by David DeLee
“Here’s where it gets weird, or weirder. I researched the ship’s registry. It’s sailing under a Denmark flag but the International Maritime Organization number doesn’t exist. I’ve tracked the ship’s ownership through IMO and every database I can think of. I’ve uncovered three shell companies so far. I’m still following the breadcrumbs down that rabbit hole…”
“To the chief’s point,” Grayson asked. “What’s the significance of this ship?”
“I don’t know, but there was a bunch of stuff about it on Tumandar’s computer,” Kayla said. “I figure, if the ship’s important to him, it must be important—”
Bannon finished for her. “To his terrorist buddies, too.”
He turned to McMurphy. “Feel up to taking a drive back to Boston?”
McMurphy pounded down the last of his beer. “Try going without me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
TARA RAN THROUGH THE rear door of the bridge. It put her in the back end of the galley. A tunic-wearing crewman—the one who’d been shooting at her—backed away from the bridge door and twisted around. Still armed with the Russian AK-47 he’d already tried to kill her with, only the stairwell down to the passenger deck stood between them.
Tara swung her rifle off her back and fired two rounds. She struck the crewman with one and missed with the other. He fell against the bulkhead and grabbed his bleeding arm. Tara fired a second time not knowing if she hit him or not as she vaulted over the railing and dropped to the base of the stairs below.
She landed awkwardly, narrowly avoiding the broken body of the man she’d pushed down the stairs. She darted across the first-class section, which was still empty of people. It wouldn’t be for long. She ducked through the curtain into the midsection. She had the rifle at the ready but she didn’t encounter anyone. She needed to get below deck. Find a stairwell down.
Her intention was to get the engine room. From there she could disable the ship, keep it from going wherever the hell it was headed. After that, she had no idea. One step at a time, she told herself. Do whatever she could to not get herself killed.
As she ran along the row of cabins, past the one she’d been kept prisoner in, she tried to figure out how long it’d been since they boarded, how far had they traveled? In what direction? For what purpose? She was full of questions and had no answers.
She’d disable the ship and then find a lifeboat. Surely a ship this size would have lifeboats. If she could get to one undetected, launch it without getting herself shot, she could escape. But what of Faaid and the others? Leave them here to escape?
Hell, no!
Tara found a door near the rear of the mid-ship section. She pushed through, determined. She wasn’t going anywhere until she’d made sure Faaid, and his ship, were dead in the water. Or just plain dead.
On the wall of the stairwell, Tara found a framed schematic of the ship meant to outline escape routes in the event of an emergency. The ship was a passenger transport catamaran called the Jean-Paul Dauphin. A large ferry designed to transport both passengers and vehicles. One this large would transport upward of a thousand passengers and five hundred vehicles. Shaped like a sailing catamaran, the ship rode on two hulls that looked like skis. There was an open space between them and one or more decks across the span between them. The ship would be powered by four independent marine diesel engines, two in each of the twin hulls.
A plan began to formulate, but she didn’t get that far.
According to the schematic there were two vehicle decks below the passenger deck. She passed the door to the upper vehicle deck and proceeded to the next level down. There she stopped and glanced through the portal-shaped window in the door to the deck beyond. It seemed the catamaran’s redesign involved more than a disrupted demo job and fancy forward passenger section. The lower vehicle deck had been completely repurposed and went a long way to explaining why the vessel rode as low as it did.
The deck had been converted into a well dock, sometimes referred to as a well deck. Open at one end, it consisted of a channel between raised, open passageways on either side and a stern gate that could be lowered into the water, like a dock ramp at a boatyard. When down, the channel between two railed passageways would be flooded, thus allowing smaller boats to launch or dock from under the catamaran between its ski-like hulls.
Tara eased the door open. Crouching low, she moved along the passageway, along the chipped yellow railings from which ropes, boat bumpers, and life rings hung. As she moved closer to the stern she saw a vessel held in a cradle made of thick nylon netting suspended over the water sloshing around on the well deck. A metal gangplank with rails extended to the boat’s stern from the passageway. The boat faced the stern, as if prepared to launch.
