Prepared For Rage

by Dana Stabenow

  The scene switched to the standard NASA-issue press conference, the six astronauts dressed in the now-familiar blue flight suits with the mission patch on the breast sitting at a long table, facing a room full of reporters with notepads and microphones and cameras. It was the second mission for the commander and one of the mission specialists, the first for the pilot and the other two mission specialists. The sixth was a Qatari who worked hard at giving the impression that his job was to single-handedly launch the ARABSAT-8A, the communications satellite for the Al Jazeera news network.

  The camera flashed on the mission commander, who for a moment looked like he'd been stuffed. One of the mission specialists, a woman from Alaska, diverted attention with a laughing complaint about the reporters' lack of interest in Eratosthenes, the orbiting observatory named for the ancient Greek scientist who had only been off three thousand miles when he estimated the circumference of the earth three hundred years before Christ.

  That persistent little voice at the back of his mind telling him he was missing something became a full-fledged nag.

  Zarqawi betrayed and killed.

  Isa, Zarqawi's devotee, on his own after Zarqawi's death, breaking with bin Laden to form his own group.

  Isa, recruiting Yussuf and Yaqub in Germany, and more in England.

  Yaqub in Toronto, waiting for the go signal.

  Mexico City, Haiti, a boatload of illegal immigrants.

  Patrick paused with the glass of water halfway to his mouth.

  Isa was Zarqawi's apprentice. Osama bin Laden hated and distrusted Zarqawi, and because of that Isa would never be regarded as a true member of al Qaeda.

  But Isa was ambitious, and al Qaeda set the gold standard for terrorism with 9/11. Isa wanted to surpass it, and to do so he would use bin Laden's name.

  One of the reasons Isa could be operating independently of al Qaeda was because he saw bin Laden's tactics change from attacking the Far Enemy on their own ground to engaging them in battle closer to home.

  What was it that loser, Karim, had quoted Isa as saying? He said that Bush said that it was better to fight us on our ground than for the Americans to fight us on theirs. And then he said he thought Bush was right.

  Instead of hitting the Far Enemy in Iraq, where the Far Enemy could hit them back, Isa was looking to bring the jihad back to the Far Enemy's backyard, where he believed it had belonged in the first place.

  And the first thing he would look for was a target of opportunity, something universally recognized as a symbol of American might and power, something that symbolized everything the Far Enemy stood for that the true believers hated. Their technology. Their secularism. Their greed.

  And their open, unabashed determination to corrupt the faithful.

  He stared at the television, at the shuttle, white against the enormous fuel tank, flanked by the slender rocket boosters, steam curling up from the tail to make it look like the whole assembly was floating on air.

  In the orbiter at this moment were five astronauts, two of them women, one of them black. One was a Protestant, one was Catholic, one was Bahai, and two were undeclared.

  And then there was the sixth person on board.

  One of the faithful.

  One of the faithful, yes, Patrick thought, but from Isa's viewpoint also a Qatari, a citizen of a nation whose women would have the right to vote in the next election. A bona fide Muslim, scion of a powerful and influential Muslim family, a family that owned a controlling interest in a global media organization whose twenty-four-hour news feed could be found on every television in every coffeehouse in every souk in the near and far East.

  An organization rich enough to launch its own satellite, which satellite was at this very moment tucked into the cargo bay of the shuttle he was staring at now.

  Suddenly Patrick knew why Isa had boarded a boat in Haiti that was headed north.

  "Fuck me," he said, and lunged for his cell phone.

  23

  ON BOARD FREIGHTER MOKAME

  "Now?" Yussuf's whisper was agonized.

  "Wait," Akil said, his voice a mere thread of sound. "Wait."

  The migrants' attention was fixed fearfully on the Coast Guard small boat. They barely registered Akil and his men's presence. With every part and fiber of their being they wanted to be safely ashore in America.

  The small boat came closer in an ever-narrowing circle. Once again the hail, "Attention, unknown freighter, this is the U.S. Coast Guard. This area is closed to all traffic, I say again this area is closed to all traffic. You must turn your vessel around immediately and leave this area."

