Operation Sea Ghost

23

Monte Carlo

BATMAN FELT LIKE a cement block was sitting on his chest.

He was lying on his back, barely able to breathe, barely able to open his eyes. He could see the stars, though, and that was strange. They seemed to be spinning and spinning, and getting closer. Or was he falling into them?

He didn’t know where he was. When he brought his mechanical hand close to his face, he saw its prongs were misshapen and shooting off at weird angles.

His first thought was: “If I’m dead, why do I still have an artificial hand?”

Suddenly, the weight was lifted off his chest and he could breathe again. His eyesight started to clear and he lost the sensation that he was falling.

Someone was slapping his face, urging him to come to.

At first, he thought it was an angel. But then everything came into focus and he saw this was hardly a seraph hovering over him.

It was Audette, the CIA agent.

“Are you still with us?” he was asking Batman. “Can you hear me?”

Batman finally nodded and, with Audette’s help, was able to sit up.

“What the hell happened?” he asked the agent, realizing he was lying in the middle of a road.

“You got ambushed and you got shot,” the agent told him soberly. “But you’re the lucky one.”

Batman saw four people lying on the asphalt close to him. The taxi driver and the three men who’d impersonated cops. They were all dead.

“But why not me?” Batman asked Audette.

Audette held up a thin piece of metal. Batman had to look at it for a few moments before he knew what it was: the platinum players card that Murphy’s beautiful female accomplice had given him when they first went into the penthouse.

“They tried to kill you, but the bullet hit this,” Audette said, holding the bent and distorted card up to his eyes. “I don’t know what it is, but it saved your life.”

Batman started breathing deep again. In just a short while, he’d been shot in the back and survived, and now shot in the chest … and still survived.

“Next time they’ll have to aim for my head,” he said. He gratefully shook hands with Audette, then asked, “How did you find me?”

Audette just shrugged. “I’ve been tailing you—I was about a half hour behind. You made some noise in those casinos winning all that money, then I found the taxi drivers you got the clothes from and…”

But suddenly a panic rose up inside Batman.

Where was Twitch?

He jumped to his feet and almost fell over. Audette steadied him.

“Was your little buddy with you for this?” the agent asked him.

Batman’s head was pounding with pain.

“I’m pretty sure he was,” he replied groggily.

With Audette helping him walk, he staggered to the side of the road.

“The real cops are going to be here at any minute,” the agent told Batman. “We probably want to avoid that.”

Batman tripped over something. He looked to see pieces of Twitch’s artificial leg next to the Rolls taxi.

Then he looked over the edge of the road and saw a crumpled body below. Batman didn’t even think about it. He immediately slid down the side of the embankment, Audette close behind.

He reached Twitch, turned him over and went to feel for a pulse. But his colleague surprised him by sitting up and shouting at him, “What the f*ck took you so long?”

Batman almost had a heart attack and came close to dying a second time. He could have punched Twitch right in the mouth.

“I’ve been trying to crawl up this f*cking hill for a half hour,” Twitch complained. He seemed not the least bit harmed, except his artificial leg was no longer attached to him. Oddly, the same thing had happened to him on their previous mission.

“You have a hard time holding on to that thing,” Batman told him. “Why don’t you just grow a new one?”

Again with Audette’s help, Batman dragged Twitch up to the roadway. Then they quickly told the agent everything that had happened: winning the gagnant’s buy-in fee, getting into the Palace, playing the very brief game and getting not the Z-box but a key that apparently opens or activates it. The story ended with Batman telling Audette of seeing the man with the rings on his fingers stealing the mysterious key.

Audette listened in disbelief.

“This is the first I’ve heard about any key,” he told them. “But it must have something to do with the Z-box if only because a bunch of people just lost a lot of money trying to get it.”

“Well, we had it, for about three minutes,” Twitch said. “But who’s got it now? And where the f*ck is the box?”

“Lots of rings on the fingers sounds like Jihad Brotherhood,” Audette told them. “They’re usually gofers for al Qaeda’s African operations, but it looks like they’ve expanded their sphere of influence and are flexing their muscles.”

“But how the hell do guys like that get into Monte Carlo?” Batman asked him. “Aren’t they all over the watch lists?”

Audette shook his head.

“I’m guessing they slipped through when they let all the vendors in for the race week,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be that easy for them to get out.”

