“And what was Ghami before? He worked for your ministry, right?”
“That is something he wants people to believe. I don’t know what he did before taking my office, but he didn’t work in the Foreign Ministry. What I have been able to piece together is that he managed to get a meeting with President Qaddafi, which is difficult to say the least. The next day it was announced that I had been arrested and Ghami had been named my replacement.”
“Could he have something on Qaddafi, some sort of leverage?”
“You cannot blackmail a man who is President for Life.”
“Hold on one second.” Juan stepped onto the bridge and keyed the wall-mounted microphone. The duty officer in the op center answered straightaway. “Do me a favor,” Juan said. “Check international press reports of any crime involving Libyan nationals going back a month prior to February seventh of this year.”
“What is it you suspect?” the diplomat asked when Juan stepped back outside.
“You don’t give a job like yours to a complete unknown without a reason.” Juan wanted to call Overholt and at the very least demand that the Vice President not attend this evening’s dinner. “I still don’t know if Ghami’s tied to Suleiman Al-Jama, but I don’t trust this guy one whit. He’s put on a hell of a show in diplomatic circles, and orchestrating the summit is the achievement of a lifetime . . .” Juan’s voice drifted off.
“What is it?”
“The timing and the fact you are who you are.” His tone sharpened. “It isn’t coincidence that you were in a terrorist camp run by Al-Jama. There is a link between him and Ghami. I’m certain of it.”
“Captain, you must understand something about my country that I am not proud of. We have harbored many fighters so they may train on our soil, and allowing them use of our political prisoners is quite common.”
“I thought your government had renounced terrorism.”
“It has, but there are many who don’t agree with that policy. Our own Justice Minister is one of them. I know for a fact that he has provided aid to Al-Jama in the past.”
“So you’re saying Ghami’s legit?”
“As much as it pains me to say, it is possible. And I have more reason than you to think ill of him. The man took my job and even now lives in my house.”
The intercom on the bridge squawked. Juan stepped through and punched the button. “Anything?”
“Nothing earth-shattering, if that’s what you’re looking for. A quick search shows a couple of Libyans arrested for smuggling heroin into Amsterdam, one killed in a traffic pileup that claimed four other people in Switzerland. A Libyan national living in Hungary was arrested for domestic abuse, and another for attempted murder stemming from a dispute with a shopkeeper just across the border in Tunisia.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Juan turned to the Minister. “Dead end.”
“What were you thinking?”
“Truthfully, I don’t know.”
Below them the forty-seat lifeboat was lowered from its davits so the refugees could step through a gate built into the ship’s rail. They would need to overload the boats to get all the people off the Oregon . The boats were fully enclosed and could weather a hurricane because of their self-righting hull design, so at worst the former prisoners would be cramped but not in any real danger.
Juan shook the diplomat’s hand a second time. “Good luck.”
Cabrillo watched until the last of the Libyans was safely aboard. He nodded to Greg Chaffee, who wasn’t happy about being exiled with them. But, then again, Juan wasn’t happy that Alana Shepard had snuck off with Linda and the others behind his back.
He waved to the general operations technician who would command the craft before the man ducked through the Plexiglas hatch and secured it behind him. The winches took up the strain and lowered the boat down the side of the Oregon’s hull. A moment later, the lines were disengaged from inside the boat and its motor fired. It started puttering away from the big freighter.
The second boat, lowered from the port side, met up with the first. The two would stay together throughout the night and hopefully would be back in their cradles in time for breakfast.
Juan took the secret elevator at the back of the pilothouse to the op center and settled into his seat. He still didn’t have a plan for how they were going to make their final approach on the Sidra or how they were going to avoid sinking her after they had rescued the Secretary. One corner of the main view screen showed the radar plot. Because of the Oregon’s vastly superior sensor suite, the Libyans had no idea they were being watched as they cruised only about a mile off the coast, tracking eastward at a lazy eight knots. The only other ship on the plot was a supertanker heading on a parallel track, most likely making for the oil terminal at Az-Zāwiya.
