Operation Sea Ghost

28

WITHIN TEN MINUTES of Savoldi telling them that Numero Two could now catch up to the Smoke-Lar, the Whiskey contingent were all asleep.

It was strange. Whether the situation had become a little more hopeful, or a little less stressful, or that exhaustion finally set in, everyone found a place at the rear of the cockpit and just drifted off.

Nolan was the last to succumb; Emma was the first. She was pressed tightly against him and he could hear her breathing softly despite the roar of the turbine and the constant slamming of the boat’s hull against the ocean waves. Above it all, she felt warm when everything else felt cold.

No surprise that when he finally dozed off, she was in his dreams. They were back on the deserted island. They had built a house, and were living their lives in paradise, everything unfolding just like a movie. But then things started to go wrong. The weather over paradise grew nasty, dark and gray. A typhoon hit and he lost Emma in the jungle, and then he himself became lost. During all this, Nolan felt his head aching and his good eye burning up. There was a fire in his throat; his lungs seemed filled with hot water.

Then … suddenly he was awake. It was morning and the sun was pouring into the Numero Two’s cockpit. But the cockpit smelled horribly—of kerosene.

He knew why. The recycler and the recovery tank they’d removed. The fuel they were designed to catch was now dripping onto the hot engine-compartment floor. The fumes were seeping into the cockpit.

Nolan started shaking Emma, but she would not respond. He looked at the others. The way everyone was sprawled about, they seemed to be not sleeping but unconscious—or worse.

Then he looked up at the control board and saw Savoldi slumped over the steering column. At that moment, Nolan was convinced everyone but him was dead of carbon monoxide poisoning.

But then he felt Emma’s hand touch his face. She woke up—groggy but looking beautiful as always.

“I just had the strangest dream,” she whispered to him.

“Join the club,” he said.

He hugged her tight, thrilled that she was alive.

Then everyone started waking up—bleary-eyed, but all still breathing.

The fumes were real, though. Everyone was aware of them; they were thick in the early morning air.

“This ain’t good,” Twitch said with a cough. “Sniffing fumes can make people crazy.”

“You mean, ‘crazier’ don’t you?” Batman replied.

As for Savoldi, he’d just been leaning over his tracking computer, making sure what he was seeing was really true.

Finally he called out to Nolan, “Major—you should look at this…”

Nolan made his way up front. He looked down at the tracking screen, thinking this is what Savoldi wanted him to do. But instead the pilot directed his attention through the windshield to the sea beyond.

Nolan was astonished. There was a boat out there.

He saw the spray first and then the exhaust plume. Then they went up on a wave and he was able to see the whole vessel.

It was a racing yacht, moving just as quickly as they were.

Savoldi nodded and smiled. “It is no dream,” he said.

It was the Smoke-Lar.

Not a mile in front of them.

A cheer went up. Everyone was quickly on their feet and looking out at the hijacked Dutch boat. Murphy was especially happy. He cried out: “Behold the white whale!”

But even as they were watching it, the boat seemed to be streaking away from them.

Savoldi turned serious.

“You never know what’s going to happen at sea,” he told them. “So if we want to shoot these people, it’s best to do it now.”

Whiskey didn’t have to be told twice.

They brought up the last weapon they had left on board—their M107 sniper rifle.

It was a monster. Nearly five feet long, and weighing a precious twenty-five pounds, it was all muzzle, metal and stock. It had a built-in collapsible bi-pod assembly for support, and a night-vision-equipped targeting scope that looked powerful enough to peer deep into the Milky Way.

Its .50-caliber bullet could seriously damage something like an armored car, a helicopter or even some tanks. As for a human body, one round in the right place could simply blow it apart.

They assembled the gun quickly and jammed in the ten-round magazine.

But then, another problem.

Where would they set up the gun?

Both racing yachts were traveling in a virtual straight line. Trying an angle shot would mean the Numero Two would have to deviate from its predetermined course, and reprogramming the computer to make that happen would take some doing. Plus, there were no guarantees if they did go off course that they’d be able to get back on track afterward.

So the sniper rifle had to be aimed straight out over the Numero Two’s bow. But the only way to do that was to take out a piece of the forward cockpit glass and stick the M107’s barrel through the hole.

