The Icarus Agenda: A Novel

  “Arabs and Jews together are now the pirates of the high seas. The world is a little madder than I thought.”

  The radioman, however, was the most startling surprise. The communications room was approached cautiously, Khalehla leading two members of the Masada Brigade and Evan Kendrick. At her signal the door was crashed open and their weapons leveled at the operator. The radioman pulled a small Israeli flag out of his pocket and grinned. “How’s Manny Weingrass?” he asked.

  “Good God!” was the only response the congressman from Colorado could manage.

  “It was to be expected,” said Khalehla.

  For two days on the water toward the port of Nishtun, the force from Oman worked in shifts around the clock in the hold of the cargo ship. They were thorough, as each man knew the merchandise he was dealing with, knew it and effectively destroyed it. Crates were resealed, leaving no marks of sabotage in evidence; there were only neatly repacked weapons and equipment precisely as if they had come off assembly lines all over the world and gathered together by Abdel Hamendi, seller of death. At dawn on the third day the ship sailed into the harbor of Nishtun, South Yemen. The “pirates” from the West Bank, Oman and the Masada Brigade, as well as the female agent from Cairo and the American congressman, had all changed into the clothes packed in their knapsacks. Half Arab, half Western, they wore the disheveled garments of erratically employed merchant seamen scratching for survival in an unfair world. Five Palestinians, posing as Bahrainian off-loaders, stood by the gangplank that in moments would be lowered. The rest watched impassively from the lower deck as the crowds gathered at the one enormous pier in the center of the harbor complex. Hysteria was in the air; it was everywhere. The ship was a symbol of deliverance, for rich and powerful people somewhere thought the proud, suffering fighters of South Yemen were important. It was a carnival of vengeance, over what they might not collectively agree upon but wild mouths below wild eyes screamed screams of violence. The vessel docked and the frenzy on the pier was ear-shattering.

  Selected members of the ship’s crew, under the watchful eyes and guns of the Omani force, were put to work at their familiar machinery and the massive unloading process began. As skids of crates were lifted out of the hold by cranes and swung over the side down to the cargo area, rabid cheers greeted each delivery. Two hours after the unloading started, it ended with the emergence of the three small Chinese tanks, and if the crates sent the crowds into frenzy, the tanks took them up into orbit. Raggedly uniformed soldiers had to hold back their countrymen from swarming over the armor-plated vehicles; again they were symbols of great importance, of immense recognition—from somewhere.

  “Jesus Christ!” said Kendrick, gripping Ahmat’s arm, staring down at the base of the pier. “Look!”

  “Where?”

  “I see!” broke in Khalehla, in trousers, her hair swept up under a Greek fisherman’s hat. “My God, I don’t believe it! It’s him, isn’t it?”

  “Who?” demanded the young sultan angrily.

  “Hamendi!” answered Evan, pointing at a man in a white silk suit surrounded by other men in uniforms and robes. The procession continued onto the pier, the soldiers in front clearing the way.

  “He’s wearing the same white suit he wore in one of the photographs in the Vanvlanderens’ apartment,” added Rashad.

  “I’m sure he’s got dozens,” explained Kendrick. “I’m also sure he thinks they make him look pure and godlike.… I’ll say this for him—he’s got balls leaving his armed camp in the Alps and coming here only a few hours by air from Riyadh.”

  “Why?” said Ahmat. “He’s protected; the Saudis wouldn’t dare inflame these crazies by taking any action across the border.”

  “Besides,” interrupted Khalehla, “Hamendi smells millions more where this ship came from. He’s securing his turf and that’s worth a minor risk.”

  “I know what he’s doing,” said Evan, speaking to Khalehla but looking at the young sultan. “ ‘The Saudis wouldn’t dare,’ ” continued Kendrick, repeating Ahmat’s words. “The Omanis wouldn’t dare …”

  “There are perfectly sound reasons to leave well enough alone where fanatics are concerned and let them sink in their own quagmires,” responded the sultan defensively.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What is?”

  “We’re counting on the fact that when all these people, especially the leaders from the Baaka Valley, find out that most of what they paid for is a bunch of crap, Hamendi will be called a fifty-million-dollar thief. He’s a pariah, an Arab who betrays Arabs for money.”