He pulled out a sat-phone and started dialing

“You’ll recall I’ve got a small army of private PSOs running around this city?” he said. “Well, they’re all going to be pissed off these Jihad monkeys just killed some of their brothers up here. So I’m going to use them to seal this place tighter than Tupperware. All the roads, the bus station, the train station—I’ll get people to the Nice Airport. Key or no key, box or no box, those a*sholes ain’t getting out. And when we’re through beating the crap out of them, you guys can take over…”

Full of rage now, Audette was ready to start giving orders. But his cell phone wouldn’t cooperate. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get a dial tone.

“Are we in a dead zone here or something?” he asked Batman and Twitch, looking in all directions. “I mean, we’re up on f*cking hill. What’s blocking the signal up here?”

They both shrugged. “Nothing works when we’re around,” Twitch murmured.

Audette finally gave up and said, “I got to get back to the city and get on a landline. How are you guys feeling? Need to go to a hospital?”

“Not me,” Twitch said.

“Same here,” Batman replied.

At that point they heard sirens approaching.

Audette told them, “OK, I say we all get out of here before the local cops start asking questions we don’t want to answer.”

* * *

IT WAS 3:00 A.M. by this time.

Audette drove like a madman back to Monte Carlo, agreeing to drop them at their hostel.

Squeezing his rented car into the alley nearby, the agent parked next to the hostel’s dumpster long enough for Batman to get Twitch out of the backseat.

Then Batman awkwardly thanked Audette for being there in their time of need. The CIA agent waved off his gratitude and handed him an umbrella. He said Batman might be able to fashion parts of it into a temporary leg for Twitch.

Then the agent drove off with a squeal, leaving Batman with the distinct feeling that he wanted to get away from them as quickly as possible.

Twitch felt the same vibe. “He must think we’re a jinx or something,” he said.

Batman helped Twitch up the seven flights of stairs leading to their tiny room. It was a tough climb. Batman was full of aches and pains, the worst being a huge throbbing in his chest. But it was Twitch who had the biggest problem; without his artificial leg, he needed to hop up each step, one at a time, with Batman holding him under the shoulder for balance.

They finally reached the top floor, sweating, dirty and exhausted. Twitch pushed the door open about halfway when Batman suddenly stopped him. He pointed down at the doorsill. Going across it was the shadow of someone waiting on the other side.

Neither of them was armed, but it wasn’t like they could go back down the stairs either. Batman toed the door open a little more. The shadow did not move. He peeked around the corner and saw the silhouette of a man sitting near the room’s only window, the moonlight illuminating him from behind.

All he had was Audette’s umbrella. He felt its point and found it fairly sharp.

“Unless you’re the cleaning lady,” Batman called out. “Don’t move a muscle.”

The intruder complied, so Batman finally switched on the light.

Only then did he realize their uninvited guest was the man Batman and Twitch knew as “Maurice.”

When Twitch realized who it was, he grabbed the umbrella and lunged at him, hoping to stab him with the sharp point. But he wound up falling to the floor just two feet into his attack.

“Help me up so I can kill this guy!” Twitch yelled at Batman.

But the little old man just smiled. He didn’t seem nervous or scared. But he did look worried.

“So, we meet again,” he said to them shyly.

“This already makes it once too often,” Batman replied, helping up Twitch and settling him in a chair on the opposite side of the room. “And if you’re here to scam us out of the key, you’re too late. We just got our asses kicked and saw four other guys get shot down by someone who wanted the box just as much as we do.”

The little old man nodded glumly.

“I know all about the key,” he said. “Last time I talked to her, my person at the gagnant gave me full report. My people are out there trying to find those guys who robbed you.”

“So, you are ‘Bobby Murphy’ then?” Batman asked him.

The little man bowed slightly. “Guilty as charged,” he said.

Batman studied him for a few moments, contemplating him now in a different light. He was dressed the same as when they first met him, except now he had a tie on. And despite all he’d heard about him, the little man still looked very ordinary. Like the retired neighbor you chatted with over your back fence.

“That was quite a sting you pulled off at the Grand Maison,” Batman finally told him. “You had us looking like a*sholes right from the start.”

Murphy shrugged. “It’s just what we do,” he said apologetically. “We’ve whacked al Qaeda financiers in just the same manner, after we’ve robbed and beat them first, of course. You go with your strengths.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Twitch told him harshly. “For all we know, you’ve just been making it up as you go along. Or maybe you’re double-dealing with these Jihad a*sholes somehow.”

Murphy stared at him for a long moment. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never ‘treasonous.’”

“How did you find out about the Z-box then?” Twitch challenged him. “Or about the gagnant or even any Monte Carlo connection?”

Murphy almost laughed. “You really want to know?”

“I sure do,” Twitch shot back.

Murphy shrugged again. “Me and my people have been listening in on the CIA for years,” he said starkly. “At Langley; their field stations. While they were busy trying to figure out what bin Laden had for breakfast, we’ve had our ears to the wires, taking it all in, blow by blow.”

