The Ghost of Flight 666

by Christopher Anderson

  “I suppose he’s not going to be around when we finally fall,” Slade sighed.

  Brueget grimaced, “Mon Dieu! He is determined to roast in Hell!”

  The young jihadist’s wails ended in a single high pitched cry. His arms reached for the sky, hands ending in grasping, burning claws. Then he collapsed and went limp as a fish.

  There was nothing more to be done; nothing to salvage from the wreck. The rescue crews came and put out the fire. When it came time to remove Abdulla from General Washington’s sword they had two choices: either cut the sword off the monument or cut Abdulla.

  The sword remained intact.

  As they walked away from the grisly scene something crunched under Slade’s boot. It was a cell phone. He picked it up and tapped it. The phone came on.

  “It’s Abdulla’s,” Slade told Brueget.

  “Incredible!”

  They drove back to Saint-Michel. It looked like a war zone. The paramedics were sorting those who were dead, those who could be saved, and those who were going to die. Abdulla and his fellow terrorists killed thirty-three of their own people—amazingly, no other citizens of Paris or Tourists were hurt.

  Slade was spirited away to the embassy. Once there, he and Brueget examined Abdulla’s phone. The last call from Abdullereda to his son came through a cell tower in Jakarta.

  Slade reported direct to Gann.

  “Good work Slade, we’re getting you out to the Enterprise pronto. We need you on the Galaxus when the convoy leaves Bandar Abbas. If there’s a switch I want you and the Delta’s there to nail it.”

  “Sir, what about the jet. It’s got to be in Jakarta.”

  “I’m heading to the White House to brief the president right now. Get to the Enterprise Slade; I want you on the Galaxus tomorrow night!”

  The connection ended. Jean glanced outside and then at his watch, “Mon Dieu it’s six in the morning already. You’ve made a full night of it—again!”

  Slade took the evening military flight from Charles de Gaulle to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. It was a little over eight hours on a normal flight, over nine this night since Hamas precipitated a war in Southern Israel and Gaza.

  After the Russians mistakenly shot down a Malaysian Airlines flight over the Ukraine just a few days past, mistaking the airliner for a cargo plane, no one had any desire to fly over or near a war zone.

  “Malaysian Airline’s days are numbered,” Slade thought as he read the Company brief. “So are mine. The president wants me dead. He approved this mission because it puts me in shark infested waters during their feeding time. I know it!”

  Slade tried not to think of the night dive. He shook his head and failed. “If the sharks don’t get me I’ll probably hyperventilate because I’m worried about the sharks getting me. I’ll get the bends or black out and drown. Then the sharks eat me. Any way you look at it the sharks get me; that ought to make him happy.”

  He studied his file, but he wasn’t happy about it. After landing, Slade transferred to a Navy Hawkeye E2C Hawkeye for the flight aboard the Enterprise. It was late morning and Slade met ‘Killer’ Kincaid in the ready room.

  “I’m sorry about Johnny and his family,” Slade said, shaking hands with his old Delta Force buddy.

  “I was hoping you’d have news of the snitch?” Killer said grimly.

  “It goes straight to the president,” Slade told him. “I was warned off Waters, but I took the opportunity to put the bug in the ear of the jihadists that he’d given them up.”

  “Hopefully we’ll be seeing his head on the evening news, just his head,” Killer sighed. “They offered us an out after the attacks, but the rest of us we wanted to see it through for Johnny Bravo. After what they did to him we have to finish this. I’m only sorry they dragged you out here for such a vanilla mission; there’s no one to shoot. It’s a standard seaborne insertion and extraction. We’re swimming a few miles to the ship, getting on board and ascertaining the status of the cargo—that’s it. Not much to it.”

  “Well, let me tell you what’s going on, and what we’re worried about,” Slade sighed. He told everything that had happened. The further he got the grimmer Killer’s expression.

  “So we’re afraid that the Iranian’s may be shipping out radioactive material to Jakarta?” he asked incredulously.

