Deep Black

by Sean McFate

  What I wouldn’t give for a shave, a pressed Jermyn Street suit, a ticket to La Scala in Milan, or even a decent cup of coffee. What I wouldn’t give to be able to wash my hands of it all. Instead, I was encased in two days of sweat, blood, and combat gear. I was feeling itchy, and I suspected it was more than my neck stubble.

  “I’ve bent for you, Dr. Locke,” the majordomo said, meaning he’d come down to my low level. “I am no longer a man who shits in the dirt.”

  Meaning he probably had been such a man, before Abdulaziz brought him into higher service. It wasn’t a surprise. According to Farhan’s briefing an hour ago, Abdulaziz had made his name in Saudi intelligence. Most of his men had probably come up that way, too. They made for loyal operatives.

  “Leave your guards,” I said.

  The majordomo glared. His eyes were hooded, more vicious than I remembered them being in Erbil. Of course, it had been dark, and I had been drinking, and he had been on the charm. Don’t underestimate this coyote, I thought.

  “I don’t do that,” he said.

  “It’s a condition. Your second is me.”

  He paused, considering. “I’m keeping my weapons.”

  “So am I.”

  He turned to his men and said something in Arabic.

  “Checks out,” our Kurdish guide said over my earpiece. He could hear everything I could, and would let me know if the majordomo said something threatening in Arabic.

  I nodded to Boon and Wildman. “We’re walking,” I said.

  The meeting spot was a few blocks away, but we took a zigzag route, overwatched by the Kurds with night-vision goggles at regular intervals. It was night, and the streets were empty. The building I’d chosen loomed before us, darkened and burned.

  “You’re taking me there?” the majordomo sighed. He was right; it was a proper shithole.

  “It’s the only thing we could afford,” I said, hand outstretched toward the front door. “You haven’t paid us our finder’s fee yet.”

  Farhan’s men had enacted their tough-guy imitation, just as before, with the baker, Abu Nadel, as tough-guy-in-chief. The guards were wrapped in black robes and standing motionless with AK-47s, looking like they had just smelled something vile. It was an excellent approximation of nasty jihadis.

  “You’re no militant,” the majordomo said to Abu Nadel, as we took seats on the floor side by side. The majordomo snarled something in Arabic. Abu Nadel’s face fell.

  “English,” I snapped.

  Abu Nadel thought he was keeping his face blank but it betrayed fear, and I knew the majordomo saw it, too. It was nearly midnight and chilly, as deserts get at night, but the young man was sweating under his thawb.

  “Infidel . . .” the baker began, but he fumbled.

  The majordomo laughed, like a man who found torture amusing. “You may call me Sayyid.”

  Sayyid, I thought. Winters had taught me using people’s first names disarms them, and that might prove an advantage.

  “Where is Farhan?” the majordomo demanded. His voice was cruel, accustomed to getting his way.

  The man was strong, though. He didn’t fold. Instead, he sat up straighter, and I saw his fear turn to determination. The majordomo saw it, too, and knew what it meant. The baker had grown during his time as a hapless refugee. It would take enhanced interrogation, at least, for the man to give up his friend.

  “He is not here, Sayyid. He has gone to a place where you cannot touch him.”

  “I have terms,” I said, as planned. “From the prince. You must provide safe passage to one of his companions, and promise to let the others go.”

  “Oath breaker,” the majordomo scoffed. “Why did I even bother?”

  “He has a wife,” I said.

  “He does not,” the majordomo snapped. It was true. Technically.

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “It isn’t his. He’s been under my protection for six months.”

  And you let him get away, I thought, realizing the majordomo was probably as desperate as we were. If he didn’t find the prince, Sayyid might spend six months in Farhan’s old jail cell. Or he might not make it that long, depending on how cruel this Abdulaziz really was.

  “Pregnancies are nine months long,” Abu Nadel said.

  “I’m surprised you know that much.”

  A serving girl entered, covered in a burka. She was carrying a large platter with only a meager portion of bulgur wheat mixed with leftover rice. Once again, the food was a message: Nothing special here. We are refugees. Sayyid didn’t even look up.