Twitch laughed at him. “Eavesdropping on the CIA? I’m sure…”

Murphy straightened his tie. “Do you really think their crappy sat-phones made by the Chi-Coms are so impenetrable?” he asked. “Do you think no one can hack into their field stations’ database? Into Langley’s database? There are hundreds of people around the world who will do just that for a price and we paid a few of them to do it for us.”

“Well, I’m guessing that’s total bullshit,” Twitch declared.

“If you don’t believe me,” Murphy countered. “Perhaps you’d like me to recite word for word the action report the crew of that spy ship had prepared to release after the Agency had sent the Z-box and the fake pirates to the bottom of the Java Trench? That thing had everything but dancing girls and a sound track.”

Twitch fell silent for a moment. Audette did tell them such an action report was written and possibly lost somewhere in cyberspace, but very few people knew about it beforehand.

But then Twitch erupted again: “Well, a*shole, if you’re here looking for more money, we’re tapped out. That’s what happens when someone steals ten million from you and then you almost get killed figuring a way to get it back.”

Murphy was in full agreement. “I’m very sorry about that,” he said. “But you have to remember, while I have the same goals as you, I don’t have the CIA approaching me to do their dirty work for them. I’m sure you know all about my group by now. We might be the best PSO around, if I say so myself. But because of politics, we’re on the outside looking in. No one gives us funds; no one approaches us with multimillion-dollar missions. So, unfortunately, we have to get in between the seams.”

“So—why are you here then?” Batman asked him. “To gloat?”

“To the contrary,” Murphy replied. “In light of the key slipping through your fingers and its obvious connection to the box, I came here to urge you to pool your talents with me and try to get it back immediately.”

Twitch laughed. He said, “Translation: He wants a cut of our payment if we wind up recovering the Z-box.”

But Murphy was emphatically shaking his head no. “Not exactly,” he said. He thought a few moments, then went on. “Remember when I saw you guys the first time? I listed three groups of people who might want access to the Z-box: People who thought it was a terrorist weapon and wanted to use it against the U.S. People who wanted it to sell back to the Agency at a high profit. And people like you guys who’d been hired to recover it for a fee.

“Back then, I admit I thought of myself being in that middle group. If I got it I would have ransomed it back to the U.S.—for twice or more of what you guys were getting paid. That was an important thing for me. But I would have used that money to continue my private war against al Qaeda, because that’s what we do best. We do it better than the whole freaking U.S. government. But yes, I would have extorted as much money out of them as I could.”

He paused a moment, collected his thoughts, then went on.

“But now—things have changed. Because now I know what this thing is. I know what’s inside the Z-box. And now I don’t care about the money so much. It’s secondary, down a bit on the list. Now, priority number one is, I just want to prevent a catastrophe. Something a thousand times worse than 9/11.”

Batman and Twitch were stunned. Suddenly the hostel began shaking again. There was a huge sound coming from the harbor.

“But how could you know what’s in it?” Batman asked him. “I mean, even the Agency doesn’t know that—or at least their field agents don’t. So it wasn’t like you picked it up sniping their communications.”

“I know because we did something those guys should have done a long time ago,” Murphy replied strongly. “I sent two of my best operatives into the worst part of Bangkok. And not ten blocks away from the CIA station there, we found the guy who dreamed this whole thing up back in 1968.

“He’s an old, old guy now, and he’s got a very bad opium addiction and a huge drinking problem, afflictions that are the direct result of him coming up with the original Z-box design and what it was built to do. He was so ashamed of himself that he couldn’t go back to the U.S. after the war was over. He had to keep the secret inside, especially after the Goddamn box got lost. But, let’s just say, when he met my two guys, they persuaded him to educate us.”

Murphy pulled out a small DVD player from his coat pocket and activated its screen. Then he revealed two unmarked DVDs.

“I just got these,” he said. “And they’re both bombshells.”

He pushed one into the DVD player and hit play. The screen filled with static, but then slowly, a grainy video materialized. It showed a hotel room smaller and grungier than the one they were in now. Two men in ski masks and black clothes were talking to a third man, who happened to be tied to a chair.

This third man was elderly and looked sick, both mentally and physically. He had long scraggly gray hair and a beard to match. He was wearing a traditional Thai silk shirt and yoga pants, but they were stained and ripped and filthy.

