear on her comely face.

  Another rocket struck moments later. It demolished a green-tiled mosque down Firdausi Street, in the direction the woman had walked. Masood looked out of his shop doorway and saw the woman turn down a side street with quick, businesslike steps. Her chiseled profile was knit in thought. It reflected no other emotion and Masood wondered what it would be like to enjoy such a woman on a cool spring night....

  Returning to his shop, Masood noticed that the last concussion had caused the portrait of the Ayatollah to tip. He restored it, wiping ancient dirt off the square nail head with a sleeve. It seemed to be just an old nail. Why had the woman displayed such interest in it? he wondered.

  Chapter 1

  Lamar Booe tossed on the narrow cot. He could not sleep. At first it was because the cot, like all the others jammed into the hold, continually shifted and creaked as the great ship plowed through the swells. Then, after the cots stopped shifting, it was because Lamar knew that meant the ship had entered smooth water.

  The Reverend-Major came down from the deck to confirm it.

  "We're in the Gulf," he whispered, going from cot to cot, shaking the men awake. They reached under their cots for their tunics. They pulled them over their undershirts. Only afterward did they begin assembling their weapons. Bolts slid into receivers. Magazines clicked into ports. Safeties were tested.

  The Reverend-Major touched Lamar Booe on the shoulder.

  "We're in the Persian Gulf," he whispered.

  "Pershing Gulf," Lamar corrected. "When we're done, the world will call it the Pershing Gulf."

  "Old Black Jack would be proud." The Reverend-Major smiled. It was a beatific smile. Not the smile of a soldier about to take a force into combat, but of a man of God leading his flock to righteousness. The smile soothed Lamar's anxious soul.

  He reached for his staff. Unlike the others, he would not carry a weapon into battle with the heathen. He sat on the side of the cot, the staff across his knees. They trembled a little. He tightened his grip. He had kept the staff on the bed with him throughout the night because he didn't want the greasy floor to get to the standard he was chosen to carry into battle against the forces of darkness.

  Lamar had also slept in his white tunic. The gold stitching across the front gleamed faintly in the weak light.

  They waited in the darkness. Some prayed quietly, half-audibly. The close air tasted of oil, heavy and moist. It had made some of them ill-so ill they could not eat, and so nauseated from not eating and the constant rolling motion of the ship that many of them suffered from the dry heaves. A few ate just to have the relief of something to vomit up from their stomachs.

  The Reverend-Major, trying to keep their minds off the uncertainty of what lay ahead, walked among them, wielding a rodlike aspergillum and sprinkling blessed water on their heads. An M-16 rifle hung from his shoulder. His tunic was purple, of fine silk. It was a proud garment, Lamar thought.

  It was a proud venture, bold and good in the eyes of the Lord. Then why were his knees trembling? Lamar wondered. From a pocket inside his tunic, he took a miniature Bible and opened it to a random page. He forced his eyes to read. They skimmed the text, but the light was too dim and he could not concentrate, not even on the sweet word of God.

  The Reverend-Major began speaking.

  "We fear not the missiles of the Iranians," he said.

  "Amen," they returned.

  "We fear not the wrath of their mulllahs," he intoned. His eyes lifted to the darkened ceiling as if to a blacked-out heaven.

  "Amen."

  "For we know that God has chosen us to be his instruments."

  "Hallelujah!" they chorused, their voices lifting.

  "And we will triumph," said the Reverend-Major.

  "We know this!"

  "I will now bless the weapons of any who wish me to do so," the Reverend-Major said quietly.

  The men collected into a ragged line. Lamar had no weapon in need of blessing. Besides, he wasn't sure his legs would be steady enough to carry him. He knew he would be ready when the tim
e came. But not now. Not just now. His hands whitened on the staff that had been sanctified and personally presented to him by God's Right Arm of Earth, the Reverend-General himself.

  He knew its holy strength would be his when the time came. For Lamar Booe had faith. And faith was all he would ever need.

  But when the muffled toots of the tugboats came through the hull, his hands started to shake.

  The great ship was being steered into the loading dock.

  Rashid Shiraz smiled when he saw the old tanker, the Seawise Behemoth, appear in the Gulf. He picked up his field glasses and watched as the tugboats surrounded it and, like waterbugs pushing the carcass of a beetle, muscled it closer to the Kharg island oil facility, on the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf.

