“As I said, he was a strange one. A health freak. Worked out with weights, kept in top shape no matter where he was, what he was doing. Never polluted his body with poisons such as alcohol, coffee, or tea.”
Johnson paused to watch the motor launches disappear around the head of the breakwater.
“And he didn’t smoke,” he added.
Loomis pondered all the ramifications of that bit of intelligence. “If Larson fabricated Boleslaw’s death inquiry, then he must have known — or suspected — he was CIA.”
“I don’t know,” Johnson said. “The whole mess puzzles me. Larson is scared shitless about something. He didn’t seem worried about Boleslaw. In fact, he even bordered on bragging about that. But when it became plain we were taking the ship, he really turned worried. I think now the stuff is on board. I just hope Boleslaw managed to leave us some message or clue, before they killed him and threw him over the side. Sure would save us some work.”
After rigging the accommodation ladder on the starboard side, the special teams brought aboard their equipment and started the search. Loomis and Johnson wandered throughout the ship, monitoring progress. The job was marvelously complicated.
The forepart of the ship contained a maze of cargo spaces both above and below the waterline. To make certain nothing was missed, all goods were removed from the two huge dry cargo spaces under the fo’c’sle. Nothing was left to chance. The entire anchor chain was hauled up from the chain locker to ensure that no nuclear birdcages were stored beneath. All of the bos’n’s stores were brought to the main deck and examined. The forepeak tanks and deep tanks forward were probed electronically and physically.
The cargo tanks amidships proved less difficult than Loomis had expected. After the first few efforts, the searchers fell into a routine that scoured all thirty tanks within ten hours.
The stern section was another matter. The engine rooms, the after-engine rooms, the boiler spaces, and the pump rooms contained hundreds of inaccessible areas where physical search was hampered, and thick metal thwarted the radiation monitors. Closed-circuit television probes were brought in to search crevices no man could enter. The work was tedious and painstaking, continuing after other areas had been secured.
The crew’s quarters yielded nothing of interest, aside from an impressive mass of clutter and an interesting collection of pornography. Boleslaw’s bunk was located and searched. No hidden message was found.
With the search entering the twentieth hour, Loomis had spread the ship’s blueprints on the steel deck. He was kneeling, tracing measurements in the pumping rooms against his notes, when a hollow, popping noise seemed to come up through the ventilator shafts on the after part of the ship.
“What the hell was that?” Johnson asked behind him.
Loomis reached for his Heckler. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I sure as hell think we better go find out.”
On the third level below the main deck, they met four men from “C” Team fleeing topside in panic. Loomis tried to stop them.
“Gunmen!” one of them yelled. “They’re killing everybody!”
As if to prove him right, another burst of gunfire sounded from below. Loomis grabbed the man’s arm and held him. He was one of the specialists, flown in from Washington.
“Where are they?” Loomis demanded.
“In the engine spaces,” he said, pointing.
“How many?”
The man seemed confused. “I don’t know,” he said. “Three, maybe four.”
“What happened?”
“We opened the drive-shaft housing. They were inside. They started shooting. They killed Smitty and Joe.”
He was pulling away. Loomis turned him loose. He scurried on up the ladder. Johnson worked the action on his Heckler to chamber a round. “No wonder Larson was worried,” he said. “Apparently he has some passengers not carried on the ship’s papers.”
Loomis tried to remember the layout of the engine spaces. From what he could recall, a narrow hatch opened onto a catwalk that made a square figure eight through the main engine room. The engines were in the center. On the outside of the catwalk were boilers, evaporators, and a maze of machinery. At regular intervals ladders led down to a steel deck and the engine bedplates. Loomis had no idea where the drive-shaft housing was located. Logically, it should be somewhere at the rear of the engine spaces.
He led Johnson down to the main engine room hatch. It was standing wide open. None of the fleeing search team had bothered to dog it. Loomis moved cautiously to the opening.
Twenty feet away, crawling slowly toward them on the catwalk, a member of the search team was calling for help. He had left a trail of blood along the catwalk.