The men in masks were injecting him with something: narcotics, truth serum, a little of both? It was impossible to tell. But after a few editing dissolves, the old man started talking

“The box was designed to be the ultimate booby trap,” he began in a raspy voice, with captions appearing at the bottom of the screen. “The idea was to turn the North Vietnamese Army’s worst weapon on themselves. So many of our guys had been killed and maimed by their booby traps. We wanted to give them a taste of their own medicine—but just do it in spades.

“The packing case was exactly the same kind used by U.S. troops to transport classified material, documents, even secret weapons in and around Vietnam. These boxes were built of the same material as an airplane’s black box, and they all had a small ‘artificial atmosphere’ inside to preserve the contents over long periods of time.

“Several had been captured by the communists during the Tet Offensive, and a bunch of our secrets were compromised. We learned Hanoi had ordered its troops in the field that should they find one of these boxes, they were not to open it, but rather get it and if possible, the key, back to Hanoi as quickly as possible.”

The old man started mumbling, so one of his interrogators gave him another shot in the arm.

“Remember the neutron bomb?” he started up again. “It kills people, but leaves the buildings standing? That’s approximately what we dreamed up. Again, that box was the ultimate booby trap. An atomic booby trap. But of course, it was also against the Geneva Convention.”

That’s where the first DVD ended. Murphy put in the second one. It was a black and white film converted to video.

“He had this with him,” Murphy told the others. “It’s a Z-box test from many years ago.”

The footage showed a flat, snowy, frozen setting, perhaps in the arctic. There were hundreds of steel cages arranged in a huge circle within camera range. They contained everything from dogs and cats, to birds, rats, and larger mammals like a bear, and many, many chimpanzees.

The Z-box was placed on the back of a jeep by men in hazmat suits. The jeep was then driven into the center of the animal cages and parked. The driver got out and quickly walked away.

An undetermined amount of time went by, and then a timer appeared in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. It began ticking down from thirty seconds. On reaching zero, there was a tremendous flash of light, so much so it blinded the camera lens for at least a minute.

When the image could be seen again, it showed some fire, some smoke, but mostly just a thirty-foot-deep crater where the jeep had been. Also many of the hundreds of animal cages around the crater had been destroyed, their occupants incinerated. But just a few hundred feet farther out from the center of the blast, many of the cages were still intact and their occupants alive but in a very high state of agitation.

Someone pushed a button somewhere and all the animals that survived were released from their cages. But on getting out, all of them began flopping about, stumbling or moving in a highly disoriented manner.

“What’s the matter with them?” Twitch asked. “Are they irradiated?”

Murphy just shook his head slowly.

“Worse,” he said. “They’re blind. Permanently blind … from the flash.”

Batman and Twitch were shocked.

Batman said, “We had no idea this is what the box contained. Whatever it is.”

“It’s a nuclear weapon, is what it is,” Murphy told him strongly. “But not a typical one. Even Nixon knew if he started lighting off tactical nukes in Vietnam, the Russians or the Chi-Coms would probably supply small nukes to the NVA and then we would have had nuclear-armed guerillas running all around southeast Asia. But somehow the Agency talked Nixon into this weapon disguised in a Z-box.

“Technically, it’s called an ‘extremely low-yield gamma-neutron TNW,’ for tactical nuclear weapon. It was built to do three things: First was to explode in such a way that it would be very hard to prove if it was even nuclear. You can see it had a relatively small blast area, maybe a quarter mile or so. We had some conventional blockbuster bombs in Vietnam that could do at least that much damage and probably more.

“Second, this bomb would also send out vast quantities of neutrons that would kill many people while leaving structures relatively unaffected. But third, and the worst of all, it was built to release huge amounts of gamma rays as well. Anyone within twenty miles of the explosion, who looked at the flash even for a second, would be rendered permanently blind.

“The CIA figured the Z-box would be opened somewhere in Hanoi, a tightly packed city of 1.5 million people at the time. There would be an explosion, which again wouldn’t be very big, but the flash would be tremendous. The Agency figured, while only a hundred or so would be killed in the actual blast—more than seven hundred thousand attracted by the noise of the blast would be blinded forever by the flash.

“Can you imagine the crisis that would cause? Three quarters of a million people suddenly and permanently without sight? All in one city? The effect would have been so paralyzing that the North Vietnamese government would have collapsed. No matter how much aid Russia and China poured in, this thing would have ruined them.

“And it probably would have won the war for the U.S., too—but we would have been morally bankrupt in the eyes of the world, or even more so than we are today.”

He pointed to the DVD, still showing the hundreds of blind animals in confused agony, stumbling about. Then he said: “Gentlemen, that’s what’s in the Z-box.…”

A stunned silence descended on the room. It lasted for a long minute.

“But how did they expect it to get into the hands of the NVA?” Batman finally asked.