  The small boat's orange hull was twenty-five feet away from the Mokames stern, then twenty, then fifteen. "Safeties off," Akil said softly, "and remember, head shots. We need the uniforms."

  He waited until the small boat had closed to within five feet of the Mokame, when he could see beyond the brightness of the spotlight to the members of the small boat's crew. He raised his gun and shot the coxswain between the eyes.

  "The coxswain sits in front on the left," Bayzani had said, illustrating with the salt and pepper shakers, so eager to instruct, so eager to please. "He's the captain of the small boat, so to speak. The man on his right maintains communications with the ship."

  Without pausing Akil shot the man sitting next to the coxswain, and one of his men, Mahmoud he thought, reached over the side with a boat hook and snagged the bow of the inflatable.

  "What the fuck?" the man in the bow said, staring open-mouthed. Yussuf shot him. The bullet hit his shoulder, high and to the left, and Akil was irritated. "We need the uniforms!" he repeated.

  He had to raise his voice over the increasing cries of the migrants, who after the first shock were scrambling, clawing, fighting to get away from the guns. One man, braver than the rest and more stupid because of it, made a clumsy attempt to tackle Yussuf. Akil's bullet caught him in the stomach and he skidded backwards, to sit down hard on the deck. He looked with surprise at the rapidly growing stain on the front of his shirt.

  Those migrants below had panicked at the sound of the gunshots, pouring out on deck, with screams and cries and pleas to their gods, only to fall back in fear when they saw the guns.

  One of the two men left alive in the inflatable was trying to pull the coxswain's body free of his seat. Akil shot twice and missed twice when the man ducked, but by then his men had found their range and the next time his head popped up three bullets hit it more or less simultaneously. Miraculously, they had managed not to hit the boat.

  The fifth man stood up in the back of the inflatable, hands raised in the air, his face a white blur in the night. The flap on his sidearm had been unfastened but his hands were empty.

  At least five guns spoke at once, and the man tumbled backwards over the edge of the small boat and hit the water with a splash. There were other splashes as some of the migrants went in, some voluntarily, others falling. By now the Mokame was listing heavily to starboard because all the migrants were crowding the starboard side gunnel, trying to crouch as far away from the armed men as they could get.

  Akil cursed with a fluency that momentarily stopped them all in their tracks. "Secure the boat!" he said.

  Mahmoud knotted the end of the small boat's bow line around one of the cleats on the Mokame. Five of his men half jumped, half fell into the small boat and began stripping the bodies.

  ON BOARD THE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR

  "T minus sixty."

  The urge to urinate was by now all Kenai could think about. She still didn't trust the diaper, but her tonsils were floating. She ran a swift calculation. An hour to go till launch. From launch, it took ten minutes to get into orbit, when she could change into dry clothes. She would spend seventy minutes lying in her own pee if the diaper didn't work.

  She decided to risk it. It took a few moments to convince her urethra that this was okay, prone on one's back not the most conducive environment for urination.

  Her urethra got the message, and her bladde
r emptied out in a warm rush. The relief was immense, and she sighed. She sent out feelers for diaper failure, but her back was still dry, so far as she could tell.

  All righty then. "Bring it on," she said.

  "What's that, Kenai?" Rick said, his voice raspy over her headset.

  "Nothing, sorry, Rick. Just hurrying up the count."

  "Hear, hear," Laurel said.

  "T minus fifty-five," said Mission Control.

  ON BOARD USCG CUTTER MUNRO

  "Less than an hour to go," Cal said to the Munros.

  They smiled, their eyes glued to the binoculars. They didn't look or act apprehensive, but like any parent of any astronaut, they had to be thinking of Challenger, and Columbia.

  He was.

  When he wasn't monitoring boat ops on the bridge, that was. He went

  back inside. "BMC?"

  "Yes, Captain," Gilmartin said. "We haven't heard from Mun 1 since they sent their last ops normal call."