He glanced at his watch. The diplomatic reception at Ali Ghami’s house was scheduled to start in a little over an hour. The guests were probably already en route. Full darkness would follow two hours later. There was a quarter moon tonight that wouldn’t rise until well after midnight, which severely tightened their window of opportunity.
To distract himself, and hopefully free his mind so inspiration would hit, Cabrillo checked the Internet for those police reports concerning Libyans. The car accident had been particularly brutal. Three of the victims were burned beyond recognition and had to be identified though dental records. The Libyan, a student, was IDed because he was driving a rental car.
He scanned a couple more reports, thinking about his conversation moments ago on deck. He called up a photograph of Libya’s Justice Minister, and cringed. He was an ugly man, with a bulbous, misshapen nose, narrow eyes, and a skin condition of some sort that made his face appear pebbled.
On top of that, he’d been injured. Half his lower jaw was missing, and the grafts to cover the hole were taut, shiny cicatrices. The official bio said the wound came from the American bombing of Tripoli in 1986, but a little further digging in a CIA database Cabrillo still had access to told him that the Minister had been beaten to within an inch of his life by a cuckolded husband.
Cabrillo smirked. He compared this information to his impression of the ousted Foreign Minister. Now, that guy was a class act, he thought. He had lost his job, been imprisoned and forced to do hard labor, and yet wouldn’t accuse Ghami of orchestrating the whole thing. He seemed more upset that Ghami was living in his house.
“Must be a hell of a place,” Juan muttered to himself.
It took him a few minutes searching the Internet to find an article about Ghami’s home that listed an address. He then found the GPS coordinates off a mapping site and keyed them into Google Earth. As the computer zoomed in on the precise location, pixels blurred for a moment. When they resolved, Cabrillo leapt from his chair so fast he startled the rest of the op center crew.
He mashed the intercom on his chair’s arm. “Max, get up here now. We’ve got trouble.”
Cabrillo looked again at the satellite image. The house sat alone in the desert, miles from any other building, and was ringed with a perimeter wall. The driveway ran up to the home before looping back on itself under a cantilevered porte cochere. There was a glass-enclosed solarium attached to one side, and the back lawns were a veritable maze of box hedges. On the roof was a satellite-uplink antenna.
He’d seen this exact layout for the first time as a mock-up less than forty-eight hours earlier.
He understood everything at that moment. The attack was planned for tonight. Al-Jama wanted to do it before the conference to show symbolically that peace never stood a chance. Knowing the terrorist mastermind’s sense of the dramatic and penchant for beheadings, he was pretty sure what would start the attack. He envisioned Fiona Katamora’s graceful neck bent and a man standing over her with a sword.
When he closed his eyes, the sword came down in a shining blur.
THIRTY-FOUR
The executioner examined the room critically. He was alone for now, but there was plenty of space for witnesses, though they
had been forced to use a lottery system to choose the lucky ones. The black backdrop, a piece of thick cloth hung from a pipe, was in place. The camera sat on its tripod and had already been tested. The uplink worked perfectly. There was thick plastic sheeting on the floor to make cleanup afterward a bit easier.
He recalled the first time he’d used a sword to decapitate a man. His victim’s heart had been racing and his blood pressure dangerously high, so when the head came free it was like a fountain. So much blood erupted from the stump that they opted to abandon the safe house in Baghdad they had used rather than clean the mess.
Tonight would be his eleventh, and for him the most satisfying. He’d never killed a woman before—at least, not with a sword. Since taking up arms he’d killed dozens of women in bombings from Indonesia to Morocco. And in firefights with Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, stray rounds had certainly hit others.
He gave them little thought. Al-Jama had issued orders and he had carried them out. There was no more weight on his conscience than had he been told to shake his victims’ hands rather than blow them up.
