Hostile Contact

by Gordon Kent

  “Out of the car now!”

  Triffler was screaming behind him, the loudest he had ever heard him yell.

  “Down! Out and down in the road!” Triffler fired a shot in the air. Alan grabbed the door open and pulled the man at the wheel right into the road, charged with adrenaline. In the backseat, a man cleared a weapon from his holster and started to point it at a third man, an Asian. Alan shot the one with the gun. He didn’t think it through, simply fired point-blank. Then he grabbed the man he had just shot and pulled him out by the passenger door. He screamed when Alan twisted his arm.

  “Lie down!” Alan bellowed. Then there was a new shower of gravel and another car, a small, rusted, white jeep, skidded sideways across the road. Alan lost the man who had been in the front passenger seat. He was off, out his own door, and trying to scramble across the ditch. Harry fired his shotgun in the air. The man threw himself down. Alan turned back to Triffler.

  “I lost one.” Triffler pointed into the brush. “Passenger bolted.”

  Alan grabbed the man in the Isuzu.

  “Colonel Lao?” The man, slight and balding, nodded, as if nothing could surprise him.

  “Cars off the road. We’ll leave in the plane. Get the trees off the road, too.”

  Alice took the shotgun from Harry and stood over the three men lying in the road.

  “Come on,” said Alan, and he and Harry started to clear the road. The trees were hard to move, and Alan was sagging, and it took Triffler’s help to get them clear enough to prevent an accident in the oncoming dark. Harry pushed both trucks off the road with his little jeep.

  “I’m going to miss this car,” he said.

  “Drive us to the plane?”

  “Sure. I’m coming with you. Alice’ll take the car. No point in lingering here.”

  “I hear that.”

  Triffler tied the three Chinese together. Harry shouted at him in Swahili a few times and Alan looked at him as if Harry had lost his mind. “Dick doesn’t know any Swahili.”

  “Does the phrase ‘plausible deniability’ mean anything to you?”

  “Huh?”

  “You look like shit and we’re both black. We might be locals.”

  “They’ll never buy that.” But Alan got it. They didn’t have to buy it. Someone just had to say it and stick to it.

  Triffler ran up. “That guy is bleeding pretty fast.” He looked at Alan. “You just going to leave him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Give me your medi-pac, for heaven’s sake.”

  Alan reached into his backpack and took out his medi-pac. He tossed it toward the three bound figures and pulled Triffler into the back of the jeep. “Screw them, Dick. They’d have done the same to us.”

  “We’re not them,” Triffler snapped.

  The overloaded Mahindi started down the hill toward the plane. Harry reached out from the front, a long arm extending into the back.

  “Dick Triffler? I’m Harry O’Neill. You like working for NCIS?”

  Triffler shook Harry’s outstretched hand. “It has its moments.”

  Harry laughed and got on his cell phone.

  Dar es Salaam.

  Dukas was standing inside the mud house that Harry had paid ten dollars for. Outside, a man named Djalik, with whom he’d talked on and off for a half-hour on the cell phone before he ever met him, was giving final, whispered instructions to Harry’s people. Djalik struck Dukas as one of those people who love to sneak around in the dark and go Boo when you least expect it, but Harry trusted him, and Dukas didn’t plan to make a lifetime pal of him. For now, creeping around the dark was a valuable skill.

  “Okay,” Djalik said in the doorway. It was dusk under the trees, dark inside the lightless house. “I got three people out there. They got three people out there—locals, and we don’t know if they’ll shit or go blind if we make a move. Far as I can tell, they don’t know we’re here. One of my guys thinks they might be Hutus, some of those hotshot militia bastards who’ve been on the run since Zaire, but we don’t know that. Hardcases if they are. On the other hand, they could be guys with ax handles and a free shirt from some Tanzanian rent-a-cop shop, in which case they’ll take one look at a gun and puke.”

  “I don’t intend to show a gun,” Dukas said.

  “Neither do I. On the other hand, I’m not going to let some Hutu shithead kill me.”