  “The word will spread like falcons in the wind, as my people would have said only a couple of decades ago,” agreed the sultan. “From what I know of the Baaka, hit teams will be sent out by the dozens to kill him, not simply because of the money but because he’s made fools of them.”

  “That’s the optimum,” said Kendrick. “That’s what we’re hoping for, but he’s got millions all over the world and there are thousands of places to hide.”

  “What is your point, Evan?” asked Khalehla.

  “Maybe we can move up the timetable and with any luck ensure the optimum.”

  “Speak English, not Latin,” insisted the agent from Cairo.

  “That’s a circus down there. The soldiers can barely hold back the crowds. All that’s needed is for a movement to get started, people shouting in unison, chanting until their voices shake the damn city.… Farjunna! Farjunna! Farjunna!”

  “Show us!” translated Ahmat.

  “One or two crates pried open, rifles held up in triumph … then ammunition’s found and handed over.”

  “And shot off by lunatics into the sky,” completed Khalehla, “but they don’t fire.”

  “Then other crates are opened,” went on the sultan, catching the shared enthusiasm. “Equipment ruined, life rafts slashed, flamethrowers fizzling. And Hamendi’s right there!… How can we get down there?”

  “You can’t, either one of you,” said Kendrick firmly, signaling a member of the Masada team. The man ran over and Evan continued rapidly, not giving Ahmat or Rashad a chance to speak as they stared at him, stunned. “You know who I am, don’t you?” he asked the Israeli.

  “I’m not supposed to, but, of course, I do.”

  “I am considered the leader of this entire unit, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, but I’m grateful that there are others—”

  “Irrelevant! I am the leader.”

  “All right, you’re the leader.”

  “I want these two people placed under cabin arrest immediately.”

  The sultan’s and Khalehla’s protests were drowned out by the Israeli’s own reaction. “Are you out of your mind? That man is—”

  “I don’t care if he’s Muhammad himself and she’s Cleopatra. Lock them up!” Evan raced away toward the gangplank and the hysterical crowds below on the pier.

  Kendrick found the first of the five Palestinian “off-loaders” and pulled him away from a group of soldiers and screaming awed civilians surrounding one of the Chinese tanks. He spoke quickly into the man’s ear; the Arab responded by nodding his head and pointing to one of his companions in the crowd, gesturing that he would reach the others.

  Each man ran along the pier from one frenzied group to another, shrieking at the top of his lungs, repeating the message over and over until the feverish cry was picked up for the command it was. Like an enormous rolling wave pounding across a human sea, the shouting erupted, a thousand disparate voices slowly coming into concert.

  “Farjunna! Farjunna! Farjunna! Farjunna …!” The crowds converged en masse onto the cargo area, and the small elite procession in which Abdel Hamendi was the center of attraction was literally swept aside, inside the huge doors of the run-down warehouse near the end of the pier. Apologies were shouted to and accepted with false grace by the arms merchant, who looked as though he had come to the wrong part of town and could not wait to get out and would have if it were not for the r
ewards that could be his by staying.

  “This way!” yelled a voice Evan knew only too well. It was Khalehla! And beside her was Ahmat, both barely holding their own within the tumultuous, frantic crowds.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” roared Kendrick, joining them, bodies pushing and shoving all around them.

  “Mister Congressman,” said the sultan of Oman imperiously, “you may be the leader of the unit, which is entirely debatable, but I command the ship! My damned troops took it!”

  “Do you know what’ll happen if she loses her hat or her shirt and these lunatics see she’s a woman? And have you any idea of the reception you’ll get if anyone has the slightest clue who you—”

  “Will you two stop it!” cried Rashad, giving an order, not asking a question. “Hurry up! The soldiers could lose control any minute, and we’ve got to make sure it happens our way.”

  “How?” shouted Evan.

  “The crates!” answered Khalehla. “The stacks on the left with the red markings. Go ahead of me, I’ll never get through by myself. I’ll hold your arm.”