“Cover me,” Johnson said, moving past Loomis. He trotted out onto the catwalk, picked up the man, and brought him back. There were no sounds from the engine room.
Johnson put the man on the deck. Loomis recognized him as one of the radiation specialists from Los Alamos. He had been hit in the stomach, groin, and thigh. He wasn’t bleeding much; Loomis figured he would live. The man was conscious, eyes bright with pain.
Johnson knelt beside him. “How many of them are there?” he asked.
“Four,” the man said, gasping for breath. “Smitty’s down there. I think he’s dead.”
“Well, we’ll go see,” Johnson said. “Where exactly are those four fellows?”
“They were in the drive shaft. The housing. But I think they’ve moved.”
Six Dominican marines came down the ladder, guns ready. Loomis motioned for them to stop where they were.
Johnson edged to the hatch and peeked in. “I’ve never seen so many places for bullets to bounce,” he said. “I think the fewer people we have shooting in there, the better.”
Loomis nodded agreement. He saw movement at the far end of the main engine room. He held his fire, on the outside chance it was a search-team member.
“My time to move,” Loomis said to Johnson. “Cover me.”
Crouching, he ran down the catwalk. He made it past the first engine. A stream of bullets spanged off the metal around him. Johnson fired one long, sustained burst that put heads down. Loomis rolled off the cat-walk and dropped the eight feet to the steel deck. He took up the firing so Johnson could make his advance. When Johnson reached the crosswalk, he took up the firing, giving Loomis time to hunt cover.
The old team was working again. Loomis jammed home a fresh magazine with a feeling of exhilaration. They had established triangulation. With any luck, they should be able to cover each other through the advance.
“This is Interpol!” Johnson yelled from the catwalk. “You fuckers are under arrest!”
Johnson was just making noise, hoping to rattle them, make them get careless.
The ploy worked. Loomis saw a figure move, trying to spot Johnson. Loomis cut loose with a burst. The man dropped.
Then all hell broke loose. Two guns sprayed the area around Loomis, the bullets ripping into the boiler behind him with an uncannily loud clamor. Live steam roared through the bullet holes. Loomis had to move. He dashed across an open space to the after-engine, hearing Johnson’s gun above covering him. He dropped beside the engine, taking what protection he could from a brace beam. For a full minute he heard nothing except the roar of the steam.
He became aware of a tingling in his left arm. A ricochet had caught him below the elbow. He was bleeding profusely. An artery had been severed. He slipped off his belt and was preparing a tourniquet when he heard Johnson’s signal — a three-round burst. Loomis quickly stepped around the brace beam and sprayed the end of the engine room while Johnson moved up. Loomis then dashed to the next brace while Johnson covered him.
Loomis waited impatiently, watching. He glanced down at his arm. He was losing a lot of blood. Figuring he couldn’t wait any longer, he cut loose with a three-round burst, signaling Johnson. When Johnson’s gun took up the fire, Loomis plunged into the aisle shooting, advancing. He saw a muzzle blast and shi
fted his fire. A dark shape sank to the deck. He heard Johnson charging on the catwalk, firing down on the gunmen at close range, bouncing the bullets off the heavy bulkhead behind them. They attempted to flee in a desperate gamble. Loomis saw their target: a hole fifteen feet beyond them, where the deckplate had been removed to pump the bilge. He knew that if they reached the bilge spaces, they’d be difficult to hit. He cut the last two men down. They fell, sprawling, their machine pistols cartwheeling across the steel deck.
Johnson came clattering down the ladder. “This all of them?” he asked.
“All I saw,” Loomis said.
Gun at ready, Johnson checked the bodies. “All four dead as lead can make them,” he said. “I guess that’s Smitty over there. He’s dead, too.” He noticed Loomis’s sleeve. “What the fuck happened to you?”
“Nick,” Loomis said. He put his Heckler down and reached for the pressure point above his elbow.