  “We think they’re going to make a switch after the cargo is checked by the United Nations inspectors,” Slade told him.

  “Cheeky bastards,” Killer shrugged. “All right, let me get this straight, we’re checking some Indonesian freighter with an American captain. We’re making sure his cargo of sand is just that—sand.”

  “Sand,” Slade sighed.

  “It does seem a bit suspicious that the Iranians are going to just give up three tons of nearly weapons grade Uranium.”

  “Everyone is watching this. They’ve invited reporters from CNN and MSNBC—our favorite propaganda networks—on board along with the UN to supervise the loading of the Uranium.”

  “If the United Nations is checking the containers going on the Atlas what are we looking for on the Galaxus?” Killer asked again.

  “Radioactivity.”

  “It’s a shell game.”

  “Right—we’re taking a swim in shark infested waters just to make sure the Iranians are sending a bunch of sand to Soekarno for his zoo exhibit,” Slade replied. He tried to look unconcerned. “These two things might be unrelated—who knows—maybe the Iranians are shooting straight.”

  “That’s about the only thing we know isn’t true!” Killer said sharply.

  “Agreed,” Slade said, putting on his deepest, darkest scowl. “However, let’s just say for the sake of argument that Soekarno’s shipment is harmless desert sand and the Iranians enriched Uranium is transported to Abu Dhabi. Where does that leave us?”

  “We’re back at square one,” Killer sighed. “We have no airplane, we have no cargo for that missing airplane, and we’re no closer to discovering what the Iranians, Al-Qaeda and ISIS were meeting about in Iraq.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t come up empty,” Slade said firmly.

  Killer shrugged and shook his head, saying, “One thing at a time. We drop in fifteen hours. Come on, get some sleep. We’re all packed up and ready to go.”

  CHAPTER 24: Fatwa

  Freddy looked furtively at the only exits of the restaurant. There were swarthy bearded men seemingly everywhere. Their dark eyes bored holes in his sallow flesh. “We can’t get out,” he said, his voice trembling.

  Looking just as nervous, Alfie tried his cell phone to no avail. “We’re in the basement. There’s no coverage. What do we do?”

  “The only line out is the house phone.”

  “And there’s two of them sitting at the bar; we’re screwed.”

  Freddy stood up and took his jacket off. “Get your clothes off.” He threw the jacket on the floor and started unbuttoning his shirt. People looked his way, murmuring about what he was doing as Freddy began to pull his shirt off.

  “What?”

  “Strip now! Do it!”

  Alfie stood up and did as he was told. “What are we doing?”

  “We’re trying to get them to call the police!” Freddy told him.

  The bartender looked at them with surprise, yelling over to them, “What are you doing? Put your clothes back on! Crazy Americans!”

  “Make me!” Freddy yelled back. “I’m an American. We saved your ass twice last century! I can eat naked anywhere in the world I want to!” Freddy stripped off his underwear, showing off his hairy, scraggly, uncircumcised privates.

  The patrons of the restaurant gasped, shielding their children’s eyes. The Arabs looked around in consternation, at a loss for what to do.

  The bartender still hadn’t reached for the phone. Freddy stepped up to Alfie, who was naked now as well, and put his hands on his shoulders. “He’s not making the call. Get on your knees and blow me!”

  “What? I’m not going to blow you
Alfie!”

  “You want your head sawed off by these animals?”

  Alfie reluctantly got on his knees. Freddy grabbed his frizzy hair and shoved Alfie’s face in his crotch.

  “Oh God!” cried Alfie.

  “Mon Dieu!” came from across the room.

  The bartender grabbed the phone. “Crazy Americans! Crazy Americans!” he shouted to the gendarmes. A moment later the sound of sirens wailing came down through the stairwell.

  The Arabs left scowling.

  “Thank God they’re gone; we’re all right!” Freddy sighed, collapsing into his chair.

  “Speak for yourself!” Alfie groaned, retching onto the restaurant floor.