  Another tanker had made it through the perilous Strait of Hormuz. It was the second in two days. That was good, Rashid thought. Iran would need all the foreign currency its oil could generate.

  But as Rashid trained his eyes on the wallowing black tanker, a furrow of perplexity appeared between his heavy eyebrows.

  There was something odd about the tanker. Something wrong. He raked the stern with his glasses. Seamen busily made ready to lash the tanker to the loading facility. All seemed normal on deck.

  Rashid examined the hull through his glasses, although he did not know why. He was a member of the Pasdaran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. It was his job to guard Kharg Island from aggression-although he sometimes wondered what the clerics in Tehran expected his unit to do if an enemy rocket came down on Kharg. Or if an American warship heaved to and issued that dreaded warning to abandon the facility.

  A vertical line of white numerals showed at the bow of the Seawise Behemoth. The furrow between Rashid Shiraz' thick eyebrows became a knife slice.

  "This is wrong," he muttered. "This is very wrong." He hurried to the manager in charge of the facility. "There is a danger from that tanker."

  The manager had been in charge of Kharg Island since the days of the Shah. He was politically suspect, but the Revolution needed his expertise more than it lusted for his blood, so he was allowed to remain on the job.

  He looked at Rashid with no fear. Just a veiled contempt.

  "What you say?" he demanded.

  "Look," Rashid said, handing him the field glasses. "At the bow. See the waterline?"

  Reluctantly the man did as he was bidden. He fixed the glasses on the bow of the ship.

  "You see it? The numbers?" Rashid demanded. "It is too low to the water."

  The manager saw the column of white numerals above the waterline. They were the plimsoll marks, and indicated the tanker's draft in feet. When the tanker was full of oil, only numbers in the high sixties or seventies would show. When it was empty it would ride very high above the water, and it would be possible to see numbers as low as twenty-five. But on this craft the number forty-seven was visible above the Gulf's turquoise waters.

  "What could they be carrying?" The manager's voice was puzzled.

  "Then I am right! They do not come with empty holds."

  "No," the manager said, taking the glasses from his eyes.

  "No sane tanker captain would bring oil into the Gulf."

  "A leak perhaps," the manager muttered. "They are taking on water."

  "They would have sunk with such a leak, am I right? Tell me. Say that I am right."

  The manager said nothing. He would not admit that Rashid was right, he hated the man so.

  "What can it mean?" the manager asked at last. He might as well have asked the wind, because Rashid was no longer there. He was running down to the docks where the tugs were easing the black monster into position. He was shouting.

  "No one comes off that ship! That ship is quarantined! I decree it in the name of the Revolution!"

  The Seaurise Behemoth lay just off the terminal. Within a matter of minutes it was surrounded by the speedy attack boats of the Revolutionary Guard. One boat pulled up to the terminal to pickup Rashid. He ordered it alongside the Seawise Behemoth.

  An aluminum ladder was lowered from the side of the big oil tanker. Rashid was the first to go up. His AK-47 was slung across his back. He unshipped it the moment his boots touched the deck plates. He pointed it at the captain.

  "What means this?" the captain, who was Norwegian, demanded hotly.

  "I am Rashid Shiraz, of the Iranian Pasdaran-e Engelab. I intend to search your ship for contraband."

  "Nonsense. I come for oil."

  "You have nothing to fear if you are not engaging in counterrevolutionary activities," Rashid said as his fellow Revolutionary Guards slipped over the deck.

  "Two teams," Rashid called. "Hamid, you take one. The others will come with me. Quickly. Search everywhere!"

  "For what?" Hamid asked doubtfully.

  "For a bad thing," Rashid said, leading his team off. Hamid's team went in the other direction, not knowing what bad thing Rashid meant, but certain that they would know it when they saw it.

  Rashid was tearing the captain's personal quarters to pieces, despite the captain's strenuous protest, when, somewhere deep within the ship, a machine gun burped. It was so brief a sound that Rashid called for his Pasdaran to cease smashing the captain's desk with axes so he could listen for it again.

  The next burst was long. There were answering shots. Pistols. Then more automatic-weapons fire.