Of course the irony, and open secret within the organization, was that he wasn’t a practicing Muslim. He’d been born into the faith, but his parents hadn’t been devout followers so he’d visited mosques only on holy days. He’d only come to Al-Jama after a hitch with the French Foreign Legion had given him a taste for combat that he had yet to slake. He fought and killed and maimed for himself, not for some insane religious conviction that slaughter was somehow Allah’s will.
He didn’t try to understand the motivations of those who fought with him so long as they followed orders. He did admit, however, that the fear of missing out on Paradise kept the fighters motivated to a degree only the best-trained armies could achieve. And the ability to talk people into blowing themselves up was a weapon unlike any other in the arsenals of the world. It went so against the West’s precepts for the preservation of life that the effects rippled from the blast’s epicenter to the very hearts of any who learned of it.
A subaltern knocked softly at the doorframe behind him. “Does everything meet your needs, Mansour?”
“Yes,” he said absently. “This will be fine.”
“When should we get the American whore?”
“Not until just before her execution. It’s been my experience that they are most terrified in those first moments when they realize their death is upon them.”
“As you wish. If you need anything further, I am just outside.”
The executioner didn’t bother to reply, and the man stepped out of view again.
He doubted there would be any pleas for mercy from the woman. He’d observed her only briefly but had a strong sense of her defiance. He actually preferred it that way. The men loved the crying and wailing, but he found it . . . bothersome. Yes, that was the word, bothersome. Better to accept fate, he believed, than to demean yourself in worthless begging. He wondered if they actually believed carrying on would stop their execution. By the time they met him, their death was an inevitability, and pleading was as useless as trying to stave off an avalanche by raising your arms protectively.
No, the woman would not beg.
“Watch the right flank,” Linda said, and fired a controlled burst over the Saqr’s rail. “They’re trying to get around us by crawling along the rubble wall.”
The muzzle flash drew counterfire from four different points.
Eric had been ready for it, crouched twenty feet farther along the deck. He raked the spot where one of the terrorists was hiding, but in the cavern’s absolute darkness he had no idea if he’d hit anything.
In the first furious seconds of the gunfight, both sides scrambled to organize themselves after the surprise encounter. Linda quickly ordered her people onto the Saqr, which offered the best cover on short notice, while the terrorist leader shouted at his men to conserve ammunition and prepare for an all-out assault.
They came swiftly, flicking their flashlights on and off like lightning bugs in order to see the terrain but not overly expose themselves. The Corporation team concentrated their fire on the men with the lights before realizing their mistake. The men carrying torches only turned them on when they were behind cover. The beams were meant for others scouting ahead.
“Come on, come on,” Mark chided himself as he tore through his pack, tossing aside gear with abandon. “I know it’s in here.”
Bullets stitched the side of the ship, several winging through a gunport and splintering wood inches from where he crouched.
Linda called to Eric. “On my mark. Go!”
They both popped up and let loose. In their scramble to find cover, a terrorist accidentally stepped into the beam of his partner’s light. He was climbing the old riverbank to gain access to the pier. Had he reached it, he would have been able to hose the deck and end the battle single-handedly.
The beam barely caressed his leg, but it was enough. Linda adjusted her aim, approximated where his torso would be, and fired again. She was rewarded with a scream that echoed over the rattling assault rifles.
She and Eric both ducked down when rounds filled the air around them.
“This is crazy,” Eric panted.
He couldn’t see her saucy grin but heard it in her voice when she said, “I’ve never been in a firefight that wasn’t.”
Something heavy rattled against the Saqr’s stern.
“Down,” Linda shouted.
An instant later, a grenade exploded. The shrapnel flew over the prone figures, tearing away more of the ship’s woodwork.
Linda’s ears rang, but she didn’t let it distract her. The grenade was meant to keep them pinned for seconds only, and she was determined not to give them even that.