  "When was that?"

  "Five minutes ago."

  They weren't overdue, and Garon's last communication had been to inform them that the contact appeared to be a sail-rigged coastal freighter

  loaded with migrants. "The message sounded kind of garbled, like their radio was failing," BMC said apologetically. "OS2 Riley says the same."

  "Oh, great," the XO said.

  ET3 Lang, on watch during boat ops, said in a puzzled voice, "I don't know what can be wrong with the boat's radio, sir. I ran the morning check and it was fine."

  They became aware of the presence of Admiral Matson standing in the doorway. "What's going on?"

  Heads swiveled toward Cal. "We have a freighter that is refusing to identify itself inside the security zone, sir." He saw Barkley's head peering over Matson's shoulder. "We've launched the small boat to go over and take a look. The small boat's been out of touch for a little longer than we'd like, but that may be due to radio problems."

  "Nothing interferes with Munro standing by this launch, Captain," Matson said, and returned to the port bridge wing.

  There was a short, uncomfortable silence.

  "One thing at a time," Cal said to his crew. "The BT will start the checklist, get the boat and crew information, if they're talking. In the meantime, we'll get this bird in the air. Then, if they haven't returned and we still haven't heard from them, we'll go over and take a look for ourselves."

  "Works for me," the XO said more cheerfully.

  ON BOARD USCG SMALL BOAT MUN 1

  Akil, Yussuf, Mahmoud, and two of the others had donned the uniform shirts and life vests stripped from the dead boat crew. Mahmoud, the only experienced boatman among them, was in the coxswain's chair. He took a moment to familiarize himself with the controls before starting the engine.

  Akil, sitting next to him, donned the headset and keyed the mike. He spoke tentatively, not entirely certain that the script he had put together from information received from Adam Bayzani and the traitor on board Munro was accurate enough to pass muster. "Munro, Mun 1."

  The answer was prompt and sounded relieved. "Mun 1, Munro."

  "The captain and crew are Haitian," Akil said. Unchallenged, he gained confidence. "The captain says his home port is Port-au-Prince." He dropped his voice as he said the last words.

  "Mun 1, Munro, say again?"

  Akil did so, again mumbling the words and keying the mike and throwing in the odd whistle and growl.

  "Mun 1, Munro, you're breaking up."

  "All right?" Akil said to Mahmoud.

  "Yes, Isa," Mahmoud said.

  "Then take us to the ship."

  "Yes, Isa," Mahmoud said.

  "Munro, Mun 1, the radio is breaking up. Mun 1 returning to base."

  The tedious months of waiting, the interminable hours on the freighter, now it was all finally culminating in glorious action, action that would make them household names around the world, feared by their enemies and canonized by their friends. Mahmoud was a true believer, and if Akil could not easily make out his face in the darkness, he could plainly hear the joy in the other man's voice.

  "Allahu Akbar!" Mahmoud said.

  Eight of them responded, if not as joyously then with as much manufactured enthusiasm as they could bring to bear, knowing that they were going almost certainly to their deaths. Even the most fanatic among them suffered at least a pang of uncertainty when faced with the near future.

  And then they looked to Akil sitting on the side of the small boat, at the calm certainty on his face, and were reassured. This was Isa, after all, Zarqawi's right-hand man, the author of too many successful actions taken against the infidel to count.

  They could not fail.

  Exalted they might be, careless they were not. They approached the cutter on the starboard side. A shout from the bridge.

  "Radio's down!" Akil shouted back.

  They waited a few moments, and then another shout from a man in a white hard hat two decks down. That would be the boat deck captain. "Captain says he'd like to leave the lights off until after the shuttle launch so we don't screw with everyone's night vision. You okay with that?"

  In a passable American accent, Akil said, "No problem!" From Adam Bayzani and the traitor, he knew the boat crews practiced boat ops in the dark all the time. In this case the dark was a friend to him. Five of his men were lying flat on the bottom of the small boat, hidden by the men in the stolen uniforms.