Above the passageway was a bank of windows. Control rooms behind the angled glass. It would be from these rooms the stern gate would be raised and lowered, the flooding of the well dock supervised, and any work being done would be overseen. Inside the rooms, dark-clothed figures moved back and forth. Most wore yellow hardhats. All were middle-eastern in appearance.
On the boat cradled in the well, two men wearing wielding gear were working on the bow section of the vessel. The welding torch popped and sparks flew. From where she was, she couldn’t see what they were welding.
Tara estimated the length of the vessel to be thirty-five feet. A Bowrider, it had a deep-V hull and was similar in size and construction to the type of ships the Coast Guard used for their fleet of medium response boats. A common enough vessel, this one had no name or identifying registration numbers on the hull. She moved closer, trying to see past the bridge, to see what the men were working on. When she did, it sent a cold shiver down her spine.
It was a large gun. But not just any gun.
Tara had seen prototypes of this kind of weapon—an electromagnetic railgun. Yet she couldn’t believe it. Though she was technically ‘retired’ from the field, like Bannon and McMurphy, she stayed current on the latest developments in cutting edge weaponry. Not only those made by the United States, but the progress made in this area by other countries as well. As far as she knew the only country other than the U.S. close to building this kind of weapon was China. But the size was all wrong. The railguns she’d read about would require a battleship to accommodate it, which was what the Chinese had done.
This. This was impossible.
A door opened from one of the overseeing control rooms. Aziza Faaid stepped down to the passageway on the opposite side of the deck. He spoke with a man wearing coveralls. He stopped and put a phone to his ear.
Had to be a sat phone to work out here, Tara surmised. Good to know.
She started to move away, backing into the shadows and using the various ropes and life rings to hide her presence. Stopping them wouldn’t be enough. Leaving them motionless in the middle of the ocean wouldn’t cut it. She knew that now. The railgun was their endgame. She needed to send the Catamaran, that boat, the railgun, and Aziza Faaid all straight to the bottom of the ocean. And this time she was determined to get it right.
Tara continued her retreat. No alarms had sounded yet, which surprised her, and Faaid didn’t appeared concerned over her escape. Still, she’d left six bodies in the wake of her movements. Puzzling, but she wasn’t going to waste time dwelling on it. She needed to find a quiet place to hide and regroup. A place to figure out what she needed, how to get it, and how best to carry out her plan of sending the devil and his ships to the bottom of the ocean for good.
She re-entered the stairwell, intending to head down to the engine room, but the door above her opened. Tara ducked into the back corner. She crouched low behind the open metal stairs. Booted feet came down the metal stairs. Two people, both men, talking in Arabic.
She was exposed. A simple glance to the side as the men reached the bottom of the stairs and she’d be spotted. All she could hope for would be tunnel vision from the two men.
They carried rifles but had them slung casually over their shoulders.<
br />
“I just wanted to grab a couple of bottles of water,” one man complained, switching to English. “It’s so hot.”
Tara had her stolen rifle on the floor. She’d coiled the chain up and held it tightly around her fist. She tightened her grasp on the stolen knife as she listened to the two men yammering and watched them thump down the stair treads to the floor.
“Sawad, you heard. No time.”
“A couple of seconds is all it would take, Wafi.”
A radio crackled. One of the men held a bulky military walkie-talkie in his hand. Over it, a voice said, “The boat is almost here. Sawad. Wafi. Where are you two? Report to the well deck. Immediately.”
“See?” one of them said. “I told you.”
He pulled the door to the passageway open. Tara tensed. But the two men passed through onto the well deck without seeing her. She heard them run down the metal grated passageway as the door swung slowly shut.
Tara breathed a sigh of relief, then decided to risk peeking out. An approaching boat. Someone arriving. Interesting. Tara needed to know who that could be.