  A moment later the gendarmes arrived along with four plain clothes detectives. One of them, a ginger haired, mustachioed man smoking a cigarette stepped up to Freddy and Alfie.

  “I sure could use one of those,” Freddy said.

  “I’d like one a bit stronger,” Alfie commented. “Thanks all the same. Those jihadists were going to behead us right in this bar!”

  “Were they?” the man smiled, blowing smoke at the, “I am Agent Brueget of INTERPOL. We have a lot to talk about.”

  “Such as what?” Freddy asked, irritated.

  “Such as why you have consorted with known terrorists like Colonel Nikahd? Why you have photographs of NATO military personnel on your computer—the same photos we found in the jihadist’s possession—photos of personnel targeted for assassination. Yes, Mr. Waters and Mr. Alford, we have much to talk about.”

  The gendarmes cuffed both Freddy and Alfie, not very politely, and not without protest. Then they were hustled away to an undisclosed location. When the INTERPOL agent working for Brueget asked what he wanted done, he smiled, and said, “International terrorists like this can’t wait to talk and tell stories. Let them sit in solitary—say, for a month. Then we will talk.”

  “They’re claiming to work for the American president. What if the embassy calls requesting to see them?”

  “You’re due for vacation aren’t you Gerard?”

  “Why, yes, but I’m too junior to take vacation at this time of year.”

  “I will swap with you,” Brueget said, slapping him on the back. “Margareta wants to be in Paris during opera season anyway. Process these terrorists into some hole and put the paperwork in your desk. Go to the Riviera and report back to me in a month!”

  “Oui monsieur, with pleasure!”

  CHAPTER 25: Introducing the World to Taqiyya

  Under the bright lights of the Bandar Abbas dockyard three military trucks drove down the docks. They were under escort by a dozen troop trucks loaded with soldiers as well as half a dozen armored personnel carriers. Following the ochre vehicles were the horribly flippant ‘baby blue’ of the self-obsessed and impotent United Nations. The convoy stopped next to an open hulled ship.

  The ship’s silhouette was that of a small albeit normal looking freighter, but instead of a deck and cargo hatches the hull was open to the keel and creased along the bottom. The bottom of the hull was actually a huge clamshell door. In practice, rocks would be loaded into the hull and then dropped with great precision on the sea bottom, creating an artificial reef or harbor breakwater, whatever the client desired.

  Tonight the ship would transport only one hundredth its normal cargo, but it was a very precious and dangerous cargo.

  Under the blaze of the dockyard lights three large containers were uncovered. Inspectors from the United Nations followed Iranian scientists up to the pallets and they examined the containers. Geiger counters were inserted in special breeches to measure the radiation levels of the materials within the containers. The weight of the trucks themselves was taken before the cargo was removed.

  The examination was a careful and lengthy process. After an hour the cranes lifted the containers one at a time from the trucks. The inspectors noted the weight of the containers and made their calculations. The radiation levels on the inside of the containers had to match the expected levels of a ton of enriched Uranium 235. The weight of the containers had to match the weight of the Uranium plus the weight of the shielded container. The final calculation was a measure of external radiation levels—some of it always escaped—the Geiger count had to be consistent with a ton of enriched Uranium 235 secured inside that particular container. Everything matched.

  The holier than thou UN inspectors nodded gravely, allowing the press to interview them, ensuring the reporters knew just how important they were, how important their job was and how essential it was that the UN carry out these kinds of inspections in Iran. Inevitably they added that no one, no one, should be outside the purview of the United Nations. It would be to the betterment of the world that they conduct these same inspections in Israel and the United States, so they said, taking a swipe at the two ‘colonial powers’ of their flawed world.

  It appeared for all intents and purposes that the Iranians were playing the game by the rules. The reporters from some networks crowed in triumph, while others were at the very least cautiously optimistic that this might actually be a step in the right direction.

  The nuclear containers were loaded onto pallets in the belly of the freighter. They were left uncovered for the short trip across the Straits of Hormuz so Western satellites could maintain a constant vigil. An hour later the ship pulled out of the harbor. The harbormaster departed the bridge and went over the side to his launch. At the harbor exit a dozen Iranian naval vessels escorted the freighter west to Abu Dhabi.

