by Robert Gandt
Tyrwhitt whirled to confront the second assassin. He was crouching over the body of the informer. A dark pool was already spreading over the cobblestones from the body of his victim.
For a moment, Tyrwhitt and the assassin locked gazes in the darkened street. Tyrwhitt could see the man’s face beneath the black kaffiyeh. He had a black mustache, a beak of a nose, dark, piercing wolf’s eyes. He held the knife at the ready, seeming to consider whether to finish the job.
“Your move,” said Tyrwhitt. He slid his hand beneath the gellebiah.
The assassin took a glance at his fallen colleague. The man lay spread-eagled on his back, staring with sightless eyes at the night sky.
The assassin reached a decision. Keeping his eye on Tyrwhitt, he backed away, moving toward the yellow lights at the end of the passageway.
Tyrwhitt withdrew the Beretta from its holster beneath the gellebiah. He watched the man, not wanting to fire the noisy weapon, but prepared in case he produced a gun of his own.
The assassin whirled to run, but he was too late.
The shape appeared behind him, seeming to materialize from the gloomy darkness of the passageway. In the thin light Tyrwhitt saw something glint, a movement across the man’s face—and he slumped to the ground.
The dark shape in coarse dark trousers and long, loose shirt stooped over the body. He wiped the blade of his kukri killing knife on the dead assassin’s shirt. The man’s sliced throat was gushing blood onto the cobblestones.
“It’s about time you showed up,” said Tyrwhitt.
“You didn’t need me,” said Mustafa Ashbar. “I was only worried that you might shoot him.”
Which he had almost done, Tyrwhitt reflected, and it would have been a mistake. Street violence, at least with firearms, was not a common event in Bahrain. The Bahraini police would have come running.
Tyrwhitt checked the other two bodies. The first assassin lay silent, his head tilted back at an unnatural angle.
The informer lay in his own thickening pool of blood. He had been stabbed numerous times, it appeared. The front of his shirt was a sodden red mess.
Tyrwhitt shook his head in frustration. Damn it, he should have expected the attack. If he’d been alert, he could have saved the informer. He had almost gotten the story about the American prisoner when these ragheads popped up. A fucking amateur performance.
From around the corner he hear voices, shuffling footsteps. Curious locals would find the bodies and summon the police.
Time to disappear.
Mustafa was sheathing his kukri. Tyrwhitt stared at the weapon. It was nearly a foot long, with a wide, curved blade. He wondered how many throats it had sliced.
“Was it necessary to kill him with that thing?”
“Of course,” said Mustafa. “He was a terrorist.”
Well, thought Tyrwhitt, he couldn’t argue with that. As usual, Mustafa made sense.
“I think it’s time for a drink,” he said.
< >
USS Ronald Reagan
Dusk was settling over the Gulf. Through the tinted glass of the flag bridge, Maxwell could see the dark silhouettes of the Reagan’s escorting warships etched against the surface of the sea.
Hightree had sent the flag yeoman and his aide off the bridge. Maxwell and Boyce were alone with the admiral.
“It seems we have kicked over a hornet’s nest,” said Hightree. “I’ve been given orders—strictly verbal because none of this will be in writing—that everything we know or think we know about the POW matter is to be expunged. It doesn’t exist. Nothing further will be discussed or sent through channels.” He looked at Maxwell, then Boyce. “Is that understood, gentlemen?”
“May I ask from whom the orders come?” said Maxwell.
“No, you may not.”
Maxwell felt the same old anger ignite inside him. What the hell was wrong with these people? He saw Boyce giving him a warning look. He knew he should just thank the admiral and leave the bridge. Follow orders and shut up.
“Admiral,” he said, “that’s a crock of shit.”
Hightree looked like he had been walloped with a mallet. “Excuse me? I must have misheard you, Commander. Did you say something about a crock of shit?”
Boyce rolled his eyes and turned to stare out the tinted window.