She carried her rifle in her left hand, the chain wrapped around her right hand. She slowly pulled the door open. The coast was clear. She darted across the width of the passageway and as cautiously as she had earlier, made her way along the length of the walkway, remaining concealed behind the railing.
When she’d progressed as far as she dared, she stopped and watched as hydraulic pistons lowered the stern gate below water level. Water rushed in and began to fill the well deck. The ship that served as weapons platform for the railgun remained suspended over the sudden rush of water.
Beyond the mouth of the open Catamaran, a twenty-six-foot Sea Ray Sundancer pulled into the shadowy well deck. The Sundancer moved slowly under the cradled railgun boat and then turned. The pilot expertly pulled the cabin cruiser in behind the railgun ship. Wafi and Sawad were there just in time to drop a couple of rubber bumpers over the railing and catch the bow and stern lines tossed to them by two dark-clad men. They tied the Sundancer off and unrolled a Jacob’s ladder down to the deck.
With the cabin cruiser properly tied off, four men climbed up the rope ladder. Two more figures emerged from the boat’s cabin. Tara ground her back teeth. Bridget Barnes’ red hair was like a beacon in the dimly lit well deck.
Tara put the rifle up to her shoulder and looked through the scope for verification, not that she needed it. Bridget waited by the ladder until another figure came up on deck to join her. Tara shifted the scope and sighted in. Shocked, she nearly dropped the rifle.
The second person, wearing a gray FBI sweatshirt and dark sweatpants, was Safiyyah Zayd.
How could that be?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
BANNON AND MCMURPHY SHOWERED and changed clothes. Grayson smoothed their departure over with the investigating detectives. In his F-350 parked at the curb a block from the Keep Haul, Bannon pulled out and hooked a quick U-turn as three black Chevy Suburbans with tinted windows pulled to the curb on Ocean Boulevard. In his rearview mirror, Bannon saw Agent Pierce hop out of the driver’s side.
“Outta there in the nick of time, “McMurphy said, watching through the side view mirror.
“Perfect timing,” Bannon agreed.
As they drove south, Bannon couldn’t ignore the sense of déjà vu he was having. He and McMurphy didn’t speak, but McMurphy didn’t sleep either. They were each processing the events of the last thirty-six hours. They’d lost men before, and they would again. You learn to compartmentalize. They would grieve later. For now they had a mission to complete and the mission came first. That above all else, otherwise there would be a lot more to mourn than one dead Coastie and a couple of FBI field agents.
But there was no doubt, these deaths hurt and someone would pay for them. That, Bannon vowed.
They drove down Route One the entire way. That late at night there were no other cars on the road. When they reached Boston, they looped around onto ninety-three south, then drove north up Atlantic Avenue, past the twin Harbor Towers apartments where Tumandar, his explosive-loaded SUV, and the docked yacht now rested on the floor of the Harbor. Sections were still cordoned off and powerful work lights still glowed as the forensic teams, the TSB, and others continued to work the scene collecting evidence.
When they reached Columbus Waterfront Park, McMurphy pointed to the right.
They circled around the park and pulled into the Commercial Wharf parking loop. Bannon parked facing the Boston Yacht Haven. They got out and walked along the J-shaped wooden wharf. It extended out into the harbor and then made a nearly ninety-degree turn north. Because of its size, the Jean-Paul Dauphin should have been berthed along the south pier.
It wasn’t.
Bannon called Kayla. “The Dauphin’s not here.”
“I’ll check with the dockmaster,” McMurphy said, going off in search of him or her.
“I can’t help you with that,” Kayla said over the phone. “But I do have more information about the ship itself. Turns out it used to be the Agros Traveler, built in Australia. Its port of Registry was Limassol, Cyprus. According to records, it was sold for scrap and towed to Bangladesh where it was broken up three years ago.”
“Supposedly,” Bannon said.
“In the legal profession we prefer ‘allegedly’. I’ll keep digging through the web of ownerships and shell companies to see what I can find.”