But that brought up more issues.

The Numero Two was now moving at more than 85 mph—but this was not a smooth, clear pond they were traveling on. It was the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, with swells that ran at least six feet high, mixed with the occasional rogue wave that could go up to ten feet or more.

At the very least, firing the M107 under these conditions called for an expert. The problem was, the team’s sniper was no longer with them. Jack “Crash” Stacks had passed away a month before. In fact, the M107 once belonged to him.

A second Whiskey member was semiqualified on the rifle—but that was Gunner, who at that moment was still in a hospital in Pakistan, recovering along with the Senegals.

So after removing the section of windshield and anchoring the weapon as best they could, it fell to Nolan to peer through the sniper scope first.

As soon as he got a good look at the man at the controls of the Smoke-Lar, Nolan felt his body freeze up. This was the guy who’d started all the trouble. The guy who’d slaughtered the Dutch crew, and the four PSOs on Palace Road. The guy who’d snatched Murphy’s adopted daughter. The guy who was holding the key to one of the most merciless weapons ever made.

Nolan wanted nothing more than to pull the trigger and erase him from the face of the Earth. But because of the high-speed, bumpy conditions, he couldn’t keep him in the sighting scope for more than a second at a time. Plus, in situations like this, Nolan really needed his specially adapted helmet-mounted telescopic lens; it had been designed to fit perfectly over his good eye. But it had gone overboard with the rest of the team’s equipment.

And he also felt he shouldn’t be the one to take out the Jihad Brothers. Considering what they’d gone through, it was really up to Batman or Twitch to have the honor.

He told this to Batman, but his colleague just held up his hands. One was burned and one was artificial.

“As much as I want to,” Batman said. “No can do.”

All eyes fell on Twitch.

And he tried—but because of his crude prosthetic leg, he couldn’t set himself properly. As a result, he could barely keep his eye on the sniper scope, never mind hold the rifle long enough to make a shot.

In desperation, Batman whispered to Nolan, “How’s your girlfriend feel about shooting people?”

Nolan shook his head. “That ain’t going to happen,” he said. “Take my word for it.”

That left Bobby Murphy …

The little old man made his way up to the rifle, took off his glasses and put his right eye to the scope.

“What should I aim for?” he asked with some uncertainty.

Savoldi thought it best to explain where not to aim on the Smoke-Lar.

“Don’t hit anything from midships to the stern,” he said. “That’s where the fuel is stored and where the turbine is located. One big bullet in the turbine could cause it to come apart, sharp pieces flying everywhere.

“And a big bullet in the fuel supply? Poof! There will be nothing left.”

* * *

Aboard the Smoke-Lar

FAHIM SHABAZZ WAS a happy man.

This was an unusual state of affairs for him. When the sun came up that morning, his autopilot told him the Smoke-Lar had passed the two-thirds marker in crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

This is what brought joy to his essentially joyless heart. He was accomplishing his mission. He would soon be a martyr. He would soon bring great destruction to the homeland of the Great Satan.

He felt on top of the world.

But there was another reason for this. He’d been taking regular injections of Adrenalin since the previous afternoon, another item provided him by the Pakistani ISI. The shots made him feel like he had superior strength and superior mind power. They also kept him awake and alert, even though he’d been doing little else but watching over the autopilot all this time.

Abdul had remained below throughout, keeping an eye on the Smoke-Lar’s power plant. He was constantly checking their fuel supply and changing out the fuel tanks when needed. The only time he and Shabazz saw each other was when Abdul came topside to throw one of the empty fuel containers overboard. Each time Abdul did this, Fahim Shabazz imagined the vessel going just a little bit faster.

Their hostage, the beautiful Asian woman, was locked in the forward bow compartment, a space barely large enough for one person to fit into. Fahim Shabazz had praised Allah regularly for giving him the wisdom to keep her alive when he did. He had not had any interference since the bizarre incident with the jet fighter. To Fahim Shabazz, feeling almost superhuman in mind and body, that seemed like it had happened years ago.

The yacht was running perfectly. Everything from the mechanicals to the computers to the turbine had been flawless so far. The support crew they’d killed back in Monte Carlo had done their jobs well. And even the weather was cooperating. Though he saw the occasional high wave and had gone through a few rainsqualls, for the most part nature had been good to him, too.