  “That’s quite a concession. Come on!” The three of them crashed sideways through the dense, constantly moving, jostling crowds, pummeling their way to a double-stack of crates at least ten feet high held together by wide jet-black metal straps. A cordon of nearly panicked soldiers, too few to lock arms but gripping hands, formed a circle around the lethal merchandise, holding back the increasingly impatient, increasingly angry throngs who now demanded, Farjunna, Farjunna!—to be shown the supplies that signified their own importance. “These are the guns and everyone knows it!” yelled Kendrick into Rashad’s ear. “They’re going crazy!”

  “Of course they know it and of course they’re going crazy. Look at the markings.” All over the wooden crates were stenciled dozens of the same insignia: three red circles, two progressively smaller ones within the largest. “Bull’s-eyes, the universal symbol of a target,” explained Khalehla. “And bull’s-eyes mean weapons. It was Blue’s idea; he figured that terrorists live by guns, so they’d flock to them.”

  “He knows his new business—”

  “Where’s the ammunition?” asked Ahmat, pulling two small pronged instruments from his pockets.

  “The West Bankers are taking care of it,” replied Rashad, crouching under the assault of thrashing arms around her. “The crates are unmarked, but they know which ones they are and will break them open. They’re waiting for us!”

  “Let’s go, then,” cried the young sultan, handing Evan one of the instruments he had removed from his pockets.

  “What …?”

  “Pliers! We have to snap as many of the crate straps as we can to make sure they all fall apart.”

  “Oh? They would have, anyway—never mind! We have to rush this bunch of maniacs forward and break the ring. Move back, Ahmat, and you get behind us,” said Kendrick to the agent from Cairo, fending off the furious arms and fists, knees and feet that kept hammering at them from all directions. “When I nod,” continued Evan, shouting at the sultan of Oman as they smashed through the frenzied bodies all trying to reach the crates. “Hit the line like you just got signed by the Patriots!”

  “No, ya Shaikh,” yelled Ahmat. “Like I just got signed by Oman—under fire, as it should be. These are the enemies of my people!”

  “Now!” roared Kendrick as he and the muscular young ruler crashed forward into the figures in front of them, shoulders and extended arms propelling the screaming terrorists into the circle of soldiers. The line broke! The assault on the ten-foot-high double sacks of heavy crates was total, and Evan and Ahmat surged through balloon-trousered legs and flailing arms to the wood and the wide metal straps, their pliers working furiously. The bindings snapped and the crates tumbled down as if exploded from within, the weight and strength of a hundred assaulters precipitating their violent descents. Wooden slats everywhere came apart, and where they did not, maniacal hands pried them apart. Then, like starving locusts attacking the sweet leaves of trees, the terrorists of South Yemen and the Baaka Valley crawled over the crates, yanking out weapons from their plastic casements and throwing them to their brothers while shrieking and straddling the large cartons that took on the grotesque images of coffins.

  Simultaneously, the Palestinian team from the West Bank heaved boxes of ammunition all around and over the collapsed wooden mountain of death, supplied by the seller of death, Abdel Hamendi. The guns were varied, all types and all sizes, ripped with abandon from their soft recesses. Many did not know what shells went into which weapons, but many others, mainly from the Baaka, did, and they instructed their less sophisticated brothers from South Yemen.

  The first repeating machine gun that was fired in triumph from atop the ersatz pyramid of death blew off the face of the one who pulled the trigger. In the midst of staccato sounds everywhere, others were fired; there were several hundred fruitless clicks, but also dozens of explosions where heads and arms and hands were blown away. Blown away!

  Hysteria fed upon hysteria. Terrorists threw down their guns in terror, while others used their hands and whatever implements they could find to pry open the unmarked crates everywhere. It was as the young sultan of Oman had predicted. Items of equipment were dragged out all over the pier, yanked from boxes and unfolded or pulled apart or ripped from their plastic casings—and displayed for all to see. As each piece was examined the crowds went wilder and wilder, but no longer in triumph, instead in animal fury. Among the items were infrared binoculars with smashed lenses, rope ladders with their rungs severed, grappling hooks without points, underwater oxygen tanks with holes drilled in the cylinders; flamethrowers, their nozzles crushed together, guaranteeing instant incineration to whoever operated them and anyone within thirty yards; rocket missile launchers without detonating caps, and again, as Ahmat had projected, landing craft held up to show where the seams had been split, all of which threw the manic crowd into paroxysms of rage over the betrayal.