  Captain Mustafa of the Iranian Navy piloted the freighter through the Straits of Hormuz. It was one of the demands Iran made of the Security Council and the company was only too glad to comply considering the amount of money the Iranians agreed to pay in order to lease the ship, behind the scenes of course.

  Everything went according to the press plan. In live feeds across the Western world the press had a party atmosphere. It was markedly different in the bridge of the Atlas. Captain Mustafa was grave, checking, always checking that things were right. His crew had much to do and little time to do it. Although the trip was short it was the most important moment in their careers. At Midnight he looked to his first officer. “Is everything prepared?”

  “We are ready sir,” he replied, looking at their American invented, Chinese manufactured GPS system. “We are approaching the coordinates.”

  “Binoculars,” the captain asked, and one of the men handed him a pair of German made binoculars. “Let’s find our little friends. Helmsman steady as she goes.”

  “Aye sir.”

  The captain and the first officer scanned the dark waters ahead. “Time!”

  “Twenty-three hundred hours, fifty five minutes and thirty seconds sir!”

  They kept scanning. Every few moments the captain asked the time. When the time approached and passed midnight he became audibly nervous. “Where is he? He’s late!”

  “I don’t know,” the first mate replied, perturbed.

  The captain lowered his glasses, squinting out into the night. “Time!”

  “Zero hours and four minutes, twenty-three seconds!”

  “Damn!”

  “Captain!” the first officer exclaimed. “Twenty degrees to port; I see it!”

  The captain trained his glasses on a hardly to be seen speck of light appearing and disappearing against the black waters. “That’s him, he’s late and a half kilometer off, but’s thank the Prophet he’s there. Signal him!” The captain went to the control panel and rang the engine room. “Start the operation!”

  The engines slowed and the smokestack began pumping out thick black smoke. The captain went out on deck, looking up at the gathering cloud. When it reached a level of opacity that blotted out the stars he nodded to the team of men waiting for his order.

  They ran down into the hold and activated airbladders built into the pallets of the three cargo containers. Air hissed and the bladders billowed around the cargo containers. Once the men were out of the cargo hol
d the captain returned to the bridge.

  The first officer reported, “The Rahman is beginning its approach. Our support vessels are calling us.”

  “Tell the destroyers we are having engine problems. We request their assistance. Make ready to tow.”

  “Yes sir,” he said, beginning the busy work of a ship in distress.

  The captain was unconcerned. Taking hold of a large lever on the control panel he pulled it back. The whine of hydraulic motors and the groan of steel drowned out every other sound. In the hold the two huge clamshell doors in the bottom of the ship opened. In the normal course of the ship’s duties they opened so as to drop tons of rock onto the ocean floor, thereby building artificial reefs and breakwaters. In this case they opened to the sea. The three containers with the enriched Uranium settled into the water, secured by ropes but now floating on the ocean.

  The crew dragged the containers to the bow of the ship and held them there. The containers didn’t protest; they stayed there, bobbing sedately. For a few minutes that’s all that happened.

  The ship’s crew fell silent, waiting with anticipation, peering into the dark waters of the hold. Finally something appeared, a black stalk pierced the water and rose about two meters above the surface, but it was close to the side of the hold—very close.

  A dull metallic clang rang over the ship. It shuddered.

  “Idiot!” the captain breathed. “He hit the ship!”

  The stalk sank back down into the depths.

  Turning to a team of six men wearing wetsuits he motioned them angrily into the water. They frogmen entered the hold. After getting into the water the deckhands threw lines to the frogmen. Catching the lines the frogmen descended into the darkness. Flashlight beams cut the black water.

  A few minutes later the frogmen emerged and shouted directions to the deckhands. The men on the starboard side began winching in their lines. The frogmen watched the progress of the work, finally signaling the deckhands on the port side to operate their winches.