She peered over the rail. Lights flickered from one side of the cavern entrance to the other. Linda fought the raw fear running through her veins. It was really two against a dozen, since Alana didn’t have a weapon, and Mark Murphy couldn’t shoot to save his life.
She searched an ammo pouch hanging from her combat harness and pinched off a wad of plastique. By feel, she selected a sixty-second timing pencil, rammed it home, and tossed it over the side. She laid down another three-round burst and ducked back again.
“We’ve got to stop them flanking us,” she called across to Eric. “I tossed some plastique. When it blows find some targets.”
She took the opportunity to change out her magazine, uncertain how many rounds she’d fired. If they had time, she would have Alana consolidate the spare ammunition in fresh clips.
The blast came a moment later. The concussion was like a kick to the chest, and she’d been ready for it. The fireball crashed against the ceiling, bathing the cavern in demonic light.
Linda and Eric opened up. Terrorists who were caught in the open raced for cover, rounds screaming past them before the pair could zero in and put the men down.
Return fire came from eight different directions. Linda’s chin was bloodied by a shard of wood torn from the rail, and as much as she didn’t want to lose the last of the light she had to stay under cover from such a deadly barrage.
When it lessened, she fired blind at the riverbank below the quay in case anyone was tying to climb it again. Then, over the sharp stench of cordite, she smelled a familiar odor: wood smoke.
She looked aft just as the smoldering decking that had been hit by the grenade caught fire. The flame was low and smoky, but every second saw it grow. If it got out of control, they were as good as dead. The Saqr would become their funeral pyre.
“Mark, get that. We’ll cover you.”
Alana crawled from his side and approached Linda. “He’s working on something. I’ve got it.”
“Stay low,” Linda cautioned, impressed with the archaeologist’s courage.
The flames rose higher, first illuminating only the ship’s stern. But, like a rising sun, the light’s reach expanded rapidly. The terrorists used this to their advantage. They could see the vessel more clearly, and
their accuracy improved.
Thirty feet from Linda, Alana slithered right to the edge of the burning section. She saw it wasn’t the deck afire, but a bench for the helmsman. She swung onto her back, braced her feet under the burning seat, and heaved. Rather than fly over the side of the ship, the bench broke in two, showering her with embers.
Alana beat out the ashes where they seared her skin, ripped her T-shirt over her head, and with nothing to protect her skin but the thin cotton she worked on snuffing out the fire by hand. All the while, Linda and the gunmen traded shots over her head.
By the time Alana extinguished the last of the stubborn flames, her shirt had all but burned up, and most the skin on her palms was gone, leaving behind nothing but raw red meat that hurt like nothing she’d ever experienced in her life.
The pain was so intense, she couldn’t crawl on her hands and knees, but rather had to slither like a snake to return to the others.
Linda shined a penlight on Alana’s injuries and gasped.
“I’ll be all right,” Alana managed to say.
“Cover your ears,” Mark Murphy whispered urgently.
He waited a beat, studying the array of winking flashlights over the touchhole of one of the Saqr’s great cannons. When he thought the time right, he slipped a timer pencil into the gun’s touchhole, where it sank into the plastic explosives he’d rammed down the barrel. Between it and the muzzle was a cannonball made up of dozens of small metal spheres fused lightly together.
The timer went off, detonating the plastique, and the gun belched the grapeshot in a ten-foot tongue of flame. The ropes secured to the cannon to prevent the recoil from pushing it across the deck failed at full stretch, and the two tons of bronze rocketed through the opposite rail and plowed into the steep riverbank below the pier.
The impact of the grape was lost in the gun’s mighty roar, but when Murphy looked out to where he’d aimed two of the three flashlights were no longer there.
It was as if the cannon’s blast had signaled the end of round one and the beginning of the second. The gunmen opened up with renewed fury, rounds chewing at the Saqr as if to tear it apart piece by piece. The three Corporation operatives fired back, but the weight of the onslaught kept them pinned.