As for his unknowing opponent, the boat named Numero Two? Fahim Shabazz had stopped monitoring his tracking screen hours ago. In fact, his challenger had fallen so far behind, his boat wasn’t even registering on the computer the last time Shabazz checked. He suspected the Italian vessel might have had engine issues and had probably dropped out, not that it made any difference to him.

To his mind, this had ceased being a race a long time ago.

* * *

SHABAZZ WAS ALSO consuming energy drinks to keep up on his nutrition.

He’d just finished a can and was in the act of throwing the empty container overboard when something strange happened.

The can never hit the water. It disappeared in a puff of smoke as soon as it left his hand.

It happened so fast, Fahim Shabazz wasn’t even sure it happened at all. One moment the can was there—the next it wasn’t.

He immediately wondered if the Adrenalin was making him see things. Or was it exhaustion? He hadn’t slept in nearly four days, and while the Adrenalin was keeping him feeling strong, the energy drinks did contain a lot of caffeine. Maybe this wasn’t the best combination.

But when he factored in the excitement of his pending martyrdom, Fahim Shabazz decided the incident with the can was probably just a slight figment of his imagination.

And that’s how it stayed—for about a minute.

That’s when he heard an odd crackling sound and saw one of the LED screens on his control panel disappear in a cloud of smoke. It was strange because, at eighty-five miles an hour, this smoke hung in the air for what seemed like a long time, before finally blowing away with the wind.

Once again, Fahim Shabazz wondered if he was seeing things. But unlike the vanishing Red Bull can, when he looked down at the computer screen there was no doubt that it had been shattered. In fact, there was nothing left of it, the glass or any of the gear behind it.

Now Shabazz was very worried. It appeared to him the panel had exploded from within, and this meant something was going wrong with the heretofore-perfect racing vessel.

The blown-away panel was their weather service screen—something that was important but not crucial. But still, Fahim Shabazz was concerned about the boat’s overall condition.

He called for Abdul, screaming to be heard over the never-ending roar of the turbine. The engineer climbed out of the engine compartment, looked at Shabazz, as if to say: What do you want?

But before he could open his mouth to speak, a piece of Abdul’s left shoulder suddenly flew off in an explosion of blood and skin.

Abdul stood there in shock. Shabazz was equally stunned.

It was only then that Shabazz realized someone was shooting at them.

* * *

BOBBY MURPHY WAS not a soldier.

His best weapon was his intellect. He killed terrorists by outsmarting them. By fooling them. By scamming them.

But unfortunately not by shooting them.

He had fired four shots at the Smoke-Lar. The one that hit the energy drink can and the one that took a chunk out of Abdul’s shoulder were pure luck. The round that went into the Smoke-Lar’s weather display panel had come within inches of destroying the boat’s autopilot, exactly the opposite of what Whiskey was trying to do. A fourth shot came dangerously close to hitting the boat’s fuel supply before falling into the sea. It was only that the Smoke-Lar was going up one wave while the Numero Two was coming down another that the Dutch boat didn’t blow up in a million pieces.

A lot of factors had worked against Murphy. The recoil of the massive M107 was enough to crack the shoulder of the most muscular rifleman; it was brutal on the bones of a sixty-five-year-old man. Then there was the noise. The M107 was basically a .50-caliber machine gun that fired one round at a time—and the noise that one round made going out the barrel was deafening, even drowning out the clamor made by the boat’s turbine engine. The standard operating procedure for deploying the M107 called for mandatory earplugs on the shooter. There were no such luxuries aboard the Numero Two.

After the four shots Murphy was essentially deaf and, for a few moments, thought he had a dislocated shoulder.

After that, he knew it was best to leave the shooting to someone else.

So the job fell back to Nolan.

* * *

WHEN HE TOOK over, Nolan was just praying the cosmos would finally take pity on them and steer any round he fired into the head or the heart or the backside of the terrorist driving the Smoke-Lar.