  Dukas felt a hand on his arm, then a firm grip pulling him toward the doorway. Djalik’s voice dropped to a whisper. “We’ve found a route to the back door of Lao’s house that’s just out of their lines of sight. It means going on your hands, but it’s okay. The wife and the kid are in there alone—he came home from school two hours ago, everything normal. Then a black woman left—maid or a cook; my guess is she got sent away. I think the woman knows what’s going down with her husband.”

  “We don’t do anything until they grab Lao,” Dukas said. It seemed exotic, alien, the idea of grabbing somebody. Not the way he had wanted it to go.

  “The longer we wait, the better the chance that the Chinese embassy is going to send their guys out. And they’re heavies.”

  Dukas guessed that the Chinese embassy was like all bureaucracies—slow and confused. Even if they had a direct order from Beijing to seize Lao’s family, the op would take time. And Dukas was counting on a bureaucracy in Beijing, too. Whatever had sent Lao to him to try to make the second meeting, it hadn’t so upset Beijing that they had killed Lao outright. Rather, he thought, the team that had taken him must have had orders to get him to a safe house someplace up the coast, or they would have brought him right back to Dar. A safe house meant delay—bureaucratic waffling. “We wait until we get the word,” he said.

  “You sure you don’t want a gun?” Djalik said. Clearly, he couldn’t believe it, because this was the third time he’d asked.

  “I couldn’t raise it to sight it, and I couldn’t take the recoil,” Dukas said for the third time.

  They waited. Against the steely sky, the leaves got blacker, then began to fade as the light slid down the sky. He looked west and saw glorious red and orange.

  If they get him, they’re going to have to do the carrier-plane pickup in the dark. Not going at all the way he’d wanted.

  His cell phone rang.

  “One,” he said.

  “We got him.”

  Dukas felt a rush of heat down his body, and his scalp crawled. “Say again.”

  “We got him. We’re headed for the rendezvous.”

  Dukas put the phone in his pocket. And took a big breath. “We’re on.” He took Djalik’s arm. “You guide me to the house. I’ll explain to the woman what’s going down. If she resists, we’ve got a problem. But we have to get her to the American embassy, capisce?”

  Djalik led him forward, Dukas bent over with his left hand on Djalik’s right shoulder. The position hurt, but Dukas ignored it. High stakes, screw the pain. They went under the fence, then right along it for a distance that Dukas realized Djalik had already measured and was now doing by duckwalk paces. Then they turned left, were able to walk almost upright for five steps between black banks of undergrowth in a kind of no-man’s-land between the good houses and the mud huts, until Dukas could see the lights of the Lao house and open space. He smelled water—somebody watering a garden.

  Djalik touched his hand, pushed down. Dukas got down. More, the touch said. Dukas was on his knees.

  They went along the ragged edge of the no-man’s-land, then to a wall that surrounded Lao’s house. Along the wall to a gate. Djalik had already cracked the gate’s lock.

  Inside the wall, Djalik pointed up at a neighboring house—only a corner visible. “Window,” he whispered. “He can see us unless we belly-crawl.”

  There was thirty feet of straggling grass between them and the house. Dukas belly-crawled. He felt water soak into his clothes. It was the Lao lawn that had been watered, the woman coming out here and doing it, maybe trying to seem normal to the watchers she knew must be out the
re. Gutsy lady. Halfway across, he allowed himself a look toward the other house. If there was a window there with a watcher in it, they were just below his line of sight.

  Djalik stood. “Golden from here,” he said. He pointed. An opening in the building made a sheltered portico; on one side was a huge plastic trash can. A basketball backboard and hoop were silhouetted against the darkening sky.

  Dukas moved along the wall to the opening and stepped in, almost falling over a bicycle. Straight ahead was a door, on his left another. Light spilled into the yard farther along, and he heard the chink of a dish on a utensil.

  He knocked on the door.

  She was small, bosomy, frightened. And she had a gun.

  “Missus Lao? Your husband sent me.” He was aware of the light spilling out of the house on him, but he thought the portico would hide him from the watcher at the window. “Missus Lao, I’m here to help you.”