“Like I said,” Murphy replied. “The CIA knew if it were found by NVA or Viet Cong troops, it would eventually get to Hanoi, where they would try to open it. But the Agency didn’t want to be obvious about it, like leaving it behind on a battlefield or in the backseat of a car.

“So they tried to fake an airplane crash with the Z-box on board, along with four already-dead bodies dressed up like the crew, hoping the box and the key would be found and immediately taken to Hanoi as ordered. But the plane was shot down long before it got where the Agency wanted it to go and it wound up being lost in this rice paddy that was covered over with water and mud for years afterward.”

“Man, the Agency was goofy even back then,” Twitch said. “I mean did they just expect it to work, just like that?”

“Yes, they did,” Murphy nodded. “Because they kept it simple. You open the box with the key, and the first few layers contain what look to be classified documents. But once you get down to the bottom layer, like a VC spinning mine, it starts ticking down and it’s impossible to stop. Unless, you turn the key again, and shut it off. And you have exactly one minute to do that. After those sixty seconds, the bomb goes off fifteen seconds later.”

Another silence came over the room.

Then Murphy said, “Now, can you imagine such a weapon being detonated in a large American city? With millions of people in the affected area? It would make 9/11 seem like a tea party.”

The hostel shook again with the loud noise coming from the harbor.

Murphy continued to pull on his tie nervously; at times he seemed like an intensely shy man. “I guess I always hoped this thing was just a box of feathers,” he went on. “Or LBJ’s stained pajamas or something. Because then, it really would have been a game, getting it back, trying to block everyone else out, just to save the Agency some bad press.

“But now that I know what it is, it’s frightening that I thought so cavalierly about it.”

He fumbled with his tie some more. Then he added: “And I swear to you on my life, I thought the gagnant prize was the box—and not just a key.”

“Well, you f*cked that up, genius,” Twitch roared at him again. “And now that key is out there on the loose, and so is the Z-box.”

Batman raised his hands as a request for calm. Then he said, “Look, we all f*cked up here in some way, shape or form. And pointing fingers won’t solve anything. What we’ve got to do now is figure out how these Jihad Brothers are planning to get the key out of Monte Carlo and bring it to wherever the box is.”

“The only people who know that must be the ex-Stazi guys,” Murphy said. “They were the brokers; they’re the ones who handled all this.”

Batman said, “Then I suggest we go back up to that Palace and beat the piss out of everyone we see. One of them has got to know where these Stazi guys are.”

Murphy nodded, but then replied, “Normally, I would say that’s not a bad idea. But I really doubt the Stazi guys were ever even here in MC. They’re too smart for that and I doubt we can ever catch them. As for the Palace, they’re just doing what every other European royal family is doing these days: They’re strapped for funds and have a lot of debt and they just made themselves a quarter of a billion dollars for doing nothing more than hosting a card game. For all we know, they were told the players were vying for an antique or a precious art collection. Far worse things have been done inside those four walls, I’m sure.”

“But here’s what’s bothering me,” Twitch said. “If the game was just for the key, then why would those people even play in it? Why would they put up fifty million if they don’t even know where the box is?”

“The answer is simple,” Murphy replied. “Everyone in that game does know where the box is—but us. Don’t you see? You two guys and my beauty queen were the only ones not in on it. We were late arrivals. My proxy was in just under the wire and then you guys walk in uninvited. We were the only good guys there. The rest of them were crooks or terrorists or a little bit of both. They all had to know where the box was already and that the key was super-important. We were just left out in the cold.”

“Then let’s face it,” Batman said glumly. “There’s only one guy in MC who definitely knows where the box is—and that’s the guy who just stole the key. Like I said, we got to find him before he slips out of town.”

“I agree,” Murphy said. “But he’s too smart to try to get out by plane. Or bus or train or car because he’ll know, or the person pulling his strings will know, that the Agency or all their PSO guys will have all those places sealed by now. I’m sure your friend Audette is doing that as we speak.

“Now we all know those Jihad Brothers are smart—or at least smart enough and brutal enough to get the one thing a lot of other people in this town wanted. What we have to do immediately is figure out the real way they’re going to get out of town.”

The building shook yet again. The noise from the harbor was even louder than before.

That’s when it came to Batman. He suddenly realized he might know how the Jihad Brotherhood was planning to escape.

He signaled Twitch and they both began climbing out of their mismatched tuxes and into their old Versace clothes.

“We’ve got to go right now,” Batman said. “The three of us…”

“Where are we going?” Murphy asked him anxiously.

“To the harbor,” Batman replied. “Of course…”