“With all due respect, sir,” said Maxwell, “I have spent my career believing that we didn’t abandon our soldiers who were captured by the enemy. For some reason, our country is leaving one of our colleagues—yours and mine—behind. I find that deeply offensive, Admiral.”
Hightree let several seconds pass while he composed his thoughts. His voice softened. “Just this once, I’m going to overlook your choice of words, Commander Maxwell. For what it’s worth, I have the same feelings. But it’s not our job as officers to interpret orders or to read things into them. As Battle Group Commander, I am expected to implement the orders that come down from my superior officers. If I’m not willing to do that, then I should stand down and ask to be relieved. The same is true of you, Commander Maxwell.”
Maxwell’s anger was spilling out of him. Hightree was right, he thought. He should ask to be relieved. Tell them to take this job and stuff it. These were orders his conscience wouldn’t allow him to follow.
Something was holding him back. What about Raz? How is that going to save him?
He took a deep breath, trying to gain control of his feelings. He heard Boyce making a production of clearing his throat.
“Yes, sir,” he heard himself say. “You are correct, and I apologize.”
“Good,” said Hightree. “We have to trust that our people in the intelligence services know what they’re doing. Let’s comply with our orders and get on with our jobs.”
Hightree’s tone made it clear the meeting was over. Boyce was already on his way to the door. “Thanks for carrying the ball on this one, Admiral,” Boyce said. “Your point is well taken. Skipper Maxwell and I will put the matter behind us.”
He gave Maxwell a meaningful look. Maxwell allowed himself to be towed out the door. He kept his mouth shut.
< >
Manama, Bahrain
Just as Tyrwhitt expected, Bronson was pissed off. But this time he was more pissed off than usual. Something else was bugging him.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Bronson demanded.
There was no point in playing dumb, Tyrwhitt thought. “Sure it was me. What’s the problem?”
They were in Bronson’s private cubicle in the SCIF in Bahrain. Tyrwhitt hadn’t yet written his report about the appointment with the Bu Hasa informer.
“Problem? An agent kills three Arabs in a semi-friendly Arab city in order to obtain one miniscule scrap of information that we already possessed. That’s the problem.”
More than one scrap, mate, thought Tyrwhitt to himself. The scrap about the American prisoner he was keeping to himself. One of those nice-to-know tidbits tucked away in his memory bank. Just in case.
“Actually, I only killed two of the buggers.” It would just complicate matters if he mentioned Mustafa’s share of the killing. “They jumped me in the back street behind the souk, and one of them took out the informer with a knife. I dispatched one with my hands, the other with the knife.”
Bronson gave him a strange look. “Your hands?”
Tyrwhitt held his hands up. “Lethal weapons.” He smiled.
A frown passed over Bronson’s face. “The Bahrain chief of domestic security has already speculated that someone from this station did the killings.”
“Clever chap, isn’t he?”
“Our operations in Bahrain depends on cordial relations with the local government.”
“Perhaps we should ask them to protect us against assassins.”
Bronson’s face darkened. “Don’t be wiseass with me, Tyrwhitt. I’m your immediate superior at this station. Your assignment was to meet an informer, ask specific questions, and report back to me. You were not authorized to commit executions
at your own discretion.”
Tyrwhitt was about to tell him that discretion had nothing to do with it, that the beady-eyed little fuckers were coming at him with knives.
He held his tongue. Bronson was a dickhead, and nothing he could say would ever change that. “Yes, sir, I understand. I promise not to kill anyone again without your permission.”
He could tell by Bronson’s blazing eyes that he wasn’t buying it.
Chapter 20 — The Squeeze
USS Ronald Reagan
1905, Thursday, 18 March
Maxwell closed the door to his stateroom and took a seat at the fold-out steel desk. A stack of squadron paperwork lay on the desk. Beside it was a tray of unfinished correspondence.