But it didn’t happen. There was just too much physics involved. The functions of wave motion, the combined speed of both racing boats and the constantly changing distance between them, the vicious recoil of the sniper rifle and the auditory disruption caused by the shooting of the gun. Bottom line, the physical act of firing the M107 had turned into a huge pain in the ass.

Worst of all, by this time, it was obvious the terrorists on the Smoke-Lar knew someone was shooting at them—so the idea of a quick kill was long gone. The terrorists were desperately trying to get the boat out of firing range, pushing their throttles to the max, but Savoldi was able to stay within a mile of them. Never closer, but never falling too far behind either.

Yet as the seas grew rougher, and both boats poured it on, the opportunities for any kind of accurate shot diminished proportionately. While at first Nolan was firing the M107 every thirty seconds or so, the conditions soon stretched that time frame to just one shot a minute. Then that became one attempt every five minutes as the terrorists were doing their best to stay down and under cover, not easy to do when one was bouncing around so much. Still, from there it went to one attempt every ten minutes, then fifteen, then twenty—with all of these rounds falling harmlessly into the sea.

Soon enough, as their ammunition, which had also been spared from being thrown overboard, started to run low and the ocean waves ran even higher, Nolan found himself attempting only one shot every half hour or so.

Then this thing they’d been waiting for, this thing they thought would take just minutes to accomplish once they were in range, stretched into an hour. Then two.

Then three.

Then four …

* * *

NOLAN STAYED WITH it, though. By midafternoon, six hours into the hunt, his good eye was red and running with tears from trying to sight his prey for more than a fraction of a second. He wasn’t able to squeeze off more than a handful of shots in that time—all misses.

Night arrived and the others in the Whiskey contingent, with little else to do, retired back to their corner of the cockpit and began to doze. Emma had stayed by Nolan’s side for a while, but when he told her she should get some rest, she listened to him and retreated to the back of the cockpit, too.

Eventually it was just Nolan and Savoldi: he at the gun, the pilot watching the controls. Even Giuseppe took the time to nap.

The stars came out, the moon came up, and the crazy, frustrating high-speed chase continued, with no real end in sight.

At one point Savoldi told him: “In a lot of Italian literature, the ship is used as a metaphor for the soul. That is why you just can’t give up. This is in your soul.”

“Maybe,” Nolan replied, his eye still glued to the scope, as it had been for almost the entire day. “But it should be easier than this.”

Savoldi laughed. “And why is that?” he asked. “Now that I know what you have gone through in the past few days, and what your friends have gone through, and what this terror weapon you are pursuing is, nothing about any of it has been easy. So, what makes you think this particular part would be that way?”

Nolan took his eye from the sniper scope for a moment and looked over at him. “Are you saying we’ve been wasting our time out here?”

Savoldi shook his head no. “You are on their trail, yes? You are chasing them. You are not letting them get away. But my heart tells me this will not end until the last chapter is written, not until you chase them down to where this bomb is located. I might be wrong, but I just think anything less would just be troppo facile. Too easy.”

As if to prove Savoldi’s point, at that moment, it started to rain.

The bad weather came as a bit of a surprise; most of their trip had been free of annoying atmospherics. But the clouds had gathered, the wind began blowing up, and according to their weather readout screen, the occasional rainsqualls had all coalesced into one large front. Soon they were in the middle of a steady, blustery downpour.

The wind was blowing up from the south, so it didn’t affect the speed of the Numero Two—or that of the Smoke-Lar, either.

But the rain all but killed Nolan’s chances of getting a good shot at the terrorists.

* * *

ONE HOUR INTO the storm, Nolan made the mistake of asking Savoldi for one of his energy drinks.

It tasted like bad soda pop but it did give him a rush—for about thirty minutes. Then he began to lose this artificial vitality as its effects quickly wore off.

Savoldi recognized the problem and handed Nolan two tiny white pills. Nolan knew what they were—amphetamines. He’d downed a lot of them in his special ops days as well as during his more recent pirate-hunting gigs.

Nolan swallowed both with another can of energy drink. The combination kept him sharp, alert and wide-awake for the next three hours. But this did nothing to help him achieve that elusive kill shot. And as the rain got worse, he found himself taking his eye off the scope more and more and just wanting to breathe.