“Well, I’d sure hate to see you get a real wound,” Johnson said. “You might bleed a little.” He turned and yelled for the marines to send down a medic. He pulled a knife and ripped Loomis’s sleeve, exposing the wound. “Doesn’t look too bad,” he agreed. “I guess you’ll live, if you’ve got enough blood.”
Feeling suddenly weak, Loomis leaned back against the engine. Johnson walked over to the bodies. “Those fellows sure are funny-looking Latins,” he said.
“Maybe it’s because they’re Arabs,” Loomis told him.
“Arabs? No shit?” Johnson rolled one over with his boot. “If that don’t beat all,” he said. “I thought we were wrapping up this can of worms. Now it looks like we’ve just opened another one.”
Johnson was right. Octopus quickly identified the four Arabs as the terrorists who had destroyed the Israeli airliner at Tel Aviv ten days before. Larson apparently was transporting them to safety. He was well known in international crime circles as the man to see for smooth smuggling operations. Langley surmised that the Arabs were to be landed by raft on the coast of South America.
The ship search was concluded. No trace of the nuclear material was found.
“It went aboard in Lisbon,” Johnson said. “It isn’t aboard now. There’s only one way to find out in a hurry what happened to it.”
“What do you have in mind?” Loomis asked, knowing.
“I’ve taken the liberty of bringing in three interrogation specialists. Let’s give them a crack at Larson.”
“What sort of subtle, sophisticated interrogation techniques are in vogue these days?” Loomis asked. “Drawing and quartering?”
The sarcasm was wasted on Johnson. “Larson will walk out without a mark on him,” he said.
“And probably not enough brains left to piss in his pants without help,” Loomis said. “All right. Take him. But spare me the details.”
They returned to their headquarters at the Jaragua. While Johnson reported the results of the search to Washington, Loomis called El Jefe, who didn’t seem surprised over the failure. He had been following its progress, hour by hour, and had concluded much earlier that the material was not aboard.
And now, he had news of his own.
“María Elena is gone,” he said. “She walked right out the front door and apparently just disappeared.”
Loomis felt his last bit of energy draining away in an overwhelming sense of helplessness.
“Just like Mary Poppins,” he said.
Chapter 20
Minus 3 Days, 02:55 Hours
The planes came over San Francisco de Macoris on the average of one every ten minutes. The C-47s continued on across town to the airfield to land supplies, but occasionally an F-100 Super Sabre or Mirage jet returned to strafe. The rebel forces were well protected, for the most part, and the strafing did little damage. Ramón knew that the whole operation was psychological. But he didn’t know what to do about it.
He sat at a long teakwood table in the basement of the huge old church, waiting impatiently for his advisers to arrive, certain that each hour of indecision brought his entire movement closer to disaster.
Ramón was fearful that his revolution had moved too rapidly, too successfully. Sniper teams he had dispatched merely to harass and to worry government forces instead had engaged and won battles. Strategic enclaves he had envisioned as strong points had been expanded through sheer enthusiasm, and now the very size of his holdings endangered the whole revolution.
The victories had come too soon. He wasn’t prepared for the tremendous responsibilities. His program had called for a campaign of several months, gradually building his strength in the north, allowing him time to assimilate supply sources before moving on the capital. His orderly plan of advance included step-by-step occupation of plantations, factories, food plants, and warehouses. Now, the map of conquest was inflated, hodgepodge, and dangerously out of balance. He had entire cities at his disposal, but the price of victory was beyond his means. He had to find some way of feeding and supplying thousands.
Ramón held his breath as a Super Sabre, more aggressive than most, passed low overhead, strafing the streets. He heard .50-caliber shells splattering against the old church walls, and the rain of glass and plaster on the tile floors above. For a heart-stopping moment, he feared that his exact location was known and that a cluster of bombs might follow the bullets. But reason told him his whereabouts could not possibly be known. He himself had not chosen the site of his strategy conference until a few minutes ago. His advisers hadn’t been informed. They had been ordered to report to various safehouses around town, where they would be picked up by a single driver, who alone would know the meeting place.