  “I will spare her,” he said slowly, as if biting every word. “If she renounces her claim to Farhan. She can have the child. I am sure Farhan will support it. But he must not acknowledge it . . .”

  “It is a girl.”

  “A relief,” the majordomo said. “A son would complicate things. A girl I can give you.”

  “She’s eight and a half months pregnant,” Abu Nadel said, as instructed. “She cannot have the baby here, and she cannot be driven out. She needs an airplane—”

  “No,” Sayyid said firmly, as the serving woman reached to put the platter between us. I could see the arm hair on her large wrist, but like a well-conditioned sexist, the majordomo didn’t even glance. “Impossible. We cannot attract attention. Abdulaziz can never know. I am doing you a favor. Accidents happen in places like Sinjar. An accident is the easiest solution by far.”

  He lashed out, suddenly, grabbing the serving woman by the arm and pulling her down. Before I could move, he stuck a small pistol into her ribs. “You understand that, don’t you, Farhan?” he hissed in the serving woman’s ear. “You understand that your precious Marhaz will die, if you don’t come with me?”

  The majordomo twisted the serving girl’s arm behind her back, as if he were trying to break it. I wouldn’t do that, I thought at the very instant Wildman said the exact same thing.

  The majordomo flinched.

  “You don’t want to do that, mate,” Wildman said again from beneath the burka.

  The majordomo didn’t move.

  “Go on,” Wildman said, with violence and amusement in his voice. He had more fun being held at gunpoint than anyone I’d ever met. “Check my dress. Don’t be shy. Pull it up. I’m packing more heat between my legs than you can handle. And oh yeah, two blocks of wired C-4, too.”

  The majordomo pushed Wildman away in disgust. Wildman lounged where he had fallen, his burka obscenely lifted around his thighs. The majordomo looked away, clearly repulsed, and Wildman laughed. He was loving this. I couldn’t blame him. I was loving it, too.

  But the bodyguard wasn’t laughing. He was pointing his AK-47 at the majordomo’s face. “You ambushed us in Tell Abyad! You killed Ahmed, Omar, Faizah, Awadi, Sana, Bayan Mohammad, Abdullah!”

  The majordomo looked up. He held up his Kahr PM9 pistol in a sign of surrender and placed it beside him, on the far side from where I was sitting. “Is that what you think, Prince Farhan?”

  “I saw you. You were doing my father’s dirty work, as always.”

  “I was saving your life, fata ’ahmaq. I am always saving your life. Even now.”

  “Those were your men.”

  “Those were militants. They had been tracking you for a week, and I had been protecting you. Seven days of watching you walk around as if you were untouchable. Seven days of watching you fuck that waqihhat al’amrikia, when I knew how pure you always were. I should have killed her then, but—”

  Farhan slammed the rifle butt into the majordomo’s face, knocking him backward.

  The majordomo sat back up, slowly, making a show. He touched his bloody nose and laughed. Blood had splattered his white suit. He calmly removed his pocket square and dabbed his broken nose.

  “Nonviolence is a virtue, right, my prince?”

  The prince wasn’t taking the bait. He kept the AK-47 steady, half a foot from the majordomo’s face. “You executed Nasser,” he said. “Personally. I saw you.”

 
The majordomo was steadier than Farhan, whose anger had festered. “I don’t know Nasser,” he said calmly.

  “You’re a murderer.”

  “When your father gives the order,” the majordomo replied, grimacing as he reset his nose.

  “Did he order you to kill Marhaz?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “But you’ve been talking with him about her.”

  The majordomo laughed. “Your father, Prince Abdulaziz, talks to me. He does not talk with me. I certainly don’t talk to him. You know that.”

  “You’re unfit for my sister, Umm Abiha,” Farhan said. “You always will be. That’s why she rejected your marriage proposal.”

  The majordomo’s anger flared. I could see it in his face. He hated this kid. Or feared him. Even the most trusted aide fears a son. A second later, though, he had regained control. “We share a favorite,” he said. “That should bring us together.”

  “I will protect my sister from you.”

  “That is her misfortune. If only you ignored her like the rest of your sisters.”