  "Follow me!" Rashid cried, throwing himself up a companionway.

  On deck, the sounds were louder. They came from amidships. It was a long run to amidships, for although not a supertanker, the Seawise Behemoth was not small. Rashid was out of breath when he came to the companionway from which the sounds of conflict crackled.

  A man stumbled up from the hold. His mouth bled. He was Iranian. His stomach suddenly blew out like a bad tire. Viscera splattered Rashid, who recoiled from the spray. Bullets coming through the man's stomach knocked one of his own men down.

  Rashid recognized the gut-shot man as belonging to Hamid's team. With hand motions, he signaled his men to stay clear of the opening. They huddled behind bulkheads, under pipes, and around the mouth of the companionway, and they waited.

  The gunfire was less frequent now. It snapped and spit. There were screams in Farsi. And in another language, a curious word:

  "Hallelujah!"

  Every time a man screamed, a chorus of voices shouted," Hallelujah!" What did it mean?

  Then there was silence and Rashid waited, wiping sweat off his upper lip, where the hair was sparse and straggly.

  A man stepped out of the darkness of the ship. He was unarmed except for a long pole. He wore a shapeless white garment over ordinary Western trousers. From his vantage point, Rashid caught a glimpse of gold stitching across his chest. He could not make out the design.

  But when the man set the pole on the deck and shook it once, sharply, so that a white flag unfurled, Rashid understood as much as he could about this sudden madness.

  For in the upper corner of the white flag was a gold cross, and it was the cross, Rashid realized, that was stitched onto the man's chest--the symbol of Christendom.

  Rashid moved in. He knocked the man in the temple with the butt of his rifle and dragged him off to one side. He was just in time.

  Others, also attired in white tunics emblazoned with the cross, surged out of the hold. But these infidels carried automatic weapons.

  Rashid cut the first man down. His fellow Pasdarans joined in. Soon a pile of bodies choked the stairwell. There were shouts of confusion from below. From men blocked by their own dead.

  Rashid pulled the pin on a grenade, and reaching around, tossed it below. A flash of fire made a momentary appearance; then there was smoke and high-pitched screaming.

  "You, you, and you," Rashid called, pointing to three of his bravest men. "Go down there."

  They ran down the hatch. One was blown back by a wall of concentrated fire. He fell in two sections, an upper half and a lower half.

  But the others got through. The soun
ds of a close-quarters firefight came from below.

  "Now, all together, charge them!"

  Rashid's men piled down into the hold. The fire was terrific. Rashid hunkered down in case stray bullets punched through the thick deck plating. He squatted on his prisoner. When this was over, Rashid's superiors would demand answers. This unarmed infidel would be the one to provide those answers.

  Seven Pasdarans had descended into the bowels of the tanker.

  Four returned. They looked at Rashid with surly blood-splattered expressions.

  "We are done," one of them said.

  "The infidels are all dead?" Rashid asked, coming to his feet.

  "See for yourself," he was told.

  "Watch this man," Rashid warned. "Do not kill him." Rashid went below. The passageway was strewn with bodies. Gold crosses were red with fresh blood. One man wore a purple tunic. Rashid turned him over with a boot. Breath hissed through the man's bared teeth. He was still alive. Rashid ended his life with two bullets in the stomach and three more in the face. The man's face broke like a dropped mirror.

  Rashid worked his way forward, stepping over hands and bodies. The trail of corpses led into a long room filled with overturned cots. A few bodies lay there, huddled in corners, as if these warriors had shrunk from the conflict and were eradicated where they cowered.

  Rashid Shiraz returned to the deck.

  "What does this mean?" one of his Pasdarans asked him.

  "It means-" Rashid began. He looked down at the unconscious man in the white tunic and began kicking him in the ribs, slowly and methodically. "It means war," he said at last.

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo and he wasn't going to jump. No matter how much the crowd begged him.

  It had started with one man. The fat guy in the peach-colored hooded sweatshirt. He had been walking along the street ten stories below on the cracked sidewalk. He looked up. It was as simple as that. The guy just happened to look up.

  He saw Remo sitting on the ledge of the dirty brick apartment building, his legs dangling over space.

  The guy in the sweatshirt stopped dead in his tracks. He turned his body to get a better look. It was nearly dusk now, the air cool.