The fatigue from the four-hour mission over Iran and the trip to the Saipan had caught up with him. A jumble of conflicting thoughts was crisscrossing his mind. He was still perplexed by the reaction from Hightree and the chain of command about the prisoner story.
He knew in his gut that the admiral was right. An officer’s job was to implement orders, not interpret them. If he wasn’t willing to do that, he should pack it in.
Well, damn it, maybe I will.
He opened the laptop computer on his desk and clicked it on. While he waited for it to boot up, he fumbled through a stack of CDs. He found a Berlioz—Symphonie Fantastique, his favorite. He slipped it into the player and let the music wash over him.
Claire was still on board the Reagan, and she would be wondering what happened to him. With her journalist status, she knew that the strike was finished and successful. She would know, too, that no jets were lost. He wanted to see her, tell her about the Iranian jet, tell her he loved her.
But not yet. He had some thinking to do.
As he usually did when he was fumbling for answers, he looked to the framed pictures on the bulkhead. Maxwell’s heroes gazed at him from their framed portraits.
To the left was the bristling, energy-filled image of Theodore Roosevelt. A bit of Roosevelt, he thought, would be a good quality in every military commander. All the way up the chain, from battle group commander to the commander-in-chief.
In the middle was a black-and-white photograph of a grinning young man in the cockpit of an A-4 Skyhawk. He was tall, lanky, wearing a dark, bushy mustache. At first glance, visitors thought the picture was Brick Maxwell. Then they read the handwritten caption on the bottom: Lt. Cmdr. Harlan Maxwell.
Maxwell’s father, retired Vice Admiral Harlan Maxwell, had been a powerful but distant icon in his life. Only in the last few years had Maxwell and his father reconciled after years of estrangement.
To the right was a portrait of a man in eighteenth century dress. He had a handsome, longish face, a wig, and a serious expression. In Maxwell’s opinion Captain James Cook was the ultimate role model—explorer, scientist, navigator, man of action. Like the fictional Captain Kirk in Star Trek, Cook boldly went where no man had gone before.
What would Cook do? Maxwell wondered. Going boldly didn’t seem to be a good idea now.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with his fingers. He’d been in the Navy nearly twenty years, including his tour at NASA. He’d had several occasions to question his own suitability as a military officer. He would never be an unquestioning follower of orders like Admiral Hightree.
But Hightree might have been right about the CIA. The intelligence services—CIA, FBI, NSA—knew what they were doing.
The hell they did.
He thought of several calamities caused by flawed intelligence. The missed warnings about the coming attack on the World Trade Center in September, 2001. The bombing of a wrong target—the Chinese embassy—in Yugoslavia. A strike against a pharmaceutical plant—misidentified as a weapons factory—in Sudan.
The worst, in his own experience, was in Yemen. A Navy intel officer conspired with a terrorist—Jamal Al-Fasr—to kill over two hundred sailors and Marines and nearly caused the loss of the Reagan.
He thought again of Al-Fasr, replaying in his mind the scene aboard the Saipan.
I have a proposition that may interest you.
What kind of proposition?
An exchange of prisoners.
Bronson had cut him off before Al-Fasr gave the name of the prisoner. It was possible, Maxwell supposed, that it might be someone other than Rasmussen. Someone they hadn’t accounted for.
But there was the notebook. Raz’s journal.
Maxwell kicked off his boots, then peeled off the sweat-caked flight suit. He slipped into a pair of nylon warm ups and a T shirt, then settled back into the padded desk chair. He picked up the notebook and began reading where he had left off.
The Colonel—he doesn’t allow anyone to use his real name—is a different breed of man than the guerrillas in his brigade. He has a western education and has been trained in the U.S. as a fighter pilot. I have not yet determined what drives him—why he has taken up arms against the U.S. and the developed countries. He doesn’t seem to be a religious fanatic like most of his troops.
As he read, he found nothing in the notebook of a sensitive nature—no details about his captors, or his treatment, not even his geographic location. No surprise there. Raz knew that anything he wrote would be read and analyzed by his captors and used against him.