  Her eyes were too big. She had been weeping. Over her shoulder, Dukas saw a boy of twelve or thirteen. “Do you speak English?” Dukas said to her.

  “I do,” the boy said. The woman said something in Chinese that sounded brutal to Dukas.

  “Please tell your mother that there are men outside who want to hurt her, and I want to help her.”

  The boy said something. The woman only stood there, the gun held out as if she were going to push Dukas away with it. He figured it was a .32 but didn’t want to find out the hard way. “Please tell your mother that your father is safe and is flying to an aircraft carrier. Right now.” Not quite true, but getting close.

  The woman listened to the boy. She began to sob. She backed into the house, the gun still on Dukas, but she didn’t shoot when he came in or when Djalik came in behind him.

  Dukas talked to the boy, who translated. Dukas lied some—he disliked that, but he did it—and told the boy that his father was coming to the States, and he wanted them to come, too. Dukas didn’t say “defect.” After the boy translated for his mother, she nodded sadly, and Dukas realized with relief that Lao had told her what he was going to do. And had depended on Dukas to get the family out—until Beijing had decided that the defection wasn’t going to happen.

  “This man is also your friend,” he said, indicating Djalik, who was prowling around, muttering to his people over a headset. “Doesn’t your mother speak any English?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Dukas absorbed that, realized this wasn’t one of the times, because she saw him as an enemy. But not, maybe, as big an enemy as some others. “Please ask your mother if we can have a dress that will fit that man.” He nodded at Djalik.

  The boy got unhappier as they talked. Whatever she had told him, it was only now coming to him that his father was a traitor, Dukas the living symbol of his treason. Yet, as the boy got farther from Dukas’s grasp, the wife came closer. He knew she was in his hand when she produced a dress that she had got from the maid’s room, and, at his request, her car keys.

  “Djalik, you go out in that and drive off in her car. When you clear the driveway, send your vehicle in. We’re going out, and they aren’t stopping us. Okay?”

  “Got it.”

  “Your people ready?”

  Djalik only nodded. He put on the sacklike dress as if it were something he did all the time. “Want me to take the lady’s gun?” he said.

  “Not yet.” Dukas figured it made her feel better. She was holding it at her side. When Djalik went out, she picked up a handbag and put the gun in it.

  “Tell your mother we’re going. Is there anything else she wants?”

  She looked around the living room. If she saw a life, the years put in with a man, the experience of Africa and other places—Dukas noted Indonesian shadow puppets, Chinese watercolors—she gave no sign that she would miss them.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  He heard the car start in the driveway and back out. There was a momentary silence, then a screech as it took off, answered by another as another car followed it. Within seconds, a heavier engine got louder in the driveway, then dropped and purred. Dukas opened the door.

  They had to cross twelve feet of gravel to get to the Toyota Land Cruiser. A Caucasian was crouched beside it, gun out in combat position, scanning the top of the wall and the house beyond. On the other side of the car, another man was just visible. Where the driveway met the street, an African was just visible against the lights of the house opposite. His hands were out, moving up and down uncertainly; his head was turning from side to side. Not one of Harry’s. And not sure of what to do now the ball’s dropped.

  Dukas led Mrs. Lao out as if he were escorting her to lunch. The boy came close behind. Dukas waited for shots. His shoulders wanted to hunch. Shot once not very long ago, he hated to have it happen again.

  “Get in the car, get in the car,” the white man was growling.

  The African at the end of the driveway turned and ran.

  Dukas put the woman into the car and then the boy. “Let’s go.”

  The two men jumped in and the doors slammed, and the car was moving at the same time. It accelerated backward down the driveway and swung hard to the left, just in time to meet a smaller car that was coming with no lights on. The two men with Dukas both screamed “Go!” and leaned out the side windows with their guns. There was a smack-thud, and the smaller car was driven backward, and Dukas’s driver shifted and accelerated, and they were tearing along the street, and the smaller car was rocking as the driver tried to start the stalled engine.

  “American embassy,” Dukas said. He patted Mrs. Lao’s hand.

  Seattle.