  “You’ll never marry into my family,” the prince sneered. “You are unfit. A street urchin turned assassin. I don’t care what she thinks she feels. She’s a princess. You’re a . . . slave. My father would never allow it. Love doesn’t matter.”

  “But when a prince falls in love—”

  “You are beneath her!”

  “Funny,” the majordomo said smoothly, “because most of the time, when we meet, she is beneath me.”

  Farhan lunged at the majordomo, and I leapt to block him.

  “I will cut off your head at Deera Square myself!” Farhan shouted at the majordomo, while I wrestled him into a headlock. Hot-headed allies are almost as bad as cold-blooded enemies.

  “Let him go!” I said. “Let him go, Farhan. Think of your wife and unborn child.”

  The world hung, suspended, as Farhan considered his next move. Then he relaxed, but it wouldn’t take much to set him off again. The situation was deteriorating, and I needed to regroup fast before I lost control.

  “What now?” the majordomo said, sensing the same thing. He might have hated Farhan, but he was a professional. He knew a losing situation when he saw one.

  “You walk out,” I said. “You take your men. You wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For the sun to rise. I need to talk to Farhan.”

  The majordomo sneered. “How do I know he won’t run?”

  “You trust me.”

  “I trusted you already, algharbi. It was a mistake. You’ve gone over to the other side.”

  “I’m not on anyone’s side. I’m negotiating.”

  “I didn’t pay you to negotiate.”

  “That’s negotiable,” I said. I waved my gun. “And right now, you don’t have a choice. Wildman!”

  “Oy.”

  “Take the majordomo back to his men. Let’s agree to meet again, Sayyid, right here, at 0600.”

  The majordomo snarled. He was getting animal on me. Good. I wanted to see his true nature. “Don’t try this again, algharbi. I won’t be fooled twice.”

  “You lost the prince when he went to Syria. You lost him again in Istanbul, from what he tells me. We’re here, Sayyid, because you’re easily fooled.”

  Wildman poked a gun in his back before the majordomo could respond and ushered him to the door.

  “You’re a dead man if you betray me again,” he called over his shoulder. Wildman shoved him hard into the wall, then continued escorting him out.

  “Exiting,” I told Boon over the radio.

  I watched them disappear, waited one breath, then turned to Farhan and the baker. “Okay, let’s go,” I said, pushing them toward the back door. “This is the most dangerous part. You never know what a man like that is going to do, after a humiliation like this.”

  “But you have some ideas.”

  “Let’s see if I’m right,” I said, as we headed out the back into an alley. I could see Farhan’s men on the roof with their AK-47s covering our departure. The majordomo hadn’t tried to double-cross us. So far so good.

  “I’m glad you’re on our side,” Farhan said.

  “I’m not. I’m on my own side.”

  We stayed quiet as we ran, taking our preplanned route. I tried to clear my mind and focus on the journey, on the danger of being wide open, surrounded by enemies, in a city like Sinjar, but something was nagging me, and after a few quiet blocks, I let down my guard.

  “What’s Al Garbage?” I asked, as we jogged along another empty alley.

  “What?” Farhan said. He sounded confused.

  “That’s what Sayyid kept calling me. Al Garbage.”

  “Algharbi,” he said. “It means Westerner.” He laughed. “And that man’s name isn’t Sayyid, you stupid algharbi. Sayyid means sir.”

  Chapter 25

  “NAV, when do we hit the CHOP line?”

  “We out-CHOP in seventy-three hours,” the voice came back. Lieutenant Commander Lopez let out a sigh. Three days until a new unit from 7th Fleet took over patrolling these waters, and the USS Ernest E. Evans could go home. The Arleigh Burke class destroyer had been in Condition III, wartime steaming, for months, and the crew was exhausted. Now they were heading to Jebel Ali, just south of Dubai, to resupply before the long journey home to Mayport, Florida.

  “Scuttlebutt is once we get into Jebel Ali we’re on restricted liberty,” one of the sailors carped. “Probably some hyped-up terrorist threat again.”