Symphonie Fantastique swelled as Maxwell wrestled with his feelings. Raz and Al-Fasr. Each a prisoner. Each wanting freedom.
A sense of purpose was settling over Maxwell. Raz was alive. He was out there somewhere in Iran. No one was going to do anything about it.
Except me.
An idea was germinating in his mind. It was still vague, probably unworkable. It all depended on whether—
A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.
He swung the door open. In the passageway stood the answer to his question.
“Why haven’t you called?” said Claire Phillips
< >
As usual, she was flustered. She had another of those cute little spiels ready to deliver. And as usual, it left her.
“Oh, Sam, I was so worried about—”
He didn’t wait for the rest. He pulled her inside the room, closed the door, took her in his arms. He kissed her, held it until she’d forgotten what she intended to say. Then she clung to him for another minute.
“Thank God, you’re back, Sam. It’s been six hours since you landed.”
“CAG and I took a trip over to the Saipan.”
She looked at him. “There was something different about this strike, wasn’t there?”
He nodded. “The good part was that everyone got home okay.”
She sat in the empty chair next to his and listened while he told her the bare facts of the strike. By the careful way he talked, she knew there was more to the story. Critical details behind the bare facts.
She knew the rules. As a journalist she knew how to piece together stories from the snippets of information she gleaned from her contacts. With Sam Maxwell it was different. Between them was a tacit agreement that whatever he told her was off limits, unless he told her otherwise. She had never violated the agreement.
He finished telling her about the strike. After a moment, she said, “Something else happened, didn’t it?” she asked.
He nodded. “Remember the rumor about an American POW in Iraq?”
“The one you asked Bronson about? What was his name. . . Rasmussen?”
“It’s more than a rumor.”
He told her about the capture of Jamal Al-Fasr. And about his proposition that he be exchanged for an American POW.
Claire kept her silence, knowing that what he was telling her was explosive information.
He handed her a manila file folder from his desk. “They found this in Iran this morning.”
She opened the handwritten journal. As she scanned the pages, her heart began to pound. Then she came to a passage that made tears spring to her eyes.
I think today is my birthday.
I wonder if Maria and the
children will remember. If so, what will they think? Will they regard me as only a distant memory, or a family figure they dearly loved and wish was back?
Do the children think of Maria’s new husband as their father? Does Maria love him the same as she did me?
Such thoughts are not healthy. I will no longer observe such occasions. Dead men shouldn’t have birthdays.
She closed the notebook and looked up at Maxwell. “This is your friend, Rasmussen? The one that was shot down in Desert Storm? He’s being held by the Bu Hasa terrorists?”
Maxwell nodded.
“And the CIA won’t agree to an exchange?”
He shook his head.
“What am I missing, Sam? Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they think Al-Fasr is too valuable a prize, or he’s too dangerous to turn loose.”
“Or maybe they don’t want to acknowledge that Rasmussen is alive.”
She saw the answer in his eyes. “That thought has occurred to me,” he said.
“It doesn’t make sense, Sam. Why isn’t our country doing everything possible to get one of our own back?”
“Maybe they just need a little prompting.”
It still didn’t make sense. “I don’t see how—”
“Have I ever asked you for help before?”
“No,” said. “Are you asking now?”
“Yes. This is important.”
“Important enough to blow your career? And mine?”
He nodded again. “It’s not for us. It’s for a guy named Raz.”
She chewed on her thumbnail for a while. The pieces were beginning to fall into place. She could guess what he had in mind.
Okay,” she said. “What do I have to do?”
< >
She returned to her stateroom, her mind filled with turmoil.
As she packed her roll-on bag, she thought about Maria Rasmussen. She met her once, back in the Washington days when she was a fledgling reporter and Sam was in test pilot school at Pax River. It was a Sunday afternoon, two years after Raz vanished over Iraq. Sam took her with him to visit Maria in Virginia Beach.