  The tension on the small boat was palpable as they heard the whine of the boat davit and the clink of the shackles as they were lowered. The man in the bow grappled for his shackle, missed, grabbed again, and this time caught it. In spite of the calm seas the small boat did move up and down and he fumbled with the clasp. When he got it on he threw himself backwards.

  "Bow on?" The boat deck captain sounded testy.

  "Bow on!" Akil said.

  The stern shackle was even more recalcitrant, but it was finally fastened to the small boat and this time Akil's man bellowed, "Stern on!" without prompting.

  There was a clank and a whine and a moment later the boat began to rise in the air.

  "Cut the engine!" came the irate yell from the boat deck. Further comments were clearly audible, and probably meant to be. "Crissake, one shuttle launch and suddenly the boat crew doesn't remember how to run a boat."

  Hastily Mahmoud cut the engine.

  Akil wondered if the boat deck captain was annoyed at the possibility of his missing the shuttle launch himself. He didn't know it yet, but he was about to witness something far more spectacular and significant.

  Something truly historic.

  "Stand by, we're putting you in the cradle, we don't have any crew on the main deck," the white hat said. The whine of the davit increased. They ascended past the main deck and were swung aboard with neatness and dispatch, the hull settling into the cradle with a small jolt.

  "You guys are supposed to report to the captain, as in pronto. Come on, Orozco." A door clanged open, and shut again.

  "Quickly, now," Akil whispered, "and silently."

  His men, galvanized, slid over the small boat's gunnel to the deck of the cutter. As Akil had hoped, the starboard side of the main deck was deserted. All of the cutter's crew was on the port side watching the shuttle.

  "You have your radios?" Akil said in a low voice.

  Yussuf held his up and clicked it twice. The click was repeated in the radios held by Akil and Mahmoud.

  "You remember the plan?"

  "I remember, Isa," Yussuf said, and surprised him with a fierce embrace. Five shadows went up the flight of stairs forward of the boat.

  "Go," Akil said to Mahmoud. Mahmoud opened a door to the main deck and went inside. Akil and the rest followed.

  Inside, the ship was dimly lit by red lights. Akil paused at the top of a flight of stairs and watched Mahmoud walk down the passageway toward the door leading into the engine room. He waited long enough to see Mahmoud open the door. Mahmoud and four men entered. The door closed firmly behind them
, and Akil waited until he saw the levers lower and lock. He turned then and went down two flights of stairs, ending up in a tiny alcove between two heavy steel doors.

  He straightened the life vest and the uniform shirt beneath it, and pulled on the bill of his cap. It was too large, and stiff with the coxswain's blood and brains.

  He didn't look up at the closed-circuit television camera mounted above the door. It doesn't work, the traitor had told him. It's supposed to but we don't have the money for it.

  He pressed the buzzer beside the door on the left.

  They're not expecting someone with a gun.

  He waited. A trickle of sweat snaked down his spine.

  They'll open the door to anyone, especially if they're in uniform.

  There was an answering buzz, and the sound of a bolt going back. The door cracked open and he stared at it in momentary disbelief.

  The door didn't open any further. He realized that whoever had opened it had walked away, leaving him to enter on his own. He pulled the door open and walked in.

  It was a large, cool, dark room, with many banks of screen displays, radios, and control consoles. There were four people looking up at a square screen. One of them looked over his shoulder. "Hey, Hendricks, come on-wait a minute, who are-"

  Akil shot him. The woman next to him screamed, and he shot her, too. The third man put his hands out and backed up. "No," he said pleadingly, no-

  He was the third to die in that room.

  But not the last.

  The fourth man sat where he was, a rictus of a smile on his face, his eyes wide behind round, silver-rimmed glasses. "You did it," he said.

  Akil ejected the magazine and slapped in another.

  "I didn't think you'd do it," the man said. He couldn't stop grinning.

  "You were wrong."

  "I intercepted the Falcon's transmissions about the freighter. I jammed the small boat's radio calls. I still didn't think you'd actually do it."