“Thanks, Kayla. About before…I was a bit testy. I’m sorry.”
“No need, Brice. I get it. What are you going to do now?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
“Just be careful, and call if you need anything.”
“Will do.” They hung up. Fences mended.
McMurphy came back, puffing on a lit cigar. “Dockmaster said the Dauphin cast off near midnight the night before last.”
The same night they brought the Naeem into port. The night they handed Tara over to the terrorists. Bannon looked out at the harbor, past the lights of Logan Airport to the left, out through the channel leading to the open ocean. With no idea where they were heading, the ship could be anywhere.
“I’m open to suggestions.”
Standing beside him, McMurphy puffed his cigar and smiled. While Bannon stared out to sea, McMurphy’s gaze shifted a bit more to the left. “I’ve got one, but you’re not gonna like it.”
His old friend was right. Bannon didn’t like it. But he liked the alternate—do nothing—even less.
After asking, “Are you serious?” they jumped back into the truck and took the William Callahan Tunnel under the harbor to Logan Airport. There, he parked the big Ford truck in the airport’s main parking structure. They hoofed it through the terminal buildings, and at the one closest to the cargo hangers, where the major air cargo companies operated from, they went back outside. From there, using the nighttime darkness and shadows for cover, they darted from buildings to trees, ducked behind electrical boxes and dumpsters, and dashed from parked cars to bushes, making their way to the cluster of buildings around the Massport Fire Rescue headquarters.
Everything was locked up tight at that time of night.
They hopped a fence and sticking to the shadows, again darted from an empty cargo container to a luggage trolley to the corner of the building McMurphy was looking for. They sidled up next to it. McMurphy looked out past the corner of the building. When he looked back, he had a big grin on his face.
“She’s there,” he said.
“Tell me again how you know about this?”
“Saw it on the news.”
Mildly surprised, Bannon said, “You watch the news?”
McMurphy rolled his eyes. “Fine. The TV was at the OTB place I go to. I happened to see the story while I was waiting in line to place my bets.”
McMurphy leaned out for a second look.
“You win?”
McMurphy turned back. “What?”
“Your horse. Did it win?”
McMurphy harrumphed. “You think I’d be here, risking the rest of my life in Leavenworth if that nag won?”
Bannon smiled. “Yeah.”
McMurphy shrugged, agreeing.
“There’s only one guard. You distract him. Go.” He pushed Bannon out of the shadows and onto the tarmac.
“The guard’s a Marine,” Bannon muttered under his breath. He looked to where McMurphy had last been, but his friend was gone. Bannon pulled out some papers he had in his pocket, hoping to make them look like airline tickets. He hissed, “And he’s armed to the teeth.”
The marine had an M16 rifle shouldered and an M9 Beretta pistol holster on his hip.
Bannon looked down at his papers and furrowed his brow, trying for an expression of exasperated confusion as he strolled toward the Marine who eyed him with suspicion as he approached.
What the Marine sergeant was guarding was the latest, most powerful, and most expensive helicopter the Marine Corp owned—a CH-53K King Stallion. On the way over, McMurphy gushed about how the chopper had cruising speed of one hundred seventy knots and range of four-hundred-sixty miles and could accommodate thirty-seven personnel and crewed with two pilots and a combat crew of three, and how it could carry a thirty-five thousand pound payload, triple what its predecessor could handle. “That’s like four Humvees,” he’d rattled off excitedly.
“Sir, you can’t be here,” the Marine said to Bannon as he approached.
Bannon ignored him, stared at his papers, and kept walking with his head down. He muttered nonsense under his breath and even scratched his head.
“Sir,” the Marine tried again. “Sir!”
When he got close, Bannon looked up. He grinned. “Oh, thank goodness. Someone I can ask. Maybe you can help me. I seem to be lost. I’m supposed to be at—”
“How did you get in here?”
Bannon looked around. He hesitated then pointed. “Through a gate, over there. It’s wide open.”
“That’s impossible. This is a restricted area. You must leave immediately.”