Finally, he had to take a break. He visited the tiny commode located in the aft part of the forward compartment, then he made his way back to the rear of the cockpit to check on Emma. She was sleeping peacefully, or as peacefully as could be expected. The others were as well.

Nolan sat down close by and stuck his head out the cockpit vent window, hoping to breathe in some fresh, if damp air. That’s when he saw a cargo ship passing them in the near distance.

This seemed odd. They had not seen any other vessels during the trip. Now this one was no more than a quarter mile away.

But Nolan quickly realized this was not some ordinary ship. It was a container vessel, painted mostly black with some green and white on the upper decks.

He was stunned. He didn’t even have to read the two words on the side of the ship to know its name.

He knew it was the Dutch Cloud.

Batman had his ethereal visions—and Nolan had his. Both men were haunted by things they couldn’t explain. For Nolan, it all started a few months before, during Whiskey’s gig for the Russian mafia. Protecting a cruise liner full of mobsters as they took a “business trip” through the Aegean Sea, their client, a gangster named Bebe, had told Nolan about the Dutch Cloud.

It was a near-mythical vessel, a phantom ship said to have disappeared shortly after 9/11. Endlessly sailing the seas ever since, its contents were unknown but subject of much speculation. Bebe said that if Whiskey were ever able to capture the Dutch Cloud, they would be in for a huge reward, payable by none other than the CIA.

It had sounded like drunken Russian bullshit at the time. But then Nolan actually saw the ghost ship. It happened while Whiskey was heading toward an island near Zanzibar to help recover a buried treasure containing a billion-dollar microchip. He was out on the rail one particular stormy night and saw the spectral ship passing just off their port side, only to be quickly lost again in the gale and fog.

Then just a month later, Nolan saw the ship once more, this time while the team was crossing the mid-Atlantic to the Bahamas for another gig.

Now, he was in the northeast Atlantic—and here it was again.

In the middle of a storm, just like before.

* * *

THE NEXT THING Nolan knew, he was awake again, slumped against the vent window where he’d just paused for a breath of fresh air.

Yes, the pep pills and the energy drinks had delivered him a great rush, but then they hit him with a sudden crash. He’d gone to sleep in a very awkward position for about two hours.

When he awoke, the first thing he saw was a seabird flying overhead. Then he looked out on the brightening sky and saw other ships, all shapes and sizes, plying the ocean.

He took in a deep breath and for the first time in a long time, detected something more in the air than just the smell of the sea.

This time, he smelled land.

* * *

FAHIM SHABAZZ HAD done nothing for most of the past twenty-four hours but duck bullets, both real and imaginary.

Shortly after the first three shots were fired at them, he’d peeked out the back of the boat and was astonished to see that the rival Italian racing yacht had not only gained on him, but was practically right behind them. This didn’t seem possible, as he thought he could see more than two people crammed into its cockpit, vastly overloading it. But after a few more large caliber rounds had gone zipping by his head, Fahim Shabazz had stopped wondering how it happened, and started worrying about how he could get away from his pursuers without getting killed first.

As a result, he’d spent a lot of time crouched down below the Smoke-Lar’s control panel, checking his settings only occasionally, but always making sure that the autopilot was still engaged. This gave him a lot of time to think as to why he was being chased—and eventually he started to put it together. The Italian boat was from Monte Carlo and there were people in Monte Carlo who knew he had the key to the Z-box. These people must have discovered that he and Abdul had stolen the Smoke-Lar for their escape and so in turn had somehow commandeered the Numero Two and had been chasing them across the Atlantic.

So for Shabazz, a weird set of circumstances was at work here. He was trapped on a boat going more than 85 mph, a boat he didn’t dare divert from its preplanned course, with another similar boat right behind him, apparently carrying expert marksmen ready to take him down the moment he presented them with a hittable target. These fears were reinforced anytime Shabazz saw the sparkling trail of a bullet going by.

It was so distracting, so unsettling, he never even bothered to crawl over and check on Abdul, who’d managed to stagger back into the engine compartment after being shot, and had stayed there ever since.

* * *

AS TIME AND the miles dragged on, the euphoria Fahim Shabazz had felt earlier had drained away.

He didn’t want to die, at least not like this. Not at the hands of these people who were so relentlessly pursuing him.