  Marvin Helmer’s secretary buzzed him. Helmer ignored her; he was still smiling about the death of Ray Suter. He had reviewed his options and had decided that, except for Piat, who was by now in Mongolia or someplace, there was no way, no way, anybody was going to pin any of the Sleeping Dog crap on him.

  The Teflon cop, he told himself.

  Of course, there was Suter’s cell phone, and his palmtop, on both of which he might have left some numbers and E-mail addresses. But those would slip off him, too. He’d used electronic dead drops and pass-throughs. Teflon.

  The secretary buzzed again.

  “Yes?”

  “Agent Myeroff of the Bureau to see you, sir?”

  Helmer frowned. “Does he have an appointment?”

  “No, sir, he’s very apologetic, really, but he says it’s important and it just came up.”

  “He should have telephoned for an appointment.” Helmer wondered what Hoover would have done. Been magnanimous? Why not? “Send him in.”

  FBI Agent Myeroff was short and a little thick at the waist to be convincing. His hair looked a little unkempt, too, Helmer thought. Helmer was standing behind his desk, frowning, back straight, hands joined in front of his privates. An example to slovens like Myeroff.

  Agent Myeroff held up a badge. “Dick Myeroff, FBI.”

  “Normally, I expect visitors to make an appointment, Agent Myeroff.”

  “Yes, sir. But this wouldn’t wait.” Myeroff got a paper from his left-hand, inside jacket pocket. His jacket was unbuttoned and his tie wasn’t quite straight. Hoover would have dressed him down, right there.

  “Well?” Helmer said.

  “Mister Helmer, this is a federal warrant for your arrest.” Myeroff smiled, not at all pleasantly. “The charge is criminal conspiracy and abuse of office.”

  Helmer’s frown wavered. The hands joined over his privates got a better grip on each other.

  “You have a right to remain silent. You have a right to a lawyer. Anything you say—”

  34

  USS Thomas Jefferson.

  “Hey, man, get your gear on!” Brian Campbell was bouncing in the ready room while Soleck read the ASW board. Soleck waved a hand and ran down the corridor to the ASW module, with Campbell right behind him. “Hey! Soleck!”

  “You got an emitters list, Brian?”

  “What?”

  “Get a tape? A good
one?”

  “Huh?”

  Soleck pounded off down the port-side passageway. Campbell caught him hovering over the chart table in the ASW module.

  “Hey! We just got upgraded from Alert 60 to Alert 30! We’re supposed to be in the goddam plane!”

  Soleck nodded and frowned, ignoring him. He ran his finger down the last location of the sub on the ASW chart and got a nod from the warrant officer who owned it. Then Soleck stepped through the tall knee knocker to the Combat Information Center. The TAO glared at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be on deck?”

  Campbell muttered something behind him. Soleck waved nervously and moved into the ASuW module, a brightly lit desk manned by two officers and two enlisted, where they tracked surface contacts. In the harsh blue glare of the JOTS terminal, Soleck looked at the whole picture, with possible contacts labeled hostile fast mover. Those would be the cigarette boats. To the south of them was a tramp freighter just out of port in Mombasa, headed north with a load of fuel oil for Mogadishu, and there were other contacts appearing.

  “You guys the alert? As soon as you launch, you have got to clean up this picture. There’s a fair amount of surface haze and no one can pick out the cigarette boats for sure. If they’re even out there and the Esek Hopkins isn’t just seeing her own shadow.”

  Soleck collected a printout from the JOTS. Then he went down a narrow passageway to a locked door, where he knocked. Campbell was just opening his mouth when the door opened. Soleck held up a colored tag he had around his neck and was allowed in. Campbell was stopped at the entrance.

  “Damn it. I’m flying on the same mission.”

  “Do you have a Top Secret Code Word Clearance?”

  “I’m cleared Top Secret for the MARI project.”

  “Where’s your tag?”

  “Fuck.” Campbell appeared to be searching himself. In fact, he never wore it.

  The chief petty officer seemed to consider for a moment, but then Soleck was back in the passageway, shouting, “Thanks, Chief,” over his shoulder. He ran right past Campbell and kept running until he reached the parachute rigger’s space behind the det’s ready room.