  “Beer on the pier?” his buddy replied. “You’re shitting me. We’ve been confined to the ship for weeks, and now our only shore leave is the sandbox.” The sandbox was the derogatory term for the U.S. Navy’s recreation area in Jebel Ali. It was a parking lot converted into the food court from hell: white plastic chairs and tables on asphalt, blaring rock music, warm beer, and chewy steaks, all under the Arabian sun.

  “Another fine navy day!” another said sardonically. “Beer, boom box, and kebab.”

  Lopez had had enough, even though they were right. “Stop your bellyaching, or I’ll administer some fan-room counseling sessions,” he said.

  That shut them up. Lopez was the Tactical Action Officer and the senior man on deck. It was 0126, and they were pulling watch in the Combat Information Center, or CIC, the ship’s brain center. Large color monitors with charts lined the bulkheads, while smaller screens glowed green with text. The crew worked electronic consoles, monitoring everything above, below, and on the sea.

  Silence again, Lopez thought. Alleluia. A cruise in the Persian Gulf was like being a goalie: boredom interspersed with brief moments of terror. Tonight was boredom. That was good, from Lopez’s point of view.

  A sailor stepped through the hatch carrying a folder marked TOP SECRET in large red letters.

  “Sir, radio just received a flash message from fleet.”

  “What is it?” Lopez asked, taking the folder.

  “They’re looking for a ship traveling through these waters, highest priority.”

  “Details?”

  “It’s a small group-three freighter. Out of Pakistan, heading to Yemen. Flag and name unknown, probably a flag of convenience. Intel thinks the crew changed both flag and vessel name after they hit international waters.”

  “Cargo?”

  “Possibly nuclear contraband, sir. That’s all we’re being told.”

  “Nukes in Yemen?” one of the sailors said. “Oh shit. Sounds like the Big Bang Theory.”

  “Sounds like Operation Haystack Needle,” another added.

  Lopez turned in his chair and shot them a glance. “No one said nukes,” he snapped. “They said nuclear contraband: probably rods or cylinders for centrifuges, something like that.”

  Nobody responded. Good men.

  “What was the last POSIT and heading?” he asked, meaning the last known position, identification, and time.

  “Unknown, sir. The message is fleet wide.”

  “Shit.�
� Lopez knew their shore leave would be canceled and their return home delayed until the fleet found the mystery freighter, but he dared not tell his watch team. “I’ll take it to the captain myself.”

  Lopez took one last sip of navy coffee and winced. It was as cold as the devil’s dick. How would you know, Chief? came the imagined reply from his ensign. You been getting friendly with Bee-el-ze-bub?

  He stepped through the hatch, leaving the red-light dim of the CIC, and entered the harsh fluorescence of the passageway. He climbed a ladderwell and entered the bridge. The skipper was slumped in the captain’s chair, boots on a console, staring at the night horizon.

  “Captain,” Lopez said. “We just received this flash traffic from fleet.”

  The captain snapped out of his daze. He had spent most of the last few weeks in this chair, missing meals and his bunk, chasing Iranian warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

  “What is it, Lopez?”

  “You better read it for yourself, sir,” Lopez said, handing him the folder containing the top secret message.

  Turner scanned it, then shoved it back in the folder with disdain. Lopez could see the captain’s displeasure.

  “The men are calling it Operation Haystack Needle, sir.”

  “They’re not wrong.” The captain leaned forward, right hand rubbing his forehead in sleep-deprived thought. Small freighters of this description were ubiquitous in the Indian Ocean. “Where are the gaps in my satellite and SIGINT coverage?”

  “Here, here, and here,” the chief said, pointing to the map on the NAV console. “And here, too.”

  The captain rubbed his forehead again. “Come to 165 at thirty knots. Have the slick-32 look for J-band emitters. Request a shift in our operational box to compensate for those gaps. We need better coverage.”

  Lopez nodded and turned to leave.

  “And Lopez.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Better cancel shore leave.”

  “Yes sir,” Lopez said, as he started to walk back to the CIC.

  “And Lopez, get the Fire Scout ready. We’ll need to see in the dark.”

  And shoot in the dark, Lopez thought. Fire Scout would hunt and kill anything they told it to.