Dust and powdered plaster drifted down from the ceiling, blanketing the surface of the table with fine debris. Alfredo came hurrying down from the sanctuary above to make certain Ramón was safe. Ramón forced a smile of reassurance. He calmly checked his watch.
“It is time,” he said. “Send the car. Tell the driver to watch the planes and to stop for cover when necessary. But we must hurry.”
Alfredo trotted back upstairs. Ramón wiped the dust from the table and noticed with irritation that he had a tremor in his hands. He couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten. He waited impatiently until Alfredo returned.
“See if the good father has food,” Ramón said.
Alfredo returned a few minutes later with rice, beans, and the father’s apologies that there was not more.
“This will do,” Ramón said. “Perhaps we can feed the multitudes later.”
By the time the first of his advisers arrived, he had finished eating. After drinking two cups of strong black coffee laced with rum, he felt much better. Within thirty minutes, the eight members of his general staff had assembled. The ninth, he was informed, had been killed during the final assault on the police barracks in Santiago.
Ramón called the meeting to order.
“We have arrived at a crucial point in our revolution,” he told them. “If we go ahead, we risk all. We’re not prepared. Yet we can’t wait. We can’t sit back and hold on to what we’ve won. And if we retreat, pull back, we will lose momentum we may never regain. I would like to hear your views.”
“We can’t stop now,” said Ricardo Morales, the hatchet-faced lawyer from Santiago. “We have El Jefe reeling. Let’s move on the Distrito Nacional.”
“That’s exactly what El Jefe would want us to do,” said Julio Paredes, the portly, asthmatic doctor from San Francisco de Macoris. “Most of his forces are concentrated in the distrito. There he has tanks, air power, artillery. And he knows that as long as he holds the capital, he holds the government.”
“We also have stronger forces in the distrito,” Professor Mario Salamanca reminded them. “And the discipline is better. Our snipers have remained snipers. Our sappers have been content to hit and run. And we are still living on El Jefe’s economy. No one has to feed us.”
Ramón moved to block the haggling. “Has your staff devised the battle plan I requested?”
“In
detail,” the Professor said. He hunted in his briefcase, unfolded a large map of the distrito, and stood to spread it on the table. Adjusting his heavy horn-rims and brushing an errant mop of unruly hair out of his eyes, the Professor spread his feet into his lecturing stance. “Instead of concentrating on the Duarte Bridge, as was done in past revolutions, we propose to focus instead on the Old Town, from here to here, along El Conde from the Gate to the river,” he said. “The approaches to the bridge will be blocked to the east, halting traffic from the military base at San Isidro. We will concentrate strong forces at this point here, on the Boca Chica highway, and here, on Las Americas at this junction.”
“The sea on one side, the river on the other,” Doctor Paredes said. “It would be a trap.”
“All our forces would be concentrated on two fronts,” Professor Salamanca pointed out.
“The gunboats and destroyers could shell from the river, or from the sea,” Doctor Paredes said.
“That possibility remains wherever we fight in the distrito,”the Professor countered. “If El Jefe chooses, his destroyers can stand at sea and shell the entire town.”
Ramón again stepped into the debate. “What are the chances for assassination?”
All eyes turned to the Professor. He hesitated, adjusting his horn-rims carefully, smoothing his scruffy beard. When he spoke his voice was firm. “Minimal. El Jefe never leaves his quarters. Never. But we have options. El Jefe has placed the entire distrito defense under command of Colonel Escortia. If we remove him at the opening of the battle, El Jefe’s defense structure will be thrown into confusion. There is much infighting, much jealousy, in the upper echelons of his military. El Jefe would lose valuable time in re-establishing line of command. And there is another possibility. The norteamericano, Loomis, has become something of a security blanket for El Jefe, psychologically as well as in fact. Loomis travels freely in the streets. An ambush could be arranged. His death would contribute much toward El Jefe’s eventual decision to abandon the fight. And the country.”
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