  In the chaos, Evan weaved through the hysterical bodies to the warehouse at the midpoint of the huge pier; he pressed his back against the wall and sidestepped to within three feet of the massive open doors. The white-suited Hamendi was shouting in Arabic that everything would be replaced; his and their enemies in the Bahrain depots who did this would be killed, every one killed! His protestations drew looks of narrowed-eyed suspicion from those he addressed.

  And then a man in a dark conservative pin-striped suit appeared, rounding the corner of the warehouse, and Kendrick froze. It was Crayton Grinell, attorney and chairman of the board for the government within the government. After his initial shock, Evan wondered why he was astonished, even surprised. Where else could Grinell go but to the core of the international network of arms merchants? It was his last and only secure refuge. The lawyer spoke briefly to Hamendi, who instantly translated Grinell’s words, explaining that his associate had already reached Bahrain and learned what had happened. It was Jews! he exclaimed. Israeli terrorists had assaulted an off-island depot, killed all the men on watch, and had done these terrible things.

  “How could that be?” asked a stocky man in the only pressed revolutionary uniform replete with at least a dozen medals. “All these supplies were in the original crates, even boxes within cartons, the casings unbroken. How could it be?”

  “The Jews can be ingenious!” screamed Hamendi. “You know that as well as I do. I shall fly back immediately, replace the entire order, and learn the truth!”

  “What do we do in the meantime?” asked the obvious leader of South Yemen’s revolutionary regime. “What do I tell our brothers from the Baaka Valley? We are all, all of us, disgraced!”

  “You will have your vengeance as well as your weapons, be assured.” Grinell spoke again to the arms merchant, and once more Hamendi translated. “I am informed by my associate that our radar clearances are only in effect for the next three hours—at an extraordinary expense to me personally, I might add—and we must leave at once.”
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  “Restore us our dignity, fellow Arab or we will find you and you will lose your life.”

  “You have my guarantee that the first will happen, and there will be no necessity for the second. I leave.”

  They were going to get away! thought Kendrick. Goddamnit, they were going to get away! Grinell had given Hamendi the unctuous words, and both of them were going to fly out of this hub of insanity and go on doing their insane, obscene business-as-usual! He had to stop them. He had to move!

  As the two arms merchants walked rapidly out the doors of the warehouse and around the corner of the building, Evan raced across the opening—as one more hysterical terrorist—and thrashed his way toward the two well-dressed men through the excited crowds on the pier. He was within feet of Crayton Grinell, then inches. He pulled his long-bladed knife out of its scabbard on his belt and lunged, circling his left arm around the American attorney’s neck and forcing him to pivot, to confront him face-to-face, inches one from the other.

  “You!” screamed Grinell.

  “This is for an old man who’s dying and thousands of others you’ve killed!” The knife plunged into the lawyer’s stomach, and then Kendrick ripped it up through the chest. Grinell fell to the planks on the pier amid a multitude of rushing paranoid terrorists who had no idea that another terrorist had been killed and lay beneath them.

  Hamendi! He had raced ahead, oblivious of his associate, determined only to reach the vehicle that would take him to his radar-cleared plane out of South Yemen across hostile borders. He must not reach it! The merchant of death could not be allowed to deal in death anymore! Evan literally sledgehammered a path through the onslaught of running, screaming figures to the base of the pier. There was a wide ascending stretch of concrete that led up to a dirt road, where a Russian Zia limousine waited, the exhaust fumes indicating that the engine was roaring, waiting for the car’s escaping passengers. Hamendi, his white silk jacket billowing behind him, was within yards of his escape! Kendrick called upon strengths within him that defied the outer regions of his imagination and raced up the concrete incline, his legs about to collapse, and then they did collapse twenty feet from the Zia as Hamendi approached the door. From his prone position, his weapon barely steadied by both trembling hands, he fired again and again and again.