All throughout the stormy night, he was certain he saw bullets whizzing overhead and on either side of the Smoke-Lar, leaving their long trails of smoke and sparks. He felt if he moved even one inch this way or that, a bullet would find his gut or his cranium, so good were these people trying to shoot him.

His biggest fear, though, was if he was killed here, out at sea, then all his efforts will have been for naught. He would have failed in his mission and the Great Satan would escape punishment once again.

But when morning finally arrived and the sky started brightening, Fahim Shabazz began rethinking his predicament. He began to wonder why his pursuers had not killed him yet. One bullet fired on the boat’s turbine would have torn it apart, sinking the boat immediately. One bullet hitting a fuel line would have blown the racing yacht to bits. They could have done either one of those things at any time.

Even in these crazy conditions, his would-be assassins were trying to be too precise, like the SEALs who’d shot the pirate hijackers of the Maersk Alabama.

Why?

And then it suddenly became obvious. This wasn’t about him. Just like it wasn’t about those Maersk Alabama pirates on that Easter Morning. It was about the hostage he had stashed below. His pursuers wanted to kill him and Abdul without harming her because with them out of the way and the autopilot still engaged, she could probably get the boat under control somehow. Or at the very least it would run out of fuel eventually and just come to a stop. Simple …

Yes, now that daylight was coming, Fahim Shabazz was sure he had the situation right—and he knew there was only one way to counteract it.

He, too, could smell the land, meaning his goal wasn’t that far away. In fact, he was close enough that he could steer the boat manually from here.

So he boldly lowered his cockpit top, making sure he’d be in full view of his pursuers and with the butt of his knife smashed the autopilot’s computer screen. The message was clear. If they shot him or Abdul now, the girl would probably die when the high-speed boat went out of control.

From that moment on, no more bullets came his way.

But now with this done, Fahim Shabazz had to get as far away from his pursuers as possible. But how?

Both boats were reaching speeds of 85 mph plus, even though the Italian boat had as many as a half dozen people on board. Logic told Shabazz its passengers had somehow discarded a lot of weight in order to increase their speed.

He had to do the same thing.

He ordered Abdul out onto the deck. The engineer timidly crawled out of the turbine compartment, still bleeding, terrified he’d be shot again.

Fahim Shabazz yelled over to him to find anything on board that they didn’t need and to throw it overboard. Two could play this game, Fahim Shabazz thought.

It took Abdul about a half hour to crawl around the boat, finding nonessentials and with his good arm, throwing them over the side. Then Fahim Shabazz told Abdul to hook up the last fuel container and, when this was done, to bring the girl up.

The end game was about to begin.

* * *

THE GIRL NAMED Li had been tied up below for almost the entire trip, yet she still looked as glamorous as always.

Making sure the rope binding her hands was tied tight, Fahim Shabazz forced her to stand at the rear of the boat in full view of his pursuers with Abdul at her side, holding her upright. Then Shabazz checked his turbine weight gauge and found Abdul had done a good job; he’d lost about two hundred pounds of nonessential items. Shabazz could actually feel the boat going faster—but he needed even more speed. He’d lost a lot of extra poundage, but at this point, every little bit more would count.

So Fahim Shabazz made his way back to the rear of the open cockpit—and promptly pushed Abdul over the side.

Then he pulled Li down to the deck, threw his throttle to full maximum power and off he went, quickly pulling away from the Numero Two.

* * *

ABDUL ADBUL COULDN’T swim. He began panicking the moment he hit the water, splashing about and trying madly to breathe. He just couldn’t believe Shabazz had done this to him. They were supposed to be partners in this. But now his desire for a great martyrdom was gone.

He was still bleeding from his gunshot wound and the salt water brought excruciating pain. Though he was far out at sea, he could make out the rim of the land to the west. The buildings, the early morning lights—this had been their goal, New York City, not twenty miles away.

But Abdul was beginning to sink; his wounded arm prevented him from even treading water. His only hope of being saved was the Italian boat coming up on him fast.

He raised his hands and started waving them madly, pleading with them to stop.

But the Numero Two was now off autopilot, too, and at maximum power, roared right past Abdul, leaving him in its wake.